English translation of an entry on pages 137–42 of the Spanish-language dictionary of logic: Luis Vega, Ed. Compendio de Lógica, Argumentación, y Retórica. Madrid: Trotta. -/- DEDICATION: To my friend and collaborator Kevin Tracy. -/- This short essay—containing careful definitions of ‘counterargument’ and ‘counterexample’—is not an easy read but it is one you’ll be glad you struggled through. It contains some carefully chosen examples suitable for classroom discussion. -/- Using the word ‘counterexample’ instead of ‘counterargument’ in connection with Aristotle’s (...) class='Hi'>invalidity proofs leads to a misinterpretation of Aristotle’s intentions. The two relations expressed by these two words are drastically different—as explained in this essay. There is however a subtle overlap: Every argument that is a counterargument for a given argument is a counterexample to the universal proposition that every argument in the same form as the given argument is valid. The word ‘counterexample’ was coined in the 1800s. The word ‘counterargument’ was given this sense in the 1960s. Saying that one argument is a counterexample for another argument is bad English—taking the word ‘counterexample’ in its Standard English sense. The word ‘counterinstance’ is an exact synonym for ‘counterexample’. Which logic books define ‘counterinstance’ or ‘counterexample’? Who started using ‘counterinstance’ or ‘counterexample’ in the sense of ‘counterargument’? Did they note that they were not using the word in the Standard sense? Why did it catch on? -/- Also see: https://www.academia.edu/8840909/Argumentations_and_logic_1989_ . (shrink)

For years, the European world saw millions of swans, and all of them without exception were white. If inductive reasoning is valid, one may conclude that all swans are white. However, this would be incorrect: in 1667 Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh observed black swans in Australia, falsifying the hypothesis that all swans are white. While often used as a cautionary tale for the use of induction, such as with Popper’s falsification principle, I want to explore a slightly different idea: (...) does the existence of fabricated or otherwise failed accounts of Black swans give me a reason to ignore future arguments or doubt their existence? I argue that while faulty or fabricated reports do not give us a logical reason to reject a claim, they can give us a practical one for refusing to consider future arguments. This practical vs logical distinction gives an inductive reason for believing that future arguments will be invalid, but keeps one from being able to necessarily deny the claim in question without further argumentation. (shrink)

Whether mathematical truths are syntactical (as Rudolf Carnap claimed) or empirical (as Mill actually never claimed, though Carnap claimed that he did) might seem merely an academic topic. However, it becomes a practical concern as soon as we consider the role of questions. For if we inquire as to the truth of a mathematical statement, this question must be (in a certain respect) meaningless for Carnap, as its truth or falsity is certain in advance due to its purely syntactical (...) (or formal-semantical) nature. In contrast, for Mill such a question is as valid as any other. These differing views have their consequences for contemporary erotetic logic. (shrink)

As soon as you believe an imagination to be nonfictional, this imagination becomes your ontological theory of the reality. Your ontological theory (of the reality) can describe a system as the reality. However, actually this system is only a theory/conceptual-space/imagination/visual-imagery of yours, not the actual reality (i.e., the thing-in-itself). An ontological theory (of the reality) actually only describes your (subjective/mental) imagination/visual-imagery/conceptual-space. An ontological theory of the reality, is being described as a situation model (SM). There is no way to prove/disprove (...) that there is only one reality, or there are two realities (i.e., “subjective reality” and “objective reality”). So, every ontology talk/theory/imagination about the two realities is only a talk/theory/imagination – we will never know whether it is true or not. The conventionally-called “physical/objective reality/world” around my conventionally-called “physical/objective body” is actually a geometric mathematical model (being generated/mathematically-modeled by my brain) – it's actually a subset/component/part/element of my brain’s mind/consciousness/manifest-image. Our cosmos is an autonomous objective parallel computing automaton (aka state machine) which evolves by itself automatically/unintentionally – wave-particle duality and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle can be explained under this SM of my brain. Each elementary particle (as a building block of our cosmos) is an autonomous mathematical entity itself (i.e., a thing in itself). Our cosmos has the same nature as a Game of Life system – both are autonomous objective parallel-computing automata. Cosmos (as a state machine) is indistinguishable from a digital simulation – my consciousness (as something nonphysical) is not cosmos (as a state machine). If we are happy to accept randomness/stochasticity, then it is obviously possible that all other worlds in the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) actually do not exist (objectively). As one metaphysical option, we can treat all other worlds as subjective only (even if they are actually objective). Under the context of this metaphysical option, we are only living in one world (i.e., the world we are currently living in; this world) – we are not living in many worlds at the same time parallelly. Under the context of this metaphysical option, there is only one possible future. The relationship among any number of elementary particles, is governed/described by Schrodinger equation. If (in theory) Schrodinger equation can’t be used to reliably forecast whether I will go to McDonald for dinner in this world (based on the current state of all elementary particles of the cosmos), then what can Schrodinger equation do? The conventionally-called “space” does not exist objectively. “Time” and “matter” are not physical. Consciousness is the subjective-form (aka quale) of the mathematical models (of the objective cosmos) which are intracorporeally/subjectively used by the control logic of a Turing machine’s program fatedly. A Turing machine’s mind/consciousness/manifest-image or deliberate decisions/choices should not be able to actually/objectively change/control/drive the (autonomous or fated) worldline of any elementary particle within this world (i.e., the world we are currently living in, under the context of MWI). Besides the Schrodinger equation (or another mathematical equation/function which is yet to be discovered) which is a valid/correct/factual causality of our cosmos/state-machine, every other causality (of our cosmos/state-machine) is either invalid/incorrect/counterfactual or can be proved by deductive inference based on the Schrodinger equation (or the aforementioned yet-to-be-discovered mathematical equation/function) only. Closed causality entails no causality. Consciousness plays no causal role (“epiphenomenalism”), or in other words, any cognitive/behavioural activity can in principle be carried out without consciousness (“conscious inessentialism”). If the “loop quantum gravity” theory is correct, then time/space does not actually/objectively exist in the objective-evolution of the objective cosmos, or in other words, we should not use the subjective/mental concept of “time”, “state” or “space” to describe/imagine the objective-evolution of our cosmos. (shrink)

In his Quadratura, Paul of Venice considers a sophism involving time and tense which appears to show that there is a valid inference which is also invalid. His argument runs as follows: consider this inference concerning some proposition A: A will signify only that everything true will be false, so A will be false. Call this inference B. Then B is valid because the opposite of its conclusion is incompatible with its premise. In accordance with the standard doctrine of ampliation, (...) Paul takes A to be equivalent to 'Everything that is or will be true will be false'. But he proceeds to argue that it is possible that B's premise ('A will signify only that everything true will be false') could be true and its conclusion false, so B is not only valid but also invalid. Thus A and B are the basis of an insoluble. In his Logica Parva, a self-confessedly elementary text aimed at students and not necessarily representing his own view, and in the Quadratura, Paul follows the solution found in the Logica Oxoniensis, which posits an implicit assertion of its own truth in insolubles like B. However, in the treatise on insolubles in his Logica Magna, Paul develops and endorses Swyneshed's solution, which stood out against this ''multiple-meanings'' approach in offering a solution that took insolubles at face value, meaning no more than is explicit in what they say. On this account, insolubles imply their own falsity, and that is why, in so falsifying themselves, they are false. We consider how both types of solution apply to B and how they complement each other. On both, B is valid. But on one (following Swyneshed), B has true premises and false conclusion, and contradictories can be false together; on the other (following the Logica Oxoniensis), the counterexample is rejected. (shrink)

This paper assesses the prospects of a pragmatist theory of content. I begin by criticising the theory presented in D.H. Mellor’s essay ‘Successful Semantics’. I then identify problems and lacunae in the pragmatist theory of meaning sketched in Chapter 13 of Dummett’s The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. The prospects are brighter, I contend, for a tempered pragmatism, in which the theory of content is permitted to draw upon irreducible notions of truth and falsity. I sketch the shape of such (...) a theory and illustrate the role of its pragmatist elements by showing how they point towards a promising account of the truth conditions of indicative conditionals. A feature of the account is that it validates Modus Ponens whilst invalidating Modus Tollens. (shrink)

Drawing from the "anti-philosophies" of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, and deploying a methodology which synthesizes critical theory with evolutionary psychology and contemporary cognitive science, our analysis demonstrates: 1. Justifications, in any context, are oriented towards social manipulation and bear no relation to any "cognitive processes." 2. The role of logic is overstated, both with regards to our justifications, and also our cognition. 3. Truth and falsity are socio-linguistic functions which have no bearing on any "objective reality." Insofar as these claims (...) are correct, the methods and aims (both normative and descriptive) of "classical epistemology" are invalidated. We offer up a proposal as to what a more useful/meaningful epistemology might look like, exploring how such a reformulation might affect conceptions of "knowledge" and "rationality.". (shrink)

The reason for Aristotle’s treatment of (traditional) fourth figure syllogisms as first figure syllogisms with inverted terms in the conclusion is the following: To disprove the conclusiveness of a premiss pair Aristotle formulates two triplets of true propositions such that two of them correspond to the premiss pair in question and that the third proposition corresponding to a conclusion is an a-proposition in the first case, an e-proposition in the other. Since the truth of an a-proposition grants the falsity (...) of the contrary e- and of the contradictory o-proposition, the first triplet offers two counter-instances for invalid syllogisms with true premisses and false conclusions. Similarly the true e-proposition grants the falsity of an a- and an i-conclusion. Since an a-proposition can be converted to an i-proposition and an e-proposition is equivalent to its converse, these first figure triplets also disprove any first figure syllogism with converted conclusions, with the exception of o-conclusions. The invalidity of the latter ones, however, can be shown by using premiss conversions of (invalid) second and third figure syllogisms. The proposed explanation also makes clear why there are no rejection proofs for invalid syllogisms of (traditional) fourth figure syllogisms in the Analytics. (shrink)

Does the human mind resemble the machines that can behave like it? Biologically inspired machine-learning systems approach “human-level” accuracy in an astounding variety of domains, and even predict human brain activity—raising the exciting possibility that such systems represent the world like we do. However, even seemingly intelligent machines fail in strange and “unhumanlike” ways, threatening their status as models of our minds. How can we know when human–machine behavioral differences reflect deep disparities in their underlying capacities, vs. when such failures (...) are only superficial or peripheral? This article draws on a foundational insight from cognitive science—the distinction between performance and competence—to encourage “species-fair” comparisons between humans and machines. The performance/competence distinction urges us to consider whether the failure of a system to behave as ideally hypothesized, or the failure of one creature to behave like another, arises not because the system lacks the relevant knowledge or internal capacities (“competence”), but instead because of superficial constraints on demonstrating that knowledge (“performance”). I argue that this distinction has been neglected by research comparing human and machine behavior, and that it should be essential to any such comparison. Focusing on the domain of image classification, I identify three factors contributing to the species-fairness of human–machine comparisons, extracted from recent work that equates such constraints. Species-fair comparisons level the playing field between natural and artificial intelligence, so that we can separate more superficial differences from those that may be deep and enduring. (shrink)

The argument from illusion attempts to establish the bold claim that we are never perceptually aware of ordinary material objects. The argument has rightly received a great deal critical of scrutiny. But here we develop a criticism that, to our knowledge, has not hitherto been explored. We consider the canonical form of the argument as it is captured in contemporary expositions. There are two stages to our criticism. First, we show that the argument is invalid. Second, we identify premises that (...) can be used to make the argument valid. But we argue that the obvious fixes are problematic. If our arguments are successful, we show that the argument from illusion is even more difficult to defend than is commonly acknowledged. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual map of the debate on ideal and non‐ideal theory. It argues that this debate encompasses a number of different questions, which have not been kept sufficiently separate in the literature. In particular, the article distinguishes between the following three interpretations of the ‘ideal vs. non‐ideal theory’ contrast: (i) full compliance vs. partial compliance theory; (ii) utopian vs. realistic theory; (iii) end‐state vs. transitional theory. The article advances critical reflections on each of these sub‐debates, and highlights (...) areas for future research in the field. (shrink)

It is widely held that there are important differences between indicative conditionals (e.g. “If the authors are linguists, they have written a linguistics paper”) and subjunctive conditionals (e.g. “If the authors had been linguists, they would have written a linguistics paper”). A central difference is that indicatives and subjunctives convey different stances towards the truth of their antecedents. Indicatives (often) convey neutrality: for example, about whether the authors in question are linguists. Subjunctives (often) convey the falsity of the antecedent: (...) for example, that the authors in question are not linguists. This paper tests prominent accounts of how these different stances are conveyed: whether by presupposition or conversational implicature. Experiment 1 tests the presupposition account by investigating whether the stances project – remain constant – when embedded under operators like negations, possibility modals, and interrogatives, a key characteristic of presuppositions. Experiment 2 tests the conversational-implicature account by investigating whether the stances can be cancelled without producing a contradiction, a key characteristic of implicatures. The results provide evidence that both stances – neutrality about the antecedent in indicatives and the falsity of the antecedent in subjunctives – are conveyed by conversational implicatures. (shrink)

Abstract: We see, experience, and live our lives in this empirical world. We, ordinary people, perceive the world as real or sattvāvāna. But, Advaitins say, the world is false, it has no actual existence. So, questions, then, arise, do we live in a falsified universe? Or, do the things which are around us have no essential value? Such questions haunt us to look into the meaning and analysis of the Advaitins, and thus, this paper is nothing but an unraveling interpretation (...) of the meaning of falsity presented by Madhusūdana Sarasvatī in his auspicious text, Advaitasiddhi. Not a single among the five definitions given in the book is his definition of Madhusūdna. He just tried to establish the validity of those definitions. Among the five, Pancapādikākāra wrote the first one. Vivaraṇakāra gave the second and the third. Citsukhācāriya wrote the fourth definition of falsity. And the last, i.e., the fifth definition of falsity, is provided by the author of Makaranda, Ᾱnandavodhācāriya. The first definition of falsity presented in the Advaitasiddhi is sadasattvānadhikaraṇatva. That is to say; the property falsity is not the substratum of either existence (sattvā) or non-existence (asattvā). Here, existence (sattvā) means free from contradiction for all the times, i.e., trikālāvādhyatva and non-existence (asattvā) means being the absence or vyatireka of trikālāvādhyatva. In this sense, Brahman is existent as it has the property trikālāvādhyatva. Brahman is never liable to contradiction, while the hare`s horn, sky-lotus, etc. are non-existent because such things cognize nowhere as trikālāvādhyatva. It has been said in the earlier that the first definition of the falsity would be analyzed, which is discussed and explained in Advaitasiddhi. Regarding the interpretations, the opponent leveled many objections which were subdued by Madhusūdana. Hence, I intend to focus only on the validity of the first definition of falsity by rejecting the opponent’s position. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Reuter, Seinhold and Sytsma put forward an implicature account to explain the intuitive failure of the pain-in-mouth argument. They argue that utterances such as ‘There is tissue damage / a pain / an inflammation in my mouth’ carry the conversational implicature that there is something wrong with the speaker’s mouth. Appealing to new empirical data, this paper argues against the implicature account and for the entailment account, according to which pain reports using locative locutions, such as (...) ‘There is a pain in my mouth’, are intuitively understood as entailing corresponding predicative locutions, such as ‘My mouth hurts.’ On this latter account, the pain-in-mouth argument seems invalid because the conclusion is naturally understood as entailing something which cannot be inferred from the premisses. Implications for the philosophical debate about pain are also drawn. (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)

This paper is based on the comments I gave to Alfred Mele regarding his original Zygote Argument during my presentation at a small workshop on manipulation arguments in Budapest back in 2012. After those comments, Mele changed the conclusion of his original Zygote Argument (OZA) from a positive, explanatory conclusion to a negative, non-explanatory conclusion--and, correspondingly, redefined 'incompatibilism' so that it would no longer refer in his work to the view that determinism precludes (undermines, eliminates, destroys, etc.) free will, but (...) refers narrowly to the perhaps spurious association claim that appears in the conclusion of the revised Zygote Argument (Mele 2013+). Yet, over the last decade, Mele has made no comment in print about the changes he made, the invalidity objection that led to them, nor to the fact that his revised Zygote Argument was originally presented by me as a (non-optimal) reaction to my invalidity objection to his original Zygote Argument. To my knowledge, Mele has only mentioned this 2015 paper once, at it was not in the context of understanding manipulation arguments; it was, rather, in the context of defending his revised, non-explanatory definition of 'incompatibilism' at the opening of Aspects of Agency (p. 6, n. 4). There, Mele singles out *just this 2015 paper* as a place where they'll find what Mele degrades as a type of nonstandard/nontraditional definition of 'incompatibilism' that he rejects. This is notable because Mele provides no empirical evidence that his preferred definition is standard, and most (including Lehrer, who coined the term) reject the negative, non-explanatory, association-based definition that Mele came to endorse in the aftermath of my invalidity objection to OZA. So, if Mele had a genuine concern about philosophers who use the term 'incompatibilism', then Mele could have--and should have--named almost any leading figure in free will for this purpose (since most--including Pereboom, Vihvelin, Haji, etc.) reject the non-explanatory definition that Mele-2013+ now endorses. Yet, for untold reasons, Mele isolated the working definition of 'incompatibilism' used in one paper by one unemployed junior researcher to use as his example--even though Neil Levy had used this same definition in previously published work (eg. Levy 2011). Moreover, if Mele were genuinely interested in helping his readers understand the ambiguity of terms like 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism' it is a mystery that he referenced a paper in which nothing of substance hung on the definitions given to these terms -- especially considering that he might have instead pointed them to my OTHER 2015 paper, "A Critique of Vihvelin's Three-Fold Classification" in which the MAIN AIM of the paper is to expose the difficulties facing anyone who wants to define the terms 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism' in a way that everyone will accept (including a critique of the negative, non-explanatory "incompossibilist" definition that Mele adopted after my objection to OZA). By all appearances, Mele's main aim in citing specifically THIS paper and none of my other work was to give readers the false impression that my working definition of 'incompatibilism' played some role in my charge that his argument is invalid (which it doesn't, given that the term doesn't appear in either the premises or conclusion of that argument). Mele adds to this unseemly rhetorical campaign in his book *Manipulation Agents* where he mentions an invalidity objection in the intro (p. 84) and then discusses that objection in the final lines of Chapter 5 of the book (p. 120-121). The invalidity objection discussed here is completely pedantic, has never been seriously raised in the primary literature (and was previously addressed in multiple places my multiple philosophers, including me), and has nothing whatever to do with my invalidity objection. In other words, Mele was content to discuss an invalidity objection that no one has ever had to an argument that is clearly valid while completely ignoring the ONLY substantive invalidity objection to his argument in print. This is unfortunate, because it has led to serious confusion --including the patently false description of my invalidity objection to OZA as an objection to the revised version of the Zygote Argument that Mele adopted in *response* my objection (e.g., Capes mistakenly claims "Mickelson (2015) contends that arguments like this [i.e. like the revised Zygote Argument] are invalid. But that’s because she defines “incompatibilism” differently than I’ve defined it here" in his "Manipulation Arguments and Direct Arguments" chapter in the 2023 Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Free Will; I did not say this, and the definition of 'incompatibilism' is irrelevant to my objection). In "The Zygote Argument Is Invalid--Now What?", I simply use the invalidity of the simple 2-premise Zygote Argument as a foil to make a series of more philosophically significant points (e.g. regarding the dialectical structure of the free-will debate, the role of best-explanation reasoning, and to develop the first-ever "master manipulation argument"). Mele has yet to address my reasons for calling attention to the non-trivial invalidity of his OZA or to any of my answers to the "Now What?" question in this paper, even though this question and my proposed answers to this question are the paper's main point. For those interested in a more recent discussion of how the logical and metaphilosophical observations made in this "Now What?" paper have helped to move the free-will debate forward, I suggest looking at the discussions of the "paradigm shift" in the free-will debate that helps to explain why the free-will debate has become mired in stalemates and empty verbal disputes that are found, for example, in my contributions to the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Free Will (Intro and Chapter 4, 2023) and my paper "Free Will, Self-Creation, and the Paradox of Moral Luck" (2019). (shrink)

Keith DeRose has argued that context shifting experiments should be designed in a specific way in order to accommodate what he calls a ‘truth/falsity asymmetry’. I explain and critique DeRose's reasons for proposing this modification to contextualist methodology, drawing on recent experimental studies of DeRose's bank cases as well as experimental findings about the verification of affirmative and negative statements. While DeRose's arguments for his particular modification to contextualist methodology fail, the lesson of his proposal is that there is (...) good reason to pay close attention to several subtle aspects of the design of context shifting experiments. (shrink)

Democracy has difficulties with the rights on non-voters (children, the mentally ill, foreigners etc). Democratic leaders have sometimes acted ethically, contrary to the wishes of voters, e.g. in accepting refugees as immigrants. The remarkable story of resettlement of the Displaced Persons of Europe after World War II is a case in point.

This paper’s most general aim is to illuminate the disagreement between singularists about thought (who claim there are non-descriptive thoughts about ordinary external objects), and descriptivists about thought (who claim all thought about ordinary external objects is descriptive). It does this by clarifying the common claim that singular thoughts have an anchoring role with respect to thought in general and by making two further claims: 1) some of the putative disagreements between singularists and descriptivists are illusory once properly understood, and (...) 2) singularists can more productively argue for their view by separating it from some of the framework in which it is commonly packaged. Separating the singular/descriptive thought distinction from the structured content framework, and casting the singularist’s central claim as one about the structure or form of what I will call referentially anchored thoughts, allows us to move past a common kind of impasse. (shrink)

In one of their papers, Michael De and Hitoshi Omori observed that the notion of classical negation is not uniquely determined in the context of so-called Belnap-Dunn logic, and in fact there are 16 unary operations that qualify to be called classical negation. These varieties are due to different falsity conditions one may assume for classical negation. The aim of this paper is to observe that there is an interesting way to make sense of classical negation independent of (...) class='Hi'>falsity conditions. We discuss two equivalent semantics, and offer a Hilbert-style system that is sound and complete with respect to the semantics. (shrink)

Determinations of ability/disability are rooted in coloniality, specifically in categorizations of race, gender, and animality as they bear on social formations. I elucidate this rootedness by weaving the “coloniality of ability” into María Lugones’ accounts of the coloniality of gender and the colonial-modern system as founded on the “human-nonhuman” difference. This enables me to reveal an “ability system” based on the “ability-bestiality” difference and delineate with more specificity liminal sites of oppression and resistance across the heterogeneous socialities of coloniality-modernity. From (...) the perspective of the coloniality of ability that I develop, I focus on the liminality of the white woman Victorian invalid and that of the colonized “bestial” body in order to distinguish between two forms of colonial-modern liminality—“light” and “dark.” I also draw from this discussion two forms of colonial-modern oppression—“dehumanizing” and “bestializing”—and two related modalities of anticolonial resistance—“humanizing” and “decolonial.”. (shrink)

In this article, I present a schema for generating counterexamples to the argument form known as Hypothetical Syllogism with indicative conditionals. If my schema for generating counterexamples to HS works as I think it does, then HS is invalid for indicative conditionals.

Anhand der genaueren Analyse von Newtons experimentum crucis und der Argumentation, die er auf dieses Experiment stützt, sowie Goethes Kritik hieran sollen im Folgenden zwei verbreitete Vorurteile revidiert werden: -/- 1. Newton ist kein Dogmatiker, der methodische Ansprüche vertritt, die er nicht einlösen kann, sondern gründet seinen Anspruch, experimentelle Beweise führen zu können, auf einer vorbildlichen Methodologie kausaler Erklärungen, was seine Kritiker allerdings übersehen. 2. Goethe ist kein Antiwissenschaftler, der einen einzigartigen Kontrapunkt zur vorherrschenden wissenschaftlichen Tradition bildet, sondern steht inmitten (...) traditioneller Auffassungen zur Farbenlehre, deren experimentelle und methodologische Grundlagen bezüglich eines Erklärungsanspruches denen Newtons unterlegen sind. (shrink)

The holism-reductionism debate, one of the classic subjects of study in the philosopy of science, is currently at the heart of epistemological concerns in ecology. Yet the division between holism and reductionism does not always stand out clearly in this field. In particular, almost all work in ecosystem ecology and landscape ecology presents itself as holistic and emergentist. Nonetheless, the operational approaches used rely on conventional reductionist methodology.From an emergentist epistemological perspective, a set of general 'transactional' principles inspired by the (...) work of J. Dewey and J.K. Feibleman are proposed in an effort to develop a coherent ontological and methodological semantics. (shrink)

This paper aims at clarifying the role which the concept of 'divine sovereignty ' plays in the discussions which are taking place among Islamic thinkers (and others) concerning the possibility of democracy in an Islamic context. It argues that 'sovereignty ' has at least two meanings, one 'f'actual', the other 'normative'. The paper also argues that the second sense of 'sovereignty ' allows us to construe ta!k o{ 'divine sovereignty' as an attempt by Islamic thinkers to go beyond the merely (...) procedural views of democracy which focus on the familiar procedures o( power contestation, election and accountability. (shrink)

In recent years, political philosophers have been fiercely arguing over the virtues and vices of utopian vs realistic theorizing. Partly due to the lack of a common and consistently used vocabulary, these debates have become rather confusing. In this chapter, I attempt to bring some clarity to them and, in doing so, I offer a conciliatory perspective on the “utopian vs realistic theorizing” controversy. I argue that, once the notion of a normative or evaluative theory is clearly defined and distinguished (...) from the desiderata that any good theory should satisfy, many of the disagreements between supporters and opponents of “utopian” or “ideal” theorizing can be easily dissolved. I conclude that, in general, political philosophers should be cautious when theorizing at the extreme ends of the “utopian-realistic” spectrum, but that, setting extremes aside, the correct level of realism or idealism depends on the particular question a theory aims to address. (shrink)

Moral enhancement is an ostensibly laudable project. Who wouldn’t want people to become more moral? Still, the project’s approach is crucial. We can distinguish between two approaches for moral enhancement: direct and indirect. Direct moral enhancements aim at bringing about particular ideas, motives or behaviors. Indirect moral enhancements, by contrast, aim at making people more reliably produce the morally correct ideas, motives or behaviors without committing to the content of those ideas, motives and/or actions. I will argue, on Millian grounds, (...) that the value of disagreement puts serious pressure on proposals for relatively widespread direct moral enhancement. A more acceptable path would be to focus instead on indirect moral enhancements while staying neutral, for the most part, on a wide range of substantive moral claims. I will outline what such indirect moral enhancement might look like, and why we should expect it to lead to general moral improvement. (shrink)

How does Quine fare in the first decades of the twenty-first century? In this paper I examine a cluster of Quinean theses that, I believe, are especially fruitful in meeting some of the current challenges of epistemology and ontology. These theses offer an alternative to the traditional bifurcations of truth and knowledge into factual and conceptual-pragmatic-conventional, the traditional conception of a foundation for knowledge, and traditional realism. To make the most of Quine’s ideas, however, we have to take an active (...) stance: accept some of his ideas and reject others, sort different versions of the relevant ideas, sharpen or revise some of the ideas, connect them with new, non-Quinean ideas, and so on. As a result the paper pits Quine against Quine, in an attempt to identify those Quinean ideas that have a lasting value and sketch potential developments. (shrink)

This paper discusses the teaching of -- and opposition to the teaching of -- evolutionary theory in Australian schools in the early twenty-first century.

It is believed to me 'Teaching is also learning'. So do on self-development across Creativity based on Syllabus of Class IX and X of ICSE Board, I go on with my students.

Robert Musil (1880-1942), the Austrian writer, essayist and author of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (MoE), and Max Scheler (1874-1928), the south German realist phenomenologist, shared a number of philosophical convictions and interests. These convictions and interests distinguish them from almost all their contemporaries. They are by no means common today although more common than they were. At the centre of their work stand detailed anatomies of the human heart.

In his recent "Thomas vs. Thomas: A New Approach to Nagel's Bat Argument", Yujin Nagasawa interprets Thomas Nagel as making a certain argument against physicalism and objects that this argument transgresses a principle, laid down by Thomas Aquinas, according to which inability to perform a pseudo-task does not count against an omnipotence claim. Taking Nagasawa's interpretation of Nagel for granted, I distinguish different kinds of omnipotence claims and different kinds of pseudo-tasks, and on that basis show that Nagasawa's criticism of (...) Nagel is unsuccessful. I also show how his reflections do nonetheless point to a limitation of the approach he means to criticize. (shrink)

I first provide an analysis of Joel Feinberg’s anti-paternalism in terms of invalidation of reasons. Invalidation is the blocking of reasons from influencing the moral status of actions, in this case the blocking of personal good reasons from supporting liberty-limiting actions. Invalidation is shown to be distinct from moral side constraints and lexical ordering of values and reasons. I then go on to argue that anti-paternalism as invalidation is morally unreasonable on at least four grounds, none of which presuppose that (...) people can be mistaken about their own good: First, the doctrine entails that we should sometimes allow people to unintentionally severely harm or kill themselves though we could easily stop them. Second, it entails that we should sometimes allow perfectly informed and rational people to risk the lives of themselves and others, though they are in perfect agreement with us on what reasons we have to stop them for their own good. Third, the doctrine leaves unexplained why we may benevolently coerce less competent but substantially autonomous people, such as young teens, but not adults. Last, it entails that there are peculiar jumps in justifiability between very similar actions. I conclude that as liberals we should reject anti-paternalism and focus our efforts on explicating important liberal values, thereby showing why liberty reasons sometimes override strong personal good reasons, though never by making them invalid. (shrink)

Words change meaning, usually in unpredictable ways. But some words’ meanings are revised intentionally. Revisionary projects are normally put forward in the service of some purpose – some serve specific goals of inquiry, and others serve ethical, political or social aims. Revisionist projects can ameliorate meanings, but they can also pervert. In this paper, I want to draw attention to the dangers of meaning perversions, and argue that the self-declared goodness of a revisionist project doesn’t suffice to avoid meaning perversions. (...) The road to Hell, or to horrors on Earth, is paved with good intentions. Finally and more importantly, I want to demarcate what meaning perversions are. This, I hope, can help us assess the moral and political legitimacy of revisionary projects. (shrink)

I offer a meta-level analysis of realist arguments for the reliability of ampliative reasoning about the unobservable. We can distinguish form-driven and content-driven arguments for realism: form-driven arguments appeal to the form of inductive inferences, whilst content-driven arguments appeal to their specific content. After regimenting the realism debate in these terms, I will argue that the content-driven arguments are preferable. Along the way I will discuss how my analysis relates to John Norton’s recent, more general thesis that the grounds for (...) licit induction are always material. (shrink)

Commentators have long agreed that Wodeham’s account of objects of judgment is highly innovative, but they have continued to disagree about its proper interpretation. Some read him as introducing items that are merely supervenient on (and nothing in addition to) Aristotelian substances and accidents; others take him to be introducing a new type of entity in addition to substances and accidents—namely, abstract states of affairs. In this paper, I argue that both interpretations are mistaken: the entities Wodeham introduces are really (...) distinct from substances and accidents, but, like substances and accidents, they are concrete (rather than abstract). Moreover, the key to understanding the significance of his theory, I contend, lies in a proper understanding of the theoretical role these entities play in his theory of judgment. (shrink)

We investigate the structure common to causal theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world. Causality implies conservation of identity, itself a far from simple notion. It imposes strong demands on the universalizing power of the theories concerned. These demands are often met by the introduction of a metalevel which encompasses the notions of 'system' and 'lawful behaviour'. In classical mechanics, the division between universal and particular leaves its traces in the separate treatment of cinematics and dynamics. This (...) analysis is applied to the mechanical theories of Newton and Leibniz, with some surprising results. (shrink)

The universality assumption (“U”) that quantum wave states only evolve by linear or unitary dynamics has led to a variety of paradoxes in the foundations of physics. U is not directly supported by empirical evidence but is rather an inference from data obtained from microscopic systems. The inference of U conflicts with empirical observations of macroscopic systems, giving rise to the century-old measurement problem and subjecting the inference of U to a higher standard of proof, the burden of which lies (...) with its proponents. This burden remains unmet because the intentional choice by scientists to perform interference experiments that only probe the microscopic realm disqualifies the resulting data from supporting an inference that wave states always evolve linearly in the macroscopic realm. Further, the nature of the physical world creates an asymptotic size limit above which interference experiments, and verification of U in the realm in which it causes the measurement problem, seem impossible for all practical purposes if nevertheless possible in principle. This apparent natural limit serves as evidence against an inference of U, providing a further hurdle to the proponent’s currently unmet burden of proof. The measurement problem should never have arisen because the inference of U is entirely unfounded, logically and empirically. (shrink)

Observational learning can enhance the acquisition and performance quality of complex motor skills. While an extensive body of research has focused on the benefits of synchronous (i.e., concurrent physical practice) and non-synchronous (i.e., delayed physical practice) observational learning strategies, the question remains as to whether these approaches differentially influence performance outcomes. Accordingly, we investigate the differential outcomes of synchronous and non-synchronous observational training contexts using a novel dance sequence. Using multidimensional cross-recurrence quantification analysis, movement time-series were recorded for novice dancers (...) who either synchronised with (n = 22) or observed and then imitated (n = 20) an expert dancer. Participants performed a 16-count choreographed dance sequence for 20 trials assisted by the expert, followed by one final, unassisted performance trial. Although end-state performance did not significantly differ between synchronous and non-synchronous learners, a significant decline in performance quality from imitation to independent replication was shown for synchronous learners. A non-significant positive trend in performance accuracy was shown for non-synchronous learners. For all participants, better imitative performance across training trials led to better end-state performance, but only for the accuracy (and not timing) of movement reproduction. Collectively, the results suggest that synchronous learners came to rely on a realtime mapping process between visual input from the expert and their own visual and proprioceptive intrinsic feedback, to the detriment of learning. Thus, the act of synchronising alone does not ensure an appropriate training context for advanced sequence learning. (shrink)

This article argues that phenomenological treatment of physical problems is more powerful than fundamental treatment. Developments in the field of superconductivity present us with a clear example of such superiority. The BCS (Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer) was accepted as the fundamental theory of superconductivity for a long time. Nevertheless, Landau and Ginzburg phenomenological model has so far proven to be a more fruitful theoretical representation to understand and to predict the features of superconductivity and superconductive materials.

Contextualism is the view that the extension of perspectival claims (involving e.g. predicates of personal taste or epistemic modals) depends on the context of utterance. Relativism is the view that the extension of perspectival claims depends on the context of assessment. Both views make concrete, empirically testable predictions about how such claims are used by ordinary English language speakers. This chapter surveys some of the recent empirical literature on the topic and presents four new experiments (total N=724). Consistent with contextualism (...) and inconsistent with relativism, the results suggest that the extension of perspectival claims depends on the context of utterance, not the context of assessment. (shrink)

Argument-forms exist which are valid over finite but not infinite domains. Despite understanding of this by formal logicians, philosophers can be observed treating as valid arguments which are in fact invalid over infinite domains. In support of this claim I will first present an argument against the classical pragmatist theory of truth by Mark Johnston. Then, more ambitiously, I will suggest the fallacy lurks in certain arguments for physicalism taken for granted by many philosophers today.

The article consistst of four parts. First, it gives an example of statism present in contemporary Europe which consists in giving a priority of loyalty to the state at the expense of loyalty to God. Secondly, it traces the idea of European statism in the thought of Hobbes and Hegel to show how the state was to replace or equal God’s authority. Thirdly, it considers whether democracy can efficiently protect against statism. Finally, it explores the words of Jesus Christ—“Render unto (...) Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”—to formulate an argument against trading Christian faith for the philosophy of statism. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that guilt and shame are not distinctive emotions. Instead, guilt is best seen as a kind of shame. I present three reasons for this view: First, guilt cannot merely arise as a consequence of how we evaluate our behaviour, since how we act implicates the whole self. Second, guilt cannot be relieved by taking responsibility, apologising and making amends unless it is a kind of shame. Third, the empirical research that seems to show that ‘shame’ (...) and ‘guilt’ are distinct can be explained by re-interpreting the data. (shrink)

Using Riemann’s Rearrangement Theorem, Øystein Linnebo (2020) argues that, if it were possible to apply an infinite positive weight and an infinite negative weight to a working scale, the resulting net weight could end up being any real number, depending on the procedure by which these weights are applied. Appealing to the First Postulate of Archimedes’ treatise on balance, I argue instead that the scale would always read 0 kg. Along the way, we stop to consider an infinitely jittery flea, (...) an infinitely protracted border conflict, and an infinitely electric glass rod. (shrink)

Localism is the view that the unit of evaluation in the scientific realism debate is a single scientific discipline, sub-discipline, or claim, whereas individualism is the view that the unit of evaluation is a single scientific theory. Localism is compatible, while individualism is not, with a local pessimistic induction and a local selective induction. Asay (2016) presents several arguments to support localism and undercut globalism, according to which the unit of evaluation is the set of all scientific disciplines. I argue (...) that some of his arguments clash with localism as well as with globalism and support individualism, and that individualism goes hand in hand, while localism does not, with the basic rule of how to evaluate an argument. (shrink)

This paper argues that the obvious validity of certain inferences involving indirect speech reports as premises and truth or falsity ascriptions as conclusions is incompatible with Davidson's so-called "paratactic" analysis of the logical form of indirect discourse. Besides disqualifying that analysis, this problem is also claimed to indicate that the analysis is doubly in tension with Davidson's metasemantic views. Specifically, it can be reconciled neither with one of Davidson's key assumptions regarding the adequacy of the kind of semantic theory (...) he recommends nor with one of his key assumptions regarding the inadequacy of a kind of semantic theory he rejects. (shrink)

In this brief paper, starting from recent works, we analyze from conceptual point of view this basic question: can be the nature of quantum entangled states interpreted ontologically or epistemologically? According some works, the degrees of freedom of quantum systems permit us to establish a possible classification between factorizables and entangled states. We suggest, that the "choice" of degree of freedom, even if mathematically justified introduces epistemic element, not only in the systems but also in their classification. We retain, instead, (...) that there are not two classes of quantum states, entangled and factorizables, but only a single classes of states: the entangled states. In fact, the factorizable states become entangled for a different choice of their degrees of freedom. In the same way, there are not partitions of quantum system which have an ontological superior status with respect to any other. For all these reasons, both mathematical tools utilized are responsible of improper classification of quantum systems. Finally, we argue that we cannot speak about a classification of quantum systems: all the quantum states exhibit a unique objective nature, they are all entangled states. (shrink)