Reconstructability analysis (RA) decomposes wholes, namely data in the form either of set theoretic relations or multivariate probability distributions, into parts, namely relations or distributions involving subsets of variables. Data is modeled and compressed by variable-based decomposition, by more general state-based decomposition, or by the use of latent variables. Models, which specify the interdependencies among the variables, are selected to minimize error and complexity.

In this talk, I want to present a conception that I have been working on for a number of years (Zwick, 1983, 1995) about the use of systems ideas. I start from the negative and proceed to the positive. The negative assertion is that systems ideas by themselves , unsupplemented by more specific and concrete knowledge (e.g., from the various disciplines), are insufficient for practical application, either for obtaining knowledge about the world or for solving problems. The reason for this (...) is the inherent abstractness of these ideas. The positive assertion is that this metaphysics can be a rich source of insights needed to improve the human condition and a component of a new scientific world view. (shrink)

Entangled quantum systems can be harnessed to transmit, store, and manipulate information in a more efficient and secure way than possible in the realm of classical physics. Given this resource character of entanglement, it is an important problem to characterize ways to manipulate it and meaningful approaches to its quantification. This is the objective of entanglement theory.

The paper outlines and immediately discusses the so-called ‘soft’ impossibility, i.e., non-logical impossibility generated by modal realism. It will be shown that although in a particular case genuine modal realism, straightforwardly applied, deems impossible a proposition that other philosophers have claimed to be (intuitively) possible, there is a variety of methodologically acceptable moves available in order to avoid the problem. The impossibility at issue is the existence of island universes. Given the Lewisian analysis there are three points at which we (...) might try to square genuine modal realism with such a controversial and problematic claim of (im)possibility, namely: a) the contraction of our pre-theoretical opinions about possibility, b) the revision of some Lewisian definitions and/or c) the extension of our ontological commitments. I shall look at each of these approaches applied to the problematic case. (shrink)

The aim of the first part of the article is to elucidate the nature of (modern) philosophical scepticism. The author defends the view that scepticism is not a homogenous doctrine, but a general label for heterogenous ways of sceptical argumentation. Sceptical argumentation is, in turn, understood to include any kind of philosophically relevant argument which aims at calling into doubt epistemically-valued qualities, especially knowledge. In the second part of the article the author focuses on the question of what constitutes the (...) intrinsic value of philosophical scepticism. The author defends the thesis that philosophical scepticism has instrumental value as a tool for understanding knowledge. This thesis is the result of the application of a particularist approach to the problem of knowledge. Scepticism provides the material for thought experiments in the context of which findings about epistemic intuitions connected with knowledge can be revealed. In spite of this, scepticism is of value only in the form of a means and its value cannot be reduced to the value of other elements. (shrink)

This book explores a question central to philosophy--namely, what does it take for a belief to be justified or rational? According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one's evidence. In this book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one's evidence must normically support it--roughly, one's evidence must make the falsity of that proposition (...) abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here. (shrink)

There is something puzzling about statistical evidence. One place this manifests is in the law, where courts are reluctant to base affirmative verdicts on evidence that is purely statistical, in spite of the fact that it is perfectly capable of meeting the standards of proof enshrined in legal doctrine. After surveying some proposed explanations for this, I shall outline a new approach – one that makes use of a notion of normalcy that is distinct from the idea of statistical frequency. (...) The puzzle is not, however, merely a legal one. Our unwillingness to base beliefs on statistical evidence is by no means limited to the courtroom, and is at odds with almost every general principle that epistemologists have proposed as to how we ought to manage our beliefs. (shrink)

According to a captivating picture, epistemic justification is essentially a matter of epistemic or evidential likelihood. While certain problems for this view are well known, it is motivated by a very natural thought—if justification can fall short of epistemic certainty, then what else could it possibly be? In this paper I shall develop an alternative way of thinking about epistemic justification. On this conception, the difference between justification and likelihood turns out to be akin to the more widely recognised difference (...) between ceteris paribus laws and brute statistical generalisations. I go on to discuss, in light of this suggestion, issues such as classical and lottery-driven scepticism as well as the lottery and preface paradoxes. (shrink)

This chapter applies ‘The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy’ – the Situationist account of the Watts Rebellion (Los Angeles, 1965) – to the August riots (England, 2011) and the global Occupy movement. It draws two conclusions: that both May ’68 and Occupy were formed by the political violence that preceded them; and that, although the Situationist essay makes problematic claims about race, its assessment of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy remains valuable: in fact, if combined with intersectional theory, it can (...) provide a useful counterbalance to identity politics that can prevent what Alain Badiou calls an ‘immediate riot’ from becoming a ‘historical riot’ by fragmenting mass social movements and undermining unity. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in metaphysical explanation, and philosophers have fixed on the notion of ground as the conceptual tool with which such explanation should be investigated. I will argue that this focus on ground is myopic and that some metaphysical explanations that involve the essences of things cannot be understood in terms of ground. Such ‘essentialist’ explanation is of interest, not only for its ubiquity in philosophy, but for its being in a sense an ultimate (...) form of explanation. I give an account of the sense in which such explanation is ultimate and support it by defending what I call the inessentiality of essence. I close by suggesting that this principle is the key to understanding why essentialist explanations can seem so satisfying. (shrink)

Content disjunctivism is the view that veridical experience involves contents and objects that differ from those of corresponding hallucinations. On one formulation of this view, we are aware of ordinary material things in our surroundings when we experience veridically, and we are aware of mere appearances when we hallucinate. This paper proposes a way of developing this view and offers some considerations in support. Central to the proposed regimentation will be a distinction between different notions of appearance. We distinguish between (...) the notion of something merely appearing to have a property and the notion of mere appearances, which are types of objects that we can refer to and be aware of. Mere appearances are not sense data or Meinongian non-existent objects but existing objects that do not have the properties that they appear to have. These notions of appearance will be elucidated, in particular by characterizing how they are involved in hallucination and illusion. I argue that the resulting view is supported by how our mental life seems to us when we experience our environment. (shrink)

Better than any other single work, Daniel enables us to understand the significance of the transition Buber made from his early mysticism to the philosophy of dialogue. The book is written in the form of five dialogues, in each of which Daniel and his friends explore a crucial philosophical problem-the nature of interconnection of unity, creativity, action, form, and realization as these illuminate the relations of man to God and the world. Daniel occupies a central position in Buber's life work.

Kant's 'Staatsrecht' in the "Metaphysik der Sitten" very likely represents the sharpest analysis and critique of democratic modernity after 1789. This, however, had to remain unrecognized as long as the repeatedly lamented problematic nature of this late text was attributed either to the alleged senility of the author, or else confusion created in the course of the printing process was blamed for its inscrutable composition. In fact, however, it is an expression of the brilliance of a philosophical rhetoric that has (...) remained unexplored to this day and must be regarded as the culmination and pièce de résistance of Kant's oeuvre. By focussing the attention to this piece of writing for the first time in the history of Kant scholarship, Martin Welsch uncovers a hitherto unnoticed variant of the notion of radical popular sovereignty that sheds new light on our political present. (shrink)

Tento text se soustřeďuje na prozkoumání vztahu dvou knih Alfreda Northa Whiteheada, Procesu a reality a Funkce rozumu, které byly publikovány ve stejném roce, v roce 1929. Autor textu nejprve představuje Whiteheadovo pojetí spekulativní filosofie, tak jak je představeno na úvodních stránkách Procesu a reality. Poukazuje, že Whitehead pro potřeby konstrukce filosofického schématu odmítl matematickou axiomatickou metodu a metodu rigidního empirismu a představuje Whiteheadovu vlastní filosofickou metodu, metodu deskriptivní generalizace. Ta může být ve stručnosti shrnuta jako imaginativní konstrukce spekulativního schématu, (...) založená na předchozích pozorováních, která je zpětně testována dalšími pozorováními. Text poukazuje na to, že v Procesu a realitě není předvedena imaginativní konstrukce Whiteheadovy filosofie. Jedna z fází deskriptivní generalizace tedy chybí. Text tvrdí, že tuto chybějící fázi deskriptivní generalizace můžeme najít ve Funkci rozumu. (shrink)

The Basics for the Philosophy Dictionary of Arguments - How to find non-mentioned concepts.

In this paper I draw attention to a peculiar epistemic feature exhibited by certain deductively valid inferences. Certain deductively valid inferences are unable to enhance the reliability of one's belief that the conclusion is true—in a sense that will be fully explained. As I shall show, this feature is demonstrably present in certain philosophically significant inferences—such as GE Moore's notorious 'proof' of the existence of the external world. I suggest that this peculiar epistemic feature might be correlated with the much (...) discussed phenomenon that Crispin Wright and Martin Davies have called 'transmission failure'—the apparent failure, on the part of some deductively valid inferences to transmit one's justification for believing the premises. (shrink)

In 1990 Edward Craig published a book called Knowledge and the State of Nature in which he introduced and defended a genealogical approach to epistemology. In recent years Craig’s book has attracted a lot of attention, and his distinctive approach has been put to a wide range of uses including anti-realist metaepistemology, contextualism, relativism, anti-luck virtue epistemology, epistemic injustice, value of knowledge, pragmatism and virtue epistemology. While the number of objections to Craig’s approach has accumulated, there has been no sustained (...) attempt to develop answers to these objections. In this paper we provide answers to seven important objections in the literature. (shrink)

Metaphysical rationalism, the doctrine which affirms the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR), is out of favor today. The best argument against it is that it appears to lead to necessitarianism, the claim that all truths are necessarily true. Whatever the intuitive appeal of the PSR, the intuitive appeal of the claim that things could have been otherwise is greater. This problem did not go unnoticed by the great metaphysical rationalists Spinoza and Leibniz. Spinoza’s response was to embrace necessitarianism. Leibniz’s (...) response was to argue that, despite appearances, rationalism does not lead to necessitarianism. This paper examines the debate between these two rationalists and concludes that Leibniz has persuasive grounds for his opinion. This has significant implications both for the plausibility of the PSR and for our understanding of modality. (shrink)

A de minimis risk is defined as a risk that is so small that it may be legitimately ignored when making a decision. While ignoring small risks is common in our day-to-day decision making, attempts to introduce the notion of a de minimis risk into the framework of decision theory have run up against a series of well-known difficulties. In this paper, I will develop an enriched decision theoretic framework that is capable of overcoming two major obstacles to the modelling (...) of de minimis risk. The key move is to introduce, into decision theory, a non-probabilistic conception of risk known as normic risk. (shrink)

When one looks into the role of artificial languages in philosophy of language it seems appropriate to start with making a distinction between philosophy of language proper and formal semantics of natural language. Although the distinction between the two disciplines may not always be easy to make since there arguably exist substantial historical and systematic relationships between the two, it nevertheless pays to keep the two apart, at least initially, since the motivation commonly given for the use of artificial languages (...) in philosophy of language is often rather different from the one that drives the use of such languages in semantics. Of course, this difference in motivation should not blind us for the commonalities that exists between the two disciplines. Philosophy of language and formal semantics have a common history, and arguably also share some of their substance. Philosophy of language is by and large an outgrowth of work in the analytical tradition in philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. Both ordinary language philosophy, with its emphasis on the description of actual language use, as well as the more logic-oriented and formally inclined school of logical positivism contributed to the definition of philosophy of language as a separate philosophical discipline, with its own set of problems and methods to solve them. Another major contributor to the establishment of philosophy of language as a distinct discipline has been modern linguistics, in particular generative grammar in the tradition of Chomsky that became the dominant paradigm in linguisticsin the fifties and sixties of the previous century. And as it happens, both the generative tradition of Chomsky and analytic philosophy in its formal and less formal guises have been important factors in the development of formal semantics as well. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the two have something in common. That the communalities go beyond a common ancestry, but are reflected in substance and methods as well, will be argued later on. However, be that as it may, it is still a good idea to keep philosophy of language and formal semantics separate, at least initially, since the role that is assigned to artificial languages and the ways in which these languages are employed in both does differ in a number of respects that are worth keeping in mind.. (shrink)

According to the principle of Conjunction Closure, if one has justification for believing each of a set of propositions, one has justification for believing their conjunction. The lottery and preface paradoxes can both be seen as posing challenges for Closure, but leave open familiar strategies for preserving the principle. While this is all relatively well-trodden ground, a new Closure-challenging paradox has recently emerged, in two somewhat different forms, due to Backes :3773–3787, 2019a) and Praolini :715–726, 2019). This paradox synthesises elements (...) of the lottery and the preface and is designed to close off the familiar Closure-preserving strategies. By appealing to a normic theory of justification, I will defend Closure in the face of this new paradox. Along the way I will draw more general conclusions about justification, normalcy and defeat, which bear upon what Backes :2877–2895, 2019b) has dubbed the ‘easy defeat’ problem for the normic theory. (shrink)

Theories of epistemic justification are commonly assessed by exploring their predictions about particular hypothetical cases – predictions as to whether justification is present or absent in this or that case. With a few exceptions, it is much less common for theories of epistemic justification to be assessed by exploring their predictions about logical principles. The exceptions are a handful of ‘closure’ principles, which have received a lot of attention, and which certain theories of justification are well known to invalidate. But (...) these closure principles are only a small sample of the logical principles that we might consider. In this paper, I will outline four further logical principles that plausibly hold for justification and two which plausibly do not. While my primary aim is just to put these principles forward, I will use them to evaluate some different approaches to justification and (tentatively) conclude that a ‘normic’ theory of justification best captures its logic. (shrink)

Any explanation of one fact in terms of another will appeal to some sort of connection between the two. In a causal explanation, the connection might be a causal mechanism or law. But not all explanations are causal, and neither are all explanatory connections. For example, in explaining the fact that a given barn is red in terms of the fact that it is crimson, we might appeal to a non-causal connection between things’ being crimson and their being red. Many (...) such connections, like this one, are general rather than particular. I call these general non-causal explanatory connections 'laws of metaphysics'. In this paper I argue that some of these laws are to be found in the world at its most fundamental level, forming a bridge between fundamental reality and everything else. It is only by admitting fundamental laws, I suggest, that we can do justice to the explanatory relationship between what is fundamental and what is not. And once these laws are admitted, we are able to provide a nice resolution of the puzzle of why there are any non-fundamental facts in the first place. (shrink)

In Groenendijk & Stokhof [1989] a system of dynamic predicate logic (DPL) was developed, as a compositional alternative for classical discourse representation theory (DRT ). DPL shares with DRT the restriction of being a first-order system. In the present paper, we are mainly concerned with overcoming this limitation. We shall define a dynamic semantics for a typed language with λ-abstraction which is compatible with the semantics DPL specifies for the language of first-order predicate logic. We shall propose to use this (...) new logical system as the semantic component of a Montague-style grammar (referred to as dynamic Montague grammar, DMG), which will enable us to extend the compositionality of DPL to the subsentential level. Furthermore, we shall extend this analysis also in this sense that we shall add new, dynamic interpretations for logical constants which in DPL were treated in a static fashion. This will substantially increase the descriptive coverage of DMG. (shrink)

There are a number of apparent parallels between belief in God and belief in the existence of an external world beyond our experiences. Both beliefs would seem to condition one's overall view of reality and one's place within it – and yet it is difficult to see how either can be defended. Neither belief is likely to receive a purely a priori defence and any empirical evidence that one cites either in favour of the existence of God or the existence (...) of the external world would seem to blatantly beg the question against a doubter. I will explore just how far this parallel can be pushed by examining some strategies for resisting external world scepticism1. (shrink)

Fragmentalism was first introduced by Kit Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’. According to fragmentalism, reality is an inherently perspectival place that exhibits a fragmented structure. The current paper defends the fragmentalist interpretation of the special theory of relativity, which Fine briefly considers in his paper. The fragmentalist interpretation makes room for genuine facts regarding absolute simultaneity, duration and length. One might worry that positing such variant properties is a turn for the worse in terms of theoretical virtues because such (...) properties are not involved in physical explanations and hence theoretically redundant. It will be argued that this is not right: if variant properties are indeed instantiated, they will also be involved in straightforward physical explanations and hence not explanatorily redundant. Hofweber and Lange, in their ‘Fine’s Fragmentalist Interpretation of Special Relativity’, object that the fragmentalist interpretation is in tension with the right explanation of the Lorentz transformations. It will be argued that their objection targets an inessential aspect of the fragmentalist framework and fails to raise any serious problem for the fragmentalist interpretation of special relativity. (shrink)

There is a type of metaphysical picture that surfaces in a range of philosophical discussions, is of intrinsic interest, and yet remains ill-understood. According to this picture, the world contains a range of standpoints relative to which different facts obtain. Any true representation of the world cannot but adopt a particular standpoint. The aim of this paper is to propose a regimentation of a metaphysics that underwrites this picture. Key components are a factive notion of metaphysical relativity, a deflationary notion (...) of adopting standpoints, and two kinds of valid inference, one that allows one to abandon standpoints and one that does not. To better understand how theories formulated in terms of this framework are situated in dialectical space, I sketch a theory in the philosophy of time that admits both temporal and atemporal standpoints. (shrink)

This paper seeks to widen the dialogue between the “epistemology of peer disagreement” and the epistemology informed by Wittgenstein’s last notebooks, later edited as On Certainty. The paper defends the following theses: not all certainties are groundless; many of them are beliefs; and they do not have a common essence. An epistemic peer need not share all of my certainties. Which response to a disagreement over a certainty is called for, depends on the type of certainty in question. Sometimes a (...) form of relativism is the right response. Reasonable, mutually recognized peer disagreement over a certainty is possible.—The paper thus addresses both interpretative and systematic issues. It uses Wittgenstein as a resource for thinking about peer disagreement over certainties. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the thought that the phenomenal appearances that accompany mental states are somehow only there, or only real, from the standpoint of the subject of those mental states. The world differs across subjects in terms of which appearances obtain. Not only are subjects standpoints across which the world varies, subjects are standpoints that we can ‘adopt’ in our own theorizing about the world (or stand back from). The picture that is suggested by these claims (...) has an appeal but is at the same time obscure and stands in need of regimentation. This paper explores and motivates a metaphysical account of what it is for subjects to be standpoints, what it is to adopt standpoints in our representations and, most importantly, how these notions might help us better understand the subjective character of conscious mental states. Some well-known observations by Thomas Nagel serve as starting points and the paper concludes by revisiting Nagel’s argument for the inevitable incompleteness of objective accounts of mental states, which will be reframed in terms of the central commitments of the proposed framework. (shrink)

There are a number of debates that are relevant to questions concerning objectivity in science. One of the eldest, and still one of the most intensely fought, is the debate over epistemic relativism. —All forms of epistemic relativism commit themselves to the view that it is impossible to show in a neutral, non-question-begging, way that one “epistemic system”, that is, one interconnected set of epistemic standards, is epistemically superior to others. I shall call this view “No-metajustification”. No-metajustification is commonly taken (...) to deny the objectivity of standards. In this paper I shall discuss two currently popular attempts to attack “No-metajustification”. The first attempt attacks no-metajustification by challenging a particular strategy of arguing in its defence: this strategy involves the ancient Pyrrhonian “Problem of the Criterion”. The second attempt to refute No-metajustification targets its metaphysical underpinning: to wit, the claim that there are, or could be, several fundamentally different and irreconcilable epistemic systems. I shall call this assumption “Pluralism”. I shall address three questions with respect to these attempts to refute epistemic relativism by attacking no-metajustification: Can the epistemic relativist rely on the Problem of the Criterion in support of No-metajustification? Is a combination of Chisholmian “particularism” and epistemic naturalism an effective weapon against No-metajustification? And is Pluralism a defensible assumption? (shrink)

A strong case can be made that the initial probability of the Resurrection is very low even if one accepts the existence of a theistic God. Even sophisticated theists who maintain that God performs miracles believe that these are rare initially improbable events. Consequently, strong evidence is needed to overcome this initial improbability. In the case of the Resurrection there is no plausible theory why this event should have occurred; moreover, even if there is, it is unlikely that it would (...) have happened at the particular time and place it did. (shrink)

Is it right to convict a person of a crime on the basis of purely statistical evidence? Many who have considered this question agree that it is not, posing a direct challenge to legal probabilism – the claim that the criminal standard of proof should be understood in terms of a high probability threshold. Some defenders of legal probabilism have, however, held their ground: Schoeman (1987) argues that there are no clear epistemic or moral problems with convictions based on purely (...) statistical evidence, and speculates that our aversion to such convictions may be nothing more than an irrational bias. More recently, Hedden and Colyvan (2019, section VI) describe our reluctance to convict on the basis of purely statistical evidence as an ‘intuition’, but suggest that there may be no ‘in principle’ problem with such convictions (see also Papineau, forthcoming, section 6). In this paper, I argue that there is, in some cases, an in principle problem with a conviction based upon statistical evidence alone – namely, it commits us to a precedent which, if consistently followed through, could lead to the deliberate conviction of an innocent person. I conclude with some reflections on the idea that the criminal justice system should strive to maximise the accuracy of its verdicts – and the related idea that we should each strive to maximise the accuracy of our beliefs. (shrink)

Richard Rorty has argued that Donald Davidson can be classified as a neopragmatist. To this end, Rorty has tried to show that Davidson's views share important similarities with those of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Davidson, for his part, has tended to resist Rorty's attempts to classify his views in this way. Interestingly, the reasons for Rorty's classification and the reasons for Davidson's resistance share a common trait: an appeal to the elimination of the dualism of conceptual scheme and experiential content (...) on the basis of an assumed background of shared beliefs. According to Rorty, Davidson's background of shared beliefs is closely related to the notion of funded experience found in those thinkers often. (shrink)

This paper1 explores, quite tentatively, possible consequences for the concept of semantics of two phenomena concerning meaning and interpretation, viz., radical interpretation and normativity of meaning. Both, it will be argued, challenge the way in which meaning is conceived of in semantics and thereby the status of the discipline itself. For several reasons it seems opportune to explore these issues. If one reviews the developments in semantics over the past two decades, one observes that quite a bit has changed, and (...) one may well wonder how to assess these changes. This relates directly to the status of semantics. If semantics is an empirical discipline, one might expect that most changes are informed by empirical considerations. However, one may also note that the core notion of semantics, meaning, today is conceived of quite differently than in, say, the seventies. How can that be? How can that what semantics is about, be different now from what is was back then? Or is this perhaps an indication that semantics is not as empirical as it is often thought to be? Moreover, it seems that in some deep sense meaning as explicated in semantics and interpretation as studied in various philosophical approaches are strangely at odds. Meaning is what interpretation is concerned with: meaning is, at least so it seems, what in the process of interpretation language users try to recover (or analogously, what they try to convey in production). Yet, the way meaning is conceived of in semantics seems not to square all that neatly with how the process of interpretation is supposed to proceed. In particular it seems to lack some of the intrinsic features that various approaches to interpretation assume it to have. Given these discrepancies, one wonders how the two can be incorporated within a single theory. And that such a theory is desirable goes, it may be presumed, without saying These are the reasons that figure in this paper. At the background there are some others.. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to Marcello Di Bello’s criticisms of the ‘normic account’ of the criminal standard of proof. In so doing, I further elaborate on what the normic account predicts about certain significant legal categories of evidence, including DNA and fingerprint evidence and eyewitness identifications.

American poet Ezra Pound wrote a letter on February 6, 1940, inviting American philosopher George Santayana to join poet T. S. Eliot and himself in writing “a volume . . . on the Ideal University, or The Proper Curriculum, or how it would be possible to educate and/or (mostly or) civilize the university student.” Santayana declined the invitation and claimed to have no ideas on the subject of education. Participation would have been morally impossible, he wrote, because unlike Pound and (...) Eliot, whom he regarded as “reformers, full of prophetic zeal and faith in the Advent of the Lord.” Santayana was “cynically content to let people educate or neglect themselves as they may prefer.”. (shrink)

Welche Theorien widersprechen einander? Welcher Autor ist welcher Theorie zuzuordnen? Wo gibt es stillschweigende Kontroversen und Übereinstimmungen? Wo verlaufen die wissenschaftlichen Lager? Die Grundlagen für das Lexikon der Argumente.

According to Larry Hickman, John Dewey’s general philosophical project of analyzing and critiquing human experience may be understood in terms of technological inquiry (Hickman 1990, 1). Following this, I contend that technology provides a model for Dewey’s analysis of language and meaning, and this analysis suggests a treatment of linguistic metaphor as a way of meeting new demands of experience with old tools of a known and understood language. An account of metaphor consistent with Dewey’s views on language and meaning (...) avoids a strict dualism of literal meaning and metaphorical meaning as well as the explanatory shortcomings of a nondualistic theory like that found in Donald Davidson’s well-known paper ”What Metaphors Mean” (1978).2 A Deweyan explanation of. (shrink)

A ‘lottery belief’ is a belief that a particular ticket has lost a large, fair lottery, based on nothing more than the odds against it winning. The lottery paradox brings out a tension between the idea that lottery beliefs are justified and the idea that that one can always justifiably believe the deductive consequences of things that one justifiably believes – what is sometimes called the principle of closure. Many philosophers have treated the lottery paradox as an argument against the (...) second idea – but I make a case here that it is the first idea that should be given up. As I shall show, there are a number of independent arguments for denying that lottery beliefs are justified. (shrink)

In a number of papers and in his recent book, Is Water H₂O? Evidence, Realism, Pluralism (2012), Hasok Chang has argued that the correct interpretation of the Chemical Revolution provides a strong case for the view that progress in science is served by maintaining several incommensurable “systems of practice” in the same discipline, and concerning the same region of nature. This paper is a critical discussion of Chang's reading of the Chemical Revolution. It seeks to establish, first, that Chang's assessment (...) of Lavoisier's and Priestley's work and character follows the phlogistonists' “actors' sociology”; second, that Chang simplifies late-eighteenth-century chemical debates by reducing them to an alleged conflict between two systems of practice; third, that Chang's evidence for a slow transition from phlogistonist theory to oxygen theory is not strong; and fourth, that he is wrong to assume that chemists at the time did not have overwhelming good reasons to favour Lavoisier's over the phlogistonists' views. (shrink)