Recent work by Brian Skyrms offers a very general way to think about how information flows and evolves in biological networks — from the way monkeys in a troop communicate, to the way cells in a body coordinate their actions. A central feature of his account is a way to formally measure the quantity of information contained in the signals in these networks. In this paper, we argue there is a tension between how Skyrms talks of signalling networks and his (...) formal measure of information. Although Skyrms refers to both how information flows through networks and that signals carry information, we show that his formal measure only captures the latter. We then suggest that to capture the notion of flow in signalling networks, we need to treat them as causal networks. This provides the formal tools to define a measure that does capture flow, and we do so by drawing on recent work defining causal specificity. Finally, we suggest that this new measure is crucial if we wish to explain how evolution creates information. For signals to play a role in explaining their own origins and stability, they can’t just carry information about acts: they must be difference-makers for acts. (shrink)

Truth by convention, once thought to be the foundation of a uniquely promising approach to explaining our access to the truth in nonempirical domains, is nowadays widely considered an absurdity. Its fall from grace has been due largely to the influence of an argument that can be sketched as follows: our linguistic conventions have the power to make it the case that a sentence expresses a particular proposition, but they can’t by themselves generate truth; whether a given proposition is true—and (...) so whether the sentence that expresses it is true—is a matter of what the world is like, which means it isn’t a matter of convention alone. The consensus is that this argument is decisive against truth by convention. Strikingly, though, it has rarely been formulated with much precision. Here I provide a new rendering of the argument, one that reveals its structure and makes transparent just what assumptions it requires, and then I assess conventionalists’ prospects for resisting each of those assumptions. I conclude that the consensus is mistaken: contrary to what is almost universally thought, there remains a promising way forward for the conventionalist project. Along the way, I clarify conventionalists’ commitments by thinking about what truth by convention would need to be like in order for conventionalism to do the epistemological work it’s intended to do. (shrink)

Which rules should guide our reasoning? Human reasoners often use reasoning shortcuts, called heuristics, which function well in some contexts but lack the universality of reasoning rules like deductive implication or inference to the best explanation. Does it follow that human reasoning is hopelessly irrational? I argue: no. Heuristic reasoning often represents human reasoners reaching a local rational maximum, reasoning more accurately than if they try to implement more “ideal” rules of reasoning. I argue this is a genuine rational achievement. (...) Our ideal rational advisors would advise us to reason with heuristic rules, not more complicated ideal rules. I argue we do not need a radical new account of epistemic norms to make sense of the success of heuristic reasoning. (shrink)

Sensitivity has sometimes been thought to be a highly epistemologically significant property, serving as a proxy for a kind of responsiveness to the facts that ensure that the truth of our beliefs isn’t just a lucky coincidence. But it's an imperfect proxy: there are various well-known cases in which sensitivity-based anti-luck conditions return the wrong verdicts. And as a result of these failures, contemporary theorists often dismiss such conditions out of hand. I show here, though, that a sensitivity-based understanding of (...) epistemic luck can be developed that respects what was attractive about sensitivity-based approaches in the first place but that's immune to these failures. (shrink)

A Benacerraf–Field challenge is an argument intended to show that common realist theories of a given domain are untenable: such theories make it impossible to explain how we’ve arrived at the truth in that domain, and insofar as a theory makes our reliability in a domain inexplicable, we must either reject that theory or give up the relevant beliefs. But there’s no consensus about what would count here as a satisfactory explanation of our reliability. It’s sometimes suggested that giving such (...) an explanation would involve showing that our beliefs meet some modal condition, but realists have claimed that this sort of modal interpretation of the challenge deprives it of any force: since the facts in question are metaphysically necessary and so obtain in all possible worlds, it’s trivially easy, even given realism, to show that our beliefs have the relevant modal features. Here I show that this claim is mistaken—what motivates a modal interpretation of the challenge in the first place also motivates an understanding of the relevant features in terms of epistemic possibilities rather than metaphysical possibilities, and there are indeed epistemically possible worlds where the facts in question don’t obtain. (shrink)

One recent topic of debate in Bayesian epistemology has been the question of whether imprecise credences can be rational. I argue that one account of imprecise credences, the orthodox treatment as defended by James M. Joyce, is untenable. Despite Joyce’s claims to the contrary, a puzzle introduced by Roger White shows that the orthodox account, when paired with Bas C. van Fraassen’s Reflection Principle, can lead to inconsistent beliefs. Proponents of imprecise credences, then, must either provide a compelling reason to (...) reject Reflection or admit that the rational credences in White’s case are precise. (shrink)

I identify an undertheorized problem with decisions we make with the aid of algorithms: the problem of inauthenticity. When we make decisions with the aid of algorithms, we can make ones that go against our commitments and values in a normatively important way. In this paper, I present a framework for algorithm-aided decision-making that can lead to inauthenticity. I then construct a taxonomy of the features of the decision environment that make such outcomes likely, and I discuss three possible solutions (...) to the problem. (shrink)

Robin McKenna’s excellent Non-Ideal Epistemology is, among other things, a testament to restraint. McKenna does not want to unnecessarily inflame tensions between ideal and non-ideal theorists in epistemology. Often ideal and non-ideal projects are aimed at different target domains and not in tension with one another (though not always; e.g. McKenna 2023, ch. 6, especially pp. 112-21). In this commentary, I will have much less tact. I sketch a route by which the non-ideal epistemologist might become more belligerent towards their (...) ideal counterparts. I do this by focusing on an area that McKenna mostly sets aside: non-ideal individual epistemology. (shrink)

The thesis that agents should calibrate their beliefs in the face of higher-order evidence—i.e., should adjust their first-order beliefs in response to evidence suggesting that the reasoning underlying those beliefs is faulty—is sometimes thought to be in tension with Bayesian approaches to belief update: in order to obey Bayesian norms, it’s claimed, agents must remain steadfast in the face of higher-order evidence. But I argue that this claim is incorrect. In particular, I motivate a minimal constraint on a reasonable treatment (...) of the evolution of self-locating beliefs over time and show that calibrationism is compatible with any generalized Bayesian approach that respects this constraint. I then use this result to argue that remaining steadfast isn’t the response to higher-order evidence that maximizes expected accuracy. (shrink)

We argue that the concept of practical wisdom is particularly useful for organizing, understanding, and improving human-machine interactions. We consider the relationship between philosophical analysis of wisdom and psychological research into the development of wisdom. We adopt a practical orientation that suggests a conceptual engineering approach is needed, where philosophical work involves refinement of the concept in response to contributions by engineers and behavioral scientists. The former are tasked with encoding as much wise design as possible into machines themselves, as (...) well as providing sandboxes or workspaces to help various stakeholders build practical wisdom in systems that are sufficiently realistic to aid transferring skills learned to real-world use. The latter are needed for the design of exercises and methods of evaluation within these workspaces, as well as ways of empirically assessing the transfer of wisdom from workspace to world. Systematic interaction between these three disciplines (and others) is the best approach to engineering wisdom for the machine age. (shrink)

Hilary Greaves and David Wallace argue that conditionalization maximizes expected accuracy and so is a rational requirement, but their argument presupposes a particular picture of the bridge between rationality and accuracy: the Best-Plan-to-Follow picture. And theorists such as Miriam Schoenfield and Robert Steel argue that it's possible to motivate an alternative picture—the Best-Plan-to-Make picture—that does not vindicate conditionalization. I show that these theorists are mistaken: it turns out that, if an update procedure maximizes expected accuracy on the Best-Plan-to-Follow picture, it's (...) guaranteed to maximize expected accuracy on the Best-Plan-to-Make picture as well, in which case moving from the former to the latter can't help us avoid the conclusion that conditionalization is a rational requirement. If there's a problem with Greaves and Wallace’s argument, it must lie elsewhere. (shrink)

Implicit attitudes are mental states posited by psychologists to explain behaviors including implicit racial and gender bias. In this paper I investigate the belief view of the implicit attitudes, on which implicit attitudes are a kind of implicit belief. In particular, I focus on why implicit attitudes, if they are beliefs, are often resistant to updating in light of new evidence. I argue that extant versions of the belief view do not give a satisfactory account of this phenomenon. This is (...) because proponents of the belief view have focused on overly narrow explanations of recalcitrance in terms of belief storage. Expanding the focus of the belief view to the kinds of irrational and arational transitions between beliefs and other mental states provides compelling (if preliminary) explanations of recalcitrance. (shrink)

In domains as disparate as playing Go and predicting the structure of proteins, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have begun to perform at levels beyond which any humans can achieve. Does this fact represent something lamentable? Does superhuman AI performance somehow undermine the value of human achievements in these areas? Go grandmaster Lee Sedol suggested as much when he announced his retirement from professional Go, blaming the advances of Go-playing programs like AlphaGo for sapping his will to play the game at (...) a high level. In this paper, I attempt to make sense of Sedol’s lament. I consider a number of ways that the existence of superhuman-performing AI technologies could undermine the value of human achievements. I argue there is very little in the nature of the technology itself that warrants such despair. (Compare: does the existence of a fighter jet undermine the value of being the fastest human sprinter?) But I also argue there are several more localized domains where these technologies threaten to displace human beings from being able to achieve valuable things at all. This is a particular worry for those in unequal societies, I argue, given the difficulty of many achievements and the corresponding amount of resources needed to achieve great things. (shrink)

I argue that Quinean naturalists’ holism-based arguments against analyticity and apriority are more difficult to resist than is generally supposed, for two reasons. First, although opponents of naturalism sometimes dismiss these arguments on the grounds that the holistic premises on which they depend are unacceptably radical, it turns out that the sort of holism required by these arguments is actually quite minimal. And second, although it’s true, as Grice and Strawson pointed out long ago, that these arguments can succeed only (...) if there isn’t any principled criterion for meaning change, such a criterion turns out to be hard to come by. David Chalmers has recently argued that such a criterion must exist, since the norms governing belief revision are subject to obvious exceptions that can be explained only by appeal to meaning change. But this, I argue, is incorrect: if choices about how to use language are themselves rationally assessable, then there are no such exceptions to be explained. To show that this is so, I formulate a new kind of coherence norm that may be useful for reasoning formally about the relationship between meaning and evidence. (shrink)

The notion of a genetic program has been widely criticized by both biologists and philosophers. But the debate has revolved around a narrow conception of what programs are and how they work, and many criticisms are linked to this same conception. To remedy this, I outline a modern and more apt idea of a program that possesses many of the features critics thought missing from programs. Moving away from over-simplistic conceptions of programs opens the way to a more fruitful interplay (...) of ideas between the complexity of biology and our most complex engineering discipline. (shrink)

One common attitude toward abstract objects is a kind of platonism: a view on which those objects are mind-independent and causally inert. But there's an epistemological problem here: given any naturalistically respectable understanding of how our minds work, we can't be in any sort of contact with mind-independent, causally inert objects. So platonists, in order to avoid skepticism, tend to endorse epistemological theories on which knowledge is easy, in the sense that it requires no such contact—appeals to Boghossian’s notion of (...) epistemic analyticity are particularly common here, as are appeals to some broadly pragmatic account of the good standing of basic beliefs. I argue, though, that these appeals are hopeless: an argument adapted from the Benacerraf–Field challenge shows that, even if some such theory can deliver the verdict that our beliefs about abstract objects have some prima facie good standing, this good standing will inevitably be defeated. (shrink)

The purpose of this project is to argue that we possess a minimal self. It will demonstrate that minimal selfhood arrives early in our development and continues to remain and influence us throughout our entire life. There are two areas of research which shape my understanding of the minimal self: phenomenology and enactivism. Phenomenology emphasizes the sense of givenness, ownership, or mineness that accompanies all of our experiences. Enactivism says there is a sensorimotor coupling that occurs between us and the (...) environment in a way which modulates the dynamic patterns of our self development; the laying down of these basic patterns helps make us who we are and gives rise to the phenomenological, experiential mineness. Drawing on these two core ideas, I will be arguing for a Phenomenological-Enactive Minimal Self. I will be emphasizing the role of the body and the role of affects as the most important components relevant to understanding minimal selfhood. Put more concretely, the set of conditions which constitute the PEMS view are: The minimal self is the experiential subject; the minimal sense of self is present whenever there is awareness. It is the subjectivity of experience, the sense of mineness, or givenness which our experiences contain. The phenomenological part of the PEMS view turns on the idea of a bodily and dynamic integration of sensorimotor coupling and affective experience. It is, ontologically speaking, the lived body in enactive engagement with the environment. It is this embodied subject which anchors and forms the foundation for the later ‘narrative’ self, which emerges from it and which is continually influenced by it. It is the subject enactively engaged with others, dependent on sensorimotor processes and affects. We have an identity, but it emerges from relational and dynamic processes. (shrink)

On a widespread naturalist view, the meanings of mathematical terms are determined, and can only be determined, by the way we use mathematical language—in particular, by the basic mathematical principles we’re disposed to accept. But it’s mysterious how this can be so, since, as is well known, minimally strong first-order theories are non-categorical and so are compatible with countless non-isomorphic interpretations. As for second-order theories: though they typically enjoy categoricity results—for instance, Dedekind’s categoricity theorem for second-order and Zermelo’s quasi-categoricity theorem (...) for second-order —these results require full second-order logic. So appealing to these results seems only to push the problem back, since the principles of second-order logic are themselves non-categorical: those principles are compatible with restricted interpretations of the second-order quantifiers on which Dedekind’s and Zermelo’s results are no longer available. In this paper, we provide a naturalist-friendly, non-revisionary solution to an analogous but seemingly more basic problem—Carnap’s Categoricity Problem for propositional and first-order logic—and show that our solution generalizes, giving us full second-order logic and thereby securing the categoricity or quasi-categoricity of second-order mathematical theories. Briefly, the first-order quantifiers have their intended interpretation, we claim, because we’re disposed to follow the quantifier rules in an open-ended way. As we show, given this open-endedness, the interpretation of the quantifiers must be permutation-invariant and so, by a theorem recently proved by Bonnay and Westerståhl, must be the standard interpretation. Analogously for the second-order case: we prove, by generalizing Bonnay and Westerståhl’s theorem, that the permutation invariance of the interpretation of the second-order quantifiers, guaranteed once again by the open-endedness of our inferential dispositions, suffices to yield full second-order logic. (shrink)

This précis summarizes the main topics, arguments and conclusions of the book. Many interesting arguments and critiques have, of course, been omitted in order to make this summary appropriately brief.

This chapter is a substantially expanded version of (and so substantially supersedes) “Words Fail Me. (Stanley Cavell’s Life Out of Music)” that appeared in Inheriting Stanley Cavell: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Bloomsbury, 2020). It offers to read Cavell’s claim that “philosophy, of a certain ambition, tends perpetually to intersect the autobiographical.” Its guiding thought is that a life that finds a home in philosophy from out of its devotion to music (as is true of, among others, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, all (...) philosophers Cavell wrote about and cared about) will take on a certain character. In Cavell’s case, his distinctive orientation in philosophy—call this his lifelong coming to terms with his abandoning a life in music—is guided in part by (1) an interest in those moments in experience where words seem to run out, or veer toward nonsense, leaving in their wake touchstones of ecstasy; and (2) an interest in the education of the senses, without which interest we risk their starvation. These twin claims are illustrated through an interweaving of remarks and reminiscences of Cavell on music that culminate in a reading of his last published pieces devoted to music, primarily “Impressions of Revolution.”. (shrink)

We offer a sceptical examination of a thesis recently advanced in a monograph published by Princeton University Press, entitled Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. In this dense and probing work, Christopher I. Beckwith, a professor of Central Eurasian studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, argues that Pyrrho of Elis adopted a form of early Buddhism during his years in Bactria and Gandhāra, and that early Pyrrhonism must be understood as a sect of early Buddhism. In making (...) his case Beckwith claims that virtually all scholars of Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophy have been operating under flawed assumptions and with flawed methodologies, and so have failed to notice obvious and undeniable correspondences between the philosophical views of the Buddha and of Pyrrho. In this study we take Beckwith’s proposal and challenge seriously, and we examine his textual basis and techniques of translation, his methods of examining passages, his construal of problems and his reconstruction of arguments. We find that his presuppositions are contentious and doubtful, his own methods are extremely flawed, and that he draws unreasonable conclusions. Although the result of our study is almost entirely negative, we think it illustrates some important general points about the methodology of comparative philosophy. (shrink)

Gerald Gaus argued in his 1996 book Justificatory Liberalism that proponents of public reason liberalism should attempt to ground their position in a specific epistemology. Critics of public reason liberalism such as David Enoch have also argued that public reason liberals need to elucidate their epistemic claims. Surprisingly, few public reason liberals have taken up Gaus and Enoch on their challenge. This paper will interact with the epistemological position undergirding the public justification principle, access internalism, arguing that it fails. In (...) its place, I put forward and defend proper functionalism as the better grounding epistemology, and then defend the new theory from possible objections. The result will be a synthesis of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s version of liberalism and an externalist version of convergence public reason liberalism. (shrink)

The concept of moral wrongness, many think, has a distinctive kind of referential stability, brought out by moral twin earth cases. This article offers a new account of the source of this stability, deriving it from a metaphysics of content: “substantive” radical interpretation, and first-order normative assumptions. This story is distinguished from extant “reference magnetic” explanations of the phenomenon, and objections and replies are considered.

The sense of form that provides the modern poet with a unique experience of the literary object has been crucial to various attempts to compare poetry to other cultural activities. In maintaining similar conceptions of the relationship between poetry and painting, Arthur Rimbaud and W. C. Williams establish a common basis for interpreting their creative work. And yet their poetry is more crucially concerned with the sudden emergence of visible "worlds" containing verbal objects that integrate a new kind of (...) literary text. This paper discusses the emergence of "aesthetic worlds" in the work of both poets and then examines how a common concern with Baroque form unites them in the phenomenological task of overcoming Cartesian dualism. (shrink)

In this essay I argue the extent to which meaning and judgment in aesthetics figures in Wittgenstein’s later conception of language, particularly in his conception of how philosophy might go about explaining the ordinary functioning of language. Following a review of some biographical and textual matters concerning Wittgenstein’s life with music, I outline the connection among (1) Wittgenstein’s discussions of philosophical clarity or perspicuity, (2) our attempts to give clarity to our aesthetic experiences by wording them, and (3) the clarifying (...) experience of the dawning of an aspect, which Wittgenstein pictures as the perception of an internal relation. By examining Wittgenstein’s use of “internal relation” from the Tractatus to his later writings, I come to challenge the still prevalent understanding of Wittgenstein’s appeals to grammar as an appeal to something given (e.g., to a set of grammatical rules). Instead, as I argue, Wittgensteinian appeals to grammatical criteria should be understood as modeled by the form of justification found in our conversations about art. (shrink)

This essay explores the creation and evolution of life and consciousness through the lens of a biological framework for understanding the universe. The theory posits that the patterns inherent in biological systems mirror the underlying mathematical principles of the cosmos. Thus, every pattern that manifests from the universe’s “parent-pattern” contains a fundamental biological-pattern inherent to its function, revealing the objective nature and purpose of that thing. Examples include the way ocean currents resemble a circulatory system and how socioeconomic phenomena mimic (...) cellular order. These correspondences suggest that life and consciousness are products of the universe’s biologically-patterned processes, and understanding these patterns is crucial for humanity's survival, especially as human society and environment becomes more complex—requiring a truer understanding of reality reality and how to organize themselves within it. The paper further argues that historical and philosophical concepts, such as Atman and Brahman in the Upanishads, Pnimiyut and Chitzoniyut in Kabbalah (Judaism), Batin and Zahir in Sufism (Islam), and many more align with this framework. The essay emphasizes that aligning human society with these biological patterns, as seen in biomimicry, is necessary for continued survival and harmony with the universe. The essay provides scientific studies and analogies supporting these ideas, illustrating how biological patterns are reflected across different domains of knowledge. (shrink)

The theory proposing a biological framework for a mathematical universe hypothesis posits that biological patterns define the fundamental nature of reality. These biological patterns are initially hidden from view, but can only be unveiled and understood through the knowledge of biology’s patterns and structurally mapping correspondences from the biological domain to a target domain. This perspective aligns with the ideas establishing perennial wisdom, a concept that encompasses universal and timeless spiritual truths found across various traditions. By exploring the parallels between (...) perennial wisdom's core ideas and the theory of a biological universe, we can assert that the mystical concepts of Pnimiyut and Chitzoniyut from Kabbalah may have been attempting to express the underlying principles surrounding a biological universe. In this essay, we will delve into the concepts of Pnimiyut and Chitzniyut and their potential connection to the biological nature of the universe. (shrink)

Practical quantum computing devices and their applications to AI in particular are presently mostly speculative. Nevertheless, questions about whether this future technology, if achieved, presents any special ethical issues are beginning to take shape. As with any novel technology, one can be reasonably confident that the challenges presented by "quantum AI" will be a mixture of something new and something old. Other commentators (Sevilla & Moreno 2019), have emphasized continuity, arguing that quantum computing does not substantially affect approaches to value (...) alignment methods for AI, although they allow that further questions arise concerning governance and verification of quantum AI applications. In this brief paper, we turn our attention to the problem of identifying as-yet-unknown discontinuities that might result from quantum AI applications. Wise development, introduction, and use of any new technology depends on successfully anticipating new modes of failure for that technology. This requires rigorous efforts to break systems in protected sandboxes, and it must be conducted at all stages of technology design, development, and deployment. Such testing must also be informed by technical expertise but cannot be left solely to experts in the technology because of the history of failures to predict how non-experts will use or adapt to new technologies. This interplay between experts and non-experts may be particularly acute for quantum AI because quantum mechanics is notoriously difficult to understand. (As Richard Feynman quipped, "Anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics is either lying or crazy.") We will discuss the extent to which the difficulties in understanding the physics underlying quantum computing challenges attempts to anticipate new failure modes that might be introduced in AI applications intended for unsupervised operation in the public sphere. (shrink)

While epistemic democrats have claimed that majority rule recruits the wisdom of the crowd to identify correct answers to political problems, the conjecture remains abstract. This article illustrates how majority rule leverages the epistemic capacity of the electorate to practically enhance the instrumental value of elections. To do so, we identify a set of sufficient conditions that effect such a majority rule mechanism, even when the decision in question is multidimensional. We then look to the case of sociotropic economic voting (...) in US presidential elections to provide empirical tractability for these conditions. We find that absent such an epistemic capacity a number of presidential elections might well have been decided differently. By generating clear conditions for the plausibility of claims made by epistemic democrats, and demonstrating their correspondence to empirical data, this article strengthens the broader instrumental grounds recommending democracy. (shrink)

The present study examines how online instruction during the COVID pandemic impacted learning and performs a partial replication of a study by Hahn et al. (2012), which compared students’ testing outcomes of the Major Field Test in Business (MFTB) and the Comprehensive Business Exam (CBE). Our results find that online instruction during the 2020-2021 pandemic isolation period had no significant impact on pre- and post-COVID testing outcomes for either exam. It was further found that the question set employed by the (...) CBE exam appears to have changed from the pre- to the post-COVID testing timeframes, making this exam questionable for assurance of learning purposes when compared to prior year results. (shrink)

How do we determine whether individuals accept the actual consistency of a political argument instead of just its rhetorical good looks? This article answers this question by proposing an interpretation of political argument within the constraints of political liberalism. It utilises modern developments in the philosophy of logic and language to reclaim ‘meaningless nonsense’ from use as a partisan war cry and to build up political argument as something more than a power struggle between competing conceptions of the good. Standard (...) solutions for ‘clarifying’ meaning through descriptive definition encounter difficulties with the biases of status quo idioms (long noted by theorists like William Connolly and Quentin Skinner), as well as partisan translations and circularity. Collectively called linguistic gerrymandering, these difficulties threaten political liberalism’s underlying coherency. The proposed interpretation of political argument overcomes this with a new brand of conceptual analysis that can falsifiably determine whether rhetoric has hijacked political argument. (shrink)

The original scheme for compensating victims of crime was introduced as an entitlement, and later codified into law so as to establish a legal right. The result has been the opposite: qualification for compensation has been made so conditional, that a right enjoyed by victims has been made into a narrowly drawn entitlement. The following describes the prior scheme, the current statutory scheme, surveys unintended and quantitative effects the change have caused, and discusses how changes to the scheme have, in (...) effect, changed a right into an entitlement. (shrink)

Unless one embraces activities as foundational, understanding activities in mechanisms requires an account of the means by which entities in biological mechanisms engage in their activities—an account that does not merely explain activities in terms of more basic entities and activities. Recent biological research on molecular motors exemplifies such an account, one that explains activities in terms of free energy and constraints. After describing the characteristic “stepping” activities of these molecules and mapping the stages of those steps onto the stages (...) of the motors’ hydrolytic cycles, researchers pieced together from images of the molecules in different hydrolyzation states accounts of how the chemical energy in ATP is transformed in the constrained environments of the motors into the characteristic activities of the motors. We argue that New Mechanism’s standard set of analytic categories—entities, activities, and organization—should be expanded to include constraints and energetics. Not only is such an expansion required descriptively to capture research on molecular motors but, more importantly from a philosophical point of view, it enables a non-regressive account of activities in mechanisms. In other words, this expansion enables a philosophical account of mechanistic explanation that avoids a regress of entities and activities “all the way down.” Rather, mechanistic explanation bottoms out in constraints and energetics. (shrink)

CLE aims and clients’ needs conflict where students’ interests are put beyond clients’ needs. Students have interests in gaining employment, impressing instructors and supervisors, and experiencing the active application of law. Where the clients’ service-needs are subordinated to students’ interests, the relationship between the two—the ‘tension’—is tilted in a manner in which the clients are disserved through the fulfilment of students’ interests. This may be exacerbated by faulty institutional cultures where clinical faculty are treated differently, or as less accomplished or (...) ‘worthwhile’ than their ‘traditional’ counterparts. This also emphasizes that it is the clinical law faculty who may exacerbate or assuage the tension, as it is for clinical faculty to assure that clients’ needs are met on ethical grounds,20 and to equate the practice of law with excellence before students. (shrink)

We advance an account that grounds cognition, specifically decision-making, in an activity all organisms as autonomous systems must perform to keep themselves viable—controlling their production mechanisms. Production mechanisms, as we characterize them, perform activities such as procuring resources from their environment, putting these resources to use to construct and repair the organism's body and moving through the environment. Given the variable nature of the environment and the continual degradation of the organism, these production mechanisms must be regulated by control mechanisms (...) that select when a production is required and how it should be carried out. To operate on production mechanisms, control mechanisms need to procure information through measurement processes and evaluate possible actions. They are making decisions. In all organisms, these decisions are made by multiple different control mechanisms that are organized not hierarchically but heterarchically. In many cases, they employ internal models of features of the environment with which the organism must deal. Cognition, in the form of decision-making, is thus fundamental to living systems which must control their production mechanisms. (shrink)

It is now well-known that Newton–Cartan theory is the correct geometrical setting for modelling the quantum Hall effect. In addition, in recent years edge modes for the Newton–Cartan quantum Hall effect have been derived. However, the existence of these edge modes has, as of yet, been derived using only orthodox methodologies involving the breaking of gauge-invariance; it would be preferable to derive the existence of such edge modes in a gauge-invariant manner. In this article, we employ recent work by Donnelly (...) and Freidel in order to accomplish exactly this task. Our results agree with known physics, but afford greater conceptual insight into the existence of these edge modes: in particular, they connect them to subtle aspects of Newton–Cartan geometry and pave the way for further applications of Newton–Cartan theory in condensed matter physics. (shrink)

This is the second part of my paper "What is good forestry?" and it completes the argument on how to balance short-term economic interests with the long-term public good.

Sometimes it is indeterminate what an agent morally ought do. This generates a Decision Ought Challenge—to give moral guidance to agents in such a scenario. This article is a field guide to the options for a theory of the decision ought for cases of indeterminacy. Three categories of view are evaluated, and the best representative for each is identified.

Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on W. K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”. Published in Clifford, W.K. “L’ètica de la creença”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 129–150. // Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on William James’s “The Will to Believe”. Published in James, William. “La voluntat de creure”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 151–172. [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “Introducció. El debat entre W. K. Clifford i William James”. Quaderns (...) de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 123–127]. (shrink)

Husserl’s early picture of explanation in the sciences has never been completely provided. This lack represents an oversight, which we here redress. In contrast to currently accepted interpretations, we demonstrate that Husserl does not adhere to the much maligned deductive-nomological (DN) model of scientific explanation. Instead, via a close reading of early Husserlian texts, we reveal that he presents a unificationist account of scientific explanation. By doing so, we disclose that Husserl’s philosophy of scientific explanation is no mere anachronism. It (...) is, instead, tenable and relevant. We discuss how Husserl and other contemporary thinkers draw theoretical inspiration from the same source—namely, Bernard Bolzano. Husserl’s theory of scientific explanation shares a common language and discusses the same themes as, for example, Phillip Kitcher and Kit Fine. To advance our novel reading, we discuss Husserl’s investigations of grounding, inter-lawful explanation, intra-mathematical explanation, and scientific unification. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's lack of sympathy for Shakespeare's works has been well noted by George Steiner and Harold Bloom among others. Wittgenstein writes in 1950, for instance: "It seems to me as though his pieces are, as it were, enormous sketches, not paintings; as though they were dashed off by someone who could permit himself anything, so to speak. And I understand how someone may admire this & call it supreme art, but I don't like it." Of course, the animosity of one (...) great mind for another has its own interest. But the interest here is increased by two factors: (1) Wittgenstein's brief but specific critique of Shakespeare's similes, of interest particularly since he identifies his own philosophical strength half-deprecatingly but still seriously as one of crafting beautiful similes; and (2) Wittgenstein's and Shakespeare's shared concern, as revealed in Stanley Cavell's writings, with the human impulse to skepticism. The present paper considers the importance of these two factors in weighing Wittgenstein's judgment. It suggests that Wittgenstein's frequent charge that Shakespeare is "completely unrealistic" is not a misunderstanding of the Bard (Wittgenstein distinguishes his "failure to understand" from others' willingness to misunderstand Shakespeare) but rather an expression of Wittgenstein's anxiety over Shakespeare's wholly original use of language to represent the sound of the raw motives to skepticism. (shrink)

In their Why Machines Will Never Rule the World, Landgrebe and Smith (2023) argue that it is impossible for artificial general intelligence (AGI) to succeed, on the grounds that it is impossible to perfectly model or emulate the “complex” “human neurocognitive system”. However, they do not show that it is logically impossible; they only show that it is practically impossible using current mathematical techniques. Nor do they prove that there could not be any other kinds of theories than those in (...) current use. Even if perfect theories were impossible or unlikely, perfection may not be needed and may even be unhelpful. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this essay I provide one methodology that yields the level of analysis of an alleged knowledge-claim under investigation via its relations to varying gradations of scepticism. Each proposed knowledge-claim possesses a specified relationship with: (i) a globally sceptical argument; (ii) the least sceptical but successful argument that casts it into doubt; and (iii) the most sceptical yet unsuccessful argument, which is conceivably hypothesized to repudiate it but fails to do so. Yielding this specified set of relations, by means (...) of proceeding from global scepticism to (ii) and (iii), increases the chances of identifying the highest evaluative relevancy of the levels of analysis and observation of an alleged knowledge-claim. I argue that the failure to analyse and derive a difference between (i) and (ii) with respect to an alleged knowledge-claim signifies that the claim is grounded within the theoretical framework itself, that the claim lacks specification with regard to content that is analysable via that framework, and the claim is dubious insofar as alternative theoretic frameworks may present greater relevancy to levels of observation. KEYWORDS: knowledge, scepticism, perception, level of observation, magnification level, methodological scepticism. (shrink)

Prima facie, rule-consequentialism as a moral theory would correlate with the concerns of an omnibenevolent being should one exist. Indeed, such a being would be divine, and under the lenses of the three Abrahamic religions, would inter alia, also be omnipotent and omniscient. In this paper, I consider the attitude of such a being to rule-consequentialism in human society. I argue, from a probabilistic perspective, that the evidence of Abrahamic scripture confirms, to a degree, that God would judge rule-consequentialism to (...) be a sound moral theory in different societies. I also consider a similar argument from a secular perspective. (shrink)

The title of this presentation encompasses three issues: (1) an enigmatic theme (the play of signs and signs of play); (2) a model of doing something, such as unraveling a puzzle; and (3) a methodology dealing with a probable case. Considering that the order of analysis runs in the opposite direction to the order of experience, my first task is to reverse the title. Then, its three parts become: (1) an eidetic and empirical conjunction that implies a taste for evidence; (...) (2) a rigorous model of analysis that implies a relationship between ontology (what I know) and epistemology (how I know); and (3) a case that brings an enigmatic theme. My title, based in the theme of our 42nd Annual Meeting, provided an experience peculiar to a non-native English speaker: how to interpret and use the word “play”. I really felt like I was a living exemplar of one of Professor Lanigan’s favorite examples: what dictionaries and encyclopedias say or do not say. Lanigan said that “dictionaries tell you how to use the words (forms, ideas) but not what word to use” and “encyclopedias tell you what facts to use (structure, experience), but not how to use them” (1992: 208–209). That was my situation with the word “play”. Webster’s dictionary gave me around fifty different meanings for the word “play”. Which one should I choose? I am sure that I made the best choice, as I will demonstrate throughout this presentation, organized around these three ideas that in an inverse order would be theory, method, and case. (shrink)

There are two distinct approaches to Bayesian modelling in cognitive science. Black-box approaches use Bayesian theory to model the relationship between the inputs and outputs of a cognitive system without reference to the mediating causal processes; while mechanistic approaches make claims about the neural mechanisms which generate the outputs from the inputs. This paper concerns the relationship between these two approaches. We argue that the dominant trend in the philosophical literature, which characterizes the relationship between black-box and mechanistic approaches to (...) Bayesian cognitive science in terms of the dichotomy between instrumentalism and realism, is misguided. We propose that the two distinctions are orthogonal: black-box and mechanistic approaches to Bayesian modelling can each be given either an instrumentalist or a realist interpretation. We argue that the current tendency to conflate black-box approaches with instrumentalism and mechanistic approaches with realism stems from unwarranted assumptions about the nature of scientific explanation, the ontological commitments of scientific theories, and the role of abstraction and idealization in scientific models. We challenge each of these assumptions to reframe the debates over Bayesian modelling in cognitive science. (shrink)

The harmonious free play of the imagination and understanding is at the heart of Kant’s account of beauty in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, but interpreters have long struggled to determine what Kant means when he claims the faculties are in a state of free play. In this article, I develop an interpretation of the free play of the faculties in terms of the freedom of attention. By appealing to the different way that we attend to objects in (...) aesthetic experience, we can explain how the faculties are free, even when the subject already possesses a concept of the object and is bound to the determinate form of the object in perception. (shrink)