I insist that I was able to raise my hand, and I acknowledge that a law would have been broken had I done so, but I deny that I am therefore able to break a law. To uphold my instance of soft determinism, I need not claim any incredible powers. To uphold the compatibilism that I actually believe, I need not claim that such powers are even possible. My incompatibilist opponent is a creature of fiction, but he has his prototypes (...) in real life. He is modeled partly after Peter van Inwagen and partly on myself when I first worried about van Inwagen's argument against compatibilism. (shrink)

We present data and argument to show that in Tetris - a real-time interactive video game - certain cognitive and perceptual problems are more quickly, easily, and reliably solved by performing actions in the world rather than by performing computational actions in the head alone. We have found that some translations and rotations are best understood as using the world to improve cognition. These actions are not used to implement a plan, or to implement a reaction; they are used to (...) change the world in order to simplify the problem-solving task. Thus, we distinguish pragmatic actions ñ actions performed to bring one physically closer to a goal - from epistemic actions - actions performed to uncover information that is hidden or hard to compute mentally. To illustrate the need for epistemic actions, we first develop a standard information-processing model of Tetris-cognition, and show that it cannot explain performance data from human players of the game - even when we relax the assumption of fully sequential processing. Standard models disregard many actions taken by players because they appear unmotivated or superfluous. However, we describe many such actions that are actually taken by players that are far from superfluous, and that play valuable roles in improving human performance. We argue that traditional accounts are limited because they regard action as having a single function: to change the world. By recognizing a second function of action - an epistemic function - we can explain many of the actions that a traditional model cannot. Although, our argument is supported by numerous examples specifically from Tetris, we outline how the one category of epistemic action can be incorporated into theories of action more generally. (shrink)

In the past few years, a number of philosophers ; Horgan and Tienson 2002; Pitt 2004) have maintained the following three theses: there is a distinctive sort of phenomenology characteristic of conscious thought, as opposed to other sorts of conscious mental states; different conscious thoughts have different phenomenologies; and thoughts with the same phenomenology have the same intentional content. The last of these three claims is open to at least two different interpretations. It might mean that the phenomenology of a (...) thought expresses its intentional content, where intentional content is understood as propositional, and propositions are understood as mind-and language-independent abstract entities. And it might mean that the phenomenology of a thought is its intentional content—that is, that the phenomenology of a thought, like the phenomenology of a sensation, constitutes its content. The second sort of view is a kind of psychologism. Psychologistic views hold that one or another sort of thing—numbers, sentences, propositions, etc.—that we can think or know about is in fact a kind of mental thing. Since Frege, psychologism has been in bad repute among analytic philosophers. It is widely held that Frege showed that such views are untenable, since, among other things, they subjectivize what is in fact objective, and, hence, relativize such things as consistency and truth to the peculiarities of human psychology. The purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of the thesis that intentional mental content is phenomenological and to try to reach a conclusion about whether it yields a tenable view of mind, thought and meaning. I believe the thesis is not so obviously wrong as it will strike many philosophers of mind and language. In fact, it can be defended against the standard objections to psychologism, and it can provide the basis for a novel and interesting account of mentality. (shrink)

The causal closure of the physical poses a familiar causal exclusion problem for the special sciences that stems from the idea that if closure is true, then fundamental physical properties do all the causal work involved in bringing about physical effects. In this paper I aim to show that the strongest causal closure principle that is not ruled out by some simple physics in fact allows for a certain kind of downward causation, which in turn makes room for robust special (...) science autonomy. I focus on the case of vector composition, arguing that it involves irreducibly multilevel causation. To give a complete causal explanation of what goes on in cases that involve the effects of multiple forces, we need to appeal not only to the fundamental properties that generate those forces, but also to geometric properties that determine how multiple vectors compose. However, if all the causal work involved in such cases were due to fundamental physical properties, there would be a one-level explanation available. Hence, I argue, it cannot be the case that fundamental physical properties do all the causal work. The extra causal work, I suggest, comes from the fact that the causal powers bestowed by fundamental physical properties have irreducibly geometric manifestation conditions. I defend the resulting form of downward causation as a solution to the problem of special science autonomy, and discuss two potential accounts of its source, in terms of the debate between kinematic and dynamic theories of the origins of spacetime symmetries. (shrink)

Hylomorphists hold that substances are, in some sense, composites of matter and form. The form of a substance is typically taken to play a fundamental role in determining the unity or identity of the whole. Staunch hylomorphists think that this role is of a kind that precludes the ontological reduction of form to the physical and thus take their position to be inconsistent with physicalism. Forms, according to staunch hylomorphism, play a fundamental role in grounding their bearers’ proper parts and (...) that, it seems, rules out the physical grounding of form itself. I shall develop a physicalist version of hylomorphism that treats form as geometric structure and which, I shall argue, entails many of the central theses endorsed by staunch hylomorphists. Based on Shoemaker’s notion of conditional powers, I shall argue that the geometric structures of complex wholes are the conditions on at least some of the conditional powers of their bearers’ proper parts, transforming those powers into powers simpliciter. Thus, forms play a fundamental role in the dynamical evolution of the physical world, but without bestowing causal powers themselves and hence without violating the causal closure of the physical domain. If a substance’s proper parts are taken to be individuated by their powers simpliciter, then they derive their identities from their places in the substantial whole, which thus determines the identities of its proper parts without changing their intrinsic natures. (shrink)

This is a collective study of the epistemic significance of disagreement: twelve contributors explore rival responses to the problems that it raises for philosophy. They develop our understanding of epistemic phenomena that are central to any thoughtful engagement with others' beliefs.

What does it mean to know how to do something? This book develops a comprehensive account of know-how, a crucial epistemic goal for all who care about getting things right, not only with respect to the facts, but also with respect to practice. It proposes a novel interpretation of the seminal work of Gilbert Ryle, according to which know-how is a competence, a complex ability to do well in an activity in virtue of guidance by an understanding of what it (...) takes to do so. This idea is developed into a full-fledged account, Rylean responsibilism, which understands know-how in terms of the normative guidance and responsible control of one's acts. Within the complex current debate about know-how, this view occupies a middle ground position between the intellectualist claim that know-how just is propositional or objectual knowledge and the anti-intellectualist claim that know-how just is ability. In genuine know-how, practical ability and guiding intellect are both necessary, but essentially intertwined. (shrink)

For a stable visual world, the colours of objects should appear the same under different lights. This property of colour constancy has been assumed to be fundamental to vision, and many experimental attempts have been made to quantify it. I contend here, however, that the usual methods of measurement are either too coarse or concentrate not on colour constancy itself, but on other, complementary aspects of scene perception. Whether colour constancy exists other than in nominal terms remains unclear.

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (shrink)

Musical works change. Bruckner revised his Eighth Symphony. Ella Fitzgerald and many other artists have made it acceptable to sing the jazz standard “All the Things You Are” without its original verse. If we accept that musical works genuinely change in these ways, a puzzle arises: why can’t I change Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony? More generally, why are some individuals in a privileged position when it comes to changing musical works and other artifacts, such as novels, films, and games? I give (...) a view of musical works that helps to answer these questions. Musical works, on this view, are created abstract objects with no parts. The paradigmatic changes that musical works undergo are socially determined normative changes in how they should be performed. Due to contingent social practices, Bruckner, but not I, can change how his symphony should be performed. Were social practices radically different, I would be able to change his symphony. This view extends to abstract artifacts beyond music, including novels, films, words, games, and corporations. (shrink)

This article uses the case study of ethnobiological classification to develop a positive and a negative thesis about the state of natural kind debates. On the one hand, I argue that current accounts of natural kinds can be integrated in a multidimensional framework that advances understanding of classificatory practices in ethnobiology. On the other hand, I argue that such a multidimensional framework does not leave any substantial work for the notion “natural kind” and that attempts to formulate a general account (...) of naturalness have become an obstacle to understanding classificatory practices. (shrink)

The arguments of Fodor, Garret, Walker and Parkes [(1980) Against definitions, Cognition, 8, 263-367] are the source of widespread skepticism in cognitive science about lexical semantic structure. Whereas the thesis that lexical items, and the concepts they express, have decompositional structure (i.e. have significant constituents) was at one time "one of those ideas that hardly anybody [in the cognitive sciences] ever considers giving up" (p. 264), most researchers now believe that "[a]ll the evidence suggests that the classical [(decompositional)] view is (...) wrong as a general theory of concepts" [Smith, Medin & Rips (1984) A psychological approach to concepts: comments on Rey, Cognition, 17, 272], and cite Fodor et al. (1980) as "sounding the death knell for decompositional theories" [MacNamara & Miller (1989) Attributes of theories of meaning, Psychological Bulletin, 106, 360]. I argue that the prevailing skepticism is unmotivated by the arguments in Fodor et al. Fodor et al. misrepresent the form, function and scope of the decompositional hypothesis, and the procedures they employ to test for the psychological reality of definitions are flawed. I argue, further, that decompositional explanations of the phenomena they consider are preferable to their primitivist alternatives, and, hence, that there is prima facie reason to accept them as evidence for the existence of decompositional structure. Cognitive scientists would, therefore, do well to revert to their former commitment to the decompositional hypothesis. (shrink)

Given their physical realization, what causal work is left for functional properties to do? Humean solutions to the exclusion problem (e.g. overdetermination and difference-making) typically appeal to counterfactual and/or nomic relations between functional property-instances and behavioural effects, tacitly assuming that such relations suffice for causal work. Clarification of the notion of causal work, I argue, shows not only that such solutions don't work, but also reveals a novel solution to the exclusion problem based on the relations between dispositional properties at (...) different levels of mechanism, which involves three central claims: (i) the causal work of properties consists in grounding dispositions, (ii) functional properties are dispositions, and (iii) the dispositions of mechanisms are grounded in the dispositions of their components. Treating functional mental properties as dispositions of components in psychological mechanisms, I argue that such properties do the causal work of grounding agent-level dispositions. These dispositions, while ultimately grounded in the physical realizers of mental properties, are indirectly so grounded, through a hierarchy of grounding relations that extends upwards, of necessity, through the mental domain. (shrink)

This paper asks whether phenomenal intentionality (intentionality that arises from phenomenal consciousness alone) has a relational structure of the sort envisaged in Russell’s theory of acquaintance. I put forward three arguments in favor of a relation view: one phenomenological, one linguistic, and one based on the view’s ability to account for the truth conditions of phenomenally intentional states. I then consider several objections to the relation view. The chief objection to the relation view takes the form of a dilemma between (...) Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of the properties constitutive of the contents of phenomenally intentional states on this view: the Aristotelian view seems unable to account for all the apparent contents of phenomenally intentional states, but the Platonic view seems to be ontologically unacceptable. I also consider other objections from physicalism, phenomenology, and epistemology. (shrink)

I argue that some important elements of the current cosmological model are 'conventionalist’ in the sense defined by Karl Popper. These elements include dark matter and dark energy; both are auxiliary hypotheses that were invoked in response to observations that falsified the standard model as it existed at the time.

The paper considers contemporary models of presumption in terms of their ability to contribute to a working theory of presumption for argumentation. Beginning with the Whatelian model, we consider its contemporary developments and alternatives, as proposed by Sidgwick, Kauffeld, Cronkhite, Rescher, Walton, Freeman, Ullmann-Margalit, and Hansen. Based on these accounts, we present a picture of presumptions characterized by their nature, function, foundation and force. On our account, presumption is a modal status that is attached to a claim and has the (...) effect of shifting, in a dialogue, a burden of proof set at a local level. Presumptions can be analysed and evaluated inferentially as components of rule-based structures. Presumptions are defeasible, and the force of a presumption is a function of its normative foundation. This picture seeks to provide a framework to guide the development of specific theories of presumption. (shrink)

We take it that we can exercise doxastic agency by reasoning and by making judgments. We take it, that is, that we can actively make up our minds by reasoning and judging. On what I call the ‘Standard View’ this is so because judgment can yield belief. It is typical to take it that judgments yield beliefs by causing them. But on the resultant understanding of the Standard View, I argue, it is unclear how judgment could play its role in (...) doxastic agency in the way we take it to. I therefore offer an alternative understanding of how judgment yields belief. Drawing on Ryle I argue that when one comes to believe by judging the event which is one's judging is token identical to the event which is one's coming to believe. This paves the way for version of the Standard View capable of explaining how we can actively make up our minds despite that we cannot believe or come to believe at will. (shrink)

Are the special sciences autonomous from physics? Those who say they are need to explain how dependent special science properties could feature in irreducible causal explanations, but that’s no easy task. The demands of a broadly physicalist worldview require that such properties are not only dependent on the physical, but also physically realized. Realized properties are derivative, so it’s natural to suppose that they have derivative causal powers. Correspondingly, philosophical orthodoxy has it that if we want special science properties to (...) bestow genuinely new causal powers, we must reject physical realization and embrace a form of emergentism, in which such properties arise from the physical by mysterious brute determination. In this paper, I argue that contrary to this orthodoxy, there are physically realized properties that bestow new causal powers in relation to their realizers. The key to my proposal is to reject causal-functional accounts of realization and embrace a broader account that allows for the realization of shapes and patterns. Unlike functional properties, such properties are defined by qualitative, non-causal specifications, so realizing them does not consist in bestowing causal powers. This, I argue, allows for causal novelty of the strongest kind. I argue that the molecular geometry of H2O—a qualitative, multiply realizable property—plays an irreducible role in explaining its dipole moment, and thereby bestows novel powers. On my proposal, special science properties can have the kind of causal novelty traditionally associated with strong emergence, without any of the mystery. (shrink)

Presentists, who believe that only present objects exist, should accept a thisness ontology, since it can do considerable work in defence of presentism. In this paper, I propose a version of presentism that involves thisnesses of past and present entities and I argue this view solves important problems facing standard versions of presentism.

This paper offers a probabilistic treatment of the conditions for argument cogency as endorsed in informal logic: acceptability, relevance, and sufficiency. Treating a natural language argument as a reason-claim-complex, our analysis identifies content features of defeasible argument on which the RSA conditions depend, namely: change in the commitment to the reason, the reason’s sensitivity and selectivity to the claim, one’s prior commitment to the claim, and the contextually determined thresholds of acceptability for reasons and for claims. Results contrast with, and (...) may indeed serve to correct, the informal understanding and applications of the RSA criteria concerning their conceptual dependence, their function as update-thresholds, and their status as obligatory rather than permissive norms, but also show how these formal and informal normative approachs can in fact align. (shrink)

The present work is focussed on the completeness of physics, or what is here called the Completeness Thesis: the claim that the domain of the physical is causally closed. Two major questions are tackled: How best is the Completeness Thesis to be formulated? What can be said in defence of the Completeness Thesis? My principal conclusions are that the Completeness Thesis can be coherently formulated, and that the evidence in favour if it significantly outweighs that against it. In opposition to (...) those who argue that formulation is impossible because no account of what is to count as physical can be provided, I argue that as long as the purpose of the argument in which the account is to be used are borne in mind there are no significant difficulties. The account of the physical which I develop holds as physical whatever is needed to fix the likelihood of pre-theoretically given physical effects, and hypothesises in addition that no chemical, biological or psychological factors will be needed in this way. The thus formulated Completeness Thesis is coherent, and has significant empirical content. In opposition to those who defend the doctrine of emergentism by means of philosophical arguments I contend that those arguments are flawed, setting up misleading dichotomies between needlessly attenuated alternatives and assuming the truth of what is to be proved. Against those who defend emergentism by appeal to the evidence, I argue that the history of science since the nineteenth century shows clearly that the empirical credentials of the view that the world is causally closed at the level of a small number of purely physical forces and types of energy is stronger than ever, and the credentials of emergentism correspondingly weaker. In opposition to those who argue that difficulties with reductionism point to the implausibility of the Completeness Thesis I argue that completeness in no way entails the kinds of reductionism which give rise to the difficulties in question. I argue further that the truth of the Completeness Thesis is in fact compatible with a great deal of taxonomic disorder and the impossibility of any general reduction of non-fundamental descriptions to fundamental ones. In opposition to those who argue that the epistemological credentials of fundamental physical laws are poor, and that those laws should in fact be seen as false, I contend that truth preserving accounts of fundamental laws can be developed. Developing such an account, I test it by considering cases of the composition of forces and causes, where what takes place is different to what is predicted by reference to any single law, and argue that viewing laws as tendencies allows their truth to be preserved, and sense to be made of both the experimental discovery of laws, and the fact that composition enables accurate prediction in at least some cases. (shrink)

According to the priority view, or prioritarianism, it matters more to benefit people the worse off they are. But how exactly should the priority view be defined? This article argues for a highly general characterization which essentially involves risk, but makes no use of evaluative measurements or the expected utility axioms. A representation theorem is provided, and when further assumptions are added, common accounts of the priority view are recovered. A defense of the key idea behind the priority view, the (...) priority principle, is provided. But it is argued that the priority view fails on both ethical and conceptual grounds. (shrink)

If there is content that we reason on, cognitive content, it is in the head and accessible to reasoning mechanisms. This paper discusses the phenomenal theory of cognitive content, according to which cognitive contents are the contents of phenomenal consciousness. I begin by distinguishing cognitive content from the closely associated notion of narrow content. I then argue, drawing on prior work, that the phenomenal theory can plausibly account for the cognitive contents of many relatively simple mental states. My main focus (...) in this paper is the question whether the phenomenal theory can account for the apparently abstract and complex cognitive contents of "high-level" thoughts. It might seem dubious that the theory can account for such cognitive contents, because cognitive phenomenology is too scarce and too thin. However, I argue there are in fact few abstract or complex cognitive contents, so the phenomenal theory's predictions are correct. This position explains some apparently irrational behavior that is otherwise hard to explain, and it makes sense of the central role of inner speech and other forms of consciousness in reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore anomalous dualism about consciousness, a view that has not previously been explored in any detail. We can classify theories of consciousness along two dimensions: first, a theory might be physicalist or dualist; second, a theory might endorse any of the three following views regarding causal relations between phenomenal properties (properties that characterize states of our consciousness) and physical properties: nomism (the two kinds of property interact through deterministic laws), acausalism (they do not causally interact), and (...) anomalism (they interact but not through deterministic laws). I suggest that a kind of anomalous dualism, nonreductive anomalous panpsychism, promises to offer the best overall answer to two pressing issues for dualist views, the problem of mental causation and the mapping problem (the problem of predicting mind-body associations). (shrink)

Working within the broad lines of general consensus that mark out the core features of John Stuart Mill’s (1806–1873) logic, as set forth in his A System of Logic (1843–1872), this chapter provides an introduction to Mill’s logical theory by reviewing his position on the relationship between induction and deduction, and the role of general premises and principles in reasoning. Locating induction, understood as a kind of analogical reasoning from particulars to particulars, as the basic form of inference that is (...) both free-standing and the sole load-bearing structure in Mill’s logic, the foundations of Mill’s logical system are briefly inspected. Several naturalistic features are identified, including its subject matter, human reasoning, its empiricism, which requires that only particular, experiential claims can function as basic reasons, and its ultimate foundations in ‘spontaneous’ inference. The chapter concludes by comparing Mill’s naturalized logic to Russell’s (1907) regressive method for identifying the premises of mathematics. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in online collaboration between experts and amateurs on scientific research. In this article, we analyse the epistemological implications of these crowdsourced projects, with a focus on Zooniverse, the world’s largest citizen science web portal. We use quantitative methods to evaluate the platform’s success in producing large volumes of observation statements and high impact scientific discoveries relative to more conventional means of data processing. Through empirical evidence, Bayesian reasoning, and conceptual analysis, we show how information (...) and communication technologies enhance the reliability, scalability, and connectivity of crowdsourced e-research, giving online citizen science projects powerful epistemic advantages over more traditional modes of scientific investigation. These results highlight the essential role played by technologically mediated social interaction in contemporary knowledge production. We conclude by calling for an explicitly sociotechnical turn in the philosophy of science that combines insights from statistics and logic to analyse the latest developments in scientific research. (shrink)

What role, if any, should our moral intuitions play in moral epistemology? We make, or are prepared to make, moral judgments about a variety of actual and hypothetical situations. Some of these moral judgments are more informed, reflective, and stable than others (call these ourconsideredmoral judgments); some we make more confidently than others; and some, though not all, are judgments about which there is substantial consensus. What bearing do our moral judgments have on philosophical ethics and the search for first (...) principles in ethics? Should these judgments constrain, or be constrained by, philosophical theorizing about morality? On the one hand, we might expect first principles to conform to our moral intuitions or at least to our considered moral judgments. After all, we begin the reflection that may lead to first principles from particular moral convictions. And some of our moral intuitions (e.g., that genocide is wrong) are more fixed and compelling than any putative first principle. If so, we might expect common moral beliefs to have an important evidential role in the construction and assessment of first principles. On the other hand, common moral beliefs often rest on poor information, reflect bias, or are otherwise mistaken. We often appeal to moral principles to justify our particular moral convictions or to resolve our disagreements. Insofar as this is true, we may expect first principles to provide a foundation on the basis of which to test common moral beliefs and, where necessary, form new moral convictions. (shrink)

A considerable part of the work of Brentano from his youth to the end of his life is concerned with the thought of Aristotle. His peculiar way to access Aristotle makes of Brentano a rather eccentric figure among the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s Aristotelian scholarship. On the one hand, he doesn’t reject emphasizing the use of philological and historical resources in order to understand ancient texts and indeed he makes extensive use of them himself; on the other hand, he (...) believes that the main guide for the study of ancient philosophy should be a philosophical hermeneutics. Therefore, he develops a sharp criticism against Zeller and other scholars. Is for this reason that Brentano considered medieval scholastics as more appropriate interpreters of classical philosophy than them, in particular Aquinas. In our remarks, we will seek to review the main features of the method for interpreting Aristotle defended by Brentano. (shrink)

Bernard Williams’ discussion of immortality in “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality” has spawned an entire philosophical literature. This literature tends to focus on one of Williams’ central claims: if we were to relinquish our mortality, we would necessarily become alienated from our existence and environment—“bored,” in his terms. Many theorists have defended this claim; many others have challenged it. Even if this claim is false, though, it still isn’t obvious that we should choose to relinquish our (...) mortality, given the option. And this is puzzling. Death is generally regarded as an evil, meriting anxiety, dread, and avoidance. What is it about our mortality that makes us hesitant to relinquish it? In this paper, I aim to explain this hesitancy and to argue in its favor: we should be hesitant to relinquish our mortality. Further, I take my discussion to suggest that most of us probably shouldn’t take this option if we were given it. To make these points, I draw on Williams’ discussion of immortality, developing and extending his thought in order to better understand how mortality shapes the way we relate to our lives, particularly the commitments and values that make them meaningful. Our mortality, it seems, plays a crucial role in our lives standing for something. Relinquishing it thus means risking the loss of this value. (shrink)

The strongest arguments for the permissibility of geoengineering (also known as climate engineering) rely implicitly on non-ideal theory—roughly, the theory of justice as applied to situations of partial compliance with principles of ideal justice. In an ideally just world, such arguments acknowledge, humanity should not deploy geoengineering; but in our imperfect world, society may need to complement mitigation and adaptation with geoengineering to reduce injustices associated with anthropogenic climate change. We interpret research proponents’ arguments as an application of a particular (...) branch of non-ideal theory known as “clinical theory.” Clinical theory aims to identify politically feasible institutions or policies that would address existing (or impending) injustice without violating certain kinds of moral permissibility constraints. We argue for three implications of clinical theory: First, conditional on falling costs and feasibility, clinical theory provides strong support for some geoengineering techniques that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Second, if some kinds of carbon dioxide removal technologies are supported by clinical theory, then clinical theory further supports using those technologies to enable “overshoot” scenarios in which developing countries exceed the cumulative emissions caps that would apply in ideal circumstances. Third, because of tensions between political feasibility and moral permissibility, clinical theory provides only weak support for geoengineering techniques that aim to manage incoming solar radiation. (shrink)

Neste artigo, discuto o problema das propriedades emergentes, começando por apresentar uma concepção tradicional de acordo com a qual estas propriedades exibem três características definidoras: elas dependem de propriedades e relações físicas, mas constituem, em relação a estas, uma novidade e, como tal, não são delas deduzíveis. Em primeiro lugar, discuto algumas das razões gerais que explicam o facto de tradicionalmente se supor que este tipo de novidade – e.g. causal ou qualitativa – parece exigir que as propriedades emergentes não (...) se encontram, de todo, fisicamente fundadas, não podendo ser deduzidas das suas bases físicas. Portanto, a dependência física das propriedades emergentes não pode ser explicada, o que é normalmente tido como misterioso. Recorrendo a uma concepção funcionalista de dedutibilidade, discuto de seguida, com mais detalhe, a relação entre a novidade e a não-dedutibilidade, realçando o modo como os diferentes tipos de não-dedutibilidade conduzem a diferentes tipos de novidade e, como tal, a diferentes formas de emergência. Finalmente, considero algumas abordagens científicas modernas que rejeitam a não-dedutibilidade enquanto condição necessária da emergência. Segundo tais abordagens, o tipo de novidade associado às propriedades emergentes é compatível com uma fundação física, o que, por sua vez, faz desvanecer o mistério e confere respeitabilidade científica à noção de emergência. Concluirei estabelecendo comparações entre estas abordagens e o hilomorfismo neo-Aristotélico. (shrink)

A critical assessment of Thomas Nagel's book, Mind and Cosmos, drawing out two independent notions of intelligibility, between which I argue Nagel equivocates in his central arguments.

The computational genomics community has come increasingly to rely on the methodology of creating annotations of scientific literature using terms from controlled structured vocabularies such as the Gene Ontology (GO). We here address the question of what such annotations signify and of how they are created by working biologists. Our goal is to promote a better understanding of how the results of experiments are captured in annotations in the hope that this will lead to better representations of biological reality through (...) both the annotation process and ontology development, and in more informed use of the GO resources by experimental scientists. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett has offered a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for something's being the proper object of our moral commitment, that is, for something's being a person. Strict application of these largely pragmatic conditions, however, would result in a moral community with quite a surprising membership roster, because of both who is on it and who isn't. The problem is that "your" being a person should amount to more than a function of "my" goals and cleverness.

In "A Modal Argument for Narrow Content" ("Journal of Philosophy", LXXXVIII, 1991, pp 5-26), Jerry Fodor proposes a necessary condition for the distinctness of causal powers. He uses this condition to support psychological individualism. I show that Fodor's argument relies on inconsistent interpretations of his condition on distinct causal powers. Moreover, on no consistent interpretation does Fodor's condition yield the results claimed for it.

For Charles Peirce, the project of inquiry is a social one. Though inquiry, the passage from genuine doubt to settled belief, can be described on the individual level, its significance as a human activity is manifested in collective action. For any individual, Truth transcends experience and inquiry. But it does not transcend experience and inquiry altogether: is a fixed limit, an ideal, towards which a properly functioning community converges. What, in principle, makes the cohesion of such a community possible? Why (...) did Peirce believe that convergence towards an ultimate conclusion was the necessary end of unlimited scientific inquiry? This essay examines Peirce's notion of community to answer these questions and suggests that the presence of genuine doubt not only makes convergence possible, but also constitutes the starting point for almost all inquiry. The exception is philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The received Cognitive Science paradigm holds that the brain manipulates mental representations of reality. This position is problematic. My alternative to representationalism is that each organism lives in its own "world" made up of objects defined by reference to the organism’s perceptual systems. These objects act as supervenient causes on organisms without the mediation of mental representations. (1992).

Why scientists reach an agreement on new experimental methods when there are conflicts of interest about the evidence they yield? I argue that debiasing methods play a crucial role in this consensus, providing a warrant about the impartiality of the outcome regarding the preferences of different parties involved in the experiment. From a contractarian perspective, I contend that an epistemic pre-requisite for scientists to agree on an experimental method is that this latter is neutral regarding their competing interests. I present (...) two medical experiments (on smallpox inoculation and Mesmerism) in which debiasing procedures such as blinding and data tabulation provided warrants of impartiality that made people agree on the experimental design even if they disagreed on the outcome. (shrink)

Through examples of embodied and learning-centered pedagogy, we discuss transformative learning of transgressive topics. We begin with a taxonomy of types of learning our students undergo as they resolve inconsistencies among their pre-existing beliefs and the material they confront in our course on feminist ethics and epistemology. We then discuss ways to help students maximize their learning while confronting internal inconsistencies. While we focus on feminist topics, our approach is broad enough to be relevant to anyone teaching a transgressive or (...) controversial topic. (shrink)

This article challenges the view most recently expounded by Emily Jackson that ‘decisional privacy’ ought to be respected in the realm of artificial reproduction (AR). On this view, it is considered an unjust infringement of individual liberty for the state to interfere with individual or group freedom artificially to produce a child. It is our contention that a proper evaluation of AR and of the relevance of welfare will be sensitive not only to the rights of ‘commissioning parties’ to AR (...) but also to public policy considerations. We argue that AR has implications for the common good, by involving matters of human reproduction, kinship, race, parenthood and identity. In this paper we challenge presuppositions concerning decisional privacy. We examine the essential commodification of human life implicit in AR and the systematicity that makes this possible. We address the objection that it is an ethically neutral way of having children and consider the problem of ‘existential debt’. After examining objections to the thesis that AR is illegitimate for reasons of public policy and the common good, we return to the issue of decisional privacy in the light of considerations concerning the legitimate role of the state in matters affecting human reproduction. (shrink)

We propose as a UCGIS research priority the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information.” Under this umbrella we unify several interrelated research subfields, each of which deals with different perspectives on geospatial ontologies and their roles in geographic information science. While each of these subfields could be addressed separately, we believe it is important to address ontological research in a unitary, systematic fashion, embracing conceptual issues concerning what would be required to establish an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain, (...) issues relating to the choice of appropriate methods for formalizing ontologies, and considerations regarding the design of ontology-driven information systems. This integrated approach is necessary, because there is a strong dependency between the methods used to specify an ontology, and the conceptual richness, robustness and tractability of the ontology itself. Likewise, information system implementations are needed as testbeds of the usefulness of every aspect of an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain. None of the current UCGIS research priorities provides such an integrative perspective, and therefore the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science” is unique. (shrink)

Mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit wird die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) am 24. September in den Bundestag einziehen. Jüngste Umfragen legen nahe, dass sie sogar drittstärkste Partei werden könnte. Warum findet die AfD so viele Unterstützerinnen und Unterstützer? Mit welchen Argumenten wirbt die AfD für ihren Einzug in den Bundestag? Das Wahlprogramm der AfD zeigt nicht nur, wofür die Partei steht, sondern auch welche Strategie sie bei der Bundestagswahl und darüber hinaus verfolgt. Aus diesem Grund habe ich es argumentationstheoretisch analysiert und die (...) darin enthaltene Argumentation im Detail rekonstruiert. Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse umfassen: Erstens, aus einer rein logischen Perspektive ist die Argumentation der AfD außergewöhnlich klar und stringent. Dies gelingt ihr deshalb, weil sie sich gezielt auf Annahmen stützt, die vereinfachend oder konstruiert sind. Zweitens, das zentrale Thema der „Flüchtlingskrise“ zieht sich beinahe durch die gesamte Argumentation. Es taucht in Argumenten über den Verlust der Leitkultur oder den Verfall der inneren Sicherheit genauso auf wie in Argumenten über die Folgen der Globalisierung oder den demographischen Wandel. Drittens, und dies ist das zentrale Ergebnis der Analyse, die AfD argumentiert nach dem folgenden Muster: Es gibt eine Bedrohung. Nur die AfD kann uns davor bewahren. Also muss die AfD an die Macht kommen. Dies nenne ich das „Kernargument des Populismus“. (shrink)

This paper looks at the causal activity of the unmoved mover of Aristotle. The author affirms both the efficient causality of God and his teleological role. According to Aristotle, the main explanation, by describing God, is ‘thinking on thinking’. That means his most important factor to act cannot only ‘be aimed’ but must also ‘be thought’. The final causality is based on the higher energeia what owns the efficient cause, since the energeia itself is regarded by Aristotle as good. God (...) as unmoved mover not moves as a form such the idea of the Good, but as individual and active substance. The goal of the divine activity is God himself, while the other immaterial substances move the spheres as instruments for the change in the world. Insofar those substances are intelligent agents, they are ends for themselves and for their effects. Many new texts to defend such as an efficient causal interpretation are quoted. (shrink)

A discussion of whether Habermas as a representative modernist and Lyotard as a representative postmodern echo the ancient dispute between Plato and the Sophists. My conclusion is that they do not quite do so. Each is more complex and ancient dichotomy should be revised.

The possibility of social and technological collapse has been the focus of science fiction tropes for decades, but more recent focus has been on specific sources of existential and global catastrophic risk. Because these scenarios are simple to understand and envision, they receive more attention than risks due to complex interplay of failures, or risks that cannot be clearly specified. In this paper, we discuss the possibility that complexity of a certain type leads to fragility which can function as a (...) source of catastrophic or even existential risk. The paper first reviews a hypothesis by Bostrom about inevitable technological risks, named the vulnerable world hypothesis. This paper next hypothesizes that fragility may not only be a possible risk, but could be inevitable,and would therefore be a subclass or example of Bostrom’s vulnerable worlds. After introducing the titular fragile world hypothesis, the paper details the conditions under which it would be correct, and presents arguments for why the conditions may in fact may apply. Finally, the assumptions and potential mitigations of the new hypothesis are contrasted with those Bostrom suggests. (shrink)

Plato is mistaken on both sides of his distinction between Socrates and the Sophists. He imagines the Sophists to have a formless power that cannot be resisted. This exaltation of the power of persuasion needs to be seen as motivating excessive fears in various modern debates. Pragmatic approaches can lessen our fear.

In this paper I present critical evaluations of Ayer and Putnam's views on the analyticity of geometry. By drawing on the historico-philosophical work of Michael Friedman on the relativized apriori; and Roberto Torretti on the foundations of geometry, I show how we can make sense of the assertion that pure geometry is analytic in Carnap's sense.

A study timeshowing that the relation of time and timeless in greek philosophers was more nuanced and complex than is commonly thought.