This paper contains a novel and coherent reading of Weberian ideal type construction, based on recent philosophical approaches to conceptual engineering. This reading makes transparent the dialectics of Weber's approach, resulting in a more nuanced interpretation of his methodological work. It will become apparent that Weber, when introducing his notion of an ideal type, did not merely summarize his views on methodology in the social sciences, but, rather, presented a two-step argument in favor of these views. The reconstruction will directly (...) bear on issues in the methodology of the social sciences. Weber not only presented a methodology that is, at some level of abstraction, strikingly similar to Carnapian explication (the canonical point of reference in the contemporary debate on conceptual engineering). He also diagnosed, in a systematic fashion, types of problems we face when dealing with ordinary and scientific concepts that play a key role in the description of social reality, and he foreshadowed what is today sometimes described as “debunking” projects. From a philosophy of science perspective, I propose Weber's view (on the reconstruction proposed here) as a serious candidate for an adequate theory of concept replacement in the social sciences. (shrink)

Taking its clues from Popperian philosophy of science, cladistics adopted a number of assumptions of the empiricist tradition. These include the identification of a dichotomy between observation reports and theoretical statements and its subsequent abandonment on the basis of the insight that all observation reports are theory-laden. The neglect of the ‘context of discovery’, which is the step of theory (hypothesis) generation. The emphasis on coherentism in the ‘context of justification’, which is the step of evaluation of the relative merits (...) of alternative theories. The appeal to a total evidence approach in phylogenetic inference. And finally, a silence about causation, which results in an instrumentalist approach to phylogeny reconstruction. This paper explores how these empiricist assumptions are embedded in phylogenetic systematics, and why these assumptions are problematic for cladists (or any taxonomists). (shrink)

Biased research occurs frequently in the sciences. In this paper, I will focus on one particular kind of biased research: research that is subject to sponsorship bias. I will address the following epistemological question: what precisely is epistemically wrong with biased research of this kind? I will defend the evidential account of epistemic wrongness: that is, research affected by sponsorship bias is epistemically wrong if and only if the researchers in question make false claims about the evidential support of some (...) hypothesis H by data E. I will argue that the evidential account captures the epistemic wrongness of three paradigmatic types of sponsorship bias. (shrink)

Most philosophers have largely downplayed any relevance of multiple meanings of the folk concept of truth in the empirical domain. However, confusions about what truth is have surged in political and everyday discourse. In order to resolve these confusions, we argue that we need a more accurate picture of how the term ‘true’ is in fact used. Our experimental studies reveal that the use of ‘true’ shows substantial variance within the empirical domain, indicating that ‘true’ is ambiguous between a correspondence (...) and a coherence reading. We then explore the consequences of these results for the project of re-engineering truth. (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)

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)

According to the theory theory of metalinguistic disputes, disagreements in metalinguistic disputes are based on diverging underlying theories, opinions, or world views. An adequate description of metalinguistic disagreement needs to consider the compatibility and topics of such theories. Although topic continuity can be spelled out in terms of measurement operations, it is argued that even metalinguistic disputes about a term used in different, mutually compatible theories can be substantive because the dispute is indirectly about the virtues of the underlying theories. (...) The account is defended against externalist and holist objections. (shrink)

This paper reassesses the criticism of the Lucas-Penrose anti-mechanist argument, based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, as formulated by Krajewski : this argument only works with the additional extra-formal assumption that “the human mind is consistent”. Krajewski argues that this assumption cannot be formalized, and therefore that the anti-mechanist argument – which requires the formalization of the whole reasoning process – fails to establish that the human mind is not mechanistic. A similar situation occurs with a corollary to the argument, that (...) the human mind allegedly outperforms machines, because although there is no exhaustive formal definition of natural numbers, mathematicians can successfully work with natural numbers. Again, the corollary requires an extra-formal assumption: “PA is complete” or “the set of all natural numbers exists”. I agree that extra-formal assumptions are necessary in order to validate the anti-mechanist argument and its corollary, and that those assumptions are problematic. However, I argue that formalization is possible and the problem is instead the circularity of reasoning that they cause. The human mind does not prove its own consistency, and outperforms the machine, simply by making the assumption “I am consistent”. Starting from the analysis of circularity, I propose a way of thinking about the interplay between informal and formal in mathematics. (shrink)

According to one of the most powerful paradigms explaining the meaning of the concept of natural number, natural numbers get a large part of their conceptual content from core cognitive abilities. Carey’s bootstrapping provides a model of the role of core cognition in the creation of mature mathematical concepts. In this paper, I conduct conceptual analyses of various theories within this paradigm, concluding that the theories based on the ability to subitize (i.e., to assess anexactquantity of the elements in a (...) collection without counting them), or on the ability to approximate quantities (i.e., to assess anapproximatequantity of the elements in a collection without counting them), or both, fail to provide a conceptual basis for bootstrapping the concept of an exact natural number. In particular, I argue that none of the existing theories explains one of the key characteristics of the natural number structure: the equidistances between successive elements of the natural numbers progression. I suggest that this regularity could be based on another innate cognitive ability, namely sensitivity to the regularity of rhythm. In the final section, I propose a new position within the core cognition paradigm, inspired by structuralist positions in philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Turing and Church formulated two different formal accounts of computability that turned out to be extensionally equivalent. Since the accounts refer to different properties they cannot both be adequate conceptual analyses of the concept of computability. This insight has led to a discussion concerning which account is adequate. Some authors have suggested that this philosophical debate—which shows few signs of converging on one view—can be circumvented by regarding Church’s and Turing’s theses as explications. This move opens up the possibility that (...) both accounts could be adequate, albeit in their own different ways. In this paper, I focus on the question of whether Church’s thesis can be seen as an explication in the precise Carnapian sense. Most importantly, I address an additional constraint that Carnap puts on the explicative power of axiomatic systems—an axiomatisation explicates when it is clear which mathematical entities form the theory’s intended model—and that implicitly applies to axiomatisations of recursion theory used in Church’s account of computability. To overcome this difficulty, I propose two possible clarifications of the pre-systematic concept of “computability” that can both be captured in recursion theory, and I show how both clarifications avoid an objection arising from Carnap’s constraint. (shrink)

In this paper I will introduce a practical explication for the notion of expertise. At first, I motivate this attempt by taking a look on recent debates which display great disagreement about whether and how to define expertise in the first place. After that I will introduce the methodology of practical explications in the spirit of Edward Craig’s Knowledge and the state of nature along with some conditions of adequacy taken from ordinary and scientific language. This eventually culminates in the (...) respective explication of expertise according to which this term essentially refers to a certain kind of service-relation. This is why expertise should be considered as a predominantly social kind. This article will end up with a discussion of advantages and prima facie plausible objections against my account of expertise. (shrink)

In this paper I will introduce a practical explication for the notion of expertise. At first, I motivate this attempt by taking a look on recent debates which display great disagreement about whether and how to define expertise in the first place. After that I will introduce the methodology of practical explications in the spirit of Edward Craig’s Knowledge and the state of nature along with some conditions of adequacy taken from ordinary and scientific language. This eventually culminates in the (...) respective explication of expertise according to which this term essentially refers to a certain kind of service-relation. This is why expertise should be considered as a predominantly social kind. This article will end up with a discussion of advantages and prima facie plausible objections against my account of expertise. (shrink)

Carnap's system of inductive logic has very often been criticized on the ground that “degree of confirmation” is defined only for languages which are extremely over-simplified. Allegedly, it would be very difficult—and perhaps impossible—to define it adequately for languages formalized within the higher predicate calculi, or languages equivalent to these in richness, and it is such languages that would be needed were we ever to formalize the language of empirical science as a whole. Thus, this criticism bears not only on (...) Carnap's work, but on all attempts to construct an exact analysis of induction from this particular standpoint; that is, from the standpoint of “logical measure functions.”. (shrink)

In modern science, the theory of probability is one of the basic tools. Scientists using probability often refer to its objective interpretation. They emphasize that their probabilistic hypotheses concern objective facts, not degrees of belief. Accordingly, the following questions arise: What is the meaning of this type of probabilistic hypothesis? Is the assumption of objectivity necessary? The paper addresses these questions by analyzing objective probability in the context of the scientific debate on determinism. Two types of arguments will be presented. (...) On the one hand, there is the assertion that objective probability can exist only in an indeterministic world. Then, on the other hand — I analyze the assertions of those who believe in the co‑existence of objective probability and determinism. As a result I show that the acceptance of deterministic and indeterministic fields as possible areas where objective probability can occur is extremely problematic. Depending on the chosen area we encounter different types of problems. Therefore, I show that a significant number of these problems are associated with the acceptance of incorrect metaphysical assumptions. And finally, I postulate that the objectivity of probability can be reduced to the epistemic variant. (shrink)

Pondering the question of free will in the context of probability allows us to take a fresh look at a number of old problems. We are able to avoid deterministic entrapments and attempt to look at free will as an outcome of the entire decision-making system. In my paper, I will argue that free will should be considered in the context of a complex system of decisions, not individual cases. The proposed system will be probabilistic in character, so it will (...) be embedded in the calculus of probability. To achieve the stated goal, I will refer to two areas of Carnap’s interest: the relationship between free will and determinism, and the probability-based decision-making system. First, I will present Carnap’s compatibilist position. On this basis, I will show how free will can be examined on deterministic grounds. Then I will present Carnap’s probabilistic project—the so-called logical interpretation of probability. In addition to presenting its characteristics and functionality, I will argue for its usefulness in the context of decision analysis and its immunity to problems associated with determinism. Finally, I will show how the two mentioned elements can be combined, as a result of which I will present a concept for a probabilistic analysis of free will. In this context, I will identify free will with the individual characteristics of the system. My main aim is to present the theme of free will in the light of a formal analysis based on probability rather than metaphysical assumptions. (shrink)

Epistemic conservatism is the thesis that the mere holding of a belief confers some positive epistemic status on its content. Conservatism is widely criticized on the grounds that it conflicts with the main goal in epistemology to believe truths and disbelieve falsehoods. In this paper I argue for conservatism and defend it from objections. First, I argue that the objection to conservatism from the truth goal in epistemology fails. Second, I develop and defend an argument for conservatism from the perspectival (...) character of the truth goal. Finally, I examine several forceful challenges to conservatism and argue that these challenges are unsuccessful. The first challenge is that conservatism implies the propriety of assertions like ‘I believe p and this is part of my justification for it’. The second challenge argues that conservatism wrongly implies that the identity of an epistemic agent is relevant to the main goal of believing truths and disbelieving falsehoods. The last two challenges I consider are the ‘extra boost’ objection and the conversion objection. Each of these objections helps to clarify the nature of the conservative thesis. The upshot of the paper is that conservatism is an important and viable epistemological thesis. (shrink)

Severity of Test (SoT) is an alternative to Popper's logical falsification that solves a number of problems of the logical view. It was presented by Popper himself in 1963. SoT is a less sophisticated probabilistic model of hypothesis testing than Oaksford & Chater's (O&C's) information gain model, but it has a number of striking similarities. Moreover, it captures the intuition of everyday hypothesis testing.

Amalgamating evidence from heterogeneous sources and across levels of inquiry is becoming increasingly important in many pure and applied sciences. This special issue provides a forum for researchers from diverse scientific and philosophical perspectives to discuss evidence amalgamation, its methodologies, its history, its pitfalls, and its potential. We situate the contributions therein within six themes from the broad literature on this subject: the variety-of-evidence thesis, the philosophy of meta-analysis, the role of robustness/sensitivity analysis for evidence amalgamation, its bearing on questions (...) of extrapolation and external validity of experiments, its connection with theory development, and its interface with causal inference, especially regarding causal theories of cancer. (shrink)

Can the axioms of probability theory and the classical patterns of statistical inference ever be falsified by observation? Various possible answers to this question are examined in a set theoretical context and in relation to the findings of microphysics.

It is widely believed that one should not become more confident that all swans are white and all lions are brave simply by observing white swans. Irrelevant conjunction or “tacking” of a theory onto another is often thought problematic for Bayesianism, especially given the ratio measure of confirmation considered here. It is recalled that the irrelevant conjunct is not confirmed at all. Using the ratio measure, the irrelevant conjunction is confirmed to the same degree as the relevant conjunct, which, it (...) is argued, is ideal: the irrelevant conjunct is irrelevant. Because the past’s really having been as it now appears to have been is an irrelevant conjunct, present evidence confirms theories about past events only insofar as irrelevant conjunctions are confirmed. Hence the ideal of not confirming irrelevant conjunctions would imply that historical claims are not confirmed. Confirmation measures partially realizing that ideal make the confirmation of historical claims by present evidence depend strongly on the (presumably subjective) degree of belief in the irrelevant conjunct. The unusually good behavior of the ratio measure has a bearing on the problem of measure sensitivity. For non-statistical hypotheses, Bayes’ theorem yields a fractional linear transformation in the prior probability, not a linear rescaling, so even the ratio measure arguably does not aptly measure confirmation in such cases. (shrink)

Many concepts are inadequate for serious inquiry, so theorists often seek to engineer new concepts. The method of explication, which involves replacing concepts with more fruitful alternatives, is a model of this process. In this paper, I develop an account of fruitfulness, the Relevant-Goals Account of Fruitfulness. The account is in the spirit of extant proposals, but develops and extends them in important ways. In particular, while it applies to explications in general, the account allows us to derive substantive details (...) for specific explications. This is achieved through a supplementary view, Contextualism, that specifies which theoretical goals are relevant in any given case. I close by discussing how the Relevant-Goals Account fits into the dynamic nature of inquiry. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is sometimes presented as an alternative to conceptual analysis. But one important objection to conceptual analysis threatens to carry across: that philosophy investigates phenomena—knowledge, truth, freedom, etc.—rather than concepts of those phenomena. This poses a prima facie problem insofar as conceptual engineering targets concepts or terms rather than phenomena. Call it the ‘phenomenon objection’. I begin by examining recent discussions of the phenomenon objection by Cappelen and Scharp, rejecting their responses. I then clarify and strengthen the objection, discussing (...) the challenge that the ‘strong phenomenon objection’ poses to conceptual engineers. Finally, I develop a new response to the strong phenomenon objection. In doing so, I motivate, articulate and defend an account of philosophy and its problems on which conceptual engineering is the appropriate method for tackling many philosophical problems—as well as, perhaps surprisingly, some problems in the sciences. (shrink)

In a number of influential papers, Machery, Mallon, Nichols and Stich have presented a powerful critique of so-called arguments from reference, arguments that assume that a particular theory of reference is correct in order to establish a substantive conclusion. The critique is that, due to cross-cultural variation in semantic intuitions supposedly undermining the standard methodology for theorising about reference, the assumption that a theory of reference is correct is unjustified. I argue that the many extant responses to Machery et al.’s (...) critique do little for the proponent of an argument from reference, as they do not show how to justify the problematic assumption. I then argue that it can in principle be justified by an appeal to Carnapian explication. I show how to apply the explication defence to arguments from reference given by Andreasen and by Churchland. (shrink)

According to Herman Cappelen’s Austerity Framework, conceptual engineering doesn’t involve concepts, and barely involves engineering. I begin by raising two objections to the Austerity Framework as it stands: the framework cannot account for important normative aspects of conceptual engineering; and it doesn’t give us an adequate response to Strawson-style objections that conceptual engineering serves only to change the subject. I then supplement the Austerity Framework with an account of semantic normativity, which builds on the speaker/semantic meaning distinction, and show that (...) so-supplemented the Austerity Framework successfully overcomes the two objections. I tentatively conclude that semantic normativity should play a key role in how we understand conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Kevin Scharp’s influential work on the alethic paradoxes combines an extensively developed inconsistency theory with a substantial conceptual engineering project. I argue that Scharp’s inconsistency theory is in tension with his conceptual engineering project: the inconsistency theory includes an account of concepts that implies that the conceptual engineering project will fail. I recommend that Scharp revises his account of concepts, and show how doing so allows him to resolve the tension. The discussion is important for ongoing work on conceptual engineering. (...) Firstly, it is important to get clear on whether Scharp’s conceptual engineering project is—or could be—successful. Secondly, the issues discussed herein may generalise to other conceptual engineering projects, such as explication and ameliorative projects. In particular, the discussion has implications for how conceptual engineers can think about concepts and their relation to how we use words. (shrink)

In the course of theorising, it can be appropriate to replace one concept—a folk concept, or one drawn from an earlier stage of theorising—with a more precise counterpart. The best-known account of concept replacement is Rudolf Carnap’s ‘explication’. P.F. Strawson famously critiqued explication as a method in philosophy. As the critique is standardly construed, it amounts to the objection that explication is ‘irrelevant’, fails to be ‘illuminating’, or simply ‘changes the subject’. In this paper, I argue that this is an (...) unfair characterisation of Strawson’s critique, spelling out the critique in more detail and showing that, fully understood, it is not undermined by extant responses. In light of both the critique and extant responses, I close by making some substantive comments about what explication can, and cannot, be used to do in philosophy. (shrink)

Shepherd and Justus argue that experimental philosophy has an important role to play in the method of Carnapian explication, facilitating the preparatory stage during which the concept to be explicated is clarified. I raise concerns about their specific proposal, before sketching an alternative. In particular, I suggest that experimental philosophy can directly aid the construction of fruitful concepts. This provides a clear practical role for experimental philosophy, both within the sciences and theoretical inquiry more generally. In this respect, experimental philosophy (...) may rightly be construed as one aspect of applied philosophy. (shrink)

What is the relationship between conceptual engineering and metasemantic externalism? Sally Haslanger has argued that metasemantic externalism justifies the seemingly counterintuitive consequences of her proposed conceptual revisions. But according to Herman Cappelen, metasemantic externalism makes conceptual engineering effectively impossible in practice. After raising objections to Haslanger’s and Cappelen’s views, I argue for a very different picture, on which metasemantic externalism bears very little on conceptual engineering. I argue that, while metasemantic externalism principally operates at the level of semantic-meaning, we should (...) understand conceptual engineering to operate largely at the level of speaker-meaning. This ‘Speaker-Meaning Picture’ has two key benefits. Firstly, it makes conceptual engineering often easy in practice. Secondly, it suggests a new, normative response to the well known objection that conceptual engineering serves only to change the subject. (shrink)

Analogical reasoning addresses the question how evidence from various phenomena can be combined and made relevant for theory development and prediction. In the first part of my contribution, I review some influential accounts of analogical reasoning, both historical and contemporary, focusing in particular on Keynes, Carnap, Hesse, and more recently Bartha. In the second part, I sketch a general framework. To this purpose, a distinction between a predictive and a conceptual type of analogical reasoning is introduced. I then take up (...) a common intuition according to which analogical inferences hold if the differences between source and target concern only irrelevant circumstances. I attempt to make this idea more precise by addressing possible objections and in particular by specifying a notion of causal irrelevance based on difference making in homogeneous contexts. (shrink)

Student relativism is a widespread phenomenon in introductory philosophy courses. It is a pressing issue for teachers because it seems to undermine the very purpose of philosophy. Since the 1980s there is a debate about how to understand and how to deal with student relativism. However, there is as yet no comprehensive presentation of the debate. The first aim of the article is to offer a classification of the strategies for dealing with student relativism and a presentation and short assessment (...) of the main strategies from the debate. The second aim is to present a new strategy based on the theory of conceptual change and drawing on the results from empirical research in developmental psychology on epistemic cognition. I call it the epistemic conceptual change strategy. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, James Hawthorne, Jürgen Landes, Christian Wallmann, and Jon Williamson argue that the principal principle entails the principle of indifference. In this paper, I argue that it does not. Lewis’s version of the principal principle notoriously depends on a notion of admissibility, which Lewis uses to restrict its application. HLWW base their argument on certain intuitions concerning when one proposition is admissible for another: Conditions 1 and 2. There are two ways of reading their (...) argument, depending on how you understand the status of these conditions. Reading 1: The correct account of admissibility is determined independently of these two principles, and yet these two principles follow from that correct account. Reading 2: The correct account of admissibility is determined in part by these two principles, so that the principles follow from that account but only because the correct account is constrained so that it must satisfy them. HLWWshow that, given an account of admissibility on which Conditions 1 and 2 hold, the principal principle entails the principle of indifference. I argue that, on either reading of the argument, it fails. First, I argue that there is a plausible account of admissibility on which Conditions 1 and 2 are false. That defeats reading 1. Next, I argue that the intuitions that lead us to assent to Condition 2 also lead us to assent to other very closely related principles that are inconsistent with Condition 2. This, I claim, casts doubt on the reliability of those intuitions, and thus removes our justification for Condition 2. This defeats the second reading of the HLWW argument. Thus, the argument fails. (shrink)

The article addresses two closely related questions: What are the criteria of adequacy of logical formalization of natural language arguments, and what gives logic the authority to decide which arguments are good and which are bad? Our point of departure is the criticism of the conception of logical formalization put forth, in a recent paper, by M. Baumgartner and T. Lampert. We argue that their account of formalization as a kind of semantic analysis brings about more problems than it solves. (...) We also argue that the criteria of adequate formalization need not be based on truth conditions associated with logical formulas; in our view, they are better based on structural (inferential) grounds. We then put forward our own version of the criteria. The upshot of the discussion that follows is that the quest for an adequate formalization in a suitable logical language is best conceived of as the search for a Goodmanian reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

In the present article, working from within the framework of critical rationalism and focusing mostly on the views developed by some Iranian writers, I argue that the programmes of producing ‘Islamic Science’ and ‘Islamisation of Science/Knowledge’ are doomed to failure. I develop my arguments in three parts. I start by explaining that the advocates of the programmes of producing cIS or IoK subscribe to mistaken images of science that are shaped by either a positivist or outmoded culturalist/interpretivist theories of science. (...) I shall then focus on the similarities and differences of ‘science’ and ‘technology’, arguing that despite close interconnection between the two it is of utmost importance, for analytical purposes, to keep these two socially constructed entities apart. Drawing on the above distinction, I argue that while creating ‘Islamic’ or ‘indigenous’ sciences is impossible, constructing ‘Islamic’ or ‘indigenous’ technologies is, in principle, feasible. Lastly, I turn to some of the... (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the method (or methods) via which we can assess and improve our concepts. Can conceptual engineering be usefully employed within analytic theology? Given that analytic theology and analytic philosophy effectively share the same philosophical toolkit then if conceptual engineering works well in philosophy then it ought to work well in analytic theology too. This will be our working hypothesis. To make good on this hypothesis, we first address two challenges. The first challenge makes conceptual engineering look to (...) be too inclusive; the second challenge makes it look to be too revolutionary (for analytic theology). To address these challenges, we propose a refined characterisation of conceptual engineering. We then turn to consider a number of case studies where analytic theology and conceptual engineering may fruitfully cooperate. These are: theological disagreements, inter-faith dialogue, meaning change, celibacy, AI, the name of God, and conceptual genealogy. (shrink)

A probability distribution is regular if it does not assign probability zero to any possible event. Williamson argued that we should not require probabilities to be regular, for if we do, certain “isomorphic” physical events must have different probabilities, which is implausible. His remarks suggest an assumption that chances are determined by intrinsic, qualitative circumstances. Weintraub responds that Williamson’s coin flip events differ in their inclusion relations to each other, or the inclusion relations between their times, and this can account (...) for their differences in probability. Haverkamp and Schulz rebut Weintraub, but their rebuttal fails because the events in their example are even less symmetric than Williamson’s. However, Weintraub’s argument also fails, for it ignores the distinction between intrinsic, qualitative differences and relations of time and bare identity. Weintraub could rescue her argument by claiming that the events differ in duration, under a non-standard and problematic conception of duration. However, we can modify Williamson’s example with Special Relativity so that there is no absolute inclusion relation between the times, and neither event has longer duration except relative to certain reference frames. Hence, Weintraub’s responses do not apply unless chance is observer-relative, which is also problematic. Finally, another symmetry argument defeats even the appeal to frame-dependent durations, for there the events have the same finite duration and are entirely disjoint, as are their respective times and places. (shrink)

A family of symmetries of polyadic inductive logic are described which in turn give rise to the purportedly rational Permutation Invariance Principle stating that a rational assignment of probabilities should respect these symmetries. An equivalent, and more practical, version of this principle is then derived.

We examine the idea that similar problems should have similar solutions (to paraphrase van Fraassen’s slogan ‘Problems which are essentially the same must receive essentially the same solution’, see van Fraassen in Laws and symmetry, Oxford Univesity Press, Oxford, 1989, p. 236) in the context of symmetries of sentence algebras within Inductive Logic and conclude that by itself this is too generous a notion upon which to found the rational assignment of probabilities. We also argue that within our formulation of (...) symmetry the paradoxes associated with the so called ‘Principle of Indifference’ collapse, but only to be replaced by genuinely irremediable examples of the same phenomenon. (shrink)

A probability distribution is regular if no possible event is assigned probability zero. While some hold that probabilities should always be regular, three counter-arguments have been posed based on examples where, if regularity holds, then perfectly similar events must have different probabilities. Howson (2017) and Benci et al. (2016) have raised technical objections to these symmetry arguments, but we see here that their objections fail. Howson says that Williamson’s (2007) “isomorphic” events are not in fact isomorphic, but Howson is speaking (...) of set-theoretic representations of events in a probability model. While those sets are not isomorphic, Williamson’s physical events are, in the relevant sense. Benci et al. claim that all three arguments rest on a conflation of different models, but they do not. They are founded on the premise that similar events should have the same probability in the same model, or in one case, on the assumption that a single rotation-invariant distribution is possible. Having failed to refute the symmetry arguments on such technical grounds, one could deny their implicit premises, which is a heavy cost, or adopt varying degrees of instrumentalism or pluralism about regularity, but that would not serve the project of accurately modelling chances. (shrink)

There are some candidates that have been thought to measure the degree to which evidence incrementally confirms a hypothesis. This paper provides an argument for one candidate—the log-likelihood ratio measure. For this purpose, I will suggest a plausible requirement that I call the Requirement of Collaboration. And then, it will be shown that, of various candidates, only the log-likelihood ratio measure \(l\) satisfies this requirement. Using this result, Jeffrey conditionalization will be reformulated so as to disclose explicitly what determines new (...) credences after experience. (shrink)

I examine the classical idea of ‘algorithm’ as a sequential, step-by-step, deterministic procedure (i.e., the idea of ‘algorithm’ that was already in use by the 1930s), with respect to three themes, its relation to the notion of an ‘effective procedure’, its different roles and uses in logic, computer science, and mathematics (focused on numerical analysis), and its different formal definitions proposed by practitioners in these areas. I argue that ‘algorithm’ has been conceptualized and used in contrasting ways in the above (...) areas, and discuss challenges and prospects for adopting a final foundational theory of (classical) ‘algorithms’. (shrink)

According to an increasingly popular view known as non-doxasticism, religious faith need not include belief, but only some cognitively weaker attitude. This view comes with great promises, as it offers a way for the agnostic to partake in religion. My concern is how such a non-doxastic faith might be understood as a rational attitude. I offer three desiderata for any account of rational, non-doxastic faith. These desiderata are based on general considerations regarding epistemic rationality and on major themes from current (...) literature on the closely related notions of trust and hope. The first desideratum states that faith must be able to meet the demands of reason. The second requires, perhaps surprisingly, that faith should not imply trust. The third requires that faith should imply hope while excluding despair. I show how several prominent accounts of non-doxastic faith, by Lara Buchak, Daniel Howard-Snyder and Daniel McKaughan, all fail to meet at least one of these desiderata. I also suggest that the desiderata should make us prefer a reconstructive methodology. (shrink)

A measure of coherence is said to be truth conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher likelihood of truth. Recent impossibility results strongly indicate that there are no (non-trivial) probabilistic coherence measures that are truth conducive. Indeed, this holds even if truth conduciveness is understood in a weak ceteris paribus sense (Bovens & Hartmann, 2003, Bayesian epistemology. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Olsson, 2005, Against coherence: Truth probability and justification. Oxford: (...) Oxford University Press). This raises the problem of how coherence could nonetheless be an epistemically important property. Our proposal is that coherence may be linked in a certain way to reliability. We define a measure of coherence to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher probability that the information sources are reliable. Restricting ourselves to the most basic case, we investigate which coherence measures in the literature are reliability conducive. It turns out that, while a number of measures fail to be reliability conducive, except possibly in a trivial and uninteresting sense, Shogenji’s measure and several measures generated by Douven and Meijs’s recipe are notable exceptions to this rule. (shrink)

I challenge a cornerstone of the Gettier debate: that a proposed analysis of the concept of knowledge is inadequate unless it entails that people don’t know in Gettier cases. I do so from the perspective of Carnap’s methodology of explication. It turns out that the Gettier problem per se is not a fatal problem for any account of knowledge, thus understood. It all depends on how the account fares regarding other putative counter examples and the further Carnapian desiderata of exactness, (...) fruitfulness and simplicity. Carnap proposed his methodology more than a decade before Gettier’s seminal paper appeared, making the present solution to the problem a candidate for being the least ad hoc proposal on the market, one whose independent standing cannot be questioned, among solutions that depart from the usual method of revising a theory of knowledge in the light of counterexamples. As an illustration of the method at work, I reconstruct reliabilism as an attempt to provide an explication of the concept of knowledge. (shrink)