What justifies our beliefs about what other people say? According to epistemic inferentialism​, the justification of comprehension-based beliefs depends on the justification of other beliefs, e.g., beliefs about what words the speaker uttered or even what sounds they produced. According to epistemic non-inferentialism, the justification of comprehension-based beliefs ​does not depend on the justification of other beliefs. This paper offers a new defense of epistemic non-inferentialism. First, I discuss three counterexamples to epistemic non-inferentialism provided recently by Brendan Balcerak Jackson. I (...) argue that only one of Balcerak Jackson’s counterexamples is effective, and that it is effective against only one version of epistemic non-inferentialism, viz. language comprehension dogmatism. Second, I propose an alternative version of epistemic non-inferentialism, viz. comprehension-process reliabilism, which is immune to these counterexamples. I conclude that we should follow Balcerak Jackson in his rejection of language comprehension dogmatism but not all the way to the endorsement of epistemic inferentialism. Comprehension-process reliabilism is superior to both these alternatives. (shrink)

I advance a type of conceptualist argument for substance dualism – minimally, the view that we are spiritual substances that have bodies – based on the understandability of what it would be for something to be a spirit, e.g. what it would be for God to be a spirit. After presenting the argument formally, I clarify and defend its various premises with a special focus on what I take to be the most controversial one, namely, if thinking matter is metaphysically (...) possible, it is not the case that we have a distinct positive concept of God's being a divine spirit. (shrink)

The nature of linguistic understanding is a much-debated topic. Among the issues that have been discussed, two questions have recently received a lot of attention: (Q1) ‘Are states of understanding direct (i.e. represent solely what is said) or indirect (i.e. represent what is said as being said/asserted)?’ and (Q2) ‘What kind of mental attitude is linguistic understanding (e.g. knowledge, belief, seeming)?’ This paper argues that, contrary to what is commonly assumed, there is no straightforward answer to either of these questions. (...) This is because linguistic understanding cannot be identified with a single mental attitude towards a particular representation. Instead, we should characterize states of linguistic understanding as involving complex representational structures generated by a dual-stream process. The first stream operates on direct representations of what is said, while the second operates on representations of what is said as being said/asserted by a given source. Both these streams feed a situation model, i.e. a complex representation of a state of affairs described by a given piece of discourse. (shrink)

The question of the cognitive role of fictionality is this: what is the correct cognitive attitude to take to p, when it is fictional that p? We began by considering one answer to this question, implicit in the work of Kendall Walton, that the correct response to a fictional proposition is to imagine that proposition. However, this approach is silent in cases of fictional incompleteness, where neither p nor its negation are fictional. We argue that that Waltonians should embrace a (...) pluralistic account of the cognitive role of fictional incompleteness: in some cases of fictional incompleteness, we are permitted to resolve the incompleteness during our engagement with the target fiction, and in other cases, we are obliged not to resolve the incompleteness. But though pluralism is accommodated by Walton’s wider account of fictionality, it puts tension on his motivating idea that fictionality stands to the imagination as truth stands to belief. And so we develop a rival conception of the cognitive role of fictionality that is built around a different analogy: on this evidentialist approach, (known) fictionality stands to the imagination as evidence stands to credence. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

*This work is no longer under development* Two major themes in the literature on indicative conditionals are that the content of indicative conditionals typically depends on what is known;1 that conditionals are intimately related to conditional probabilities.2 In possible world semantics for counterfactual conditionals, a standard assumption is that conditionals whose antecedents are metaphysically impossible are vacuously true.3 This aspect has recently been brought to the fore, and defended by Tim Williamson, who uses it in to characterize alethic necessity by (...) exploiting such equivalences as: A⇔¬A A. One might wish to postulate an analogous connection for indicative conditionals, with indicatives whose antecedents are epistemically impossible being vacuously true: and indeed, the modal account of indicative conditionals of Brian Weatherson has exactly this feature.4 This allows one to characterize an epistemic modal by the equivalence A⇔¬A→A. For simplicity, in what follows we write A as KA and think of it as expressing that subject S knows that A.5 The connection to probability has received much attention. Stalnaker suggested, as a way of articulating the ‘Ramsey Test’, the following very general schema for indicative conditionals relative to some probability function P: P = P 1For example, Nolan ; Weatherson ; Gillies. 2For example Stalnaker ; McGee ; Adams. 3Lewis. See Nolan for criticism. 4‘epistemically possible’ here means incompatible with what is known. 5This idea was suggested to me in conversation by John Hawthorne. I do not know of it being explored in print. The plausibility of this characterization will depend on the exact sense of ‘epistemically possible’ in play—if it is compatibility with what a single subject knows, then can be read ‘the relevant subject knows that p’. If it is more delicately formulated, we might be able to read as the epistemic modal ‘must’. (shrink)

A gas in a box is perhaps the most important model system studied in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Usually, studies focus on the gas, whereas the box merely serves as an idealized confinement. The present article focuses on the box as the central object and develops a thermodynamic theory by treating the geometric degrees of freedom of the box as the degrees of freedom of a thermodynamic system. Applying standard mathematical methods to the thermody- namics of an empty box allows (...) equations with the same structure as those of cosmology and classical and quantum mechanics to be derived. The simple model system of an empty box is shown to have interesting connections to classical mechanics, special relativity, and quantum field theory. (shrink)

The integration of Internet Protocol and Embedded Systems can enhance the communication platform. This paper describes the emerging smart technologies based on Internet of Things (IOT) and internet protocols along with embedded systems for monitoring and controlling smart devices with the help of WiFi technology and web applications. The internet protocol (IP) address has been assigned to the things to control and operate the devices via remote network that facilitates the interoperability and end-to-end communication among various devices c,onnected over a (...) network. The HTTP POST and HTTP GET command that supports the RESTful service have been used to ensure the transmission and reception of packets between the IOT Gateway and Cloud Database. The emerging smart technologies based on the Internet of Things (IoT) facilitated features like automation, controllability, interconnectivity, reliability which in turn turn paved the way for a wide range of acceptance amongst the masses. The Internet of Things (IoT) has brought in many new emerging technologies into varoius field like our daily lives, industry, agricultural sector, and many more. The world is experiencing the explosive growth with the advent of Internet of Things (IoT) these years. The potential growth of IoT is enoromous which is evidenced by all the human beings in our day to day life. (shrink)

Purpose Prescription stimulant use as “cognitive enhancers” has been described among undergraduate college students. However, the use of prescription stimulants among future health care professionals is not well characterized. This study was designed to determine the prevalence of prescription stimulant misuse among students at an academic health sciences center. -/- Method Electronic surveys were e-mailed to 621 medical, pharmacy, and respiratory therapy students at East Tennessee State University for four consecutive weeks in fall 2011. Completing the survey was voluntary and (...) anonymous. Surveys asked about reasons for, frequency of, and side effects of nonprescription misuse of prescription stimulants. Given the sensitive material, an opportunity to win one of ten $50 gift cards was used as an incentive. -/- Results Three hundred seventy-two (59.9%) students completed the survey from three disciplines (47.6% medical, 70.5% pharmacy, and 57.6% respiratory therapy). Overall, 11.3% of responders admitted to misusing prescription stimulants. There was more misuse by respiratory therapy students, although this was not statistically significant (10.9% medicine, 9.7% pharmacy, 26.3% respiratory therapy; P = .087). Reasons for prescription stimulant misuse included to enhance alertness/ energy (65.9%), to improve academic performance (56.7%), to experiment (18.2%), and to use recreationally/get high (4.5%). -/- Conclusions Prescription stimulant misuse was prevalent among participating students, but further research is needed to describe prevalence among future health care workers more generally. The implications and consequences of such misuse require further study across professions with emphasis on investigating issues of academic dishonesty (e.g., “cognitive enhancement”), educational quality, and patient safety or health care quality. (shrink)

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "Biomedical Informatics: We Are What We Publish", written by Peter L. Elkin, Steven H. Brown, and Graham Wright. It is introduced by an editorial. This article contains the combined commentaries invited to independently comment on the Elkin et al. paper. In subsequent issues the discussion can continue through letters to the editor.

It is commonly assumed that personalization technologies used by Google for the purpose of tailoring search results for individual users create filter bubbles, which reinforce users’ political views. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for a personalization-induced filter bubble has not been forthcoming. Here, we investigate whether filter bubbles may result instead from a searcher’s choice of search queries. In the first experiment, participants rated the left-right leaning of 48 queries (search strings), 6 for each of 8 topics (abortion, benefits, climate change, sex (...) equality, immigration, nuclear family, Islam, and taxation). An independent sample of participants were then asked to select one of these queries for each of the 8 topics. With the exception of the topic of Islam, participants were significantly more likely to select a query corresponding to their own political leaning, compared to other queries, explaining between 12% and 39% of the variance. A second experiment investigated the effect of the political leaning of the same queries on the overall political leaning of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) in Google Search. The top six results of each SERP were rated collectively by a third group of participants, explaining 36.3% of the variance across all 48 search terms (p < .00001). That is, (1) participants in our experiments tended to select own-side search queries, and (2) using those queries tended to yield own-side search results when using the Google search engine. Our results are consistent with the notion of a self-imposed filter bubble in which query selection plays a salient role. (shrink)

Ang Noli Me Tangere at El Filibusterismo ay mga nobelang isinulat ni Dr. Jose P. Rizal na sumasalamin sa kalagayan ng mga Pilipino noong panahon ng mga Español. Ikinubli ni Rizal ang mga di-makatáong pagtrato ng mga Español sa mga itinuring na Indio sa pamamagitan ng mga pangyayari at mga karakter sa kaniyang dalawang akda. Mula sa Teorya ng Moral na Pag-unlad (Theory of Moral Development) ng isang Amerikanong Sikolohistang si Lawrence Kohlberg ay sinuri ng papel na ito ang 10 (...) tagpo na nagpapakita ng katungkulang moral sa dalawang nobela gámit ang Antas at Yugto ng Moral na Pag-unlad ni Kohlberg (Kohlberg’s Levels and Stages of Moral Development). Mula sa ginawang pagsusuri, napagtanto ng papel na ito na gumamit si Rizal ng estratehiya upang ipakita na ang aksiyong isinagawa ng ahente sa bawat tagpo ay taliwas sa kaniyang kabuoang moralidad, bagaman ang pamamaraang ito ay nagdulot sa mga mambabása ng Noli Me Tangere at El Filibusterismo ng iba’t ibang interpretasyon at pagkaunawa sa mga isinulat ng may-akda. Mapanghámon ang mga nobela ni Rizal na sumusubok sa tradisyonal na kaugalian at panuntunan ng Pilipinas maging sa pagkukunwari ng lipunang Pilipino. Malaki ang naging gampanin ng nabuong tema na sumisimbolo sa mga isyung panlipunang nais palutangin ni Rizal. Gayunpaman, dahil sa mataas na pangangatwirang moral na nakapaloob sa kaniyang mga gawa, nararapat na gamítin ito hindi lámang bílang materyal sa pagaaral ng Filipino at sa mga kaugnay na larang, kundi pati rin sa pag-aaral ng kritisismo sa politika at lipunan, maging sa pag-aaral ng etika at moralidad, partikular na sa konteksto ng Pilipinas. (shrink)

A new way to transpose the virtue epistemologist’s ‘knowledge = apt belief’ template to the collective level, as a thesis about group knowledge, is developed. In particular, it is shown how specifically judgmental belief can be realised at the collective level in a way that is structurally analogous, on a telic theory of epistemic normativity (e.g., Sosa 2020), to how it is realised at the individual level—viz., through a (collective) intentional attempt to get it right aptly (whether p) by alethically (...) affirming that p. An advantage of the proposal developed is that it is shown to be compatible with competing views—viz., joint acceptance accounts and social-distributive accounts—of how group members must interact in order to materially realise a group belief. I conclude by showing how the proposed judgment-focused collective (telic) virtue epistemology has important advantages over a rival version of collective virtue epistemology defended in recent work by Jesper Kallestrup (2016). (shrink)

Advocates of psychedelic drugs argue that they can induce experiences that are of great spiritual and philosophical value, and that they have the potential to ‘expand consciousness.’ But can drugs, as William James (1842-1910), Aldous Huxley (1894- 1963), and Timothy Leary (1920- 1996) argue, allow us to see beyond the horizon of ordinary perception — that is, see things as they really are? To put the philosophical question more generally, can an artificial change (by the means of drugs, electrical stimuli, (...) or psychosurgery) to the brain— to the mind’s material foundations — reveal knowledge through the resulting experience? And could such a change actually provide an authentic religious experience, or rather, knowledge of what it is like to have an authentic religious experience? Or are such claims of instant enlightenment merely a mystical façade? (shrink)

Review of Craig And Mroeland: *Naturalism: A Critical Analysis*.

In their thought-provoking article, Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) defend the view that the status—both epistemic and ethical—of Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI) used in psychotherapy is complicated. While therapeutic CAI seems to be more than a mere tool implementing particular therapeutic techniques, it falls short of being a “digital therapist.” One of the main arguments supporting the latter claim is that even though “the interaction with CAI happens in the course of conversation… the conversation is profoundly different from a conversation with (...) a human therapist” (Sedlakova and Trachsel 2023, 8). In particular, unlike a human therapist, CAI cannot help its users gain new insight and self-understanding (Sedlakova and Trachsel 2023). We agree that currently available therapeutic CAI cannot be considered a “digital therapist,” however, we think that the issue surrounding the acquisition of new self-understanding in the interaction with therapeutic CAI is more complicated than Sedlakova and Trachsel suggest. (shrink)

This chapter defends the account of metaphysical indeterminacy of Barnes and Williams against Eklund's objections.

Growing demand for broadly accessible mental health care, together with the rapid development of new technologies, trigger discussions about the feasibility of psychotherapeutic interventions based on interactions with Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI). Many authors argue that while currently available CAI can be a useful supplement for human-delivered psychotherapy, it is not yet capable of delivering fully fledged psychotherapy on its own. The goal of this paper is to investigate what are the most important obstacles on our way to developing CAI (...) systems capable of delivering psychotherapy in the future. To this end, we formulate and discuss three challenges central to this quest. Firstly, we might not be able to develop effective AI-based psychotherapy unless we deepen our understanding of what makes human-delivered psychotherapy effective. Secondly, assuming that it requires building a therapeutic relationship, it is not clear whether psychotherapy can be delivered by non-human agents. Thirdly, conducting psychotherapy might be a problem too complicated for narrow AI, i.e., AI proficient in dealing with only relatively simple and well-delineated tasks. If this is the case, we should not expect CAI to be capable of delivering fully-fledged psychotherapy until the so-called “general” or “human-like” AI is developed. While we believe that all these challenges can ultimately be overcome, we think that being mindful of them is crucial to ensure well-balanced and steady progress on our path to AI-based psychotherapy. (shrink)

We discuss arguments against the thesis that the world itself can be vague. The first section of the paper distinguishes dialectically effective from ineffective arguments against metaphysical vagueness. The second section constructs an argument against metaphysical vagueness that promises to be of the dialectically effective sort: an argument against objects with vague parts. Firstly, cases of vague parthood commit one to cases of vague identity. But we argue that Evans' famous argument against will not on its own enable one to (...) complete the reductio in the present context. We provide a metaphysical premise that would complete the reductio, but note that it seems deniable. We conclude by drawing general morals from our case study. (shrink)

It is often suggested that we are equipped with a set of cognitive tools that help us to filter out unreliable testimony. But are these tools effective? I answer this question in two steps. Firstly, I argue that they are not real-time effective. The process of filtering, which takes place simultaneously with or right after language comprehension, does not prevent a particular hearer on a particular occasion from forming beliefs based on false testimony. Secondly, I argue that they are long-term (...) effective. Some hearers sometimes detect false testimony, which increases speakers’ incentives for honesty and stabilizes the practice of human communication in which deception is risky and costly. In short, filtering prevents us from forming a large number of beliefs based on false testimony, not by turning each of us into a high-functioning polygraph but by turning the social environment of human communication into one in which such polygraphs are not required. Finally, I argue that these considerations support strong anti-reductionism about testimonial entitlement. (shrink)

The majority of our linguistic exchanges, such as everyday conversations, are divided into turns; one party usually talks at a time, with only relatively rare occurrences of brief overlaps in which there are two simultaneous speakers. Moreover, conversational turn-taking tends to be very fast. We typically start producing our responses before the previous turn has finished, i.e., before we are confronted with the full content of our interlocutor’s utterance. This raises interesting questions about the nature of linguistic understanding. Philosophical theories (...) typically focus on linguistic understanding characterized either as an ability to grasp the contents of utterances in a given language or as outputs of this ability—mental states of one type or another. In this paper, I supplement these theories by developing an account of the process of understanding. I argue that it enables us to capture the dynamic and temporal aspect of understanding and reconcile philosophical investigations with empirical research on language comprehension. (shrink)

According to the cognitive model of psychopathology, maladaptive beliefs about oneself, others, and the world are the main factors contributing to the development and persistence of various forms of mental suffering. Therefore, the key therapeutic process of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—a therapeutic approach rooted in the cognitive model—is cognitive restructuring, i.e., a process of revision of such maladaptive beliefs. In this paper, I examine the philosophical assumptions underlying CBT and offer theoretical reasons to think that the effectiveness of belief revision (...) in psychotherapy is very limited. This is the case, I argue, because the cognitive model wrongly assumes that our body of beliefs is unified, while it is in fact fragmented. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, physiologists such as David Ferrier, Eduard Hitzig, and Hermann Munk argued that cerebral brain functions are localized in discrete structures. By the early 20th century, this became the dominant position. However, another prominent physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, rejected theories of cerebral localization and argued against these physiologists until his death in 1902. I argue in this paper that previous historical accounts have failed to comprehend why Goltz rejected cerebral localization. I show that Goltz adhered to a (...) falsificationist methodology, and I reconstruct how he designed his experiments and weighted different kinds of evidence. I then draw on the exploratory experimentation literature from recent philosophy of science to trace one root of the debate to differences in how the German localizers designed their experiments and reasoned about evidence. While Goltz designed his experiments to test hypotheses about the functions of predetermined cerebral structures, the localizers explored new functions and structures in the process of constructing new theories. I argue that the localizers relied on untested background conjectures to justify their inferences about functional organization. These background conjectures collapsed a distinction between phenomena they produced direct evidence for (localized symptoms) and what they reached conclusions about (localized functions). (shrink)

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI) systems (also known as AI “chatbots”) are among the most promising examples of the use of technology in mental health care. With already millions of users worldwide, CAI is likely to change the landscape of psychological help. Most researchers agree that existing CAIs are not “digital therapists” and using them is not a substitute for psychotherapy delivered by a human. But if they are not therapists, what are they, and what role can they play in mental (...) health care? To answer these questions, we appeal to two well-established and widely discussed concepts: cognitive and affective artifacts. Cognitive artifacts are artificial devices contributing functionally to the performance of a cognitive task. Affective artifacts are objects which have the capacity to alter subjects’ affective state. We argue that therapeutic CAIs are a kind of cognitive-affective artifacts which contribute to positive therapeutic change by (i) simulating a (quasi-)therapeutic interaction, (ii) supporting the performance of cognitive tasks, and (iii) altering the affective condition of their users. This sheds new light on why virtually all existing mental health CAIs implement principles and techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy — a therapeutic orientation according to which affective change and, ultimately, positive therapeutic change is mediated by cognitive change. Simultaneously, it allows us to conceptualize better the potential and limitations of applying these technologies in therapy. (shrink)

The Caesar problem arises for abstractionist views, which seek to secure reference for terms such as ‘the number of Xs’ or #X by stipulating the content of ‘unmixed’ identity contexts like ‘#X = #Y’. Frege objects that this stipulation says nothing about ‘mixed’ contexts such as ‘# X = Julius Caesar’. This article defends a neglected response to the Caesar problem: the content of mixed contexts is just as open to stipulation as that of unmixed contexts.

Philosophy is experiencing a resurgence of property (PD) and generic substance dualism (SD). One important argument for SD that has played a role in this resurgence is some version of a modal argument. Until recently, premise (3) of the argument (Possibly, I exist, and no wholly physical objects exist.) has garnered most of the attention by critics. However, more recently, the focus has also been on (2) (Wholly physical objects are essentially, wholly, and intrinsically physical and wholly spiritual substances are (...) essentially, wholly, and intrinsically immaterial.). Andrew Bailey has provided one of the best criticisms of (2) on offer. In what follows, I present and clarify one form of the argument and defend premise (2) by responding to important defeaters proffered by Andrew Bailey and his contingent physicalism. (shrink)

Graham Oppy had criticized my argument for God from consciousness (AC) in my recent book ’Consciousness and the Existence of God’ (N.Y.: Routledge, 2008). In this article I offer a rejoinder to Oppy. Specifically, I respond to his criticisms of my presentation of three forms of AC, and interact with his claims about theism, consciousness and emergent chemical properties.

Contractarians aim to derive moral principles from the dictates of instrumental rationality alone. But it is well-known that contractarian moral theories struggle to identify normative principles that are both uniquely rational and morally compelling. Michael Moehler's recent book, *Minimal Morality* seeks to avoid these difficulties by developing a novel "two-level" social contract theory, which restricts the scope of contractarian morality to cases of deep and persistent moral disagreement. Yet Moehler remains ambitious, arguing that a restricted version of Kant's categorical imperative (...) is a uniquely rational principle of conflict resolution. We develop a formal model of Moehler's informal game-theoretic argument, which reconstructs a valid argument for Moehler's conclusion. This model, in turn, enables us to expose how a successful argument for Moehler's contractarian principle rests on assumptions that can only be justified by subtle yet significant departures from the standard conception of rationality. We thus extend our understanding of familiar contractarian difficulties by showing how they arise even if we restrict the scope of contractarian morality to a domain where its application seems both promising and necessary. We show that the problem lies not in contractarians' immodest ambitions but in the modest resources rationality can offer to satisfy them. (shrink)

Traditional descriptivism and Kripkean causalism are standardly interpreted as rival theories on a single topic. I argue that there is no such shared topic, i.e. that there is no question that they can be interpreted as giving rival answers to. The only way to make sense of the commitment to epistemic transparency that characterizes traditional descriptivism is to interpret Russell and Frege as proposing rival accounts of how to characterize a subject’s beliefs about what names refer to. My argument relies (...) on a development of the distinction between speaker’s reference and semantic reference. (shrink)

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

Decisions are made under uncertainty when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and one is uncertain to which the act will lead. Decisions are made under indeterminacy when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and it is indeterminate to which the act will lead. This paper develops a theory of (synchronic and diachronic) decision-making under indeterminacy that portrays the rational response to such situations as inconstant. Rational agents have to capriciously and randomly choose how to resolve (...) the indeterminacy relevant to a given choice-situation, but such capricious choices once made constrain how they will choose in the future. The account is illustrated by the case of self-interested action in situations where it is indeterminate whether you yourself will survive to benefit or suffer the consequences. The conclusion emphasizes some distinctive anti-hedging predictions of the account. (shrink)

Might it be that world itself, independently of what we know about it or how we represent it, is metaphysically indeterminate? This article tackles in turn a series of questions: In what sorts of cases might we posit metaphysical indeterminacy? What is it for a given case of indefiniteness to be 'metaphysical'? How does the phenomenon relate to 'ontic vagueness', the existence of 'vague objects', 'de re indeterminacy' and the like? How might the logic work? Are there reasons for postulating (...) this distinctive sort of indefiniteness? Conversely, are there reasons for denying that there is indefiniteness of this sort? (shrink)

Inscrutability arguments threaten to reduce interpretationist metasemantic theories to absurdity. Can we find some way to block the arguments? A highly influential proposal in this regard is David Lewis’ ‘ eligibility ’ response: some theories are better than others, not because they fit the data better, but because they are framed in terms of more natural properties. The purposes of this paper are to outline the nature of the eligibility proposal, making the case that it is not ad hoc, but (...) instead flows naturally from three independently motivated elements; and to show that severe limitations afflict the proposal. In conclusion, I pick out the element of the eligibility response that is responsible for the limitations: future work in this area should therefore concentrate on amending this aspect of the overall theory. (shrink)

This article investigates the claim that some truths are fundamentally or really true — and that other truths are not. Such a distinction can help us reconcile radically minimal metaphysical views with the verities of common sense. I develop an understanding of the distinction whereby Fundamentality is not itself a metaphysical distinction, but rather a device that must be presupposed to express metaphysical distinctions. Drawing on recent work by Rayo on anti-Quinean theories of ontological commitments, I formulate a rigourous theory (...) of the notion. In the final sections, I show how this package dovetails with ' interpretationist' theories of meaning to give sober content to thought that some things — perhaps sets, or gerrymandered mereological sums — can be 'postulated into existence'. (shrink)

Lewis (1973) gave a short argument against conditional excluded middle, based on his treatment of ‘might’ counterfactuals. Bennett (2003), with much of the recent literature, gives an alternative take on ‘might’ counterfactuals. But Bennett claims the might-argument against CEM still goes through. This turns on a specific claim I call Bennett’s Hypothesis. I argue that independently of issues to do with the proper analysis of might-counterfactuals, Bennett’s Hypothesis is inconsistent with CEM. But Bennett’s Hypothesis is independently objectionable, so we should (...) resolve this tension by dropping the Hypothesis, not by dropping CEM. (shrink)

Sometimes it is indeterminate what an agent morally ought do. This generates a Decision Ought Challenge—to give moral guidance to agents in such a scenario. This article is a field guide to the options for a theory of the decision ought for cases of indeterminacy. Three categories of view are evaluated, and the best representative for each is identified.

This paper examines two puzzles of indeterminacy. The first puzzle concerns the hypothesis that there is a unified phenomenon of indeterminacy. How are we to reconcile this with the apparent diversity of reactions that indeterminacy prompts? The second puzzle focuses narrowly on borderline cases of vague predicates. How are we to account for the lack of theoretical consensus about what the proper reaction to borderline cases is? I suggest (building on work by Maudlin) that the characteristic feature of indeterminacy is (...) alethic normative silence, and use this to explain both plurality and lack of consensus. (shrink)

Worlds where things divide forever ("gunk" worlds) are apparently conceivable. The conceivability of such scenarios has been used as an argument against "nihilist" or "near-nihilist" answers to the special composition question. I argue that the mereological nihilist has the resources to explain away the illusion that gunk is possible.

Jeff Paris proves a generalized Dutch Book theorem. If a belief state is not a generalized probability then one faces ‘sure loss’ books of bets. In Williams I showed that Joyce’s accuracy-domination theorem applies to the same set of generalized probabilities. What is the relationship between these two results? This note shows that both results are easy corollaries of the core result that Paris appeals to in proving his dutch book theorem. We see that every point of accuracy-domination defines a (...) dutch book, but we only have a partial converse. (shrink)

Revisionary theories of logic or truth require revisionary theories of mind. This essay outlines nonclassically based theories of rational belief, desire, and decision making, singling out the supervaluational family for special attention. To see these nonclassical theories of mind in action, this essay examines a debate between David Lewis and Derek Parfit over what matters in survival. Lewis argued that indeterminacy in personal identity allows caring about psychological connectedness and caring about personal identity to amount to the same thing. The (...) essay argues that Lewis's treatment of two of Parfit's puzzle cases—degreed survival and fission—presuppose different nonclassical treatments of belief and desire. (shrink)

Joyce (1998) gives an argument for probabilism: the doctrine that rational credences should conform to the axioms of probability. In doing so, he provides a distinctive take on how the normative force of probabilism relates to the injunction to believe what is true. But Joyce presupposes that the truth values of the propositions over which credences are defined are classical. I generalize the core of Joyce’s argument to remove this presupposition. On the same assumptions as Joyce uses, the credences of (...) a rational agent should always be weighted averages of truth value assignments. In the special case where the truth values are classical, the weighted averages of truth value assignments are exactly the probability functions. But in the more general case, probabilistic axioms formulated in terms of classical logic are violated—but we will show that generalized versions of the axioms formulated in terms of non-classical logics are satisfied. (shrink)

Many accounts of structural rationality give a special role to logic. This paper reviews the problem case of clear-eyed logical uncertainty. An account of rational norms on belief that does not give a special role to logic is developed: doxastic probabilism.

In the literature on supervaluationism, a central source of concern has been the acceptability, or otherwise, of its alleged logical revisionism. I attack the presupposition of this debate: arguing that when properly construed, there is no sense in which supervaluational consequence is revisionary. I provide new considerations supporting the claim that the supervaluational consequence should be characterized in a ‘global’ way. But pace Williamson (1994) and Keefe (2000), I argue that supervaluationism does not give rise to counterexamples to familiar inference-patterns (...) such as reductio and conditional proof. (shrink)

Supervaluationism is often described as the most popular semantic treatment of indeterminacy. There’s little consensus, however, about how to fill out the bare-bones idea to include a characterization of logical consequence. The paper explores one methodology for choosing between the logics: pick a logic thatnorms beliefas classical consequence is standardly thought to do. The main focus of the paper considers a variant of standard supervaluational, on which we can characterizedegrees of determinacy. It applies the methodology above to focus ondegree logic. (...) This is developed first in a basic, single-premise case; and then extended to the multipremise case, and to allowdegreesof consequence. The metatheoretic properties of degree logic are set out. On the positive side, the logic is supraclassical—all classical valid sequents are degree logic valid. Strikingly, metarules such as cut and conjunction introduction fail. (shrink)

I outline and motivate a way of implementing a closest world theory of indicatives, appealing to Stalnaker's framework of open conversational possibilities. Stalnakerian conversational dynamics helps us resolve two outstanding puzzles for a such a theory of indicative conditionals. The first puzzle -- concerning so-called 'reverse Sobel sequences' -- can be resolved by conversation dynamics in a theoryneutral way: the explanation works as much for Lewisian counterfactuals as for the account of indicatives developed here. Resolving the second puzzle, by contrast, (...) relies on the interplay between the particular theory of indicative conditionals developed here and Stalnakerian dynamics. The upshot is an attractive resolution of the so-called "Gibbard phenomenon" for indicative conditionals. (shrink)

There are advantages to thrift over honest toil. If we can make do without numbers we avoid challenging questions over the metaphysics and epistemology of such entities; and we have a good idea, I think, of what a nominalistic metaphysics should look like. But minimizing ontology brings its own problems; for it seems to lead to error theory— saying that large swathes of common-sense and best science are false. Should recherche philosophical arguments really convince us to give all this up? (...) Such Moorean considerations are explicitly part of the motivation for the recent resurgence of structured metaphysics, which allow a minimal (perhaps nominalistic) fundamental ontology, while avoiding error-theory by adopting a permissive stance towards ontology that can be argued to be grounded in the fundamental. This paper evaluates the Moorean arguments, identifying key epistemological assumptions. On the assumption that Moorean arguments can be used to rule out error-theory, I examine deflationary ‘representationalist’ rivals to the structured metaphysics reaction. Quinean paraphrase, fictionalist claims about syntax and semantics are considered and criticized. In the final section, a ‘direct’ deflationary strategy is outlined and the theoretical obligations that it faces are articulated. The position advocated may have us talking a lot like a friend of structured metaphysics—but with a very different conception of what we’re up to. (shrink)

Some argue that theories of universals should incorporate structural universals, in order to allow for the metaphysical possibility of worlds of 'infinite descending complexity' ('onion worlds'). I argue that the possibility of such worlds does not establish the need for structural universals. So long as we admit the metaphysical possibility of emergent universals, there is an attractive alternative description of such cases.