According to the conventional wisdom, Turing said that computing machines can be intelligent. I don't believe it. I think that what Turing really said was that computing machines –- computers limited to computing –- can only fake intelligence. If we want computers to become genuinelyintelligent, we will have to give them enough “initiative” to do more than compute. In this paper, I want to try to develop this idea. I want to explain how giving computers more ``initiative'' can allow them (...) to do more than compute. And I want to say why I believe that they will have to go beyond computation before they can become genuinely intelligent. (shrink)

Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. First, they can give rise to so-called non-maximal readings, in the sense that they ‘allow for exceptions’. Second, while they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences, they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation. Building on previous works, we offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for (...) their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates. The resulting proposal is briefly compared with an alternative proposal by Križ, which has similar coverage but is based on a very different architecture and sometimes makes subtly different predictions. (shrink)

Israel 2004 claims that numerous philosophers have misinterpreted Goodman’s original ‘New Riddle of Induction’, and weakened it in the process, because they do not define ‘grue’ as referring to past observations. Both claims are false: Goodman clearly took the riddle to concern the maximally general problem of “projecting” any type of characteristic from a given realm of objects into another, and since this problem subsumes Israel’s, Goodman formulated a stronger philosophical challenge than the latter surmises.

This essay addresses the question of when evidence for a stronger claim H1 also constitutes evidence for a weaker claim H2. Although the answer “Always” is tempting, it is false on a natural Bayesian conception of evidence. This essay first describes some prima facie counterexamples to this answer and surveys some weaker answers and rejects them. Next, it proposes an answer, which appeals to the “Dragging Condition.” After explaining and arguing for its use of the Dragging Condition, the essay argues (...) that the Dragging Condition provides a general account of, and solution to, the counterexamples with which the essay began. The essay briefly discusses the relevance of the Dragging Condition to the recently much-discussed topic of “transmission failure” in epistemology, applies the Dragging Condition to the problem of “bootstrapping” in epistemology, and discusses three important objections to the view defended in the essay. (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)

The recent discussion of fictional models has focused on imagination, implicitly considering fictions as something nonconcrete. We present two cases from synthetic biology that can be viewed as concrete fictions. Both minimal cells and alternative genetic systems are modal in nature: they, as well as their abstract cousins, can be used to study unactualized possibilia. We approach these synthetic constructs through Vaihinger’s notion of a semi-fiction and Goodman’s notion of semifactuality. Our study highlights the relative existence of such concrete fictions. (...) Before their realizations neither minimal cells nor alternative genetic systems were any well-defined objects, and the subsequent experimental work has given more content to these originally schematic imaginings. But it is as yet unclear whether individual members of these heterogeneous groups of somewhat functional synthetic constructs will eventually turn out to be fully realizable, remain only partially realizable, or prove outright impossible. (shrink)

Classifying accounts of institutionalized social norms that rely on individual rule-following as ‘sociological’ and accounts based on individual opportunity-seeking behavior as ‘economic’, the paper rejects purely economic accounts on theoretical grounds. Explaining the realworkings of institutionalized social norms and social order exclusively in terms of self-regarding opportunityseeking individual behavior is impossible. An integrated sociological approach to the so-called Hobbesian problem of social order that incorporates opportunityseeking along with rule-following behavior is necessary. Such an approach emerges on the horizon if economic (...) methods are put to good sociological use on the basis of recent experimental economic findings on rule-following behavior. (shrink)

In the spirit of James and Dewey, I ask what one might want from a theory of knowledge. Much Anglophone epistemology is centered on questions that were once highly pertinent, but are no longer central to broader human and scientific concerns. The first sense in which epistemology without history is blind lies in the tendency of philosophers to ignore the history of philosophical problems. A second sense consists in the perennial attraction of approaches to knowledge that divorce knowing subjects from (...) their societies and from the tradition of socially assembling a body of transmitted knowledge. When epistemology fails to use the history of inquiry as a laboratory in which methodological claims can be tested, there is a third way in which it becomes blind. Finally, lack of attention to the growth of knowledge in various domains leaves us with puzzles about the character of the knowledge we have. I illustrate this last theme by showing how reflections on the history of mathematics can expand our options for understanding mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

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)

Most management researchers pause at the threshold of objective right and wrong. Their hesitation is understandable. Values imply a “subjective,” personal dimension, one that can invite religious and moral interference in research. The dominant epistemological camps of positivism and subjectivism in management stumble over the notion of moral objectivity. Empirical research can study values in human behavior, but hard-headed scientists should not assume that one value can be objectively better than another. In this article, we invite management researchers to rethink (...) this presumption. We show how accepting at least a limited form of moral objectivity, namely, an epistemic orientation that seeks objective moral reasons, can benefit management research by 1. guiding research practice; 2. using patterns of moral objectivity as clues for formulating empirical hypotheses for psychological explanations; and 3. adding prescriptive power to empirical theories. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a unified causal account of natural kinds. Using as a starting point the widely held view that natural kind terms or predicates are projectible, I argue that the ontological bases of their projectibility are the causal properties and relations associated with the natural kinds themselves. Natural kinds are not just concatenations of properties but ordered hierarchies of properties, whose instances are related to one another as causes and effects in recurrent causal processes. The resulting account (...) of natural kinds as clusters of core causal properties that give rise to clusters of derivative properties enables us to distinguish genuine natural kinds from non-natural kinds. For instance, it enables us to say why some of the purely conventional categories derived from the social domain do not correspond to natural kinds, though other social categories may. (shrink)

A Moorean fact, in the words of the late David Lewis, is ‘one of those things that we know better than we know the premises of any philosophical argument to the contrary’. Lewis opens his seminal paper ‘Elusive Knowledge’ with the following declaration.

In this age of post-Moorean modesty, many of us are inclined to doubt that philosophy is in possession of arguments that might genuinely serve to undermine what we ordinarily believe. It may perhaps be conceded that the arguments of the skeptic appear to be utterly compelling; but the Mooreans among us will hold that the very plausibility of our ordinary beliefs is reason enough for supposing that there must be something wrong in the skeptic’s arguments, even if we are unable (...) to say what it is. In so far then, as the pretensions of philosophy to provide a world view rest upon its.. (shrink)

Explaining the connection, if any, between simplicity and truth is among the deepest problems facing the philosophy of science, statistics, and machine learning. Say that an efficient truth finding method minimizes worst case costs en route to converging to the true answer to a theory choice problem. Let the costs considered include the number of times a false answer is selected, the number of times opinion is reversed, and the times at which the reversals occur. It is demonstrated that (1) (...) always choosing the simplest theory compatible with experience, and (2) hanging onto it while it remains simplest, is both necessary and sufficient for efficiency. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University, Baker Hall 135, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The paper focuses on knowledge generation, a topic frequently overlooked in the traditional debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. We focus on investigation as the primary process generating knowledge and its products. Investigation is taken as a generalization of the research process that includes similar knowledge-generating practices in aboriginal communities. To characterize the complexity of investigation processes and their products we go beyond traditional epistemological characterization of knowledge in terms of mental states and turn to the concept of routine. (...) Investigation processes share a common symbolic representation form which we call here a knowledge thread. The dynamics of the knowledge thread may be characterized by two intertwined tiers: cognitive and institutional. Using examples from our previous studies, especially on the recent discovery of microRNAs in molecular biology, we illustrate the dynamics of threads and claim that it is susceptible to the social network analysis which, however, requires insightful applications and sound interpretation of the results. Such an interpretation, as we suggest, may further be elaborated on the grounds of anthropological theories of distributed agency and distributed cognition. (shrink)

Un grand nombre de problèmes dont traite aujourd'hui la théorie de la décision reposent sur des problématiques qui appartiennent à des approches philosophiques, méthodologiques et théoriques fort différentes et dont l'auteur deChoix rationnel et vie publiquedéplore à juste titre l'absence d'unité intrinsèque. En effet, les racines de la théorie contemporaine du choix rationnel ont des ramifications dans trois traditions philosophiques qui ont été maintenues sans entretenir de contacts: théories philosophiques de l'action d'Aristote à Hume, à Kant et à la philosophie (...) analytique de l'action de Davidson; la théorie du conflit de Hobbes à David Gauthier; la théorie de la justice (d'inspiration utilitariste qui a profondément marqué la pensée économique du XXesiècle). Ces branches ont entretenu des interactions sporadiques, mais ces relations n'ont jamais été exploitées systématiquement. Le travail que présente l'auteur est une première tentative dans cette direction, du moins en langue française. (shrink)

Cultural psychologists often describe the relationship between mind and culture as ‘dynamic.’ In light of this, we provide two desiderata that a theory about encultured minds ought to meet: the theory ought to reflect how cultural psychologists describe their own findings and it ought to be thoroughly naturalistic. We show that a realist theory of causal powers — which holds that powers are causally-efficacious and empirically-discoverable — fits the bill. After an introduction to the major concepts in cultural psychology and (...) describing causal power realism, we use a case study — the effects of pathogen prevalence on culture and cognition — to show the explanatory capacities of the powers framework. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that norms and customs, despite frequently being described as being causes of behavior in the social sciences and ordinary conversation, cannot really cause behavior. Terms like "norms" and the like seem to refer to philosophically disreputable disjunctive properties. More problematically, even if they do not, or even if there can be disjunctive properties after all, I argue that norms and customs still cannot cause behavior. The social sciences would be better off without referring to properties (...) like norms and customs as if they could be causal. (shrink)

Central elements of W. V. Quine’s epistemology are widely and deeply misunderstood, including the following. He held from first to last that our evidence consists of the stimulations of our sense organs, and of our observations, and of our sensory experiences; meeting the interpretive challenge this poses is a sine qua non of understanding his epistemology. He counted both “This is blue” and “This looks blue” as observation sentences. He took introspective reports to have a high degree of certainty. He (...) endorsed outright Hume’s “skeptical” argument concerning induction. His naturalized epistemology is simply naturalistic, or scientific, epistemology stripped of the project of rational reconstruction, and is thoroughly normative. Quine was unconditionally a scientific philosopher who took our theories to be answerable ultimately to our perceptual experiences (sensations)—and conditionally an empiricist, empiricism being a scientific theory that has no competitors worthy of the name. I attempt to make all of this clear, and conclude by offering a concise formulation of his epistemology. (shrink)

Goodman concurs in Hume’s contention that no theory has any probability relative to any set of data, and offers two accounts, compatible with that contention, of how some inductive inferences are nevertheless justified. The first, framed in terms of rules of inductive inference, is well known, significantly flawed, and enmeshed in Goodman’s unfortunate entrenchment theory and view of the mind as hypothesizing at random. The second, framed in terms of characteristics of inferred theories rather than rules of inference, is less (...) well known, but provides a compelling view of inductive justification. Once the two accounts are clearly delineated, one can see that both are driven by a single deep conviction: that inductive justification can only be understood in terms of our actual inductive practice. (shrink)

Knowledge of mechanisms is critical for causal reasoning. We contrasted two possible organizations of causal knowledge—an interconnected causal network, where events are causally connected without any boundaries delineating discrete mechanisms; or a set of disparate mechanisms—causal islands—such that events in different mechanisms are not thought to be related even when they belong to the same causal chain. To distinguish these possibilities, we tested whether people make transitive judgments about causal chains by inferring, given A causes B and B causes C, (...) that A causes C. Specifically, causal chains schematized as one chunk or mechanism in semantic memory led to transitive causal judgments. On the other hand, chains schematized as multiple chunks led to intransitive judgments despite strong intermediate links. Normative accounts of causal intransitivity could not explain these intransitive judgments. (shrink)

As inductive decision-making procedures, the inferences made by machine learning programs are subject to underdetermination by evidence and bear inductive risk. One strategy for overcoming these challenges is guided by a presumption in philosophy of science that inductive inferences can and should be value-free. Applied to machine learning programs, the strategy assumes that the influence of values is restricted to data and decision outcomes, thereby omitting internal value-laden design choice points. In this paper, I apply arguments from feminist philosophy of (...) science to machine learning programs to make the case that the resources required to respond to these inductive challenges render critical aspects of their design constitutively value-laden. I demonstrate these points specifically in the case of recidivism algorithms, arguing that contemporary debates concerning fairness in criminal justice risk-assessment programs are best understood as iterations of traditional arguments from inductive risk and demarcation, and thereby establish the value-laden nature of automated decision-making programs. Finally, in light of these points, I address opportunities for relocating the value-free ideal in machine learning and the limitations that accompany them. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop an adequate version of the D-N theory of explanation for particular events and to show how the resulting D-N model can be used as a tool in articulating a regularity theory of causation and an analysis of the truth conditions for counterfactual conditionals. Starting with a basic model that is largely the product of other workers in this field, two new restrictions are formulated in order to construct a version of D-N explanation (...) that does not yield the counterintuitive results that have plagued all earlier versions. An additional condition is then developed that is indispensable for utilizing the D-N model as a tool in formulating a regularity theory of causation. Finally, it is shown how a suitable model of potential D-N explanation facilitates the formulation of a theory of counterfactual conditionals. (shrink)

David Lewis is associated with the controversial thesis that some properties are more eligible than others to be the referents of our predicates solely in virtue of those properties’ being more natural; independently, that is, of anything to do with our patterns of usage of the relevant predicates. On such a view, the natural properties act as ‘reference magnets’. In this paper I explore (though I do not endorse) a related thesis in epistemology: that some propositions are ‘justification magnets’. According (...) to the doctrine of justification magnetism, we have better justification for some propositions than for others solely in virtue of certain features of those propositions; independently, that is, of anything to do with evidential support or cognitive accomplishment. In the course of discussing an objection to justification magnetism I describe (though I do not endorse) a novel approach to epistemology akin to interpretationism in the theory of reference. (shrink)

In the book, I provide an account of what it is for an agent to have an ability. According to the Success View, abilities are all about success across possible situations. In developing and applying the view, the book elucidates the relation between abilities on the one hand and possibility, counterfactuals, and dispositions on the other; it sheds light on the distinction between general and specific abilities; it offers an understanding of degrees of abilities; it explains which role intentions and (...) performances play for the having of an ability, how abilities relate to success and failure, and gives an outlook at how the view might be applied to the free will debate and time travel. (shrink)

Scientific practice involves two kinds of induction. In one, generalizations are drawn about the states of a particular system of variables. In the other, generalizations are drawn across systems in a class. We can discern two questions of correctness about both kinds of induction: what distinguishes those systems and classes of system that are ‘projectible’ in Goodman’s sense from those that are not, and what are the methods by which we are able to identify kinds that are likely to be (...) projectible? In answer to the first question, numerous theories of ‘natural kinds’ have been advanced, but none has satisfactorily addressed both questions simultaneously. I propose a shift in perspective. Both essentialist and cluster property theories have traditionally characterized kinds directly in terms of the causally salient properties their members possess. Instead, we should focus on ‘dynamical symmetries’, transformations of a system to which the causal structure of that system is indifferent. I suggest that to be a member of natural kind it is necessary and sufficient to possess a particular collection of dynamical symmetries. I show that membership in such a kind is in turn necessary and sufficient for the presence of the sort of causal structure that accounts for success in both kinds of induction, thus demonstrating that has been answered satisfactorily. More dramatically, I demonstrate that this new theory of ‘dynamical kinds’ provides an answer to with methodological implications concerning the discovery of projectible kinds. (shrink)

Yehezkel presents an interesting argument to resolve Goodman’s New Riddle of Induction, and in effect to claim that a purely syntactical theory of confirmation is possible. In this paper I suggest that Yehezkel’s argument relies on two premises not proven in his paper. The first premise is that if “a New Riddle of Deduction” can be formulated then there is no New Riddle of Induction. This premise seems to be wrong as I claim in part 2 of this paper. The (...) second premise is that a New Riddle of Deduction can be formulated. Despite Yehezkel’s efforts to prove this claim, it seems to me false, or at least, unproven. I therefore conclude that there is no New Riddle of Deduction, and therefore, no actual resolution to the New Riddle of Induction. (shrink)

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

The epistemology of disagreement standardly divides conciliationist views from steadfast views. But both sorts of views are subject to counterexample—indeed, both sorts of views are subject to the same counterexample. After presenting this counterexample, I explore how the epistemology of disagreement should be reconceptualized in light of it.

According to an influential characterisation of reflective equilibrium, it is a kind of algorithm for licensing explicitly normative claims in philosophical inquiries. Call this the machine-view of reflective equilibrium. The machine-view implies a causal relation between input and output data that is devoid of human agency in any significant sense. In this paper, I argue for a neo-Aristotelian alternative view. According to this view, the judgement that is called forth in the decision procedure of reflective equilibrium is a rational response (...) of an epistemic agent, which integrates the whole of her character as a knower, both cognitive and affective, and which cannot be reduced to the explicit following of rules or an algorithm. Unlike the machine-view, this alternative account is able to support the dynamic structure and the normative status of the decision procedure. (shrink)

This paper engages with a specific problem concerning the relationship between descriptive and normative claims. Namely, if we understand that descriptive claims frequently contain normative assertions, and vice versa, how then do we interpret the traditionally rigid distinction that is made between the two, as ’Hume’s law’ or Moore’s ’naturalistic fallacy’ argument offered. In particular, Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s ’rule-following paradox’ is specially focused upon in order to re-consider the rigid distinction. As such, the paper argues that if descriptive and (...) normative claims are not mutually exclusive, then we need a new framework with which to understand this relationship. In this regard, the paper borrows from concerns with vagueness, particularly using a degree-theoretic approach in terms of subjective probability, in an attempt to graphically figure out these differences. Consequently, the paper tentatively proposes the hyperbola model in which degrees of normativity and degrees of descriptivity could be expressed and measured. It is hoped, as a result, that this tentative proposal will contribute to deepening the debate on vagueness in general. (shrink)

The justificatory force of empirical reasoning always depends upon the existence of some synthetic, a priori justification. The reasoner must begin with justified, substantive constraints on both the prior probability of the conclusion and certain conditional probabilities; otherwise, all possible degrees of belief in the conclusion are left open given the premises. Such constraints cannot in general be empirically justified, on pain of infinite regress. Nor does subjective Bayesianism offer a way out for the empiricist. Despite often-cited convergence theorems, subjective (...) Bayesians cannot hold that any empirical hypothesis is ever objectively justified in the relevant sense. Rationalism is thus the only alternative to an implausible skepticism. (shrink)

It would be a mistake to deny commonsense intuitions a role in developing a theory of consciousness. However, philosophers have traditionally failed to probe commonsense in a way that allows these commonsense intuitions to make a robust contribution to a theory of consciousness. In this paper, I report the results of two experiments on purportedly phenomenal states and I argue that many disputes over the philosophical notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ are misguided—they fail to capture the interesting connection between commonsense ascriptions (...) of pain and emotion. With this data in hand, I argue that our capacity to distinguish between ‘mere things’ and ‘subjects of moral concern’ rests, to a significant extent, on the sorts of mental states that we take a system to have. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Daniel Steel charges me with committing a fallacy in my discussion of inductive rules. I show that the charge is false, and that Steel's own attempt to validate enumerative induction in terms of formal learning theory is itself fallacious. I go on to argue that, contra Steel, formal learning theory is in principle incapable of answering Hume's famous claim that any attempt to justify induction will beg the question.

Philosophical analysis was the central preoccupation of 20th-century analytic philosophy. In the contemporary methodological debate, however, it faces a number of pressing external and internal challenges. While external challenges, like those from experimental philosophy or semantic externalism, have been extensively discussed, internal challenges to philosophical analysis have received much less attention. One especially vexing internal challenge is that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are deeply unclear. According to the standard textbook view, a philosophical analysis aims at a strict biconditional (...) that captures the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in the relevant category. The textbook view arguably identifies a necessary condition on successful philosophical analyses, but understood as a sufficient condition it is untenable, as I will argue in this paper. To this end, I first uncover eight conditions of adequacy on successful philosophical analyses, some of which have rarely been spelled out in detail. As we shall see, even sophisticated alternatives to the textbook view fail to accommodate some of these conditions. I then propose the concept grounding view as a more promising account of philosophical analysis. According to this view, successful philosophical analyses require necessary biconditionals that are constrained by grounding relations among the concepts involved. Apart from providing a satisfactory account of philosophical analysis in its own right, the concept grounding view is also able to meet the challenge that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are problematically unclear. (shrink)

There are at least two senses in which human beings can be called “naturally artificial”: being adapted for creation of and participation in niche constructed environments, and being adapted for creation of and participation in such environments despite an exceptional indeterminacy in the details of the niche constructed environments themselves. The former puts human beings in a common category with many niche-constructing organisms while the latter is arguably distinctive of our species. I explain how this can be so by developing (...) an account of supporting concepts of complexity, contingency, and content-openness, and show how to defend the position against a common style of objection by a single comparative case study: hermit crabs and their shells versus humans and their movable dwellings. Finally, I consider evidence that such a feature is indeed species-typical and evolved in human populations. (shrink)

In 'General Propositions and Causality' Ramsey rejects his earlier view that universal generalizations are infinite conjunctions, arguing that they are not genuine propositions at all. We argue that his new position is unstable. The issues about infinity that lead Ramsey to the new view are essentially those underlying Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations. If they show that generalizations are not genuine propositions, they show that there are no genuine propositions. The connection raises interesting historical questions about the direction of influence between Ramsey (...) and Wittgenstein, the origin of the rule-following argument, and the influence of writers such as Brouwer. (shrink)

The inductive argument from the falsity of most past scientific theories (more than 100 years old) to the falsity of most present ones is defensible, I argue, if it is modified to account for the degrees of theoreticity or observationality in such theories, and the extent to which they are hedged. The case of descriptive astronomy is examined to show that most of the true theories of the 1890s were high in observationality and/or significantly hedged. The false theories of that (...) period, however, were not even approximately true. Apparently, scientists are more interested in supplanting theories with improved observations than in producing true theories. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that in philosophy, intuitions supply evidence for and against philosophical theories. Recent work in experimental philosophy has brought to bear the intuitions of philosophically naïve subjects in a number of different ways. One line of response to this work has been to claim that philosophers have expertise that privileges their intuitive judgments, and allows them to disregard the judgments of non-experts. This expertise is supposed to be analogous to the expertise of the mathematician or the physicist. (...) This paper critically evaluates this appeal to philosophical expertise. (shrink)

an observation to formulate a theory, it is no surprise that the resulting theory accurately captures that observation. However, when the theory makes a novel prediction—when it predicts an observation that was not used in its formulation—this seems to provide more substantial confirmation of the theory. This paper presents a new approach to the vexed problem of understanding the epistemic difference between prediction and accommodation. In fact, there are several problems that need to be disentangled; in all of them, the (...) key is the concept of overfitting. We float the hypothesis that accommodation is a defective methodology only when the methods used to accommodate the data fail to guard against the risk of overfitting. We connect our analysis with the proposals that other philosophers have made. We also discuss its bearing on the conflict between instrumentalism and scientific realism. Introduction Predictivisms—a taxonomy Observations Formulating the problem What might Annie be doing wrong? Solutions Observations explained Mayo on severe tests The miracle argument and scientific realism Concluding comments. (shrink)

According to structuralism, all natural properties are individuated by their roles in causal/nomological structures. According to quidditism, at least some natural properties are individuated in some other way. Because these theses deal with the identities of natural properties, this distinction cuts to the core of a serious metaphysical dispute: Are the intrinsic natures of all natural properties essentially causal/nomological in character? I'll argue that the answer is ‘no’, or at least that this answer is more plausible than many critics of (...) quidditism have recognized. In section 1, I distinguish between two versions of quidditism. Bare quidditism holds that worlds with distinct properties and isomorphic structures must be qualitatively identical in the following sense: inhabiting one world would be indistinguishable from inhabiting the other. In contrast, qualitative quidditism allows such worlds to have qualitative differences. In section 2, I discuss an epistemological position that allows us to bett... (shrink)

According to the Nomological Argument, observed regularities in nature are best explained by an appeal to a supernatural being. A successful explanation must avoid two perils. Some explanations provide too little structure, predicting a universe without regularities. Others provide too much structure, thereby precluding an explanation of certain types of lawlike regularities featured in modern scientific theories. We argue that an explanation based in the creative, intentional action of a supernatural being avoids these two perils whereas leading competitors do not. (...) Although our argument falls short of a full defense, it does suggest that the Nomological Argument is worthy of philosophical attention. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman cast the ‘problem of induction’ as the task of articulating the principles and standards by which to distinguish valid from invalid inductive inferences. This paper explores some logical bounds on the ability of a rational reasoner to accomplish this task. By a simple argument, either an inductive inference method cannot admit its own fallibility, or there exists some non-inferable hypothesis whose non-inferability the method cannot infer (violating the principle of ‘negative introspection’). The paper discusses some implications of this (...) limited self-knowledge for the justifiability of inductive inferences, auto-epistemic logic, and the epistemic foundations of game theory. (shrink)