The Operator Argument against eternalism holds that having non-vacuous tense operators in the language is incompatible with the claim that every proposition has its truth-value eternally. Assuming that (1) there are non-vacuous tense operators, (2) tense operators operate on propositions and (3) tense operators which operate on eternal entities are vacuous, it may be argued that eternalism is false. In this paper, I examine the Operator Argument. The goal is threefold. First, I want to present some (...) aspects of the debate in a more elaborate way, especially those concerning formal matters. Secondly, I will argue that eternalism can escape the Operator Argument. There are two main strategies for handling the Operator Argument. The first one is based on replacing temporal operators with object-language quantifiers. The second rejects the identification of compositional semantic value with assertoric content. My third goal is to show that none of them is as good as the strategy that adopts Timestamp Semantics (Fritz in Philosl Stud 176:2933–2959, 2019). I am going to argue that the quantificational treatment of tenses is compatible with temporalism and that the arguments for rejecting the identification of compositional semantic value with assertoric content provide, in fact, a motivation for the temporalist position. At the end, I will develop Timestamp Semantics by providing a novel formalization of it, and defend it against three potential counter-arguments. (shrink)

In the debate between relativism and contextualism about various expressions, the Operator Argument, initially proposed by Kaplan , has been taken to support relativism. However, one widespread reaction against the argument has taken the form of arguing against one assumption made by Kaplan: namely, that certain natural language expressions are best treated as sentential operators. Focusing on the only extant version of the Operator Argument proposed in connection to predicates of personal taste such as “tasty” (...) and experiencer phrases such as “for Anna” ), in this paper I investigate whetherthe reasons offered by Cappelen and Hawthorne against various assumptions of the argument failing in the case of modal, temporal, locationaland precisional expressions transfer to the case of experiencer phrases to undercut support for relativism about predicates of personal taste. My aim is to show that they don’t. Thus, I first show that their considerations against experiencer phrases such as “for Anna” being sentential operators are not decisive. Second, I show that even if granting that such experiencer phrases are not sentential operators, a suitably modified version of the Operator Argument can be defended from the objections they raise. (shrink)

It is a widely held view in philosophy that propositions perform a plethora of different theoretical roles. Amongst other things, they are believed to be the semantic values of sentences in contexts, the objects of attitudes, the contents of illocutionary acts, and the referents of that-clauses. This assumption is often combined with the claim that propositions have their truth-values eternally. In this paper I aim to show that these two assumptions are incompatible: propositions cannot both fulfill the mentioned roles and (...) be eternally true or false. Following Kaplan and Lewis’s Operator Argument, I argue that compositional semantic values of sentences in contexts do not correspond to eternal propositions. Thus, either we regard the non-eternal entities that in fact realize the semantic role of propositions as also fulfilling the remaining propositional roles, or we abandon the assumption that there is a unique realizer of all the roles. The Operator Argument has recently come under attack, mainly for its tense-logical assumptions. However, rejecting these assumptions is not a sufficient defense of the compatibility of the two claims, since the extensional alternative to the tense-logical framework does not allow us to universally retain eternal propositions as compositional semantic values of sentences either. (shrink)

Certain passages in Kaplan’s ‘Demonstratives’ are often taken to show that non-vacuous sentential operators associated with a certain parameter of sentential truth require a corresponding relativism concerning assertoric contents: namely, their truth values also must vary with that parameter. Thus, for example, the non-vacuity of a temporal sentential operator ‘always’ would require some of its operands to have contents that have different truth values at different times. While making no claims about Kaplan’s intentions, we provide several reconstructions of how (...) such an argument might go, focusing on the case of time and temporal operators as an illustration. What we regard as the most plausible reconstruction of the argument establishes a conclusion similar enough to that attributed to Kaplan. However, the argument overgenerates, leading to absurd consequences. We conclude that we must distinguish assertoric contents from compositional semantic values, and argue that once they are distinguished, the argument fails to establish any substantial conclusions. We also briefly discuss a related argument commonly attributed to Lewis, and a recent variant due to Weber. (shrink)

The quantified argument calculus (Quarc) is a novel logic that departs in several ways from mainstream first-order logic. In particular, its quantifiers are not sentential operators attached to variables, but attach to unary predicates to form arguments – quantified arguments – of other predicates. Furthermore, Quarc includes devices to account for anaphora, active-passive-voice distinctions, and sentence- versus predicate-negation. While this base system has already been shown to be sound and complete, modal extensions still lack such results. The present paper (...) fills this lacuna by developing a modal extension of Quarc, including identity. The semantics will invalidate the Quarc-analogues of the Barcan-formula and its converse, as well as treat identity as contingent by default. Furthermore, an unlabelled Gentzen-style natural deduction system will be presented, which includes the full expressive power of Quarc. It will be shown to be strongly sound and complete with respect to relational frames. The paper closes off with considerations on how to extend the system to cover other normal modal logics as well as extensions to suitable three-valued semantics that capture relevant types of presupposition-failure. (shrink)

William Lane Craig has argued that there cannot be actual infinities because inverse operations are not well-defined for infinities. I point out that, in fact, there are mathematical systems in which inverse operations for infinities are well-defined. In particular, the theory introduced in John Conway's *On Numbers and Games* yields a well-defined field that includes all of Cantor's transfinite numbers.

In a recent paper, Michael Huemer provides a new interpretation for ‘N’, the operator that occurs in Peter van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument, and argues that, given that interpretation, the Consequence Argument is sound. I have no quarrel with Huemer’s claim that the Consequence Argument is valid. I shall argue instead that his defense of its premises—a defense that allegedly involves refuting David Lewis’s response to van Inwagen—is unsuccessful.

This article, the second of a two-part essay, outlines a solution to certain tensions in Thomist philosophical anthropology concerning the interaction of the human person’s immaterial intellectual or noetic operations with the psychosomatic sensory operations that are constituted from the formal organization of the nervous system. Continuing with where the first part left off, I argue that Thomists should not be tempted by strong emergentist accounts of mental operations that act directly on the brain, but should maintain, with Aquinas, that (...) noetic operations directly interact with psychosomatic operations. I develop a Thomist account of noetic–psychosomatic interactions that expands upon the first part’s rapprochement between the new mechanist philosophy of neuroscience and psychology and hylomorphic animalism. I argue that noetic–psychosomatic interactions are best understood as analogous to the way diverse higher and lower order psychosomatic powers interact by actualizing, coordinating, and directing the operations of other psychosomatic powers. I draw on James Ross’s arguments for the immateriality of intellectual operations as realizing definite pure functions in order to elucidate the way noetic operations uniquely actualize, coordinate, and direct the psychosomatic operations they interact with. I conclude with a conjectural sketch of how this presentation of Thomist philosophical anthropology understands the noetic and psychosomatic deficits brought about by damage to the nervous system. (shrink)

Does the Chinese Room Argument (CRA) apply to large language models (LLMs)? The thought experiment at the center of the CRA is tailored to Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence (GOFAI) systems. However, natural language processing has made significant progress, especially with the emergence of LLMs in recent years. LLMs differ from GOFAI systems in their design; they operate on vectors rather than symbols and do not follow a program but instead learn to map inputs to outputs. Consequently, some have suggested (...) that the CRA is no longer relevant in discussions surrounding artificial language understanding. Contrary to these authors, I argue that if the CRA successfully demonstrates that implementing a symbolic computation is not sufficient for language understanding, then it also shows that implementing an LLM is not sufficient for language understanding. At the core of my argument lies a thought experiment called “the flashcard sorter”. (shrink)

The analysis of the reversibility of quantum mechanics depends upon the choice of the time reversal operator for quantum mechanical states. The orthodox choice for the time reversal operator on QM states is known as the Wigner operator, T*, where * performs complex conjugation. The peculiarity is that this is not simply the unitary time reversal operation, but an anti-unitary operator, involving complex conjugation in addition to ordinary time reversal. The alternative choice is the Racah (...) class='Hi'>operator, which is simply ordinary time reversal, T. Orthodox treatments hold that it is either logically or empirically necessary to adopt the Wigner operator, and the Racah operator has received little attention. The basis for this choice is analysed in detail, and it is concluded that all the conventional arguments for rejecting the Racah operator and adopting the Wigner operator are mistaken. The additional problem of whether the deterministic part of quantum mechanics should be judged to be reversible or not is also considered. The adoption of the Racah operator for time reversal appears prima facie to entail that quantum mechanics is irreversible. However, it is concluded that the real answer to question depends upon the choice of interpretation of the theory. In any case, the conventional reasons for claiming that quantum mechanics is reversible are incorrect. (shrink)

There are 1,000 of us and one victim. We each increase the level at which a ‘discomfort machine’ operates on the victim – leading to great discomfort. Suppose that consecutive levels of the machine are so similar that the victim cannot distinguish them. Have we acted permissibly? According to the ‘no-difference argument’ the answer is ‘yes’ because each of our actions was guaranteed to make the victim no worse off. This argument is of interest because, if it is (...) sound, similar arguments threaten intuitive moral verdicts about many cases in which a large number of individual choices cumulatively make a great difference, while each choice seems to make no difference on its own. But the argument is not sound, as is shown by a simple objection based on a plausible dominance principle – an objection that avoids challenges that have been brought against previous criticisms of the no-difference argument. (shrink)

Defenses of political obligation—the pro tanto obligation to obey the law because the state commands it—often operate at or near the level of ideal theory. Critics, though, increasingly question that approach’s relevance for the imperfect states that exist. This article develops a lesser evil framework to evaluate political obligation with several advantages over more ideal approaches: (1) avoids the questionable assumption that some actual states are reasonably just, (2) recognizes that context matters for political obligation, (3) captures the complicity involved (...) in obeying the state, and (4) identifies a basis—varying intuitions on lesser evil justifications—to distinguish philosophical anarchism from conceptions of political obligation without the former collapsing into the latter. We remain agnostic on whether this framework establishes political obligation to any state but argue that it offers a compelling account of the moral dilemma of obeying the state under nonideal conditions. (shrink)

The open borders view is frequently dismissed for making infeasible demands. This is a potent strategy. Unlike normative arguments regarding open borders, which tend to be relatively intractable, the charge of infeasibility is supposed to operate as what we call a "normative argument-stopper." Nonetheless, we argue that the strategy fails. Bringing about open borders is perfectly feasible on the most plausible account of feasibility. We consider and reject what we take to be the only three credible ways to save (...) the charge of infeasibility: by proposing an alternative account of feasibility; by proposing an alternative, more circumscribed interpretation of the subject-matter of feasibility claims; and by proposing a more expansive account of the addressees of the demand for open borders. The first fails to vindicate the claim that infeasibility is a normative argument-stopper. The second does not provide an argument against open borders at all. The third underestimates the power of at least some non-state actors. We conclude by drawing some lessons for the open borders view and the use of feasibility in politics more generally. (shrink)

The central argument of this article is that there is a remarkable conceptual parallel between Hegel’s famous notion of the “cunning of Reason” and the philosophically profound concept of Chi in Igbo metaphysics. By way of establishing this parallel, the article advances the following subsidiary but complementary points: Chi is also “cunning” in its dynamics; both principles (i.e. Chi and Reason/Spirit) are non-deterministic because they try to maintain a dialectic balance between destiny and individual responsibility; both possess divine attributes; (...) and community serves as an invaluable medium of operation for both. The scholarly significance of the article lies in its attempt not only to systematise the Igbo thought on Chi by eliminating the vestiges of discredited “ethno-philosophy”, but also to open up a constructive dialogue between Hegel and elements of African philosophy, using Igbo metaphysics as a placeholder. This is against the backdrop of certain discontents generated by Hegel’s famous uncomplimentary and racist remarks on Africa. Seen in this light, the article may well be an exercise in “rapprochement”. (shrink)

Ion, one of the earliest of Plato’s dialogues, is also considered as one of the philosopher’s less important philosophical works. It is also viewed as one of the earliest texts on the philosophy of art that distinguishes between techne and artistic creation, with the latter representing a form of divine inspiration which occurs outside the awareness of its creator. Here I will offer an alternative interpretation that is based on the dissociation of the poet from his reciter. The latter, by (...) operating as a medium, functions similarly to the ignorant in Chinese but possessor and user of a perfect manual, in Searle’s Chinese room. Furthermore, I propose that art, in Plato’s view, may represent a form of creative achievement with significance that exceeds the sum of the specific disciplines it deals with. (shrink)

This chapter compares simple predicates of personal taste (PPTs) such as tasty and beautiful with their complex counterparts (eg tastes good, looks beautiful). I argue that the former differ from the latter along two dimensions. Firstly, simple PPTs are individual-level predicates, whereas complex ones are stage-level. Secondly, covert Experiencer arguments of simple PPTs obligatorily receive a generic interpretation; by contrast, the covert Experiencer of a complex PPT can receive a generic, bound variable or referential interpretation. I provide an analysis of (...) these facts based on a novel proposal about the licensing of individual-level predicates (the ‘Licensing Condition on ILPs’). This condition states that all covert pronominal arguments of an individual-level predicate must be bound by the generic operator. Finally, I show that generic construal of the Experiencer is a necessary condition for faultless disagreement. This is evidence in favour of treatments of subjective meaning that appeal to genericity, and against relativism about PPTs. (shrink)

The paper discusses a prominent one of Kratzer's (1986, 1991, 2012) arguments against material implication analyses of the denotation of (indicative) conditional sentences. This is the argument based on the sentence _Most of the time, if a man buys a horse, he pays cash for it_. It is shown that material implication makes a prediction that does conform to speakers' intuitions, contrary to Kratzer's claim. The paper also argues that Lewis's (1975) attack on material implication analyses of conditional sentences (...) based on examples where the conditional is embedded under the adverbials _sometimes_ and _never_ does not have much force given that the interpretation of such sentences is subject to inferential pragmatic operations in addition to the recovery of their denotation. (shrink)

Todd (2016) proposes an analysis of future-directed sentences, in particular sentences of the form 'will(φ)', that is based on the classic Russellian analysis of definite descriptions. Todd's analysis is supposed to vindicate the claim that the future is metaphysically open while retaining a simple Ockhamist semantics of future contingents and the principles of classical logic, i.e. bivalence and the law of excluded middle. Consequently, an open futurist can straightforwardly retain classical logic without appeal to supervaluations, determinacy operators, or any further (...) controversial semantical or metaphysical complication. In this paper, we will show that this quasi-Russellian analysis of 'will' both lacks linguistic motivation and faces a variety of significant problems. In particular, we show that the standard arguments for Russell's treatment of definite descriptions fail to apply to statements of the form 'will(φ)'. (shrink)

In Proslogion, Anselm claims that understanding God as “something beyond which a greater nothing can be thought” refers to God’s existence in the mind and facilitates our understanding of God existing also in reality. The argument is epistemological and not ontological since its conclusion is our understanding of God’s existence, not a proof or demonstration that God exists. However, I argue that Anselm’s notion of existence in the mind invokes mentalism, a claim that meaning is housed in the mind (...) and semantic rules are contained within linguistic expression itself. Wittgenstein argued that mentalism is a mistaken conflation of linguistic understanding with ostensive reference to one’s private sensations. Instead, all linguistic understanding depends on the public use of rules operating within a specific semantic context. If mentalism is false, then the concept of existence in the mind alone is a shallow metaphysical idea, rendering the rest of the argument invalid. (shrink)

Opponents of medically assisted dying have long appealed to ‘slippery slope’ arguments. One such slippery slope concerns palliative care: that the introduction of medically assisted dying will lead to a diminution in the quality or availability or palliative care for patients near the end of their lives. Empirical evidence from jurisdictions where assisted dying has been practiced for decades, such as Oregon and the Netherlands, indicate that such worries are largely unfounded. The failure of the palliation slope argument is (...) nevertheless instructive with respect to how slippery slope arguments can be appraised without having to await post-facto evidence regarding the effects of a proposed change in public policy. Close attention in particular to the norms operative in a given institution and how changes to policy will interact with those norms enable slippery slopes to be credibly appraised. (shrink)

Compatibilism is the view that determinism is true, but agents nevertheless possess free will as long as they act from a compatibilist friendly agential structure (i.e., agents want to perform their actions, agents identify with the actions they perform, agents would be responsive to reasons against performing those actions, etc.). The most powerful contemporary objection to compatibilism is the manipulation argument, according to which agents determined to act as they do by the prodding of manipulative neuroscientists are not considered (...) free, so agents determined to act by physical processes operating from the remote past should not be considered free either. One compatibilist response to the manipulation argument is the so-called hard-line reply, according to which compatibilists argue that agents determined by physical processes operating from the remote past are free, so agents determined by manipulative neuroscientists are free as well. In this paper I demonstrate that leading hard-line replies fail, while also introducing a novel argument against the hard-line reply. (shrink)

Some of our beliefs are institutional; that is, beliefs whose content is to a large extent shaped by institutions, such as beliefs about intellectual property, trade policy, or traffic rules. In this chapter, we propose a novel account of institutional beliefs, as we call them. In particular, we argue that institutional beliefs are primarily attributable to social entities, such as groups or collectives, and only secondarily to individual agents. This is because institutional beliefs respond to specific problems that, in principle, (...) only collectives face. However, existing methodology in behavioural science primarily relies on eliciting beliefs through individual choice data, which presents challenges for empirically modelling our proposed concept of institutional beliefs. To address this challenge, we propose to speak of institutional beliefs attributable to individual agents as ‘qua beliefs’. That is, institutional beliefs attributable to individual agents acting qua members of certain institutionally shaped groups. Within this framework, individuals’ qua actions occur in a shared realm of problems that can only be addressed through collective efforts. The relationship between individuals and their groups can be rendered tractable under formalised conditions. Under these conditions, choice data collected from individuals need not obstruct the elicitation of institutional beliefs for empirical study at both the collective and the individual level. We refer to these conditions as “IS conditions”, which are developed based on the synthesis between an interpretationist understanding of mental states and standard models of revealed preference theory as used in experimental economics. For an illustration of how this approach can be operationalised experimentally, we direct our readers to chapter 10 of this volume, where an experimental study applied our account of institutional beliefs. (shrink)

According to the AI ensoulment hypothesis, some future AI systems will be endowed with immaterial souls. I argue that we should have at least a middling credence in the AI ensoulment hypothesis, conditional on our eventual creation of AGI and the truth of substance dualism in the human case. I offer two arguments. The first relies on an analogy between aliens and AI. The second rests on the conjecture that ensoulment occurs whenever a physical system is “fit to possess” a (...) soul, where very roughly this amounts to being physically structured in such a way that the system can meaningfully cooperate with the operations of the soul. (shrink)

In the paper, certain rational postulates for protocols describing real communicating are introduced.These rational postulates, on the one hand, allow assigning a certain typology of real systems of interactions, which is consistent with the reality of epistemic argumentation in systems of communicating, and on the other one – defining rules of using argumentation in real situations. Moreover, the presented postulates for protocols characterize information networks and administering knowledge in real interactivity systems. Due to the epistemic character of the considerations, the (...) problem undertaken in the paper concerns working out fundamental assumptions that refer to building of epistemic logics. They allow establishing the correctness of the discourse defined by rational postulates of protocols of real communication. In the context of the presented problem there are the following two research questions distinguished: 1) How do we determine the rule of building of real dynamic epistemic logics? and 2) How should we define semantics for these logics? Within the framework of considerations relating to the research questions asked, certain epistemic operators, relativized to types of communicating, are introduced. Basic logical relations between using these operators are established for these operators. The relations are presented by a diagram called the square of epis temic operators. On the basis of these logical relations some axioms for real dynamic epistemic logics are presented. The semantics of real dynamic epistem ic logics is extended by the methods of lower and upper approximation of formula evaluating. This allows defining ‘approximation Kripke models’. The results of conceptualization of knowledge on real premises of epistemic argum entation presented in this paper can be applied to rhetoric in real systems of interaction. (shrink)

This is my Cambridge PhD thesis, written under the supervision of Hugh Mellor and Richard Healey, and examined by Mary Hesse and Simon Blackburn. It addresses what it takes to be the core of the problem of single case probability, namely, the interpretation of claims such as ‘It is probable that P’ (where the probabilistic component occurs as a sentential or propositional operator). I argue that claims of this form are not genuinely truth-apt, and that such operators modify the (...) force, rather than the sense, of sentences or propositions to which they attach. In contemporary terms, I thus defend a version of what Yalcin (2012) has called ‘credal expressivism’. Some of the core arguments were later published in the following papers: (i) ‘Does “Probably” modify sense?’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61(1983), 396–408 and (ii) 'Mellor, chance and the single case', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35(1984), 11-23. Other arguments, including an attempt at the Frege-Geach problem, form the basis of an unpublished piece 'The use of force in a theory of meaning' (1983), accessible at PhilPapers. (shrink)

I shall be dealing, throughout this book, with a set of related problems: the relationship between morality and reasoning in general, the way in which moral reasoning is properly to be carried on, and why morality is not arbitrary. The solutions to these problems come out of the same train of argument. Morality is not arbitrary, I shall argue, because the acceptance of certain qualities of character as virtues and the rejection of others as vices is forced on us (...) by the co-operative basis of human life. The co-operation in human life is unavoidable; the alternative is a literal Hobbesian state of nature, and that is impossible. It is not that co-operation between people is a good thing or even a very good thing; it is simply unavoidable in human life, and it is impossible unless the qualities of character counted as virtues are encouraged and are at least fairly common. The possibility of human life presupposes a theory of human nature, and working out that theory of human nature is the main job of moral philosophy. These virtues or qualities of character or attitudes lead us towards a theory of reasons. A person with a sense of justice is a person inclined to accept certain sorts of facts as reasons for acting, and if the virtues are presupposed by human life then the acceptance of those sorts of facts as reasons for acting is presupposed by human life. A condition of the life of reasoning beings (a more accurate term here than 'human beings') is that moral reasons are reasons for acting and are at the very basis of reasoning. And from this it follows that properly conducted moral reasoning is ultimately guided by the virtues rather than ultimately guided by a set of rules. (shrink)

Opponents of medically assisted dying have long appealed to ‘slippery slope’ arguments. One such slippery slope concerns palliative care: That the introduction of medically assisted dying will lead to a diminution in the quality or availability or palliative care for patients near the end of their lives. Empirical evidence from jurisdictions where assisted dying has been practiced for decades, such as Oregon and the Netherlands, indicate that such worries are largely unfounded. The failure of the palliation slope argument is (...) nevertheless instructive with respect to how slippery slope arguments can be appraised without having to await post-facto evidence regarding the effects of a proposed change in public policy. Close attention in particular to the norms operative in a given institution and how changes to policy will interact with those norms enable slippery slopes to be credibly appraised. (shrink)

There is a growing sense that many liberal states are in the midst of a shift in legal and political norms—a shift that is happening slowly and for a variety of reasons relating to security. The internet and tech booms—paving the way for new forms of electronic surveillance—predated the 9/11 attacks by several years, while the police’s vast use of secret informants and deceptive operations began well before that. On the other hand, the recent uptick in reactionary movements—movements in which (...) the rule of law seems expendable—began many years after 9/11 and continues to this day. One way to describe this book is an examination of the moral limits on modern police practices that flow from the basic legal and political tenets of the liberal tradition. The central argument is that policing in liberal states is constrained by a liberal conception of persons coupled with particular rule of law principles. Part I consists of three chapters that constitute the book’s theoretical foundation, including an overview of the police’s law enforcement role in the liberal polity and a methodology for evaluating that role. Part II consists of three chapters that address applications of the theory, including the police’s use of informants, deceptive operations, and surveillance. The upshot is that policing in liberal societies has become illiberal in light of its response to both internal and external threats to security. The book provides an account of what it might mean to retrieve policing that is consistent with the basic tenets of liberalism and the limits imposed by those tenets. [This is an uncorrected draft of the book's preface and introduction, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.]. (shrink)

Mental representations remain the central posits of psychology after many decades of scrutiny. However, there is no consensus about the representational format(s) of biological cognition. This paper provides a survey of evidence from computational cognitive psychology, perceptual psychology, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and social psychology, and concludes that one type of format that routinely crops up is the language-of-thought (LoT). We outline six core properties of LoTs: (i) discrete constituents; (ii) role-filler independence; (iii) predicate–argument structure; (iv) logical operators; (v) (...) inferential promiscuity; and (vi) abstract content. These properties cluster together throughout cognitive science. Bayesian computational modeling, compositional features of object perception, complex infant and animal reasoning, and automatic, intuitive cognition in adults all implicate LoT-like structures. Instead of regarding LoT as a relic of the previous century, researchers in cognitive science and philosophy-of-mind must take seriously the explanatory breadth of LoT-based architectures. We grant that the mind may harbor many formats and architectures, including iconic and associative structures as well as deep-neural-network-like architectures. However, as computational/representational approaches to the mind continue to advance, classical compositional symbolic structures – that is, LoTs – only prove more flexible and well-supported over time. (shrink)

Schrödinger’s equation says that the Hamiltonian is the generator of time translations. This seems to imply that any reasonable definition of time operator must be conjugate to the Hamiltonian. Then both time and energy must have the same spectrum since conjugate operators are unitarily equivalent. Clearly this is not always true: normal Hamiltonians have lower bounded spectrum and often only have discrete eigenvalues, whereas we typically desire that time can take any real value. Pauli concluded that constructing a general (...) a time operator is impossible. Here we show how the Pauli argument fails when one uses an external system to track time, so that time arises as correlations between the system and the clock. In this case, the time operator is conjugate to the clock Hamiltonian and not to the system Hamiltonian, but its eigenvalues still satisfy the Schrödinger equation for arbitrary system Hamiltonians. (shrink)

Philosophical problems about the part-whole relation have been discussed throughout the history of philosophy, at least since Plato and Aristotle. In contemporary philosophy, the understanding of these issues has benefited from the formal tools of Classical Extensional Mereology. This paper aims is to defend mereological restrictivism against some constraints imposed by the vagueness argument. To achieve this, the paper is divided into three parts. In the first, I introduce the special composition question (hereafter SCQ) as formulated by [Van Inwagen, (...) 1990] and briefly present the three sets of theories that proffer answers to it. In the second part, I focus on the vagueness argument, that was presented by [Lewis, 1986, ] and [Sider, 2007, ] to defend mereological universalism. In the third section, I introduce the theory of natural properties by David Lewis. From this theory, I propose a new mereological operation labeled as natural fusion. The purpose of this operation is to falsify one of the premises of the vagueness argument. Then, I discuss some examples and counter-examples to natural fusion. (shrink)

I argue that, at least on the assumption that if there are epistemic facts they are irreducible, the evolutionary debunking maneuver is prima facie self-debunking because it seems to debunk a certain class of facts, namely, epistemic facts that prima facie it needs to rely on in order to launch its debunking arguments. I then appeal to two recent reconstructions of the evolutionary debunking maneuver (Kahane (2011), Griffiths and Wilkins (2015)) and find them wanting. Along the way I set aside (...) two ways (one envisaged, the other by Sterpetti (2015)) to avoid the self-debunking problem that I find unpromising. I conclude that the evolutionary debunking maneuver needs to clarify the meta-epistemological commitments upon which it is supposed to operate. (shrink)

According to the reading offered here, Descartes' use of the meditative mode of writing was not a mere rhetorical device to win an audience accustomed to the spiritual retreat. His choice of the literary form of the spiritual exercise was consonant with, if not determined by, his theory of the mind and of the basis of human knowledge. Since Descartes' conception of knowledge implied the priority of the intellect over the senses, and indeed the priority of an intellect operating independently (...) of the senses, and since, in Descartes' view, the untutored individual was likely to be nearly wholly immersed in the senses, a procedure was needed for freeing the intellect from sensory domination so that the truth might be seen. Hence, the cognitive exercises of the Meditations, modeled not on the sense- and imagination-based exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, but on the Augustinian procedure of turning away from the senses and imagination to perceive the unpicturable with the fleshless eye of the mind. In accordance with this reading, the function of Descartes' skeptical arguments is not to introduce skepticism so that it can be defeated but to aid the meditator in withdrawing the mind from the senses in order to attend to truths of the pure intellect. These truths then offer the basis for a new natural philosophy, including a new theory of the senses. (shrink)

The problem of negative truth is the problem of how, if everything in the world is positive, we can speak truly about the world using negative propositions. A prominent solution is to explain negation in terms of a primitive notion of metaphysical incompatibility. I argue that if this account is correct, then minimal logic is the correct logic. The negation of a proposition A is characterised as the minimal incompatible of A composed of it and the logical constant ¬. A (...) rule based account of the meanings of logical constants that appeals to the notion of incompatibility in the introduction rule for negation ensures the existence and uniqueness of the negation of every proposition. But it endows the negation operator with no more formal properties than those it has in minimal logic. (shrink)

The objective of this article is twofold. First, a methodological issue is addressed. It is pointed out that even if philosophers of mathematics have been recently more and more concerned with the practice of mathematics, there is still a need for a sharp definition of what the targets of a philosophy of mathematical practice should be. Three possible objects of inquiry are put forward: (1) the collective dimension of the practice of mathematics; (2) the cognitives capacities requested to the practitioners; (...) and (3) the specific forms of representation and notation shared and selected by the practitioners. Moreover, it is claimed that a broadening of the notion of ‘permissible action’ as introduced by Larvor (2012) with respect to mathematical arguments, allows for a consideration of all these three elements simultaneously. Second, a case from topology – the proof of Alexander’s theorem – is presented to illustrate a concrete analysis of a mathematical practice and to exemplify the proposed method. It is discussed that the attention to the three elements of the practice identified above brings to the emergence of philosophically relevant features in the practice of topology: the need for a revision in the definition of criteria of validity, the interest in tracking the operations that are performed on the notation, and the constant and fruitful back-and-forth from one representation to another in dealing with mathematical content. Finally, some suggestions for further research are given in the conclusions. (shrink)

Over 1000 companies have either curtailed or else completely ceased operations in Russia as a response to its invasion of Ukraine, a mass corporate exodus of a speed and scale which we’ve never seen. While corporate withdrawal appears to have considerable public support, it’s not obvious that it has done anything to hamper the Russian war effort, nor is it clear what the long-run effects of corporate withdrawal as a regularised response to war might be. Given this, it’s important the (...) evaluate the ethical merits of such a response. In this paper I critique what I take to be the two most common arguments given in favour of voluntary corporate withdrawal, which I label ‘the instrumental argument’ and ‘the clean hands argument’ respectively. After illustrating their shortcomings, I reframe corporations’ predicament as a ‘spattered hands’ case—one where they may do good by remaining in a war-waging state, but where they contribute indirectly to grave wrongdoing by doing so. Drawing on ideas from the ‘Business for Peace’ and ‘Business and Human Rights’ literature, I highlight the potentially positive role of corporate presence within war-waging countries, before highlighting four considerations which corporations ought to bear in mind when determining whether to withdraw, or whether it is the lesser evil to stay and to let their hands be spattered. (shrink)

Aristotle determines eristic argument as argument which either operates upon the basis of acceptable premisses and merely give the impression of being deductive, or argument which truly is deductive but operates upon the basis of premisses which seem to be acceptable, but are not. I attempt to understand what Aristotle has in mind when he says that someone is deceived into accepting premisses which seem to be acceptable but which are really not, and how this disqualifies such (...) arguments from being dialectical. In the first section of the paper I interpret Aristotle’s notion of ἔνδοξα in terms of a relational concept of acceptability. Real ἔνδοα are propositions which are accepted by a qualified group or individual. False ἔνδοα may also be accepted by someone or some group, and may even be true, but they are used to serve the purposes of eristical argumentation, which departs from certain standards of dialectical argumentation articulated in the notion of ἔνδοξα as a norm for premiss-acceptance. In particular, eristic arguments may even be valid in the sense of a συλλογισμός while still failing to be proper dialectical arguments. In the second part of the paper I consider how this can be, in examining certain types of fallacies in the Sophistical Refutations and the relationship between fallacious argumentation and false ἔνδοξα. (shrink)

Viewed in the light of the remarkable performance of ‘Watson’ - IBMs proprietary artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language - on the US general knowledge quiz show ‘Jeopardy’, we review two experiments on formal systems - one in the domain of quantum physics, the other involving a pictographic languaging game - whereby behaviour seemingly characteristic of domain understanding is generated by the mere mechanical application of simple rules. By re-examining both experiments in the context (...) of Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, we suggest their results merely endorse Searle’s core intuition: that ‘syntactical manipulation of symbols is not sufficient for semantics’. Although, pace Watson, some artificial intelligence practitioners have suggested that more complex, higher-level operations on formal symbols are required to instantiate understanding in computational systems, we show that even high-level calls to Google translate would not enable a computer qua ‘formal symbol processor’ to understand the language it processes. We thus conclude that even the most recent developments in ‘quantum linguistics’ will not enable computational systems to genuinely understand natural language. (shrink)

In earlier work, I have expressed scepticism about privacy-based criticisms of bulk collection for counter-terrorism ( Sorell 2018 ). But even if these criticisms are accepted, is bulk collection nonetheless legitimate on balance – because of its operational utility for the security services, and the overriding importance of the purposes that the security services serve? David Anderson’s report of the Bulk Powers review in the United Kingdom suggests as much, provided bulk collection complies with strong legal safeguards ( Anderson 2016 (...) ). I think it is hard to mount a uniformly compelling operational utility argument, because purposes other than counter-terrorism are pursued by the security services with the help of bulk collection. For example, the Intelligence Services Act 1994, section 1(2) says that apart from the interests of national security and the prevention and detection of serious crime, the Secret Intelligence Service may act “in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom.”The phrase “interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom” is opento a disturbingly wide range of interpretations, and it is doubtful that these interests justify bulk collection even when relevant “economic interests” are confined to those “also relevant to the interests of national security”, as required by the Investigatory Powers Act (2016) section 204 (3a). (shrink)

Viewed in the light of the remarkable performance of ‘Watson’ - IBMs proprietary artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language - on the US general knowledge quiz show ‘Jeopardy’, we review two experiments on formal systems - one in the domain of quantum physics, the other involving a pictographic languaging game - whereby behaviour seemingly characteristic of domain understanding is generated by the mere mechanical application of simple rules. By re-examining both experiments in the context (...) of Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, we suggest their results merely endorse Searle’s core intuition: that ‘syntactical manipulation of symbols is not sufficient for semantics’. Although, pace Watson, some artificial intelligence practitioners have suggested that more complex, higher-level operations on formal symbols are required to instantiate understanding in computational systems, we show that even high-level calls to Google translate would not enable a computer qua ‘formal symbol processor’ to understand the language it processes. We thus conclude that even the most recent developments in ‘quantum linguistics’ will not enable computational systems to genuinely understand natural language. (shrink)

The small improvement argument has been said to establish that the standard weak preference or value relation can be incomplete. We first show that the argument is one of three possible ‘small amendment arguments’, each of which would yield the same conclusion. Generalizing the analysis thus, we subsequently present a strong and a weak version of small amendment arguments and derive the exact rationality conditions under which they reveal incompleteness. The results show that the arguments (in any of (...) their variants) need not reveal a problem for the possibility of rational choice. In fact, it can be argued that they only reveal such a problem if the underlying relation is complete rather than incomplete. (shrink)

The Impossibility of Absolute Free Will: A Natural Law Perspective -/- Introduction -/- The concept of free will has been a subject of philosophical, scientific, and theological debate for centuries. Many people believe that they have the power to make choices independent of external influences, a belief often referred to as “absolute free will.” However, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that no decision is made in complete isolation from external and internal constraints. From biological and environmental factors to social (...) and psychological influences, human decision-making is shaped by forces beyond individual control. This essay will argue that absolute free will is impossible because all human choices are bound by natural laws and feedback mechanisms, aligning with the universal law of balance in nature. -/- The Illusion of Absolute Free Will -/- The idea of absolute free will suggests that an individual can make choices without any constraints. However, this is an illusion because every decision is influenced by various factors. Biological needs, such as hunger and thirst, compel us to act in specific ways. Social norms and cultural upbringing shape our values and behaviors. Psychological factors, including past experiences and cognitive biases, further restrict our choices. Even at the neurological level, decisions arise from brain activity governed by physical and chemical processes, limiting the extent to which they can be considered truly “free.” -/- Natural Laws and the Constraints on Free Will -/- One of the strongest arguments against absolute free will is the existence of natural laws that govern all aspects of reality. In physics, for example, objects must obey the laws of motion and gravity. Similarly, in the realm of human decision-making, choices are guided by a universal law of balance in nature. Just as an ecosystem maintains equilibrium through feedback mechanisms, human behavior operates within a dynamic system where internal desires interact with external constraints. This feedback loop ensures that no choice is made in a vacuum—every action has consequences that shape future decisions. -/- The Role of Feedback Mechanisms in Decision-Making -/- The interaction between conscious minds further reinforces the impossibility of absolute free will. Individuals constantly influence each other, creating a network of interdependent decisions. Governments, educational institutions, and economic systems all impose structures that shape individual choices. Even at a personal level, social feedback affects our decision-making, as approval or disapproval from others conditions our behaviors. This interconnected nature of human decisions shows that free will is always relative, never absolute. -/- The Practical Implications of Understanding Free Will -/- Recognizing that absolute free will does not exist has important implications for society. It highlights the need for education that aligns decision-making with the universal law of balance in nature. If people understand that their choices are shaped by natural laws and feedback mechanisms, they can make more informed and responsible decisions. This awareness can also lead to better governance, as leaders can design policies that account for the constraints on human behavior rather than assuming individuals act with unrestricted freedom. -/- Conclusion -/- Absolute free will is an impossibility because all human decisions are bound by natural laws and external influences. Biological, environmental, social, and psychological factors create constraints that shape human choices, making true independence of will unattainable. Instead of striving for an illusion of absolute free will, society should focus on understanding the natural limits of decision-making and using this knowledge to promote balance and harmony. By embracing this perspective, individuals and leaders can work towards a world where human actions align with the universal principles governing existence. -/- . (shrink)

The environmental costs and energy constraints have become emerging issues for the future development of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). So far, the discussion on environmental impacts of ML/AI lacks a perspective reaching beyond quantitative measurements of the energy-related research costs. Building on the foundations laid down by Schwartz et al., 2019 in the GreenAI initiative, our argument considers two interlinked phenomena, the gratuitous generalisation capability and the future where ML/AI performs the majority of quantifiable inductive inferences. (...) The gratuitous generalisation capability refers to a discrepancy between the cognitive demands of a task to be accomplished and the performance (accuracy) of a used ML/AI model. If the latter exceeds the former because the model was optimised to achieve the best possible accuracy, it becomes inefficient and its operation harmful to the environment. The future dominated by the non-anthropic induction describes a use of ML/AI so all-pervasive that most of the inductive inferences become furnished by ML/AI generalisations. The paper argues that the present debate deserves an expansion connecting the environmental costs of research and ineffective ML/AI uses (the issue of gratuitous generalisation capability) with the (near) future marked by the all-pervasive Human-Artificial Intelligence Nexus. (shrink)

The link between seen and unseen, matter and spirit, flesh and soul was always presumed, but never clarified enough, leaving room for debates and mostly controversies between the scientific domains and theologies of a different type; how could God, who is immaterial, have created the material world? Therefore, the logic of obtaining a result on this concern is first to see how religions have always seen the ratio between divinity and matter/universe. In this part, the idea of a world personality (...) is implied by many, so that nature itself was transformed into a person ; others have seen within the universe/the world a Spirit ruling all, connecting all and bending all to God’s commands. In a way or another, every culture has gifted the universe/nature with the capability of ruling all, seeing everything and controlling, even determining facts by connecting all together with a Great Spirit. What is this Great Spirit of all and where it resides? With the analogy of human body in relation to his Spirit we will try to figure out a place or vehicle for the Spirit to dwell the body, and the Great Spirit the matter. The Christianity names this linkage between God and matter as ‘the created grace of God’, which indwells matter and helps the Creator move and transform things. Is there any scientific argument to sustain such assertion? Can we argue somehow that God’s voice makes matter vibrate from within the way it can recombine primer elements into giant stars to the human body? If so, what should be the ratio between theology and science on this issue and with these assertions? How could God command to matter to bring things and beings out of it and what were the material leverages that was supposed to be operated to accomplish His will? However, if we can assume that God resides in the universe – as a whole, His body, or as in its very fabric – can we also figure out how is this even possible, without transforming our explanation into a pantheistic and immanent exclusive one? Through these ‘divine leverages within matter’ theory, there is no need for questioning evolutionism, creationism, pantheism, deism and many other cosmological hypotheses any longer. (shrink)

This article focuses on the distinction between psychosocial types and conceptual personae advanced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in What is Philosophy? The conceptual persona is the tool that a philosopher invents in order to create new concepts with which to bring forth new events. Although they present it as one of the three elements of philosophy, its nature and function and, above all, its conjunctions with psychosocial types have been overlooked by scholars. What is Philosophy? contains a list (...) of character traits of which each conceptual persona is composed. The central argument of this article is that this list can well be regarded as a table of categories that enable the exercise and experience of philosophy’s creative thinking. Since the character traits of a conceptual persona match the characteristics of the given psychosocial types, it is necessary to keep inventing new conceptual personae always starting from the historical presuppositions. The philosopher requires the conceptual persona to transfer his or her movements of thought to philosophy’s plane of immanence and thereby transform them in such a manner that philosophy can unfold as a creative power. It emerges as the subject of creative thinking at the same time as the concepts that subject creates, with which it coincides in the moment of creation. With the conceptual persona in What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari determine the one element of philosophy that makes the transcendental empiricism a method of creation that appears as a precise operation with all its convincing and transparent results. (shrink)

The question of existence of reality beyond physical realm is an old question. This cannot be solved by science due to its nature and method of operation of science. Though some conclusions about it can be made logically and rationally. It has been showed that the claim made by materialists is equivalent to the one made by anthropocentric theists.

Sensations can occur in the absence of perception and yet be experienced ‘as if’ seen, heard, tasted, or otherwise perceived. Two concepts used to investigate types of these sensory-like mental phenomena (SLMP) are mental imagery and hallucinations. Mental imagery is used as a concept for investigating those SLMP that merely resemble perception in some way. Meanwhile, the concept of hallucinations is used to investigate those SLMP that are, in some sense, compellingly like perception. This may be a difference of degree. (...) Attempts to reliably differentiate between instances of each type of SLMP remain unresolved. Despite this, the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each routinely used independently of the other. These uses are especially interesting in those published accounts of experiments where equivalent findings about the neuroanatomical correlates of SLMP are reported in support of diverging knowledge-claims about the role of SLMP in neurocognitive processes. This practice presents a puzzle. To examine one aspect of this puzzle, I compare the uses of these two scientific concepts in three ways: examining their roles in differentiating between types of SLMP; exploring how their respective historical developments intersect; and analysing their contributions in neuroimaging experiments. In presenting this series of comparative analyses, I will draw on three themes from historical, philosophical, and social studies of scientific practices: interest in material contributions to knowledge; accounts of how concepts are used in experiments; and explorations of the historical conditions within which current practices emerge. Building on this literature, my comparative analyses supports five related claims. My first claim is that the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each used as independent tools in neuroimaging experiments. My second claim is that, as experimental tools, the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each used for investigating discrete epistemic goals. My third claim is that there are implicit interdependent associations that structure the uses of these two concepts as tools for independently investigating these discrete epistemic goals in neuroimaging experiments. This third claim rests on my analyses of both past and present uses of each concept. Firstly, as seen in their intersecting histories, there are disciplined performances of using the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations that carry-along shared associations about the mediating role of SLMP in thought. Secondly, these interdependent ‘mediator-view’ associations continue to structure the independent uses of each concept as a tool for investigating SLMP in pursuit of specific goals. Taking this further, my fourth claim is that recognising the structured uses of the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations can help to account for how equivalent SLMP-neuro-correlates are generated in support of diverging knowledge-claims. Finally, my fifth claim is that the structured uses of these concepts as tools can contribute to experiments in ways analogous to, yet not equivalent with, the active contributions of material instruments. Bringing these claims together, I argue that the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations operate as structured tools that can actively contribute to the knowledge generated by neuroimaging experiments. In presenting this argument I seek to demonstrate that examining the structured uses of concepts as tools can complement existing approaches to studying how the heterogeneous dynamics of experimental practices can come to contribute to scientific knowledge in unintended ways. (shrink)

The “nature or nurture” problem concerning the debate on the innate features with respect to the acquired ones is approached in terms of information, from the perspective of the Informational Model of Consciousness. This model reveals seven distinct informational systems reflected in consciousness as informational centers, i.e. memory (Iknow-Ik), decisional info-operational center (Iwant-Iw), emotions (Ilove-Il), metabolic operations (Iam-Ia), genetic transmission (Icreate-Ic), genetic info-generation (Icreated-Icd) and the anti-entropic center (Ibelieve-Ib). Ib is a life-assisting beneficial center, because it is opposed to the (...) entropic action of matter, eliminating or reducing the uncertainty characteristic of unknown possibilities to certainty, and inducing in this way the trust and confidence in own actions. The pro and contra arguments of the “nature or nurture” are shortly presented, noting the large range of divergent opinions and concepts on the approached problem. It is shown that the information concept acting both as informal and matter-related information, specifically referred to the embodiment/ disembodiment mechanisms for the transmission of information during the epigenetic processes, can coherently approach and explain the transgenerational transmission of the traits acquired during the life span of the predecessors. The concepts of tendency, affinity, propensity, predisposition, aptitude, vocation and talent, specific for inheritable properties described by Icd are discussed, pointing out the large pallet and variety of such concepts describing the evidences detected by external observers on the inherited behaviors, and that of self-perceived by the implicated individual, as a silent voice of whose are no longer. The external manifestation of such inherited features and traits depends on practice, because the characteristic operation of the nervous system and of epigenetic processes is based on repetition and/or intensive practice, but these are permanently guided by the silent voice of those who are no longer, with various signal intensities. (shrink)

My analysis takes as its point of departure the controversial assumption that contemporary ethical theories cannot capture adequately the ethical and social challenges of scientific and technological development. This assumption is rooted in the argument that classical ethical theory invariably addresses the issue of ethical responsibility in terms of whether and how intentional actions of individuals can be justified. Scientific and technological developments, however, have produced unintentional consequences and side-consequences. These consequences very often result from collective decisions concerning the (...) way we wish to organise our economies and society, rather than from individual actions. It has been apparent for a long time now that it is not sufficient to construct an ethics of science and technology on the basis of the image of a scientist who intentionally wants to create a Frankenstein. Thus, as a minimum we would require an ethical framework that addresses both the aspect of unintentional side consequences (rather than intentional actions) and the aspect of collective decisions (rather than individual decisions) with regard to complex societal systems, such as the operation of our economy. We do not have such a theory available. More disturbing than the principle shortcomings of ethical theory are the shortcomings of conventional ethical practice with respect to technological developments. Below I will suggest how four different developments can illustrate these shortcomings, which centre around the fact that individuals in our society can simply not be held fully accountable for their individual role within the context of scientific technological developments. I will call these shortcomings of a theory (and practice) of individual role responsibility. This may help us to reflect on robotics too, insofar as robots may be perceived as replacements for “roles”. From there, I will argue why we have to shift our attention to an ethics of knowledge assessment in the framework of deliberative procedures. (shrink)

The question of what “is” someone who is queer in a metaphysical standpoint have been hotly debated in contemporary metaphysics of gender. In my paper I will explore the view of a Phenomenological source and understanding of queerness within the umbrella of gender. Within the realm of gender we can see how queerness is a blob to which gender is both part of and a stand in for the person gender. Using Phenomenological methods based on Husserl’s foundation I can establishes (...) a base for which queerness can be clearly seen. In my paper I will address not only the difference of cis heteronormative phenomenology and the reality that queer people live. This causes a negation in a metaphysical way. The object in which the queer person lives becomes In a way how Hegel understood that if we see a gendered person in the cis reality we can say “this is a man or women” due to the way we correspond cis normative gender. This is where I will try to use Husserl’s “principle of contradiction” and Hegel’s idea of “negation” to show the fluidity of gender in which queerness encompasses. I can clearly demonstrate the “Horizon” in which the limits of cis hetero perspective of understanding of gender and queerness. But in the same thought I will further drive this idea that in a sense the split with in an ontological reality between the lives of cis hetero people and queer people. By giving definitions of what if different such a orientation and performance with the reality that queer people live with such a gender binary ontology. I will then derive some meta-language and construct a realty how communities build themselves from a mutual understanding of this queer ontology. Also real world examples of how the logic of gender effects the way that queer people operate. The counter argument I would argue against a gender nihilism that would try to attack the question that I raise that queerness is a separate state within consciousness. To which I would defended against an individual level of gender identity and understanding. To treat gender in an alienated value. But by using a strong phenomenological structure I would be able to defended by idea that queerness with in gender is a whole different ontological reality that the cis hetero reality. I will then derive some meta-language and construct a realty how communities build themselves from a mutual understanding of this queer ontology. . (shrink)