Abstract One of the most important things that the Darwinian revolution affected is the previous teleological thinking. In particular, the attribution of functions to various entities of the natural world with explanatory pretensions. In this change, his theory of natural selection played an important role. We all agree on that, but the diversity and heterogeneity of the answers that try to explain what Darwin did exactly with functional biology are overwhelming. In this paper I will try to show how Darwin (...) modified previous functional biology. Pre-Darwinian naturalists did not hesitate to attribute functions in which, for example, the traits of one species were in the service of other species. I will try to show that this has consequences on the discussion regarding the nature of functional language, since the main approaches, the systemic and the etiological, do not adequately account for these changes and therefore do not account for the way functional biology regulates the kind of legitimate functions. I will outline a possible new solution to this problem: appropriate functional attributions in Darwinian functional biology could be regulated by a theory or a set of laws that provide the criteria for determining its fundamental concepts. -/- Resumen: Una de las cosas más importantes a las que la revolución darwiniana afectó es el pensamiento teleológico previo. En particular, la atribución de funciones a diversas entidades del mundo natural con pretensiones explicativas. En este cambio, su teoría de la selección natural desempeñó un papel importante. Todos estamos de acuerdo en ello, pero la diversidad y heterogeneidad de las respuestas que tratan de explicar lo que Darwin hizo exactamente con la biología funcional son abrumadoras. En este artículo intentaré mostrar cómo Darwin modificó la biología funcional anterior. Los naturalistas predarwinianos no dudaban en atribuir funciones en las que, por ejemplo, los rasgos de una especie estaban al servicio de otras especies. Intentaré mostrar que esto tiene consecuencias en la discusión sobre la naturaleza del lenguaje funcional, pues los principales enfoques, el sistémico y el etiológico, no dan cuenta adecuadamente de estos cambios y, por tanto, no dan cuenta de la forma en que la biología funcional regula el tipo de funciones legítimas. Esbozaré una posible nueva solución a este problema: las atribuciones funcionales apropiadas en la biología funcional darwiniana podrían estar reguladas por una teoría o un conjunto de leyes que proporcionen los criterios para determinar sus conceptos fundamentales. -/- . (shrink)

I discuss three understandings of the idea of “Knowledge First Epistemology”, i.e. Timothy Williamson’s suggestion that we should take knowledge as a starting point, rather than trying to analyze it. Some have taken this to be a suggestion about the role of the concept of knowledge, but Williamson also seems to be concerned with intuition-based metaphysics. As an alternative, I develop the idea that knowledge may be a social kind that can be understood through a functional analysis in the tradition (...) of Edward Craig. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on models of conceptual change in science and philosophy. In particular, I developed a new bootstrapping methodology for studying conceptual change, centered around the formalization of several popular models of conceptual change and the collective assessment of their improved formal versions via nine evaluative dimensions. Among the models of conceptual change treated in the thesis are Carnap’s explication, Lakatos’ concept-stretching, Toulmin’s conceptual populations, Waismann’s open texture, Mark Wilson’s patches and facades, Sneed’s structuralism, and Paul Thagard’s conceptual revolutions. (...) -/- In order to analyze and compare the conception of conceptual change provided by these different models, I rely on several historical reconstructions of episodes of scientific conceptual change. The historical episodes of scientific change that figure in this work include the emergence of the morphological concept of fish in biological taxonomies, the development of scientific conceptions of temperature, the Church-Turing thesis and related axiomatizations of effective calculability, the history of the concept of polyhedron in 17th and 18th century mathematics, Hamilton’s invention of the quaternions, the history of the pre-abstract group concepts in 18th and 19th century mathematics, the expansion of Newtonian mechanics to viscous fluids forces phenomena, and the chemical revolution. I will also present five different formal and informal improvements of four specific models of conceptual change. I will first present two different improvements of Carnapian explication, a formal and an informal one. My informal improvement of Carnapian explication will consist of a more fine-grained version of the procedure that adds an intermediate, third step to the two steps of Carnapian explication. I will show how this novel three-step version of explication is more suitable than its traditional two-step relative to handle complex cases of explications. My second, formal improvement of Carnapian explication will be a full explication of the concept of explication itself within the theory of conceptual spaces. By virtue of this formal improvement, the whole procedure of explication together with its application procedures and its pragmatic desiderata will be reconceptualized as a precise procedure involving topological and geometrical constraints inside the theory of conceptual spaces. My third improved model of conceptual change will consist of a formal explication of Darwinian models of conceptual change that will make vast use of Godfrey-Smith’s population-based Darwinism for targeting explicitly mathematical conceptual change. My fourth improvement will be dedicated instead to Wilson’s indeterminate model of conceptual change. I will show how Wilson’s very informal framework can be explicated within a modified version of the structuralist model-theoretic reconstructions of scientific theories. Finally, the fifth improved model of conceptual change will be a belief-revision-like logical framework that reconstructs Thagard’s model of conceptual revolution as specific revision and contraction operations that work on conceptual structures. -/- At the end of this work, a general conception of conceptual change in science and philosophy emerges, thanks to the combined action of the three layers of my methodology. This conception takes conceptual change to be a multi-faceted phenomenon centered around the dynamics of groups of concepts. According to this conception, concepts are best reconstructed as plastic and inter-subjective entities equipped with a non-trivial internal structure and subject to a certain degree of localized holism. Furthermore, conceptual dynamics can be judged from a weakly normative perspective, bound to be dependent on shared values and goals. Conceptual change is then best understood, according to this conception, as a ubiquitous phenomenon underlying all of our intellectual activities, from science to ordinary linguistic practices. As such, conceptual change does not pose any particular problem to value-laden notions of scientific progress, objectivity, and realism. At the same time, this conception prompts all our concept-driven intellectual activities, including philosophical and metaphilosophical reflections, to take into serious consideration the phenomenon of conceptual change. An important consequence of this conception, and of the analysis that generated it, is in fact that an adequate understanding of the dynamics of philosophical concepts is a prerequisite for analytic philosophy to develop a realistic and non-idealized depiction of itself and its activities. (shrink)

According to an infinite frequency principle, it is rational, under certain conditions, to set your credence in an outcome to the limiting frequency of that outcome if the experiment were repeated indefinitely. I argue that most infinite frequency principles are undesirable in at least one of the following ways: accepting the principle would lead you to accept bets with sure losses, the principle gives no guidance in the case of deterministic experiments like coin tosses and the principle relies on a (...) metaphysical property, ‘chanciness’, whose necessary and sufficient conditions are unknown. I show that a frequency principle that is based on the principal principle suffers from problems related to the definition of ‘chance’ or ‘chanciness’, which could lead to all three of the above problems. I introduce a version of the infinite frequency principle that does not rely on a notion of chance or chanciness and does not suffer from any of these problems. (shrink)

This paper draws on the notion of “objects of research” in psychology as clusters of phenomena (Feest in Philos Sci 84:1165–1176, 2017) to analyze the productive role of folk psychological concepts—and the operational definitions that arise from them—in the development of concepts in scientific psychology. Using the case study of similarity, I discuss the role of the folk psychological concept in the regimentation of different measures of similarity judgments. I propose that by giving rise to operational definitions that lead to (...) experimental dissociation on the one hand, and by providing the concept with unity on the other hand, the folk psychological concept generates a productive tension that facilitates empirical and theoretical development of the scientific concept. (shrink)

Will brain imaging technology soon enable neuroscientists to read minds? We cannot answer this question without some understanding of the state of the art in neuroimaging. But neither can we answer this question without some understanding of the concept invoked by the term "mind reading." This article is an attempt to develop such understanding. Our analysis proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, we provide a categorical explication of mind reading. The categorical explication articulates empirical conditions that must be (...) satisfied if mind reading is to be achieved. In the second stage, we develop a metric for judging the proficiency of mind reading experiments. The conception of mind reading that emerges helps to reconcile folk psychological judgments about what mind reading must involve with the constraints imposed by empirical strategies for achieving it. (shrink)

Extreme Permissivism is the view that a body of evidence could rationally permit both the attitude of belief and disbelief towards a proposition. This paper puts forward a new argument against Extreme Permissivism, which improves on a similar style of argument due to Roger White (2005, 2014). White’s argument is built around the principle that the support relation between evidence and a hypothesis is objective: so that if evidence E makes it rational for an agent to believe a hypothesis H, (...) then E makes it rational to believe H, for all agents. In this paper, I construct a new argument against Extreme Permissivism that appeals to a logically weaker, less demanding view about evidential support, Relational Objectivity: whether a body of evidence E is more likely if H is true than if H is false is an objective matter and does not depend on how any agent interprets the relationship between E and H. Relational Objectivity is solely concerned with the conditional probabilities called likelihoods and does not put substantive constraints on an agent’s prior and posterior credences. For this reason, the presented argument avoids the standard permissivist criticism levelled against White’s argument. (shrink)

This chapter explores two central questions in the conceptual ethics of normative inquiry. The first is whether to orient one’s normative inquiry around folk normative concepts (like KNOWLEDGE or IMMORAL) or around theoretical normative concepts (like ADEQUATE EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION or PRO TANTO PRACTICAL REASON). The second is whether to orient one’s normative inquiry around concepts whose normative authority is especially accessible to us (such as OUGHT ALL THINGS CONSIDERED), or around concepts whose extension is especially accessible to us (such as (...) BETRAYAL). The chapter aims to make vivid and plausible a range of possible answers to these questions, and important forms of argument that can be used to favor certain answers over others. (shrink)

Schurz (2019, ch. 4) argues that probabilistic accounts of induction fail. In particular, he criticises probabilistic accounts of induction that appeal to direct inference principles, including subjective Bayesian approaches (e.g., Howson 2000) and objective Bayesian approaches (see, e.g., Williamson 2017). In this paper, I argue that Schurz’ preferred direct inference principle, namely Reichenbach’s Principle of the Narrowest Reference Class, faces formidable problems in a standard probabilistic setting. Furthermore, the main alternative direct inference principle, Lewis’ Principal Principle, is also hard to (...) reconcile with standard probabilism. So, I argue, standard probabilistic approaches cannot appeal to direct inference to explicate the logic of induction. However, I go on to defend a non-standard objective Bayesian account of induction: I argue that this approach can both accommodate direct inference and provide a viable account of the logic of induction. I then defend this account against Schurz’ criticisms. (shrink)

This paper investigates the connection between two recent trends in philosophy: higher-orderism and conceptual engineering. Higher-orderists use higher-order quantifiers (in particular quantifiers binding variables that occupy the syntactic positions of predicates) to express certain key metaphysical doctrines, such as the claim that there are properties. I argue that, on a natural construal, the higher-orderist approach involves an engineering project concerning, among others, the concept of existence. I distinguish between a modest construal of this project, on which it aims at engineering (...) higher-order analogues of the familiar notion of first-order existence, and an ambitious construal, on which it additionally aims at engineering a broadened notion of existence that subsumes first-order and higher-order existence. After identifying a substantial problem for the ambitious project, I investigate a possible response which is based on adopting a cumulative type theory as the background higher-order logic. While effective against the problem at hand, this strategy turns out to undermine a major reason to embrace higher-orderism in the first place, namely the idea that higher-orderism dissolves a range of otherwise intractable debates in metaphysics. Higher-orderists are therefore best advised to pursue their engineering project on the modest variant and against the background of standard type theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically evaluate several related, provocative claims made by proponents of data-intensive science and “Big Data” which bear on scientific methodology, especially the claim that scientists will soon no longer have any use for familiar concepts like causation and explanation. After introducing the issue, in Section 2, I elaborate on the alleged changes to scientific method that feature prominently in discussions of Big Data. In Section 3, I argue that these methodological claims are in tension with a (...) prominent account of scientific method, often called “Inference to the Best Explanation”. Later on, in Section 3, I consider an argument against IBE that will be congenial to proponents of Big Data, namely, the argument due to Roche and Sober Analysis, 73:659–668, that “explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant.” This argument is based on Bayesianism, one of the most prominent general accounts of theory-confirmation. In Section 4, I consider some extant responses to this argument, especially that of Climenhaga Philosophy of Science, 84:359–368,. In Section 5, I argue that Roche and Sober’s argument does not show that explanatory reasoning is dispensable. In Section 6, I argue that there is good reason to think explanatory reasoning will continue to prove indispensable in scientific practice. Drawing on Cicero’s oft-neglected De Divinatione, I formulate what I call the “Ciceronian Causal-nomological Requirement”, which states, roughly, that causal-nomological knowledge is essential for relying on correlations in predictive inference. I defend a version of the CCR by appealing to the challenge of “spurious correlations,” chance correlations which we should not rely upon for predictive inference. In Section 7, I offer some concluding remarks. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to work out Quine's account of explication. Quine does not provide a general account but considers a paradigmatic example which does not fit other examples he claims to be explications. Besides working out Quine's account of explication and explaining this tension, I show how it connects to other notions such as paraphrase and ontological commitment. Furthermore, I relate Quinean explication to Carnap's conception and argue that Quinean explication is much narrower because its main (...) purpose is to be a criterion of theory choice. (shrink)

– We offer a new motivation for imprecise probabilities. We argue that there are propositions to which precise probability cannot be assigned, but to which imprecise probability can be assigned. In such cases the alternative to imprecise probability is not precise probability, but no probability at all. And an imprecise probability is substantially better than no probability at all. Our argument is based on the mathematical phenomenon of non-measurable sets. Non-measurable propositions cannot receive precise probabilities, but there is a natural (...) way for them to receive imprecise probabilities. The mathematics of non-measurable sets is arcane, but its epistemological import is far-reaching; even apparently mundane propositions are liable to be affected by non-measurability. The phenomenon of non-measurability dramatically reshapes the dialectic between critics and proponents of imprecise credence. Non-measurability offers natural rejoinders to prominent critics of imprecise credence. Non-measurability even reverses some of the critics’ arguments—by the very lights that have been used to argue against imprecise credences, imprecise credences are better than precise credences. (shrink)

According to a widely shared generic conception of inferential justification—‘the standard conception’—an agent is inferentially justified in believing that p only if she has antecedently justified beliefs in all the non-redundant premises of a good argument for p. This conception tends to serve as the starting-point in contemporary debates about the nature and scope of inferential justification: as neutral common ground between various competing, more specific, conceptions. But it’s a deeply problematic starting-point. This paper explores three questions that haven’t been (...) given the attention they deserve, that complicate the application of the standard conception to cases, and that reveal it to be underspecified at the core—in ways that aren’t resolved but inherited by more specific (extant) versions of it. The goal isn’t to answer the questions, but to articulate them, explain what turns on them, and invite a critical re-examination of the standard conception. (shrink)

Although much has been written about divine knowledge, and some on divine beliefs, virtually nothing has been written about divine credences. In this essay we comparatively assess four views on divine credences: (1) God has only beliefs, not credences; (2) God has both beliefs and credences; (3) God has only credences, not beliefs; and (4) God has neither credences nor beliefs, only knowledge. We weigh the costs and benefits of these four views and draw connections to current discussions in philosophical (...) theology. (shrink)

This paper argues for explanatory eliminativism about topics (and cognates, such as subject matters) relative to the domain of conceptual engineering. It has become usual to think that topics serve an important explanatory role in theories of conceptual engineering, namely, to determine the limits of revision. I argue, first, that such limits can be understood either as thenormative limitspertaining to the justification of conceptual engineering, as themetaphysical limitspertaining to the identity of the concepts in question, or as theterminological limitspertaining to (...) usage of the original terminology. Second, I argue that the metaphysical reading is disputable as a theory of concepts and inconsequential for conceptual engineers, and that neither of the two leading accounts of topics that have been presented in the literature—the samesaying account and functionalism—determine the limits of revision in either of the two remaining senses. In the absence of more promising competitors, I conclude that there is no theoretical role for topics to play in theories of conceptual engineering. An upshot of my argument is that conceptual engineers should stop worrying about things like topic (dis)continuity, and instead shift their attention to the issues that really matter for justifying conceptual revisions or replacements, making terminological choices, and underpinning conceptual engineering with a theory of concepts. (shrink)

The argument from inductive risk, as developed by Rudner and others, famously concludes that the scientist qua scientist makes value judgments. The paper aims to show that trust in the soundness of the argument is overrated – that philosophers who endorse its conclusion fail to refute two of the most important objections that have been raised to its soundness: Jeffrey’s objection that the genuine task of the scientist is to assign probabilities to hypotheses, and Levi’s objection that the argument is (...) ambiguous about decisions about how to act and decisions about what to believe, that only the former presuppose value judgments, and that qua scientist, the scientist only needs to decide what to believe. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to debates about the nature of philosophical inquiry and its relation to science. The starting point is the Discontinuity View (DV), which holds that philosophy is discontinuous with science. Upon critically engaging two lines of argument in favor of DV, the paper presents and defends the Continuity View (CV), according to which philosophy and science are continuous forms of inquiry. The critical engagement sheds light on continuities between philosophical and scientific inquiry while underlining special normative (...) competences of philosophical work. The final part of the paper uses these insights to offer a brief outline of a normative approach to philosophy of science. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalists about logic claim that logical methodology is not different from scientific methodology when it comes to theory choice. Two anti-exceptionalist accounts of theory choice in logic are abductivism and predictivism. These accounts have in common reliance on pre-theoretical logical intuitions for the assessment of candidate logical theories. In this paper, I investigate whether intuitions can provide what abductivism and predictivism want from them and conclude that they do not. As an alternative to these approaches, I propose a Carnapian view (...) on logical theorizing according to which logical theories do not simply account for pre-theoretical intuitions, but rather improve on them. In this account, logical theories are ameliorative, rather than representational. (shrink)

The full Bayesian signi/cance test (FBST) for precise hypotheses is presented, with some illustrative applications. In the FBST we compute the evidence against the precise hypothesis. We discuss some of the theoretical properties of the FBST, and provide an invariant formulation for coordinate transformations, provided a reference density has been established. This evidence is the probability of the highest relative surprise set, “tangential” to the sub-manifold (of the parameter space) that defines the null hypothesis.

Conceptual engineering projects have been criticized for creating discontinuities of subject-matter and, as a result, discontinuities in inquiries: call this the Change of Subject objection. In this paper, I explore a way of dealing with the objection that clarifies its scope and eventually downplays it. First, two strategies aimed at saving subject-continuity are examined and found wanting: Herman Cappelen’s appeal to topics, and the account in terms of concept function. Second, the idea is introduced that one can begin an object-level (...) inquiry either with a ‘semantically conservative’ approach, whereby semantic change is not permitted, or with a ‘semantically progressive’ approach, whereby semantic change is permitted. This distinction helps one significantly downplay the Change of Subject objection. (shrink)

When we think about what others believe and want, we are usually affected by what we know about their attitudes. If I’m aware that another person believes something, I have an opportunity to agree or disagree with it. If I think that another person wants something, I can endorse or disapprove of her desire. The importance of such reactions to attributed beliefs and desires has thus far been overlooked in philosophy of mind where the focus has been on explanatory and (...) predictive roles of attitude attribution. The primary goal of this thesis is to fill this lacuna and to articulate the indispensability of such reactions – agreement/disagreement and endorsement/disapproval – for social cognition. In the process of doing it I also show how these initial reactions ground certain further possible responses in intersubjective communication: manipulation, negotiation or adoption of attributed attitudes. The second aim of this thesis is to explicate what is it about belief and desire attributions that makes the responses I’ve described possible. Because one can agree or disagree both with beliefs and assertions and endorse or disapprove both desires and requests, I argue that we should understand belief attributions in terms of assertions and desire attributions in terms of requests. When we think what someone believes and wants, we treat her as a conversation partner because her attitudes call for the same responses as speech acts do, even if she hasn’t made any explicit assertion or request herself. In short, beliefs and desires have communicative significance. Given such significance, we can also see what one needs to take into consideration when attributing these attitudes to another. My answer in the thesis is that belief and desire attributions have to be grounded in facts about the behaviour and well-being of attributees and that these facts also constitute the nature of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

What is scientific progress? This paper advances an interpretation of this question, and an account that serves to answer it. Roughly, the question is here understood to concern what type of cognitive change with respect to a topic X constitutes a scientific improvement with respect to X. The answer explored in the paper is that the requisite type of cognitive change occurs when scientific results are made publicly available so as to make it possible for anyone to increase their understanding (...) of X. This account is briefly compared to two rival accounts of scientific progress, based respectively on increasing truthlikeness and accumulating knowledge, and is argued to be preferable to both. (shrink)

This essay offers a conception of logic by which logic may be considered to be exceptional among the sciences on the backdrop of a naturalistic outlook. The conception of logic focused on emphasises the traditional role of logic as a methodology for the sciences, which distinguishes it from other sciences that are not methodological. On the proposed conception, the methodological aims of logic drive its definitions and principles, rather than the description of scientific phenomena. The notion of a methodological discipline (...) is explained as a relation between disciplines or practices. Logic serves as a methodological discipline with respect to any theoretical practice, and this generality, as well as logic’s reflexive nature, distinguish it from other methodological disciplines. Finally, the evolution of model theory is taken as a case study, with a focus on its methodological role. Following recent work by John Baldwin and Juliette Kennedy, we look at model theory from its inception in the mid-twentieth century as a foundational endeavour until developments at the end of the century, where the classification of theories has taken centre-stage. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom dictates that proofs of mathematical propositions should be treated as necessary, and sufficient, for entailing `significant' mathematical truths only if the proofs are expressed in a---minimally, deemed consistent---formal mathematical theory in terms of: * Axioms/Axiom schemas * Rules of Deduction * Definitions * Lemmas * Theorems * Corollaries. Whilst Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem FLT, which appeals essentially to geometrical properties of real and complex numbers, can be treated as meeting this criteria, it nevertheless leaves two (...) questions unanswered: (i) Why is x^n +y^n = z^n solvable only for n < 3 if x, y, z, n are natural numbers? (ii) What technique might Fermat have used that led him to, even if only briefly, believe he had `a truly marvellous demonstration' of FLT? Prevailing post-Wiles wisdom---leaving (i) essentially unaddressed---dismisses Fermat's claim as a conjecture without a plausible proof of FLT. -/- However, we posit that providing evidence-based answers to both queries is necessary not only for treating FLT as significant, but also for understanding why FLT can be treated as a true arithmetical proposition. We thus argue that proving a theorem formally from explicit, and implicit, premises/axioms using rules of deduction---as currently accepted---is a meaningless game, of little scientific value, in the absence of evidence that has already established---unambiguously---why the premises/axioms and rules of deduction can be treated, and categorically communicated, as pre-formal truths in Marcus Pantsar's sense. Consequently, only evidence-based, pre-formal, truth can entail formal provability; and the formal proof of any significant mathematical theorem cannot entail its pre-formal truth as evidence-based. It can only identify the explicit/implicit premises that have been used to evidence the, already established, pre-formal truth of a mathematical proposition. Hence visualising and understanding the evidence-based, pre-formal, truth of a mathematical proposition is the only raison d'etre for subsequently seeking a formal proof of the proposition within a formal mathematical language (whether first-order or second order set theory, arithmetic, geometry, etc.) By this yardstick Andrew Wiles' proof of FLT fails to meet the required, evidence-based, criteria for entailing a true arithmetical proposition. -/- Moreover, we offer two scenarios as to why/how Fermat could have laconically concluded in his recorded marginal noting that FLT is a true arithmetical proposition---even though he either did not (or could not to his own satisfaction) succeed in cogently evidencing, and recording, why FLT can be treated as an evidence-based, pre-formal, arithmetical truth (presumably without appeal to properties of real and complex numbers). It is primarily such a putative, unrecorded, evidence-based reasoning underlying Fermat's laconic assertion which this investigation seeks to reconstruct; and to justify by appeal to a plausible resolution of some philosophical ambiguities concerning the relation between evidence-based, pre-formal, truth and formal provability. (shrink)

Denna artikel är den första i en serie om två artiklar som introducerar astrobiologins filosofi. Detta är ett förhållandevis nytt och i Sverige nästan okänt forskningsfält som dock befinner sig i snabb tillväxt internationellt. Ämnet presenteras här i form av exempel på några centrala frågeställningar inom området. I den här artikeln presenteras några frågeställningar hemmahörande i teoretisk filosofi.

Andrew Wiles' analytic proof of Fermat's Last Theorem FLT, which appeals to geometrical properties of real and complex numbers, leaves two questions unanswered: (i) What technique might Fermat have used that led him to, even if only briefly, believe he had `a truly marvellous demonstration' of FLT? (ii) Why is x^n+y^n=z^n solvable only for n<3? In this inter-disciplinary perspective, we offer insight into, and answers to, both queries; yielding a pre-formal proof of why FLT can be treated as a true (...) arithmetical proposition (one which, moreover, might not be provable formally in the first-order Peano Arithmetic PA), where we admit only elementary (i.e., number-theoretic) reasoning, without appeal to analytic properties of real and complex numbers. We cogently argue, further, that any formal proof of FLT needs---as is implicitly suggested by Wiles' proof---to appeal essentially to formal geometrical properties of formal arithmetical propositions. (shrink)

How do multiple reasons combine to support a conclusion about what to do or believe? This question raises two challenges: How can we represent the strength of a reason? How do the strengths of multiple reasons combine? Analogous challenges about confirmation have been answered using probabilistic tools. Can reductive and nonreductive theories of reasons use these tools to answer their challenges? Yes, or more exactly: reductive theories can answer both challenges. Nonreductive theories, with the help of a result in confirmation (...) theory, can answer one, and there are grounds for optimism that they can answer the other. (shrink)

How much does rationality constrain what we should believe on the basis of our evidence? According to this book, not very much. For most people and most bodies of evidence, there is a wide range of beliefs that rationality permits them to have in response to that evidence. The argument, which takes inspiration from William James' ideas in 'The Will to Believe', proceeds from two premises. The first is a theory about the basis of epistemic rationality. It's called epistemic utility (...) theory, and it says that what it is epistemically rational for you to believe is what it would be rational for you to choose if you were given the chance to pick your beliefs and, when picking them, you were to care only about their epistemic value. So, to say which beliefs are permitted, we must say how to measure epistemic value, and which decision rule to use when picking your beliefs. The second premise is a claim about attitudes to epistemic risk, and it says that rationality permits many different such attitudes. These attitudes can show up in epistemic utility theory in two ways: in the way you measure epistemic value; and in the decision rule you use to pick beliefs. This book explores the latter. The result is permissivism about epistemic rationality: different attitudes to epistemic risk lead to different choices of prior beliefs; given most bodies of evidence, different priors lead to different posteriors; and even once we fix your attitudes to epistemic risk, if they are at all risk-inclined, there is a range of different priors and therefore different posteriors they permit. (shrink)

There are presently two approaches to the study of well-being. Philosophers typically focus on normative theorizing, attempting to identify the things that are ultimately good for a person, while largely ignoring empirical research. The idea is that empirical attention cannot be directed to the right place without a rigorous theory. Meanwhile, social scientists typically focus on empirical research, attempting to identify the causes and consequences of well-being, while largely ignoring normative theorizing. The idea is that conceptual and theoretical clarity will (...) come with time and more data. This paper argues that neither is a good approach to the study of well-being. The traditional philosophical approach underappreciates the vital importance of empirical investigation, while the atheoretical empirical approach underappreciates the vital importance of normative theorizing. The proposed solution is to bring these methods together. Well-being research should be interdisciplinary. The paper proposes a “conceptual engineering” approach as a novel alternative. This approach involves an iterative process of normative theorizing, empirical investigation, and conceptual revision, with the aim of articulating concepts and theories of well-being that optimally suit particular interests and purposes. (shrink)

L'ingegneria concettuale è una branca della filosofia caratterizzata da un approccio normativo nei confronti della rappresentazione. Assunzione fondamentale è che i nostri dispositivi rappresentazionali possano essere difettosi. Si configura dunque come l'attività che consiste nell'identificare i difetti in tali dispositivi e mettere in atto strategie di miglioramento. Verranno illustrate le questioni fondamentali a cui una teoria di ingegneria concettuale deve rispondere: in cosa consiste esattamente questa attività? Come possiamo attuarla? Quali meccanismi regolano la formazione dei dispositivi rappresentazionali? Possiamo influire su (...) tali meccanismi? Verrà inoltre presentata un'obiezione all'ingegneria concettuale e varie risposte. -/- Conceptual engineering is a branch of philosophy characterised by a normative approach towards representation. The fundamental assumption of it is that our representational devices can be defective. Conceptual engineering is then the activity consisting of identifying the defects of such devices and putting in place ameliorative strategies. This paper illustrates the fundamental issues for a theory of conceptual engineering: what does this activity consist of? How can we implement it? What mechanisms regulate the formation of representational devices? Can we have an influence over those mechanisms? Moreover, it will be presented an objection to conceptual engineering and various responses to it. (shrink)

In his new book, Logical Form, Andrea Iacona distinguishes between two different roles that have been ascribed to the notion of logical form: the logical role and the semantic role. These two roles entail a bifurcation of the notion of logical form. Both notions of logical form, according to Iacona, are descriptive, having to do with different features of natural language sentences. I agree that the notion of logical form bifurcates, but not that the logical role is merely descriptive. In (...) this paper, I focus on formalization, a process by which logical form, on its logical role, is attributed to natural language sentences. According to some, formalization is a form of explication, and it involves normative, pragmatic, as well as creative aspects. I present a view by which formalization involves explicit commitments on behalf of a reasoner or an interpreter, which serve the normative grounds for the evaluation of a given text. In previous work, I proposed the framework of semantic constraints for the explication of logical consequence. Here, I extend the framework to include formalization constraints. The various constraints then serve the role of commitments. I discuss specific issues raised by Iacona concerning univocality, co-reference and equivocation, and I show how our views on these matters diverge as a result of our different starting assumptions. (shrink)

Despite its central role in our cognitive lives, rational belief revision has received relatively little attention from epistemologists. This dissertation begins to fill that absence. In particular, we explore the phenomenon of defeasible epistemic justification, i.e., justification that can be lost as well as gained by epistemic agents. We begin by considering extant theories of defeat, according to which defeaters are whatever cause a loss of justification or things that somehow neutralize one's reasons for belief. Both of these theories are (...) both extensionally and explanatorily inadequate and, so, are rejected. We proceed to develop a novel theory of defeat according to which defeaters are reasons against belief. According to this theory, the dynamics of justification are explained by the competition between reasons for and reasons against belief. We find that this theory not only handles the counter-examples that felled the previous theories but also does a fair job in explaining the various aspects of the phenomenon of defeat. Furthermore, this theory accomplishes this without positing any novel entities or mechanisms; according to this theory, defeaters are epistemic reasons against belief, the mirror image of our epistemic reasons for belief, rather than sui generis entities. (shrink)

Decision-making procedures in medical practice are often analysed by both philosophers of science and ethicists, as well as statisticians, clinicians and methodologists. The paper focuses on decisions made by patients in situations of moral dilemma. The main purpose is to analyse the strategies used in resolving such dilemmas. First, the concept of a ‘situation of moral dilemma’ is clarified. Then, two types of strategies for resolving such situations are distinguished. The first strategy requires revising the patient’s belief system or moral (...) orientation. The second one includes a group of non-revision beliefs strategies (NRB). The authors argue in support of the thesis that NRB strategies are, in fact, the patient’s first choice when it comes to resolving moral dilemmas. The paper analyses situations where the NRB strategies may prove effective, as well as situations where they fail and where the solution of the moral dilemma must be addressed by revising the accepted belief system. The findings will help to better understand patients’ decision-making processes. (shrink)

Carnap’s seminal ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ makes important use of the notion of a framework and the related distinction between internal and external questions. But what exactly is a framework? And what role does the internal/external distinction play in Carnap’s metaontology? In an influential series of papers, Matti Eklund has recently defended a bracingly straightforward interpretation: A Carnapian framework, Eklund says, is just a natural language. To ask an internal question, then, is just to ask a question in, say, English. (...) To try to ask an external question is to try, absurdly, to ask a question in no language at all. Finding that so trivial an I/e distinction can’t help to explain Carnap’s deflationary metaontology, Eklund is led to attribute to Carnap a view he calls ontological pluralism. In this paper, I show that Eklund misreads Carnap, and I argue that this misreading obscures fundamental features of Carnap’s philosophy. I then defend an account of frameworks as what Carnap called semantical systems, and I place this account in the context of Carnap’s philosophical program of explication. Finally, I discuss the role that frameworks and the I/e distinction play in ESO, showing that ESO provides no reason to attribute the doctrine of ontological pluralism to Carnap. (shrink)

What is the significance of empirical moral psychology for metaethics? In this article we take up Michael Ruse’s evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism and reassess it in the context of the empirical state of the art. Ruse’s argument depends on the phenomenological presumption that people generally experience morality as objective. We demonstrate how recent experimental findings challenge this widely-shared armchair presumption and conclude that Ruse’s argument fails. We situate this finding in the recent debate about Carnapian explication and argue (...) that it illustrates the necessary role that empirical moral psychology plays in explication preparation. Moral psychology sets boundaries for reasonable desiderata in metaethics and, therefore, it is necessary for metaethics. (shrink)

The Shape of Agency offers interlinked explanations of the basic building blocks of agency, as well as its exemplary instances. The first part offers accounts of a collection of related phenomena that have long troubled philosophers of action: control over behaviour, non-deviant causation, and intentional action. These accounts build on earlier work in the causalist tradition, and undermine the claims made by many that causalism cannot offer a satisfying account of non-deviant causation, and therefore fails as an account of intentional (...) action. The second part turns to modes of agentive excellence—ways that agents display quality of form—providing a novel account of skill, including an account of the ways that agents display more or less skill. Shepherd discusses the role of knowledge in skill, and concludes that while knowledge is often important, it is inessential. This leads to a discussion of the way that knowledge of action and knowledge of how to act informs action execution. Knowledgeable action includes a unique epistemic underpinning: in knowledgeable action, the agent has authoritative knowledge of what she is doing and how she is doing it when and because she is poised to control her action by way of practical reasoning. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I address the question of how to construct scientific theories of emotions that are both conceptually sound and empirically fruitful. To do this, I offer an analysis of the main challenges scientific theories of emotions face, and I propose a meta-theoretical framework to construct scientific concepts of emotions as explications of folk emotion concepts. Part I discusses the main challenges theories of emotions in psychology and neuroscience encounter. The first states that a proper scientific theory of emotions (...) must explain all and only the phenomena under the vernacular term ‘emotion’ with a common set of conceptual resources and under an overarching generic concept of emotion. The second demands that each emotion category corresponds to well-coordinated sets of neural, physiological, and behavioral patterns of responses. I argue that none of the best contemporary theories of emotions in psychology and neuroscience overcomes these challenges. As a result, a new theory of emotions is required. In Part II, I develop the meta-theoretical framework to construct a theory of emotions that overcomes the challenges above. First, I propose a pluralistic account of scientific kinds based on different patterns of projection that various disciplines may take to justify inductive inferences. These are essentialist, historical, and social patterns. Each of these patterns provides a framework to construct different types of scientific concepts. I argue that among the frameworks for scientific kinds available, the one that is best suited to explicate emotion concepts is a functional framework. Consequently, I conclude by recommending scientists pursue functionalist theories of emotions over essentialist, historical, or social theories. (shrink)

Scientists often diverge widely when choosing between research programs. This can seem to be rooted in disagreements about which of several theories, competing to address shared questions or phenomena, is currently the most epistemically or explanatorily valuable—i.e. most successful. But many such cases are actually more directly rooted in differing judgments of pursuit-worthiness, concerning which theory will be best down the line, or which addresses the most significant data or questions. Using case studies from 16th-century astronomy and 20th-century geology and (...) biology, I argue that divergent theory choice is thus often driven by considerations of scientific process, even where direct epistemic or explanatory evaluation of its final products appears more relevant. Broadly following Kuhn’s analysis of theoretical virtues, I suggest that widely shared criteria for pursuit-worthiness function as imprecise, mutually-conflicting values. However, even Kuhn and others sensitive to pragmatic dimensions of theory ‘acceptance’, including the virtue of fruitfulness, still commonly understate the role of pursuit-worthiness—especially by exaggerating the impact of more present-oriented virtues, or failing to stress how ‘competing’ theories excel at addressing different questions or data. This framework clarifies the nature of the choice and competition involved in theory choice, and the role of alternative theoretical virtues. (shrink)

Conceptual engineers seek to revise or replace the devices we use to speak and think. If this amounts to an effort to change what natural language expressions mean, conceptual engineers will have a hard time. It is largely unfeasible to change the meaning of e.g. ‘cause’ in English. Conceptual engineers may therefore seem unable to make the changes they aim to make. This is what I call ‘the implementation problem’. In this paper, I argue that the implementation problem dissolves if (...) we expand our view of how conceptual engineers could implement the products of their work. I describe four implementation options: Standing Meaning, Meaning Modulation, Speaker-Meaning and Different Language. I query the feasibility and worth of pursuing these options. Unless each option fails because it is unfeasible or not worthwhile, conceptual engineers do not face an implementation problem worth worrying about. I argue that some of the options are feasible and worthwhile, and therefore, that conceptual engineers do not face an implementation problem worth worrying about. (shrink)

Epistemic injustice is injustice to a person qua knower. In one form of this phenomenon a speaker’s testimony is denied credence in a way that wrongs them. I argue that the received definition of this testimonial injustice relies too heavily on epistemic criteria that cannot explain why the moral concept of injustice should be invoked. I give an account of the nature of the wrong of epistemic injustice that has it depend not on the accuracy of judgments that are used (...) or made in the process of deciding whether to listen to or trust a speaker, but on whether the basis of the decision about a speaker is their reliability or their identity, and the account explains why the latter is a moral wrong. A key difference between the two accounts is how they classify the use of true statistical generalizations connecting identity and reliability. The received view implies that this cannot be an injustice, while the view proposed here implies that it can. As such the new view appears to imply a conflict between moral and epistemic obligations: it is morally wrong to use true statistical generalizations in certain contexts, yet they are part of our evidence, and we are epistemically obligated to take all of our evidence into account. I reconcile these two thoughts without adopting the currently popular view that a belief’s being morally wrong makes it epistemically unjustified, and I argue that following the principle of total evidence encourages epistemic justice rather than thwarting it. (shrink)

Lloyd analyzes every proposed evolutionary explanation of female orgasm and argues that all but one suffers from serious evidential errors. Lloyd attributes these errors to two main biases: androcentrism and adaptationism. This paper begins by arguing that the explanation Lloyd favors—the by-product account—is guilty of the androcentrism which supposedly implicates the other explanations of female orgasm with numerous evidential discrepancies. This suggests that there is another error afflicting orgasm research in addition to the biases Lloyd identities. I attempt to diagnose (...) and characterize this additional error. In short, I think the error is using an imprecise definition of the trait in question. Further, Lloyd takes her analysis to support Longino’s contextual empiricist model of scientific objectivity. I consider what implications this analysis has for contextual empiricism. Finally, I argue that theorizing about female orgasm should be done from a conceptual engineering approach. (shrink)

Max Deutsch has recently argued that conceptual engineering is stuck in a dilemma. If it is construed as the activity of revising the semantic meanings of existing terms, then it faces an unsurmountable implementation problem. If, on the other hand, it is construed as the activity of introducing new technical terms, then it becomes trivial. According to Deutsch, this conclusion need not worry us, however, for conceptual engineering is ill-motivated to begin with. This paper responds to Deutsch by arguing, first, (...) that there is a third construal of conceptual engineering, neglected by him, which renders it both implementable and non-trivial, and second, that even the more ambitious project of changing semantic meanings is no less feasible than other normative projects we currently pursue. Lastly, the value of conceptual engineering is defended against Deutsch’s objections. (shrink)

I argue that Sarah Sawyer's and Herman Cappelen's recent accounts of how speakers talk and think about the same concept or topic even when their understandings of that concept or topic substantially diverge risk multiplying our metasemantic categories unnecessarily and fail to prove explanatory. When we look more closely at our actual practices of samesaying, we find that speakers with seemingly incompatible formulations of a subject matter take one another to samesay when they are attempting to arrive at a correct (...) understanding of that subject matter. These speakers adopt what I call a prospective externalist perspective on the subject matter in question. I then argue that there are contexts where judgments of samesaying are more routinely defeated because speakers are taking up a perspective I call retrospective internalism. From this perspective, speakers are aiming to render maximally intelligible the linguistic behavior of other speakers that appear to them to deviate from their own. Whether or not we count speakers as samesaying with us will therefore depend on the kind of the perspective we adopt. Different perspectives, it will turn out, often yield different verdicts. On my perspective-based approach, there is no need to hypostatize or inflate our metasemantic taxonomies. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed technical protocol analysis of chess masters' evaluative expertise, paying particular attention to the analysis of the structure of their memory process in evaluating foreseen possibilities in games of dynamic equilibrium. The paper has two purposes. First, to publish a results chapter from my DPhil thesis (in revised journal article form) attending to the measurement of foresight in chess masters' evaluation process, testing alternative theories of cognitive expertise in the domain of (...) chess; and second to provide a subset of the technical graphical analysis that corresponds to that measurement to preserve this protocol analysis for access in the academic domain for future studies of expert memory and foresight (e.g., Ericsson & Simon, 1993). The step-by-step protocol analysis consists of: (i) an introduction to foresight cognition as hypothesis testing, (ii) a theoretical review in the domain of chess masters' expertise according to the theoretical frameworks in that field purporting hypotheses relevant to chess masters' evaluative skill processes, and (iii) summary tables and non-parametric statistical analysis corroborating chunking theory frameworks of expert cognition (e.g., DeGroot, 1965; Newell & Simon, 1972; Gobet, 1998; Gobet et al., 2004), and refuting the alternative search-evaluation models (e.g., Holding & Reynolds, 1982). Moreover, the journal article espouses the preservation of the traditional protocol analysis method core to the field of expert cognition (DeGroot, 1969; Kotov, 1971). The full protocol analysis can be found in monograph form here on my SSRN profile in ‘The role of falsification in hypothesis testing’. It takes the form of a specialist population study (e.g., detailed case study work; Luria, 1987). Thus the outline consists of a short introduction, a theoretical methodological review discussing protocol analysis methods for specialist population studies in cognition (with particular attention to the preservation of protocol analysis methods for chess studies in cognition and expert memory/ with a fresh angle on the foresight process), and the full set of protocol analyses with corresponding problem behaviour graphs. A subset of the main results has been published elsewhere (e.g., Cowley & Byrne, 2004; Cowley 2006), receiving scientific and scientific journalistic acclaim (e.g., Nature Online News 2004). (shrink)

The conservation of energy and momentum have been viewed as undermining Cartesian mental causation since the 1690s. Modern discussions of the topic tend to use mid-nineteenth century physics, neglecting both locality and Noether’s theorem and its converse. The relevance of General Relativity has rarely been considered. But a few authors have proposed that the non-localizability of gravitational energy and consequent lack of physically meaningful local conservation laws answers the conservation objection to mental causation: conservation already fails in GR, so there (...) is nothing for minds to violate. This paper is motivated by two ideas. First, one might take seriously the fact that GR formally has an infinity of rigid symmetries of the action and hence, by Noether’s first theorem, an infinity of conserved energies-momenta. Second, Sean Carroll has asked how one should modify the Dirac–Maxwell–Einstein equations to describe mental causation. This paper uses the generalized Bianchi identities to show that General Relativity tends to exclude, not facilitate, such Cartesian mental causation. In the simplest case, Cartesian mental influence must be spatio-temporally constant, and hence 0. The difficulty may diminish for more complicated models. Its persuasiveness is also affected by larger world-view considerations. The new general relativistic objection provides some support for realism about gravitational energy-momentum in GR. Such realism also might help to answer an objection to theories of causation involving conserved quantities, because energies-momenta would be conserved even in GR. (shrink)