Standard theories define fiction in terms of an invited response of imagining or make-believe. I argue that these theories are not only subject to numerous counterexamples, they also fail to explain why classification matters to our understanding and evaluation of works of fiction as well as non-fiction. I propose instead that we construe fiction and non-fiction as genres: categories whose membership is determined by a cluster of nonessential criteria, and which play a role in the appreciation of particular works. I (...) claim that this proposal captures the intuitions motivating alternative theories of fiction. (shrink)

Statements about fictional characters, such as “Gregor Samsa has been changed into a beetle,” pose the problem of how we can say something true (or false) using empty names. I propose an original solution to this problem that construes such utterances as reports of the “prescriptions to imagine” generated by works of fiction. In particular, I argue that we should construe these utterances as specifying, not what we are supposed to imagine—the propositional object of the imagining—but how we are supposed (...) to imagine. Most other theories of thought and discourse about fictional characters either fail to capture the intentionality of our imaginings, or else obscure the differences between imaginings directed toward fictional characters and those directed toward real individuals. I argue that once we have an account of prescriptions to imagine about real individuals, we can adapt the same framework to specify the contents of prescriptions to imagine about fictional characters, and thereby to account for the truth (or falsity) of statements about fictional characters. (shrink)

I argue that judgments of what is ‘true in a fiction’ presuppose the Reality Assumption: the assumption that everything that is true is fictionally the case, unless excluded by the work. By contrast with the more familiar Reality Principle, the Reality Assumption is not a rule for inferring implied content from what is explicit. Instead, it provides an array of real-world truths that can be used in such inferences. I claim that the Reality Assumption is essential to our ability to (...) understand stories, drawing on a range of empirical evidence that demonstrates our reliance on it in narrative comprehension. However, the Reality Assumption has several unintuitive consequences, not least that what is fictionally the case includes countless facts that neither authors nor readers could ever consider. I argue that such consequences provide no reason to reject the Reality Assumption. I conclude that we should take fictions, like non-fictions, to be about the real world. (shrink)

If there are no fictional characters, how do we explain thought and discourse apparently about them? If there are, what are they like? A growing number of philosophers claim that fictional characters are abstract objects akin to novels or plots. They argue that postulating characters provides the most straightforward explanation of our literary practices as well as a uniform account of discourse and thought about fiction. Anti-realists counter that postulation is neither necessary nor straightforward, and that the invocation of pretense (...) provides a better account of the same phenomena. I outline and assess these competing theories. (shrink)

Book synopsis: New work on a hot topic by an outstanding team of authors At the intersection of several central areas of philosophy It is the linguistic job of singular terms to pick out the objects that we think or talk about. But what about singular terms that seem to fail to designate anything, because the objects they refer to don't exist? We can employ these terms in meaningful thought and talk, which suggests that they are succeeding in fulfilling their (...) representational task. A team of leading experts presents new essays on the much-debated problem of empty reference and thought. In the 1960s and 1970s Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam initiated a revolution in the then standard conception of reference—a concept at the core of philosophical inquiry. The repercussions of the revolution, particularly felt in metaphysics and epistemology, were soon refined by other influential writers such as Tyler Burge, Gareth Evans, and John Perry. They argued that some linguistic and mental representations have contents individuated by what they are about—by ordinary referents of expressions such as proper names, indexicals, definite descriptions and common nouns, i.e. by planets, people or natural kinds. The view was at odds with a central philosophical presumption at that time: that cognitive and linguistic access to objective reality is indirect and accidental, mediated by general descriptive characterizations, the only constitutive semantic feature of the expressions; hence its ontological and epistemological repercussions. A turning-point in the debate about how linguistic and mental representation reach external contents concerned the nature of empty mental and linguistic representations, framed by means of the very same expressions crucially invoked in the Donnellan-Kaplan-Kripke-Putnam arguments. The papers in this volume address different aspects of reference and thought about the non-existent. (shrink)

It is widely taken for granted that fictions, including both literature and film,influence our attitudes toward real people, events, and situations. Philosopherswho defend claims about the cognitive value of fiction view this influence in apositive light, while others worry about the potential moral danger of fiction.Marketers hope that visual and aural references to their products in movies willhave an effect on people’s buying patterns. Psychologists study the persuasiveimpact of media. Educational books and films are created in the hopes of guidingchildren’s (...) and adult’s preferences toward socially acceptable norms.The influencesdiscussed by marketers, psychologists, educators, and philosophers tend to be bothcognitive and affective. It seems that we can be “emotionally persuaded”: ourpreferences can be changed, our feelings about particular people or events can beinfluenced, and so forth. (shrink)

Engagement with fiction often inspires emotional responses. We may pity Sethe while feeling ambivalent about her actions (in Beloved), fear for Ellen Ripley as she battles monstrous creatures (in Alien), get angry at Okonkwo for killing Ikemefuna (in Things Fall Apart), and hope that Kiyoaki and Satoko find love (in Spring Snow). Familiar as they are, these reactions are puzzling. Why do I respond emotionally if I do not believe that these individuals exist or that the events occurred? If I (...) merely imagine that my best friend has betrayed me, I do not become angry with him; if I did, I would be considered irrational. Yet although beliefs seem to be necessary for emotions in other contexts, we respond to fiction without the relevant beliefs. These observations prompt two questions about our emotional responses to fiction (henceforth: fictional emotions). The first is descriptive: Should fictional emotions be classified as the same kind of emotions we experience in other contexts? The second is normative: Are fictional emotions irrational or otherwise inappropriate? I take each of these debates in turn. (shrink)

Two assumptions are common in discussions of the paradox of tragedy: (1) that tragic pleasure requires that the work be fictional or, if non-fiction, then non-transparently represented; and (2) that tragic pleasure may be provoked by a wide variety of art forms. In opposition to (1) I argue that certain documentaries could produce tragic pleasure. This is not to say that any sad or painful documentary could do so. In considering which documentaries might be plausible candidates, I further argue, against (...) (2), that the scope of tragic pleasure is limited to works that possess certain thematic and narrative features. (shrink)

The currently standard approach to fiction is to define it in terms of imagination. I have argued elsewhere that no conception of imagining is sufficient to distinguish a response appropriate to fiction as opposed to non-fiction. In her contribution Kathleen Stock seeks to refute this objection by providing a more sophisticated account of the kind of propositional imagining prescribed by so-called ‘fictive utterances’. I argue that although Stock's proposal improves on other theories, it too fails to provide an adequate criterion (...) of fictionality. I conclude by sketching an alternative account according to which fiction is a genre. (shrink)

I claim that we should reject a sharp distinction between fiction and non-fiction according to which documentary is a faithful representation of the facts, whilst fiction films merely invite us to imagine what is made up. Instead, we should think of fiction and non-fiction as genres: categories whose membership is determined by a combination of non-essential features and which influence appreciation in a variety of ways. An objection to this approach is that it renders the distinction too conventional and fragile, (...) undermining our justification for criticising documentaries like Bowling for Columbine or The Hunting Ground for playing fast and loose with the facts. I argue that this objection is misguided, misidentifying the justification for criticising non-fiction films that mislead or deceive. I develop an alternative account that explains why we also criticise many fictions for inaccuracy. (shrink)

Most discussions of proper names in fiction concern the names of fictional characters, such as ‘Clarissa Dalloway’ or ‘Lilliput.’ Less attention has been paid to referring names in fiction, such as ‘Napoleon’ (in Tolstoy’s War and Peace) or ‘London’ (in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four). This is because many philosophers simply assume that such names are unproblematic; they refer in the usual way to their ordinary referents. The alternative position, dubbed Exceptionalism by Manuel García-Carpintero, maintains that referring names make a distinctive semantic (...) contribution in fiction. In this paper I offer a positive argument for Non-Exceptionalism, relying on the claim that works of both fiction and non-fiction can express the same singular propositions. I go on to defend my account against García-Carpintero’s objections. (shrink)

What does it mean for a proposition to be "true in a fiction"? According to the account offered by Kendall Walton in Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990), what is fictionally true, or simply fictional, is what a work of fiction invites or prescribes that we imagine. To say that it is fictional that Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, for example, is to say that we are supposed to imagine that event. Yet Walton gives no account of the (...) kind of imagining relevant to understanding fictionality. In this paper I argue that the relevant kind of imagining is imagining a storyworld. I propose an account of this sort of imagining, as well as the nature of the invitations or prescriptions to imagine generated by fiction. I show that this account can be defended against various criticisms of Walton's original view, including his own argument in 2015 that prescriptions to imagine provide only necessary conditions for fictionality. (shrink)

Analytic aesthetics has had little to say about academic schools of criticism, such as Freudian, Marxist, feminist, or postcolonial perspectives. Historicists typically view their interpretations as anachronistic; non-historicists assess all interpretations according to formalist criteria. Insofar as these strategies treat these interpretations as on a par, however, they are inadequate. For the theories that ground the interpretations differ in the claims they make about the world. I argue that the interpretations of different critical schools can be evaluated according to the (...) truth or epistemic merit of these claims. (shrink)

Many philosophers have drawn parallels between scientific models and fictions. In this paper I will be concerned with a recent version of the analogy, which compares models to the imagined characters of fictional literature. Though versions of the position differ, the shared idea is that modeling essentially involves imagining concrete systems analogously to the way that we imagine characters and events in response to works of fiction. Advocates of this view argue that imagining concrete systems plays an ineliminable role in (...) the practice of modeling that cannot be captured by other accounts. The approach thus leaves open what we should say about the ontological status of model-systems, and here advocates differ among themselves, defending a variety of realist or anti-realist positions. I argue that this debate over the ontological status of model-systems is misguided. If model-systems are the kinds of objects fictional realists posit, they can play no role in explaining the epistemology of modeling for an advocate of this approach. So they are at best superfluous. Defenders of the approach should focus on developing an account of the epistemological role of imagining model-systems. (shrink)

The most well-known and controversial solution to the paradox of fiction is Kendall Walton’s, according to whom pity of (say) Anna Karenina is not genuine pity. Walton’s opponents argue that we can resolve the paradox of fiction while preserving the intuition that our response to Anna is ordinary, run-of-the-mill pity; and they claim that retaining this intuition explains more than Walton’s approach. In my view, the arguments of Walton’s opponents depend on idiosyncratic features of examples involving purely fictional characters like (...) Anna Karenina. What is really at issue is the fact that we respond emotionally to fiction in ways that are not explained by our beliefs, but instead by what we imagine. That this is the crux of the paradox of fiction becomes clear only when we consider fictions about real persons and events. And I contend that once we turn our attention to these cases, Walton’s theory proves significantly more explanatory than the opposition. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists have argued that fiction can ethically educate us: fiction supposedly can make us better people. This view has been contested. It is, however, rarely argued that fiction can morally “corrupt” us. In this article, we focus on the alleged power of fiction to decrease one's prejudices and biases. We argue that if fiction has the power to change prejudices and biases for the better, then it can also have the opposite effect. We further argue that fictions are (...) more likely to be a bad influence than a good one. (shrink)

While aestheticians have devoted substantial attention to the possibility of acquiring knowledge from fiction, little of this attention has been directed at the acquisition of factual information. The neglect traces, I believe, to the assumption that the task of aesthetics is to explain the special cognitive value of fiction. While the value of many works of nonfiction may be measured, in part, by their ability to transmit information, most works of fiction do not have this aim, and so many conclude (...) that the transmission of information is irrelevant to their value. I am skeptical of these claims. I doubt that there is any value, cognitive or otherwise, special to all and only works of fiction. Thus I see no reason to neglect the capacity to convey factual information—specifically, propositional knowledge about real individuals and events—when assessing the value of particular works. In this paper I consider the value of learning about history from a particular work of fiction, Gore Vidal’s Lincoln: A Novel. Drawing on recent work in cognitive psychology, I argue that narrative devices used by Vidal can enhance our ability to learn and retain factual information, despite also increasing the possibility that we will form false beliefs, and that acquiring propositional knowledge from fiction, far from being a process we can take for granted, constitutes a difficult achievement. (shrink)

A popular way for irrealists to explain co-identification—thinking and talking ‘about the same thing’ when there is no such thing—is by appeal to causal, historical or informational chains, networks or practices. Recently, however, this approach has come under attack by philosophers who contend that it cannot provide necessary and/or sufficient conditions for co-identification. In this paper I defend the approach against these objections. My claim is not that the appeal to such practices can provide necessary and sufficient conditions for co-identification, (...) but rather that it is a mistake to seek these in the first place. -/- . (shrink)

Many works of fiction include portraits in their storyworlds. Some of these portraits are themselves fictional, such as the portrait of Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde's novel. Others are real, such as the Darnley portrait of Elizabeth I in A. S. Byatt's The Virgin in the Garden. When authors invent portraits, they expect us to visualise them. When they refer to real portraits, they exploit our familiarity with how they actually look. Like representations of other real entities in fiction, references (...) to real portraits function to ground the story in the real world. But portraits are more than material entities; they are also representational in their own right. In contrasting the ways real portraits are used in Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time and Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, I argue that authors can be criticised when they mischaracterise the representational features of real portraits. (shrink)

In Film, Art and the Third Culture, Murray Smith articulates and defends a naturalized aesthetics of film that exemplifies a “third culture,” integrating the insights and methods of the natural sciences with those of the arts and humanities. By contrast with skeptics who reject the relevance of psychology or neuroscience to the study of film and art, I agree with Smith that we should embrace the third-cultural project. However, I argue that Smith does not go far enough in in developing (...) this project. In defending the contribution of the natural sciences to film aesthetics as traditionally conceived in the arts and humanities, Smith focuses on only one side of the equation, unduly limiting the potential contribution of the arts and humanities to the scientific study of film. Using the example of emotional responses to fiction film, I propose that we adopt a more genuinely integrative approach. (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.

The idea that fictions may educate us is an old one, as is the view that they distort the truth and mislead us. While there is a long tradition of passionate assertion in this debate, systematic arguments are a recent development, and the idea of empirically testing is particularly novel. Our aim in this chapter is to provide clarity about what is at stake in this debate, what the options are, and how empirical work does or might bear on its (...) resolution. We distinguish between merely influencing people’s opinions and providing genuine learning, where the latter requires that the source of the change in opinion should be reliable. Other important ideas here are the extent to which authors of fiction may be considered to provide testimony, or something like it, and the possibility of recognizing an unstated purpose in the project of the fictional work. We ask whether fictions can furnish us not merely with ideas but with reasons for believing them, perhaps by constituting thought experiments. We consider whether the focus should be on understanding rather than on knowledge, and whether fictions can inform us about the qualities of another’s experiences. We briefly describe some experimental work of recent decades and suggest that the evidence for learning from fiction is currently meagre. (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.

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.

Many healthcare practices expose people to risks of harmful outcomes. However, the major theories of moral philosophy struggle to assess whether, when and why it is ethically justifiable to expose individuals to risks, as opposed to actually harming them. Sven Ove Hansson has proposed an approach to the ethical assessment of risk imposition that encourages attention to factors including questions of justice in the distribution of advantage and risk, people’s acceptance or otherwise of risks, and the scope individuals have to (...) influence the practices that generate risk. This paper investigates the ethical justifiability of preventive healthcare practices that expose people to risks including overdiagnosis. We applied Hansson’s framework to three such practices: an ‘ideal’ breast screening service, a commercial personal genome testing service, and a guideline that lowers the diagnostic threshold for hypertension. The framework was challenging to apply, not least because healthcare has unclear boundaries and involves highly complex practices. Nonetheless, the framework encouraged attention to issues that would be widely recognised as morally pertinent. Our assessment supports the view that at least some preventive healthcare practices that impose risks including that of overdiagnosis are not ethically justifiable. Further work is however needed to develop and/or test refined assessment criteria and guidance for applying them. (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)

General Introduction: In [1] a Calculus of Qualia (CQ) was proposed. The key idea is that, for example, blackness is radically different than █. The former term, “blackness” refers to or is about a quale, whereas the latter term, “█” instantiates a quale in the reader’s mind and is non-referential; it does not even refer to itself. The meaning and behavior of these terms is radically different. All of philosophy, from Plato through Descartes through Chalmers, including hieroglyphics and emojis, used (...) referential terms up until CQ. This paper in this series of papers includes a relatively short but comprehensive discussion with the AI Claude 3.5 Sonnet on how the CQ impacts various theories of consciousness, including Materialism, Dualism, Idealism, and 14 others. (shrink)

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)

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.

That every expression of language that is {true on the basis of its meaning expressed using language} must have a connection by truth preserving operations to its {meaning expressed using language} is a tautology. The accurate model of the actual world is expressed using formal language and formalized natural language.

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.

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)

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)

How does microbiota research impact our understanding of biological individuality? We summarize the interdisciplinary summer school on "Microbiota, Symbiosis and Individuality: Conceptual and Philosophical Issues" (July 2019), which was supported by a European Research Council starting grant project "Immunity, DEvelopment, and the Microbiota" (IDEM). The summer school centered around interdisciplinary group work on four facets of microbiota research: holobionts, individuality, causation, and human health. The conceptual discussion of cutting-edge empirical research provided new insights into microbiota and highlights the value of (...) incorporating into meetings experts from other disciplines, such as philosophy and history of science. (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)

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 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.

This study examines how ABKS might optimize search efficiency and data security in cloud storage systems. We examine index compression, query processing improvement, and encryption optimization to decrease computational cost and preserve security. After a thorough investigation, the article shows how these methods may boost cloud storage system performance, security, and usability. Tests show that improved ABKS speeds up search searches and lowers storage costs, making it a viable cloud storage alternative. Exploring sophisticated machine learning algorithms for predictive search improvements (...) a. (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)

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)

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.

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)

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)