Empirical knowledge is at once an exercise of freedom and rationally constrained by how things are. But if the reality on which empirical thought aims to bear is outside the sphere of the conceptual then, while it can exert a causal constraint on knowing, it cannot exert a rational constraint. Empirical reality both must and, so it seems, cannot have rational bearing on empirical thought. I consider the related ways Kant and Sellars try to avoid this antinomy, arguing that understanding (...) the relationship between their views reveals how unsatisfactory both are, and what might be said instead. (shrink)

Recent worries about possible epiphenomenalist consequences of nonreductive materialism are misplaced, not, as many have argued, because nonreductive materialism does not have epiphenomenalist implications but because the epiphenomenalist implications are actually virtues of the theory, rather than vices. It is only by showing how certain kinds of mental properties are causally impotent that cognitive scientific explanations of mentality as we know them are possible.

Virtues can be considered to play a causal role in the production of behaviour and so too can our self-narratives. We identify a point of connection between the two cases and draw a parallel between them. But, those folk psychological notions, virtues and self-narratives, fail to reduce smoothly to the underlying human physiology. As a first step towards handling that failure to connect with the scientific framework that is the familiar grounding for our understanding of causation, we consider the causal (...) theory of action, a leading theory of action, which shows how reasons, understood as an appropriate pair of beliefs and desires, can be treated as causes of action. Davidson’s picture is based on cause as a relation between events, which can have both a description in scientific terms and in folk psychological terms. The character of both virtues and self-narratives is not that of events, even extended ones, so we need to refer to examples of scientific explanation that incorporate structural properties of objects. While we retain the spirit of the causal theory, we wish to guard against any unwarranted optimism that an explicitly scientific explanation for human action lies in our future, drawing on Chomsky’s view that a causal explanation of human actions is likely to remain beyond human science forming capacities. We take a mild-realist view of virtues and self-narratives, in the style of Dennett. We argue that, in spite of that limited form of realism, underlined by Chomsky’s mysterian position in this domain, we still need to frame our explanations of behaviour based on virtues and self-narratives in causal terms. (shrink)

Despite the remarkable progress made in consciousness research during recent decades, there is still no sign of a general agreement about the location of its object. According to internalists, consciousness resides inside the brain. According to externalists, consciousness is partly constituted by elements or aspects of the environment. Internalism comports better with the existence of dreams, hallucinations and sensory imaging. Externalism seems to provide a more promising basis for understanding how we can experience the world and refer to the content (...) of our consciousness. I argue that the framework of structural realism supports internalism and helps to reveal the reasons behind the apparent explanatory success of the externalist approach. More specifically, structural realism supports the view that the structure of our consciousness is always present in our neural processes and only sometimes in an extended system that includes elements of the environment. (shrink)

I argue that although Ockham’s Razor (OR) has its origins in a-priorist ontological mandates according to the purposes of natural theology and natural philosophy as influenced by it, the principle has taken on significant empirical and contingent materialist connotations and conceptual content since the scientific revolution. I briefly discuss the pluralism of the concept of OR historically and in contemporary science and philosophy. I then attempt to align scientific metaphysics with contemporary conceptions of OR, and to demonstrate that ontic parsimony (...) is an indispensable element of scientific (contingent and anti-a-priorist) metaphysics. I then further deploy that scientific metaphysics to propose a contingently grounded semi-formal approach, with set theoretic features, and then with information theoretic features, to provide a way of assessing when a scientific theory and its ontology are aligned with OR appropriately in the context of the proposed scientific metaphysics. (shrink)

Scientists and philosophers frequently speak about levels of description, levels of explanation, and ontological levels. In this paper, I propose a unified framework for modelling levels. I give a general definition of a system of levels and show that it can accommodate descriptive, explanatory, and ontological notions of levels. I further illustrate the usefulness of this framework by applying it to some salient philosophical questions: (1) Is there a linear hierarchy of levels, with a fundamental level at the bottom? And (...) what does the answer to this question imply for physicalism, the thesis that everything supervenes on the physical? (2) Are there emergent properties? (3) Are higher-level descriptions reducible to lower-level ones? (4) Can the relationship between normative and non-normative domains be viewed as one involving levels? Although I use the terminology of “levels”, the proposed framework can also represent “scales”, “domains”, or “subject matters”, where these are not linearly but only partially ordered by relations of supervenience or inclusion. (shrink)

Scientists often think of the world as a dynamical system, a stochastic process, or a generalization of such a system. Prominent examples of systems are the system of planets orbiting the sun or any other classical mechanical system, a hydrogen atom or any other quantum–mechanical system, and the earth’s atmosphere or any other statistical mechanical system. We introduce a general and unified framework for describing such systems and show how it can be used to examine some familiar philosophical questions, including (...) the following: how can we define nomological possibility, necessity, determinism, and indeterminism; what are symmetries and laws; what regularities must a system display to make scientific inference possible; how might principles of parsimony such as Occam’s Razor help when we make such inferences; what is the role of space and time in a system; and might they be emergent features? Our framework is intended to serve as a toolbox for the formal analysis of systems that is applicable in several areas of philosophy. (shrink)

In natural kind debates, Boyd's famous Homeostatic Property Cluster theory (HPC) is often misconstrued in two ways: Not only is it thought to make for a normative standard for natural kinds, but also to require the homeostatic mechanisms underlying nomological property clusters to be uniform. My argument for the illegitimacy of both overgeneralizations, both on systematic as well as exegetical grounds, is based on the misconstrued view's failure to account for functional kinds in science. I illustrate the combination of these (...) two misconstruals with recent entries into the natural kind debate about emotions. Finally, I examine and reject Stich's "Kornblith-Devitt method" as a potential justification of these misconstruals. (shrink)

According to the orthodox interpretation of bounce cosmologies, the universe was born from an entropy-reducing phase in a previous universe. To defend the thesis that the whole of physical reality was caused to exist a finite time ago, Craig and Sinclair have argued the low-entropy interface between universes should instead be understood as the beginning of two universes. Here, I present Craig and Sinclair with a dilemma. On the one hand, if the direction of time is reducible, as friends of (...) the Mentaculus—for example, Albert, Loewer, and Papineau—maintain, then there is reason to think that the direction of time and the entropic arrow of time align. But on that account, efficient causation is likely reducible to non-causal phenomena. In consequence, contrary to Craig and Sinclair’s theological aims, things can begin to exist without causes. On the other hand, if the direction of time is not reducible, Craig and Sinclair’s interpretation of bounce cosmologies is unjustified. Lastly, a reply to a potential objection motivates a discussion of how to interpret bounce cosmologies on the tensed theory of absolute time favoured by Craig and Sinclair. I offer two interpretations of bounce cosmologies that, given a tensed theory of absolute time, are preferable to those Craig and Sinclair offer, yet inconsistent with their project in natural theology; on one interpretation, the universe does not require a supernatural cause and, on the other, bounce cosmologies represent the universe as never having begun to exist. (shrink)

We aim to develop a take on the meaning of works of art that builds on Dennett’s view on the nature of intentionality, namely, that the intentionality exhibited by mental phenomena is not original, but derived. Regarding the meaning of works of art, theories that hold that the meaning is determined by the intentions of the author when creating the work are considered intentionalist. Adopting the view of derived intentionality implies that it is no longer possible to maintain that the (...) semantic content of a work of art is closely linked to the creative act that gave rise to it; accordingly, intentionalist theories should be, broadly speaking, abandoned. However, we claim that one aspect of intentionalist theories is accurate and, moreover, compatible with the perspective on intentionality we adopt: The fact that part of the meaning of a work of art is given by the interpretations that arise when it is assumed that the work was produced by an agent with the purpose of transmitting something. We call this interpretative strategy the work-of-art stance and argue that it should be understood as a subtype of the intentional stance. According to our proposal, this interpretive strategy is part of a view that tries to explain the meaning of works of art as partially indeterminate, relative to a history (and not to a foundational origin) and dependent on interpretive attribution. En este artículo elaboramos una propuesta sobre el significado de las obras de arte que se apoya en la perspectiva de Dennett acerca de la naturaleza de la intencionalidad de los fenómenos mentales. De acuerdo a ella, la intencionalidad que estos exhiben no es original, sino derivada. Adoptar la perspectiva de la intencionalidad derivada implica que ya no será posible sostener que el significado de una obra de arte esté vinculado al acto creativo que le dio origen o que esté determinado por las intenciones que tuvo su autor al crearlas, como han sostenido las teorías intencionalistas. Ahora bien, creemos que hay un aspecto de estas que no es incompatible con la perspectiva de intencionalidad derivada. Se trata del hecho de que parte del significado de la obra de arte está dado por las interpretaciones que surgen sólo cuando se asume que la misma fue producida por un agente con el propósito de transmitir algo. Llamaremos a esta estrategia interpretativa actitud de la obra de arte y defenderemos que debe ser entendida como un subtipo de la actitud intencional. Esta estrategia interpretativa forma parte de una propuesta que intenta explicar el significado de las obras de arte como siendo parcialmente indeterminado, relativo a una historia y dependiente de la atribución interpretativa. (shrink)

It is generally acknowledged by proponents of ‘new mechanism’ that mechanistic explanation involves adopting a perspective, but there is less agreement on how we should understand this perspective-taking or what its implications are for practising science. This paper examines the perspectival nature of mechanistic explanation through the lens of the ‘mechanistic stance’, which falls somewhere between Dennett’s more familiar physical and design stance. We argue this approach implies three distinct and significant ways in which mechanistic explanation can be interpreted as (...) perspectival: ‘phenomenon perspectivism’, ‘pattern perspectivism’ and ‘hierarchy perspectivism’. We evaluate the strength of the perspective-dependency implied by each of these, and along the way, discuss their significance for wider debates within the new mechanism literature, such as the nature of function attribution and an ontic vs epistemic understanding of explanation. (shrink)

The battle over the proper place of mental representation in cognitive science is often portrayed as a clash between realism and eliminativism. But this simple dichotomy belies the variety of different ontological positions available. This article investigates the various stances that one can adopt toward the ontology of mental representation, and in so doing, shows that eliminativism is in fact best understood as two distinct positions: a posteriori eliminativism and a priori eliminativism. Furthermore, I show that a priori eliminativism faces (...) two crippling challenges. I argue that once we put a priori eliminativism aside, determining the ultimate ontological status of representation can be postponed while we assess its utility across different domains of cognitive science—something all remaining positions can agree on. (shrink)

In recent years, the ‘mechanistic view’ has developed as a popular alternative to the ‘semantic view’ concerning the identity of physical computation. However, semanticists have provided powerful arguments that suggest the mechanistic view fails to deliver essential distinctions between paradigmatic computational operations. This article reviews responses on behalf of the mechanist and uses this opportunity to propose a type of pluralism about computational identity. This pluralism contends that there are multiple ‘levels’ of properties and relations pertaining to computation that can (...) inform different kinds of individuation. As such, for the pluralist, there are multiple legitimate ways of classifying computation, depending on the nature of the system in question, and one’s own epistemic priorities. (shrink)

Nearly 30 years have passed since Donald Davidson first presented his ar- gument against the possibility of psychophysical laws in “Mental Events”. The argument applies to intentional rather than phenomenal properties, so whenever I refer to mental properties and to psychophysical laws it should be understood that I mean intentional properties and laws relating them to physical properties. No consensus has emerged over what the argument actually is, and the subsequent versions of it presented by Davidson show significant differences. But (...) many have been inclined to agree with the spirit of the argument and with its conclusion. (shrink)

Whether a person is pretending, or not, is a function of their beliefs and intentions. This poses a challenge to 4E accounts of pretense, which typically seek to exclude such cognitive states from their explanations of psychological phenomena. Resulting tensions are explored within three recent accounts of imagination and pretense offered by theorists working in the 4E tradition. A path forward is then charted, through considering ways in which explanations can invoke beliefs and intentions while remaining true to 4E precepts. (...) To make real progress in explaining pretense, 4E theorists will need to grow comfortable with the idea that two agents whose outward behaviors and environments are, in the short term, the same, may be guided by quite different beliefs and intentions, in virtue of which only one is pretending. In this way, the scientific project of explaining pretense remains inseparable from the more general project of determining which beliefs and intentions are appropriate to ascribe to which kinds of entities, given which kinds of behaviors. (shrink)

Eliminative materialism is a popular view of the mind which holds that propositional attitudes, the typical units of our traditional understanding, are unsupported by modern connectionist psychology and neuroscience, and consequently that propositional attitudes are a poor scientific postulate, and do not exist. Since our traditional folk psychology employs propositional attitudes, the usual argument runs, it too represents a poor theory, and may in the future be replaced by a more successful neurologically grounded theory, resulting in a drastic improvement in (...) our interpersonal relationships. I contend that these eliminativist arguments typically run together two distinct capacities: the folk psychological mechanisms which we use to understand one another, and scientific and philosophical guesses about the structure of those understandings. Both capacities are ontologically committed and therefore empirical. However, the commitments whose prospects look so dismal to the eliminativist, in particular the causal and logical image of propositional attitudes, belong to the guesses, and not necessarily to the underlying mechanisms. It is the commitments of traditional philosophical perspectives about the operation of our folk psychology which are contradicted by␣new evidence and modeling methods in connectionist psychology. Our actual folk psychology was not clearly committed to causal, sentential propositional attitudes, and thus is not directly threatened by connectionist psychology. (shrink)

The paper aims to assess whether the ideas developed by Don Ross in his recent book Economic theory and cognitive science: microexplanation, which relates neoclassical economics to recent developments in cognitive science, might revolutionize the methodology of economics. Since Ross challenges a conception of economics associated with what is pejoratively called 'Folk psychology', the paper discusses ideas of the philosopher Daniel Dennett on which this challenge is largely based. This discussion could not avoid bearing on questions such as the nature (...) of consciousness, the interpretation of ontological realism, the relations between agency and selfhood, and the nature and scope of economics. The paper attempts to rehabilitate the two pieces of the traditional conception of economics that were most radically contested by Ross, namely methodological individualism and the foundational role of rationality in economics. A relatively nuanced judgment on Ross's bold enterprise is proposed in conclusion. (shrink)

Complex systems research is becoming ever more important in both the natural and social sciences. It is commonly implied that there is such a thing as a complex system, different examples of which are studied across many disciplines. However, there is no concise definition of a complex system, let alone a definition on which all scientists agree. We review various attempts to characterize a complex system, and consider a core set of features that are widely associated with complex systems in (...) the literature and by those in the field. We argue that some of these features are neither necessary nor sufficient for complexity, and that some of them are too vague or confused to be of any analytical use. In order to bring mathematical rigour to the issue we then review some standard measures of complexity from the scientific literature, and offer a taxonomy for them, before arguing that the one that best captures the qualitative notion of the order produced by complex systems is that of the Statistical Complexity. Finally, we offer our own list of necessary conditions as a characterization of complexity. These conditions are qualitative and may not be jointly sufficient for complexity. We close with some suggestions for future work. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to revisit the phlogiston theory to see what can be learned from it about the relationship between scientific realism, approximate truth and successful reference. It is argued that phlogiston theory did to some extent correctly describe the causal or nomological structure of the world, and that some of its central terms can be regarded as referring. However, it is concluded that the issue of whether or not theoretical terms successfully refer is not the key (...) to formulating the appropriate form of scientific realism in response to arguments from theory change, and that the case of phlogiston theory is shown to be readily accommodated by ontic structural realism. (shrink)

Three accounts of effective realism (ER) have been advanced to solve three problems for scientific realism: Fraser and Vickers (forthcoming) develop a version of ER about non-relativistic quantum mechanics that they argue is compatible with all the main realist versions (‘interpretations’) of quantum mechanics avoiding the problem of underdetermination among them; Williams (2019) and Fraser (2020b) propose ER about quantum field theory as a response to the problems facing realist interpretations; Robertson and Wilson (forthcoming) propose ER to deal with the (...) dubious ontological status of the entities belonging to superseded theories. This paper argues for the unification of these proposals based on realism about modal structure and the idea of scale relativity of ontology developed by ontic structural realists. This solves problems some or all the accounts of ER face, especially that of making explicit in what way they are realist. Furthermore, we respond to a recent critique that has been raised against the ontic structural realist account of quantum mechanics that we employ. (shrink)

This two-part article presents the research program for a theory and empirical analysis of religious evolution. It is assumed that religion isprimarilya co-evolution to societal evolution, which in turn is a co-evolution to mental, organic, and physical evolution. The theory of evolution is triangulated with the systems theory and the semiotically informed theory of communication, so that knowledge can be gained that would not be acquired by only one of the three theories: The differentiation between religion and its environment can (...) be reconstructed based on the theory of evolution. The elements of the theory of evolution can be understood as the formation of systems. The semiotically informed theory of communication clarifies the conditions of the combination of both the systems theory and the theory of evolution as well as its objects. In turn, the combination of the systems theory and the theory of evolution can describe how communication—including religion and science—evolves and is structured. (shrink)

An Aristotelian philosophy of nature rejects the modern prejudice in favor of the microscopic, a rejection that is crucial if we are to penetrate the mysteries of the quantum world. I defend an Aristotelian model by drawing on both quantum chemistry and recent work on the measurement problem. By building on the work of Hans Primas, using the distinction between quantum and classical properties that emerges in quantum chemistry at the thermodynamic or continuum limit, I develop a new version of (...) the Copenhagen interpretation, a version that is realist, holistic, and hylomorphic in character, allowing for the attribution of fundamental causal powers to human observers and their instruments. I conclude with a critique of non-hylomorphic theories of primitive ontology, including Bohmian mechanics, Everettianism, and GRW mass-density. (shrink)

There is substantial disagreement among philosophers of embodied cognitive science about the meaning of embodiment. In what follows, I describe three different views that can be found in the current literature. I show how this debate centers around the question of whether the science of embodied cognition can retain the computer theory of mind. One view, which I will label body functionalism, takes the body to play the functional role of linking external resources for problem solving with internal biological machinery. (...) Embodiment is thus understood in terms of the role the body plays in supporting the computational circuits that realize cognition. Body enactivism argues by contrast that no computational account of cognition can account for the role of commonsense knowledge in our everyday practical engagement with the world. I will attempt a reconciliation of these seemingly opposed views. (shrink)

Imagine you are casually browsing an online bookstore, looking for an interesting novel. Suppose the store predicts you will want to buy a particular novel: the one most chosen by people of your same age, gender, location, and occupational status. The store recommends the book, it appeals to you, and so you choose it. Central to this scenario is an automated prediction of what you desire. This article raises moral concerns about such predictions. More generally, this article examines the ethics (...) of artificial social cognition—the ethical dimensions of attribution of mental states to humans by artificial systems. The focus is presumptuous aim attributions, which are defined here as aim attributions based crucially on the premise that the person in question will have aims like superficially similar people. Several everyday examples demonstrate that this sort of presumptuousness is already a familiar moral concern. The scope of this moral concern is extended by new technologies. In particular, recommender systems based on collaborative filtering are now commonly used to automatically recommend products and information to humans. Examination of these systems demonstrates that they naturally attribute aims presumptuously. This article presents two reservations about the widespread adoption of such systems. First, the severity of our antecedent moral concern about presumptuousness increases when aim attribution processes are automated and accelerated. Second, a foreseeable consequence of reliance on these systems is an unwarranted inducement of interpersonal conformity. (shrink)

This article considers the popular thesis that a more proportional relationship between a cause and its effect yields a more abstract causal explanation of that effect, which in turn produces a deeper explanation. This thesis is taken to have important implications for choosing the optimal granularity of explanation for a given explanandum. In this article, I argue that this thesis is not generally true of probabilistic causal relationships. In light of this finding, I propose a pragmatic, interest-relative measure of explanatory (...) depth. This measure uses a decision-theoretic model of information pricing to determine the optimal granularity of explanation for a given explanandum, agent, and decision problem. (shrink)

How should philosophy of social science proceed? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9592-7 Authors Harold Kincaid, Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 900 13th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35294-1260, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

There is a lively ongoing debate among philosophers and social scientists about the reality of race and among social scientists about the reality of caste and ethnicity. This paper tries to sort out what the issues are and makes some preliminary suggestions about what the evidence shows. Standard philosophical analyses try to find the necessary and sufficient conditions of our concept of race. I argue that this is not the best way to approach the issue and that the reality of (...) these concepts should be taken as a scientific realism question; that is, do our best social scientific accounts of these phenomena show that appealing to the concepts of race, caste, and ethnicity is essential to successful social science explanation? I argue that in some cases that is the case and lay out the empirical issues involved. (shrink)

I share with all the other authors the view that conceptual metaphysics without close ties to science is of minimal value, that this holds for much of current work on social ontology, and that if there is value in social ontology, it has to be in contributing to empirical social science. I do perhaps disagree with all three authors about making any blanket statements concerning either instrumentalism or realism about the social sciences and their ontologies. I argue and try to (...) show instead that if there are fruitful questions of social ontology, they are probably mostly local empirical issues raised by specific pieces of social science. Certain kinds of pluralism and instrumentalism may well make sense in some situations. I illustrate with debates over the need for psychological realism and revealed preference theory in economics. (shrink)

Debates about explanation in the social sciences often proceed without any clear idea what an 'account' of explanation should do. In this paper I take a stance - what I will call contextualism - that denies there are purely formal and conceptual constraints on explanation and takes standards of explanation to be substantive empirical claims, paradigmatically claims about causation. I then use this standpoint to argue for position on issues in the philosophy of social science concerning reduction, idealized models, social (...) mechanisms, functional explanations, inference to the best explanation and interpretive understanding. (shrink)

This paper shows how a niche account of the metaphysics of laws of nature and physical properties—the Powers-BSA—can underpin both a sense in which the laws are metaphysically necessary and a sense in which it is true that the laws could have been different. The ability to reconcile entrenched disagreement should count in favour of a philosophical theory, so this paper constitutes a novel argument for the Powers-BSA by showing how it can reconcile disagreement about the laws’ modal status. This (...) paper also constitutes a defence of modal necessitarianism, the interesting and controversial view according to which all worlds are nomologically identical, because it shows how the modal necessitarian can appease the orthodox contingentist about laws. (shrink)

The predominance of machine learning based techniques in cognitive neuroscience raises a host of philosophical and methodological concerns. Given the messiness of neural activity, modellers must make choices about how to structure their raw data to make inferences about encoded representations. This leads to a set of standard methodological assumptions about when abstraction is appropriate in neuroscientific practice. Yet, when made uncritically these choices threaten to bias conclusions about phenomena drawn from data. Contact between the practices of multivariate pattern analysis (...) and philosophy of science can help to illuminate the conditions under which we can use artificial neural networks to better understand neural mechanisms. This paper considers a specific technique for MVPA called representational similarity analysis. I develop a theoretically-informed account of RSA that draws on early connectionist research and work on idealization in the philosophy of science. By bringing a philosophical account of cognitive modelling in conversation with RSA, this paper clarifies the practices of neuroscientists and provides a generalizable framework for using artificial neural networks to study neural mechanisms in the brain. (shrink)

One might take the significance of Davidson’s indeterminacy thesis to be that the question as to which language we can take another to be speaking can only be settled relative to our choice of an acceptable theory for interpreting the speaker. This, in turn, could be taken to show that none of us is ever speaking a determinate language. I argue that this result is self-defeating and cannot avoid collapse into a troubling skepticism about meaning. I then offer a way (...) of trying to make sense of the idea that some utterances do belong to determinate languages even though there is no determinate language one can take another to be speaking. This, however, results in an uninviting picture of communication in which no speaker is really in a position to say what another’s words mean. (shrink)

Matthen (Philos Sci 76(4):464–487, 2009) argues that explanations of evolutionary change that appeal to natural selection are statistically abstractive explanations, explanations that ignore some possible explanatory partitions that in fact impact the outcome. This recognition highlights a difficulty with making selective analyses fully rigorous. Natural selection is not about the details of what happens to any particular organism, nor, by extension, to the details of what happens in any particular population. Since selective accounts focus on tendencies, those factors that impact (...) the actual outcomes but do not impact the tendencies must be excluded. So, in order to properly exclude the factors irrelevant to selection, the relevant factors must be identified, and physical processes, environments, and populations individuated on the basis of being relevantly similar for the purposes of selective accounts. Natural selection, on this view, becomes in part a measure of the robustness of particular kinds of outcomes given variations over some kinds of inputs. (shrink)

We examine some of Connes’ criticisms of Robinson’s infinitesimals starting in 1995. Connes sought to exploit the Solovay model S as ammunition against non-standard analysis, but the model tends to boomerang, undercutting Connes’ own earlier work in functional analysis. Connes described the hyperreals as both a “virtual theory” and a “chimera”, yet acknowledged that his argument relies on the transfer principle. We analyze Connes’ “dart-throwing” thought experiment, but reach an opposite conclusion. In S , all definable sets of reals are (...) Lebesgue measurable, suggesting that Connes views a theory as being “virtual” if it is not definable in a suitable model of ZFC. If so, Connes’ claim that a theory of the hyperreals is “virtual” is refuted by the existence of a definable model of the hyperreal field due to Kanovei and Shelah. Free ultrafilters aren’t definable, yet Connes exploited such ultrafilters both in his own earlier work on the classification of factors in the 1970s and 80s, and in Noncommutative Geometry, raising the question whether the latter may not be vulnerable to Connes’ criticism of virtuality. We analyze the philosophical underpinnings of Connes’ argument based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, and detect an apparent circularity in Connes’ logic. We document the reliance on non-constructive foundational material, and specifically on the Dixmier trace −∫ (featured on the front cover of Connes’ magnum opus) and the Hahn–Banach theorem, in Connes’ own framework. We also note an inaccuracy in Machover’s critique of infinitesimal-based pedagogy. (shrink)