When considering the value of friendship, most philosophers ignore the negatives. Most assume that humans need friends to flourish, and some argue that friendships can be good, no matter the risks entailed. This makes conversations about the value of friendship one-sided. Here, I argue that Cynics and Pessimists have an important view on friendship, despite it being ignored. They hold that: (a) friendship is unnecessary for flourishing, and (b) friendship presents ethical risks, especially to one’s own self-sufficiency. I defend these (...) views. Then I conclude with reflections on why Cynics and Pessimists actually make great friends. By helping people to focus on vulgar human nature and the flaws that humans have, they create an unpretentious basis for friendship. (shrink)

This paper does two things. First, it interprets the work of W. E. B. Du Bois to reveal that the meanings of race terms are grounded by both a historical and an aspirational component. Race terms refer to a backward-looking component that traces the history of the group to its present time, as well as a forward-looking component that sets out values and goals for the group. Race terms thus refer to a complex cluster of concepts that involve biological, sociological, (...) historical, moral, and political properties. Second, the paper defends W. E. B. Du Bois’s conservationist thesis about races, which holds that we should maintain race talk and racial distinctions. But instead of offering philosophical evidence, this paper defends the plausibility of the conservationist thesis with evidence from contemporary biology and psychology. It argues that, instead of eliminating race terms or concepts, we should conserve and revise them. (shrink)

Assessing the success or failure of a work of architecture typically requires determining its function. However, architectural criticism often founders on apparently intractable disputes concerning the 'true' function of particular works. In this essay, I propose that the proper function of an architectural work is a matter of empirical fact, and can be determined by examining the history of the relevant architectural type. I develop this claim by appeal to the so-called 'etiological theory of function'.

I offer a new metacognitive account of the feeling of agency over bodily actions. On this model the feeling of agency is the metacognitive monitoring of two cues: i) smoothness of action: done via monitoring the output of the comparison between actual and predicted sensory consequences of action and ii) action outcome: done via monitoring the outcome of action and its success relative to a prior intention. Previous research has shown that the comparator model offers a powerful explanation of the (...) feeling of agency. However, within the literature there is a growing sense of unease with the model; a consensus seems to be building that the model is not up to the task of explaining all of the new discoveries made regarding the feeling of agency since its inception. Most problematically there are paradigms which deeply challenge the comparator model by suggesting that a weak feeling of agency can be elicited even when no motor prediction is formed. The new account offered here inherits the explanatory power of the comparator model whilst avoiding this problem. (shrink)

I compare Frith and colleagues’ influential comparator account of how the sense of agency is elicited to the multifactorial weighting model advocated by Synofzik and colleagues. I defend the comparator model from the common objection that the actual sensory consequences of action are not needed to elicit the sense of agency. I examine the comparator model’s ability to explain the performance of healthy subjects and those suffering from delusions of alien control on various self-attribution tasks. It transpires that the comparator (...) model needs case-by-case adjustment to deal with problematic data. In response to this, the multifactorial weighting model of Synofzik and colleagues is introduced. Although this model is incomplete, it is more naturally constrained by the cases that are problematic for the comparator model. However, this model may be untestable. I conclude that currently the comparator model approach has stronger support than the multifactorial weighting model approach. (shrink)

In this paper we try to diagnose one reason why the debate regarding the Hard Problem of consciousness inevitably leads to a stalemate: namely that the characterisation of consciousness assumed by the Hard Problem is unjustified and probably unjustifiable. Following Dennett : 4–6, 1996, Cognition 79:221–237, 2001, J Conscious Stud 19:86, 2012) and Churchland :402–408, 1996, Brainwise: studies in neurophilosophy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002), we argue that there is in fact no non-question begging argument for the claim that consciousness (...) is a uniquely Hard Phenomenon. That is; there is no non-question begging argument for the claim that consciousness is necessarily in explicable in terms of the structure and function of mental states. Unfortunately the debate has not moved on because the majority of materialists feel the pull of the at least one of, what we call, the ‘key’ intuitions that supposedly support dualism and the existence of a Hard Phenomenon and so try to accommodate them rather than denying them. Although this a possible response to the intuitions it tends to mask the fact that there is in fact no argument for the existence of a Hard Phenomenon. So we end up participating in our own hornswoggling :402–408, 1996) and chasing our tails trying to answer a question we should in fact ignore. We have no reason to think there is a Hard Problem of consciousness because we have no reason to think the Hard Phenomenon exists. (shrink)

Replacing the value-free ideal (VFI) for science requires attention to the broader understanding of how science in society should function. In public spaces, science needed to project the VFI in norms for science advising, science education, and science communication. This resulted in the independent science advisor model and a focus on science literacy for science education and communication. Attending to these broader implications of the VFI which structure science and society relationships is crucial if we are to properly replace the (...) VFI with a better ideal. (shrink)

Wegner and colleagues have offered an explanation of the sense of agency over one’s bodily actions. If the orthodox view is correct and there is a sense of agency deficit associated with delusions of alien control, then Wegner and colleagues’ model ought to extend to an explanation of this deficit. Data from intentional binding studies opens up the possibility that an abnormality in representing the timing of mental events leads to a violation of the principle of priority in those suffering (...) from delusions of alien control. However, the model ultimately fails as it is unable to accommodate action monitoring deficits associated with delusions of alien control, in particular the theory of mind deficiencies predicted by such accounts have not materialised. There are theory of mind problems associated with schizophrenia but they are not associated with delusions of alien control. Such accounts thereby fail to adequately explain delusions of alien control. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of self-consciousness typically begin by dividing experiences of the self into types, each requiring separate explanation. The stereotypical case of an out of body experience may be seen to suggest a distinction between the sense of oneself as an experiencing subject, a mental entity, and a sense of oneself as an embodied person, a bodily entity. Point of view, in the sense of the place from which the subject seems to experience the world, in this case is tied (...) to the sense of oneself as a mental entity and seems to be the ‘real’ self. Closer reading of reports, however, suggests a substantially more complicated picture. For example, the ‘real’ self that is experienced as separate from the body in an OBE is not necessarily experienced as disembodied. Subjects may experience themselves as having two bodies. In cases classed as heautoscopy there is considerable confusion regarding the apparent location of the experiencing subject; is it the ‘real mind’ in the body I seem to be looking out from, or is it in the body that I see? This suggests that visual point of view can dissociate from the experience of one’s own “real mind” or experience of self-identification. I provide a tripartite distinction between the sense of ownership, the sense of embodiment and the sense of subjectivity to better describe these experiences. The phenomenology of OBEs suggests that there are three distinct forms of self-consciousness which need to be explained. (shrink)

The sense of agency, that is the sense that one is the agent of one’s bodily actions, is one component of our self-consciousness. Recently, Wegner and colleagues have developed a model of the causal history of this sense. Their model takes it that the sense of agency is elicited for an action when one infers that one or other of one’s mental states caused that action. In their terms, the sense of agency is elicited by the inference to apparent mental (...) state causation. Here, I argue that this model is inconsistent with data from developmental psychology that suggests children can identify the agent behind an action without being capable of understanding the relationship between their intentions and actions. Furthermore, I argue that this model is inconsistent with the preserved sense of agency in autism. In general, the problem is that there are cases where subjects can experience themselves as the agent behind their actions despite lacking the resources to make the inference to apparent mental state causation. (shrink)

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the considerable challenge of sourcing expertise and determining which experts to trust. Dissonant information fostered controversy in public discourse and encouraged an appeal to a wide range of social indicators of trustworthiness in order to decide whom to trust. We analyze public discourse on expertise by examining how social indicators inform the reputation of Dr. Didier Raoult, the French microbiologist who rose to international prominence as an early advocate for using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. To (...) comprehend how these indicators came to inform his reputation, we outline Dr. Raoult's rise to fame based on discourse about hydroxychloroquine. We then discuss why we trust in experts like scientist-practitioners. This is followed by an examination of how social indicators of trust like status, epistemic authority, influence and values have informed Dr. Raoult's reputation. We conclude with recommendations for how to improve the selection and evaluation social indicators of trust and reputations. Our aim here, instead of making a claim about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine or Dr. Raoult's reputation per se, is to outline through this case study how social indicators of trust inform reputation and the challenge they present to evaluating expertise. (shrink)

Scientific cognitivism is the idea that nature must be aesthetically appreciated in light of scientific information about it. I defend Carlson's traditional formulation of scientific cognitivism from some recent criticisms. However, I also argue that if we employ this formulation it is difficult to uphold two claims that Carlson makes about scientific cognitivism: (i) it is the correct analysis of the notion of appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature, and (ii) it justifies the idea that nature, seen aright, is always beautiful (...) (that is, positive aesthetics about nature). I attempt to find a revised formulation of scientific cognitivism that can support both of these claims. I argue that to do this we must rethink the notion of positive aesthetics and its place in our theorizing about the appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature. Specifically, I propose that positive aesthetics be made ‘internal’ to the theory of appropriate aesthetic appreciation, in the sense that this theory determines the correct scientific categories for appreciating a natural object, in part, in virtue of a ‘beauty-making’ criterion. I argue that this sort of formulation of scientific cognitivism can support both of Carlson's claims and does not compromise the objectivist scruples that motivate the view. (shrink)

Our culture praises—indeed revels in—the beauty of the human form. And yet, in the midst of this exuberant celebration of corporeal beauty, not even the most unreflective can be unaware of the problems that have been laid at its feet. The philosopher Kathleen Higgins notes a “pervasive impression that is widespread in our culture: that beauty, or some near kin of it, is unsavory, a temptation that might get the soul off-track” (2000, 89). In response to this suspicion, some have (...) argued that beauty is in desperate need of reform or redefinition in our time. In this essay, I attempt to analyze and evaluate this counsel. How should these claims be understood? Would we be wise to follow them? (shrink)

Publics trust experts for personal and pro-social reasons. Scientists are among the experts publics trust most, and so, epistemic trust is routinely afforded to them. The call for epistemic trust to be more socially situated in order to account for the impact of science on society and public welfare is at the forefront of enhanced epistemic trust. I argue that the value-free ideal for science challenges establishing enhanced epistemic trust by preventing the inclusion of non-epistemic values throughout the evaluation of (...) evidence and communication of these values. By selectively silencing non-epistemic values, the ideal cannot take into account publics’ social and moral responses to inductive risk, which are instrumental for defining and determining public welfare. Furthermore, by emphasising epistemic values almost exclusively in science education and communication, the value-free ideal is presented to publics in such a way that it becomes a social indicator of trust. I show this through examination of the importance of values in decisions to trust, and conclude that values (and restrictions on them) can be used by lay publics to help decide which experts to trust. (shrink)

Expert knowledge regularly informs personal and civic-decision making. To decide which experts to trust, lay publics —including policymakers and experts from other domains—use different epistemic and non-epistemic cues. Epistemic cues such as honesty, like when experts are forthcoming about conflicts of interest, are a popular way of understanding how people evaluate and decide which experts to trust. However, many other epistemic cues, like the evidence supporting information from experts, are inaccessible to lay publics. Therefore, lay publics simultaneously use second-order social (...) cues in their environment to inform decisions to trust. These second-order social cues, or ‘social indicators of trust’, prevent lay publics from having to trust blindly. Social indicators of trust therefore inform lay publics’ epistemic vigilance, or constant low level-monitoring of testimony from experts. This special issue examines the nature, acquisition and application of social indicators of trust for scientific experts and institutions. It also raises questions about the types of trust asked of lay publics and challenges traditional normative assumptions about the relationship between science and lay publics through study of attitudes, values, and experiences. The issue descriptively re-examines the structure of institutions, their role and methods for ferrying information, as well as how social indicators operate in times of crisis. In this collection of works, we bridge history, science, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, science communication and social epistemology, to broaden the discourse on trust in experts and more accurately reflect the imperfect yet indispensable endeavour that trusting is. (shrink)

A long-standing puzzle for moral philosophers and psychologists alike is the concept of psychopathy, a personality disorder marked by tendencies to defy moral norms despite cognitive knowledge about right and wrong. Previously, discussions of the moral deficits of psychopathy have focused on willingness to harm and cheat others as well as reasoning about rule-based transgressions. Yet recent research in moral psychology has begun to more clearly define the domains of morality, en- compassing issues of harm, fairness, loyalty, authority, and spiritual (...) purity. Clinical descriptions and theories of psychopathy suggest that deficits may exist primarily in the areas of harm and fairness, although quantitative evidence is scarce. Within a broad sample of participants, we found that scores on a measure of psychopathy predicted sharply lower scores on the harm and fairness subscales of a measure of moral concern, but showed no relationship with authority, and very small relationships with ingroup and purity. On a measure of willingness to violate moral standards for money, psychopathy scores predicted greater willingness to violate moral concerns of any type. Results are further explored via potential mediators and analyses of the two factors of psychopathy. (shrink)

Increasing evidence from psychology and neuroscience suggests that emotion plays an important and sometimes critical role in moral judgment and moral behavior. At the same time, there is increasing psychological and neuroscientific evidence that brain regions critical in emotional and moral capacity are impaired in psychopaths. We ask how the criminal law should accommodate these two streams of research, in light of a new normative and legal account of the criminal responsibility of psychopaths.

Emil Cioran offers novel arguments against suicide. He assumes a meaningless world. But in such a world, he argues, suicide and death would be equally as meaningless as life or anything else. Suicide and death are as cumbersome and useless as meaning and life. Yet Cioran also argues that we should contemplate suicide to live better lives. By contemplating suicide, we confront the deep suffering inherent in existence. This humbles us enough to allow us to change even the deepest aspects (...) of ourselves. Yet it also reminds us that our peculiar human ability—being able to contemplate suicide—sets us above anything else in nature or in the heavens. This paper assembles and defends a view of suicide written about in Cioran’s aphorisms and essays. (shrink)

Aesthetic preservation is the idea of sparing natural areas from development because of their aesthetic value. In this article I discuss a problem for aesthetic preservation that I call the ‘hidden gems problem’: in certain cases, the natural area under consideration is so remote and/or fragile that few people can actually experience it. In these cases, it becomes unclear how nature's aesthetic value can justify its preservation when development promises practical human benefits. After rejecting some potential responses to the hidden (...) gems problem, I offer a different solution. I argue that we have an aesthetic reason to preserve nature's hidden gems because they are required to produce ‘true judges’ of aesthetic value, who are capable of improving the general quality of taste for landscape. I develop this argument using the example of recent preservationist efforts to save the isolated landscape of Sable Island, Nova Scotia. (shrink)

In Natural Beauty, Ronald Moore presents a novel account of our aesthetic encounters with the natural world. In this essay, I consider the relation between Moore's 'syncretic aesthetic' and rival views of the aesthetics of nature, particularly the view sometimes called 'scientific cognitivism'. After discussing Moore's characterization of rival views in general, and scientific cognitivism in particular, I rehearse his reasons for rejecting the latter view. I critique these arguments, but also suggest that scientific cognitivism and the syncretic aesthetic need (...) not, after all, be viewed as incompatible notions. (shrink)

Stoicism deserves everything that Broic$ are doing to its movement. This is because Stoics stuff the value of everything into their own heads, thus denying that external things are good and that other people have intrinsic value. Stoics are psychopathic narcissists and axiological solipsists. And this makes Stoicism easy to coopt into bro-y, shallow, self-help-y garbage.

Lying is one of the characteristic features of psychopathy, and has been recognized in clinical and diagnostic descriptions of the disorder, yet individuals with psychopathic traits have been found to have reduced neural activity in many of the brain regions that are important for lying. In this study, we examine brain activity in sixteen individuals with varying degrees of psychopathic traits during a task in which they are instructed to falsify information or tell the truth about autobiographical and non-autobiographical facts, (...) some of which was related to criminal behavior. We found that psychopathic traits were primarily associated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate, various regions of the prefrontal cortex, insula, angular gyrus, and the inferior parietal lobe when participants falsified information of any type. Associations tended to be stronger when participants falsified information about criminal behaviors. Although this study was conducted in a small sample of individuals and the task used has limited ecological validity, these findings support a growing body of literature suggesting that in some contexts, individuals with higher levels of psychopathic traits may demonstrate heightened levels of brain activity. (shrink)

In fMRI research, the goal of correcting for multiple comparisons is to identify areas of activity that reflect true effects, and thus would be expected to replicate in future studies. Finding an appropriate balance between trying to minimize false positives (Type I error) while not being too stringent and omitting true effects (Type II error) can be challenging. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of these types of errors may differ for different areas of study. In many areas of social neuroscience (...) that involve complex processes and considerable individual differences, such as the study of moral judgment, effects are typically smaller and statistical power weaker, leading to the suggestion that less stringent corrections that allow for more sensitivity may be beneficial, but also result in more false positives. Using moral judgment fMRI data, we evaluated four commonly used methods for multiple comparison correction implemented in SPM12 by examining which method produced the most precise overlap with results from a meta-analysis of relevant studies and with results from nonparametric permutation analyses. We found that voxel-wise thresholding with family-wise error correction based on Random Field Theory provides a more precise overlap (i.e., without omitting too few regions or encompassing too many additional regions) than either clusterwise thresholding, Bonferroni correction, or false discovery rate correction methods. (shrink)

Some stories of moral exemplars motivate us to emulate their admirable attitudes and behaviors, but why do some exemplars motivate us more than others? We systematically studied how motivation to emulate is influenced by the similarity between a reader and an exemplar in social or cultural background (Relatability) and how personally costly or demanding the exemplar’s actions are (Attainability). Study 1 found that university students reported more inspiration and related feelings after reading true stories about the good deeds of a (...) recent fellow alum, compared to a famous moral exemplar from decades past. Study 2A developed a battery of short moral exemplar stories that more systematically varied Relatability and Attainability, along with a set of non-moral exemplar stories for comparison. Studies 2B and 2C examined the path from the story type to relatively low stakes altruism (donating to charity and intentions to volunteer) through perceived attainability and relatability, as well as elevation and pleasantness. Together, our studies suggest that it is primarily the relatability of the moral exemplars, not the attainability of their actions, that inspires more prosocial motivation, at least regarding acts that help others at a relatively low cost to oneself. (shrink)

We evaluated the reliability, validity, and differential item functioning (DIF) of a shorter version of the Defining Issues Test-1 (DIT-1), the behavioral DIT (bDIT), measuring the development of moral reasoning. 353 college students (81 males, 271 females, 1 not reported; age M = 18.64 years, SD = 1.20 years) who were taking introductory psychology classes at a public University in a suburb area in the Southern United States participated in the present study. First, we examined the reliability of the bDIT (...) using Cronbach’s α and its concurrent validity with the original DIT-1 using disattenuated correlation. Second, we compared the test duration between the two measures. Third, we tested the DIF of each question between males and females. Findings reported that first, the bDIT showed acceptable reliability and good concurrent validity. Second, the test duration could be significantly shortened by employing the bDIT. Third, DIF results indicated that the bDIT items did not favour any gender. Practical implications of the present study based on the reported findings are discussed. (shrink)

With the surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, online sellers faced challenges in managing their online business daily. Aside from it, their work-life balance has been negatively affected as well, considering that they work from home and are responsible for household responsibilities. Thus, this study is conducted during the pandemic and gathered data using a semi-structured interview through Messenger call. It is conducted to explore the lived experiences of online sellers and how they managed their online business and personal life. It (...) also determines the specific challenges they’ve encountered and how they coped with them. Lastly, this study aims to map out how these experiences will benefit online sellers and consumers and explain that online selling can be both sustainable and convenient in terms of earning a good living and meeting their daily needs. Moreover, three major conclusions emerged from this study’s findings: (1) online sellers faced psychological and physical difficulties in managing their online business during the pandemic, (2) online sellers discovered ways on how to cope with the struggles they are facing, and (3) online sellers reflected on their experience to be more effective in the online selling industry. (shrink)

We developed and tested a behavioral version of the Defining Issues Test-1 revised (DIT-1r), which is a measure of the development of moral judgment. We conducted a behavioral experiment using the behavioral Defining Issues Test (bDIT) to examine the relationship between participants’ moral developmental status, moral competence, and reaction time when making moral judgments. We found that when the judgments were made based on the preferred moral schema, the reaction time for moral judgments was significantly moderated by the moral developmental (...) status. In addition, as a participant becomes more confident with moral judgment, the participant differentiates the preferred versus other schemas better particularly when the participant’s abilities for moral judgment are more developed. (shrink)

A nation’s economy runs on the knowledge and skills of its people.Quality assurance mechanisms for higher education institutions must take cognizance of the graduates' acquisition of skills to become productive and contributory for societal development. The study is a quantitative survey assessing the attainment of the immediate program learning outcomes of the graduating Bachelor of Science in Information Technology of one campus of a public higher education institution in the Philippines. It also assessed the introspection and level of satisfaction of (...) the graduates in their studies. Findings disclosed that the graduates have a high level of attainment of the program's learning outcomes and a high level of satisfaction. The high school where the respondents graduated is the single variable that defined the difference in attainment of program intended learning outcomes. As to the graduates' introspections, themost significant percentage of them learned the program from family, relatives, and friends. Reasons for pursuing the degree program are because of parents’ influence, prestige of IT profession. Meanwhile, the university's reputation, affordable tuition fees, and proximity to home were the factors affecting the enrolment in the BSIT program. The findings will be the basis for strategic program interventions of the program. (shrink)

Background: Moral Growth Mindset (MGM) is a belief about whether one can become a morally better person through efforts. Prior research showed that MGM is positively associated with promotion of moral motivation among adolescents and young adults. We developed and tested the English version of the MGM measure in this study with data collected from college student participants. Methods: In Study 1, we tested the reliability and validity of the MGM measure with two-wave data (N = 212, Age mean = (...) 24.18 years, SD = 7.82 years). In Study 2, we retested the construct validity of the MGM measure once again and its association with other moral and positive psychological indicators to test its convergent and discriminant validity (N = 275, Age mean = 22.02 years, SD = 6.34 years). Results: We found that the MGM measure was reliable and valid from Study 1. In Study 2, the results indicated that the MGM was well correlated with other moral and positive psychological indicators as expected. Conclusions: We developed and validated the English version of the MGM measure in the present study. The results from studies 1 and 2 supported the reliability and validity of the MGM measure. Given this, we found that the English version of the MGM measure can measure one’s MGM as we intended. (shrink)

Socioeconomic status refers to the family's social and economic standing in society. It is measured by combining an individual or group's economic and social position, which is often based on income, education, and occupation. It significantly affects academic performance and even one's health status. The pandemic changed the educational system, causing a huge transition from traditional learning methods to online learning. This shift resulted in confusion, burden, and difficulty among students from different walks of life. This study was conducted to (...) determine the academic stress on online learning among nursing students in relation to their economic status and their ability to access technology. The study utilized a quantitative-correlational method aided by a standard questionnaire. Two hundred thirty-six University of Bohol nursing students enrolled in the second semester of SY 2021–2022 were included in the study by random selection. Data revealed a significant correlation between economic status and the level of stress related to academic expectations and a significant correlation between economic status and access to technology after being subjected to the Spearman rho test of correlation. However, no significant correlation was found between access to technology and the respondents' level of academic stress. (shrink)

AI is increasingly becoming based upon Internet-dependent systems to handle the massive amounts of data it requires to function effectively regardless of the availability of stable Internet connectivity in every affected community. As such, sustainable development (SD) for rural and mountain communities will require more than just equitable access to broadband Internet connection. It must also include a thorough means whereby to ensure that affected communities gain the education and tools necessary to engage inclusively with new technological advances, whether they (...) be focused on machine learning algorithms or community infrastructure, as they will be increasingly dependent upon the automational capabilities of AI. In this essay, an exploration will be conducted into the means whereby student-engaged learning (SEL) can effectively be utilized to provide targeted, inclusive education to rural and mountain communities regarding the implications of AI for SD. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship education is among the key drivers of the country’s economy, and teachers are primarily responsible for its integration into teaching and finding the best and most useful method. The purpose of this research is to determine the level of entrepreneurial competence and teaching methods among entrepreneurship education teachers. Focusing on the concept of entrepreneurial competencies combining conceptual, human relations, strategic, commitment, opportunity, organizational and strategic competencies. Using quantitative – descriptive survey, the study tested its significant difference and relationship when (...) grouped with the profile variables. The findings indicate a significant correlation between the variables particularly, with the technical competence which has the strongest correlation. The paper sheds some light concerning the status of the current entrepreneurial competence of the teachers in the division and recommends training curriculum to develop their competencies in handling the subject. (shrink)

Branching time is a popular theory of time that is intended to account for the openness of the future. Generally, branching-time models the openness of the future by positing a multiplicity of concrete alternative futures mirroring all the possible ways the future could unfold. A distinction is drawn in the literature among branching-time theories: those that make use of moment-based structures and those that employ history-based ones. In this paper, I introduce and discuss a particular kind of openness relative to (...) the possibility that time ends (doomsday). I then show that whereas moment-based branching structures cannot represent this kind of openness, history-based structures can account for it. The conclusion is that history-based structures have an advantage over moment-based ones. (shrink)

In recent years, the branching spacetime (BST) interpretation of quantum mechanics has come under study by a number of philosophers, physicists and mathematicians. This paper points out some implications of the BST interpretation for two areas of quantum physics: (1) quantum gravity, and (2) stochastic interpretations of quantum mechanics.

In Everettian quantum mechanics, justifications for the Born rule appeal to self-locating uncertainty or decision theory. Such justifications have focused exclusively on a pure-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a wave function. Recent works in quantum foundations suggest that it is viable to consider a mixed-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a (mixed-state) density matrix. Here, we develop the conceptual foundations for decoherence and branching in a mixed-state multiverse, and extend the standard Everettian justifications for the Born rule to this setting. This (...) extended framework provides a unification of 'classical' and 'quantum' probabilities, and additional theoretical benefits, for the Everettian picture. (shrink)

At a first glance, and even at a second one, it seems that if time is linear the threat of determinism is more severe than if time is branching, since in the latter case the future is open in a way it is not in the former one where, so to speak, there exists only one branch – one future. In this paper, I want to give a 'third glance' at this claim. I acknowledge that such a claim is (...) intuitive (this is the first glance) and that it is also meaningfully and interestingly defended in recent literature where branching time is either said to imply indeterminism or at least to be compatible with it. To try to make my third glance as precise and as fleshed out as possible, I shall first concentrate on what 'branching' is or could be, and I shall discuss various versions and interpretations of this view. I shall then (more quickly) turn my attention to what determinism is or could be, and I will distinguish three (well-known) kinds of it – focusing mainly on 'metaphysical determinism'. Having these tools in hand, I will then ask (and answer) the question whether branching time helps with avoiding determinism or not. As we shall see, it is incorrect to think that under the branching hypothesis the threat of determinism is any smaller – rather, I will argue that if one has reasons to think that determinism is true, branching will not help, and that the issue of branching versus linear time is then actually neutral with respect to the question whether determinism or indeterminism is true. (shrink)

We draw out significant consequences of a relatively popular theory of metaphysical modality—branching actualism—for cosmological arguments for God’s existence. According to branching actualism, every possible world shares an initial history with the actual world and diverges only because causal powers (or dispositions, or some such) are differentially exercised. We argue that branching actualism undergirds successful responses to two recent cosmological arguments: the Grim Reaper Kalam argument and a modal argument from contingency. We also argue that branching actualism affords a response (...) to one popular defense of the classic contingency argument. What results are new difficulties for several cosmological arguments arising from the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

Given reductionism about people, personal persistence must fundamentally consist in some kind of impersonal continuity relation. Typically, these continuity relations can hold from one to many. And, if they can, the analysis of personal persistence must include a non-branching clause to avoid non-transitive identities or multiple occupancy. It is far from obvious, however, what form this clause should take. This paper argues that previous accounts are inadequate and develops a new proposal.

The central claim of the Parfitian psychological approach to personal identity is that the fact about personal identity is underpinned by a non-branching psychological continuity relation. Hence, for the advocates of the Parfitian view, it is important to understand what it is for a relation to take or not take a branching form. Nonetheless, very few attempts have been made in the literature of personal identity to define the non-branching clause. This paper undertakes this task. Drawing upon a recent debate (...) between Anthony Brueckner and Harold Noonan on the issue, I present three candidates for the non-branching clause. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper develops and advocates a rule for assigning self-locating credences in quantum branching scenarios, called Indexed Branch-Counting. It is argued that Indexed Branch-Counting can be justified on both accuracy-theoretic grounds and on the grounds that it satisfies a requirement of exchangeability for probability assignments. Since Indexed Branch-Counting diverges from the Born Rule, this poses trouble for Everettian approaches to probability. The paper also addresses a common argument against branch-counting, namely that the rule is incoherent (...) in light of putative vagueness in the number of branches. Finally, the paper addresses a recent proposal from Simon Saunders that aims to reconcile branch-counting with the Born Rule, arguing that the proposal faces challenges. (shrink)

The supervaluationist approach to branching time (‘SBT-theory’) appears to be threatened by the puzzle of retrospective determinacy: if yesterday I uttered the sentence ‘It will be sunny tomorrow’ and only in some worlds overlapping at the context of utterance it is sunny the next day, my utterance is to be assessed as neither true nor false even if today is indeed a sunny day. John MacFarlane (“Truth in the Garden of Forking Paths” 81) has recently criticized a promising solution to (...) this puzzle for falling short of an adequate account of ‘actually’. In this paper, I aim to rebut MacFarlane's criticism. To this effect, I argue that: (i) ‘actually’ can be construed either as an indexical or as a nonindexical operator; (ii) if ‘actually’ is nonindexical, MacFarlane's criticism is invalid; (iii) there appear to be independent reasons for SBT-theorists to claim that ‘actually’ is a nonindexical expression. (shrink)

The future is different from the past. What is past is fixed and set in stone. The future, on the other hand, is open insofar as it holds numerous possibilities. Branching-tree models of time account for this asymmetry by positing an ontological difference between the past and the future. Given a time t, a unique unified past lies behind t, whereas multiple alternative existing futures lie ahead of t. My goal in this paper is to show that there is an (...) incompatibility between the way branching-tree models account for the open future and the possibility of time travel. That is, I argue that once time travel enters the picture, branching time fails to model the openness of the future by means of alternative future branches. I show how this holds independently of whether branching-time models are cashed out in A-theoretic or B-theoretic terms. (shrink)

This paper investigates logical aspects of combining linear orders as semantics for modal and temporal logics, with modalities for possible paths, resulting in a variety of branching time logics over classes of trees. Here we adopt a unified approach to the Priorean, Peircean and Ockhamist semantics for branching time logics, by considering them all as fragments of the latter, obtained as combinations, in various degrees, of languages and semantics for linear time with a modality for possible paths. We then consider (...) a hierarchy of natural classes of trees and bundled trees arising from a given class of linear orders and show that in general they provide different semantics. We also discuss transfer of definability from linear orders to trees and introduce a uniform translation from Priorean to Peircean formulae which transfers definability of properties of linear orders to definability of properties of all paths in trees. (shrink)