35 found
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  1. Two Conceptions of Similarity.Ben Blumson - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (270):21-37.
    There are at least two traditional conceptions of numerical degree of similarity. According to the first, the degree of dissimilarity between two particulars is their distance apart in a metric space. According to the second, the degree of similarity between two particulars is a function of the number of (sparse) properties they have in common and not in common. This paper argues that these two conceptions are logically independent, but philosophically inconsonant.
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  2. Resemblance and Representation: An Essay in the Philosophy of Pictures.Ben Blumson - 2014 - Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.
    It’s a platitude – which only a philosopher would dream of denying – that whereas words are connected to what they represent merely by arbitrary conventions, pictures are connected to what they represent by resemblance. The most important difference between my portrait and my name, for example, is that whereas my portrait and I are connected by my portrait’s resemblance to me, my name and I are connected merely by an arbitrary convention. The first aim of this book is to (...)
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  3. Distance and Dissimilarity.Ben Blumson - 2018 - Philosophical Papers 48 (2):211-239.
    This paper considers whether an analogy between distance and dissimilarlity supports the thesis that degree of dissimilarity is distance in a metric space. A straightforward way to justify the thesis would be to define degree of dissimilarity as a function of number of properties in common and not in common. But, infamously, this approach has problems with infinity. An alternative approach would be to prove representation and uniqueness theorems, according to which if comparative dissimilarity meets certain qualitative conditions, then it (...)
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  4. Mental Maps1.Ben Blumson - 2011 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2):413-434.
    It's often hypothesized that the structure of mental representation is map-like rather than language-like. The possibility arises as a counterexample to the argument from the best explanation of productivity and systematicity to the language of thought hypothesis—the hypothesis that mental structure is compositional and recursive. In this paper, I argue that the analogy with maps does not undermine the argument, because maps and language have the same kind of compositional and recursive structure.
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  5. Naturalness and Convex Class Nominalism.Ben Blumson - 2019 - Dialectica 73 (1-2):65-81.
    In this paper I argue that the analysis of natural properties as convex subsets of a metric space in which the distances are degrees of dissimilarity is incompatible with both the definition of degree of dissimilarity as number of natural properties not in common and the definition of degree of dissimilarity as proportion of natural properties not in common, since in combination with either of these definitions it entails that every property is a natural property, which is absurd. I suggest (...)
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  6. Mereology.Ben Blumson - 2021 - Archive of Formal Proofs.
    The interactive theorem prover Isabelle/HOL is used to verify elementary theorems of classical extensional mereology.
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  7. Pictures, perspective and possibility.Ben Blumson - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 149 (2):135 - 151.
    This paper argues for a possible worlds theory of the content of pictures, with three complications: depictive content is centred, two-dimensional and structured. The paper argues that this theory supports a strong analogy between depictive and other kinds of representation and the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance.
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  8. Love and Fission.Ben Blumson & Jeremiah Joven Joaquin - manuscript
    According to a traditional conception, romantic love is both constant - if someone loves another, they continue to love them - and exclusive - if someone loves another, they love only the other. In this paper, we argue that the essentiality of constancy and exclusivity is incompatible with the possibilities of fission - roughly speaking, of one person becoming two - and fusion - roughly speaking, of two people becoming one. Moreover, if fission or fusion are possible, then constancy and (...)
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  9. Defining depiction.Ben Blumson - 2009 - British Journal of Aesthetics 49 (2):143-157.
    It is a platitude that whereas language is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance. But this platitude may be attacked on the grounds that resemblance is either insufficient for or incidental to depictive representation. I defend common sense from this attack by using Grice's analysis of meaning to specify the non-incidental role of resemblance in depictive representation.
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  10. Story Size.Ben Blumson - 2015 - Philosophical Papers 44 (2):121-137.
    The shortest stories are zero words long. There is no maximum length.
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  11. Images, intentionality and inexistence.Ben Blumson - 2009 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (3):522-538.
    The possibilities of depicting non-existents, depicting non-particulars and depictive misrepresentation are frequently cited as grounds for denying the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. I first argue that these problems are really a manifestation of the more general problem of intentionality. I then show how there is a plausible solution to the general problem of intentionality which is consonant with the platitude.
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  12. Dialetheism and Modus Tollens.Ben Blumson & Theresa Helke - 2021 - The Reasoner 15 (4):30.
    Suppose that some contradictions are true – for example, that as I walk through the door, I’m inside and I’m not inside. Then we argue 'if I'm walking through the door, I'm inside; I'm not inside; therefore, I'm not walking through the door' is an invalid instance of modus tollens.
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  13. A Note on the Definition of Physicalism.Ben Blumson & Weng Hong Tang - 2015 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 4 (1):10-18.
    Physicalism is incompatible with what is known as the possibility of zombies, that is, the possibility of a world physically like ours, but in which there are no conscious experiences. But it is compatible with what is known as the possibility of ghosts, that is, the possibility of a world which is physically like ours, but in which there are additional nonphysical entities. In this paper we argue that a revision to the traditional definition of physicalism designed to accommodate the (...)
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  14. Dialetheism and the Problem of Evil.Ben Blumson - 2023 - In Soraj Hongladarom, Jeremiah Joven Joaquin & Frank J. Hoffman (eds.), Philosophies of Appropriated Religions: Perspectives from Southeast Asia. Springer Nature Singapore. pp. 69-79.
    According to dialetheism, some contradictions are true. In a recent paper, Aaron Cotnoir has suggested that theists who are also dialetheists can resolve the paradox of the stone by accepting a contradiction, and arguing that God both can and can't make the stone. However, Zach Weber has replied that dialetheism is no help for avoiding one of the most serious problems for theism, namely the problem of evil. In this paper, I argue the situation is even worse than this for (...)
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  15. Dialetheism and distributed sorites.Ben Blumson - 2023 - Synthese 202 (4):1-18.
    Noniterative approaches to the sorites paradox accept single steps of soritical reasoning, but deny that these can be combined into valid chains of soritical reasoning. The distributed sorites is a puzzle designed to undermine noniterative approaches to the sorites paradox, by deriving an inconsistent conclusion using only single steps, but not chains, of soritical reasoning. This paper shows how a dialetheist version of the noniterative approach, the strict-tolerant approach, also solves the distributed sorites paradox, at no further cost, by accepting (...)
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  16. (1 other version)Depiction and convention.Ben Blumson - 2008 - Dialectica 62 (3):335-348.
    By defining both depictive and linguistic representation as kinds of symbol system, Nelson Goodman attempts to undermine the platitude that, whereas linguistic representation is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance. I argue that Goodman is right to draw a strong analogy between the two kinds of representation, but wrong to draw the counterintuitive conclusion that depiction is not mediated by resemblance.
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  17. A Never-Ending Story.Ben Blumson - 2014 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1):111-120.
    Take a strip of paper with 'once upon a time there'‚ written on one side and 'was a story that began'‚ on the other. Twisting the paper and joining the ends produces John Barth’s story Frame-Tale, which prefixes 'once upon a time there was a story that began'‚ to itself. I argue that the ability to understand this sentence cannot be explained by tacit knowledge of a recursive theory of truth in English.
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  18. Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy.Ben Blumson - 2015 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 39 (1):46-57.
    This paper argues: (1) All knowledge from fiction is from imagination (2) All knowledge from imagination is modal knowledge (3) So, all knowledge from fiction is modal knowledge Moreover, some knowledge is from fiction, so (1)-(3) are non-vacuously true.
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  19. Depictive Structure?Ben Blumson - 2011 - Philosophical Papers 40 (1):1-25.
    This paper argues against definitions of depiction in terms of the syntactic and semantic properties of symbol systems. In particular, it is argued that John Kulvicki's definition of depictive symbol systems in terms of relative repleteness, semantic richness, syntactic sensitivity and transparency is susceptible to similar counterexamples as Nelson Goodman's in terms of syntactic density, semantic density and relative repleteness. The general moral drawn is that defining depiction requires attention not merely to descriptive questions about syntax and semantics, but also (...)
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  20. Anselm's God in Isabelle/HOL.Ben Blumson - 2017 - Archive of Formal Proofs:9.
    Paul Oppenheimer and Edward Zalta's formalisation of Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God is automated by embedding a free logic for definite descriptions within Isabelle/HOL.
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  21. Maps and Meaning.Ben Blumson - 2010 - Journal of Philosophical Research 35:123-128.
    It's possible to understand an infinite number of novel maps. I argue that Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi's compositional semantics of maps cannot explain this possibility, because it requires an infinite number of semantic primitives. So the semantics of maps is puzzlingly different from the semantics of language.
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  22. Relevance and Verification.Ben Blumson - 2021 - Philosophical Quarterly 71 (3):457-480.
    A. J. Ayer’s empiricist criterion of meaning was supposed to have sorted all statements into nonsense on the one hand, and tautologies or genuinely factual statements on the other. Unfortunately for Ayer, it follows from classical logic that his criterion is trivial—it classifies all statements as either tautologies or genuinely factual, but none as nonsense. However, in this paper, I argue that Ayer’s criterion of meaning can be defended from classical proofs of its triviality by the adoption of a relevant (...)
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  23. Isabelle for Philosophers.Ben Blumson - manuscript
    This is an introduction to the Isabelle proof assistant aimed at philosophers and their students.
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  24. Does everything resemble everything else to the same degree?Ben Blumson - 2022 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1):1-21.
    According to Satosi Watanabe's "theorem of the ugly duckling", the number of predicates satisfied by any two different particulars is a constant, which does not depend on the choice of the two particulars. If the number of predicates satisfied by two particulars is their number of properties in common, and the degree of resemblance between two particulars is a function of their number of properties in common, then it follows that the degree of resemblance between any two different particulars is (...)
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  25. Extension and Self-Connection.Ben Blumson & Manikaran Singh - 2021 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 30 (3):435-59.
    If two self-connected individuals are connected, it follows in classical extensional mereotopology that the sum of those individuals is self-connected too. Since mainland Europe and mainland Asia, for example, are both self-connected and connected to each other, mainland Eurasia is also self-connected. In contrast, in non-extensional mereotopologies, two individuals may have more than one sum, in which case it does not follow from their being self-connected and connected that the sum of those individuals is self-connected too. Nevertheless, one would still (...)
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  26. Whitehead’s principle.Ben Blumson & Manikaran Singh - 2020 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 9 (2):115-27.
    According to Whitehead’s rectified principle, two individuals are connected just in case there is something self-connected which overlaps both of them, and every part of which overlaps one of them. Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi have offered a counterexample to the principle, consisting of an individual which has no self-connected parts. But since atoms are self-connected, Casati and Varzi’s counterexample presupposes the possibility of gunk or, in other words, things which have no atoms as parts. So one may still wonder (...)
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  27. Depiction and Composition.Ben Blumson - 2014 - In Resemblance and Representation: An Essay in the Philosophy of Pictures. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. pp. 99-116.
    Traditionally, the structure of a language is revealed by constructing an appropriate theory of meaning for that language, which exhibits how – and whether – the meaning of sentences in the language depends upon the meaning of their parts. In this paper, I argue that whether – and how – what pictures represent depends on what their parts represent should likewise by revealed by the construction of appropriate theories of representation for the symbol system of those pictures. This generalisation, I (...)
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  28. The Number of Bricks in a Ziggurat.Ben Blumson & Jarinah Jabbar - 2020 - Mathematics Magazine 93 (3):226-227.
    The number of bricks in a ziggurat is a sum of consecutive squares.
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  29. Pictures and Properties.Ben Blumson - 2014 - In Resemblance and Representation: An Essay in the Philosophy of Pictures. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. pp. 179-198.
    It’s a platitude that a picture is realistic to the degree to which it resembles what it represents (in relevant respects). But if properties are abundant and degrees of resemblance are proportions of properties in common, then the degree of resemblance between different particulars is constant (or undefined), which is inconsonant with the platitude. This paper argues this problem should be resolved by revising the analysis of degrees of resemblance in terms of proportion of properties in common, and not by (...)
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  30. 'Metaphorically'.Ben Blumson - manuscript
    Not every metaphor can be literally paraphrased by a corresponding simile – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is not the literal meaning of ‘Juliet is like the sun’. But every metaphor can be literally paraphrased, since if ‘metaphorically’ is prefixed to a metaphor, the result says literally what the metaphor says figuratively – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is the literal meaning of ‘metaphorically, Juliet is the sun’.
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  31. Interpreting Images.Ben Blumson - 2014 - In Resemblance and Representation: An Essay in the Philosophy of Pictures. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. pp. 118-138.
    Just as it’s possible to understand novel sentences without having heard them before, it’s possible to understand novel pictures without having seen them before. But these possibilities are often supposed to have totally different explanations: whereas the ability to understand novel sentences is supposed to be explained by tacit knowledge of a compositional theory of meaning for their language, the ability to understand novel pictures is supposed to be explained differently. In this paper I argue against this disanalogy: insofar as (...)
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  32.  45
    Resemblance and Representation.Ben Blumson - 2007 - Dissertation, Australian National University
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  33. The Impossible Arises: Oscar Reutersvärd and his Contemporaries. [REVIEW]Ben Blumson - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    Review of Chris Mortensen, The Impossible Arises: Oscar Reutersvärd and his Contemporaries, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022, pp. vii + 152, $50.00 (hardback).
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  34. A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction. [REVIEW]Ben Blumson - 2016 - British Journal of Aesthetics 56 (4):427-429.
    Review of A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction by Alberto Voltolini.
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  35. Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction. [REVIEW]Ben Blumson - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (1):187 - 189.
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 90, Issue 1, Page 187-189, March 2012.
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