Psychological studies show that the beliefs of two agents in a hypothesis can diverge even if both agents receive the same evidence. This phenomenon of belief polarisation is often explained by invoking biased assimilation of evidence, where the agents’ prior views about the hypothesis affect the way they process the evidence. We suggest, using a Bayesian model, that even if such influence is excluded, belief polarisation can still arise by another mechanism. This alternative mechanism involves differential weighting of the evidence (...) arising when agents have different initial views about the reliability of their sources of evidence. We provide a systematic exploration of the conditions for belief polarisation in Bayesian models which incorporate opinions about source reliability, and we discuss some implications of our findings for the psychological literature. (shrink)

I argue for two claims: that the ordinary English truth predicate is a gradable adjective and that truth is a property that comes in degrees. The first is a semantic claim, motivated by the linguistic evidence and the similarity of the truth predicate’s behavior to other gradable terms. The second is a claim in natural language metaphysics, motivated by interpreting the best semantic analysis of gradable terms as applied to the truth predicate. In addition to providing arguments for these two (...) claims, I draw out consequences for debates about deflationism and truth-based analyses of notions such as assertion and logical consequence. (shrink)

This chapter examines how epistemic norms could be social norms, with a reliance on work on the philosophy and social science of social norms from Bicchieri (on the one hand) and Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin and Southwood (on the other hand). We explain how the social ontology of social norms can help explain the rationality of epistemic cooperation, and how one might begin to model epistemic games.

Whatever else a theory of impeccability assumes about the moral life of heavenly agents, it seems to imply something about the type of actions possible for such agents, along with the quality of their moral characters. Regarding these characters, there are many that have argued impeccable and heavenly agents must also be perfectly virtuous agents. Michael Slote has recently argued, however, that perfect virtue is impossible. Assuming Slote’s argument is successful, a theory of impeccability that relies on the possibility of (...) perfect virtue would be greatly harmed, even to the point of incoherence. My intent here is to defend the coherence of the doctrine of impeccability, at least as it applies to the moral life of heavenly agents. (shrink)

This article argues for the compatibility of deflationism and truth-conditional semantic theories. I begin by focusing on an argument due to Dorit Bar-On, Claire Horisk, and William Lycan for incompatibility, arguing that their argument relies on an ambiguity between two senses of the expression ‘is at least.’ I go on to show how the disambiguated arguments have different consequences for the deflationist, and argue that no conclusions are established that the deflationist cannot accommodate. I then respond to some objections and (...) gesture at a more general defense of the compatibility claim. (shrink)

A discussion of Sosa's Knowing Full Well. The authors focus on the understood place and significance of animal and reflective knowledge.

The last decades have seen major advances in the study of gestures both in humans and non-human primates. In this paper, we seriously examine the idea that there may be gestural form types that are shared across great ape species, including humans, which may underlie gestural universals, both in form and meaning. We focus on one case study, the hand fling gesture common to chimpanzees and humans, and provide a semantic analysis of this gesture.

Data subject rights provide data controllers with obligations that can help with transparency, giving data subjects some control over their personal data. To date, a growing number of researchers have used these data subject rights as a methodology for data collection in research studies. No one, however, has gathered and analysed different academic research studies that use data subject rights as a methodology for data collection. To this end, we conducted a systematic literature review that searched, compiled, and analysed 32 (...) academic studies that use data subject rights as a data collection method. We find that the right of access is the most commonly-used data subject right by researchers, most studies are interested in measuring data subject rights compliance, and that a variety of difficulties exist in conducting research studies with data subject rights. We conclude that researchers should explore other data subject rights for alternative purposes, ease the process of exercising data subject rights, and improve the scalability of these studies. (shrink)

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

Agonism as a political theory emphasizes the ontological aspect of conflict in human political interaction. This article aims to shed light on the political practice of agonism – and in doing so on its limits – by viewing 'crisis discourse' as an agonistic political practice. As my analysis of the Dutch Socialist Party and the Freedom Party’s speech in the European Sovereign Debt Crisis shows, crisis discourse aimed to (re)create a ‘people’ and to justify radical change in economic and social (...) structures. Crisis discourse is employed to construct an 'other' that can be based on ethnic and nationalist terms and to justify retroactive application of the law and the stripping of Dutch citizens of their rights. This attention to crisis discourse as an agonistic political practice highlights an unease within agonism itself: where must the agonist accepts limits to the conflict and contestation she so values? The article starts with Chantal Mouffe's answer to this question - her insistence that legitimate conflict must always recognize the shared values of equality and liberty - and proceeds to show that Mouffe's view unnecessarily relies on a deliberative democratic desire for consensus. Other than Mouffe, I draw on Honig’s emphasis of perpetual contestation to propose that the issue of limits can be best answered by reference to the core of agonistic thought: the preservation of the struggle over political norms and processes. It is not shared values or even a shared political space that matters, but that the political space of the ‘people’ – however contested membership therein might be – remains a place that the 'other' can re-enter. (shrink)

This paper will show that Mary Wollstonecraft developed a modern feminist version of virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is an all-encompassing moral theory which holds that the best life for individuals is commensurate with a good society. Simply, self-interest and our public duties are argued as identical and not at odds when we realize what is truly good for ourselves and for others. In the Western philosophic cannon, the most common version of virtue ethics is Aristotle’s, with the Nicomachean Ethics as (...) the definitive presentation. Wollstonecraft’s argument for the political, social, economic, and personal equality of women utilizes ideas that are reminiscent of classical virtue ethics. Her novel and effective addition is to show that the explicit inclusion of women requires a reconsideration of the duties needed for happy lives to be led and for a good society, and good families, to exist. (shrink)

Donkey sentences have existential and universal readings, but they are not often perceived as ambiguous. We extend the pragmatic theory of nonmaximality in plural definites by Križ (2016) to explain how context disambiguates donkey sentences. We propose that the denotations of such sentences produce truth-value gaps — in certain scenarios the sentences are neither true nor false — and demonstrate that Križ’s pragmatic theory fills these gaps to generate the standard judgments of the literature. Building on Muskens’s (1996) Compositional Discourse (...) Representation Theory and on ideas from supervaluation semantics, the semantic analysis defines a general schema for quantification that delivers the required truth-value gaps. Given the independently motivated pragmatic theory of Križ 2016, we argue that mixed readings of donkey sentences require neither plural information states, contra Brasoveanu 2008, 2010, nor error states, contra Champollion 2016, nor singular donkey pronouns with plural referents, contra Krifka 1996, Yoon 1996. We also show that the pragmatic account improves over alternatives like Kanazawa 1994 that attribute the readings of donkey sentences to the monotonicity properties of the embedding quantifier. (shrink)

Exercise-based rehabilitation forms a key part of the UK National Health Service patient-care pathway for cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Only around half of all eligible patients attend core CR, however, with social inequalities affecting participation. Few qualitative studies have explored in-depth the key factors influencing engagement with CR, specifically from a sociological theoretical, and ethnographic perspective. Utilising an ethnographic approach allowed us to get a sense of the embodied experiences of 10 participants attending or declining core CR, together with a further (...) seven family members/significant others. This provided in-depth appreciation of participants’ lifeworld contexts as key influences on CR participation. The article draws on these qualitative data and focuses on 1) participants’ initial thoughts about CR; and 2) navigating the field of CR, analysed via thematic analysis. We utilise a Bourdieusian theoretical perspective to theorise the findings, including salient socio-cultural factors influencing attendance/non-attendance and (non)adherence. The article findings highlight how perceptions of CR and the ability to navigate the field are strongly influenced by habitus and capital, and how personal biographies and socio-material conditions affect adherence to CR programmes. The study provides original insights into embodied experiences of exercise-based CR, and novel understandings of the reasons for drop-out/poor adherence, theorised from a Bourdieusian perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, I reply to 18 of the essays on panpsychism in this issue. Along the way, I sketch out what a post-Galilean science of consciousness, one in which consciousness is taken to be a fundamental feature of reality, might look like.

The notion of a simulating termination analyzer is examined at the concrete level of pairs of C functions. This is similar to AProVE: Non-Termination Witnesses for C Programs. The termination status decision is made on the basis of the dynamic behavior of the input. This paper explores what happens when a simulating termination analyzer is applied to an input that calls itself.

P. F. Strawson; II*—Scruton and Wright on Anti-Realism Etc., Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 15–22, https://doi.

Tradução para o português do ensaio "Freedom and Resentment”, de P. F. Strawson. Publicado originalmente em Proceedings of the British Academy, v. 48, 1960. Republicado em Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Londres: Methuen, 1974. [Routledge, 2008, p. 2-28]. Publicado na coletânea: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson: com a tradução de Liberdade e ressentimento & Moralidade social e ideal individual. Organizadores: Jaimir Conte & Itamar Luís Gelain. Editora da UFSC, 2015. ISBN: 9788532807250.

Tradução para o português do ensaio "Social Morality and Individual Ideal”. Publicado originalmente em Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, vol. XXXVI, n. 136, p. 1-17, Jan. 1961. Republicado em: STRAWSON, P. F. Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Londres: Methuen, 1974. [Routledge, 2008, p. 26-44]. ]. Publicado na coletânea: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson: com a tradução de Liberdade e ressentimento & Moralidade social e ideal individual. Organizadores: Jaimir Conte & Itamar Luís Gelain. Editora da (...) UFSC, 2015. ISBN: 9788532807250. (shrink)

Some philosophers understand natural kinds to be the categories which are constraints on enquiry. In order to elaborate the metaphysics appropriate to such an account, I consider the complicated history of scurvy, citrus, and vitamin C. It may be tempting to understand these categories in a shallow way (as mere property clusters) or in a deep way (as fundamental properties). Neither approach is adequate, and the case instead calls for middle-range ontology: starting from categories which we identify in the world (...) and elaborating their structure, but not pretending to jump ahead to a complete story about fundamental being. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do livro "Ceticismo e naturalismo: algumas variedades", Strawson, P. F. . São Leopoldo, RS: Editora da Unisinos, 2008, 114 p. Coleção: Ideias. ISBN: 9788574313214. Capítulo 1 - Ceticismo, naturalismo e argumentos transcendentais 1. Notas introdutórias; 2. Ceticismo tradicional; 3. Hume: Razão e Natureza; 4. Hume e Wittgenstein; 5. “Apenas relacionar”: O papel dos argumentos transcendentais; 6. Três citações; 7. Historicismo: e o passado.

The Argument from Inductive Risk (AIR) is taken to show that values are inevitably involved in making judgements or forming beliefs. After reviewing this conclusion, I pose cases which are prima facie counterexamples: the unreflective application of conventions, use of black-boxed instruments, reliance on opaque algorithms, and unskilled observation reports. These cases are counterexamples to the AIR posed in ethical terms as a matter of personal values. Nevertheless, it need not be understood in those terms. The values which load a (...) theory choice may be those of institutions or past actors. This means that the challenge of responsibly handling inductive risk is not merely an ethical issue, but is also social, political, and historical. (shrink)

The no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much-discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent `wholesale' arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilistically, we can see very clearly why realists (...) and anti-realists have been talking past one another. We then formulate a dilemma for advocates of either argument, answer potential objections to our criticism, discuss what remains (if anything) of these two major arguments, and then speculate about a future philosophy of science freed from these two arguments. In so doing, we connect the point about base rates to the wholesale/retail distinction; we believe it hints at an answer of how to distinguish profitable from unprofitable realism debates. In short, we offer a probabilistic analysis of the feeling of ennui afflicting contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

Do the ethical features of an artwork bear on its aesthetic value? This movie endorses misogyny, that song is a civil rights anthem, the clay constituting this statue was extracted with underpaid labor—are facts like these the proper bases for aesthetic evaluation? I argue that this debate has suffered from a false presupposition: that if the answer is yes (for at least some such ethical features), such considerations feature as pro tanto contributions to an artwork's overall aesthetic value, i.e., as (...) merits or flaws which make something have more or less overall aesthetic value. As the case of ethically laden, aesthetic evaluation makes clear, however, good aesthetic judgement is irreducibly multi-dimensional, e.g., "the movie has an engaging soundtrack, tasteful camera work, and takes a misogynistically prurient perspective on its female lead.'' Such a "non-summative" judgement refuses to reduce those various dimensions of aesthetic value to a single aggregate aesthetic evaluation, like "it's a 6/10" or "it's a pretty good movie!" I defend both the modest claim that such non-summative evaluations are not mistaken and the extremist claim that summative (i.e., unidimensional) aesthetic evaluation is defective by considering other domains of normative assessment in which summing seems inappropriate, notably including evaluations of people's character. (shrink)

forall x: Calgary is a full-featured textbook on formal logic. It covers key notions of logic such as consequence and validity of arguments, the syntax of truth-functional propositional logic TFL and truth-table semantics, the syntax of first-order (predicate) logic FOL with identity (first-order interpretations), symbolizing English in TFL and FOL, and Fitch-style natural deduction proof systems for both TFL and FOL. It also deals with some advanced topics such as modal logic, soundness, and functional completeness. Exercises with solutions are available. (...) It is provided in PDF (for screen reading, printing, and a special version for dyslexics), HTML, and in LaTeX source code. (shrink)

Modern-day societies seem to be dominated by a hedonistic approach to happiness. A less short-term and more process-based definition of happiness - eudaimonism - has been proposed by Aristotle. Can this definition of happiness exist in consumer societies as proposed by Zygmunt Bauman and how can we begin to explore such a question? This essay will provide a comparison between two ideal types: eudaimonism and consumer society. With this comparison, we hope to provide a conceptual framework for further research within (...) this subject. (shrink)

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

I've previously suggested that the historical evidence used to challenge scientific realism should lead us to embrace what I call Uniformitarianism, but many recently influential forms of scientific realism seem happy to share this commitment. I trace a number of further points of common ground that collectively constitute an appealing Middle Path between classical forms of realism and instrumentalism, and I suggest that many contemporary realists and instrumentalists have already become fellow travelers on this Middle Path without recognizing how far (...) they have thereby diverged from those who share their labels and slogans. I conclude by describing their central remaining disagreement and the sorts of evidence needed to resolve it. (shrink)

A critical note on Christopher Bartel and Jack M. C. Kwong, ‘Pluralism, Eliminativism, and the Definition of Art’, Estetika 58 (2021): 100–113. Art pluralism is the view that there is no single, correct account of what art is. Instead, art is understood through a plurality of art concepts and with considerations that are different for particular arts. Although avowed pluralists have retained the word ‘art’ in their discussions, it is natural to ask whether the considerations that motivate pluralism should lead (...) us to abandon art talk altogether; that is, should pluralism lead to eliminativism? This paper addresses arguments both for and against this move. We ultimately argue that pluralism allows one to retain the word ‘art’, if one wants it, but only in a loose, conversational sense. The upshot of pluralism is that talk of art in general cannot be asked to do theoretical and philosophical work. (shrink)

There is a history of thinking that photographs provide a special kind of access to the objects depicted in them, beyond the access that would be provided by a painting or drawing. What is included in the photograph does not depend on the photographer’s beliefs about what is in front of the camera. This feature leads Kendall Walton to argue that photographs literally allow us to see the objects which appear in them. Current generative algorithms produce images in response to (...) users’ text prompts. Depending on the parameters, the output can resemble specific people or things which are named in the prompt. This resemblance does not depend on the user’s beliefs, so generated images are in this sense like photographs. Given this parallel, how should we think about AI-generated images? (shrink)

It is now commonly held that values play a role in scientific judgment, but many arguments for that conclusion are limited. First, many arguments do not show that values are, strictly speaking, indispensable. The role of values could in principle be filled by a random or arbitrary decision. Second, many arguments concern scientific theories and concepts which have obvious practical consequences, thus suggesting or at least leaving open the possibility that abstruse sciences without such a connection could be value-free. Third, (...) many arguments concern the role values play in inferring from evidence, thus taking evidence as given. This paper argues that these limitations do not hold in general. There are values involved in every scientific judgment. They cannot even conceivably be replaced by a coin toss, they arise as much for exotic as for practical sciences, and they are at issue as much for observation as for explicit inference. (shrink)

William James’ argument against William Clifford in The Will to Believe is often understood in terms of doxastic efficacy, the power of belief to influence an outcome. Although that is one strand of James’ argument, there is another which is driven by ampliative risk. The second strand of James’ argument, when applied to scientific cases, is tantamount to what is now called the Argument from Inductive Risk. Either strand of James’ argument is sufficient to rebut Clifford's strong evidentialism and show (...) that it is sometimes permissible to believe in the absence of compelling evidence. However, the two considerations have different scope and force. Doxastic efficacy applies in only some cases but allows any values to play a role in determining belief; risk applies in all cases but only allows particular conditional values to play a role. (shrink)

This discussion note addresses Caleb Hazelwood’s ‘Practice-Centered Pluralism and a Disjunctive Theory of Art’. Hazelwood advances a disjunctive definition of art on the basis of an analogy with species concept pluralism in the philosophy of biology. We recognize the analogy between species and art, we applaud attention to practice, and we are bullish on pluralism—but it is a mistake to take these as the basis for a disjunctive definition.

The problem of underdetermination is thought to hold important lessons for philosophy of science. Yet, as Kyle Stanford has recently argued, typical treatments of it offer only restatements of familiar philosophical problems. Following suggestions in Duhem and Sklar, Stanford calls for a New Induction from the history of science. It will provide proof, he thinks, of “the kind of underdetermination that the history of science reveals to be a distinctive and genuine threat to even our best scientific theories” (Stanford 2001, (...) p. S12). This paper examines Stanford’s New Induction and argues that it – like the other forms of underdetermination that he criticizes – merely recapitulates familiar philosophical conundra. (shrink)

Although some authors hold that natural kinds are necessarily relative to disciplinary domains, many authors presume that natural kinds must be absolute, categorical features of the reality —often assuming that without even mentioning the alternative. Recognizing both possibilities, one may ask whether the difference especially matters. I argue that it does. Looking at recent arguments about natural kind realism, I argue that we can best make sense of the realism question by thinking of natural kindness as a relation that holds (...) between a category and a domain. (shrink)

Cover songs are a familiar feature of contemporary popular music. Musicians describe their own performances as covers, and audiences use the category to organize their listening and appreciation. However, until now philosophers have not had much to say about them. This book explores how to think about covers, appreciating covers, and the metaphysics of covers and songs. Along the way, it explores a range of issues raised by covers, from the question of what precisely constitutes a cover, to the history (...) and taxonomy of the category, the various relationships that hold between songs, performances, and tracks, and the appreciation and evaluation of covers. (shrink)

The underdetermination of theory by evidence is supposed to be a reason to rethink science. It is not. Many authors claim that underdetermination has momentous consequences for the status of scientific claims, but such claims are hidden in an umbra of obscurity and a penumbra of equivocation. So many various phenomena pass for `underdetermination' that it's tempting to think that it is no unified phenomenon at all, so I begin by providing a framework within which all these worries can be (...) seen as species of one genus: A claim of underdetermination involves (at least implicitly) a set of rival theories, a standard of responsible judgment, and a scope of circumstances in which responsible choice between the rivals is impossible. Within this framework, I show that one variety of underdetermination motivated modern scepticism and thus is a familiar problem at the heart of epistemology. I survey arguments that infer from underdetermination to some reëvaluation of science: top-down arguments infer a priori from the ubiquity of underdetermination to some conclusion about science; bottom-up arguments infer from specific instances of underdetermination, to the claim that underdetermination is widespread, and then to some conclusion about science. The top-down arguments either fail to deliver underdetermination of any great significance or (as with modern scepticism) deliver some well-worn epistemic concern. The bottom-up arguments must rely on cases. I consider several promising cases and find them to either be so specialized that they cannot underwrite conclusions about science in general or not be underdetermined at all. Neither top-down nor bottom-up arguments can motivate any deep reconsideration of science. (shrink)

In 1956, a few writings of Wittgenstein that he didn't publish in his lifetime were revealed to the public. These writings were gathered in the book Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). There, we can see that Wittgenstein had some discontentment with the way philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians were thinking about paradoxes, and he even registered a few polemic reasons to not accept Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

Philosophy in Africa has for more than a decade now been dominated by the discussion of one compound question, namely, is there an African philosophy, and if there is, what is it? The first part of the question has generally been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Dispute has been primarily over the second part of the question as various specimens of African philosophy presented do not seem to pass muster. Those of us who refuse to accept certain specimens as philosophy (...) have generally been rather illogically said also to deny an affirmative answer to the first part of the question. In a paper presented at the International Symposium in Memory of Dr William Amo, the Ghanaian philosopher who taught in German universities in the early part of the eighteenth century, Professor Odera Oruka identified four trends, perhaps more appropriately approaches, in current African philosophy. (shrink)

In this article, the concept of system of symbolic 2-plithogenic linear equations and its solutions are introduced and studied. The Cramer's rule was applied to solve the system of symbolic 2-plithogenic linear equations. Also, provided enough examples for each case to enhance understanding.

To stimulate research and innovation (R&I), to contribute to the solution of societal challenges and to align R&I with societal values, the European Commission has launched the governance framework of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). RRI figures in many high-level EU policies as a means to promote smart growth, and a growing community of R&I practitioners from both the public and private sectors appears committed to it. Although debates on what RRI precisely entails have not reached closure yet, RRI provides (...) an interesting avenue to explore ways of making R&I more societally germane. While recognizing the usefulness of keeping critical reflection on RRI’s meaning alive, we suggest that to make the step from theorizing to implementation, RRI could benefit from a clearer conceptualization. This chapter presents the iterative trajectory in conceptualizing RRI followed as part of RRI Tools, one of a number of EC-funded research projects and support acts aimed at fleshing out what RRI can and should be, and the conceptualization of RRI that this led to. It suggests that RRI is best captured if in R&I governance attention is paid to the five p’s of Purpose, Products, Processes, Preconditions and People, and that further elaborations on the meaning of RRI should happen in dialogue with attempts at practicing RRI. (shrink)

The Homeostatic Property Cluster (HPC) account of natural kinds has become popular since it was proposed by Richard Boyd in the late 1980s. Although it is often taken as a defining natural kinds as such, it is easy enough to see that something's being a natural kind is neither necessary nor sufficient for its being an HPC. This paper argues that it is better not to understand HPCs as defining what it is to be a natural kind but instead as (...) providing the ontological realization of (some) natural kinds. (shrink)

To stimulate research and innovation (R&I), to contribute to the solution of societal challenges and to align R&I with societal values, the European Commission has launched the governance framework of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). RRI figures in many high-level EU policies as a means to promote smart growth, and a growing community of R&I practitioners from both the public and private sectors appears committed to it. Although debates on what RRI precisely entails have not reached closure yet, RRI provides (...) an interesting avenue to explore ways of making R&I more societally germane. While recognizing the usefulness of keeping critical reflection on RRI’s meaning alive, we suggest that to make the step from theorizing to implementation, RRI could benefit from a clearer conceptualization. This chapter presents the iterative trajectory in conceptualizing RRI followed as part of RRI Tools, one of a number of EC-funded research projects and support acts aimed at fleshing out what RRI can and should be, and the conceptualization of RRI that this led to. It suggests that RRI is best captured if in R&I governance attention is paid to the five p’s of Purpose, Products, Processes, Preconditions and People, and that further elaborations on the meaning of RRI should happen in dialogue with attempts at practicing RRI. (shrink)

A ring is said to be clean if every element of the ring can be written as a sum of an idempotent element and a unit element of the ring and a ring is said to be nil-clean if every element of the ring can be written as a sum of an idempotent element and a nilpotent element of the ring. In this paper, we generalize these arguments to symbolic 2-plithogenic structure. We introduce the structure of clean and nil-clean symbolic (...) 2-plithogenic rings and some of its elementary properties are presented. Also, we have found the equivalence between classical clean(nil-clean) ring R and the corresponding symbolic 2-plithogenic ring 2-SPR. (shrink)

When we ask what natural kinds are, there are two different things we might have in mind. The first, which I’ll call the taxonomy question, is what distinguishes a category which is a natural kind from an arbitrary class. The second, which I’ll call the ontology question, is what manner of stuff there is that realizes the category. Many philosophers have systematically conflated the two questions. The confusion is exhibited both by essentialists and by philosophers who pose their accounts in (...) terms of similarity. It also leads to misreading philosophers who do make the distinction. Distinguishing the questions allows for a more subtle understanding of both natural kinds and their underlying metaphysics. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true, but they can be obeyed or binding: `Surrender!' is obeyed if you surrender and is binding if you have a reason to surrender. A pure declarative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are declaratives — is valid exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is true if the conjunction of its premisses is true; similarly, I suggest, a pure imperative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are imperatives — is obedience-valid (alternatively: bindingness-valid) exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is (...) obeyed (alternatively: binding) if the conjunction of its premisses is. I argue that there are two kinds of bindingness, and that a vacillation between two corresponding variants of bindingness-validity largely explains conflicting intuitions concerning the validity of some pure imperative arguments. I prove that for each of those two variants of bindingness-validity there is an equivalent variant of obedience-validity. Finally, I address alternative accounts of pure imperative inference. (shrink)

The accepted narrative treats John Stuart Mill’s Kinds as the historical prototype for our natural kinds, but Mill actually employs two separate notions: Kinds and natural groups. Considering these, along with the accounts of Mill’s nineteenth-century interlocutors, forces us to recognize two distinct questions. First, what marks a natural kind as worthy of inclusion in taxonomy? Second, what exists in the world that makes a category meet that criterion? Mill’s two notions offer separate answers to the two questions: natural groups (...) for taxonomy and Kinds for ontology. This distinction is ignored in many contemporary debates about natural kinds and is obscured by the standard narrative that treats our natural kinds just as a development of Mill’s Kinds. (shrink)

It has been over two decades since Miranda Fricker labeled epistemic injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their capacity as a knower. The philosophical literature has proliferated with variants and related concepts. By considering cases in popular music, we argue that it is worth distinguishing a parallel phenomenon of art-interpretive injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their creative capacity as a possible artist. In section 1, we consider the prosecutorial use of rap lyrics in court as (...) a central case of this injustice. In section 2, we distinguish art-interpretive injustice from other categories already discussed in recent literature. In section 3, we discuss the relationship between genre discourse and identity prejudice. The case for recognizing the category of art-interpretive injustice is that it allows one to recognize a class of harms as being importantly related in ways that one would otherwise overlook. (shrink)

Peter Baumann offers the tantalizing suggestion that Thomas Reid is almost, but not quite, a pragmatist. He motivates this claim by posing a dilemma for common sense philosophy: Will it be dogmatism or scepticism? Baumann claims that Reid points to but does not embrace a pragmatist third way between these unsavory options. If we understand `pragmatism' differently than Baumann does, however, we need not be so equivocal in attributing it to Reid. Reid makes what we could call an argument from (...) practical commitment, and this is plausibly an instance of what William James calls the pragmatic method. (shrink)

Kyle Stanford has recently claimed to offer a new challenge to scientific realism. Taking his inspiration from the familiar Pessimistic Induction (PI), Stanford proposes a New Induction (NI). Contra Anjan Chakravartty’s suggestion that the NI is a ‘red herring’, I argue that it reveals something deep and important about science. The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives, which lies at the heart of the NI, yields a richer anti-realism than the PI. It explains why science falls short when it falls short, and (...) so it might figure in the most coherent account of scientific practice. However, this best account will be antirealist in some respects and about some theories. It will not be a sweeping antirealism about all or most of science. (shrink)

Given the fact that many people use Wikipedia, we should ask: Can we trust it? The empirical evidence suggests that Wikipedia articles are sometimes quite good but that they vary a great deal. As such, it is wrong to ask for a monolithic verdict on Wikipedia. Interacting with Wikipedia involves assessing where it is likely to be reliable and where not. I identify five strategies that we use to assess claims from other sources and argue that, to a greater of (...) lesser degree, Wikipedia frustrates all of them. Interacting responsibly with something like Wikipedia requires new epistemic methods and strategies. (shrink)