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Inexpressible Ignorance

Philosophical Review 124 (4):441-480 (2015)

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  1. Counterparts, Determinism, and the Hole Argument.Franciszek Cudek - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    The hole argument concludes that substantivalism about spacetime entails the radical indeterminism of the general theory of relativity (GR). In this paper, I amend and defend a response to the hole argument first proposed by Butterfield (1989) that relies on the idea of counterpart substantivalism. My amendment clarifies and develops the metaphysical presuppositions of counterpart substantivalism and its relation to various definitions of determinism. My defence consists of two claims. First, contra Weatherall (2018) and others: the hole argument is not (...)
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  • The ¬K¬K rule and the structurally unknowable.Yiwen Zhan - 2022 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1):1-11.
    Rosenkranz (2021) offered a logic and a detailed account of justification, according to which justification that p can be analyzed as a form of second-level ignorance: ¬K¬Kp. An intuition behind the analysis is that the justified subject has the potential, at least in a nearby world, to either come to know p or come to know ¬Kp. However, given Rosenkranz’s hyperintensional semantics for modeling knowledge states, we can always construct, out of an ¬K¬K-agent’s knowledge state, epistemic possibilities that prohibit the (...)
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  • Freedom and the open future.Yishai Cohen - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (3):228-255.
    I draw upon Helen Steward's concept of agential settling to argue that freedom requires an ability to change the truth‐value of tenseless future contingents over time from false to true and that this ability requires a metaphysically open future.
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  • On the Mathematics and Metaphysics of the Hole Argument.Oliver Pooley & James Read - forthcoming - The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    We make some remarks on the mathematics and metaphysics of the hole argument, in response to a recent article in this journal by Weatherall ([2018]). Broadly speaking, we defend the mainstream philosophical literature from the claim that correct usage of the mathematics of general relativity `blocks' the argument.
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  • How to Be a Spacetime Substantivalist.Trevor Teitel - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (5):233-278.
    The consensus among spacetime substantivalists is to respond to Leibniz's classic shift arguments, and their contemporary incarnation in the form of the hole argument, by pruning the allegedly problematic metaphysical possibilities that generate these arguments. Some substantivalists do so by directly appealing to a modal doctrine akin to anti-haecceitism. Other substantivalists do so by appealing to an underlying hyperintensional doctrine that implies some such modal doctrine. My first aim in this paper is to pose a challenge for all extant forms (...)
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  • Lucky Ignorance, Modality and Lack of Knowledge.Oscar A. Piedrahita - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (3).
    I argue against the Standard View of ignorance, according to which ignorance is defined as equivalent to lack of knowledge, that cases of environmental epistemic luck, though entailing lack of knowledge, do not necessarily entail ignorance. In support of my argument, I contend that in cases of environmental luck an agent retains what I call epistemic access to the relevant fact by successfully exercising her epistemic agency and that ignorance and non-ignorance, contrary to what the Standard View predicts, are not (...)
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  • The Phenomenal Representation of Size.Jonathan Brink Morgan - 2021 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 99 (4):716-729.
    Suppose that, while you are dreamlessly asleep, the sizes of and distances between all objects in the world are uniformly multiplied. Would you be able to detect this global inflation? Intuitively, no. But would your experience of size remain accurate? Intuitively, yes. On these grounds, some have concluded that our experiences do not represent size and instead represent modes of presentation of size. We are, in this sense, ‘cut off’ from the sizes of things in the external world. Here, I (...)
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  • The (un)detectability of absolute Newtonian masses.Niels C. M. Martens - 2019 - Synthese 198 (3):2511-2550.
    Absolutism about mass claims that mass ratios obtain in virtue of absolute masses. Comparativism denies this. Dasgupta, Oxford studies in metaphysics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) argues for comparativism about mass, in the context of Newtonian Gravity. Such an argument requires proving that comparativism is empirically adequate. Dasgupta equates this to showing that absolute masses are undetectable, and attempts to do so. This paper develops an argument by Baker to the contrary: absolute masses are in fact empirically meaningful, that is (...)
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  • The Epistemology of Identity.Samuel Elgin - manuscript
    The subject of this paper is the epistemology of identity: a general theory of knowledge, evidence and justification for the claim that one thing is identical to another. Although identity figures significantly in our epistemic lives, this is a topic that, to the best of my knowledge, has gone entirely unexplored. Initial attempts to integrate such an epistemology into existing theories of evidence---many of which are tailor-made for contingent propositions---are confounded by the necessity of identity. I defend a restricted form (...)
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  • The Triviality of the Identity of Indiscernibles.Samuel Elgin - manuscript
    The Identity of Indiscernibles is the principle that objects cannot differ only numerically. It is widely held that one interpretation of this principle is trivially true: the claim that objects that bear all of the same properties are identical. This triviality ostensibly arises from haecceities (properties like \textit{is identical to a}). I argue that this is not the case; we do not trivialize the Identity of Indiscernibles with haecceities, because it is impossible to express the haecceities of indiscernible objects. I (...)
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  • The Puzzle of Pure Moral Motivation.Adam Lerner - 2018 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 13:123-144.
    People engage in pure moral inquiry whenever they inquire into the moral features of some act, agent, or state of affairs without inquiring into the non-moral features of that act, agent, or state of affairs. This chapter argues that ordinary people act rationally when they engage in pure moral inquiry, and so any adequate view in metaethics ought to be able to explain this fact. The Puzzle of Pure Moral Motivation is how to provide such an explanation. This chapter argues (...)
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  • Grounding, Essence, And Identity.Fabrice Correia & Alexander Skiles - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (3):642-670.
    Recent metaphysics has turned its focus to two notions that are—as well as having a common Aristotelian pedigree—widely thought to be intimately related: grounding and essence. Yet how, exactly, the two are related remains opaque. We develop a unified and uniform account of grounding and essence, one which understands them both in terms of a generalized notion of identity examined in recent work by Fabrice Correia, Cian Dorr, Agustín Rayo, and others. We argue that the account comports with antecedently plausible (...)
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  • Temporary Safety Hazards.Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2016 - Noûs 50 (4):152-174.
    The Epistemic Objection says that certain theories of time imply that it is impossible to know which time is absolutely present. Standard presentations of the Epistemic Objection are elliptical—and some of the most natural premises one might fill in to complete the argument end up leading to radical skepticism. But there is a way of filling in the details which avoids this problem, using epistemic safety. The new version has two interesting upshots. First, while Ross Cameron alleges that the Epistemic (...)
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  • Awareness of ignorance.İlhan İnan - 2020 - SATS 20 (2):141-173.
    Despite the recent increase in interest in philosophy about ignorance, little attention has been paid to the question of what makes it possible for a being to become aware of their own ignorance. In this paper, I try to provide such an account by arguing that, for a being to become aware of their own ignorance, they must have the mental capacity to represent something as being unknown to them. For normal adult humans who have mastered a language, mental representation (...)
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  • A Defense of Hume's Dictum.Cameron Gibbs - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    Is the world internally connected by a web of necessary connections or is everything loose and independent? Followers of David Hume accept the latter by upholding Hume’s Dictum, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Roughly put, anything can coexist with anything else, and anything can fail to coexist with anything else. Hume put it like this: “There is no object which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves.” Since Hume’s (...)
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  • There Are no Metaphysical Primitives.Samuel Elgin - manuscript
    Many metaphysicians posit primitives. These vary with respect to the theoretical work that they perform, but are all undefinable in more basic terms. I argue against the existence of metaphysical primitives on the grounds that, if they existed, they would be essentially primitive. However, if primitives were essentially primitive, then they would have an essence. Because they are primitive, they lack an essence, which undermines the original supposition that they are primitive. I close by mentioning some implications this has both (...)
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  • Against Comparativism about Mass in Newtonian Gravity - a Case Study in the Metaphysics of Scale.Niels C. M. Martens - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Oxford
    This thesis concerns the metaphysics of scale. It investigates the implications of a physical determinable being dimensionful. In particular, it considers the case study of mass, as it features within Newtonian Gravity. Nevertheless, most of the terminology, methodology and arguments developed should be relatively straightforwardly applicable to other determinables and theories. -/- Weak Absolutism about mass holds that mass ratios obtain in virtue of absolute masses. Weak Comparativism denies this. In the first five chapters I argue in favour of Weak (...)
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  • The epistemology of spacetime.Neil Dewar, Niels Linnemann & James Read - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 17 (4):e12821.
    Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2022.
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  • The Recent Renaissance of Acquaintance.Thomas Raleigh - 2019 - In Jonathan Knowles & Thomas Raleigh (eds.), Acquaintance: New Essays. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    This is the introductory essay to the collection of essays: 'Acquaintance: New Essays' (eds. Knowles & Raleigh, forthcoming, OUP). In this essay I provide some historical background to the concept of acquaintance. I examine various Russellian theses about acquaintance that contemporary acquaintance theorists may wish to reject. I consider a number of questions that acquaintance theorists face. I provide a survey of current debates in philosophy where acquaintance has recently been invoked. And I also provide brief summaries of the other (...)
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  • How Naive Is Contentful Moral Perception?Preston J. Werner - 2023 - Philosophies 8 (3):49.
    According to contentful moral perception (CMP), moral properties can be perceived in the same sense as tables, tigers, and tomatoes. Recently, Heather Logue (2012) has distinguished between two potential ways of perceiving a property. A Kantian Property (KP) in perception is one in which a perceiver’s access involves a detection of the property via a representational vehicle. A Berkeleyan Property (BP) in perception is one in which a perceiver’s access to the property involves that property as partly constitutive of the (...)
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  • Wavefunction realism does not ‘privilege position’.David Schroeren - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-14.
    It is common ground among proponents and detractors of wavefunction realism that the view ‘privileges position’, in the sense that it arbitrarily singles out one among a continuum infinity of wavefunction representations as characterizing the fundamental field: the position representation. This paper shows that, properly understood, wavefunction realism does not involve such an arbitrary choice. First, I argue that, though each wavefunction representation gives rise to a different version of wavefunction realism, the difference between these theories amounts to a mere (...)
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  • Humility and metaphysics.José L. Zalabardo - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (3):183-196.
    David Lewis has argued that we cannot identify the fundamental properties. It is generally accepted that we can resist Lewis's conclusion if we are prepared to accept a structuralist account of fundamental properties, according to which their causal/nomological role is essential to their identity. I argue, to the contrary, that a structuralist construal of fundamental properties does not sustain a successful independent strategy for resisting Lewis's conclusion. The structuralist can vindicate our ability to identify fundamental properties only if she accepts (...)
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  • Geometric Objects and Perspectivalism.James Read - 2022 - In James Read & Nicholas J. Teh (eds.), The Philosophy and Physics of Noether's Theorems. Cambridge University Press. pp. 257-273.
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  • Merely partial definition and the analysis of knowledge.Samuel Z. Elgin - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 7):1481-1505.
    Two families of positions dominate debates over a metaphysically reductive analysis of knowledge. Traditionalism holds that knowledge has a complete, uniquely identifying analysis, while knowledge-first epistemology contends that knowledge is primitive—admitting of no reductive analysis whatsoever. Drawing on recent work in metaphysics, I argue that these alternatives fail to exhaust the available possibilities. Knowledge may have a merely partial analysis: a real definition that distinguishes it from some, but not all other things. I demonstrate that this position is attractive; it (...)
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  • How to Be a Substantivalist Without Getting Shifty About It.Zee R. Perry - 2017 - Philosophical Issues 27 (1):223-249.
    According to substantivalism, spacetime points and regions are real entities whose existence is not dependent on matter. In this paper, I motivate and defend a version of substantivalism which takes the totality of spacetime as fundamental, and show how this position avoids certain problem cases, in particular the objection from static Leibniz shifts, and better conforms to how we think about space in physics. I argue that, even though the static Leibniz shifts do not show ordinary substantivalism is committed to (...)
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  • Teaching and learning guide for: The epistemology of spacetime.Neil Dewar, Niels Linnemann & James Read - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (10):e12875.
    Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 10, October 2022.
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