Empirical philosophers of science aim to base their philosophical theories on observations of scientific practice. But since there is far too much science to observe it all, how can we form and test hypotheses about science that are sufficiently rigorous and broad in scope, while avoiding the pitfalls of bias and subjectivity in our methods? Part of the answer, we claim, lies in the computational tools of the digital humanities, which allow us to analyze large volumes of scientific literature. Here (...) we advocate for the use of these methods by addressing a number of large-scale, justificatory concerns—specifically, about the epistemic value of journal articles as evidence for what happens elsewhere in science, and about the ability of DH tools to extract this evidence. Far from ignoring the gap between scientific literature and the rest of scientific practice, effective use of DH tools requires critical reflection about these relationships. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to results of protein (...) research. PRO (http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro) is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. (shrink)

The hermeneutic pragmatism explored in this article timely examines how “post-truth” claims over-estimate semantic freedoms while at the same time underestimating semantic and pre-semantic restraints. Such pragmatism also timely examines how formalists err by committing the reverse errors. Drawing on insights from James, Peirce, Putnam, Rorty, Gadamer, Derrida, and others, such hermeneutic pragmatism explores (1) the necessary role of both internal and objective experience in meaning, (2) the resulting instrumental nature of concepts required to deal with such experience, (3) the (...) related need for workability to apply to the “the collectivity of experience’s demands, nothing being omitted,” (4) the inherent role of morality and other norms in measuring such workability, (5) the semantic as well as experiential nature of our workable realities, (6) the semantic freedoms involved in constructing, framing, and retaining our workable realities and concepts, and (7) the semantic, pre-semantic, and other restraints on constructing, framing, and retaining our workable realities and concepts. -/- Such hermeneutic pragmatism also introduces Eunomia, a real-world alternative to Dworkin’s superhuman judge Hercules. Named after the Greek goddess of good order, the human Eunomia represents the reasonable judge excellently versed in (among other things) legal theory, legal practice, linguistics, and philosophy of language. Additionally, in its appendices, this article surveys the pragmatic restraints of “implementives” and provides a detailed overview of pragmatic “workability” restraints for both law and fact. -/- (By “sense” the title of this article means not only “meaning conveyed or intended” but also “capacity for effective application of the powers of the mind as a basis for action or response.” See Sense, MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY (11th ed. 2014) “Workable” has the broad meaning discussed in Sections II, IV, and Appendix C of the Article, and "good" is further explored in the section on Eunomia, namesake of the Greek goddess of good order.) -/- Keywords: Pragmatism, Hermeneutic, Truth, Rule of Law, William James, C.S. Peirce, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Gadamer, Habermas, Derrida, Lon Fuller, H.L.A. Hart, Post-truth, Postmodernism, Trump, Rhetoric, Meaning, Interpretation, Metaphor, Category, Lifeworld, Formalism, Framing, Deconstruction. (shrink)

In this retrospective for Ethics, I discuss H.M. Oliver’s “Established Expectations and American Economic Policies.” This article, by a then-modestly-famous economist, has been ignored (no citations) since its 1940 publication. Yet it bears directly on a normative problem at the intersection of ethics and economics that challenges today’s policymakers but has received comparatively little philosophical attention: how should we balance potentially desirable institutional change against the disruption of established expectations? -/- Oliver details how the principle of fulfilling established (...) expectations cuts across political lines. Conservatives, he observes, criticized inflation for disrupting expectations, and demanded the protection of established corporations. New Deal progressives achieved “the safeguarding of the economic positions of certain important sections of the American people” (104) via statutes designed to protect income and homeownership status. And labor leaders lobbied for the preservation of occupational status. Oliver criticizes these demands on two grounds. First, they are noncompossible: they can’t simultaneously be fulfilled. Second, they are economically inefficient. He concludes that “in a modern dynamic economy, the preservation of status is not and cannot be a feasible criterion of economic justice” (107). -/- I argue that Oliver accurately recognizes both the wide endorsement and the moral ill-foundedness of fulfilling expectations. However, I criticize Oliver’s belief in the noncompossibility of expectations. The established expectations of the wealthy, middle-class homeowners and retirees, and current workers can all be maintained, but at the price of constricting the opportunities of new graduates, immigrants, and the poor—all groups yet to develop settled expectations. This insight renders the protection of expectations not merely inefficient but also unjust. (shrink)

Jordan acceded to the WTO in 1999. In its accession Jordan agreed, for example, to reduce tariffs on imported products and open its services market; it also modified its intellectual property regime. Jordan enjoyed special and differential treatment in few areas and was not able to designate olive oil as a good eligible for special safeguards. The WTO agreements required fundamental changes in the domestic laws and regulations of Jordan. The article concludes by arguing that Jordan’s accession to the WTO (...) was a lengthy and costly process. Jordan agreed to an arduous package of legal and economic reforms. Given that Jordan agreed to greater commitments compared to the obligations of the original WTO members, the multilateral trading system witnessed an accession saga. (shrink)

Instead of focusing on the Malebranche-Edwards connection regarding occasionalism as if minds are distinct from the ideas they have, I focus on how finite minds are particular expressions of God's will that there be the distinctions by which ideas are identified and differentiated. This avoids problems, created in the accounts of Fiering, Lee, and especially Crisp, about the inherently idealist character of Edwards' occasionalism.

William Oliver Martin published "The Order and Integration of Knowledge" in 1957 to address the problem of the nature and the order of various kinds of knowledge; in particular, the theoretical problem of how one kind of knowledge is related to another kind. Martin characterizes kinds of knowledge as being either autonomous or synthetic. The latter are reducible to two or more of the autonomous (or irreducible) kinds of knowledge, viz., history (H), metaphysics (Meta), theology (T), formal logic (FL), (...) mathematics (Math), and generalizations of experimental science (G). Metaphysics and theology constitute the two domains of the ontological context while history and experimental science are the two domains of the phenomenological context. The relation of one kind of knowledge to another may be instrumental, constitutive, and/or regulative. For instance, historical propositions are constitutive of G, metaphysical propositions are regulative of G, and propositions in formal logic and mathematics are instrumental to G. Theological propositions are not related to G and so there is no conflict between science and theology. Martin's work sheds light on the possible areas of incompatibility between science and religion. (shrink)

Aesthetic internalism claims a link between judgement and motivation: aesthetic judgements bring with them motivations to act in characteristic ways. Critics object that there is a difference between merely liking something and judging it to be aesthetically good, and that it is our likings, not our aesthetic judgements, that motivate us. This paper develops a version of aesthetic internalism that can respond to this criticism. Wholehearted aesthetic judgements are characterized by stability, attention, and motivation. Making such judgements is an important (...) part of a good life, and so at least some aesthetic judgements are motivating. So we have reason to think that this version of aesthetic internalism is true. This paper defends wholehearted aesthetic internalism against objections, and assesses an argument from aesthetic internalism to aesthetic non-cognitivism. While wholehearted aesthetic internalism can only offer qualified support to non-cognitivism, it nonetheless offers a number of fruitful avenues for further work. (shrink)

I argue, through appeal to the distinction between analysis and decomposition described by Dummett, that Wittgenstein employs both of those notions in the Tractatus. I then bring this interpretation to bear upon the issue of propositional unity, where I formulate an objection to the views of both Leonard Linksy and José Zalabardo. I show that both Linsky and Zalabardo fail to acknowledge the distinction between analysis and decomposition present in the Tractatus, and that they consequently mischaracterise Wittgenstein’s position with respect (...) to propositional unity. (shrink)

In this volume, leading philosophers of psychiatry examine psychiatric classification systems, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, asking whether current systems are sufficient for effective diagnosis, treatment, and research. Doing so, they take up the question of whether mental disorders are natural kinds, grounded in something in the outside world. Psychiatric categories based on natural kinds should group phenomena in such a way that they are subject to the same type of causal explanations and respond similarly to (...) the same type of causal interventions. When these categories do not evince such groupings, there is reason to revise existing classifications. The contributors all question current psychiatric classifications systems and the assumptions on which they are based. They differ, however, as to why and to what extent the categories are inadequate and how to address the problem. Topics discussed include taxometric methods for identifying natural kinds, the error and bias inherent in DSM categories, and the complexities involved in classifying such specific mental disorders as "oppositional defiance disorder" and pathological gambling. -/- Contributors George Graham, Nick Haslam, Allan Horwitz, Harold Kincaid, Dominic Murphy, Jeffrey Poland, Nancy Nyquist Potter, Don Ross, Dan Stein, Jacqueline Sullivan, Serife Tekin, Peter Zachar. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against Michael Morris’ claim, that the Tractatus view involves holding that the possibility of truth-functional combination is prior to the possibility for sentential constituents to combine with one another. I provide an alternative interpretation in which I deny the presence of any distinction in the Tractatus between these two possibilities. I then turn to Adrian Moore’s ‘disjunctivist’ account of sentencehood, itself inspired by the Tractatus view. I argue that Moore’s account need not involve a commitment (...) to the kind of priority Morris describes, and that it need not involve a commitment to transcendental idealism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, based on a comparison of Spinoza's and Descartes‟s discussion of error, that beliefs are affirmations of the content of imagination that is not false in itself, only in relation to the object. This interpretation is an improvement both on the winning ideas reading and on the interpretation reading of beliefs. Contrary to the winning ideas reading it is able to explain belief revision concerning the same representation. Also, it does not need the assumption that I (...) misinterpret my otherwise correct ideas as the interpretation reading would have it. In the first section I will provide a brief overview of the notion of inherence and its role in Spinoza‟s discussion of the status of finite minds. Then by examining the relation between Spinoza‟s and Descartes‟ distinction of representations and attitudes, I show that affirmation can be identified with beliefs in Spinoza. Next, I will take a closer look at the identification of intellect and will and argue that Spinoza's identification of the two is based on the fact that Spinoza sees both as the active aspect of the mind. After that, I analyze Spinoza‟s comments on the different scopes of will and intellect, and argue that beliefs are affirmations of the imaginative content of the idea. Finally, through Spinoza‟s example of the utterance of mathematical error, I present my solution to the problem of inherence of false beliefs. (shrink)

This paper considers two reasons that might support Russell’s choice of a ramified-type theory over a simple-type theory. The first reason is the existence of purported paradoxes that can be formulated in any simple-type language, including an argument that Russell considered in 1903. These arguments depend on certain converse-compositional principles. When we take account of Russell’s doctrine that a propositional function is not a constituent of its values, these principles turn out to be too implausible to make these arguments troubling. (...) The second reason is conditional on a substitutional interpretation of quantification over types other than that of individuals. This reason stands up to investigation: a simple-type language will not sustain such an interpretation, but a ramified-type language will. And there is evidence that Russell was tacitly inclined towards such an interpretation. A strong construal of that interpretation opens a way to make sense of Russell’s simultaneous repudiation of propositions and his willingness to quantify over them. But that way runs into trouble with Russell’s commitment to the finitude of human understanding. (shrink)

Divers presents a set of de re modal truths which, he claims, are inconvenient for Lewisean modal realism. We argue that there is no inconvenience for Lewis.

This paper reviews the hole argument as an argument against spacetime substantivalism. After a careful presentation of the argument itself, I critically review possible responses.

This article tackles the sole surviving ancient commentary on what was perhaps the second most important Platonic work, with special interest for the manner in which the ancients tackled the setting of Plato's dialogues, Socratic ignorance, Socratic eros, the central myth-like Palinode, and the question of oral as against written teaching.

In this paper I offer an argument against one important version of panentheism, that is, mereological panentheism. Although panentheism has proven difficult to define, I provide a working definition of the view, and proceed to argue that given this way of thinking about the doctrine, mereological accounts of panentheism have serious theological drawbacks. I then explore some of these theological drawbacks. In a concluding section I give some reasons for thinking that the classical theistic alternative to panentheism is preferable, all (...) things considered. (shrink)

Ancient Chinese and Greek thinkers alike were preoccupied with the moral value of music; they distinguished between good and bad music by looking at the music’s effect on moral character. The idea can be understood in terms of two closely related questions. Does music have the power to affect the ethical character of either listener or performer? If it does, is it better as music for doing so? I argue that an affirmative answers to both questions are more plausible than (...) it might seem at first. (shrink)

In this paper, through a close reading of Spinoza's use of common notions I argue for the role of experiential and experimental knowledge in Spinoza's epistemology.

Binding specificity is a centrally important concept in molecular biology, yet it has received little philosophical attention. Here I aim to remedy this by analyzing binding specificity as a causal property. I focus on the concept’s role in drug design, where it is highly prized and hence directly studied. From a causal perspective, understanding why binding specificity is a valuable property of drugs contributes to an understanding of causal selection—of how and why scientists distinguish between causes, not just causes from (...) noncauses. In particular, the specificity of drugs is precisely what underwrites their value as experimental interventions on biological processes. (shrink)

Part 1 [Hodes, 2021] “looked under the hood” of the familiar versions of the classical propositional modal logic K and its intuitionistic counterpart. This paper continues that project, addressing some familiar classical strengthenings of K and GL), and their intuitionistic counterparts. Section 9 associates two intuitionistic one-step proof-theoretic systems to each of the just mentioned intuitionistic logics, this by adding for each a new rule to those which generated IK in Part 1. For the systems associated with the intuitionistic counterparts (...) of D and T, these rules are “pure one-step”: their schematic formulations does not use □ or ♢. For the systems associated with the intuitionistic counterparts of K4, etc., these rules meet these conditions: neither □ nor ♢ is iterated; none use both □ and ♢. The join of the two systems associated with each of these familiar logics is the full one-step system for that intuitionistic logic. And further “blended” intuitionistic systems arise from joining these systems in various ways. Adding the 0-version of Excluded Middle to their intuitionistic counterparts yields the one-step systems corresponding to the familiar classical logics. Each proof-theoretic system defines a consequence relation in the obvious way. Section 10 examines inclusions between these consequence relations. Section 11 associates each of the above consequence relations with an appropriate class of models, and proves them sound with respect to their appropriate class. This allows proofs of some failures of inclusion between consequence relations. Section 12 proves that the each consequence relation is complete or weakly complete, that relative to its appropriate class of models. The Appendix presents three further results about some of the intuitionistic consequence relations discussed in the body of the paper. For Keywords, see Part 1. (shrink)

This paper uses a schema for infinite regress arguments to provide a solution to the problem of the infinite regress of justification. The solution turns on the falsity of two claims: that a belief is justified only if some belief is a reason for it, and that the reason relation is transitive.

We make some remarks on the mathematics and metaphysics of the hole argument, in response to a recent article in this journal by Weatherall ([2018]). Broadly speaking, we defend the mainstream philosophical literature from the claim that correct usage of the mathematics of general relativity `blocks' the argument.

In this paper, I argue for a novel reading of Spinoza’s position in his exchangewith Boyle about Boyle’s experiment with nitre. Boyle claimed to have shownthrough experiments that nitre ceased to be nitre after heating. Spinozadisagreed and proposed the alternative hypothesis that nitre has changed itsstate and not its nature. Spinoza’s position was construed in the literature asrational scepticism denying that experiments can yield knowledge ofessences because all sensory experience is underdetermined and open tomultiple interpretations. I argue for an alternative (...) reading of Spinoza’sposition which focuses on Bacon’s notion of crucial instance. According tothis reading, Spinoza did not deny the possibility of knowing byexperimentation whether nitre has changed its nature, he asked for a crucialinstance, i.e. an experiment that would refute the hypothesis that nitre haschanged merely its state. Spinoza’s argumentative strategy shows that,contrary to the mainstream reading, the representational content of sensoryideas can be determined even if it does not represent the essence of theobject: we can know with absolute, rather than merely moral, certaintywhether nitre ceased to be nitre without knowing what nitre is. (shrink)

Ontologies, as the term is used in informatics, are structured vocabularies comprised of human- and computer-interpretable terms and relations that represent entities and relationships. Within informatics fields, ontologies play an important role in knowledge and data standardization, representation, integra- tion, sharing and analysis. They have also become a foundation of artificial intelligence (AI) research. In what follows, we outline the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), which covers multiple areas in the domain of coronavirus diseases, including etiology, transmission, epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, (...) prevention, and treatment. We emphasize CIDO development relevant to COVID-19. (shrink)

Contrary to economics or history, for example, there does not exist an organized field dedicated to the philosophy of political science. Given that the philosophical issues raised by political science research are just as pressing and vibrant as those raised in these more organized fields, fostering a field that labels itself Philosophy of Political Science (PoPS) is important. PoPS is advanced here as a fruitful meeting place where both philosophers and practicing political scientists contribute and discuss—with philosophical discussions that are (...) close to and informed by actual developments in political science, making philosophy of science continuous with the sciences in line with contemporary naturalist philosophy of science. The topics scrutinized in the different chapters of the Handbook will figure prominently in PoPS, as we lay out in this chapter. (shrink)

Jacques Monod (1971) argued that certain molecular processes rely critically on the property of chemical arbitrariness, which he claimed allows those processes to “transcend the laws of chemistry”. It seems natural, as some philosophers have done, to interpret this in modal terms: a biological relationship is chemically arbitrary if it is possible, within the constraints of chemical “law”, for that relationship to have been otherwise than it is. But while modality is certainly important for understanding chemical arbitrariness, understanding its biological (...) role also requires an account of the concrete causal-functional features that distinguish arbitrary from non-arbitrary phenomena. In this paper I elaborate on this under-emphasised aspect by offering a general account of these features: arbitrary relations are instantiated by mechanisms that involve molecular adapters, which causally couple two properties or processes which would otherwise be uncorrelated. Additionally, adapters work by acting as intermediate rather than cooperating causes. (shrink)

Discourse carries thin commitment to objects of a certain sort iff it says or implies that there are such objects. It carries a thick commitment to such objects iff an account of what determines truth-values for its sentences say or implies that there are such objects. This paper presents two model-theoretic semantics for mathematical discourse, one reflecting thick commitment to mathematical objects, the other reflecting only a thin commitment to them. According to the latter view, for example, the semantic role (...) of number-words is not designation but rather the encoding of cardinality-quantifiers. I also present some reasons for preferring this view. (shrink)

This paper has three aims: to define autonomism clearly and charitably, to offer a positive argument in its favour, and to defend a larger view about what is at stake in the debate between autonomism and its critics. Autonomism is here understood as the claim that a valuer does not make an error in failing to bring her moral and aesthetic judgements together, unless she herself values doing so. The paper goes on to argue that reason does not require the (...) valuer to make coherent her aesthetic and moral evaluations. Finally, the paper shows that the denial of autonomism has realist commitments that autonomism does not have, and concludes that issues of value realism and irrealism are relevant to the debates about autonomism in ways that have not hitherto been recognized. (shrink)

Immoralists hold that in at least some cases, moral fl aws in artworks can increase their aesthetic value. They deny what I call the valence constraint: the view that any effect that an artwork’s moral value has on its aesthetic merit must have the same valence. The immoralist offers three arguments against the valence constraint. In this paper I argue that these arguments fail, and that this failure reveals something deep and interesting about the relationship between cognitive and moral value. (...) In the fi nal section I offer a positive argument for the valence constraint. (shrink)

What responsibilities do audiences have in engaging with artworks? Certain audience responses seem quite clear: for example, audiences should not vandalize or destroy artworks; they should not disrupt performances. This paper examines other kinds of resisting responses that audiences sometimes engage in, including petitioning the artist to change their works, altering copies of artworks, and creating new artworks in another artist’s fictional world. I argue for five claims: (1) while these actions can sometimes infringe on the rights of artists, the (...) rights of artists are not absolute; (2) the fact that such actions are based on mistaken interpretations of the artworks has no normative weight; (3) there can be reason to object to additions and alterations whose conception of the artwork is morally worse than the original (and so, there can be reason to support additions and alterations whose conception is morally better); (4) petitioning raises special moral problems; and, most important, (5) some of these actions are valuable because they involve creative and aesthetic activity. Those acts of audience resistance that are creative, morally improve on the original work, and that minimize the infringement of the artists’ rights are good, and should be encouraged. (shrink)

In the following article I intend to examine the problem of the unity of the proposition in Russell, Frege, and Wittgenstein. My chief aim will be to draw attention to the distinction between Russell’s conception of propositional constituents, on the one hand, with Frege and Wittgenstein’s on the other. My focus will be on Russell’s view of terms as independent, propositions being built up out of these building blocks, compared with Frege and Wittgenstein’s ‘top down’ approach. Furthermore, I will argue (...) that, contra certain other commentators, Frege’s metaphor of saturation and unsaturation does not serve as a solution to the problem of unity, and that the extension of this metaphorical language to Wittgenstein is, therefore, inappropriate. (shrink)

Two extremely detailed accounts of temporal experience can be found in the work of C. D. Broad. These accounts have been subject to considerable criticism. I argue that, when we look more carefully at Broad’s work, we find that much of this criticism fails to find its target. I show that the objection that ultimately proves troubling for Broad stems from his commitment to two principles: i) the Thin-PSA, and ii) the ‘Overlap’ claim. I use this result to demonstrate that (...) we can learn two extremely important lessons from Broad’s work on temporal experience. -/- The first lesson is that there is a structural problem facing any account that commits to these two principles. This is significant given that a number of recent accounts of temporal experience are so committed. The second lesson is that the problem facing these accounts stems only from commitment to the Thin-PSA and ‘Overlap’, rather than to commitment to a particular conception of how experiences are to be individuated. This, I argue, gives us reason to reject Tye’s recent claim that the problems facing accounts of temporal experience can be dissolved simply by making stipulations about how experiences are to be individuated. (shrink)

Logicism is, roughly speaking, the doctrine that mathematics is fancy logic. So getting clear about the nature of logic is a necessary step in an assessment of logicism. Logic is the study of logical concepts, how they are expressed in languages, their semantic values, and the relationships between these things and the rest of our concepts, linguistic expressions, and their semantic values. A logical concept is what can be expressed by a logical constant in a language. So the question “What (...) is logic?” drives us to the question “What is a logical constant?” Though what follows contains some argument, limitations of space constrain me in large part to express my Credo on this topic with the broad brush of bold assertion and some promissory gestures. (shrink)

Relative to any reasonable frame, satisfiability of modal quantificational formulae in which “= ” is the sole predicate is undecidable; but if we restrict attention to satisfiability in structures with the expanding domain property, satisfiability relative to the familiar frames (K, K4, T, S4, B, S5) is decidable. Furthermore, relative to any reasonable frame, satisfiability for modal quantificational formulae with a single monadic predicate is undecidable ; this improves the result of Kripke concerning formulae with two monadic predicates.