For decades scholars thought they knew Hume's position on the existence of causes and objects he was a sceptic. However, this received view has been thrown into question by the `new readings of Hume as a sceptical realist. For philosophers, students of philosophy and others interested in theories of causation and their history, The New Hume Debate is the first book to fully document the most influential contemporary readings of Hume's work. Throughout, the volume brings the debate beyond textual issues (...) in Hume to contemporary philosophical issues concerning causation and knowledge of the external world and issues in the history of philosophy, offering the reader a model for scholarly debate. This revised paperback edition includes three new chapters by Janet Broughton, Peter Kail and Peter Millican. Contributors: Kenneth A. Richman, Barry Stroud, Galen Strawson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John P. Wright, Simon Blackburn, Edward Craig, Martin Bell, Daniel Flage, Anne Jaap Jacobson, Rupert Read, Janet Broughton, Peter Millican, Peter Kail. (shrink)

It is plausible that there are epistemic reasons bearing on a distinctively epistemic standard of correctness for belief. It is also plausible that there are a range of practical reasons bearing on what to believe. These theses are often thought to be in tension with each other. Most significantly for our purposes, it is obscure how epistemic reasons and practical reasons might interact in the explanation of what one ought to believe. We draw an analogy with a similar distinction between (...) types of reasons for actions in the context of activities. The analogy motivates a two-level account of the structure of normativity that explains the interaction of correctness-based and other reasons. This account relies upon a distinction between normative reasons and authoritatively normative reasons. Only the latter play the reasons role in explaining what state one ought to be in. All and only practical reasons are authoritative reasons. Hence, in one important sense, all reasons for belief are practical reasons. But this account also preserves the autonomy and importance of epistemic reasons. Given the importance of having true beliefs about the world, our epistemic standard typically plays a key role in many cases in explaining what we ought to believe. In addition to reconciling (versions of) evidentialism and pragmatism, this two-level account has implications for a range of important debates in normative theory, including the interaction of right and wrong reasons for actions and other attitudes, the significance of reasons in understanding normativity and authoritative normativity, the distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘substantive’ normativity, and whether there is a unified source of authoritative normativity. (shrink)

Abstract: Proponents of the this-universe objection to fine-tuning arguments for a multiverse claim that while the multiverse hypothesis raises the probability that some universe is fine-tuned for life, it fails to raise the probability that this one is. Because that is so, they further argue, those who take the fine-tuning of this universe as evidence for the multiverse hypothesis are guilty of a probabilistic fallacy. I argue that a proper evaluation of the this-universe objection requires the development of a general, (...) formal framework for reasoning probabilistically with evidence statements expressed using indexical terms (such as the statement This universe is fine-tuned). I proceed to develop such a framework and then to apply it to the this-universe objection. While my primary aim is to defend the this-universe objection from recent rebuttals, a secondary aim is to exhibit the utility of the framework itself, which has the potential for wider application. (shrink)

We have now reached the point at which cloud computing and other types of advanced infrastructure are bringing about a situation in which knowledge objects can be delivered in an efficient manner to hose who need to consume them. And just as highways were the infrastructure necessary for a manufacturing economy, serving as the arteries along which raw materials and manufactured goods coming in from all directions could flow, so we believe that ontologies will in the future provide an important (...) pillar in the infrastructure that is necessary for the accurate and safe delivery of all varieties of knowledge. (shrink)

The author attempts to show how mereology, taken together with certain topological notions, can yield the foundations for future investigations in formal ontology. He also attempts to show how the mereological framework allows for the direct and natural formulation of a series of theses - for example pertaining to the concept of a boundary - which can be only indirectly formulated (if at all) in set-theoretic terms. The far-reaching ain of the present framework is to serve as a basis for (...) a formal ontology of the common-sense world. The author is interested in producing formally precise theories of structures of certain sorts in such a way that it is the structures themselves that intrest him and not formal machinery that has been set up to describe them. Hence the axioms are chosen primarily for the sake of the light they throw on the intended subject-matters (and not for their logical independence). The world itself - or its picture given in ordinary experience - is the only model the paper concentrates upon. Thus for example the presented system allows to prove that every boundary is the boundary of something, and that in particular no point exists in isolation from a large extended whole that is its boundary. (shrink)

In their responses to my article “Epistemically Pernicious Groups and the Groupstrapping Problem” (Boyd, 2018), Bert Baumgaertner (“Groupstrapping, Boostrapping, and Oops-strapping: A Reply to Boyd”) and C. Thi Nguyen (“Group-strapping, Bubble, or Echo Chamber?”) have raised interesting questions and opened lines of inquiry regarding my discussion of what I hope to be a way to help make sense of how members of groups can continue to hold beliefs that are greatly outweighed by countervailing evidence (e.g. antivaxxers, climate-change deniers, etc.). Here (...) I respond to these arguments and suggestions by providing three new reasons to believe that groupstrapping as I describe it occurs in epistemically pernicious groups. (shrink)

"'It is clear", wrote Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, "that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the usual sense of the terms" (6.422). But he insisted also that there must be some kind of ethical punishment and reward; "the reward", he tells us, "must be something pleasant, and the punishment something unpleasant" (ibid.). I argue that we can understand what Wittgenstein meant by "reward" and "punishment" by conceiving these notions as elements in a system of interrelated concepts (...) connected with the idea of law. (shrink)

Material things have material (spatial) parts. Acts, events, occurrences, have phases, which we can view as their temporal parts. Spatial surfaces and volumes, stretches of time, they all have parts again; they can all be considered "extended". Entities, on the other hand, such as directions, numbers, temperatures, colors, tones, fictional characters, prices, numbers, values, ideologies, goals, are all unextended; they are partless. Let us call such non-extended objects “nodes”, in order to express the fact that we have a tendency to (...) grasp them as pure correlates of our thinking, often at the same time viewing them effectively as placeholders within systems of coordinates in various intellectual and social domains. My aim, here, is to clarify this rough idea of “node” for the purpose of providing a corresponding clarification of Ingarden's idea of a purely intentional object. I first consider purely intentional objects in general, and then focus in particular on fictional examples. (shrink)

Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley used abductive reasoning to draw conclusions about the ionic basis of the action potential. Here we build on that initial proposal. First, we propose that Hodgkin and Huxley’s constitutive abductive reasoning has four features. Second, we argue that Hodgkin and Huxley are not alone in giving such arguments. Tolman, 1948, and Baumgartner, 1960, also gave such arguments. The implication is that such arguments are common enough in science that philosophers of science should pay more attention (...) to them. Third, we propose that constitutive abduction describes a method that scientists use to confirm constitutive hypotheses that is an alternative to the mutual manipulability approach that is familiar in the New Mechanist literature. (shrink)

Those who believe suitably programmed computers could enjoy conscious experience of the sort we enjoy must accept the possibility that their own experience is being generated as part of a computerized simulation. It would be a mistake to dismiss this is just one more radical sceptical possibility: for as Bostrom has recently noted, if advances in computer technology were to continue at close to present rates, there would be a strong probability that we are each living in a computer simulation. (...) The first part of this paper is devoted to broadening the scope of the argument: even if computers cannot sustain consciousness (as many dualists and materialists believe), there may still be a strong likelihood that we are living simulated lives. The implications of this result are the focus of the second part of the paper. The topics discussed include: the Doomsday argument, scepticism, the different modes of virtual life, transcendental idealism, the Problem of Evil, and simulation ethics. (shrink)

A constant theme in Sherry Turkle’s work is the idea that computers shape our social and psychological lives. This idea is of course in a sense trivial, as can be observed when walking down any city street and noting how many of the passers-by have their heads buried in screens. In The Second Self, however, Turkle makes a stronger claim to the effect that where people confront machines that seem to think this suggests a new way for us to think (...) – about human thought, emotion, memory, and understanding and thereby affects the way we think and see ourselves as humans. I here attempt here to throw a sceptical light on claims of this sort by examining the Chinese chatbot “Xiǎoice”, which is described by its authors as “the most popular social chatbot in the world”. (shrink)

Take pragmatic encroachment to be the view that whether one knows that p is determined at least in part by the practical consequences surrounding the truth of p. This view represents a significant departure from the purist orthodoxy, which holds that only truth-relevant factors determine whether one knows. In this chapter I consider some consequences of accepting pragmatic encroachment when applied to problems of political knowledge and political ignorance: first, that there will be cases in which it will not be (...) practically rational to acquire political knowledge when the stakes surrounding one’s political actions are high; second, that political knowledge can be more easily acquired when one values the welfare of others less; and third, that pragmatic encroachment may fail to account for a form of epistemic injustice when it comes to evaluating the political knowledge of members of marginalized groups. I argue that while these consequences are undesirable, the extent to which the pragmatic encroacher is committed to them depends both on the details of the theory, as well as the extent to which one considers political knowledge to be important. (shrink)

Current approaches to formal representation in biomedicine are characterized by their focus on either the static or the dynamic aspects of biological reality. We here outline a theory that combines both perspectives and at the same time tackles the by no means trivial issue of their coherent integration. Our position is that a good ontology must be capable of accounting for reality both synchronically (as it exists at a time) and diachronically (as it unfolds through time), but that these are (...) two quite different tasks, whose simultaneous realization is by no means trivial. The paper is structured as follows. We begin by laying out the methodological and philosophical background of our approach. We then summarize the structure and elements of the Basic Formal Ontology on which it rests, in particular the SNAP ontology of objects and the SPAN ontology of processes. Finally, we apply the general framework to the specific domain of biomedicine. (shrink)

The Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) symbolically represents the structural organization of the human body from the macromolecular to the macroscopic levels, with the goal of providing a robust and consistent scheme for classifying anatomical entities that is designed to serve as a reference ontology in biomedical informatics. Here we articulate the need for formally clarifying the is-a and part-of relations in the FMA and similar ontology and terminology systems. We diagnose certain characteristic errors in the treatment of these relations (...) and show how these errors can be avoided through adoption of the formalism we describe. We then illustrate how a consistently applied formal treatment of taxonomy and partonomy can support the alignment of ontologies. (shrink)

The article recovers the earlier meaning of event as found in Alfred North Whitehead’s works, Principles of Natural Knowledge and Concept of Nature. In the early Whitehead, the event is considered as the metaphysical ultimate; such that events are the metaphysical building blocks in order to account for the temporal and spatial extensiveness of reality. The recuperation of the pre-PR concept of event is expressive of a dynamic of extending over, or passing into, of one event to another. This dynamic (...) is explicitly absent in the actual occasion of Process and Reality, after Whitehead’s “turn to atomism.”. (shrink)

When philosophers, social scientists, and politicians seek to determine the justice of institutional arrangements, their discussions have often taken the form of questioning whether and under what circumstances the redistribution of wealth or other valuable goods is justified. This essay examines the different ways in which redistribution can be understood, the diverse political contexts in which it has been employed, and whether or not it is a useful concept for exploring questions of distributive justice.

Die klassische bikategoriale Ontologie von Substanzen und Akzidentien ist für die Festlegung der Strukturen menschlichen und tierischen Verhaltens nicht hinreichend, da die Umwelten dieses Verhaltens sich nicht in dieses klassische System einfügen. Wir bieten dementsprechend den Grundriß einer Theorie der besonderen Gebilde, die die Alltagswelten menschlicher und tierischer Verhalten konstituieren. Die Ausgangsüberlegung ist die folgende, Wir sind alle (Schau)spieler, und diese brauchen eine Bühne. Unsere Bühne ist die jeweilige Umwelt, in der wir leben und handeln. Der Terminus ‘Umwelt’ wird hierbei (...) in Analogie zu Husserls Begriff der Lebenswelt verwendet. Er bezeichnet dementsprechend einen strukturierten Teil der Welt, in den sich ein Lebewesen, z.B. ein Mensch, einpaßt. Die Umwelt ist, wenn man so will, demnach die Bühne, auf welcher sich unser Verhalten abspielt. Der Versuch, das Wesen solcher Umwelten ontologisch festzulegen, bringt allerdings ein schwieriges Problem mit sich - ein Problem so alt wie Platons Höhlengleichnis und so neu wie gegenwärtige Reflexionen amerikanischer Philosophen zur Metaphysik der virtuellen Realität und zum Gedankenexperiment des Gehirns im Tank. Es gibt nämlich in manchen Fällen grobe Inkonsistenzen zwischen (1) der Umwelt, wie wir sie uns gerade vorstellen, und (2) der Umwelt als Bestandteil der wirklichen Welt. Das Problem, zwischen diesen beiden Umweltklassen einen Ausgleich zu finden, wird im letzten Teil des Aufsatzes behandelt. (shrink)

Upon doing something generous for someone with whom you are close, some kind of reciprocity may be appropriate. But it often seems wrong to actually request reciprocity. This chapter explores the wrongness in making these requests, and why they can nevertheless appear appropriate. After considering several explanations for the wrongness at issue (involving, e.g. distinguishing oughts from obligation, the suberogatory, imperfect duties, and gift-giving norms), a novel proposal is advanced. The requests are disrespectful; they express that their agent insufficiently trusts (...) the hearer to recognize their own reasons to reciprocate, and the close relationship between them morally requires this kind of trust. This proposal is articulated and situated in the recent discussion of the normativity of requests. The chapter concludes by explaining how these requests may appear appropriate. Agents in these relationships often have standing to make requests, though the standing is lacking in these particular cases. (shrink)

This paper examines Spinoza’s view on the consistency of mental representation. First, I argue that he departs from Scholastic tradition by arguing that all mental states—whether desires, intentions, beliefs, perceptions, entertainings, etc.—must be logically consistent. Second, I argue that his endorsement of this view is motivated by key Spinozistic doctrines, most importantly the doctrine that all acts of thought represent what could follow from God’s nature. Finally, I argue that Spinoza’s view that all mental representation is consistent pushes him to (...) a linguistic account of contradiction. (shrink)

This review focuses on the Ogdoas scholastica by Jacob Lorhard, published in 1606. The importance of this document turns on the fact that it contains what is almost certainly the first published occurrence of the term “ontology.” The body of the work consists in a series of diagrams called “diagraphs.” Relevant features of this compendium of diagraphs are: 1. that it does not in fact contain the word “ontology,” and 2. that Lorhard himself was not responsible for its content.

The history of evolution is a history of development from less to more complex organisms. This growth in complexity of organisms goes hand in hand with a concurrent growth in complexity of environments and of organism-environment relations. It is a concern with this latter aspect of evolutionary development that motivates the present paper. We begin by outlining a theory of organism-environment relations. We then show that the theory can be applied to a range of different sorts of cases, both biological (...) and non-biological, in which objects are lodged or housed within specific environments, or niches. Biological science is interested in types—for example in genotypes, phenotypes, and environment types—in regularities that can serve as the basis for the formulation of laws or general principles. Types, however, can exist only through their corresponding tokens. Our theory of token environments is meant to plug this gap and to provide a first step towards a general theory of causally relevant spatial volumes. (shrink)

The human body is a system made of systems. The body is divided into bodily systems proper, such as the endocrine and circulatory systems, which are subdivided into many sub-systems at a variety of levels, whereby all systems and subsystems engage in massive causal interaction with each other and with their surrounding environments. Here we offer an explicit definition of bodily system and provide a framework for understanding their causal interactions. Medical sciences provide at best informal accounts of basic notions (...) such as system, process, and function, and while such informality is acceptable in documentation created for human beings, it falls short of what is needed for computer representations. In our analysis we will accordingly provide the framework for a formal definition of bodily system and of associated notions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We have previously argued that there are forms of greenhouse gas offsetting for which, when one emits and offsets, one imposes no risk. Orri Stefansson objects that our argument fails to distinguish properly between the people who stand to be harmed by one’s emissions and the people who stand to be benefited by one’s offsetting. We reply by emphasizing the difference between acting with a probability of making a difference to the distribution of harm and acting in a way (...) that worsen’s someone’s prospect. (shrink)

Efficient markets are alienating if they inhibit us from recognizably caring about one another in our productive activities. I argue that efficient market behaviour is both exclusionary and fetishistic. As exclusionary, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care alongside their market behaviour. As fetishistic, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care in their market behaviour. The conjunction entails that efficient market behavior inhibits care. It doesn’t follow that efficient market behavior is vicious: individuals might justifiably commit to efficiency because doing so serves (...) the common good. But efficient market systems nevertheless have significant opportunity costs. The discussion yields a range of desiderata for non-alienated economic organization. (shrink)

We begin at the beginning, with an outline of Aristotle’s views on ontology and with a discussion of the influence of these views on Linnaeus. We move from there to consider the data standardization initiatives launched in the 19th century, and then turn to investigate how the idea of computational ontologies developed in the AI and knowledge representation communities in the closing decades of the 20th century. We show how aspects of this idea, particularly those relating to the use of (...) the term 'concept' in ontology development, influenced SNOMED CT and other medical terminologies. Against this background we then show how the Foundational Model of Anatomy, the Gene Ontology, Basic Formal Ontology and other OBO Foundry ontologies came into existence and discuss their role in the development of contemporary biomedical informatics. (shrink)

This essay is a response to Luis M. Augusto’s intriguing paper on the rift between mainstream and formal ontology. I will show that there are in fact two questions at issue here: 1. concerning the links between mainstream and formal approaches within philosophy, and 2. concerning the application of philosophy (and especially philosophical ontology) in support of information-driven research for example in the life sciences.

In uttering a sentence we are often taken to assert more than its literal meaning — though we sometimes assert less. Robyn Carston and others take this phenomenon to show that what is said or asserted by a speaker on an occasion of utterance is usually a contextuallyenriched version of the semantic content of the sentence. I shall argue that we can resist this conclusion if we recognize that what we think we are asserting, or take others to be asserting, (...) involves selective attention to one of the ways a sentence could be true and neglects others. Most of the time people converge in their selective attention and so communication is not impaired. Though in the case of sentences involving predicates of taste, people’s attention to different aspect of the truth conditions leads to seemingly intractable disputes. I will propose a treatment of such cases on which speakers mean the same by a sentence, assert no more than its semantic content, hold conflicting opinions about its truth-value, and are both right. (shrink)

For as long as there have been markets, there have been complaints about market motives. For much of this history, the two sides have talked past one another. Optimists about markets have mostly addressed other optimists, and failed to take seriously the kinds of relational values that might be at stake and the range of possible alternatives to market-based production. Pessimists about markets have mostly addressed other pessimists, and failed to take seriously the full range of market-involving economic structures and (...) the different kinds of psychologies compatible with market interactions. Recently, there has been a break-through, on behalf of the optimists. According to the model of exchange as mutual assistance, an exchange can be perceived as a joint activity for mutual benefit - and needn't involve self-directed motives at all. This essay pushes back, on behalf of the market pessimists. The essay develops a contrast between exchange as mutual assistance and an ideal of production as caring solidarity, in which production is a joint activity of caring about one another. This alternative ideal draws on Marxist, socialist, feminist, and Christian traditions, and, in particular, on recent work on care, solidarity, and alienation. These two models – exchange as mutual assistance and production as caring solidarity – share key features, including an emphasis on reasoning from a ‘we-perspective’, on trusting one another, and on resisting a familiar self/other motivational dichotomy. Key differences are developed in detail. The essay concludes by discussing the implications for an economics of caring solidarity, with discussion of the limitations of various market socialist strategies. (shrink)

The perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson embraces a radically externalistic view of mind and action. We have, for Gibson, not a Cartesian mind or soul, with its interior theater of contents and the consequent problem of explaining how this mind or soul and its psychological environment can succeed in grasping physical objects external to itself. Rather, we have a perceiving, acting organism, whose perceptions and actions are always already tuned to the parts and moments, the things and surfaces, of its (...) external environment. We describe how on this basis Gibson sought to develop a realist science of environments which will be ‘consistent with physics, mechanics, optics, acoustics, and chemistry’. (shrink)

In his latest book, Michael Devitt rejects Chomsky’s mentalist conception of linguistics. The case against Chomsky is based on two principal claims. First, that we can separate the study of linguistic competence from the study of its outputs: only the latter belongs to linguistic inquiry. Second, Chomsky’s account of a speaker’s competence as consisiting in the mental representation of rules of a grammar for his language is mistaken. I shall argue, first, that Devitt fails to make a case for separating (...) the study of outputs from the study of competence, and second, that Devitt mis-characterises Chomsky’s account of competence, and so his objections miss their target. Chomsky’s own views come close to a denial that speaker’s have knowledge of their language. But a satisfactory account of what speakers are able to do will need to ascribe them linguistic knowledge that they use to speak and understand. I shall explore a conception of speaker’s knowledge of language that confirrns Chomsky’s mentalist view of linguistics but which is immune to Devitt’s criticism. (shrink)

A brief study of the logical, linguistic, psychological and ontological problem of ‘impersonalia’, which is to say of assertions such as ‘it’s raining’ or ‘es blitzt’ which seem to have no subject. Such assertions cause problems not only for defenders of traditional subject-predicate views of assertive sentences, but also for those, such as Frege, who defended a view in terms of functions and arguments.

While contemporary philosophers have devoted vast amounts of attention to the language we use in describing and finding our way about the world of everyday experience, they have, with few exceptions, refused to see this world itself as a fitting object of theoretical concern. In what follows I shall seek to show how the commonsensical world might be treated ontologically as an object of investigation in its own right. At the same time I shall seek to establish how such a (...) treatment might help us better philosophically to understand the structures of both physical reality and cognition. (shrink)

The paper relates classical treatments of physics and metaphysics to contemporary work on common sense in the field of artificial intelligence (J. Hobbs, P. Hayes, et al.). It defends the universality (and truth) of certain basic principles of common-sense physics and shows why these basic principles must leave certain issues undetermined.

If Mont Blanc is a vague object, then its vagueness will depend on the context in which reference is made. In a geological context the mountain might include only rock, perhaps together with a certain amount of air in the crevices and tunnels which have been formed beneath its surface. In a context of soil chemistry we might include also a surrounding thin layer of organic matter. In a skiing context we might include some snow. This essay sketches in informal (...) terms the theory of granular partitions, which is designed to do justice to this context-dependence of vagueness by means of what might be described as a contextualized supervaluationism. Granularity and vagueness, it is argued, are two sides of a single coin: what is vague at one level of granularity may appear crisp at another. The resultant theory can be shown to resolve certain problems in our description of perceptual content, for example when John says that he sees the wall, but that he does not see the molecules by which the wall is constituted. (shrink)

Can there be a theory-free experience? And what would be the object of such an experience. Drawing on ideas set out by Husserl in the “Crisis” and in the second book of his “Ideas”, the paper presents answers to these questions in such a way as to provide a systematic survey of the content and ontology of common sense. In the second part of the paper Husserl’s ideas on the relationship between the common-sense world (what he called the ‘life-world’) and (...) the world of physical theory are subjected to a critical evaluation. The relation of Husserl’s ideas to current work in folk psychology and naive physics and to the direct realism of J. J. Gibson are also treated. (shrink)

Idee ontologii formalnej zawdzieczamy filozofowi Edmundowi Husserlowi, który w Badaniach logicznych dokonał rozróznienia na logike formalna i formalna ontologie. Przedmiotem pierwszej sa wzajemne zwiazki pomiedzy prawdami (lub znaczeniami zdan w ogólnosci) relacje wynikania, niesprzecznosc, dowód i obowiazywalnosc. Przedmiotem drugiej sa natomiast wzajemne zwiazki pomiedzy rzeczami przedmiotami i własnosciami, czesciami i całosciami, relacjami i kolektywami. Tak jak logika formalna zajmuje sie własnosciami wynikania, które sa formalne w tym sensie, ze stosuja sie do poszczególnych przypadków wynikania jedynie ze wzgledu na ich forme, (...) tak ontologia formalna zajmuje sie własnosciami przedmiotów, które sa formalne w tym sensie, ze ich przykładami, co do zasady, moga byc przedmioty wszystkich materialnych sfer czy dziedzin rzeczywistosci. (shrink)

In this chapter, we defend an explanationist version of proper functionalism. After explaining proper functionalism’s initial appeal, we note two major objections to proper functionalism: creatures with no design plan who appear to have knowledge (Swampman) and creatures with malfunctions that increase reliability. We then note how proper functionalism needs to be clarified because there are cases of what we call warrant-compatible malfunction. We then formulate our own view: explanationist proper functionalism, which explains the warrant-compatible malfunction cases and helps to (...) block the above objections. We also advance a positive argument for explanationist proper functionalism. (shrink)

A collection of material on Husserl's Logical Investigations, and specifically on Husserl's formal theory of parts, wholes and dependence and its influence in ontology, logic and psychology. Includes translations of classic works by Adolf Reinach and Eugenie Ginsberg, as well as original contributions by Wolfgang Künne, Kevin Mulligan, Gilbert Null, Barry Smith, Peter M. Simons, Roger A. Simons and Dallas Willard. Documents work on Husserl's ontology arising out of early meetings of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy.

It is only by fixing on agreed meanings of terms in biomedical terminologies that we will be in a position to achieve that accumulation and integration of knowledge that is indispensable to progress at the frontiers of biomedicine. Standardly, the goal of fixing meanings is seen as being realized through the alignment of terms on what are called ‘concepts’. Part I addresses three versions of the concept-based approach – by Cimino, by Wüster, and by Campbell and associates – and surveys (...) some of the problems to which they give rise, all of which have to do with a failure to anchor the terms in terminologies to corresponding referents in reality. Part II outlines a new, realist solution to this anchorage problem, which sees terminology construction as being motivated by the goal of alignment not on concepts but on the universals (kinds, types) in reality and thereby also on the corresponding instances (individuals, tokens). We outline the realist approach, and show how on its basis we can provide a benchmark of correctness for terminologies which will at the same time allow a new type of integration of terminologies and electronic health records. We conclude by outlining ways in which the framework thus defined might be exploited for purposes of diagnostic decision-support. (shrink)

We construct a presentist semantics on which there are no truth-makers for past and future tensed statements. The semantics is not an expressivist or projectivist one, and is not susceptible to the semantical difficulties that confront such theories. We discuss how the approach handles some standard concerns with presentism.

Searle’s tool for understanding culture, law and society is the opposition between brute reality and institutional reality, or in other words between: observer-independent features of the world, such as force, mass and gravitational attraction, and observer-relative features of the world, such as money, property, marriage and government. The question posed here is: under which of these two headings do moral concepts fall? This is an important question because there are moral facts – for example pertaining to guilt and responsibility – (...) which hover uncomfortably close to the boundary between the observer-relative and the observer-independent. By means of a thought experiment involving an imagined Chinese society in which guilt is determined by the random throwing of sticks, I seek to show that moral concepts threaten the foundations of Searle’s philosophy of social reality. (shrink)

In modern cities, many old or abandoned buildings occupy valuable land without providing a comparably valuable service. In the past they have often met with the fate of being demolished and replaced, but modern day sentiment, be it foolhardy nostalgia or legitimate concern for architectural heritage, often leads to a building’s refurbishment. As a result, buildings save themselves from the wrecking ball by providing a service that satiates modern day demand.

As available intelligence data and information expand in both quantity and variety, new techniques must be deployed for search and analytics. One technique involves the semantic enhancement of data through the creation of what are called ‘ontologies’ or ‘controlled vocabularies.’ When multiple different bodies of heterogeneous data are tagged by means of terms from common ontologies, then these data become linked together in ways which allow more effective retrieval and integration. We describe a simple case study to show how these (...) benefits are being achieved, and we describe our strategy for developing a suite of ontologies to serve the needs of the war-fighter in the ever more complex battlespace environments of the future. (shrink)

A perennial problem in social epistemology is the problem of expert testimony, specifically expert testimony regarding scientific issues: for example, while it is important for me to know information pertaining to anthropogenic climate change, vaccine safety, Covid-19, etc., I may lack the scientific background required to determine whether the information I come across is, in fact, true. Without being able to evaluate the science itself, then, I need to find trustworthy expert testifiers to listen to. A major project in social (...) epistemology has thus become determining what the markers of trustworthiness are that laypersons can appeal to in order to identify and acquire information from expert testifiers. At the same time, the ways in which we acquire scientific information has changed significantly, with much of it nowadays being acquired in online environments. While much has been said about the potential pitfalls of seeking information online, little has been said about how the nature of seeking information online should make us think about the problem of expert testimony. Indeed, it seems to be an underlying assumption that good markers of trustworthiness apply equally well when seeking information from expert testifiers in online and offline environments alike, and that the new challenges and opportunities presented by online environments merely affects the methods by which we can acquire evidence of said trustworthiness. Here I argue that in making this assumption one risks failing to account for how unique features of the ways in which we acquire information online affect how we evaluate the trustworthiness of experts. Specifically, I argue for two main claims: first, that the nature of information-seeking online is such that the extent to which information is susceptible to manipulation is a dominant marker of trustworthiness; second, as a result, one will be more likely to seek out a particular kind of expert testifier in online environments, what I call a cooperative as opposed to preemptive expert. The result is that criteria for expert trustworthiness may look significantly different when acquiring information online as opposed to offline. (shrink)

This paper develops the Value-Based Theory of Reasons in some detail. The central part of the paper introduces a number of theoretically puzzling features of normative reasons. These include weight, transmission, overlap, and the promiscuity of reasons. It is argued that the Value-Based Theory of Reasons elegantly accounts for these features. This paper is programmatic. Its goal is to put the promising but surprisingly overlooked Value-Based Theory of Reasons on the table in discussions of normative reasons, and to draw attention (...) to a number of areas for fruitful further research. (shrink)

The paper uses the tools of mereotopology (the theory of parts, wholes and boundaries) to work out the implications of certain analogies between the 'ecological psychology' of J. J Gibson and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. It presents an ontological theory of spatial boundaries and of spatially extended entities. By reference to examples from the geographical sphere it is shown that both boundaries and extended entities fall into two broad categories: those which exist independently of our cognitive acts (for example, (...) the planet Earth, its exterior surface); and those which exist only in virtue of such acts (for example: the equator, the North Sea). The visual field, too, can be conceived as an example of an extended entity that is dependent in the sense at issue. The paper suggests extending this analogy by postulating entities which would stand to true judgments as the visual field stands to acts of visual perception. The judgment field is defined more precisely as that complex extended entity which comprehends all entities which are relevant to the truth of a given (true) judgment. The work of cognitive linguists such as Talmy and Langacker, when properly interpreted, can be shown to yield a detailed account of the structures of the judgment fields corresponding to sentences of different sorts. A new sort of correspondence-theoretic definition of truth for sentences of natural language can then be formulated on this basis. (shrink)

Ontologies and standards are strongly interrelated and can often be seen as two sides of the same coin. Indeed, standards reflect consensus on the semantics of terms, though different standards might employ different ways to explain the same or very similar concepts semantically. Given the crucial role played by both aspects in OntoCommons, we have interviewed Barry Smith, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo and one of the External Advisory Board (EAB) members of the OntoCommons (...) project, to better understand what are the challenges and priorities to focus on in this context. (shrink)

Samuel Butler is usually remembered for Erewhon, widely considered among the best English satires. He also contributed to philosophical biology in works that collectively compose the nineteenth century's finest statement of the evolutionary argument associated with the name of Lamarck. In writing on evolution, Butler was not presenting science for a popular audience but deliberately intervening in the scientific argument about Darwinism. Surprised by the success of his first venture in philosophical biology, Life and Habit, Butler committed himself to the (...) project of developing an alternative to Darwinism, which he did in three additional volumes, and these are the works canvassed in this “delayed book review.”. (shrink)