Although the main focus of Hume’s career was in the humanities, his work also has an observable role in the historical development of natural sciences after his time. To show this, I shall center on the relation between Hume and two major figures in the history of the natural sciences: Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955). Both of these scientists read Hume. They also found parts of Hume’s work useful to their sciences. Inquiring into the relations between Hume and (...) the two scientists shows that his philosophical positions had a partial but constructive role in the formation of modern biology and physics. This is accordingly a clear indication of Hume’s impact on the scientific tradition. Before proceeding to analyze Hume’s contribution to the history of science, it is important to address his broader role in the history of philosophy of science. Hume’s discussions concerning the topics of causation, induction, the distinction between mathematical and empirical propositions, and laws of nature have been important for the philosophy of science of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (shrink)

This article centers on Hume’s position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. To that end, the controversy surrounding universal gravitation shall be scrutinized. It is very well-known that Hume sides with the Newtonian experimentalist approach rather than with the Leibnizian demand for intelligibility. However, what is not clear is Hume’s overall position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. It shall be argued that Hume declines Leibniz’s principle of intelligibility. However, Hume does not eschew intelligibility altogether; his concept of causation itself (...) stipulates mechanical intelligibility. (shrink)

Because factory-farmed meat production inflicts gratuitous suffering upon animals and wreaks havoc on the environment, there are morally compelling reasons to become vegetarian. Yet industrial plant agriculture causes the death of many field animals, and this leads some to question whether consumers ought to get some of their protein from certain kinds of non factory-farmed meat. Donald Bruckner, for instance, boldly argues that the harm principle implies an obligation to collect and consume roadkill and that strict vegetarianism is thus immoral. (...) But this argument works only if the following claims are true: all humans have access to roadkill, roadkill would go to waste if those who happen upon it don’t themselves consume it, it’s impossible to harvest vegetables without killing animals, the animals who are killed in plant production are all-things-considered harmed by crop farming, and the best arguments for vegetarianism all endorse the harm principle. As I will argue in this paper, each claim is deeply problematic. Consequently, in most cases, humans ought to strictly eat plants and save the roadkill for cats. (shrink)

We develop some of Williamson’s ideas regarding how propositional calculus aids in comprehending Aristotelian logic. Specifically, we enhance the utilisation of truth tables to examine the structure of opposition diagrams. Using ‘conditioned truth tables’, we establish logical dependency relationships between the truth values of different propositions. This approach proves effective in interpreting various texts of the Organon concerning the doctrine of opposition.

In recent discussions, it has been argued that a theory of animal rights is at odds with a liberal abortion policy. In response, Francione (1995) argues that the principles used in the animal rights discourse do not have implications for the abortion debate. I challenge Francione’s conclusion by illustrating that his own framework of animal rights, supplemented by a relational account of moral obligation, can address the moral issue of abortion. I first demonstrate that Francione’s animal rights position, which grounds (...) moral consideration in sentience, is committed to the claim that a sentient fetus has a right to life. I then illustrate that a fully developed account of animal rights that recognizes the special obligations humans have to assist animals when we cause them to be dependent and vulnerable through our voluntary actions or omissions is committed to the following: a woman also has a special obligation to assist a sentient fetus when she causes it to be dependent and vulnerable through her voluntary actions or omissions. From these considerations, it will become evident that a fully developed and consistent animal rights ethic does in fact have implications for the abortion discussion. (shrink)

When fat people are depicted in popular media, we often take their behavior to be representative of all fat people. How one fat person acts becomes representative of a broader pattern of behavior that all fat people are presumed to share, shaping the way we understand fatness. This way of generalizing presents fatness as a singular experience, reducing fat people to a monolithic narrative that often reinforces anti-fat bias. How do we avoid this reduction? How can we responsibly depict fat (...) characters without perpetuating negative stereotypes about real fat people? Using the case of “Fat Thor” from Avengers: Endgame, I propose the beginnings of an account of responsible artistic agency which can be used to improve the ways that marginalized communities are depicted in art, with a particular focus on fat communities. Central to this account are two features: inclusion of and deference to members of the communities depicted from a variety of backgrounds throughout the production process, and mindfulness of the preexisting narrative web built around the communities depicted. I will use this discussion to highlight the need for a drastic shift in how we consider marginalized populations in art—in reimagining both who tells their stories, and what stories are told on their behalf. (shrink)

In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan argues that, in addition to the negative duty not to harm nonhuman animals, moral agents have a positive duty to assist nonhuman animals who are victims of injustice. This claim is not unproblematic because, in many cases, assisting a victim of injustice requires that we harm some other nonhuman animal(s). For instance, in order to feed victims of injustice who are obligate carnivores, we must kill some other animal(s). It seems, then, that (...) sometimes the duty to assist nonhuman animals who are victims of injustice conflicts with the prima facie duty not to harm nonhuman animals. In defense of Regan’s theory against this apparent inconsistency, I introduce an additional principle, the “guardianship principle,” which can be used to illustrate how we can be justified, under certain conditions, in overriding our prima facie duty not to harm nonhuman animals in order to fulfill our duty to assist nonhuman animals who are victims of injustice. (shrink)

In response to my argument against Aristotle’s claim that humans are more political than other animals, Edward Jacobs counters that the evidence I use from cognitive ethology and my application of evolutionary principles fail to demonstrate that other animals are as political as humans. Jacobs furthermore suggests that humans are more political than other animals by pointing to the political variation in human communities. In this article, I defend my use of evolutionary principles and my interpretation of anecdotes from cognitive (...) ethology, while challenging Jacobs’s assertion that human political variation implies that humans are more political than other animals. (shrink)

Eternalism is the view that all times are equally real. The relativity of simultaneity in special relativity backs this up. There is no cosmically extended, self-existing ‘now.’ This leads to a tricky problem. What makes statements about the present true? I shall approach the problem along the lines of perspectival realism and argue that the choice of the perspective does. To corroborate this point, the Lorentz transformations of special relativity are compared to the structurally similar equations of the Doppler effect. (...) The ‘now’ is perspectivally real in the same way as a particular electromagnetic spectrum frequency. I also argue that the ontology of time licensed by perspectival realism is more credible in this context than its current alternative, the fragmentalist interpretation of special relativity. (shrink)

In this paper we track the ‘body positivity’ movement from its origins, promoting radical acceptance of marginalized bodies, to its co-optation as a push for self-love for all bodies, including those bodies belonging to socially dominant groups. We argue that the new focus on the ‘body positivity’ movement involves a single-minded emphasis on beauty and aesthetic adornment, and that this undermines the original focus of social and political equality, pandering instead to capitalism and failing to rectify unjust institutions and policies. (...) As such, we argue that the ‘body positivity’ movement ultimately marginalises further the bodies for which it initially sought justice and acceptance. (shrink)

For the last forty years, Hume's Newtonianism has been a debated topic in Hume scholarship. The crux of the matter can be formulated by the following question: Is Hume a Newtonian philosopher? Debates concerning this question have produced two lines of interpretation. I shall call them ‘traditional’ and ‘critical’ interpretations. The traditional interpretation asserts that there are many Newtonian elements in Hume, whereas the critical interpretation seriously questions this. In this article, I consider the main points made by both lines (...) of interpretations and offer further arguments that contribute to this debate. I shall first argue, in favor of the traditional interpretation, that Hume is sympathetic to many prominently Newtonian themes in natural philosophy such as experimentalism, criticality of hypotheses, inductive proof, and criticality of Leibnizian principles of sufficient reason and intelligibility. Second, I shall argue, in accordance with the critical interpretation, that in many cases Hume... (shrink)

The state of our current world has brought about a very active discussion concerning possible alternatives to our current society. In this article, I wish to consider Marx’s idea of communism as a possible alternative, by understanding it as an undetermined concept that only proposes a society without classes and private property. The thesis I will defend here is that we can meaningfully think about such an alternative through the means of Science Fiction literature. In particular, I will take Ursula (...) Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (2006) as a case study. To clarify this relation between science fiction (SF) literature and communism as a particular case of an alternative society, I will introduce some concepts of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological theory. Thus, I shall argue that in SF we can presentify in bounded phantasy an alternative lifeworld, so furnishing with content the undetermined idea, and in doing so, strengthen the belief in the possibility of such an alternative society. (shrink)

While theories of animal rights maintain that nonhuman animals possess prima facie rights, such as the right to life, the dominant philosophies of animal rights permit the killing of nonhuman animals for reasons of self-defense. I argue that the animal rights discourse on defensive killing is problematic because it seems to entail that any nonhuman animal who poses a threat to human beings can be justifiably harmed without question. To avoid this human-privileged conclusion, I argue that the animal rights position (...) needs to both (1) deploy a new criterion of liability to defensive harm, and (2) seriously consider whether human beings themselves are liable to defensive harm in human-animal conflicts. By shifting the focus to whether humans are liable to defensive harm, we will find that in many situations of human-animal conflict, human beings are actually the ones liable to be harmed because they are often culpable or, to some degree, morally responsible for posing an unjust threat to nonhuman animals. (shrink)

According to a widespread view, Einstein’s definition of time in his special relativity is founded on the positivist verification principle. The present paper challenges this received outlook. It shall be argued that Einstein’s position on the concept of time, to wit, simultaneity, is best understood as a mitigated version of concept empiricism. He contrasts his position to Newton’s absolutist and Kant’s transcendental arguments, and in part sides with Hume’s and Mach’s empiricist arguments. Nevertheless, Einstein worked out a concept empiricism that (...) is considerably more moderate than what we find in the preceding empiricist tradition and early logical positivism. He did not think that the origin of concepts is in observations, but in conventions, and he also maintained a realist ontology of physical events, which he thought is necessary for his theory. Consequently, his philosophy of time in special relativity is not couched in terms of an anti-metaphysical verificationism. (shrink)

Eternalism is the view that the past, the present and the future exist simpliciter. A typical argument in favor of this view leans on the relativity of simultaneity. The ‘equally real with’ relation is assumed to be transitive between spacelike separated events connected by hyperplanes of simultaneity. This reasoning is in tension with the conventionality of simultaneity. Conventionality indicates that, even within a specific frame, simultaneity is based on the choice of the synchronization parameter. Hence the argument for eternalism is (...) compromised. This paper lays out alternative eternalist strategies which do not hinge on hyperplanes. While we lack a rigorous proof for eternalism, there are still cogent reasons to prefer eternalism over presentism. (shrink)

I argue that Hume’s philosophy of time is relationist in the following two senses. 1) Standard definition of relationism. Time is a succession of indivisible moments. Hence there is no time independent of change. Time is a relational, not substantial feature of the world. 2) Rigid relationism. There is no evidence of uniform natural standard for synchronization of clocks. No absolute temporal metric is available. There are countless times, and no time is privileged. Combining 1) and 2) shows that Hume’s (...) ontology of time is thoroughly relationist. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relations between knowledge, language and communication within the framework of Neurath's philosophical and political program. In particular, we draw a parallel between the adoption of the physicalist language as the basic language of science and the development of ISOTYPE system of visual education. We defend the idea that they maintain a relation of reciprocity with each other that makes possible the exchange of factual information and the transformation of verbal statements into (...) visual statements, and vice versa. This relation of reciprocity is also based on a series of shared features. In this regard, we consider that both are conceived as thing-languages and both play a pedagogical and political role, that consists in enabling communication between science and society. For Neurath, this role also involves a model of communication aimed at the humanization of knowledge and the democratization of decisions. (shrink)

This book defends a relational theory of the passage of time. The realist view of passage developed in this book differs from the robust, substantivalist position. According to relationism, passage is nothing over and above the succession of events, one thing coming after another. Causally related events are temporally arranged as they happen one after another along observers’ worldlines. There is no unique global passage but a multiplicity of local passages of time. After setting out this positive argument for relationism, (...) the author deals with five common objections to it: (a) triviality of deflationary passage, (b) a-directionality of passage, (c) the impossibility of experiencing passage, (d) fictionalism about passage, and (e) the incompatibility of passage with perduring objects. (shrink)

Taiwan and Vietnam have taken successful measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 at the early stages. Many authors attributed the successful policies to the lessons learned by these countries during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic in 2002.(Ohara, 2004) This manuscript provides a summary of recent early-stage policies that were successful in mitigating the spread and creating resilience against the negative consequences of COVID-19 in Taiwan and Vietnam. Crucially, these policies go beyond and complement social isolation. As social (...) isolation is expected to have a negative socio-economic impact on the population and adherence is likely to decrease with time(Armitage and Nellums, 2020; Weems et al., 2020), it is important to consider a broad range of policies to promote a steady control of the COVID-19 spread. Initially, we provide a brief introduction to some general concepts related to COVID-19. Thereafter, we introduce a concise review of policies and their dates relative to the first detection case in Taiwan and Vietnam as well as doing a comparative analysis. (shrink)

The discourses of Antillanité and Créolité are both based on the absence of women. This is more important in the discourse of Créolité since it silences the grandmothers, great aunts and village midwives who are the transmitters of folk tales, folk medicines and oral culture. In the struggle for recognition between Caribbean males and western males folk medicine may be too closely associated with the denigrated female role to be considered a suitable inclusion into modern development.

Ajan luonnetta koskevissa käsityksissä on tyypillistä erottaa kaksi eriävää kantaa: A-teoreettinen presentismi ja B-teoreettinen eternalismi. Edeltävän väitetään tyypillisesti sopivan yhteen inhimillisen ajallisen kokemuksen kanssa ja jälkimmäisen ontologisesti perustavanlaatuisen luonnontieteen kanssa. Ilmikuvamme ajasta sisältää ehdottoman nykyisyyden ja yksisuuntaisen ajan kulun menneestä tulevaan. Tieteellinen kuva ajasta ei sisällä erityistä nykyisyyttä eikä ajan kulun edellyttämää dynaamista aikamuotojen muutosta. Monet ovat pitäneet kokemustamme ajan kulusta illuusiona. Tässä artikkelissa keskitytään A-sarjan mukaisen ajankulun virheteoreettiseen tulkintaan. Tarkastellaan mahdollisuutta, jonka mukaan meillä ei ole kyseistä kokemusta vaan kuvailemme (...) kokemustamme virheellisesti ajan virtaukseen liittyvillä vertauskuvilla. Tätä tukee fysikalistinen argumentti: Jos ajan kulun kokemuksellamme ei ole fysikaalista perustaa, meillä ei voi olla sen mukaista kokemustakaan ajasta. (shrink)

This book contextualizes David Hume's philosophy of physical science, exploring both Hume's background in the history of early modern natural philosophy and its subsequent impact on the scientific tradition.

Einstein acknowledged that his reading of Hume influenced the development of his special theory of relativity. In this article, I juxtapose Hume’s philosophy with Einstein’s philosophical analysis related to his special relativity. I argue that there are two common points to be found in their writings, namely an empiricist theory of ideas and concepts, and a relationist ontology regarding space and time. The main thesis of this article is that these two points are intertwined in Hume and Einstein.

This article investigates the relationship between Hume’s causal philosophy and Newton ’s philosophy of nature. I claim that Newton ’s experimentalist methodology in gravity research is an important background for understanding Hume’s conception of causality: Hume sees the relation of cause and effect as not being founded on a priori reasoning, similar to the way that Newton criticized non - empirical hypotheses about the properties of gravity. However, according to Hume’s criteria of causal inference, the law of universal gravitation is (...) not a complete causal law, since it does not include a reference either to contiguity or to temporal priority. It is still argued that because of the empirical success of Newton ’s theory—the law is a statement of an exceptionless repetition—Hume gives his support to it in interpreting gravity force instrumentally as if it bore a causal relation to motion. (shrink)

In this paper, we try to understand how Bunge’s scientific hylorealism can fit with several crystal chemistry’s objects and their properties. It is found that many of them, lying at the very core of this discipline, bring support to ontologi-cal emergentism. Building units, such as vacancies, their chemical potential, the crystal quantum number and many aspects of the spectroscopic properties of 4f electrons in ionic crystals, are presented as striking examples of emergent (or submergent) objects or properties encountered in the (...) single crystalline state. Among all the types of building. (shrink)

Given the sharp distinction that follows from Hume’s Fork, the proper epistemic status of propositions of mixed mathematics seems to be a mystery. On the one hand, mathematical propositions concern the relation of ideas. They are intuitive and demonstratively certain. On the other hand, propositions of mixed mathematics, such as in Hume’s own example, the law of conservation of momentum, are also matter of fact propositions. They concern causal relations between species of objects, and, in this sense, they are not (...) intuitive or demonstratively certain, but probable or provable. In this article, I argue that the epistemic status of propositions of mixed mathematics is that of matters of fact. I wish to show that their epistemic status is not a mystery. The reason for this is that the propositions of mixed mathematics are dependent on the Uniformity Principle, unlike the propositions of pure mathematics. (shrink)

This paper provides an original approach to research on the logical processes that determine how certain forms participate in others. By introducing the concept of relational participation, the problems of self-referentiality of the Platonic forms can be dealt with more effectively. Applying this to the forms of likeness and unlikeness in Parmenides 132d-133a reveals a possible way to resolve different versions of the Third Man Argument. The method of generating numbers from oddness and evenness may also be of interest; relational (...) participation in these forms clarifies the interpretation of Parmenides 143e-144a. (shrink)

Empleando procedimientos de la lógica simbólica, se intenta contribuir a una mejor comprensión del ejercicio dialéctico llevado a cabo en el Parménides. La interpretación de las formas del ser y el no ser a partir de la oposición entre el objeto de conocimiento y el pensamiento acerca del mismo, abre la puerta a una manera original de enfocar el problema de la verdad en Platón. Puede resultar interesante, asimismo, la solución que se propone a la aporía planteada en Parménides 132b-c, (...) relativa a la confusión del pensamiento o el no ser con otras formas. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es examinar el diagnóstico crítico que Rahel Jaeggi realiza de la sociedad. El trabajo comienza desarrollando el análisis que lleva a cabo de la crítica de la ideología. Luego mostraremos los elementos centrales de su teoría crítica desplegados en Alienación y Crítica de las formas de vida. La conclusión es que la teoría crítica de Jaeggi es una crítica inmanente y una crítica de la ideología de la sociedad contemporánea.

Dans cet article, nous essayons de comprendre comment l’hyloréalisme scientifique de Bunge peut s’accommoder avec plusieurs objets de la chimie des cristaux et leurs propriétés. Nous montrons que plusieurs d’entre eux, constituant le cœur de la discipline, soutiennent l’émergentisme ontologique. Les unités de construction, comme les lacunes, leur potentiel chimique, le nombre quantique cristallographique et plusieurs aspects des propriétés spectroscopiques des électrons 4f dans les cristaux ioniques, sont présentés comme des exemples remarquables d’objets ou de propriétés émergents (ou submergents) rencontrés (...) dans l’état cristallin. Parmi tous les types d’unités de construction, nous montrons que les lacunes s’avèrent ontologiquement réelles et matérielles. (shrink)

Category-based induction is an inferential mechanism that uses knowledge of conceptual relations in order to estimate how likely is for a property to be projected from one category to another. During the last decades, psychologists have identified several features of this mechanism, and they have proposed different formal models of it. In this article; we propose a new mathematical model for category-based induction based on distances on conceptual spaces. We show how this model can predict most of the properties of (...) this kind of reasoning while providing a solid theoretical foundation for it. We also show that it subsumes some of the previous models proposed in the literature and that it generates new predictions. (shrink)

Este ensayo acomete un análisis del concepto de fantasmagoría en el marco de los materiales del proyecto inacabado del Libro de los pasajes de Walter Benjamin. Para ello, parte de la relación que en ellos se traza entre este término y el carácter fetichista que Marx atribuye a la mercancía, a fin de mostrar cómo dicho carácter, así como la noción de ideología que se segrega de él, constituyen el fundamento de la utilización por parte de Benjamin del concepto de (...) fantasmagoría. Sobre esta base, se defiende que el sentido que Benjamin confiere a esta noción implica una ampliación del concepto marxiano de ideología que obedecería a un doble objetivo: incluir bajo su alcance aspectos de la autocomprensión de la sociedad moderna no tematizados por Marx y adaptarlo a los resultados de la evolución del capitalismo. Por último, se estudia la conexión que la noción de fantasmagoría guarda con lo que Benjamin llama el «despertar» en el contexto de su reflexión sobre la tarea del historiador materialista. (shrink)

I shall argue that when Hume refers to the laws of dynamics, he tacitly assumes a mechanism. Nevertheless, he remains agnostic on whether the hidden micro-constitution of bodies is machinelike. Hence this article comes to the following conclusion. Hume is not a full-blown mechanical philosopher. Still his position on dynamic laws and his concept of causation instantiate a tacitly mechanical understanding of the interactions of bodies.

An underappreciated fact in the history of analytic philosophy is that American pragmatism had an early and strong influence on the Vienna Circle. The path of that influence goes from Charles Peirce to Frank Ramsey to Ludwig Wittgenstein to Moritz Schlick. That path is traced in this paper, and along the way some standard understandings of Ramsey and Wittgenstein, especially, are radically altered.

We may distinguish two interpretations of the relation between Newton’s natural philosophy and Hume’s science of human nature. The first interpretation can be called ‘traditional,’ the second ‘critical.’ This article will not side with either readings of Hume’s Newtonianism (or with some middle positions). Instead, essential points of confluence and divergence will be discussed.

To provide metaphysical grounds for the physics of her time, Du Châtelet argued for the notion of an active force. This was different from the impressed force in Newton’s second law. The former force was a property of a body, whereas the latter was an external cause. I shall study this discrepancy and argue that the interactive concept of force in Newton’s third law is consistent with Du Châtelet’s standards for an intelligible physics. Consequently, the interaction entailed by the law (...) of universal gravitation complies with Du Châtelet’s principles of human knowledge. (shrink)

This essay explores Kaila's interpretation of the special theory of relativity. Although the relevance of his work to logical empiricism is well-known, not much has been written on what Kaila calls the ‘Einstein-Minkowski invariance theory’. Kaila's interpretation focuses on two salient features. First, he emphasizes the importance of the invariance of the spacetime interval. The general point about spacetime invariance has been known at least since Minkowski, yet Kaila applies his overall tripartite theory of invariances to space, time and spacetime (...) in an original way. Second, Kaila provides a non-conventionalist argument for the isotropic speed of electromagnetic signals. The standard Einstein synchrony is not a mere convention but a part of a larger empirical theory. According to Kaila's holistic principle of testability, which stands in contrast to the theses of translatability and verification, different items in the theory cannot be sharply divided into conventional and empirical. Kaila's invariantism/non-conventionalism about relativity reflects an interesting case in the gradual transition from positivism to realism within the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The subject of this essay-based dissertation is Hume’s natural philosophy. The dissertation consists of four separate essays and an introduction. These essays do not only treat Hume’s views on the topic of natural philosophy, but his views are placed into a broader context of history of philosophy and science, physics in particular. The introductory section outlines the historical context, shows how the individual essays are connected, expounds what kind of research methodology has been used, and encapsulates the research contributions of (...) the essays. The first essay treats Newton’s experimentalist methodology in gravity research and its relation to Hume’s causal philosophy. It is argued that Hume does not see the relation of cause and effect as being founded on a priori reasoning, similar to the way in which Newton criticized non-empirical hypotheses about the causal properties of gravity. Contrary to Hume’s rules of causation, the universal law does not include a reference either to contiguity or succession, but Hume accepts it in interpreting the force and the law of gravity instrumentally. The second article considers Newtonian and non-Newtonian elements in Hume more broadly. He is sympathetic to many prominently Newtonian themes in natural philosophy, such as experimentalism, critique of hypotheses, inductive proof, and the critique of Leibnizian principles of sufficient reason and intelligibility. However, Hume is not a Newtonian philosopher in many respects: his conceptions regarding space and time, the vacuum, the specifics of causation, the status of mechanism, and the reality of forces differ markedly from Newton’s related conceptions. The third article focuses on Hume’s Fork and the proper epistemic status of propositions of mixed mathematics. It is shown that the epistemic status of propositions of mixed mathematics, such as those concerning laws of nature, is that of matters of fact. The reason for this is that the propositions of mixed mathematics are dependent on the Uniformity Principle. The fourth article analyzes Einstein’s acknowledgement of Hume regarding special relativity. The views of the scientist and the philosopher are juxtaposed, and it is argued that there are two common points to be found in their writings, namely an empiricist theory of ideas and concepts and a relationist ontology regarding space and time. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, cognitive science has identified several forms of reasoning that make essential use of conceptual knowledge. Despite significant theoretical and empirical progress, there is still no unified framework for understanding how concepts are used in reasoning. This paper argues that the theory of conceptual spaces is capable of filling this gap. Our strategy is to demonstrate how various inference mechanisms which clearly rely on conceptual information—including similarity, typicality, and diagnosticity-based reasoning—can be modeled using principles derived from (...) conceptual spaces. Our first topic analyzes the role of expectations in inductive reasoning and their relation to the structure of our concepts. We examine the relationship between using generic expressions in natural language and common-sense reasoning as a second topic. We propose that the strength of a generic can be described by distances between properties and prototypes in conceptual spaces. Our third topic is category-based induction. We demonstrate that the theory of conceptual spaces can serve as a comprehensive model for this type of reasoning. The final topic is analogy. We review some proposals in this area, present a taxonomy of analogical relations, and show how to model them in terms of distances in conceptual spaces. We also briefly discuss the implications of the model for reasoning with concepts in artificial systems. (shrink)

It seems that no philosopher these days wants a theory of truth which can be accused of being metaphysical. But even if we agree that grandiose metaphysics is to be spurned, even if we agree that our theory of truth should be a deflated one, the controversy does not die down. A variety of deflationist options present themselves. Some, with Richard Rorty, take the notion of truth to be so wedded to metaphysics that we are advised to drop it altogether. (...) Others, with Paul Horwich, take the disquotational or equivalence schema—'p' is T if and only if p—to completely capture the content of the predicate 'is true'. And others argue that there is a conception of truth to be had which is non-metaphysical but which goes beyond the triviality expressed by the disquotational schema. (shrink)

Necessity is a touchstone issue in the thought of Charles Peirce, not least because his pragmatist account of meaning relies upon modal terms. We here offer an overview of Peirce’s highly original and multi-faceted take on the matter. We begin by considering how a self-avowed pragmatist and fallibilist can even talk about necessary truth. We then outline the source of Peirce’s theory of representation in his three categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, (monadic, dyadic and triadic relations). These have modal (...) purport insofar as the first category corresponds to possibility, the second to mechanical necessity and the third to a kind of semantic or intentional necessity. We then turn to Peirce’s explicit modal epistemology and show how it began as information-relative, with different modalities (e.g. logical, physical, practical) distinguished in terms of respective ‘designated states of information’, and shifted later in his life towards a more robust realism founded in direct perception of ideas in their relations. We then turn to Peirce’s formal logic, focusing on his diagrammatic system of Existential Graphs where he did his most serious logical research. Finally we discuss Peirce’s modal metaphysics and its implications for determinism and realism about universals. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the All Affected Principle generates a puzzle when applied to carbon tax referendums. According to recent versions of the All Affected Principle, people should have a say in a democratic decision in positive proportion to how much the decision affects them. Plausibly, one way of being affected by a carbon tax referendum is to bear the economic burden of paying the tax. On this metric of affectedness, then, people who pollute a lot are ceteris (...) paribus more affected than people who don’t, because the former stands to pay more in carbon taxes than the latter. Consequently, people who pollute a lot receive large voting power, while people who pollute a little receive little voting power. This is a puzzling distribution of voting power for several reasons. First, it is instrumentally counterproductive if the goal is to rectify damages to the climate. Second, it introduces prudential incentives for everyone to pollute more to gain voting power. Third, the relative difference in voting power between people who pollute a lot and people who don’t is puzzling from a desert-based point of view, since the former often make a serious effort to avoid polluting, while the latter don’t. (shrink)

This paper examines a variety of social scientific studies purporting to demonstrate that transracial adoption is in the best interests of children. Finding flaws in these studies and the ethical and political arguments based upon such scientific findings, we argue for adoption practices and policies that respect the racial and ethnic identities of children of color and their communities of origin.

The topic of this book is vast. The author Heather Dyke has less than 80 pages to expound on the nature of time. Her starting point is the distinction between the common-sense and the scientific conception of time. The former includes two points: a special present moment and the understanding that time is dynamic. The latter eschews both points.

In this paper, we present a non-trivial and expressively complete paraconsistent naïve theory of truth, as a step in the route towards semantic closure. We achieve this goal by expressing self-reference with a weak procedure, that uses equivalences between expressions of the language, as opposed to a strong procedure, that uses identities. Finally, we make some remarks regarding the sense in which the theory of truth discussed has a property closely related to functional completeness, and we present a sound and (...) complete three-sided sequent calculus for this expressively rich theory. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline a comprehensive approach to composed analogies based on the theory of conceptual spaces. Our algorithmic model understands analogy as a search procedure and builds upon the idea that analogical similarity depends on a conceptual phenomena called ‘dimensional salience.’ We distinguish between category-based, property-based, event-based, and part-whole analogies, and propose computationally-oriented methods for explicating them in terms of conceptual spaces.

Up till this day one cannot find much scholarship which situates Hume in the context of early modern natural philosophy. Tamás Demeter's new book, David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism, does a spectacular job in filling this gap. His monograph is the most comprehensive pursuit to understand Hume's place in the Newtonian tradition of natural philosophy. Demeter specifies Hume's place both in the context of Newtonian moral philosophy and Newtonian chemistry and physiology.