Results for 'Bradley G. Winton'

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  1. A literary approach to scientific practice: R. I. G. Hughes: The theoretical practices of physics: Philosophical essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 289pp, £35.00, $ 75.00 HB.Seamus Bradley - 2010 - Metascience 20 (2):363--367.
    A literary approach to scientific practice: Essay Review of R.I.G. Hughes' _The Theoretical Practices of Physics_.
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  2. On the origins of the contemporary notion of propositional content: anti-psychologism in nineteenth-century psychology and G.E. Moore’s early theory of judgment.Consuelo Preti - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (2):176-185.
    I argue that the familiar picture of the rise of analytic philosophy through the early work of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell is incomplete and to some degree erroneous. Archival evidence suggests that a considerable influence on Moore, especially evident in his 1899 paper ‘The nature of judgment,’ comes from the literature in nineteenth-century empirical psychology rather than nineteenth-century neo-Hegelianism, as is widely believed. I argue that the conceptual influences of Moore’s paper are more likely to have had their (...)
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  3. Pathological Pretending.Jody Azzouni - 2018 - Analysis 78 (4):692-703.
    Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge, in Pretense and Pathology, make an ambitious and far-ranging case that philosophical fictionalism (particularly the pretence variety that they favour) illuminates several long-standing philosophical puzzles posed by words in ordinary language, such as ‘exist’, ‘true’ and ‘means that’, as well as the more technical, ‘refers to’, ‘proposition’ and ‘satisfies’. Along the way, Armour-Garb and Woodbridge discuss topics in the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, ontology, epistemology and more. An important aspect of their project (...)
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  4. The history or Russell's concepts 'sense-data' and 'knowledge by acquaintance'.Nikolay Milkov - 2001 - Archiv Fuer Begriffsgeschichte 43:221-231.
    Two concepts of utmost importance for the analytic philosophy of the twentieth century, “sense-data” and “knowledge by acquaintance”, were introduced by Bertrand Russell under the influence of two idealist philosophers: F. H. Bradley and Alexius Meinong. This paper traces the exact history of their introduction. We shall see that between 1896 and 1898, Russell had a fully-elaborated theory of “sense-data”, which he abandoned after his analytic turn of the summer of 1898. Furthermore, following a subsequent turn of August 1900—-after (...)
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  5. Susan Stebbing, Incomplete Symbols and Foundherentist Meta-Ontology.Frederique Janssen-Lauret - 2017 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5 (2):6-17.
    Susan Stebbing’s work on incomplete symbols and analysis was instrumental in clarifying, sharpening, and improving the project of logical constructions which was pivotal to early analytic philosophy. She dispelled use-mention confusions by restricting the term ‘incomplete symbol’ to expressions eliminable through analysis, rather than those expressions’ purported referents, and distinguished linguistic analysis from analysis of facts. In this paper I explore Stebbing’s role in analytic philosophy’s development from anti-holism, presupposing that analysis terminates in simples, to the more holist or foundherentist (...)
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  6. Lotze and the Early Cambridge Analytic Philosophy.Nikolay Milkov - 2000 - Prima Philosophia 13:133-53.
    Many historians of analytic philosophy consider the early philosophy of Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein as much more neo-Hegelian as once believed. At the same time, the authors who closely investigate Green, Bradley and Bosanquet find out that these have little in common with Hegel. The thesis advanced in this chapter is that what the British (ill-named) neo-Hegelians brought to the early analytic philosophers were, above all, some ideas of Lotze, not of Hegel. This is true regarding: (i) Lotze’s logical (...)
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  7. Ontologie relazionali e metafisica trinitaria. Sussistenze, eventi e gunk.Damiano Migliorini - 2022 - Brescia: Morcelliana.
    The book aims to examine how a Trinitarian Theism can be formulated through the elaboration of a Relational Ontology and a Trinitarian Metaphysics, in the context of a hyperphatic epistemology. This metaphysics has been proposed by some supporters of the so-called Open Theism as a solution to the numerous dilemmas of Classical Theism. The hypothesis they support is that the Trinitarian nature of God, reflected in a world of multiplicity, relationality, substance and relations, demands that we think of God as (...)
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  8. Mereological Nihilism and Puzzles about Material Objects.Bradley Rettler - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (4):842-868.
    Mereological nihilism is the view that no objects have proper parts. Despite how counter‐intuitive it is, it is taken quite seriously, largely because it solves a number of puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects – or so its proponents claim. In this article, I show that for every puzzle that mereological nihilism solves, there is a similar puzzle that (a) it doesn’t solve, and (b) every other solution to the original puzzle does solve. Since the solutions to the new (...)
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  9. The General Truthmaker View of ontological commitment.Bradley Rettler - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (5):1405-1425.
    In this paper, I articulate and argue for a new truthmaker view of ontological commitment, which I call the “General Truthmaker View”: when one affirms a sentence, one is ontologically committed to there being something that makes true the proposition expressed by the sentence. This view comes apart from Quinean orthodoxy in that we are not ontologically committed to the things over which we quantify, and it comes apart from extant truthmaker views of ontological commitment in that we are not (...)
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  10. Analysis of faith.Bradley Rettler - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (9):e12517.
    In recent years, many philosophers of religion have turned their attention to the topic of faith. Given the ubiquity of the word “faith” both in and out of religious contexts, many of them have chosen to begin their forays by offering an analysis of faith. But it seems that there are many kinds of faith: religious faith, non‐religious faith, interpersonal faith, and propositional faith, to name a few. In this article, I discuss analyses of faith that have been offered and (...)
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  11. Wave Function Ontology.Bradley Monton - 2002 - Synthese 130 (2):265-277.
    I argue that the wave function ontology for quantum mechanics is an undesirable ontology. This ontology holds that the fundamental space in which entities evolve is not three-dimensional, but instead 3N-dimensional, where N is the number of particles standardly thought to exist in three-dimensional space. I show that the state of three-dimensional objects does not supervene on the state of objects in 3N-dimensional space. I also show that the only way to guarantee the existence of the appropriate mental states in (...)
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  12. Grounds and ‘Grounds’.Bradley Rettler - 2017 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47 (5):631-655.
    In this paper, I offer a new theory of grounding. The theory has it that grounding is a job description that is realized by different properties in different contexts. Those properties play the grounding role contingently, and grounding is the property that plays the grounding role essentially. On this theory, grounding is monistic, but ‘grounding’ refers to different relations in different contexts. First, I argue against Kit Fine’s monist univocalism. Next, I argue against Jessica Wilson’s pluralist multivocalism. Finally, I introduce (...)
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  13. (2 other versions)Prolegomena to any Future Physics-Based Metaphysics.Bradley Monton - 2010 - In Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion Volume. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Metaphysicians sometimes appeal to physics to establish claims about the fundamental nature of the world. But given the current state of inquiry in physics, where there are two most fundamental theories that are incompatible, such arguments of physics-based metaphysics are problematic. I support this line of thought by focussing on two sorts of problematic arguments, special-relativity-based arguments against presentism and big-bang-based arguments in favor of the existence of God. I am not arguing that physics-based metaphysics can’t be done; I am (...)
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  14. Ways of thinking about ways of being.Bradley Rettler - 2020 - Analysis 80 (4):712-722.
    Monism about being says that there is one way to be. Pluralism about being says that there are many ways to be. Recently, Trenton Merricks and David Builes have offered arguments against Pluralism. In this paper, I show how Pluralists who appeal to the relative naturalness of quantifiers can respond to these arguments.
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  15. Confirmation in a Branching World: The Everett Interpretation and Sleeping Beauty.Darren Bradley - 2011 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (2):323-342.
    Sometimes we learn what the world is like, and sometimes we learn where in the world we are. Are there any interesting differences between the two kinds of cases? The main aim of this article is to argue that learning where we are in the world brings into view the same kind of observation selection effects that operate when sampling from a population. I will first explain what observation selection effects are ( Section 1 ) and how they are relevant (...)
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  16. An Atheistic Defence of Christian Science.Monton Bradley - 2013 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (3):43--54.
    Should the Christian community engage in Christian science – doing science starting from the standpoint of the Christian evidence base? Plantinga asks this question, and I argue that the answer is ‘yes’. Moreover, this is an answer that both Christians and atheists can agree upon. Scientific progress should not be shackled by methodological naturalism; instead we need an ecumenical approach to science, which will allow for various high-level research programmes to count as science (including Christian science). If one does science (...)
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  17. Self-location is no problem for conditionalization.Darren Bradley - 2011 - Synthese 182 (3):393-411.
    How do temporal and eternal beliefs interact? I argue that acquiring a temporal belief should have no effect on eternal beliefs for an important range of cases. Thus, I oppose the popular view that new norms of belief change must be introduced for cases where the only change is the passing of time. I defend this position from the purported counter-examples of the Prisoner and Sleeping Beauty. I distinguish two importantly different ways in which temporal beliefs can be acquired and (...)
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  18. Quantum Mechanics and 3 N - Dimensional Space.Bradley Monton - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (5):778-789.
    I maintain that quantum mechanics is fundamentally about a system of N particles evolving in three-dimensional space, not the wave function evolving in 3N-dimensional space.
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  19. Identity-Crowding and Object-Seeing: A Reply to Block.Bradley Richards - 2013 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 2 (1):9-19.
    Contrary to Block's assertion, “identity-crowding” does not provide an interesting instance of object-seeing without object-attention. The successful judgments and unusual phenomenology of identity-crowding are better explained by unconscious perception and non-perceptual phenomenology associated with cognitive states. In identity-crowding, as in other cases of crowding, subjects see jumbled textures and cannot individuate the items contributing to those textures in the absence of attention. Block presents an attenuated sense in which identity-crowded items are seen, but this is irrelevant to the debate about (...)
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  20. Arrow of Time.Bradley H. Dowden - 2024 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Many philosophers and scientists have claimed that time has an arrow that points in a special direction. The Roman poet Ovid may have referred to this one-way property of time when he said, “Time itself glides on with constant motion, ever as a flowing river.” However, understanding this arrow is not … Continue reading The Arrow of Time →.
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  21. Multiple Universes and Observation Selection Effects.Darren Bradley - 2009 - American Philosophical Quarterly 46 (1):72.
    The fine-tuning argument can be used to support the Many Universe hypothesis. The Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy objection seeks to undercut the support for the Many Universe hypothesis. The objection is that although the evidence that there is life somewhere confirms Many Universes, the specific evidence that there is life in this universe does not. I will argue that the Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy is not committed by the fine-tuning argument. The key issue is the procedure by which the universe with life (...)
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  22. Against 3N-Dimensional Space.Bradley Monton - 2013 - In Alyssa Ney & David Albert (eds.), The Wave Function: Essays on the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics. , US: Oxford University Press USA.
    I argue that space has three dimensions, and quantum mechanics does not show otherwise. Specifically, I argue that the mathematical wave function of quantum mechanics corresponds to a property that an N-particle system has in three-dimensional space.
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  23. Sleeping beauty and the forgetful bayesian.Bradley Monton - 2002 - Analysis 62 (1):47–53.
    Adam Elga takes the Sleeping Beauty example to provide a counter-example to Reflection, since on Sunday Beauty assigns probability 1/2 to H, and she is certain that on Monday she will assign probability 1/3. I will show that there is a natural way for Bas van Fraassen to defend Reflection in the case of Sleeping Beauty, building on van Fraassen’s treatment of forgetting. This will allow me to identify a lacuna in Elga’s argument for 1/3. I will then argue, however, (...)
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  24. Flourishing in a Risky World. [REVIEW]Winton Bates - 2021 - The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 21 (2):240-244.
    The reviewer discusses how Kathleen Touchstone’s book, “Freedom, Eudaemonia, and Risk”, raises the big question of why a person would rationally choose to risk their life, as well as prompting readers to think deeply about other issues including the natural rights of children, the point at which human life begins, the virtue of parenting, rules of thumb for charitable giving, and the bequest motive in risking death. He considers that Touchstone makes an important contribution in explaining the role that a (...)
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  25. God, fine-tuning, and the problem of old evidence.Bradley Monton - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2):405-424.
    The fundamental constants that are involved in the laws of physics which describe our universe are finely-tuned for life, in the sense that if some of the constants had slightly different values life could not exist. Some people hold that this provides evidence for the existence of God. I will present a probabilistic version of this fine-tuning argument which is stronger than all other versions in the literature. Nevertheless, I will show that one can have reasonable opinions such that the (...)
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  26. Carnap’s Robot Redux: LLMs, Intensional Semantics, and the Implementation Problem in Conceptual Engineering (extended abstract).Bradley Allen - manuscript
    In his 1955 essay "Meaning and synonymy in natural languages", Rudolf Carnap presents a thought experiment wherein an investigator provides a hypothetical robot with a definition of a concept together with a description of an individual, and then asks the robot if the individual is in the extension of the concept. In this work, we show how to realize Carnap's Robot through knowledge probing of an large language model (LLM), and argue that this provides a useful cognitive tool for conceptual (...)
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  27. Presentism and quantum gravity.Bradley Monton - 2006 - In Dennis Geert Bernardus Johan Dieks (ed.), Ontology of Spacetime. Boston: Elsevier.
    There is a philosophical tradition of arguing against presentism, the thesis that only presently existing things exist, on the basis of its incompatibility with fundamental physics. I grant that presentism is incompatible with special and general relativity, but argue that presentism is not incompatible with quantum gravity, because there are some theories of quantum gravity that utilize a fixed foliation of spacetime. I reply to various objections to this defense of presentism, and point out a flaw in Gödel's modal argument (...)
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  28. Four Problems about Self-Locating Belief.Darren Bradley - 2012 - Philosophical Review 121 (2):149-177.
    This article defends the Doomsday Argument, the Halfer Position in Sleeping Beauty, the Fine-Tuning Argument, and the applicability of Bayesian confirmation theory to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. It will argue that all four problems have the same structure, and it gives a unified treatment that uses simple models of the cases and no controversial assumptions about confirmation or self-locating evidence. The article will argue that the troublesome feature of all these cases is not self-location but selection effects.
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  29. Aggregating Causal Judgments.Richard Bradley, Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (4):491-515.
    Decision-making typically requires judgments about causal relations: we need to know the causal effects of our actions and the causal relevance of various environmental factors. We investigate how several individuals' causal judgments can be aggregated into collective causal judgments. First, we consider the aggregation of causal judgments via the aggregation of probabilistic judgments, and identify the limitations of this approach. We then explore the possibility of aggregating causal judgments independently of probabilistic ones. Formally, we introduce the problem of causal-network aggregation. (...)
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  30. Against Multiverse Theodicies.Bradley Monton - 2010 - Philo 13 (2):113-135.
    In reply to the problem of evil, some suggest that God created an infinite number of universes—for example, that God created every universe that contains more good than evil. I offer two objections to these multiverse theodicies. First, I argue that, for any number of universes God creates, he could have created more, because he could have created duplicates of universes. Next, I argue that multiverse theodicies can’t adequately account for why God would create universes with pointless suffering, and hence (...)
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  31. Sleeping beauty: A note on Dorr's argument for 1/3.Darren Bradley - 2003 - Analysis 63 (3):266–268.
    Cian Dorr (2002) gives an argument for the 1/3 position in Sleeping Beauty. I argue this is based on a mistake about Sleeping Beauty's epistemic position.
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  32. Time travel without causal loops.Bradley Monton - 2009 - Philosophical Quarterly 59 (234):54-67.
    It has sometimes been suggested that backwards time travel always incurs causal loops. I show that this is mistaken, by describing worlds where backwards time travel occurs and yet no causal loops occur. Arguments that backwards time travel can occur without causal loops have been given before in the literature, but I show that those arguments are unconvincing.
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  33. (1 other version)Properties as Truthmakers.Bradley Rettler - 2024 - In Anna Sofia Maurin & Anthony Fisher (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Properties. pp. 38-47.
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  34. Mixed strategies can't evade Pascal's Wager.Bradley Monton - 2011 - Analysis 71 (4):642-645.
    I defend Pascal's Wager from a particular way of evading it, the mixed strategy approach. The mixed strategies approach suggests that Pascal's Wager does not obligate one to believe in God, because one can get the same infinite expected utility from other strategies besides the strategy of believing in God. I will show that while there's nothing technically wrong with the mixed strategy approach, rationality requires it to be applied in such a way that Pascal's Wager doesn't lose any force.
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  35. Monty hall, doomsday and confirmation.Darren Bradley & Branden Fitelson - 2003 - Analysis 63 (1):23–31.
    We give an analysis of the Monty Hall problem purely in terms of confirmation, without making any lottery assumptions about priors. Along the way, we show the Monty Hall problem is structurally identical to the Doomsday Argument.
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  36. Pseudoscience.Bradley Monton - 2013 - In Martin Curd & Stathis Psillos (eds.), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science, Second Edition. Routledge. pp. 468-479.
    I insightfully discuss the question: what is pseudoscience?
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  37. Conceptual Engineering Using Large Language Models.Bradley Allen - forthcoming - In Vincent C. Müller, Aliya R. Dewey, Leonard Dung & Guido Löhr (eds.), Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence: The State of the Art. Berlin: SpringerNature.
    We describe a method, based on Jennifer Nado’s proposal for classification procedures as targets of conceptual engineering, that implements such procedures by prompting a large language model. We apply this method, using data from the Wikidata knowledge graph, to evaluate stipulative definitions related to two paradigmatic conceptual engineering projects: the International Astronomical Union’s redefinition of PLANET and Haslanger’s ameliorative analysis of WOMAN. Our results show that classification procedures built using our approach can exhibit good classification performance and, through the generation (...)
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  38. Quantification in the Ontology Room.Bradley Rettler - 2019 - Dialectica 73 (4):563-585.
    There is a growing movement towards construing some classic debates in ontology as meaningless, either because the answers seem obvious or the debates seem intractable. In this paper, I respond to this movement. The response has three components: First, the members of the two sides of the ontological debates that dismissivists have targeted are using different quantifiers. Second, the austere ontologist is using a more fundamental quantifier than her opponent. Third, the austere ontologist’s more fundamental quantifier is a restriction of (...)
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  39. How to predict future duration from present age.Bradley Monton & Brian Kierland - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (222):16-38.
    The physicist J. Richard Gott has given an argument which, if good, allows one to make accurate predictions for the future longevity of a process, based solely on its present age. We show that there are problems with some of the details of Gott's argument, but we defend the core thesis: in many circumstances, the greater the present age of a process, the more likely a longer future duration.
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  40. What Is Risk Aversion?H. Orii Stefansson & Richard Bradley - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (1):77-102.
    According to the orthodox treatment of risk preferences in decision theory, they are to be explained in terms of the agent's desires about concrete outcomes. The orthodoxy has been criticised both for conflating two types of attitudes and for committing agents to attitudes that do not seem rationally required. To avoid these problems, it has been suggested that an agent's attitudes to risk should be captured by a risk function that is independent of her utility and probability functions. The main (...)
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  41. The doomsday argument without knowledge of birth rank.Bradley Monton - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (210):79–82.
    The Carter-Leslie Doomsday argument, as standardly presented, relies on the assumption that you have knowledge of your approximate birth rank. I demonstrate that the Doomsday argument can still be given in a situation where you have no knowledge of your birth rank. This allows one to reply to Bostrom's defense of the Doomsday argument against the refutation based on the idea that your existence makes it more likely that many observers exist.
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  42. Conditionalization and Belief De Se.Darren Bradley - 2010 - Dialectica 64 (2):247-250.
    Colin Howson (1995 ) offers a counter-example to the rule of conditionalization. I will argue that the counter-example doesn't hit its target. The problem is that Howson mis-describes the total evidence the agent has. In particular, Howson overlooks how the restriction that the agent learn 'E and nothing else' interacts with the de se evidence 'I have learnt E'.
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  43. McTaggart and indexing the copula.Bradley Rettler - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 158 (3):431-434.
    In this paper, I show how a solution to Lewis’ problem of temporary intrinsics is also a response to McTaggart’s argument that the A-series is incoherent. There are three strategies Lewis considers for solving the problem of temporary intrinsics: perdurantism, presentism, and property-indexing. William Lane Craig (Analysis 58(2):122–127, 1998) has examined how the three strategies fare with respect to McTaggart’s argument. The only viable solution Lewis considers to the problem of temporary intrinsics that also succeeds against McTaggart, Craig claims, is (...)
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  44. Inner Self Located.Bradley Bartholomew - 1991 - Indian Philosophical Quarterly 18 (4):549.
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  45. Axioms, Definitions, and the Pragmatic a priori: Peirce and Dewey on the “Foundations” of Mathematical Science.Bradley C. Dart - 2024 - European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 16 (1).
    Peirce and Dewey were generally more concerned with the process of scientific activity than purely mathematical work. However, their accounts of knowledge production afford some insights into the epistemology of mathematical postulates, especially definition and axioms. Their rejection of rationalist metaphysics and their emphasis on continuity in inquiry provides the pretext for the pragmatic a priori – hypothetical and operational assumptions whose justification relies on their fruitfulness in the long run. This paper focuses on the application of this idea to (...)
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  46. Are There Indefeasible Epistemic Rules?Darren Bradley - 2019 - Philosophers' Imprint 19.
    What if your peers tell you that you should disregard your perceptions? Worse, what if your peers tell you to disregard the testimony of your peers? How should we respond if we get evidence that seems to undermine our epistemic rules? Several philosophers have argued that some epistemic rules are indefeasible. I will argue that all epistemic rules are defeasible. The result is a kind of epistemic particularism, according to which there are no simple rules connecting descriptive and normative facts. (...)
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  47. Atheistic Induction by Boltzmann Brains.Bradley Monton - 2018 - In Jerry L. Walls Trent Dougherty (ed.), Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project. New York, New York: Oxford University Press.
    I present a new thermodynamic argument for the existence of God. Naturalistic physics provides evidence for the failure of induction, because it provides evidence that the past is not at all what you think it is, and your existence is just a momentary fluctuation. The fact that you are not a momentary fluctuation thus provides evidence for the existence of God – God would ensure that the past is roughly what we think it is, and you have been in existence (...)
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  48. When betting odds and credences come apart: more worries for Dutch book arguments.Darren Bradley & Hannes Leitgeb - 2006 - Analysis 66 (2):119-127.
    If an agent believes that the probability of E being true is 1/2, should she accept a bet on E at even odds or better? Yes, but only given certain conditions. This paper is about what those conditions are. In particular, we think that there is a condition that has been overlooked so far in the literature. We discovered it in response to a paper by Hitchcock (2004) in which he argues for the 1/3 answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem. (...)
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  49. Naturalness as a Constraint on Priors.Darren Bradley - 2020 - Mind 129 (513):179-203.
    Many epistemological problems can be solved by the objective Bayesian view that there are rationality constraints on priors, that is, inductive probabilities. But attempts to work out these constraints have run into such serious problems that many have rejected objective Bayesianism altogether. I argue that the epistemologist should borrow the metaphysician’s concept of naturalness and assign higher priors to more natural hypotheses.
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  50. Philosophers should prefer simpler theories.Darren Bradley - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (12):3049-3067.
    Should philosophers prefer simpler theories? Huemer (Philos Q 59:216–236, 2009) argues that the reasons to prefer simpler theories in science do not apply in philosophy. I will argue that Huemer is mistaken—the arguments he marshals for preferring simpler theories in science can also be applied in philosophy. Like Huemer, I will focus on the philosophy of mind and the nominalism/Platonism debate. But I want to engage with the broader issue of whether simplicity is relevant to philosophy.
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