The observational-theoretical distinction has played a central role in the philosophy of science from logical empiricism onwards. Developments within the discipline have shown that such a distinction hides two non-identical distinctions: observational vs. non-observational and theoretical vs. non-theoretical. Likewise, metatheoretical structuralism proposed a more sophisticated treatment of theoricity in terms of the operational dependence or independence of concepts from the theories in which they appear. Despite this remarkable sophistication, it is still generally accepted that the distinction between theoretical and non-theoretical (...) concepts coincides with the explanatory vs. non-explanatory and testing vs. non-testing distinctions. Ginnobili and Carman argued for the independence between theoricity and explanation. In this paper we will focus on testing and argue for its independence from both theoricity and explanation. To do so, we propose an account of theory testing based on the framework of metatheoretical structuralism and apply it to natural selection theory and cladistics. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception, broadly understood, is the influence that the cognitive system has on a perceptual system. The paper shows a form of cognitive penetration in the visual system which I call ‘architectural’. Architectural cognitive penetration is the process whereby the behaviour or the structure of the perceptual system is influenced by the cognitive system, which consequently may have an impact on the content of the perceptual experience. I scrutinize a study in perceptual learning that provides empirical evidence that (...) cognitive influences in the visual system produce neural reorganization in the primary visual cortex. The type of cognitive penetration can be synchronic and diachronic. (shrink)

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t! -/- There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a certain (...) property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics. -/- An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects. -/- What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics. -/- Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others. -/- Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze? (shrink)

In this paper, we present a way to translate the metainferences of a mixed metainferential system into formulae of an extended-language system, called its associated σ-system. To do this, the σ-system will contain new operators (one for each standard), called the σ operators, which represent the notions of "belonging to a (given) standard". We first prove, in a model-theoretic way, that these translations preserve (in)validity. That is, that a metainference is valid in the base system if and only if its (...) translation is a tautology of its corresponding σ-system. We then use these results to obtain other key advantages. Most interestingly, we provide a recipe for building unlabeled sequent calculi for σ-systems. We then exemplify this with a σ-system useful for logics of the ST family, and prove soundness and completeness for it, which indirectly gives us a calculus for the metainferences of all those mixed systems. Finally, we respond to some possible objections and show how our σ-framework can shed light on the “obeying” discussion within mixed metainferential contexts. (shrink)

Imprecise probabilities are often modelled with representors, or sets of probability functions. In the recent literature, two ways of interpreting representors have emerged as especially prominent: vagueness interpretations, according to which each probability function in the set represents how the agent's beliefs would be if any vagueness were precisified away; and comparativist interpretations, according to which the set represents those comparative confidence relations that are common to all probability functions therein. I argue that these interpretations have some important limitations. I (...) also propose an alternative—the functional interpretation—according to which representors are best interpreted by reference to the roles they play in the theories that make use of them. (shrink)

En un libro reciente McShea y Brandon defienden que la diversidad y la complejidad de la vida se explican, principalmente, por la acción de un principio que llaman “la ley evolutiva de fuerzas cero” o “ZFEL”. Tal principio actuaría de un modo implícito por detrás de muchas explicaciones de la biología, pero nunca habría sido explicitado. Asumiendo que esta idea es interesante, y que los autores en cuestión tienen razón, discutiremos el modo metateórico en que presentan dicho principio, como siendo (...) parte de la teoría de la probabilidad. Esto permite a los autores afirmar que la teoría de la probabilidad brindaría la base reductiva para toda la biología evolutiva (dado que consideran que otros principios, como el de selección natural, también serían parte de la teoría de la probabilidad). Defenderemos que, efectivamente, ZFEL no es propio de la biología únicamente, pero no por formar parte de la teoría de la probabilidad, sino por tratarse de una versión específica del principio de causa común. -/- In a recent book, McShea and Brandon argue that the observed diversity and complexity of life are explainable by a principle they call the “zero-force evolutionary law” or “ZFEL”. Although this principle would be implicit in many explanations given by biologists, it would have never been made explicit. Assuming that this idea is interesting, and that the authors are right, we will discuss the metatheoretical way in which they present said principle, as being a part of probability theory. This allows the authors to claim that probability theory provides the reductive basis for all evolutionary biology. We will defend, in accordance with them, that ZFEL is not a solely biological principle, but not because it is a part of probability theory, but rather because it is a specific version of the principle of common cause. (shrink)

Is autonomy – governing yourself – compatible with letting yourself be governed by trust? This paper argues that autonomy is not only compatible with appropriate trust but actually requires it. Autonomy requires appropriate trust because it is undermined by inappropriate mistrust. An autonomous agent treats herself as answerable for her action-guiding commitments, where answerability requires openness to the rational influence of external, critical perspectives on those commitments. This openness to correction makes one vulnerable to manipulation and can be exploited in (...) ways that undermine autonomy instead of supporting it. We argue that autonomy is undermined by inappropriate trust, and that the inappropriateness lies in the agent’s failure to manifest appropriate responsiveness to evidence of untrustworthiness in the one trusted. The problem isn’t that autonomy requires dispensing with trust but that trust must itself be governed by appropriate responsiveness to evidence of untrustworthiness. Our view confronts two challenges. One challenge lies in explaining why you shouldn’t treat your vulnerability to manipulation as a general reason to let your trusting disposition lapse into an untrusting one. We argue that there is no such general reason to let your responsiveness to evidence of untrustworthiness be supplanted by a suspicious disposition to seek and require positive evidence of trustworthiness. A second, and deeper, challenge arises from the fact that in some especially sophisticated cases of manipulation there is no evidence of untrustworthiness to which you could respond. We argue that you cannot rationally cope with even this unresolvable risk of exploited trust by trusting only yourself. (shrink)

At the start of his discussion of causation, Hume claims to demonstrate that simultaneous causation is absolutely impossible; all causes must precede their effects in time. I argue that considering Hume’s modal theory can reveal two important and previously unaddressed features of this argument. First, his modal metaphysics resolves one of the most pressing extant interpretive issues: how Hume is able to infer from the claim that it is possible for some object to be simultaneously caused to the claim that (...) it is possible for all objects to be simultaneously caused. This step, I argue, is justified by Hume’s theory of relations. Based on an analysis of the representational capacities of the imagination in the Treatise, I develop a modal theory for relations that supports inferences of this kind. Second, his distinction between absolute and natural modality raises a problem that has not yet been identified in the literature. Hume is trying to conclude that something is metaphysically impossible, but one of his premises relies on a mere natural impossibility (that no object can begin to exist uncaused). I argue that this is an intractable problem: Hume cannot get the conclusion he wants because it depends on an equivocation between two strengths of modality. (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. (...) In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

The standard representation theorem for expected utility theory tells us that if a subject’s preferences conform to certain axioms, then she can be represented as maximising her expected utility given a particular set of credences and utilities—and, moreover, that having those credences and utilities is the only way that she could be maximising her expected utility. However, the kinds of agents these theorems seem apt to tell us anything about are highly idealised, being always probabilistically coherent with infinitely precise degrees (...) of belief and full knowledge of all a priori truths. Ordinary subjects do not look very rational when compared to the kinds of agents usually talked about in decision theory. In this paper, I will develop an expected utility representation theorem aimed at the representation of those who are neither probabilistically coherent, logically omniscient, nor expected utility maximisers across the board—that is, agents who are frequently irrational. The agents in question may be deductively fallible, have incoherent credences, limited representational capacities, and fail to maximise expected utility for all but a limited class of gambles. (shrink)

Why do a conceptual analysis on a word that we already know how to use? Marilyn Strathern provides some information on garden cities and suburbs which suggests a novel solution to me.

In this article, we provide three generators of propositional formulae for arbitrary languages, which uniformly sample three different formulae spaces. They take the same three parameters as input, namely, a desired depth, a set of atomics and a set of logical constants (with specified arities). The first generator returns formulae of exactly the given depth, using all or some of the propositional letters. The second does the same but samples up-to the given depth. The third generator outputs formulae with exactly (...) the desired depth and all the atomics in the set. To make the generators uniform (i.e. to make them return every formula in their space with the same probability), we will prove various cardinality results about those spaces. (shrink)

Once upon a time, Aesop says, there was a donkey who wanted to be a pet dog. The pet dog was given many treats by the master and the household servants, and the donkey was envious of him. Hence, the donkey began emulating the pet dog. What happened next? The story ends up with the donkey beaten senseless, chased off to the stables, exhausted and barely alive. Who is to blame for the poor donkey’s unfortunate fate? Well, there could be (...) disagreement upon this, but we think emulation is to blame. And it’s on the kinds of envy-related emulation that we focus in this chapter. More analytically, we aim at vindicating the role of envy for moral exemplars within an exemplarist character educational framework. In the first section, we recall the central tenets of an exemplarist account of moral progress, and highlight how negative emotions, in general, have suffered a bad press within character education, with exemplarism being no exception. Then we provide a brief outline of standard strategies of defending envy by appealing to useful taxonomies of envy (e.g., Taylor 1988; Protasi 2016; Fussi 2018). After that, we put forward our 'Donkey Objection' by recalling Aesop’s fable on "foolish imitation", so as to show that when envy triggers mere emulation, it can bear devastating effects such as conformism and a lack of self-worth and personal integrity. In response to this objection, we bring into play a distinction between two rival forms of imitation—emulation and inspiration—and we coin the label of "inspired envy" for those forms of imitation by inspiration triggered by envy that lead to self-improvement avoiding morally detrimental consequences. (shrink)

I present a sense of the term “ideal theory” based on Joseph Raz’s response to the situation of a lifeguard faced with three drowning on one side and two on the other and unable to save all. From what is of value, such a theory builds up a conception of an ideal political state or an aspect of it which we have reason to realize, but ignoring whether it is possible for us to realize this.

I draw attention to how one of Donald Davidson’s arguments against the claim that others have an alternative conceptual scheme does not look compatible with his rejection of analytic truths – how his rejection of the third dogma of empiricism depends on accepting the first. The appendix contests Davidson’s approach to organizing the Pacific Ocean.

Perceptual experience is often said to be transparent; that is, when we have a perceptual experience we seem to be aware of properties of the objects around us, and never seem to be aware of properties of the experience itself. This is a introspective fact. It is also often said that we can infer a metaphysical fact from this introspective fact, e.g. a fact about the nature of perceptual experience. A transparency theory fills in the details for these two facts, (...) and bridges the gap between them. We have three aims: to scrutinize Michael Tye’s transparency theory :137–151, 2002; Consciousness revisited: materialism without phenomenal concepts, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009; Philos Stud 170:39–57, 2014a), introduce a new transparency theory, and advance a meta-theoretical hypothesis about the interest, and import, of transparency theories. (shrink)

In his review of Chris Daly’s book Philosophical Methods, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa debates with Daly over the value of using the word “tension,” which Daly describes as a weasel word. Ichikawa disagrees. I raise a worry that Ichikawa’s response will not convince Daly and try to help Ichikawa out. Then I outline a traditional empiricist objection to Daly.

This paper offers a solution to Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory. A reason for idealizing assumptions is because otherwise the theory would be too complicated to be action guiding.

This paper examines another criticism of Milan Kundera apart from the familiar charge of sexism: that his representations of crowds are overly negative. It is made in a paper by Martha Kuhlman. I agree that Kundera generally depicts crowds in a negative light, but I also observe that there are major and puzzling differences between novels when it comes to details, which I believe is intentional.

This paper proposes that Fodor has, or had, a personal reason to avoid the creative writing department, to do with his opposition to inferential role semantics.

This paper presents an objection to John Rawls’s use of the original position method to argue against implementing utilitarian rules. The use of this method is pointless because a small subset of the premises Rawls relies on can be used to infer the same conclusion.

[The version of this paper published by Oxford online in 2019 was not copy-edited and has some sense-obscuring typos. I have posted a corrected (but not the final published) version on this site. The version published in print in 2020 has these corrections.] Which is more fundamental, assertion or testimony? Should we understand assertion as basic, treating testimony as what you get when you add an interpersonal addressee? Or should we understand testimony as basic, treating mere assertion -- assertion without (...) testimony -- as what you get when you subtract that interpersonal relation? In this chapter, I’ll argue for the subtractive approach and for the more general thesis that its treatment of the interpersonal element in assertion makes understanding that interpersonal element the key to understanding how assertion expresses belief. My theory of belief-expression in assertion treats it as internalizing the transmission of belief in testimony. How we understand that internalizing move depends on how we conceptualize the interpersonal element in testimony. Since what I’ll call the Command Model does not give us the conceptual resources to make this move, we should adopt an alternative that I’ll call the Custodial Model, on which a testifier aims not to convince her addressee but to reason with him – to give him reasons to believe what she tells him grounded in her trustworthiness in thus attempting to influence him. The subtractive approach to assertion thus rests on a key distinction between the aims of reasoning and persuasion. (shrink)

It is tempting to interpret Marilyn Strathern as saying that the concept of nature is a social construction, because in her essay “No Nature, No Culture: the Hagen Case” she tells us that the Hagen people do not describe the world using this concept. However, I point out an obstacle to interpreting her in this way, an obstacle which leads me to reject this interpretation. Interpreting her in this way makes her inconsistent. The inconsistency is owing to a commitment that (...) she shares with previous British anthropologists, a commitment which points to an incompatibility between two intellectual traditions. (shrink)

The paradox asserts “to be a decent human being, you have to treat people like they're special; but to be a decent sociologist, you have to remember they're not.” How then can a sociologist be a decent human being? I distinguish between rights and other things, such as beliefs or tastes, and draw attention to how respect for rights is compatible with a focus on the typical in research.

This paper gives further feedback in response to the evening of presentations about the value of different disciplines to the social sciences, at the University of Manchester. I respond to Peter Lawler’s presentation for the politics department, or discipline area. The appendix responds to a remark which I found online about Laura Valentini, related to the main content.

This paper attempts to provide a clearer formulation of the paradox presented by Annette B. Weiner, in terms of a requirement to keep certain objects within a social group and also a requirement to exchange them with another social group.

This article argues against Bowman Clarke's attempt to eliminate futurity from the God of Process.

I consider a puzzle that greatly preoccupies some people and mildly preoccupies others, while being of no interest to some at all: “How did those people get into an elite university?” Problems with writing faux Japanese fiction provide one explanation. Once skilled literary craftspeople have failed, one turns to others.

In this reading of the Euthyphro, Socrates and Euthyphro are seen less in a primordial conflict between reason and devotion, than as sincere Hellenic polytheists engaged in an inquiry based upon a common intuition that, in addition to the irreducible agency of the Gods, there is also some irreducible intelligible content to holiness. This reading is supported by the fact that Euthyphro does not claim the authority of revelation for his decision to prosecute his father, but rather submits it to (...) elenchus, and that Euthyphro does not embrace the ‘solution’ of theological voluntarism when Socrates explicitly offers it. Since the goal of this inquiry is neither to eliminate the noetic content of the holy, nor to eliminate the Gods’ agency, the purpose of the elenchus becomes the effort to articulate the results of this productive tension between the Gods and the intelligible on the several planes of Being implied by each conception of the holy which is successively taken up and dialectically overturned to yield the conception appropriate to the next higher plane, a style of interpretation characteristic of the ancient Neoplatonists. (shrink)

An objection to John Rawls’s original position is that it faces a problem of inconsistent features: the individuals in this hypothetical situation are not supposed to know where they are in history, but they have knowledge of general social science, from which they can infer at which point in time they are. In this paper, I consider two solutions. One of these solutions depends on extending a solution to another well-known objection: that readers cannot imagine lacking the knowledge that these (...) individuals lack. (shrink)

I present another explanation for why Cambodian hunters catch themselves in their own nets when they have caught nothing. It is a humiliation rite, based on the premise: if you have spent your whole day hunting and have not trapped anything with the net, then the net has trapped you. The explanation reveals one of the problems with trying to work out why other people do things by placing yourself in their position: contradictory explanations.

I compare Rosamond’s relationship with her husband in Middlemarch with Rosamond’s marital relationship in L.A.G. Strong’s short story “The Seal.” I interpret the latter fiction as addressing the unpleasant question: what sort of decent man can suppress Rosamond?

Do individuals in John Rawls’s original position take into account the fallibility of human nature? Some notable commentators on Rawls say that they do or that they should. But this enables us to say that individuals in the original position would not come to an agreement at all.

In this paper, I present a little puzzle to do with a book of prefaces.

This paper presents what I call “the flowchart solution” to Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem. Rather than three options – don’t save any child, save one, or save two – there is a flowchart with a choice of don’t save or save, and then within save, save one or save two.

This is a one page handout reconstructing the paradox and identifying four solutions in the literature, as well as some concerns about them.

This paper offers a cheap solution to Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory. An ideal theory cannot be sound by definition, since in the relevant sense of “ideal theory” it involves false propositions.

An assurance theory of trust begins from the act of assurance – whether testimonial, advisorial or promissory – and explains trust as a cognate stance of resting assured. My version emphasizes the risks and rewards of trust. On trust’s rewards, I show how an assurance can give a reason to the addressee through a twofold exercise of ‘normative powers’: (i) the speaker thereby incurs an obligation to be sincere; (ii) if the speaker is trustworthy, she thereby gives her addressee the (...) reason. Each claim is controversial; my contribution lies in how I defend them together, linking the sincerity obligation to the provision of reasons. On trust’s risks, I defend a popular thesis about the nature of trust – that trust differs from mere reliance in how it risks betrayal – against the objection that the thesis ‘moralizes’ trust. Such betrayal need not be moral, I argue, because it may derive entirely from how the assurance purports to provide a reason. (shrink)

This article explores and critically examines the concepts and value dimensions of God, process, creativity, eternal objects, and individuals in Whitehead's thought.

Timothy Williamson objects that we do not have any reason to regard reflective equilibrium as a philosophical method, whether good or bad. In this paper, I propose a less demanding account of when a method is being described.

Jeanette Edwards tells us that she is often asked about why she did fieldwork in the English town of Bacup, whereas she has not heard anthropologists who did fieldwork in Papua New Guinea asked why there. She commits herself to a certain explanation for this: potential inquirers assume that non-Western societies are legitimate objects of study for social anthropology but this is not assumed for Western societies. I propose another explanation: it is not about the legitimacy of the object of (...) study, rather “your” levels of commitment. Would you do that for anthropology? (shrink)

I distinguish two senses of the word “deconstruction.” Then I quote a passage by a critic from the 1860s which, together with trends of that time, gives rise to the question of whether deconstructive interpretation existed in the nineteenth century.

Should one read T.H. Irwin’s three volume history of Western ethics, or parts of it? Here one might turn to reviews. The journal The Philosophical Forum uses the sensible strategy of getting different specialists to review different parts of the book. There are two chapters on Rawls, each one reviewed by a Rawlsian. I wish to register discontent with Steven Ross’s review.

This paper responds to an essay by Elena Ferrante on male literary figures acknowledging the influence of female ones. She poses a question about her reception by males which I address.

This paper is a pastiche of the Lacanian philosopher Renata Salecl, my fourth attempt, combined with a note. In it I present a response I anticipate from analytic philosophy to the thesis that the signifier has priority over the signified: that this thesis is either trivially true or obviously false.

I present a paradox concerning a person who desires to fail to achieve the goal that matters most to them. I recently encountered a similar paradox, but radical solipsism is a solution to it. This is not a solution to the paradox that I present.

This paper identifies three positions on the relationship between language and experience, the third of which I was not acquainted with before from my reading. It seems absurd.

In his Edifying Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard published a sermon entitled ‘The Unchangeableness of God’ in which he reiterated the dogma which dominated Catholic, Protestant and even Jewish expressions of classical supernaturalist theology from the first century A.D. until the advent of process theology in the twentieth century. The dogma that as a perfect being, God must be totally unchanging in every conceivable respect was expressed by Kierkegaard in such ways as: He changes all, Himself unchanged. When everything seems stable and (...) in the overturn of all things, He remains equally unchanged; no change touches Him, not even the shadow of a change; in unaltered clearness He, the father of lights, remained eternally unchanged. 1. (shrink)