Pressure and influences on school leaders as school policy makers during COVID-19 have made the task of interpreting, translating and implementing guidance more a complex and essential operation. School leaders need to prioritise and balance ever-changing government policy advice, against limitations of school buildings, the welfare of students and staff as well as the needs of the communities their schools serve. By surveying and interviewing headteachers, senior leaders and governors, this paper identifies the inputs school leaders have had to react (...) and respond to when creating policy in the context of COVID-19. The paper addresses the nature of, and factors affecting, pressures school leaders feel in authoring policy. The considerable challenges school-based policy makers face in implementing social distancing policy are non-trivial and increase tension to what is already highly stressful work. The report draws on data collected from a randomised, stratified sample of primary and secondary school leaders from across England in early June 2020, during the time of social distancing and school closure for most students. Findings suggest quality, quantity and frequency of top-down communication have contributed to school leader stress, while horizontal communication and collaboration between school leaders and across school communities helped to support leaders during rapid change. We recommend government and the education sector address communication, collaboration and change, to harness the challenges and opportunities identified by school leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This paper reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subaltern forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of science and outline a constructive alternative of transdisciplinary philosophy of science. While a demarcationist focus obscures the complex relations between epistemic communities, transdisciplinary (...) philosophy of science provides resources for meeting epistemic and political challenges of collaborative knowledge production. (shrink)

In the good old days, when general philosophy of science ruled the Earth, a simple division was often invoked to talk about philosophical issues specific to particular kinds of science: that between the natural sciences and the social sciences. Over the last 20 years, philosophical studies shaped around this dichotomy have given way to those organized by more fine-grained categories, corresponding to specific disciplines, as the literatures on the philosophy of physics, biology, economics and psychology--to take the most prominent (...) four examples--have blossomed. In general terms, work in each of these areas has become increasingly enmeshed with that in the corresponding science itself, increasingly naturalistic (in at least one sense of that term), and in my view, increasingly interesting. (shrink)

The idea that there are five senses dates back to Aristotle, who was one of the first philosophers to examine them systematically. Though it has become conventional wisdom, many scientists and philosophers would argue that this idea is outdated and inaccurate. Indeed, they have given many different answers to this question, ranging from just three (the number of different kinds of physical energy we can detect) to 33 or more senses. Perhaps surprisingly, the issue remains controversial, partly because it (...) is not clear exactly what should count as a ‘sense’. Should proprioception, balance and kinaesthesis, amongst others, be considered additional senses? And if so, how do we figure out how many senses we really have? -/- (Published in Turkish under the title ‘Çok Duyumlu Algi’). (shrink)

Typically, nudging is a technique for steering the choices of people without giving reasons or using enforcement. In benevolent cases, it is used when people are insufficiently responsive to reason. The nudger triggers automatic cognitive mechanisms – sometimes even biases – in smart ways in order to push irrational people in the right direction. Interestingly, this technique can also be applied to doxastic attitudes. Someone who is doxastically unresponsive to evidence can be nudged into forming true beliefs or doxastic attitudes (...) that are propositionally justified. When doxastic nudging uses non-rational mechanisms, the worry is that nudging cannot result in justified beliefs or knowledge, as the resulting doxastic attitudes lack the right kind of basis. In this paper, I will argue that given the right background views about knowledge, justified beliefs and the relevant processes, epistemic nudging is possible even in these cases. That is, all kinds of nudging can – in appropriate circumstances – produce justified beliefs or knowledge in the nudgee. (shrink)

Epistemic two-dimensional semantics, advocated by Chalmers and Jackson, among others, aims to restore the link between necessity and a priority seemingly broken by Kripke, by showing how armchair access to semantic intensions provides a basis for knowledge of necessary a posteriori truths. The most compelling objections to E2D are that, for one or other reason, the requisite intensions are not accessible from the armchair. As we substantiate here, existing versions of E2D are indeed subject to such access-based objections. But, we (...) moreover argue, the difficulty lies not with E2D but with the typically presupposed conceiving-based epistemology of intensions. Freed from that epistemology, and given the right alternative—one where inference to the best explanation provides the operative guide to intensions—E2D can meet access-based objections, and fulfill its promise of restoring the desirable link between necessity and a priority. This result serves as a central application of Biggs and Wilson, according to which abduction is an a priori mode of inference. (shrink)

Introduction in chapter viii of book ii of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke provides various putative lists of primary qualities. Insofar as they have considered the variation across Locke's lists at all, commentators have usually been content simply either to consider a self-consciously abbreviated list (e.g., "Size, Shape, etc.") or a composite list as the list of Lockean primary qualities, truncating such a composite list only by omitting supposedly co-referential terms. Doing the latter with minimal judgment about what (...) terms are co-referential gives us the following list of eleven qualities (in the order in which they appear in this chapter of the Essay): solidity, extension, figure, mobility, motion or rest, number, bulk, texture, motion, size, and situation. Perhaps surprisingly given the attention to the primary/secondary distinction since Locke, Locke's primary qualities themselves have received little more than passing mention in the bulk of the subsequent literature. In particular, no discussion both offers an interpretation of Locke's conception of primary qualities and makes sense of Locke's various lists as lists of primary qualities. A central motivation for this paper is the idea that these two tasks are not independent. (shrink)

One might suppose that Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) is inhospitable to metaphysial indeterminacy (MI), given that, as A. Wilson (2020) puts it, "the central idea of EQM is to replace indeterminacy with multiplicity" (77). But as Wilson goes on to suggest, the popular decoherence-based understanding of EQM (henceforth: DEQM) appears to admit of indeterminacy in both world number and world nature, where the latter indeterminacy---our focus here---is plausibly metaphysical. After a brief presentation of DEQM (S1), we bolster (...) the case for there being MI in world nature in DEQM (S2). The remainder of the paper is devoted to a comparative assessment of the two main approaches to MI for purposes of accommodating this MI---namely, a metaphysical supervaluationist approach (as per Barnes and Williams 2011) and a determinable-based approach (as per Wilson 2013 and Calosi and Wilson 2018 and 2021). We briefly describe each approach (S3), then offer arguments in favour of a determinable-based approach to world nature MI in DEQM (S4). (shrink)

We propose an ontological theory that is powerful enough to describe both complex spatio-temporal processes (occurrents) and the enduring entities (continuants) that participate in such processes. For this purpose we distinguish between meta-ontology and token ontologies. Token ontologies fall into two major categories: ontologies of type SPAN and ontologies of type SNAP. These represent two complementary perspectives on reality and result in distinct though compatible systems of categories. The meta-ontological level then describes the relationships between the different token ontologies. In (...) a SNAP (snapshot) ontology we have enduring entities such as substances, qualities, roles, functions as these exist to be inventoried at a given moment of time. In a SPAN ontology we have perduring entities such as processes and their parts and aggregates. We argue that both kinds of ontological theory are required, together with the metaontology which joins them together, in order to give a non-reductionistic account of both static and dynamic aspects of the geospatial world. (shrink)

Instability occurs when the very fact of choosing one particular possible option rather than another affects the expected values of those possible options. In decision theory: An act is stable iff given that it is actually performed, its expected utility is maximal. When there is no stable choice available, the resulting instability can seem to pose a dilemma of practical rationality. A structurally very similar kind of instability, which occurs in cases of anti-expertise, can likewise seem to create dilemmas (...) of epistemic rationality. One possible line of response to such cases of instability, suggested by both Jeffrey (1983) and Sorensen (1987), is to insist that a rational agent can simply refuse to accept that such instability applies to herself in the first place. According to this line of thought it can be rational for a subject to discount even very strong empirical evidence that the anti-expertise condition obtains. I present a new variety of anti-expertise condition where no particular empirical stage-setting is required, since the subject can deduce a priori that an anti-expertise condition obtains. This kind of anti-expertise case is therefore not amenable to the line of response that Jeffrey and Sorensen recommend. (shrink)

Philosophical exploration of individualism and externalism in the cognitive sciences most recently has been focused on general evaluations of these two views (Adams & Aizawa 2008, Rupert 2008, Wilson 2004, Clark 2008). Here we return to broaden an earlier phase of the debate between individualists and externalists about cognition, one that considered in detail particular theories, such as those in developmental psychology (Patterson 1991) and the computational theory of vision (Burge 1986, Segal 1989). Music cognition is an area in (...) the cognitive sciences that has received little attention from philosophers, though it has relatively recently been thrown into the externalist spotlight (Cochrane 2008, Kruger 2014, Kersten forthcoming). Given that individualism can be thought of as a kind of paradigm for research on cognition, we provide a brief overview of the field of music cognition and individualistic tendencies within the field (sections 2 and 3) before turning to consider externalist alternatives to individualistic paradigms (section 4-5) and then arguing for a qualified form of externalism about music cognition (section 6). (shrink)

I consider the ‘inferentialist’ thesis that whenever a mental state rationally justifies a belief it is in virtue of inferential relations holding between the contents of the two states. I suggest that no good argument has yet been given for the thesis. I focus in particular on Williamson (2000) and Ginsborg (2011) and show that neither provides us with a reason to deny the plausible idea that experience can provide non-inferential justification for belief. I finish by pointing out some (...) theoretical costs and tensions associated with endorsing inferentialism. (shrink)

Given any proposition, is it possible to have rationally acceptable attitudes towards it? Absent reasons to the contrary, one would probably think that this should be possible. In this paper I provide a reason to the contrary. There is a proposition such that, if one has any opinions about it at all, one will have a rationally unacceptable set of propositional attitudes—or if one doesn’t, one will end up being cognitively imperfect in some other manner. The proposition I am (...) concerned with is a self-referential propositional attitude ascription involving the propositional attitude of rejection. Given a basic assumption about what constitutes irrationality, and a few assumptions about the nature of cognitively ideal agents, a paradox results. This paradox is superficially like the Liar, but it is importantly different in that no alethic notions are involved at all. As such, it stands independent of the Liar and is not a ‘revenge’ version of it. After setting out the paradox I discuss possible responses. After considering several I argue that one is best off simply accepting that the paradox shows us something surprising and interesting about rationality: that some cognitive shortfall is unavoidable even for ideal agents. I argue that nothing disastrous follows from accepting this conclusion. (shrink)

This essay examines how Husserl stretches the bounds of his philosophy of meaning, according to which all propositions are categorical, to account for existential propositions, which seem to lack predicates. I examine Husserl’s counterintuitive conclusion that an existential proposition does possess a predicate and I explore his endeavor to pinpoint what that predicate is. This goal is accomplished in three stages. First, I examine Husserl’s standard theory of predication and categorial intuition from his 1901 Logical Investigations. Second, I show how (...) Husserl imposes those 1901 insights to uncover the predicate of the existential proposition in unpublished manuscripts and lectures. He determines that the existential proposition predicates of the subject, that it corresponds to an actual object. This analysis reveals that Husserl’s descriptions of existential propositions from the late 1890s employed both static and genetic methodologies. In those texts, he carefully untangles and clarifies the co-enmeshed passive and active moments of consciousness and shows that the passive givenness of certain circumstances is the condition of possibility for our active verifying of propositions. Finally, I execute a critical assessment of Husserl’s thought to reveal that, while his insights about existential propositions are largely correct, they are augmented by re-construing them within the context of his mature philosophy. Only by renouncing his metaphysical neutrality and by accounting for intersubjectivity, can Husserl properly clarify existential propositions. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is the name for a recent movement whose participants use the methods of experimental psychology to probe the way people think about philosophical issues and then examine how the results of such studies bear on traditional philosophical debates. Given both the breadth of the research being carried out by experimental philosophers and the controversial nature of some of their central methodological assumptions, it is of no surprise that their work has recently come under attack. In this paper (...) we respond to some criticisms of experimental philosophy that have recently been put forward by Antti Kauppinen. Unlike the critics of experimental philosophy, we do not think the fledgling movement either will or should fall before it has even had a chance to rise up to explain what it is, what it seeks to do (and not to do), and exactly how it plans to do it. Filling in some of the salient details is the main goal of the present paper. (shrink)

Common-sense morality divides acts into those that are right and those that are wrong, but it thinks some wrong acts are more seriously wrong than others, for example murder than breaking a promise. If an act is more seriously wrong, you should feel more guilt about it and, other things equal, are more blameworthy for it and can deserve more punishment; more serious wrongs are also more to be avoided given empirical or moral uncertainty. This paper examines a number (...) of different views about what makes for more serious wrongness and considers the possibility that this may be different for acts that violate deontological vs. consequentialist duties. It also asks whether there’s a parallel concept that admits of degrees on the side of rightness, one of being, as we can say, more importantly right. (shrink)

In his 1998 postscript to ‘The Possibility of Resurrection’ Peter van Inwagen argues that the scenario he describes by which God might resurrect a human organism, even though probably not true, is still conceivable and, consequently, ‘serves to establish a possibility’, namely, the metaphysical possibility of the resurrection of material beings. Van Inwagen, however, has also argued in favour of ‘modal scepticism’ [van Inwagen in, God, knowledge and mystery: essays in philosophical theology, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1995b, pp. 11–12; van (...) Inwagen in, Philos Stud 92:67–84, 1998a]. That is, he thinks that we should limit all our claims about what is possible to ‘ordinary propositions about everyday matters’, 1998a). In this paper I argue that van Inwagen’s modal argument as found in ‘The Possibility of Resurrection’ is inconsistent with his modal scepticism as found in ‘Modal Epistemology’. In consequence, I argue that, given his modal scepticism, the task van Inwagen set himself in ‘The Possibility of Resurrection’ has not been achieved. (shrink)

Recent political developments cast doubt on the wisdom of democratic decision-making. Brexit, the Colombian people's (initial) rejection of peace with the FARC, and the election of Donald Trump suggest that the time is right to explore alternatives to democracy. In this essay, I describe and defend the epistocratic system of government which is, given current theoretical and empirical knowledge, most likely to produce optimal political outcomes—or at least better outcomes than democracy produces. To wit, we should expand the suffrage (...) as wide as possible and weight citizens’ votes in accordance with their competence. As it turns out, the optimal system is closely related to J. S. Mill's plural voting proposal. I also explain how voters’ competences can be precisely determined, without reference to an objective standard of correctness and without generating invidious comparisons between voters. (shrink)

We propose an ontological theory that is powerful enough to describe both complex spatio-temporal processes and the enduring entities that participate therein. For this purpose we introduce the notion a directly depicting ontology. Directly depicting ontologies are based on relatively simple languages and fall into two major categories: ontologies of type SPAN and ontologies of type SNAP. These represent two complementary perspectives on reality and employ distinct though compatible systems of categories. A SNAP (snapshot) ontology comprehends enduring entities such as (...) organisms, geographic features, or qualities as they exist at some given moment of time. A SPAN ontology comprehends perduring entities such as processes and their parts and aggregates as they unfold themselves through some temporal interval. We give an axiomatic account of the theory of directly depicting ontologies and of the core parts of the metaontological fragment within which they are embedded. (shrink)

Recognizing that truth is socially constructed or that knowledge and power are related is hardly a novelty in the social sciences. In the twenty-first century, however, there appears to be a renewed concern regarding people’s relationship with the truth and the propensity for certain actors to undermine it. Organizations are highly implicated in this, given their central roles in knowledge management and production and their attempts to learn, although the entanglement of these epistemological issues with business ethics has not (...) been engaged as explicitly as it might be. Drawing on work from a virtue epistemology perspective, this paper outlines the idea of a set of epistemic vices permeating organizations, along with examples of unethical epistemic conduct by organizational actors. While existing organizational research has examined various epistemic virtues that make people and organizations effective and responsible epistemic agents, much less is known about the epistemic vices that make them ineffective and irresponsible ones. Accordingly, this paper introduces vice epistemology, a nascent but growing subfield of virtue epistemology which, to the best of our knowledge, has yet to be explicitly developed in terms of business ethics. The paper concludes by outlining a business ethics research agenda on epistemic vice, with implications for responding to epistemic vices and their illegitimacy in practice. (shrink)

This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such (...) as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess mental autonomy (M-autonomy) in this sense. Empirical data from research on mind wandering and nocturnal dreaming clearly show that phenomenally represented cognitive processing is mostly an automatic, non-agentive process and that personal-level cognition is an exception rather than the rule. This raises an interesting new version of the mind-body problem: How is subpersonal cognition causally related to personal-level thought? More fine-grained phenomenological descriptions for what we called “conscious thought” in the past are needed, as well as a functional decomposition of umbrella terms like “mind wandering” into different target phenomena and a better understanding of the frequent dynamic transitions between spontaneous, task-unrelated thought and meta-awareness. In an attempt to lay some very first conceptual foundations for the now burgeoning field of research on mind wandering, the third section proposes two new criteria for individuating single episodes of mind-wandering, namely, the “self-representational blink” (SRB) and a sudden shift in the phenomenological “unit of identification” (UI). I close by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between mind wandering research and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

We argue that a semantics for counterfactual conditionals in terms of comparative overall similarity faces a formal limitation due to Arrow’s impossibility theorem from social choice theory. According to Lewis’s account, the truth-conditions for counterfactual conditionals are given in terms of the comparative overall similarity between possible worlds, which is in turn determined by various aspects of similarity between possible worlds. We argue that a function from aspects of similarity to overall similarity should satisfy certain plausible constraints while Arrow’s (...) impossibility theorem rules out that such a function satisfies all the constraints simultaneously. We argue that a way out of this impasse is to represent aspectual similarity in terms of ranking functions instead of representing it in a purely ordinal fashion. Further, we argue against the claim that the determination of overall similarity by aspects of similarity faces a difficulty in addition to the Arrovian limitation, namely the incommensurability of different aspects of similarity. The phenomena that have been cited as evidence for such incommensurability are best explained by ordinary vagueness. (shrink)

Semantic externalism holds that the content of at least some of our thoughts is partly constituted by external factors. Accordingly, it leads to the unintuitive consequence that we must then often be mistaken in what we are thinking, and any kind of claim of privileged access must be given up. Those who deny that semantic externalists can retain any account of self-knowledge are ‘incompatibilists’, while those who defend the compatibility of self-knowledge with semantic externalism are ‘compatibilists’. This paper examines (...) the claim of compatibilism, focusing on Burge’s “Slow Switching Argument” and Boghossian’s “Objection of Relevant Alternatives”. I argue that compatibilism is false, and that semantic externalism is incompatible with self-knowledge. (shrink)

This thesis is about the metaphysics of logic. I argue against a view I refer to as ‘logical realism’. This is the view that the logical constants represent a particular kind of metaphysical structure, which I dub ‘logico-metaphysical structure’. I argue instead for a more metaphysically lightweight view of logic which I dub ‘logical expressivism’. -/- In the first part of this thesis (Chapters I and II) I argue against a number of arguments that Theodore Sider has given for (...) logical realism. In Chapter I, I present an argument of his to the effect that logico-metaphysical structure provides the only good explanation of the semantic determinacy of the logical constants. I argue that other explanations are possible. In Chapter II, I present another argument of his to the effect that logico-metaphysical structure is something that comes along with ontological realism: the view that there is a non-language-relative fact of the matter about what exists. I argue that the connection between logical and ontological realism is not as close as Sider makes it out to be. -/- In the second part of this thesis (Chapters III – V) I set out a positive view of the logical constants that can explain both why their meanings are semantically determinate, and why they form part of our vocabulary. On that view, the primary bearers of logical structure are propositional attitudes, and the logical constants are in our language as vehicles for the expression of logically complex propositional attitudes. In Chapter III, I set out an expressivist theory of propositional logic. In Chapter IV, I use this theory to explain how the logical connectives end up having determinate meanings. In Chapter V, I extend the expressivist theory to predicate logic. (shrink)

Common-sense morality divides acts into those that are right and those that are wrong, but it thinks some wrong acts are more seriously wrong than others, for example murder than breaking a promise. If an act is more seriously wrong, you should feel more guilt about it and, other things equal, are more blameworthy for it and can deserve more punishment; more serious wrongs are also more to be avoided given empirical or moral uncertainty. This paper examines a number (...) of different views about what makes for more serious wrongness and considers the possibility that this may be different for acts that violate deontological vs. consequentialist duties. It also asks whether there’s a parallel concept that admits of degrees on the side of rightness, one of being, as we can say, more importantly right. (shrink)

Published in extended form as "Endurants and Perdurants in Directly Depicting Ontologies", -/- We propose an ontological theory that is powerful enough to describe both complex spatio-temporal processes and the enduring entities that participate in such processes. For this purpose we distinguish between ontologies and metaontology. Ontologies are based on very simple directly depicting languages and fall into two major categories: ontologies of type SPAN and ontologies of type SNAP. These represent two complementary perspectives on reality and result in distinct (...) though compatible systems of categories. In a SNAP (snapshot) ontology we have the enduring entities in a given domain as they exist to be inventoried at some given moment of time. In a SPAN ontology we have perduring entities such as processes and their parts and aggregates. We argue that both kinds of ontology are required, together with the meta-ontology which joins them together. On the level of meta-ontology we are able to impose constraints on ontologies of a sort which can support efficient processing of large amounts of data. (shrink)

According to the permissibility solution to the lottery paradox, the paradox can be solved if we conceive of epistemic justification as a species of permissibility. Clayton Littlejohn has objected that the permissibility solution draws on a sufficient condition for permissible belief that has implausible consequences and that the solution conflicts with our lack of knowledge that a given lottery ticket will lose. The paper defends the permissibility solution against Littlejohn's objections.

The term ‘continuous’ in real analysis wasn’t given an adequate formal definition until 1817. However, important theorems about continuity were proven long before that. How was this possible? In this paper, I introduce and refine a proposed answer to this question, derived from the work of Frank Jackson, David Lewis and other proponents of the ‘Canberra plan’. In brief, the proposal is that before 1817 the meaning of the term ‘continuous’ was determined by a number of ‘platitudes’ which had (...) some special epistemic status. (shrink)

‘Post-truth’ has become a buzzword for numerous current crises: the fragmentation of the media landscape, the ongoing debate about ‘fake news’, the loss of trust in science, etc. Although these crises take place in society, it is claimed that the roots of post-truth can be traced back to the history of philosophy. Occasionally, it is asserted that Karl Popper’s critical rationalism gave rise to post-truth: His rejection of verificationism has limited truth claims in the realm of science. Given the (...) absence of infallible evidence and certainty, critical rationalism calls for challenging scientific authority. I argue that post-truth is compatible with critical rationalism from an epistemological point of view, considering that both positions are critical of certainty. However, in critical rationalism, fallibilism, responsibility, and the idea of criticism are combined, and in this respect, it offers a possible way to overcome the problems that are associated with post-truth. This treatment of the problems of post-truth results from the recognition of moral responsibility to take action on the basis of a hypothesis that remains open to revision. (shrink)

A challenging question regarding compensation for historic injustices like slavery or colonialism is whether there is anyone to whom it would be just to ascribe duties of compensation given that allegedly all the perpetrators--the guilty parties--are dead. Some answer this question negatively, arguing it is wrong to ascribe to anyone compensatory duties for injustices committed by others who died multiple generations ago. This objection to compensation for historic injustice, which I call the Historical Responsibility Objection (HRO), takes as its (...) core premises (1) that one must be guilty of wrongdoing with respect to a given historic injustice in order to bear a duty to compensate for the injustice, and (2) that no one alive today can be considered so guilty because no one alive today was alive when the historic injustice occurred. The result is that we cannot ascribe compensatory duties to anyone for any historic injustic. While all arguments I am aware of that refute HRO reject premise (1), this paper sketches a novel refutation of HRO by exploring the implications of rejecting premise (2). Doing so would invoke the state as a collective agent, distinct from its constitutive individual agents, liable to acquire compensatory duties for wrongs it commits that none of its constitutive individuals bear. To the extent that states that are collective agents committed historic injustices, such states have duties to compensate for historic injustice. (shrink)

A probabilistic Chomsky–Schützenberger hierarchy of grammars is introduced and studied, with the aim of understanding the expressive power of generative models. We offer characterizations of the distributions definable at each level of the hierarchy, including probabilistic regular, context-free, (linear) indexed, context-sensitive, and unrestricted grammars, each corresponding to familiar probabilistic machine classes. Special attention is given to distributions on (unary notations for) positive integers. Unlike in the classical case where the "semi-linear" languages all collapse into the regular languages, using analytic (...) tools adapted from the classical setting we show there is no collapse in the probabilistic hierarchy: more distributions become definable at each level. We also address related issues such as closure under probabilistic conditioning. (shrink)

A central tenet of medical ethics holds that it is permissible to perform a medical intervention on a competent individual only if that individual has given informed consent to the intervention. However, in some circumstances it is tempting to say that the moral reason to obtain informed consent prior to administering a medical intervention is outweighed. For example, if an individual’s refusal to undergo a medical intervention would lead to the transmission of a dangerous infectious disease to other members (...) of the community, one might claim that it would be morally permissible to administer the intervention even in the absence of consent. Indeed, as we shall discuss below, there are a number of examples of public health authorities implementing compulsory or coercive measures for the purposes of infectious disease control (IDC). The plausibility of the thought that non-consensual medical interventions might be justified when performed for the purpose of IDC raises the question of whether such interventions might permissibly be used to realize other public goods. In this article we focus on one possibility: whether it could be permissible to non-consensually impose certain interventions that alter brain states or processes through chemical or physical means on serious criminal offenders. We shall suggest that some such interventions might be permissible if they safely and effectively serve to facilitate the offender’s rehabilitation and thereby prevent criminal recidivism. (shrink)

Minimalism about truth is one of the main contenders for our best theory of truth, but minimalists face the charge of being unable to properly state their theory. Donald Davidson incisively pointed out that minimalists must generalize over occurrences of the same expression placed in two different contexts, which is futile. In order to meet the challenge, Paul Horwich argues that one can nevertheless characterize the axioms of the minimalist theory. Sten Lindström and Tim Button have independently argued that Horwich’s (...) attempt to formulate minimalism remains unsuccessful. We show how to properly state Horwich’s axioms by appealing to propositional functions that are given by definite descriptions. Both Lindström and Button discuss proposals similar to ours and conclude that they are unsuccessful. Our new suggestion avoids these objections. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Marc Champagne leveled an argument against what Wilfrid Sellars dubbed “the Myth of the Given.” Champagne contends that what is given in observation in the form of a sensation must be able to both cause and justify propositionally structured beliefs. He argues for this claim by attempting to show that one cannot decide which of two equally valid chains of inference is sound without appeal to what is given in experience. (...) In this note, I show that while this argument is sound, the conclusion he draws is far too strong. Champagne’s argument shows only that our empirical beliefs are determined through experience. It does not license the stronger claim that, in order for us to have empirical knowledge, bare sensations must be able to justify beliefs. (shrink)

Thomas Nagel provides a brief summary of Wittgenstein's thought, both early and late, for the general public. Summarizing the late Wittgenstein, Nagel writes: "The beginning, the point at which we run out of justifications for dividing up or organizing the world or experience as we do, is typically a form of life. Justification comes to an end within it, not by an appeal to it. This is as true of the language of experience as it is of the language (...) of physical objects or mathematic. Experience cannot be regarded as the absolute given on which the structure of the world is based, for the categories of experience itself—what constitutes sameness, difference, and structure in that domain—are as much dependent on the interpersonal responses of a communal form of life as any other conceptual or linguistic domain.". (shrink)

Distinctions in fundamentality between different levels of description are central to the viability of contemporary decoherence-based Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM). This approach to quantum theory characteristically combines a determinate fundamental reality (one universal wave function) with an indeterminate emergent reality (multiple decoherent worlds). In this chapter I explore how the Everettian appeal to fundamentality and emergence can be understood within existing metaphysical frameworks, identify grounding and concept fundamentality as promising theoretical tools, and use them to characterize a system of explanatory (...) levels (with associated laws of nature) for EQM. This Everettian level structure encompasses and extends the ‘classical’ levels structure. The ‘classical’ levels of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. are recovered, but they are emergent in character and potentially variable across Everett worlds. EQM invokes an additional fundamental level, not present in the classical levels picture, and a novel potential role for self-location in interlevel metaphysics. When given a modal realist interpretation, EQM also makes trouble for supervenience-based approaches to levels. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health disaster driven largely by antibiotic use in human health care. Doctors considering whether to prescribe antibiotics face an ethical conflict between upholding individual patient health and advancing public health aims. Existing literature mainly examines whether patients awaiting consultations desire or expect to receive antibiotic prescriptions, but does not report views of the wider public regarding conditions under which doctors should prescribe antibiotics. It also does not explore the ethical significance of public views (...) or their sensitivity to awareness of AMR risks or the standpoint (self-interested or impartial) taken by participants. Methods: An online survey was conducted with a sample of the U.S. public (n = 158). Participants were asked to indicate what relative priority should be given to individual patients and society-at-large from various standpoints and in various contexts, including antibiotic prescription. Results: Of the participants, 50.3% thought that doctors should generally prioritize individual patients over society, whereas 32.0% prioritized society over individual patients. When asked in the context of AMR, 39.2% prioritized individuals whereas 45.5% prioritized society. Participants were significantly less willing to prioritize society over individuals when they themselves were the patient, both in general (p = .001) and in relation to AMR specifically (p = .006). Conclusions: Participants’ attitudes were more oriented to society and sensitive to collective responsibility when informed about the social costs of antibiotic use and when considered from a third-person rather than first-person perspective. That is, as participants came closer to taking the perspective of an informed and impartial “ideal observer,” their support for prioritizing society increased. Our findings suggest that, insofar as antibiotic policies and practices should be informed by attitudes that are impartial and well-informed, there is significant support for prioritizing society. (shrink)

This essay attempts to explain the traditional and contemporary philosophical neglect of disability by arguing that the philosophical prioritization of rationality leads to a distinctly philosophical conception of disability as a negative category of non-normative embodiment. I argue that the privilege given to rationality as distinctive of what it means to be both a human subject and a moral agent informs supposedly rational norms of human embodiment. Non-normative types of embodiment in turn can only be understood in contradistinction to (...) these rationalized norms, which are predicated on the elimination of certain features and types of embodiment deemed inimical to reason. To establish this thesis, I focus on Platonic philosophy and the Republic as Platonic conceptions of reason and normative types of embodiment have a historical and conceptual influence on contemporary assumptions concerning rational human nature, medicine, mental health, vice, disease, and impairment. (shrink)

The goal of this short chapter, aimed at philosophers, is to provide an overview and brief explanation of some central concepts involved in predictive processing (PP). Even those who consider themselves experts on the topic may find it helpful to see how the central terms are used in this collection. To keep things simple, we will first informally define a set of features important to predictive processing, supplemented by some short explanations and an alphabetic glossary. -/- The features described here (...) are not shared in all PP accounts. Some may not be necessary for an individual model; others may be contested. Indeed, not even all authors of this collection will accept all of them. To make this transparent, we have encouraged contributors to indicate briefly which of the features are necessary to support the arguments they provide, and which (if any) are incompatible with their account. For the sake of clarity, we provide the complete list here, very roughly ordered by how central we take them to be for “Vanilla PP” (i.e., a formulation of predictive processing that will probably be accepted by most researchers working on this topic). More detailed explanations will be given below. Note that these features do not specify individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the application of the concept of “predictive processing”. All we currently have is a semantic cluster, with perhaps some overlapping sets of jointly sufficient criteria. The framework is still developing, and it is difficult, maybe impossible, to provide theory-neutral explanations of all PP ideas without already introducing strong background assumptions. (shrink)

AT POSTERIOR ANALYTICS 1.1.71B15 AND FOLLOWING, Aristotle identifies six characteristics of the first principles from which demonstrative science proceeds. These are traditionally grouped into two sets of three: group A: ex alêthôn, prôtôn, amêsôn; group B: gnôrimôterôn, proterôn, and aitiôn. The characteristic, which I believe has been underrated and somewhat misinterpreted by scholars and commentators from Philoponus to the present day, is the characteristic of truth. In this paper I propose to present a textually based interpretation of truth that shows (...) the following: that truth is necessarily linked to being. The example given of nonbeing, the commensurability of the diagonal with the sides of a square, suggests more than simple truth is required for first principles and premises of demonstrative science; and that Aristotle later in the APo changes this characteristic to necessary truth, for he recognizes that truth alone is an insufficient basis for scientific demonstration. The referents of necessary truth are eternal being, and the need for eternal being demands that universals exist extramentally for Aristotle. Finally, one of the important ways that universal genera and species exist for Aristotle are as real, causal principles. (shrink)

Much of the literature from political psychology has focused on the negative traits that are positively associated with affective polarization—e.g., animus, arrogance, distrust, hostility, and outrage. Not as much attention has been focused on the positive traits that might be negatively associated with polarization. For instance, given that people who are intellectually humble display greater openness and less hostility towards conflicting viewpoints (Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016; Hopkin et al., 2014; Porter & Schumann, 2018), one might reasonably expect them to (...) be less polarized. -/- We ran two studies designed to explore the relationship between various forms of humility and polarization. Our chief finding is that people who value humility are prone to what we are calling epistemic polarization—that is, judging the epistemic traits of contrapartisans negatively—which in turn plays a role in polarization more generally. Not only are contrapartisans deemed to have the wrong moral and political beliefs, they are also viewed as less humble and more arrogant, close-minded, and irrational. This makes matters even worse when it comes to the growing partisan divide. In light of our findings, we believe that the novel concept of epistemic polarization that we introduce is a promising target for further investigation. (shrink)

(1) This is Part 2 of the semantic theory I call TM. In Part 1, I developed TM as a theory in the analytic philosophy of language, in lexical semantics, and in the sociology of relating occasions of statement production and comprehension to formal and informal lexicographic conclusions about statements and lexical items – roughly, as showing how synchronic semantics is a sociological derivative of diachronic, person-relative acts of linguistic behavior. I included descriptions of new cognitive psychology experimental paradigms which (...) would allow us to precisely measure the two constituents of semantics – meaning and reference – both at the level of individual speech acts and at the level of societal convergences, i.e. at both the token and type levels. -/- (2) In the Introduction, I recapitulate the arguments of Part 1. The Introduction also develops some analytic philosophical and lexical semantics themes not discussed in Part 1. -/- (3) After the Introduction, I present neural TM (nTM) as a theory of the neural mechanisms and processes which give rise to these person/occasion-relative acts of linguistic behavior. I develop nTM at three levels, the first two of which describe linguistic/semantic functions independently of their cortical locations. At the first level, I describe individual word-to-word and word-to-object connections. At the second level, I describe the corresponding structuralist networks of which they are the individual components. At this level, I introduce some key linguistic concepts of TM – its graded meaning, reference, and generalization sets, and the types of statements which express various levels of word-to-word and word-to-object relationships among lexical items which, because of the constraints they impose on the use of those lexical items in statements we produce and comprehend, are concepts. This constitutes the second structural level of nTM. -/- (4) At the third level, I associate the non-localized structures of the previous levels with cortically located neural structures and with the fasciculi that connect them. I distinguish neural areas in which primary (phonetic) and secondary (orthographic) lexicons are stored in long-term memory. I also describe the embodied concepts which co-exist in the anterior temporal lobes with the images they lexicalize. These concepts are often said to name physical objects and their features, although what they in fact name are kinds of physical objects and features. I describe how conceptual constraints and referential constraints interact to channel our intentions to say how things are into statements which are semantically well-formed, and which consequently successfully communicate information. -/- (5) Following this presentation of nTM, I examine five prominent neural semantic theories. I point out what is wrong with each of them as far as their explanations of semantics are concerned, and I also indicate how nTM can replace the “semantic cores” of those theories. -/- (6) The two basic mistakes made by neuroscience semantic theories, as I will explain, are (i) that all but one of them regard semantics as a matter of the association of words with perceptual images, and of generalizations from those associations; and (ii) that they all rely on an unspecified set of neural structures which purportedly encode the meaning of concepts in abstraction from their phonological and orthographic forms. nTM maintains, in contrast, that there are no abstract neural representations of semantic content. Neural constraints on our linguistic behavior, especially on our ascriptive and co-ascriptive use of words, express the semantic constraints on those words which make them concepts. That is the semantic content of words. -/- (7) I next consider several results from neuroscience experimental data which have been given one interpretation by one or another of the standard neurosemantic theories, but to which nTM gives a different interpretation. I include several predictions which I have found neither confirmed nor disconfirmed in the experimental neuroscience literature. -/- (8) After a concluding section in which I summarize the major changes to neurosemantic theory introduced by TM, and the analytic philosophy of language and lexical semantics contexts within which TM is situated, there follows an appendix in which I discuss neural net AI, and make some recommendations for implementing nTM in silicon. (shrink)

To understand Hobbes’s handling of Christian scripture in Part 3 of Leviathan we need to see it in the light of his own radical account of the norms controlling public religious speech and practice as set out in Part 2 and in other works such as De Cive and De Corpore. As these texts make clear, Hobbes holds that we ought rationally to venerate the first cause of all, and that the proper way to venerate this awesome and incomprehensible being (...) is to publicly adopt the local culture’s religious practices, however arbitrary or conventional those practices might be. For the seventeenth-century English subject, the Anglo-Protestant scriptural religion provides the appropriate vehicle to express this rationally mandated religious piety, and thus provides a form of devotion that Hobbes embraces in a spirit of genuine religious reverence. At the same time, he also regards this religion, like all scriptural religions, as a conventional human artifact that, given the ear of the sovereign, he might hope to shape in favor of Hobbesian ideals such as civil obedience, the separation of philosophy from religion, and the extirpation of belief in an immaterial spirit-world. The proposed interpretation dissolves systematic problems facing irreligious readings on the one hand, and more straightforwardly Christian readings on the other. (shrink)

We consider momentum operators on intrinsically curved manifolds. Given that the momentum operators are Killing vector fields whose integral curves are geodesics, it is shown that the corresponding manifold is either flat, or otherwise of compact type with positive constant sectional curvature and dimension equal to 1, 3 or 7. Explicit representations of momentum operators and the associated Casimir element will be discussed for the 3-sphere. It will be verified that the structure constants of the underlying Lie algebra are (...) proportional to 2ħ/R, where R is the curvature radius of the sphere. This results in a countable energy and momentum spectrum of freely moving particles. It is shown that the maximum resolution of the possible momenta is given by the de-Broglie wave length λ=πR, which is identical to the diameter of the manifold. The corresponding covariant position operators are defined in terms of geodesic normal coordinates and the associated commutator relations of position and momentum are established. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders Ockham's critique of the species theory of cognition. As Ockham understands this theory, it says that the direct objects of cognition are mental representations, or species. According to many commentators, one of Ockham's main objections to this theory was that, if the direct objects of cognition are species rather than external objects, we will never be able to establish whether or not a given species is a veridical representation of the world. In this paper I argue (...) that this line of interpretation sits uneasily with Ockham's epistemology, and offer a new interpretation of Ockham's critique of species. (shrink)

Sabine Hohl and Dominic Roser argue that states that emit their fair share of greenhouse gases have a duty to step in for states that emit more than their fair share. In this comment I ask two questions: First, given that Hohl and Roser are right, how relevant is the duty to step in for the polluters in practice? Second, is there such a duty on more non-ideal approaches than the one taken by Hohl and Roser as well? I (...) argue that the duty to step in for the polluters is not very relevant (because of considerations of demandingness and fairness) and that on more extremely non-ideal approaches there may be only a limited duty to take up the slack, or no such duty at all (because the duty must be weighed against other duties, and because states are poorly motivated to act in conformity with it). (shrink)

It is not a particularly hard thing to want or seek explanations. In fact, explanations seem to be a large and natural part of our cognitive lives. Children ask why and how questions very early in development and seem genuinely to want some sort of answer, despite our often being poorly equipped to provide them at the appropriate level of sophistication and detail. We seek and receive explanations in every sphere of our adult lives, whether it be to understand why (...) a friendship has foundered, why a car will not start, or why ice expands when it freezes. Moreover, correctly or incorrectly, most of the time we think we know when we have or have not received a good explanation. There is a sense both that a given, successful explanation satisfies a cognitive need, and that a questionable or dubious explanation does not. There are also compelling intuitions about what make good explanations in terms of their form, that is, a sense of when they are structured correctly. (shrink)

St. Thomas’s Third Way to prove the existence of God, “Of Possibility and Necessity” (ST 1, q.2, art. 3, response) is one of the most controverted passages in the entire Thomistic corpus. The central point of dispute is that if there were only possible beings, each at some time would cease to exist and, therefore, at some point in time nothing would exist, and because something cannot come from nothing, in such an eventuality, nothing would exist now—a reductio ad (...) absurdum conclusion. Therefore, at least one necessary being must exist. Generations of critics and defenders have contended over St. Thomas’s proof. This article argues that the principle of pros hen analogy is implicit in the Third Way and that once identified explains the ontological dependency of possible beings, as secondary analogates, on the first necessary being, as primary analogate. Thus, without the necessary being as primary analogate, possible beings simply could not exist. The fact that they do exist is evidence for the existence of the necessary being. St. Thomas makes synthesizes the principle of pros hen analogy, as found in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, with the Neoplatonic principle of participation. Aristotle develops pros hen analogy in contradistinction to univocal and equivocal predication as well as to genus in Metaphysics 4.2, 11.3, 12.3-5. Since Scotus and re-enforced by modern analytic logic, philosophers have almost universally regarded any kind of analogical predication as a sub-category of equivocal predication and, thus, implicitly occlude the possibility of considering pros hen analogy in their readings of the Third Way. Distinction of per se and per accidens infinite regress and of radical and natural contingency are also central to understanding the Third Way. While resolving apparent problems in the Third Way, the article also seeks to rehabilitate the doctrine of pros hen analogy as a basic principle in Thomistic and, indeed, Aristotelian metaphysics. (shrink)

So-called ‘distinctively mathematical explanations’ (DMEs) are said to explain physical phenomena, not in terms of contingent causal laws, but rather in terms of mathematical necessities that constrain the physical system in question. Lange argues that the existence of four or more equilibrium positions of any double pendulum has a DME. Here we refute both Lange’s claim itself and a strengthened and extended version of the claim that would pertain to any n-tuple pendulum system on the ground that such explanations are (...) actually causal explanations in disguise and their associated modal conditionals are not general enough to explain the said features of such dynamical systems. We argue and show that if circumscribing the antecedent for a necessarily true conditional in such explanations involves making a causal analysis of the problem, then the resulting explanation is not distinctively mathematical or non-causal. Our argument generalises to other dynamical systems that may have purported DMEs analogous to the one proposed by Lange, and even to some other counterfactual accounts of non-causal explanation given by Reutlinger and Rice. (shrink)

Based on the Aristotelian dynamis-energeia-differentiation, a concept issuing dynamic coherence providers as the sub-level of individual realizations. This logical sub-level is given for any kind of realizations. Based on this two-level approach, to some degree similar to the two-level approach developed by Polanyi, model of biopsychosocial interaction is established. It is suggested as the theoretical basis for a person-centered approach in healthcare, integrating science and humanitites.