Results for ' typicality'

979 found
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  1. The Typical Principle.Isaac Wilhelm - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    If a proposition is typically true, given your evidence, then you should believe that proposition; or so I argue here. In particular, in this paper, I propose and defend a principle of rationality---call it the `Typical Principle'---which links rational belief to facts about what is typical. As I show, this principle avoids several problems that other, seemingly similar principles face. And as I show, in many cases, this principle implies the verdicts of the Principal Principle: so ultimately, the Typical Principle (...)
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  2. Typicality of Dynamics and the Laws of Nature.Aldo Filomeno - 2023 - In Cristián Soto (ed.), Current Debates in Philosophy of Science: In Honor of Roberto Torretti. Springer Verlag.
    Certain results, most famously in classical statistical mechanics and complex systems, but also in quantum mechanics and high-energy physics, yield a coarse-grained stable statistical pattern in the long run. The explanation of these results shares a common structure: the results hold for a 'typical' dynamics, that is, for most of the underlying dynamics. In this paper I argue that the structure of the explanation of these results might shed some light --a different light-- on philosophical debates on the laws of (...)
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  3.  93
    Typicality First.Isaac Wilhelm - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    Instances of the law of large numbers are used to model many different physical systems. In this paper, I argue for a particular interpretation, of those instances of that law, which appeals to typicality. As I argue, the content of that law, when used to model physical systems, is that the probability of an event typically—rather than probably—approximates the frequency with which that event occurs.
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  4. How Typical! An Epistemological Analysis of Typicality in Statistical Mechanics.Massimiliano Badino - manuscript
    The recent use of typicality in statistical mechanics for foundational purposes has stirred an important debate involving both philosophers and physicists. While this debate customarily focuses on technical issues, in this paper I try to approach the problem from an epistemological angle. The discussion is driven by two questions: (1) What does typicality add to the concept of measure? (2) What kind of explanation, if any, does typicality yield? By distinguishing the notions of `typicality-as-vast-majority' and ` (...)-as-best-exemplar', I argue that the former goes beyond the concept of measure. Furthermore, I also argue that typicality aims at providing us with a form of causal explanation of equilibrium. (shrink)
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  5. Typical Quantum States of the Universe are Observationally Indistinguishable.Eddy Keming Chen & Roderich Tumulka - 2024
    This paper is about the epistemology of quantum theory. We establish a new result about a limitation to knowledge of its central object---the quantum state of the universe. We show that, if the universal quantum state can be assumed to be a typical unit vector from a high-dimensional subspace of Hilbert space (such as the subspace defined by a low-entropy macro-state as prescribed by the Past Hypothesis), then no observation can determine (or even just narrow down significantly) which vector it (...)
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  6. The Typicality Effect in Basic Needs.Thomas Pölzler & Ivar R. Hannikainen - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-26.
    According to the so-called Classical Theory, concepts are mentally represented by individually necessary and jointly sufficient application conditions. One of the principal empirical objections against this view stems from evidence that people judge some instances of a concept to be more typical than others. In this paper we present and discuss four empirical studies that investigate the extent to which this ‘typicality effect’ holds for the concept of basic needs. Through multiple operationalizations of typicality, our studies yielded evidence (...)
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  7. Typical Subjectivity.Emiliano Diaz - 2022 - Idealistic Studies 52 (1):1-21.
    Husserl’s theory of types is most often associated with his account of perception. Here, types operate as pre-predicative frames of experience that guide the perception of objects. In this paper, I will argue that Husserl’s theory of types is also central to his account of intersubjectivity. More specifically, I will show that a foundational kind of typical subjectivity is entailed by his discussion of the sphere of ownness. It is by way of this type that even a solitary subject can (...)
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  8. Typicality of Dynamics and Laws of Nature.Aldo Filomeno - 2023 - In Cristián Soto (ed.), Current Debates in Philosophy of Science: In Honor of Roberto Torretti. Springer Verlag. pp. 391-418.
    Certain results, most famously in classical statistical mechanics and complex systems, but also in quantum mechanics and high-energy physics, yield a coarse-grained stable statistical pattern in the long run. The explanation of these results shares a common structure: the results hold for a ‘typical’ dynamics, that is, for most of the underlying dynamics. In this paper I argue that the structure of the explanation of these results might shed some light—a different light—on philosophical debates on the laws of nature. In (...)
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  9. Typicality à la Russell in Set Theory.Athanassios Tzouvaras - 2022 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 63 (2).
    We adjust the notion of typicality originated with Russell, which was introduced and studied in a previous paper for general first-order structures, to make it expressible in the language of set theory. The adopted definition of the class ${\rm NT}$ of nontypical sets comes out as a natural strengthening of Russell's initial definition, which employs properties of small (minority) extensions, when the latter are restricted to the various levels $V_\zeta$ of $V$. This strengthening leads to defining ${\rm NT}$ as (...)
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  10. Generics as Expectations: Typicality and Diagnosticity.Peter Gärdenfors & Matías Osta-Vélez - 2025 - Ratio 38 (1):16-26.
    Generic statements play a crucial role in concept learning, communication and education. Despite many efforts, the semantics of generics remain a controversial issue, as they do not seem to fit our standard theories of meaning. In this article, we attempt to shed light on this problem by focusing on how these sentences function in reasoning. Drawing on a distinction between property and diagnostic generics, we defend three theses: First, property generics are not about facts but express relations between concepts. Second, (...)
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  11. Can Typicality Arguments Dissolve Cosmology’s Flatness Problem?C. D. McCoy - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (5):1239-1252.
    Several physicists, among them Hawking, Page, Coule, and Carroll, have argued against the probabilistic intuitions underlying fine-tuning arguments in cosmology and instead propose that the canonical measure on the phase space of Friedman-Robertson-Walker space-times should be used to evaluate fine-tuning. They claim that flat space-times in this set are actually typical on this natural measure and that therefore the flatness problem is illusory. I argue that they misinterpret typicality in this phase space and, moreover, that no conclusion can be (...)
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  12. The Early Husserl on Typicality.Hamid Taieb - 2021 - In Arnaud Dewalque, Charlotte Gauvry & Sébastien Richard (eds.), Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School: Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 263–278..
    This paper presents and evaluates the early Husserl’s account of typicality. In the Logical Investigations, Husserl holds that the meaning of ordinary language (common) names is sensitive to typicality: this meaning depends on typical examples which vary in different contexts and are more or less similar to one another. This seems to entail that meanings, which according to Husserl are concepts, are “fluctuating” (schwankend) and vague. Prima facie, such a claim contravenes his theory of ideal meanings, or concepts, (...)
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  13. A Description Logic of Typicality for Conceptual Combination.Antonio Lieto & Gian Luca Pozzato - 2018 - In Antonio Lieto & Gian Luca Pozzato (eds.), Proceedings of ISMIS 18. Springer.
    We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of combining prototypical concepts, an open problem in the fields of AI and cognitive modelling. Our logic extends the logic of typicality ALC + TR, based on the notion of rational closure, by inclusions p :: T(C) v D (“we have probability p that typical Cs are Ds”), coming from the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics. Additionally, it embeds a set of cognitive heuristics (...)
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  14. Failure of Calibration is Typical.Gordon Belot - 2013 - Statistics and Probability Letters 83:2316--2318.
    Schervish (1985b) showed that every forecasting system is noncalibrated for uncountably many data sequences that it might see. This result is strengthened here: from a topological point of view, failure of calibration is typical and calibration rare. Meanwhile, Bayesian forecasters are certain that they are calibrated---this invites worries about the connection between Bayesianism and rationality.
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  15. The History of Moral Certainty as the Pre-History of Typicality.Mario Hubert - 2024 - Physics and the Nature of Reality: Essays in Memory of Detlef Dürr.
    This paper investigates the historical origin and ancestors of typicality, which is now a central concept in Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics and Bohmian Mechanics. Although Ludwig Boltzmann did not use the word typicality, its main idea, namely, that something happens almost always or is valid for almost all cases, plays a crucial role for his explanation of how thermodynamic systems approach equilibrium. At the beginning of the 20th century, the focus on almost always or almost everywhere was fruitful for (...)
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  16. A Description Logic Framework for Commonsense Conceptual Combination Integrating Typicality, Probabilities and Cognitive Heuristics.Antonio Lieto & Gian Luca Pozzato - 2019 - Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence:1-39.
    We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of the combination of prototypical concepts. The proposed logic relies on the logic of typicality ALC + TR, whose semantics is based on the notion of rational closure, as well as on the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics, and is equipped with a cognitive heuristic used by humans for concept composition. We first extend the logic of typicality ALC + TR by (...) inclusions of the form p :: T(C) v D, whose intuitive meaning is that “we believe with degree p about the fact that typical Cs are Ds”. As in the distributed semantics, we define different scenarios containing only some typicality inclusions, each one having a suitable probability. We then exploit such scenarios in order to ascribe typical properties to a concept C obtained as the combination of two prototypical concepts. We also show that reasoning in the proposed Description Logic is EXPTIME-complete as for the underlying standard Description Logic ALC. (shrink)
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  17. Two semantic interpretations of probabilities in description logics of typicality.Antonio Lieto & Gian Luca Pozzato - forthcoming - Logic Journal of the IGPL.
    We intoduce a novel extension of Description Logics (DLs) of typicality by means of probabilities able to represent and reason about typical properties and defeasible inheritance in DLs.
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  18. State Capture, Party Patronage and Unfair Electoral Processes: The Typical Case of Election Conduct in Albania.Gerti Sqapi - 2022 - Acta Politologica 14 (3):1-22.
    This paper aims to analyse the relationship that exists between state capture, party patronage, and the conduct of electoral processes in the settings of post-communist countries, of which Albania is one. A characteristic of the political developments of the transition period in many post-communist countries has been the phenomenon of state capture, which has occurred mainly through the endemic party patronage and politicization of state institutions. The phenomenon of state capture by the ruling political parties has had a negative conditional (...)
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  19. A Toothful of Concepts: Towards a Theory of Weighted Concept Combination.Daniele Porello, Oliver Kutz, Guendalina Righetti, Nicolas Troquard, Pietro Galliani & Claudio Masolo - 2019 - In Mantas Simkus & Grant E. Weddell (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd International Workshop on Description Logics, Oslo, Norway, June 18-21, 2019.
    We introduce a family of operators to combine Description Logic concepts. They aim to characterise complex concepts that apply to instances that satisfy \enough" of the concept descriptions given. For instance, an individual might not have any tusks, but still be considered an elephant. To formalise the meaning of "enough", the operators take a list of weighted concepts as arguments, and a certain threshold to be met. We commence a study of the formal properties of these operators, and study some (...)
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  20. Conceptual Spaces for Cognitive Architectures: A Lingua Franca for Different Levels of Representation.Antonio Lieto, Antonio Chella & Marcello Frixione - 2017 - Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 19:1-9.
    During the last decades, many cognitive architectures (CAs) have been realized adopting different assumptions about the organization and the representation of their knowledge level. Some of them (e.g. SOAR [35]) adopt a classical symbolic approach, some (e.g. LEABRA[ 48]) are based on a purely connectionist model, while others (e.g. CLARION [59]) adopt a hybrid approach combining connectionist and symbolic representational levels. Additionally, some attempts (e.g. biSOAR) trying to extend the representational capacities of CAs by integrating diagrammatical representations and reasoning are (...)
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  21. Commonsense reasoning as a key feature for dynamic knowledge invention and computational creativity.Antonio Lieto - 2020 - ICAR-MEET 2020.
    Inventing novel knowledge to solve problems is a crucial, creative, mechanism employed by humans, to extend their range of action. In this talk, I will show how commonsense reasoning plays a crucial role in this respect. In particular, I will present a cognitively inspired reasoning framework for knowledge invention and creative problem solving exploiting TCL: a non-monotonic extension of a Description Logic (DL) of typicality able to combine prototypical (commonsense) descriptions of concepts in a human-like fashion. The proposed approach (...)
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  22. Representing Concepts by Weighted Formulas.Daniele Porello & Claudio Masolo - 2018 - In Stefano Borgo, Pascal Hitzler & Oliver Kutz (eds.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems - Proceedings of the 10th International Conference, {FOIS} 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, 19-21 September 2018. IOS Press. pp. 55--68.
    A concept is traditionally defined via the necessary and sufficient conditions that clearly determine its extension. By contrast, cognitive views of concepts intend to account for empirical data that show that categorisation under a concept presents typicality effects and a certain degree of indeterminacy. We propose a formal language to compactly represent concepts by leveraging on weighted logical formulas. In this way, we can model the possible synergies among the qualities that are relevant for categorising an object under a (...)
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  23. Heterogeneous Proxytypes Extended: Integrating Theory-like Representations and Mechanisms with Prototypes and Exemplars.Antonio Lieto - 2018 - In Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, Springer. Springer.
    The paper introduces an extension of the proposal according to which conceptual representations in cognitive agents should be intended as heterogeneous proxytypes. The main contribution of this paper is in that it details how to reconcile, under a heterogeneous representational perspective, different theories of typicality about conceptual representation and reasoning. In particular, it provides a novel theoretical hypothesis - as well as a novel categorization algorithm called DELTA - showing how to integrate the representational and reasoning assumptions of the (...)
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  24. Conceptual fingerprints: Lexical decomposition by means of frames – a neuro-cognitive model.Wiebke Petersen & Markus Werning - 2007 - In U. Priss, S. Polovina & R. Hill (eds.), Conceptual structures: Knowledge architectures for smart applications. Heidelberg: pp. 415-428.
    Frames, i.e., recursive attribute-value structures, are a general format for the decomposition of lexical concepts. Attributes assign unique values to objects and thus describe functional relations. Concepts can be classified into four groups: sortal, individual, relational and functional concepts. The classification is reflected by different grammatical roles of the corresponding nouns. The paper aims at a cognitively adequate decomposition, particularly, of sortal concepts by means of frames. Using typed feature structures, an explicit formalism for the characterization of cognitive frames is (...)
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  25. Cognitive Modelling and Conceptual Spaces.Antonio Lieto - 2021 - Airbus Invited Talks on Cognitive Modelling.
    I will present the rationale followed for the conceptualization and the following development the Dual PECCS system that relies on the cognitively grounded heterogeneous proxytypes representational hypothesis. Such hypothesis allows integrating exemplars and prototype theories of categorization and has provided useful insights in the context of cognitive modelling for what concerns the typicality effects in categorization. As argued in [Chella et al., 2017] [Lieto et al., 2018b] [Lieto et al., 2018a] a pivotal role in this respect is played by (...)
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  26. Functional and Structural Models of Commonsense Reasoning in Cognitive Architectures.Antonio Lieto - 2021 - VISCA 2021 - 2nd Virtual International Symposium on Cognitive Architecture.
    I will present two different applications - Dual PECCS and the TCL reasoning framework - addressing some crucial aspects of commonsense reasoning (namely: dealing with typicality effects and with the problem of commonsense compositionality) in a way that is integrated or compliant with different cognitive architectures. In doing so I will show how such aspects are better dealt with at different levels of representation and will discuss the adopted solution to integrate such representational layers.
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  27. Heterogeneous Proxytypes as a Unifying Cognitive Framework for Conceptual Representation and Reasoning in Artificial Systems.Antonio Lieto - 2021 - In CARLA @FOIS Proceeding. Amsterdam, Netherlands: IOS Press.
    The paper presents the heterogeneous proxytypes hypothesis as a cognitively-inspired computational framework able to reconcile, in both natural and artificial systems, different theories of typicality about conceptual representation and reasoning that have been traditionally seen as incompatible. In particular, through the Dual PECCS system and its evolution, it shows how prototypes, exemplars and theory-theory like conceptual representations can be integrated in a cognitive artificial agent (thus extending its categorization capabilities) and, in addition, can provide useful insights in the context (...)
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  28. A Logic-based Tool for Dynamic Generation and Classification of Musical Content.Antonio Lieto - 2022 - In proceedings of AI*IA 2022. Springer LNCS. pp. 1-12.
    In this work we present NERVOUS, an intelligent recommender system exploiting a probabilistic extension of a Description Logic of typicality to dynamically generate novel contents in AllMusic, a comprehensive and in-depth resource about music, providing data about albums, bands, musicians and songs. The tool can be used for both the generation of novel music genres and styles, described by a set of typical properties characterizing them, and the reclassification of the available songs within such new genres.
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  29. Reciprocity and reputation: a review of direct and indirect social information gathering.Yvan I. Russell - 2016 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 37 (3-4):247-270.
    Direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and reputation are important interrelated topics in the evolution of sociality. This non-mathematical review is a summary of each. Direct reciprocity (the positive kind) has a straightforward structure (e.g., "A rewards B, then rewards A") but the allocation might differ from the process that enabled it (e.g., whether it is true reciprocity or some form of mutualism). Indirect reciprocity (the positive kind) occurs when person (B) is rewarded by a third party (A) after doing a good (...)
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  30. An Explainable Affective Recommender based on the Commonsense Reasoning Framework TCL.Antonio Lieto - 2022 - AISC 2022.
    In this work we present an explainable system for emotion attribution and recommendation (called DEGARI (Dynamic Emotion Generator And ReclassIfier) relying on a recently introduced probabilistic commonsense reasoning framework (i.e. the TCL logic, see Lieto & Pozzato 2020) which is based on a human-like procedure for the automatic generation of novel concepts in a Description Logics knowledge base (see also Lieto et al. 2019, Chiodino et al. 2020 for other applications). In particular, in order to model human-like forms of concept (...)
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  31. Concept Combination in Weighted Logic.Guendalina Righetti, Claudio Masolo, Nicolas Toquard, Oliver Kutz & Daniele Porello - 2021 - In Guendalina Righetti, Claudio Masolo, Nicolas Toquard, Oliver Kutz & Daniele Porello (eds.), Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops 2021 Episode {VII:} The Bolzano Summer of Knowledge co-located with the 12th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems {(FOIS} 2021), and the 12th Internati.
    We present an algorithm for concept combination inspired and informed by the research in cognitive and experimental psychology. Dealing with concept combination requires, from a symbolic AI perspective, to cope with competitive needs: the need for compositionality and the need to account for typicality effects. Building on our previous work on weighted logic, the proposed algorithm can be seen as a step towards the management of both these needs. More precisely, following a proposal of Hampton [1], it combines two (...)
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  32. A Non Monotonic Reasoning framework for Goal-Oriented Knowledge Adaptation.Antonio Lieto, Federico Perrone, Gian Luca Pozzato & Eleonora Chiodino - 2019 - In Paglieri (ed.), Proceedings of AISC 2019. Università degli Studi di Roma Tre. pp. 12-14.
    In this paper we present a framework for the dynamic and automatic generation of novel knowledge obtained through a process of commonsense reasoning based on typicality-based concept combination. We exploit a recently introduced extension of a Description Logic of typicality able to combine prototypical descriptions of concepts in order to generate new prototypical concepts and deal with problem like the PET FISH (Osherson and Smith, 1981; Lieto & Pozzato, 2019). Intuitively, in the context of our application of this (...)
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  33. Knowledge re-combination and invention as key features for commonsense reasoning and computational creativity research.Antonio Lieto - 2020 - In ECAI 2020 Worskhop "ARTIFICIAL AND HUMAN INTELLIGENCE FORMAL AND COGNITIVE FOUNDATIONS FOR HUMAN-CENTRED COMPUTING".
    Dynamic conceptual reframing represents a crucial mechanism employed by humans, and partially by other animal species, to generate novel knowledge used to solve complex goals. In this talk, I will present a reasoning framework for knowledge invention and creative problem solving exploiting TCL: a non-monotonic extension of a Description Logic (DL) of typicality able to combine prototypical (commonsense) descriptions of concepts in a human-like fashion [1]. The proposed approach has been tested both in the task of goal-driven concept invention (...)
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  34. Machines with human-like commonsense.Antonio Lieto - 2021 - 18th Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence Meeting Group (SIG-AGI).
    I will review the main problems concerning commonsense reasoning in machines and I will present resent two different applications - namaly: the Dual PECCS linguistic categorization system and the TCL reasoning framework that have been developed to address, respectively, the problem of typicality effects and the one of commonsense compositionality, in a way that is integrated or compliant with different cognitive architectures thus extending their knowledge processing capabilities In doing so I will show how such aspects are better dealt (...)
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  35. Non classical concept representation and reasoning in formal ontologies.Antonio Lieto - 2012 - Dissertation, Università Degli Studi di Salerno
    Formal ontologies are nowadays widely considered a standard tool for knowledge representation and reasoning in the Semantic Web. In this context, they are expected to play an important role in helping automated processes to access information. Namely: they are expected to provide a formal structure able to explicate the relationships between different concepts/terms, thus allowing intelligent agents to interpret, correctly, the semantics of the web resources improving the performances of the search technologies. Here we take into account a problem regarding (...)
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  36. Governing Without A Fundamental Direction of Time: Minimal Primitivism about Laws of Nature.Eddy Keming Chen & Sheldon Goldstein - 2022 - In Yemima Ben-Menahem (ed.), Rethinking Laws of Nature. Springer. pp. 21-64.
    The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans, who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter, and non-Humeans, who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction of (...)
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  37. Density Matrix Realism.Eddy Keming Chen - 2024 - In Michael E. Cuffaro & Stephan Hartmann (eds.), Open Systems: Physics, Metaphysics, and Methodology (2025: Oxford University Press). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Realism about quantum theory naturally leads to realism about the quantum state of the universe. It leaves open whether it is a pure state represented by a wave function, or an impure (mixed) one represented by a density matrix. I characterize and elaborate on Density Matrix Realism, the thesis that the universal quantum state is objective but can be impure. To clarify the thesis, I compare it with Wave Function Realism, explain the conditions under which they are empirically equivalent, consider (...)
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  38. Graded Genericity.Junhyo Lee & Anthony Nguyen - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-23.
    Any adequate semantics of generic sentences (e.g., “Philosophers evaluate arguments”) must accommodate both what we call the positive data and the negative data. The positive data consists of observations about what felicitous interpretations of generic sentences are available. Conversely, the negative data consists of observations about which interpretations of generic sentences are unavailable. Nguyen argues that only his pragmatic neo-Gricean account and Sterken’s indexical account can accommodate the positive data. Lee and Nguyen have advanced the debate by arguing that the (...)
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  39. On the possibility of stable regularities without fundamental laws.Aldo Filomeno - 2014 - Dissertation, Autonomous University of Barcelona
    This doctoral dissertation investigates the notion of physical necessity. Specifically, it studies whether it is possible to account for non-accidental regularities without the standard assumption of a pre-existent set of governing laws. Thus, it takes side with the so called deflationist accounts of laws of nature, like the humean or the antirealist. The specific aim is to complement such accounts by providing a missing explanation of the appearance of physical necessity. In order to provide an explanation, I recur to fields (...)
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  40. Modelling Principles and Methodologies: Relations in Anatomical Ontologies.Fabian Neuhaus & Barry Smith - 2007 - In Albert Burger, Duncan Davidson & Richard Baldock (eds.), Anatomy Ontologies for Bioinformatics: Principles and Practice. Springer. pp. 289--306.
    It is now increasingly accepted that many existing biological and medical ontologies can be improved by adopting tools and methods that bring a greater degree of logical and ontological rigor. In this chapter we will focus on the merits of a logically sound approach to ontologies from a methodological point of view. As we shall see, one crucial feature of a logically sound approach is that we have clear and functional definitions of the relational expressions such as ‘is a’ and (...)
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  41. The Implementation, Interpretation, and Justification of Likelihoods in Cosmology.C. D. McCoy - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 62:19-35.
    I discuss the formal implementation, interpretation, and justification of likelihood attributions in cosmology. I show that likelihood arguments in cosmology suffer from significant conceptual and formal problems that undermine their applicability in this context.
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  42. The modifier effect in within-category induction: Default inheritance in complex noun phrases.Martin Jönsson & James Hampton - 2012 - Language and Cognitive Processes 27:90-116.
    Within-category induction is the projection of a generic property from a class to a subtype of that class. The modifier effect refers to the discovery reported by Connolly et al., that the subtype statement tends to be judged less likely to be true than the original unmodified sentence. The effect was replicated and shown to be moderated by the typicality of the modifier. Likelihood judgements were also found to correlate between modified and unmodified versions of sentences. Experiment 2 elicited (...)
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  43. Modal Realism and Anthropic Reasoning.Mario Gómez-Torrente - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (4):925-938.
    Some arguments against David Lewis’s modal realism seek to exploit apparent inconsistencies between it and anthropic reasoning. A recent argument, in particular, seeks to exploit an inconsistency between modal realism and typicality anthropic premises, premises common in the literature on physical multiverses, to the effect that observers who are like human observers in certain respects must be typical in the relevant multiverse. Here I argue that typicality premises are not applicable to the description of Lewis’s metaphysical multiverse, where (...)
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  44. Reviving Frequentism.Mario Hubert - 2021 - Synthese 199:5255–5584.
    Philosophers now seem to agree that frequentism is an untenable strategy to explain the meaning of probabilities. Nevertheless, I want to revive frequentism, and I will do so by grounding probabilities on typicality in the same way as the thermodynamic arrow of time can be grounded on typicality within statistical mechanics. This account, which I will call typicality frequentism, will evade the major criticisms raised against previous forms of frequentism. In this theory, probabilities arise within a physical (...)
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  45. A Plea for Epistemic Excuses.Clayton Littlejohn - forthcoming - In Julien Dutant Fabian Dorsch (ed.), The New Evil Demon Problem. Oxford University Press.
    The typical epistemology course begins with a discussion of the distinction between justification and knowledge and ends without any discussion of the distinction between justification and excuse. This is unfortunate. If we had a better understanding of the justification-excuse distinction, we would have a better understanding of the intuitions that shape the internalism-externalism debate. My aims in this paper are these. First, I will explain how the kinds of excuses that should interest epistemologists exculpate. Second, I will explain why the (...)
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  46. Ordinary language semantics: the contribution of Brentano and Marty.Hamid Taieb - 2019 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (4):777-796.
    This paper examines the account of ordinary language semantics developed by Franz Brentano and his pupil Anton Marty. Long before the interest in ordinary language in the analytic tradition, Brentanian philosophers were exploring our everyday use of words, as opposed to the scientific use of language. Brentano and Marty were especially interested in the semantics of (common) names in ordinary language. They claimed that these names are vague, and that this is due to the structure of the concepts that constitute (...)
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  47. Causal Power and Perfection: Descartes's Second a Posteriori Argument for the Existence of God.Samuel Murray - 2024 - Review of Metaphysics 77 (3):445-459.
    The third Meditation is typically understood to contain two a posteriori arguments for the existence of God. The author focuses on the second argument, where Descartes proves the existence of God partly in virtue of proving that Descartes cannot be the cause of himself. To establish this, Descartes argues that if he were the cause of himself, then he would endow himself with any conceivable perfection. The justification for this claim is that bringing about a substance is more difficult than (...)
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  48. (1 other version)Does MITE Make Right?: On Decision-Making under Normative Uncertainty.Brian Hedden - 2016 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 11:102-128.
    We typically have to act under uncertainty. We can be uncertain about the relevant descriptive facts, but also about the relevant normative facts. However, the search for a theory of decision-making under normative uncertainty is doomed to failure. First, the most natural proposal for what to do given normative uncertainty faces two devastating problems. Second, the motivations for wanting a theory of what to do given descriptive uncertainty do not carry over to normative uncertainty. Descriptive facts may be inaccessible even (...)
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  49. Rational Hope, Possibility, and Divine Action.Andrew Chignell - 2014 - In Gordon E. Michalson (ed.), Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason: A Critical Guide. Cambridge University Press. pp. 98-117.
    Commentators typically neglect the distinct nature and role of hope in Kant’s system, and simply lump it together with the sort of Belief that arises from the moral proof. Kant himself is not entirely innocent of the conflation. Here I argue, however, that from a conceptual as well as a textual point of view, hope should be regarded as a different kind of attitude. It is an attitude that we can rationally adopt toward some of the doctrines that are not (...)
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  50. The Possibility of Epistemic Nudging.Thomas Grundmann - 2023 - Social Epistemology 37 (2):208-218.
    Typically, nudging is a technique for steering the choices of people without giving reasons or using enforcement. In benevolent cases, it is used when people are insufficiently responsive to reason. The nudger triggers automatic cognitive mechanisms – sometimes even biases – in smart ways in order to push irrational people in the right direction. Interestingly, this technique can also be applied to doxastic attitudes. Someone who is doxastically unresponsive to evidence can be nudged into forming true beliefs or doxastic attitudes (...)
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