For two ideally rational agents, does learning a finite amount of shared evidence necessitate agreement? No. But does it at least guard against belief polarization, the case in which their opinions get further apart? No. OK, but are rational agents guaranteed to avoid polarization if they have access to an infinite, increasing stream of shared evidence? No.

It is wholly uncontroversial that measurements-or, more properly, propositions that are measurement reports-are often paradigmatically good cases of propositions that serve the function of evidence. In normal cases it is also obvious that stating such a report is an utterly pedestrian case of successful assertion. So, for example, there is nothing controversial about the following claims: (1) that a proposition to the effect that a particular thermometer reads 104C when properly used to determine the temperature of a particular patient is (...) evidence that the patient in question has a fever and (2) that there is nothing wrong with asserting the proposition that a particular thermometer reads 104C for appropriate reasons of communication, etc. when the thermometer has been properly used to determine the temperature of a particular patient. Here it will be shown that Timothy Williamson’s commitments to a number of principles about knowledge and assertion imply that a whole class of utterly ordinary statements like these that are used as evidence are not really evidence because they are not knowledge and so are (perversely) unassertable according to his principled commitments. This paper deals primarily with the second of these two problems and an alternative account of the norms of assertion is introduced which allows for the assertability of such measurement reports. (shrink)

Debunking skeptics claim that our moral beliefs are formed by processes unsuited to identifying objective facts, such as emotions inculcated by our genes and culture; therefore, they say, even if there are objective moral facts, we probably don’t know them. I argue that the debunking skeptics cannot explain the pervasive trend toward liberalization of values over human history, and that the best explanation is the realist’s: humanity is becoming increasingly liberal because liberalism is the objectively correct moral stance.

There are three theories in the epistemology of modality that have received sustained attention over the past 20 years: conceivability-theory, counterfactual-theory, and deduction-theory. In this paper we argue that all three face what we call the problem of modal epistemic friction. One consequence of the problem is that for any of the three accounts to yield modal knowledge, the account must provide an epistemology of essence. We discuss an attempt to fend off the problem within the context of the internalism (...) versus externalism debate about epistemic justification. We then investigate the effects that the PMEF has on reductive and non-reductive theories of the relation between essence and modality. (shrink)

Time may be infinite in both directions. If it is, then, if persons could live at most once in all of time, the probability that you would be alive now would be zero. But if persons can live more than once, the probability that you would be alive now would be nonzero. Since you are alive now, with certainty, either the past is finite, or persons can live more than once.

In recent years, philosophers have proposed a variety of accounts of the nature of harm. In this paper, I consider several of these accounts and argue that they are unsuccessful. I then make a modest case for a different view.

In this paper, I try to show that democratic consensus – one of the more prominent ideals in recent political thought – is an essential byproduct of epistemically warranted beliefs about political action and organization, at least in those cases where the issues under dispute are epistemic in nature. An essential byproduct (to borrow Jon Elster’s term) is a goal that can only be intentionally achieved by aiming at some other objective. In my usage, a political issue is epistemic when (...) there is some right (or at least best) answer concerning how it ought to be resolved that is independent of people’s beliefs or desires about how it ought to be resolved. An important secondary claim, then, is that it is difficult to explain the presumptive value of political deliberation unless we understand a very large share of political issues as epistemic in nature. This view implies a considerably more contentious model of political deliberation but is not incompatible with familiar forms of conciliatory behavior in our public disputes. (shrink)

The social welfare functional approach to social choice theory fails to distinguish a genuine change in individual well-beings from a merely representational change due to the use of different measurement scales. A generalization of the concept of a social welfare functional is introduced that explicitly takes account of the scales that are used to measure well-beings so as to distinguish between these two kinds of changes. This generalization of the standard theoretical framework results in a more satisfactory formulation of welfarism, (...) the doctrine that social alternatives are evaluated and socially ranked solely in terms of the well-beings of the relevant individuals. This scale-dependent form of welfarism is axiomatized using this framework. The implications of this approach for characterizing classes of social welfare orderings are also considered. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the concept of normality in medical research and clinical practice is inextricable from the concept of ambiguity. I make this argument in the context of Edmund Pellegrino's call for a renewed reflection on medicine’s basic concepts and by drawing on work in critical disability studies concerning Deafness and body integrity identity disorder. If medical practitioners and philosophers of medicine wish to improve their understanding of the meaning of medicine as well as its concrete practice, (...) I contend that they should take seriously the import and centrality of ambiguity for biomedicine. (shrink)

The main question addressed in this paper is whether some false sentences can constitute evidence for the truth of other propositions. In this paper it is argued that there are good reasons to suspect that at least some false propositions can constitute evidence for the truth of certain other contingent propositions. The paper also introduces a novel condition concerning propositions that constitute evidence that explains a ubiquitous evidential practice and it contains a defense of a particular condition concerning the possession (...) of evidence. The core position adopted here then is that false propositions that are approximately true reports of measurements can constitute evidence for the truth of other propositions. So, it will be argued that evidence is only quasi-factive in this very specific sense. (shrink)

The essay argues that while there is no general agreement on whether moral realism is true, there is general agreement on at least some of the moral obligations that we have if moral realism is true. Given that moral realism might be true, and given that we know some of the things we ought to do if it is true, we have a reason to do those things. Furthermore, this reason is itself an objective moral reason. Thus, if moral realism (...) might be true, then it is true. (shrink)

Juries, committees and experts panels commonly appraise things of one kind or another on the basis of grades awarded by several people. When everybody's grading thresholds are known to be the same, the results sometimes can be counted on to reflect the graders’ opinion. Otherwise, they often cannot. Under certain conditions, Arrow's ‘impossibility’ theorem entails that judgements reached by aggregating grades do not reliably track any collective sense of better and worse at all. These claims are made by adapting the (...) Arrow–Sen framework for social choice to study grading in groups. (shrink)

When future historians chronicle the twentieth century, they will see phenomenology as one of the preeminent social and ethical philosophies of its age. The phenomenological movement not only produced systematic reflection on common moral concerns such as distinguishing right from wrong and explaining the status of values; it also called on philosophy to renew European societies facing crisis, an aim that inspired thinkers in interwar Europe as well as later communist bloc dissidents. Despite this legacy, phenomenology continues to be largely (...) discounted as esoteric and solipsistic, the last gasp of a Cartesian dream to base knowledge on the isolated rational mind. Intellectual histories tend to cite Husserl's epistemological influence on philosophies like existentialism and deconstruction without considering his social or ethical imprint. And while a few recent scholars have begun to note phenomenology's wider ethical resonance, especially in French social thought, its image as stubbornly academic continues to hold sway. _The Far Reaches_ challenges that image by tracing the first history of phenomenological ethics and social thought in Central Europe, from its founders Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl through its reception in East Central Europe by dissident thinkers such as Jan Patocka, Karol Wojtyla, and Václav Havel. (shrink)

While evil has always fascinated philosophers, it is only in modern times that the existence of evil has been seen as a serious challenge to belief in the existence of a powerful and benevolent God. In order to demonstrate this, the following chapter traces the historical emergence of what philosophers today call “the problem of evil” through an analysis of the writings of Plato, Epicurus, Sextus Empiricus, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Descartes, Bayle, and Hume.

Passion is a hidden issue behind or at the heart of, contemporary theoretical debates about nationalism, identity politics and religious fundamentalism. It is not that reason and passion cannot be conceptually distinguished. They are, however, always entangled in practice - and this entanglement itself requires a conceptual account. So it is my ambition to blur the line between reason and passion: to rationalize (some of) the passions and to impassion reason. Passionate intensity has a legitimate place in the social world. (...) This extension of rational legitimacy to the political passions seems to me a useful revision of liberal theory which has been too pre-occupied in recent years with the construction of dispassionate deliberative procedures. It opens the way for better accounts of social connection and conflict and for more explicit and self-conscious answers to the unavoidable political questions: which side are you on? Key Words: conviction • interest • liberalism • passion • politics • Yeats. (shrink)

I argue that taxation for redistributive purposes is a property rights violation, responding to arguments (due to Nagel, Murphy, Sunstein, and Holmes) claiming that individuals lack ownership of their pretax incomes.

I defend my pure social account of global autonomy from Steven Weimer's recent criticisms. In particular, I argue that it does not implicitly rely upon the very kind of nonsocial conception of autonomy that it hopes to replace.

How can people function appropriately and respond normatively in social contexts even if they are not aware of rules governing these contexts? John Searle has rightly criticized a popular way out of this problem by simply asserting that they follow them unconsciously. His alternative explanation is based on his notion of a preintentional, nonrepresentational background. In this paper I criticize this explanation and the underlying account of the background and suggest an alternative explanation of the normativity of elementary social practices (...) and of the background itself. I propose to think of the background as being intentional, but nonconceptual, and of the basic normativity or proto-normativity as being instituted through common sensory-motor-emotional schemata established in the joint interactions of groups. The paper concludes with some reflections on what role this level of collective intentionality and the notion of the background can play in a layered account of the social mind and the ontology of the social world. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have been arguing for decades that swift action to protect our natural environment is morally paramount, and that our concern for the environment should go beyond its importance for human welfare. It might be thought that the widespread acceptance of moral anti-realism would undermine the aims of environmental ethicists. One reason is that recent empirical studies purport to show that moral realists are more likely to act on the basis of their ethical convictions than anti-realists. In addition, it (...) is sometimes argued that only moral realists can countenance the claim that nature is intrinsically valuable. Against this, we argue that the acceptance of moral anti-realism is no threat to the environmentalist cause. We argue, further, that the acceptance of moral realism is potentially an obstacle to delivering on a third core environmental ethicist demand: namely, that successful action on climate change and environmental destruction requires us to change some of our commonly-held ethical views and to achieve a workable consensus. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s influential exclusion argument attempts to demonstrate the inconsistency of nonreductive materialism in the philosophy of mind. Kim’s argument begins by showing that the three main theses of nonreductive materialism, plus two additional considerations, lead to a specific and familiar picture of mental causation. The exclusion argument can succeed only if, as Kim claims, this picture is not one of genuine causal overdetermination. Accordingly, one can resist Kim’s conclusion by denying this claim, maintaining instead that the effects of the (...) mental are always causally overdetermined. I call this strategy the ‘ overdetermination challenge’. One of the main aims of this paper is to show that the overdetermination challenge is the most appropriate response to Kim’s exclusion argument, at least in its latest form. I argue that Kim fails to adequately respond to the overdetermination challenge, thus failing to prevent his opponents from reasonably maintaining that the effects of the mental are always causally overdetermined. Interestingly, this discussion reveals a curious dialectical feature of Kim’s latest response to the overdetermination challenge: if it succeeds, then a new, simpler and more compact version of the exclusion argument is available. While I argue against the consequent of this conditional, thereby also rejecting the antecedent, this dialectical feature should be of interest to philosophers on either side of this debate. (shrink)

According to psychological emotion theories referred to as appraisal theory, emotions are caused by appraisals (evaluative judgments). Borrowing a term from Jan Smedslund, it is the contention of this article that psychological appraisal theory is “pseudoempirical” (i.e., misleadingly or incorrectly empirical). In the article I outline what makes some scientific psychology “pseudoempirical,” distinguish my view on this from Jan Smedslund’s, and then go on to show why paying heed to the ordinary meanings of emotion terms is relevant to psychology, and (...) how appraisal theory is methodologically off the mark by employing experiments, questionnaires, and the like, to investigate what follows from the ordinary meanings of words. The overarching argument of the article is that the scientific research program of appraisal theory is fundamentally misguided and that a more philosophical approach is needed to address the kinds of questions it seeks to answer. (shrink)

Foundations of Relational Realism presents an intuitive interpretation of quantum mechanics, based on a revised decoherent histories interpretation, structured within a category theoretic topological formalism. -/- If there is a central conceptual framework that has reliably borne the weight of modern physics as it ascends into the twenty-first century, it is the framework of quantum mechanics. Because of its enduring stability in experimental application, physics has today reached heights that not only inspire wonder, but arguably exceed the limits of intuitive (...) vision, if not intuitive comprehension. For many physicists and philosophers, however, the currently fashionable tendency toward exotic interpretation of the theoretical formalism is recognized not as a mark of ascent for the tower of physics, but rather an indicator of sway—one that must be dampened rather than encouraged if practical progress is to continue. -/- In this unique two-part volume, designed to be comprehensible to both specialists and non-specialists, the authors chart out a pathway forward by identifying the central deficiency in most interpretations of quantum mechanics: That in its conventional, metrical depiction of extension, inherited from the Enlightenment, objects are characterized as fundamental to relations—i.e., such that relations presuppose objects but objects do not presuppose relations. The authors, by contrast, argue that quantum mechanics exemplifies the fact that physical extensiveness is fundamentally topological rather than metrical, with its proper logico-mathematical framework being category theoretic rather than set theoretic. -/- By this thesis, extensiveness fundamentally entails not only relations of objects, but also relations of relations. Thus, the fundamental quanta of quantum physics are properly defined as units of logico-physical relation rather than merely units of physical relata as is the current convention. Objects are always understood as relata, and likewise relations are always understood objectively. In this way, objects and relations are coherently defined as mutually implicative. The conventional notion of a history as “a story about fundamental objects” is thereby reversed, such that the classical “objects” become the story by which we understand physical systems that are fundamentally histories of quantum events. -/- These are just a few of the novel critical claims explored in this volume—claims whose exemplification in quantum mechanics will, the authors argue, serve more broadly as foundational principles for the philosophy of nature as it evolves through the twenty-first century and beyond. (shrink)

The paper proposes a new interpretation of Timon's attack on Arcesilaus in fr. 806 SH.

In "Evil and the Justice of God", N.T. Wright presses the point that attempting to solve the philosophical problem of evil is an immature response to the existence of evil--a response that belittles the real problem of evil, which is just the fact that evil is bad and needs to be dealt with. As you might expect, I am not inclined to endorse this sort of sweeping indictment of the entire field of research on the philosophical problem of evil. (I (...) sort of doubt that Wright really meant to either.) But I do think that there is a kernel of truth in what I take to be Wright's fundamental objection to attempts to solve the philosophical problem of evil. In the first section of what follows, I will try briefly to explain why. I will then go on to argue that, despite this fact, certain efforts at solving the problem of evil avoid Wright's objection. Indeed, drawing on recent work by Elenore Stump, I will argue that one perfectly legitimate way to try to solve the philosophical problem of evil is to follow precisely what seems to be the main piece of advice in "Evil and the Justice of God": namely, to look more seriously than we have at the attitudes taken toward evil by human authors of and characters in the Bible, and to attend more carefully to what the Bible says about how God deals with evil. (shrink)

A common way of testing the inner sense theory of introspection exploits the possibility of damage to inner sense. Such damage is expected to lead to first-personal deficits/impairments of one kind or another. I raise various problems for this way of testing the theory. The main difficulty, I argue, stems from the existence of the method subserving confabulation.

This paper shows that any view of future contingent claims that treats such claims as having indeterminate truth values or as simply being false implies probabilistic irrationality. This is because such views of the future imply violations of reflection, special reflection and conditionalization.

I first clarify the idea that blameworthiness requires consciousness as the view that one can be blameworthy only for what is a response to a reason of which one is conscious. Next I develop the following argument: blameworthiness requires exercising control in a way distinctive of persons and doing this, in view of what it is to be a person, requires responding to a reason of which one is conscious. Then I defend this argument from an objection inspired by Arpaly (...) and Schroeder according to which responding to moral reasons suffices for exercising control distinctive of persons. (shrink)

From the premise that our biology imposes cognitive constraints on our epistemic activities, a series of prominent authors – most notably Fodor, Chomsky and McGinn – have argued that we are cognitively closed to certain aspects and properties of the world. Cognitive constraints, they argue, entail cognitive closure. I argue that this is not the case. More precisely, I detect two unwarranted conflations at the core of arguments deriving closure from constraints. The first is a conflation of what I will (...) refer to as ‘representation’ and ‘object of representation’. The second confuses the cognitive scope of the assisted mind for that of the unassisted mind. Cognitive closure, I conclude, cannot be established from pointing out the (uncontroversial) existence of cognitive constraints. (shrink)

Recently Timothy Williamson (2007) has argued that characterizations of the standard (i.e. intuition-based) philosophical practice of philosophical analysis are misguided because of the erroneous manner in which this practice has been understood. In doing so he implies that experimental critiques of the reliability of intuition are based on this misunderstanding of philosophical methodology and so have little or no bearing on actual philosophical practice or results. His main point is that the orthodox understanding of philosophical methodology is incorrect in that (...) it treats philosophical thought experiments in such a way that they can be “filled in” in various ways that undermines their use as counter-examples and that intuition plays no substantial role in philosophical practice when we properly understand that methodology as a result of the possibility of such filling in. In this paper Williamson’s claim that philosophical thought experiments cases can be legitimately filled in this way will be challenged and it will be shown that the experimental critique of the intuition-based methods involved a serious issue. (shrink)

Den Beteiligten des Politikbetriebs einschließlich Wählern, Aktivisten und Spitzenpolitikern fehlt häufig der grundlegende Sachverstand für die jeweiligen politischen Entscheidungen. Selbst Experten verstehen gesellschaftliche Mechanismen kaum und können deren Auswirkung kaum vorhersagen. Nur auf einfachste und unstrittige politische Behauptungen ist Verlass. Teilweise rührt das daher, dass politisches Wissen schwer zu erlangen ist, und teilweise daher, dass der Einzelne keinen ausreichenden Ansporn hat, es zu erlangen. Demzufolge besteht der beste Ratschlag an die politischen Akteure sehr häufig schlicht darin, gesellschaftliche Probleme nicht anzugehen, (...) zumal Eingriffe, die nicht auf einem genauen Verständnis beruhen, vermutlich mehr Schaden als Nutzen anrichten. -/- [This is a German translation of "In Praise of Passivity". Studia Humana 1,2 (2012): 12-28.]. (shrink)

Soll der Freizeitkonsum von Drogen wie Marihuana, Kokain, Heroin und LSD einem gesetzlichen Verbot unterliegen? Drogengegner sagen ja. Sie behaupten für gewöhnlich, Drogenkonsum sei sowohl für den Nutzer als auch für die Gesellschaft allgemein äußerst schädlich – vielleicht sogar unmoralisch, und sie glauben, diese Tatsachen seien als Verbotsgrund ausreichend. Freigabebefürworter sagen nein und berufen sich dabei für gewöhnlich auf eines oder mehrere von drei Argumenten: Erstens behaupten einige, Drogenkonsum sei nicht so schädlich, wie Drogengegner meinen, und sei gelegentlich sogar nützlich. (...) Zweitens behaupten einige, Drogenverbote „funktionierten“ nicht, d. h. sie verhinderten den Drogenkonsum nicht besonders wirksam und hätten eine Reihe sehr nachteiliger Folgewirkungen. Schließlich behaupten einige, Drogenverbote seien Unrecht oder verletzten Rechte. -/- Ich unternehme an dieser Stelle nicht den Versuch, all diese Argumente zu besprechen. Stattdessen beschränke ich mich auf die drei Hauptargumente der Drogendebatte: Erstens demjenigen, Drogen solle man aufgrund der Schädigung der Konsumenten verbieten; zweitens, man solle sie verbieten, weil sie außer den Konsumenten noch anderen schadeten; und drittens, man solle sie legalisieren, weil Drogenverbote Rechte verletzten. Ich richte mein Augenmerk auf die moralphilosophischen Fragen, welche diese Argumente aufwerfen, statt auf medizinische oder gesellschaftliche Fragen und werde zeigen, dass die beiden Verbotsargumente scheitern, wogegen das dritte Argument für die Freigabe greift. -/- [This is a German translation of "America's Unjust Drug War". In The New Prohibition, ed. Bill Masters (St. Louis, Mo.: Accurate Press, 2004), p. 133-144.]. (shrink)

A brief review of the life and spiritual autobiography of the unique American mystic Adi Da (Franklin Jones). The sticker on the cover of some editions says `The most profound spiritual autobiography of all time` and this might well be true. I am in my 70´s and have read many books by spiritual teachers and on spirituality, and this is one of the greatest ones. Certainly it is by far the fullest and clearest account of the process of enlightenment I (...) have ever seen. Even if you have no interest at all in the most fascinating of all human psychological processes, it is an amazing document that reveals a great deal about religion, yoga, and human psychology and probes the depths and limits of human possibilities. I describe it in some detail and compare his teaching with that of the Indian mystic Osho. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

Few philosophers would deny that unconscious motives enter into causal explanations of human behavior. But many would be reluctant to say that deeply unconscious motives have anything to do with the intentionality with which we act. I argue to the contrary that deeply unconscious motives can indeed contribute to agent-intentionality on the following condition: If she were self-aware and honest with respect to her unconscious motive, the agent would believe that it constituted her reason for the action of which it (...) was a cause. I conclude that when an agent’s conscious reasons are vague, confused, or self-deceiving, her unconscious reason-grounding motive may fill what would otherwise be a gap in her intentionality. (shrink)

CONTEMPORARY philosophers of religion have devoted much worthy effort to analyzing and reconsidering such important traditional doctrines as those of divine omniscience and simplicity. But the similarly important and traditional doctrine of creation ex nihilo has not been enjoying the same kind of attention. One reason for this may be that its purport seems clearer, and its place in classical theism accordingly less controversial, than those of certain other doctrines, so that neither proponents nor opponents are as much inclined to (...) puzzle over it as over those other doctrines. But in Aquinas's magisterial account, at least one of the doctrine's aspects bears a philosophical interest that is easy to overlook. In this paper I will bring out that aspect by resolving two alleged inconsistencies in Aquinas's account.... (shrink)

This paper shows that the knowability paradox isn’t a paradox because the derivation of the paradox is faulty. This is explained by showing that the K operator employed in generating the paradox is used equivocally and when the equivocation is eliminated the derivation fails.

Extended review of Gerard Benssousan's Moses Hess, la philosophie, le socialisme ((1985) and of Shlomo Avineris' Moses Hess Prophet of Communism and Zionism (1985) with references to other contemporary publications on Hess' thought.

24 undergraduates were blindfolded and walked through paths laid out on a floor to investigate whether the orientation of Ss' cognitive maps (CMs) could be determined after they had learned a path by walking through it. Given the assumption that the CM is picturelike, it was predicted that it has a specific orientation, which implies that tests in which the CM is assumed to be aligned with the path should be less difficult than tests in which the CM is hypothesized (...) to be contraligned. In Exp I (8 Ss), Ss were required to draw a picture of the path they had walked through; in Exp II (14 Ss), Ss were required to locate targets in the path under conditions in which their presumed CMs were either aligned or contraligned with the path. Results show that, in Exp I, all Ss drew the 1st line segment of the path upward, suggesting that this part of the path was fixed in an upward direction in memory. In Exp II, Ss were more accurate and faster in locating points on the path when the CM was hypothesized to be aligned with the path than when it was hypothesized to be contraligned. (shrink)

Subjectivism about normativity (SN) is the view that norms are never intrinsic to things but are instead always imposed from without. After clarifying what SN is, I argue against it on the basis of its implications concerning intentionality. Intentional states with the mind-to-world direction of fit are essentially norm-subservient, i.e., essentially subject to norms such as truth, coherence, and the like. SN implies that nothing is intrinsically an intentional state of the mind-to-world sort: its being such a state is only (...) a status relative to the imposition of a norm. If one rejects this view of mind-to-world states, then one has grounds for rejecting SN itself. If one accepts it, an infinite regress arises that makes it impossible for norms to be imposed, which means that SN has undermined itself. (shrink)

Torricelli elaborated the theory of ballistics as part of Galileo's theory of motion. In 1647 he had an interesting exchange of letters with G. B. Renieri, from Genoa, who complained that some experiments he had made with guns contradicted Galileo's theory. The correspondence discloses some fundamental issues of the Seventeenth century Scientific Revolution, the main one being to what extent mathematics can be applied to physics. Torricelli's view on this issue is ambivalent. He defends Galileo's kinematics as the correct description (...) of reality yet says that mathematics does not describe reality. It is suggested that this ambivalence is an outcome of the climate of uncertainty which followed Galileo's trial. (shrink)

The role of natural theology in St. Thomas Aquinas's early doctrine of (transcendental) trut, especially in question one of Aquinas's "Disputed Questions on Truth (De veritate).

Arnold Sommerfeld introduced the fine-structure constant that determines the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. Following Sommerfeld, Wolfgang Pauli left several clues to calculating the fine-structure constant with his research on Johannes Kepler's view of nature and Pythagorean geometry. The Laplace limit of Kepler's equation in classical mechanics, the Bohr-Sommerfeld model of the hydrogen atom and Julian Schwinger's research enable a calculation of the electron magnetic moment anomaly. Considerations of fundamental lengths such as the charge radius of the proton and mass (...) ratios suggest some further foundational interpretations of quantum electrodynamics. (shrink)

In ‘Godel’s Way’ three eminent scientists discuss issues such as undecidability, incompleteness, randomness, computability and paraconsistency. I approach these issues from the Wittgensteinian viewpoint that there are two basic issues which have completely different solutions. There are the scientific or empirical issues, which are facts about the world that need to be investigated observationally and philosophical issues as to how language can be used intelligibly (which include certain questions in mathematics and logic), which need to be decided by looking at (...) how we actually use words in particular contexts. When we get clear about which language game we are playing, these topics are seen to be ordinary scientific and mathematical questions like any others. Wittgenstein’s insights have seldom been equaled and never surpassed and are as pertinent today as they were 80 years ago when he dictated the Blue and Brown Books. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

I have read many recent discussions of the limits of computation and the universe as computer, hoping to find some comments on the amazing work of polymath physicist and decision theorist David Wolpert but have not found a single citation and so I present this very brief summary. Wolpert proved some stunning impossibility or incompleteness theorems (1992 to 2008-see arxiv.org) on the limits to inference (computation) that are so general they are independent of the device doing the computation, and even (...) independent of the laws of physics, so they apply across computers, physics, and human behavior. They make use of Cantor's diagonalization, the liar paradox and worldlines to provide what may be the ultimate theorem in Turing Machine Theory, and seemingly provide insights into impossibility,incompleteness, the limits of computation,and the universe as computer, in all possible universes and all beings or mechanisms, generating, among other things,a non-quantum mechanical uncertainty principle and a proof of monotheism. (shrink)

In a society where filial piety is regarded as a social norm, should a son consent to withdrawing treatments to his terminally ill father or should he request that his father’s life be maintained as long as possible? Leaving a father unattended is regarded as unfilial in a Confucian society, let alone untreated while being ill. Although Taoism also teaches filial piety, it asserts artificially as unnatural. In other words in Taoist view, uselessly prolonging a life through life-sustaining devices or (...) futilely treating an incurable terminal patient is against the will of Heaven. This paper is not an argument in favor of euthanasia but a discussion of what is natural and un-natural in terms of life and death phenomenon from Taoist perspective. Artificial life relying on external means is not harmonious with nature. Thus keeping a person in PVS stage alive should be ethically flaw. In this sense, don’t all attempts to cure illness un-natural? This author will say that if treatments can restore health, then it is not un-natural. But if medical procedures fail to revert the deterorating health of a terminally ill patient and treatments prove to be futile, foregoing treatments can be regarded as flowing with Heaven and thus is ethically justifiable. (shrink)

Materialism, reductionism, behaviorism, functionalism, dynamic systems theory and computationalism are popular views, but they were shown by Wittgenstein to be incoherent. The study of behavior encompasses all of human life but behavior is largely automatic and unconscious and even the conscious part, mostly expressed in language (which Wittgenstein equates with the mind), is not perspicuous, so it is critical to have a framework which Searle calls the Logical Structure of Rationality (LSR) and I call the Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order (...) Thought (DPHOT). After summarizing the framework worked out by Wittgenstein and Searle, as extended by modern reasoning research, I comment on this first book in a trilogy on Human Nature by the leading authority on Wittgenstein. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016). For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 662p (2016). -/- All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX . (shrink)

This paper focuses on the distinction between methods which are mathematically "clever", and those which are simply crude, typically repetitive and computer intensive, approaches for "crunching" out answers to problems. Examples of the latter include simulated probability distributions and resampling methods in statistics, and iterative methods for solving equations or optimisation problems. Most of these methods require software support, but this is easily provided by a PC. The paper argues that the crunchier methods often have substantial advantages from the perspectives (...) of user-friendliness, reliability (in the sense that misuse is less likely), educational efficiency and realism. This means that they offer very considerable potential for simplifying the mathematical syllabus underlying many areas of applied mathematics such as management science and statistics: crunchier methods can provide the same, or greater, technical power, flexibility and insight, while requiring only a fraction of the mathematical conceptual background needed by their cleverer brethren. (shrink)

In this admirable book, Scott Soames provides well defended answers to some of the most difficult and important questions in the philosophy of language, and he does so with characteristic thoroughness, clarity, and rigor. The book's title is appropriate, since it does indeed go ‘beyond rigidity’ in many ways. Among other things, Soames does the following in the course of the book. He persuasively argues that the main thesis of Kripke's Naming and Necessity—that ordinary names are rigid designators—can be extended (...) to the more general thesis that simple proper names are synonymous with neither nonrigid nor rigidified descriptions, and so have no descriptive content whatever. He thoroughly defends and places in the context of a larger semantic theory the Millian thesis that the sole semantic contents of most proper names are the names' referents, so that sentences containing such names semantically express singular Russellian propositions. He provides and defends at length an innovative pragmatic account of why substitution of co-referring proper names in cognitive contexts intuitively fails to be truth preserving, even though it seems to follow from the Millian thesis that such substitution must be semantically valid. And he thoroughly and persuasively defends a semantic theory of natural kind terms that explains how, following Kripke and Putnam, theoretical identities involving such terms can express a posteriori necessities, even though on Soames's theory, and contrary to the Kripke-Putnam view, such terms are neither names of natural kinds nor rigid designators in any interesting sense. (shrink)