Results for 'Counterfactual Clauses'

852 found
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  1. Levelling counterfactual scepticism.Katie Steele & Alexander Sandgren - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):927-947.
    In this paper, we develop a novel response to counterfactual scepticism, the thesis that most ordinary counterfactual claims are false. In the process we aim to shed light on the relationship between debates in the philosophy of science and debates concerning the semantics and pragmatics of counterfactuals. We argue that science is concerned with many domains of inquiry, each with its own characteristic entities and regularities; moreover, statements of scientific law often include an implicit ceteris paribus clause that (...)
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  2. 'Might' Counterfactuals.Ginger Schultheis - forthcoming - Linguistics and Philosophy.
    The epistemic thesis is the thesis that a 'might' counterfactual like 'If Matt had gone to the parade, David might have gone to the parade' has the same meaning as 'Maybe, if Matt had gone to the parade, David would have gone to the parade.' I offer a new theory of the counterfactual interpretation of the modal 'might' on which 'might' has the same meaning as 'maybe would'. And I show that, when coupled with a plausible semantics for (...)
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  3. Two switches in the theory of counterfactuals: A study of truth conditionality and minimal change.Ivano Ciardelli, Linmin Zhang & Lucas Champollion - 2018 - Linguistics and Philosophy (6).
    Based on a crowdsourced truth value judgment experiment, we provide empirical evidence challenging two classical views in semantics, and we develop a novel account of counterfactuals that combines ideas from inquisitive semantics and causal reasoning. First, we show that two truth-conditionally equivalent clauses can make different semantic contributions when embedded in a counterfactual antecedent. Assuming compositionality, this means that the meaning of these clauses is not fully determined by their truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation (...)
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  4. Making Causal Counterfactuals More Singular, and More Appropriate for Use in Law.Geert Keil - 2013 - In Benedikt Kahmen Markus Stepanians (ed.), Causation and Responsibility: Critical Essays. pp. 157-189.
    Unlike any other monograph on legal liability, Michael S. Moore’s book CAUSATION AND RESPONSIBILITY contains a well-informed and in-depth discussion of the metaphysics of causation. Moore does not share the widespread view that legal scholars should not enter into metaphysical debates about causation. He shows respect for the subtleties of philosophical debates on causal relata, identity conditions for events, the ontological distinctions between events, states of affairs, facts and tropes, and the counterfactual analysis of event causation, and he considers (...)
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  5. Breaking de Morgan's law in counterfactual antecedents.Lucas Champollion, Ivano Ciardelli & Linmin Zhang - manuscript
    The main goal of this paper is to investigate the relation between the meaning of a sentence and its truth conditions. We report on a comprehension experiment on counterfactual conditionals, based on a context in which a light is controlled by two switches. Our main finding is that the truth-conditionally equivalent clauses (i) "switch A or switch B is down" and (ii) "switch A and switch B are not both up" make different semantic contributions when embedded in a (...)
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  6. In Defence of Linguistics as an Empirical Science in Light of Mario Bunge’s Defence of the Scientific Treatment of Biology.Dorota Zielińska - 2024 - Mεtascience: Scientific General Discourse 3:205-251.
    Although few linguists currently embrace the empirical paradigm, there are increasing calls for the development of tools for studying language that resemble those in exact sciences. This trend can be observed even in top mainstream linguistic journals, such as the Journal of Pragmatics, as exemplified by Xiang (2017). Today, however, linguists who adapt the methodologies from more advanced sciences face isolation from the mainstream linguistic community. This is because the majority of linguists in philological and philosophical departments remain convinced that (...)
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  7. Semantic dispositionalism without exceptions.Arvid Båve - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (6):1751-1771.
    Semantic dispositionalism is roughly the view that meaning a certain thing by a word, or possessing a certain concept, consists in being disposed to do something, e.g., infer a certain way. Its main problem is that it seems to have so many and disparate exceptions. People can fail to infer as required due to lack of logical acumen, intoxication, confusion, deviant theories, neural malfunctioning, and so on. I present a theory stating possession conditions of concepts that are counterfactuals, rather than (...)
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  8. How (not) to think about idealisation and ceteris paribus -laws.Robert Kowalenko - 2009 - Synthese 167 (1):183-201.
    "Semantic dispositionalism" is the theory that a speaker's meaning something by a given linguistic symbol is determined by her dispositions to use the symbol in a certain way. According to an objection by Kripke, further elaborated in Kusch :156–163, 2005), semantic dispositionalism involves ceteris paribus-clauses and idealisations, such as unbounded memory, that deviate from standard scientific methodology. I argue that Kusch misrepresents both ceteris paribus-laws and idealisation, neither of which factually "approximate" the behaviour of agents or the course of (...)
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  9. Causal Pluralism.Stathos Psillos - 2009 - In Robrecht Vanderbeeken & Bart D'Hooghe (eds.), Worldviews, Science and Us: Studies of Analytical Metaphysics. World Scientific.
    There has been no shortage of such conceptual analyses and no shortage of counterexamples to all of them. The counterexamples exploit, at least partly, situations in which we are presumed to have clear intuitions about what causes what, but which intuitions are not being respected by the suggested philosophical analysis. The counterexamples typically lead to a battery of sophisticated attempts to revise or amend the philosophical analysis so that it is saved from refutation. These attempts, typically, either deny the intuitions (...)
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  10. Aboutness and Modality.Dean McHugh - 2022 - Proceedings of the 23Rd Amsterdam Colloquium.
    In this paper I would like to offer a new framework for hypothetical reasoning, with the goal of predicting what scenarios we consider when we interpret a conditional or causal claim (such as a sentence containing the word ‘because‘). The idea is that when we interpret a conditional or causal claim, we identify a part of the world to change and imagine changing that. Sentences are about parts of the world: when we interpret a conditional antecedent or because clause, we (...)
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  11. Virtual Realism: Really Realism or only Virtually so? A Comment on D. J. Chalmers’s Petrus Hispanus Lectures.Claus Beisbart - 2019 - Disputatio 11 (55):297-331.
    What is the status of a cat in a virtual reality environment? Is it a real object? Or part of a fiction? Virtual realism, as defended by D. J. Chalmers, takes it to be a virtual object that really exists, that has properties and is involved in real events. His preferred specification of virtual realism identifies the cat with a digital object. The project of this paper is to use a comparison between virtual reality environments and scientific computer simulations to (...)
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  12. Is there a defensible conception of reflective equilibrium?Claus Beisbart & Georg Brun - 2024 - Synthese 203 (3):1-26.
    The goal of this paper is to re-assess reflective equilibrium (“RE”). We ask whether there is a conception of RE that can be defended against the various objections that have been raised against RE in the literature. To answer this question, we provide a systematic overview of the main objections, and for each objection, we investigate why it looks plausible, on what standard or expectation it is based, how it can be answered and which features RE must have to meet (...)
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  13. Making Reflective Equlibrium Precise: A Formal Model.Claus Beisbart, Gregor Betz & Georg Brun - 2021 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8:441–472.
    Reflective equilibrium (RE) is often regarded as a powerful method in ethics, logic, and even philosophy in general. Despite this popularity, characterizations of the method have been fairly vague and unspecific so far. It thus may be doubted whether RE is more than a jumble of appealing but ultimately sketchy ideas that cannot be spelled out consistently. In this paper, we dispel such doubts by devising a formal model of RE. The model contains as components the agent’s commitments and a (...)
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  14. What is Metaphysics in Baroque Scotism? Key Passages from Bartolomeo Mastri’s Disputations on Metaphysics (1646–1647).Claus Asbjørn Andersen - 2019 - Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 44:49–71.
    Bartolomeo Mastri’s Disputations on Metaphysics is the single most important work on metaphysics produced in the Scotist school during the Early Modern period. This contribution guides through the work by highlighting a selection of key passages that convey an impression of its historical-literary context, its subject matter, its main motifs and scientific aims, but also its limitations. Especially, we see Mastri emphasizing the theological aspect of theology, though he in the end refrains from exploring this aspect of metaphysics within his (...)
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  15. Scientia formalitatum. The Emergence of a New Discipline in the Renaissance.Claus A. Andersen - 2024 - Noctua 11 (2):200-257.
    The Formalist tradition in late-scholastic philosophy has gone unnoticed in standard historiography. This article’s overall objective is to add the Formalist tradition to what we know about Renaissance philosophy. I first show how the Formalist tradition was born out of some innovative considerations of hierarchies of distinctions in the wake of the Franciscan John Duns Scotus’s teaching on the formal distinction in the beginning of the fourteenth century (especially Francis of Meyronnes’s model of four distinctions and Petrus Thomae’s more elaborate (...)
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  16. Javelli and the Reception of the Scotist System of Distinctions in Renaissance Thomism.Claus A. Andersen - 2023 - In Tommaso De Robertis & Luca Burzelli (eds.), Chrysostomus Javelli: Pagan Philosophy and Christian Thought in the Renaissance. Springer Verlag. pp. 143-167.
    This chapter uncovers a less investigated aspect of the relationship between the two most important scholastic schools of the Renaissance, Thomism and Scotism: the influence of Scotist literature on distinctions as seen in some sixteenth-century Thomists. The chapter has a primary focus on Chrysostomus Javelli’s engagement in his discussion of divine attributes with the Scotist doctrine of distinctions, but also considers other Thomist sources. First, the beginnings of the highly specialised Scotist literature on distinctions are traced back to the start (...)
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  17. Besprechungsaufsatz zu Khaled El-Rouayheb/Sabine Schmidtke (Hgg.), The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy.Claus A. Andersen - 2018 - Philosophisches Jahrbuch 125 (1):90-97.
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  18. Krausism.Claus Dierksmeier - 2009 - In Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte & Otávio Bueno (eds.), A Companion to Latin American Philosophy. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 110–127.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Philosophical Context in Jena around 1800 A Metaphysics of Freedom Analytic and Synthetic Philosophy Metaphysics of Humanity Socioeconomic Philosophy The Natural World Harmonious Freedom Krause's Philosophy in Spain Ideal de la humanidad (the ideal of humanity) Latin American Reception Conclusion References Further Reading.
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  19.  85
    Philosophy and Electronic Publishing.Claus Huitfeldt - 1997 - The Monist 80 (3):348-367.
    This article is an account of an electronic discussion which took place between November 1995 and June 1996. A number of specialists in relevant research areas had been invited to take part in the discussion from the very beginning, and some were added later. Altogether 30 individuals subscribed to the list. The “target paper,” written by Allen Renear, was sent to the list on November 27, 1995. The target paper alone comprised 8,500 words. The ensuing discussion, to which 9 of (...)
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  20. Computersimulationen in der Angewandten Politischen Philosophie - Ein Beispiel.Claus Beisbart & Stephan Hartmann - 2011 - In Carl-Friedrich Gethmann (ed.), Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft. Meiner Verlag. pp. 601-634.
    In den vergangenen Jahren hat die Europäische Union (EU) wiederholt versucht, ihre Institutionen zu reformieren. Als der Entwurf für eine Europäische Verfassung und später der Vertrag von Lissabon ausgehandelt wurden, betraf einer der meistdiskutiertesten Streitpunkte die Frage, nach welcher Entscheidungsregel der EU-Ministerrat abstimmen sollte. Diese Frage ist eine genuin normative Frage. Deshalb sollten auch politische Philosophen und Ethiker etwas zu dieser Frage beitragen können. Im folgenden wollen wir uns dieser Herausforderung stellen und alternative Entscheidungsregeln für den EU-Ministerrat bewerten. Dabei erweisen (...)
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  21. (1 other version)Krause’s Ethics as a Precursor to Capability Theory.Claus Dierksmeier - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (2):83-107.
    There are striking parallels between current capability theories and the moral philosophy of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. This article reconstructs central arguments of Krause’s ethics and correlates them with passages from the works of Martha Nussbaum, showing that such similarities extend not only to what, substantially, is being professed in either philosophy but also, procedurally, to the question of how the respective moral conclusions are reached. As Krause correlates responsibility with capability, the article begins with an examination of Krause’s idea (...)
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  22. Laws of Form: Why Spencer-Brown is missing the point.Claus Janew - 2011 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 2 (6):885-886.
    What George Spencer-Brown wants to rationalize out of existence is alternation itself – the prerequisite of his whole operation. By that he simplifies (identifies) more than he says. And he does not say all that is important.
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  23. Bild – eine Explikation auf der Basis von Intentionalität und Bewirken.Claus Schlaberg - 2012 - Https://Mediarep.Org/Server/Api/Core/Bitstreams/8Cad9Bf3-1a29-420C-Ace9-a5524Ed52Ce1/Content.
    Abstract The first part argues that being an image is an (at least) four part relation between the image itself (x2), properties of recipients (B), the object (x3), and properties of the object (M). Referring to Grice, Schiffer, and Meggle, a distinction is made between communicativity and non-communicativity (manipulativity) of x2 regarding to B, x3, and M. The second part substitutes sign and image by explicates that denote properties relevant for x2 being an image regarding to B, x3, and M, (...)
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  24.  79
    Falsafa. Ibn Rushd, filosofien og islam.Claus Asbjørn Andersen - 2022 - Copenhagen, Denmark: Forlaget Vandkunsten.
    This essay argues that what is provoking about Ibn Rushd today is not his stance on such topics as the eternity of the world, God's knowledge of singular things, or the immortality of the soul. It is rather his radical philosophical elitisim, i.e., his view that every religion has room for philosophy, but only for the few - the majority must simply follow holy writ and leave all questioning and allegorical interpretation to those few individuals who possess sufficient training in (...)
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  25. Minimizing the threat of a positive majority deficit in two-tier voting systems with equipopulous units.Claus Beisbart & Luc Bovens - 2013 - Public Choice 132 (1-2):75-94.
    The mean majority deficit in a two-tier voting system is a function of the partition of the population. We derive a new square-root rule: For odd-numbered population sizes and equipopulous units the mean majority deficit is maximal when the member size of the units in the partition is close to the square root of the population size. Furthermore, within the partitions into roughly equipopulous units, partitions with small even numbers of units or small even-sized units yield high mean majority deficits. (...)
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  26. Dynamic Existence.Claus Janew - 2011 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 2 (6):877-884.
    Everything is in motion. "Inertness" arises from (approximative) repetition, that is, through rotation or an alternation that delineates a focus of consciousness. This focus of consciousness, in turn, must also move/alternate (the two differ only in continuity). If its alternation seems to go too far - physically, psychically or intellectually - it reaches into the subconscious. In this way, interconnection is established by the alternation of the focus of consciousness. Therefore, in a world in which everything is interconnected, all focuses (...)
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  27. The Self, Emptiness, and Awareness.Claus Janew - 2024 - Truthfulness. The Consciousness That Creates Reality (Book).
    In this exploration of self-identity, I argue that the self is not a standalone entity but an integral part of a broader consciousness. Deep meditation reveals the self as a construct beyond egoistic confines, interlinked with the external world and others' experiences. Decisions arise from an awareness that transcends individual ego, suggesting that our sense of self is an inexhaustible center of dynamic consciousness rather than an ultimate emptiness.
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  28.  94
    Scotism Made in Louvain. The Scholastic Culture of the Franciscans in Belgium. Exhibition at KU Leuven, Maurits Sabbe Library, June 3 - September 30, 2024. Catalogue.Andersen Claus A. & Jacob Schmutz (eds.) - 2024 - Louvain-la-Neuve:
    2024 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Theodor Smising’s giant volume De Deo Uno (printed in Antwerp in 1624), which was soon followed by a second volume, De Deo Trino (printed in Antwerp in 1626). Smising’s work was the first printed output of what developed into a specific tradition within early modern thought, the Louvain tradition of Scotism, itself but one part of the broad Scotist tradition that build upon the thought of John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266–1308). This (...)
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  29. What is the folk concept of life?Kevin Reuter & Claus Beisbart - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (2):486-507.
    This paper details the content and structure of the folk concept of life, and discusses its relevance for scientific research on life. In four empirical studies, we investigate which features of life are considered salient, universal, central, and necessary. Functionings, such as nutrition and reproduction, but not material composition, turn out to be salient features commonly associated with living beings (Study 1). By contrast, being made of cells is considered a universal feature of living species (Study 2), a central aspect (...)
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  30. The Reality of Free Will.Claus Janew - 2020 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 11 (1):1-16.
    The uniqueness of each standpoint, each point of effect, can only be "overcome" by the standpoint changing to other standpoints and returning. In such alternation, which can also appear as constant change, lies the unity of the world. The wholeness of an alternation, however, is a structure of consciousness due to the special relationship between the circumscribing periphery and the infinitesimal center. This process structure unites determinacy and indeterminacy also totally in every place. Therefore, everywhere we are dealing with forms (...)
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  31. Die Erschaffung der Realität.Claus Janew - 1998 - Dresden, Germany: Sumari-Verlag.
    Das Hauptargument dieses Buches ist die unleugbare Offenheit jedes Systems zum Unbekannten hin. Und die Grundfrage lautet: Was ergibt sich aus dieser Offenheit? Wir sind ein Teil des unendlichen Universums und eine Verkörperung seiner Ganzheit. Beides bedeutet für uns eine individualisierte Wirklichkeit, durch die sich das Universum ausdrückt und durch die es andererseits mit gebildet wird. Es bedeutet ebenfalls unsere Notwendigkeit, Wichtigkeit und Unzerstörbarkeit für die Gesamtheit seiner Verkörperungen. Die meisten Verbindungen untereinander sind uns kaum bewusst. Indessen gewährleistet die Infinitesimalstruktur (...)
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  32. Unifying the essential concepts of biological networks: biological insights and philosophical foundations.Daniel Kostic, Claus Hilgetag & Marc Tittgemeyer - 2020 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 375 (1796):1-8.
    Over the last decades, network-based approaches have become highly popular in diverse fields of biology, including neuroscience, ecology, molecular biology and genetics. While these approaches continue to grow very rapidly, some of their conceptual and methodological aspects still require a programmatic foundation. This challenge particularly concerns the question of whether a generalized account of explanatory, organisational and descriptive levels of networks can be applied universally across biological sciences. To this end, this highly interdisciplinary theme issue focuses on the definition, motivation (...)
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  33. How Consciousness Creates Reality.Claus Janew - 2011 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 2 (6):838-867.
    We will begin with seemingly simple interactions in our daily lives, examine how they originate on a deeper level, come to understand the essentials of consciousness, and finally recognize that we create our reality in its entirety. In the course of this quest, we will uncover little-heeded paths to accessing our subconscious, other individuals, and that which can be understood by the term "God". And the solution to the classical problem of free will constitutes the gist of the concepts is (...)
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  34. How Consciousness Creates Reality. The Full Version.Claus Janew - 2022 - Charleston: CreateSpace.
    The main argument in this book is the undeniable openness of every system to the unknown. And the fundamental question goes: What does this openness produce? We are a part of the infinite universe and an incorporation of its wholeness. Both for us means an individualized reality, through which the universe expresses itself and on the other hand through which it is built up with. It also means our necessity, importance and indestructibility for the sum of its incorporations. Most connections (...)
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  35. Dialogue on Alternating Consciousness: From Perception to Infinities and Back to Free Will.Claus Janew - 2014 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 5 (4):351-391.
    Can we trace back consciousness, reality, awareness, and free will to a single basic structure without giving up any of them? Can the universe exist in both real and individual ways without being composed of both? This dialogue founds consciousness and freedom of choice on the basis of a new reality concept that also includes the infinite as far as we understand it. Just the simplest distinction contains consciousness. It is not static, but a constant alternation of perspectives. From its (...)
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  36. The Biosemiotic Approach in Biology : Theoretical Bases and Applied Models.Joao Queiroz, Claus Emmeche, Kalevi Kull & Charbel El-Hani - 2011 - In George Terzis & Robert Arp (eds.), Information and Living Systems: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives. Bradford. pp. 91-130.
    Biosemiotics is a growing fi eld that investigates semiotic processes in the living realm in an attempt to combine the fi ndings of the biological sciences and semiotics. Semiotic processes are more or less what biologists have typically referred to as “ signals, ” “ codes, ”and “ information processing ”in biosystems, but these processes are here understood under the more general notion of semiosis, that is, the production, action, and interpretation of signs. Thus, biosemiotics can be seen as biology (...)
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  37. Omnipresent Consciousness and Free Will.Claus Janew - 2011 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 2 (6):868-876.
    This article is not an attempt to explain consciousness in terms basically of quantum physics or neuro-biology. Instead I should like to place the term "Consciousness" on a broader footing. I shall therefore proceed from everyday reality, precisely where we experience ourselves as conscious beings. I shall use the term in such a general way as to resolve the question whether only a human being enjoys consciousness, or even a thermostat. Whilst the difference is considerable, it is not fundamental. Every (...)
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  38. Sven K. Knebel, Suarezismus, Erkenntnistheoretisches aus dem Nachlass des Jesuitengenerals Tirso González de Santalla (1624–1705), Abhandlung und Edition, (= Bochumer Studien zur Philosophie, Bd. 51). [REVIEW]Claus A. Andersen - 2014 - Philosophisches Jahrbuch 121 (1):194-197.
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  39. "I like how it looks but it is not beautiful" -- Sensory appeal beyond beauty.Claudia Muth, Jochen Briesen & Claus-Christian Carbon - 2020 - Poetics 79.
    Statements such as “X is beautiful but I don’t like how it looks” or “I like how X looks but it is not beautiful” sound contradictory. How contradictory they sound might however depend on the object X and on the aesthetic adjective being used (“beautiful”, “elegant”, “dynamic”, etc.). In our study, the first sentence was estimated to be more contradictory than the latter: If we describe something as beautiful, we often intend to evaluate its appearance, whereas it is less counterintuitive (...)
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  40. A semiotic analysis of the genetic information.Charbel El-Hani, Joao Queiroz & Claus Emmeche - 2006 - Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique 1 (4):1-68.
    Terms loaded with informational connotations are often employed to refer to genes and their dynamics. Indeed, genes are usually perceived by biologists as basically ‘the carriers of hereditary information.’ Nevertheless, a number of researchers consider such talk as inadequate and ‘just metaphorical,’ thus expressing a skepticism about the use of the term ‘information’ and its derivatives in biology as a natural science. First, because the meaning of that term in biology is not as precise as it is, for instance, in (...)
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  41. Counterfactual Skepticism and Multidimensional Semantics.H. Orri Stefánsson - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (5):875-898.
    It has recently been argued that indeterminacy and indeterminism make most ordinary counterfactuals false. I argue that a plausible way to avoid such counterfactual skepticism is to postulate the existence of primitive modal facts that serve as truth-makers for counterfactual claims. Moreover, I defend a new theory of ‘might’ counterfactuals, and develop assertability and knowledge criteria to suit such unobservable ‘counterfacts’.
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  42. Mechanisms, counterfactuals and laws.Stavros Ioannidis & Stathis Psillos - 2017 - In Stuart Glennan & Phyllis McKay Illari (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 144-156.
    In this chapter we examine the relation between mechanisms and laws/counterfactuals by revisiting the main notions of mechanism found in the literature. We distinguish between two different conceptions of ‘mechanism’: mechanisms-of underlie or constitute a causal process; mechanisms-for are complex systems that function so as to produce a certain behavior. According to some mechanists, a mechanism fulfills both of these roles simultaneously. The main argument of the chapter is that there is an asymmetrical dependence between both kinds of mechanisms and (...)
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  43. Counterfactuals and explanation.Boris Kment - 2006 - Mind 115 (458):261-310.
    On the received view, counterfactuals are analysed using the concept of closeness between possible worlds: the counterfactual 'If it had been the case that p, then it would have been the case that q' is true at a world w just in case q is true at all the possible p-worlds closest to w. The degree of closeness between two worlds is usually thought to be determined by weighting different respects of similarity between them. The question I consider in (...)
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  44. Against Counterfactual Miracles.Cian Dorr - 2016 - Philosophical Review 125 (2):241-286.
    This paper considers how counterfactuals should be evaluated on the assumption that determinism is true. I argue against Lewis's influential view that the actual laws of nature would have been false if something had happened that never actually happened, and in favour of the competing view that history would have been different all the way back. I argue that we can do adequate justice to our ordinary practice of relying on a wide range of historical truths in evaluating counterfactuals by (...)
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  45. Most Counterfactuals Are False.Alan Hajek - 2014
    I argue that most counterfactuals are false.
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  46. Clause-Type, Force, and Normative Judgment in the Semantics of Imperatives.Nate Charlow - 2018 - In Daniel Fogal, Daniel W. Harris & Matt Moss (eds.), New Work on Speech Acts. Oxford University Press. pp. 67–98.
    I argue that imperatives express contents that are both cognitively and semantically related to, but nevertheless distinct from, modal propositions. Imperatives, on this analysis, semantically encode features of planning that are modally specified. Uttering an imperative amounts to tokening this feature in discourse, and thereby proffering it for adoption by the audience. This analysis deals smoothly with the problems afflicting Portner's Dynamic Pragmatic account and Kaufmann's Modal account. It also suggests an appealing reorientation of clause-type theorizing, in which the cognitive (...)
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  47. Counterfactual Decision Theory.Brian Hedden - 2023 - Mind 132 (527):730-761.
    I defend counterfactual decision theory, which says that you should evaluate an action in terms of which outcomes would likely obtain were you to perform it. Counterfactual decision theory has traditionally been subsumed under causal decision theory as a particular formulation of the latter. This is a mistake. Counterfactual decision theory is importantly different from, and superior to, causal decision theory, properly so called. Causation and counterfactuals come apart in three kinds of cases. In cases of overdetermination, (...)
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  48. Counterfactual Attitudes and Multi-Centered Worlds.Dilip Ninan - 2012 - Semantics and Pragmatics 5 (5):1-57.
    Counterfactual attitudes like imagining, dreaming, and wishing create a problem for the standard formal semantic theory of de re attitude ascriptions. I show how the problem can be avoided if we represent an agent's attitudinal possibilities using "multi-centered worlds", possible worlds with multiple distinguished individuals, each of which represents an individual with whom the agent is acquainted. I then present a compositional semantics for de re ascriptions according to which singular terms are "assignment-sensitive" expressions and attitude verbs are "assignment (...)
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  49. Counterfactual Decision Theory Is Causal Decision Theory.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2024 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 105 (1):115-156.
    The role of causation and counterfactuals in causal decision theory is vexed and disputed. Recently, Brian Hedden (2023) argues that we should abandon causal decision theory in favour of an alternative: counterfactual decision theory. I argue that, pace Hedden, counterfactual decision theory is not a competitor to, but rather a version of, causal decision theory – the most popular version by far. I provide textual evidence that the founding fathers of causal decision theory (Stalnaker, Gibbard, Harper, Lewis, Skyrms, (...)
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  50. Downward Counterfactuals and Motivation: The Wake-Up Call and the Pangloss Effect.Keith Markman & Matthew McMullen - 2000 - Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26 (5):575-584.
    Three studies examined the motivational implications of thinking about how things could have been worse. It was hypothesized that when these downward counterfactuals yield negative affect, through consideration of the possibility of a negative outcome, motivation to change and improve would be increased (the wake-up call). When downward counterfactuals yield positive affect, through diminishing the impact of a potentially negative outcome, motivation to change and improve should be reduced (the Pangloss effect). Results from three studies supported these hypotheses. Studies 1 (...)
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