The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics offers the most authoritative and compelling guide to this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. Twenty-four of the world's most distinguished specialists provide brand-new essays about 'what there is': what kinds of things there are, and what relations hold among entities falling under various categories. They give the latest word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness. The Handbook's unrivaled breadth and depth make it the definitive reference work (...) for students and academics across the philosophical spectrum. (shrink)

Selective scientific realists disagree on which theoretical posits should be regarded as essential to the empirical success of a scientific theory. A satisfactory account of essentialness will show that the (approximate) truth of the selected posits adequately explains the success of the theory. Therefore, (a) the essential elements must be discernible prospectively; (b) there cannot be a priori criteria regarding which type of posit is essential; and (c) the overall success of a theory, or ‘cluster’ of propositions, not only individual (...) derivations, should be explicable. Given these desiderata, I propose a “unification criterion” for identifying essential elements. (shrink)

This paper constitutes a radical departure from the existing philosophical literature on models, modeling-practices, and model-based science. I argue that the various entities and practices called 'models' and 'modeling-practices' are too diverse, too context-sensitive, and serve too many scientific purposes and roles, as to allow for a general philosophical analysis. From this recognition an alternative view emerges that I shall dub model anarchism.

Shows that the very same asymmetries that arise for intentionally also arise from deciding, desiring, in favor of, opposed to, and advocating. It seems that the phenomenon is not due to anything about the concept of intentional action in particular. Rather, the effects observed for the concept of intentional action should be regarded as just one manifestation of the pervasive impact of moral judgment.

On a currently popular reading of Locke, an idea represents its cause, or what God intended to be its cause. Against Martha Bolton and my former self (among others), I argue that Locke cannot hold such a view, since it sins against his epistemology and theory of abstraction. I argue that Locke is committed to a resemblance theory of representation, with the result that ideas of secondary qualities are not representations.

Economic policy evaluations require social welfare functions for variable-size populations. Two important candidates are critical-level generalized utilitarianism (CLGU) and rank-discounted critical-level generalized utilitarianism, which was recently characterized by Asheim and Zuber (2014) (AZ). AZ introduce a novel axiom, existence of egalitarian equivalence (EEE). First, we show that, under some uncontroversial criteria for a plausible social welfare relation, EEE suffices to rule out the Repugnant Conclusion of population ethics (without AZ’s other novel axioms). Second, we provide a new characterization of CLGU: (...) AZ’s set of axioms is equivalent to CLGU when EEE is replaced by the axiom same-number independence. (shrink)

Are demands for equality motivated by envy? Nietzsche, Freud, Hayek, and Nozick all thought so. Call this the Envy Objection. For egalitarians, the Envy Objection is meant to sting. Many egalitarians have tried to evade the Envy Objection.. But should egalitarians be worried about envy? In this paper, I argue that egalitarians should stop worrying and learn to love envy. I argue that the persistent unwillingness to embrace the Envy Objection is rooted in a common misunderstanding of the nature of (...) the charge, what it reveals, and what can be said in response to it. I develop what Bernard Williams might call a vindicatory genealogy of envy, thereby allowing us to see that envy, rather than undermining egalitarian intuitions, can in fact play a distinct justificatory role (when it is fitting), which undermines the Envy Objection. (shrink)

Physical boundaries and the earliest topologists. Topology has a relatively short history; but its 19th century roots are embedded in philosophical problems about the nature of extended substances and their boundaries which go back to Zeno and Aristotle. Although it seems that there have always been philosophers interested in these matters, questions about the boundaries of three-dimensional objects were closest to center stage during the later medieval and modern periods. Are the boundaries of an object actually existing, less-than-three-dimensional parts of (...) the object—that is, are solids bounded by two-dimensional surfaces, surfaces by one-dimensional “edges” or “physical lines”, edges by dimensionless “simples”? If not, how does a perfectly spherical object manage to touch a perfectly flat object—what part of the sphere is in immediate contact with the plane, if the sphere has no unextended parts? But if such parts be admitted, are we not then saddled with “actual infinities” of simples, lines, and surfaces spread throughout each continuous object—the boundaries of all the object’s internal parts? Does it help to say that these internal boundaries exist only “potentially”? (shrink)

Are living organisms--as Descartes argued--just machines? Or is the nature of life such that it can never be fully explained by mechanistic models? In this thought-provoking and controversial book, eminent geophysicist Walter M. Elsasser argues that the behavior of living organisms cannot be reduced to physico-chemical causality. Suggesting that molecular biology today is at the same point as Newtonian physics on the eve of the quantum revolution, Elsasser lays the foundation for a theoretical biology that points the way toward (...) a natural philosophy of organic life. Explicitly repudiating "vitalism" (the notion that the laws of nature need to be modified when applied to living organisms), Elsasser argues instead that the structural complexity of even a single living cell is "transcomputational"--that is, beyond the power of any imaginable system to compute. Beginning from this insight, Elsasser leads the reader through a step-by-step process that ultimately arrives at the conclusion that living and non-living matter are separated by "a no-man's land of irrationality." Trained in Germany as a physicist, Elsasser first pondered the implications of quantum mechanics for biology as early as 1951. The more closely he studied the inherent complexity of life, the more skeptical he became of the reductionist view of organisms as tiny machines. "An organism," he concluded, "is a source of causal chains which cannot be traced beyond a terminal point because they are lost in the unfathomable complexity of the organism." Like the physicist who works within the bounds of an unfathomable universe, Elsasser argues, the biologist must seek answers within a system that is no less unfathomable. (shrink)

An indeterminate version of Henry Sidgwick’s “Dualism of Practical Reason” may offer a solution to Derek Parfit’s “Repugnant Conclusion”. Here we will outline the problem of Sidgwick’s Dualism and how to resolve it within the framework of practical reason and the problem of Parfit’s Repugnance and why it is irresoluble within the framework of pure utilitarianism. Then we will argue how Sidgwick’s Dualism, under certain formulations of indeterminacy, specifically under those Indeterminacy Views advanced by David Phillips (and others), implies a (...) resolution to the Repugnant Conclusion that is both intuitive and simple, resolving Sidgwick’s Dualism and Parfit’s Repugnance in one conceptual move. (shrink)

Research Articles Dean Moyar, Kantian Review, FirstView Article.

This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to (...) deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathological complexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computational complexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals. (shrink)

In Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Robert Stern argues that Hegel has a social command view of obligation. On this view, there is an element of social command or social sanction that must be added to a judgment of the good in order to bring about an obligation. I argue to the contrary that Hegel's conception of conscience, and thus the individual's role in obligation, is more central to his account than the social dimension. While agreeing with Stern that (...) Hegel's conception of Sittlichkeit does preserve a role for obligation, and that the social plays an important part in that account, I argue that there is no extra social component that converts the morally good into obligation. Rather, Hegel's conception of Sittlichkeit as the “living good” means that judgments of the moral facts are simultaneously judgments of obligation. (shrink)

In this response I first address the criticisms of omission by discussing some of the elements of the original project that were excluded in the final version (section 1). In section 2 I respond to Howard’s criticism that I assume too much transparency in conscience. In section 3 I discuss the problem of evil and the transition in the Phenomenology of Spirit from conscience to religion. I focus here especially on the distinction between Objective and Absolute Spirit, and on how (...) that distinction plays out differently in the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right. In section 4 I take up the specifically political issues of conscience, responding to Speight’s suggestion that conscience should have a transformative role and to De Nys’s query about the State’s relationship to dissenting moral and religious views. Finally, in section 5 I take up the issues of whether I and Hegel do justice to the range of uses of conscience and whether or not the Hegelian view is too optimistic about modernity. (shrink)

Nietzsche has been accused by Habermas of abandoning the pursuit of emancipation and truth. Ironically, this pursuit is at the core of Nietzsche’s works, though radically transformed. The pursuit of knowledge requires emancipated sovereign individuality, a severe honesty, and the courage to follow one's most rigorous use of reason and creative insight wherever they may lead, including the most disturbing insights about truth, language and reason themselves. The first part of this paper discusses Nietzsche’s ideas of individual sovereignty and the (...) associated ideas of emancipation and transformation necessary to this. The next section entitled The Question of Truth: Beyond Universalism and the Quest for Foundations and Certainty deals with how knowledge and truth are intelligible notions in the absence of certainty and absolute standards of truth. The following section, Nietzsche, Habermas and Social Solidarity shows how Habermas’s attempt to ground morality in his discourse ethics cannot succeed once the Nietzchean insight into truth is understood. In the final part, The Irony of Sovereign Individuality, I argue that morality is inconsistent with the individuality that it is supposed to uphold. Nietzsche’s ethical ideal provides a model for concrete individuality that offers the most powerful ethical contribution to social solidarity, given the failure of any grounded morality. (shrink)

There has been much criticism of the idea that Friston's free-energy principle can unite the life and mind sciences. Here, we argue that perhaps the greatest problem for the totalizing ambitions of its proponents is a failure to recognize the importance of evolutionary dynamics and to provide a convincing adaptive story relating free-energy minimization to organismal fitness.

In this paper we present a philosophical motivation for the logics of formal inconsistency, a family of paraconsistent logics whose distinctive feature is that of having resources for expressing the notion of consistency within the object language in such a way that consistency may be logically independent of non-contradiction. We defend the view according to which logics of formal inconsistency may be interpreted as theories of logical consequence of an epistemological character. We also argue that in order to philosophically justify (...) paraconsistency there is no need to endorse dialetheism, the thesis that there are true contradictions. Furthermore, we show that mbC, a logic of formal inconsistency based on classical logic, may be enhanced in order to express the basic ideas of an intuitive interpretation of contradictions as conflicting evidence. (shrink)

Variable-Value axiologies avoid Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion while satisfying some weak instances of the Mere Addition principle. We apply calibration methods to two leading members of the family of Variable-Value views conditional upon: first, a very weak instance of Mere Addition and, second, some plausible empirical assumptions about the size and welfare of the intertemporal world population. We find that such facts calibrate these two Variable-Value views to be nearly totalist, and therefore imply conclusions that should seem repugnant to anyone who (...) opposes Total Utilitarianism only due to the Repugnant Conclusion. (shrink)

The Principle of Ariadne, formulated in 1988 ago by Walter Carnielli and Carlos Di Prisco and later published in 1993, is an infinitary principle that is independent of the Axiom of Choice in ZF, although it can be consistently added to the remaining ZF axioms. The present paper surveys, and motivates, the foundational importance of the Principle of Ariadne and proposes the Ariadne Game, showing that the Principle of Ariadne, corresponds precisely to a winning strategy for the Ariadne Game. (...) Some relations to other alternative. set-theoretical principles are also briefly discussed. (shrink)

Boolean-valued models of set theory were independently introduced by Scott, Solovay and Vopěnka in 1965, offering a natural and rich alternative for describing forcing. The original method was adapted by Takeuti, Titani, Kozawa and Ozawa to lattice-valued models of set theory. After this, Löwe and Tarafder proposed a class of algebras based on a certain kind of implication which satisfy several axioms of ZF. From this class, they found a specific 3-valued model called PS3 which satisfies all the axioms of (...) ZF, and can be expanded with a paraconsistent negation *, thus obtaining a paraconsistent model of ZF. The logic (PS3 ,*) coincides (up to language) with da Costa and D'Ottaviano logic J3, a 3-valued paraconsistent logic that have been proposed independently in the literature by several authors and with different motivations such as CluNs, LFI1 and MPT. We propose in this paper a family of algebraic models of ZFC based on LPT0, another linguistic variant of J3 introduced by us in 2016. The semantics of LPT0, as well as of its first-order version QLPT0, is given by twist structures defined over Boolean agebras. From this, it is possible to adapt the standard Boolean-valued models of (classical) ZFC to twist-valued models of an expansion of ZFC by adding a paraconsistent negation. We argue that the implication operator of LPT0 is more suitable for a paraconsistent set theory than the implication of PS3, since it allows for genuinely inconsistent sets w such that [(w = w)] = 1/2 . This implication is not a 'reasonable implication' as defined by Löwe and Tarafder. This suggests that 'reasonable implication algebras' are just one way to define a paraconsistent set theory. Our twist-valued models are adapted to provide a class of twist-valued models for (PS3,*), thus generalizing Löwe and Tarafder result. It is shown that they are in fact models of ZFC (not only of ZF). (shrink)

The main objective o f this descriptive paper is to present the general notion of translation between logical systems as studied by the GTAL research group, as well as its main results, questions, problems and indagations. Logical systems here are defined in the most general sense, as sets endowed with consequence relations; translations between logical systems are characterized as maps which preserve consequence relations (that is, as continuous functions between those sets). In this sense, logics together with translations form a (...) bicomplete category of which topological spaces with topological continuous functions constitute a full subcategory. We also describe other uses of translations in providing new semantics for non-classical logics and in investigating duality between them. An important subclass of translations, the conservative translations, which strongly preserve consequence relations, is introduced and studied. Some specific new examples of translations involving modal logics, many-valued logics, para- consistent logics, intuitionistic and classical logics are also described. (shrink)

Researchers often lack the necessary data to credibly estimate racial discrimination in policing. In particular, police administrative records lack information on civilians police observe but do not investigate. In this article, we show that if police racially discriminate when choosing whom to investigate, analyses using administrative records to estimate racial discrimination in police behavior are statistically biased, and many quantities of interest are unidentified—even among investigated individuals—absent strong and untestable assumptions. Using principal stratification in a causal mediation framework, we derive (...) the exact form of the statistical bias that results from traditional estimation. We develop a bias-correction procedure and nonparametric sharp bounds for race effects, replicate published findings, and show the traditional estimator can severely underestimate levels of racially biased policing or mask discrimination entirely. We conclude by outlining a general and feasible design for future studies that is robust to this inferential snare. (shrink)

One of the most expected properties of a logical system is that it can be algebraizable, in the sense that an algebraic counterpart of the deductive machinery could be found. Since the inception of da Costa's paraconsistent calculi, an algebraic equivalent for such systems have been searched. It is known that these systems are non self-extensional (i.e., they do not satisfy the replacement property). More than this, they are not algebraizable in the sense of Blok-Pigozzi. The same negative results hold (...) for several systems of the hierarchy of paraconsistent logics known as Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs). Because of this, these logics are uniquely characterized by semantics of non-deterministic kind. This paper offers a solution for two open problems in the domain of paraconsistency, in particular connected to algebraization of LFIs, by obtaining several LFIs weaker than C1, each of one is algebraizable in the standard Lindenbaum-Tarski's sense by a suitable variety of Boolean algebras extended with operators. This means that such LFIs satisfy the replacement property. The weakest LFI satisfying replacement presented here is called RmbC, which is obtained from the basic LFI called mbC. Some axiomatic extensions of RmbC are also studied, and in addition a neighborhood semantics is defined for such systems. It is shown that RmbC can be defined within the minimal bimodal non-normal logic E+E defined by the fusion of the non-normal modal logic E with itself. Finally, the framework is extended to first-order languages. RQmbC, the quantified extension of RmbC, is shown to be sound and complete w.r.t. BALFI semantics. (shrink)

This paper reviews the central points and presents some recent developments of the epistemic approach to paraconsistency in terms of the preservation of evidence. Two formal systems are surveyed, the basic logic of evidence (BLE) and the logic of evidence and truth (LET J ), designed to deal, respectively, with evidence and with evidence and truth. While BLE is equivalent to Nelson’s logic N4, it has been conceived for a different purpose. Adequate valuation semantics that provide decidability are given for (...) both BLE and LET J . The meanings of the connectives of BLE and LET J , from the point of view of preservation of evidence, is explained with the aid of an inferential semantics. A formalization of the notion of evidence for BLE as proposed by M. Fitting is also reviewed here. As a novel result, the paper shows that LET J is semantically characterized through the so-called Fidel structures. Some opportunities for further research are also discussed. (shrink)

This paper introduces new logical systems which axiomatize a formal representation of inconsistency (here taken to be equivalent to contradictoriness) in classical logic. We start from an intuitive semantical account of inconsistent data, fixing some basic requirements, and provide two distinct sound and complete axiomatics for such semantics, LFI1 and LFI2, as well as their first-order extensions, LFI1* and LFI2*, depending on which additional requirements are considered. These formal systems are examples of what we dub Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFI) (...) and form part of a much larger family of similar logics. We also show that there are translations from classical and paraconsistent first-order logics into LFI1* and LFI2*, and back. Hence, despite their status as subsystems of classical logic, LFI1* and LFI2* can codify any classical or paraconsistent reasoning. (shrink)

The conditions animals experience during the early developmental stages of their lives can have critical ongoing effects on their future health, welfare, and proper development. In this paper we draw on evolutionary theory to improve our understanding of the processes of developmental programming, particularly Predictive Adaptive Responses (PAR) that serve to match offspring phenotype with predicted future environmental conditions. When these predictions fail, a mismatch occurs between offspring phenotype and the environment, which can have long-lasting health and welfare effects. Examples (...) include metabolic diseases resulting from maternal nutrition and behavioral changes from maternal stress. An understanding of these processes and their evolutionary origins will help in identifying and providing appropriate developmental conditions to optimize offspring welfare. This serves as an example of the benefits of using evolutionary thinking within veterinary science and we suggest that in the same way that evolutionary medicine has helped our understanding of human health, the implementation of evolutionary veterinary science (EvoVetSci) could be a useful way forward for research in animal health and welfare. (shrink)

In this summary I introduce the interpretive framework for Hegel's Conscience and then provide an overview of the book’s six chapters.

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that (...) has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. (shrink)

Do the hard problem of consciousness and the simulation argument potentially resolve each other? Here we will argue for four possible views: that consciousness may be possible only (a) outside of, (b) inside and/or outside of, (c) inside of, or (d) interfacing with simulations. The first two of these views have been developed at length by David Chalmers and are used as jumping off points to introduce and develop the latter two views here. If any one of these views could (...) be proven true, it would simultaneously both support a kind of account of properties of consciousness and also provide a kind of sign as to whether or not we are indeed living in the kind of immersive computer simulation that Nick Bostrom hypothesizes about. However, given that none of these views are proven true but all are plausible, these considerations should tend to neutralize our credence that we are either simulated or not simulated, by themselves giving us no sign one way or the other. (shrink)

“Trends in Logic XVI: Consistency, Contradiction, Paraconsistency, and Reasoning - 40 years of CLE” is being organized by the Centre for Logic, Epistemology and the History of Science at the State University of Campinas (CLEUnicamp) from September 12th to 15th, 2016, with the auspices of the Brazilian Logic Society, Studia Logica and the Polish Academy of Sciences. The conference is intended to celebrate the 40th anniversary of CLE, and is centered around the areas of logic, epistemology, philosophy and history of (...) science, while bringing together scholars in the fields of philosophy, logic, mathematics, computer science and other disciplines who have contributed significantly to what Studia Logica is today and to what CLE has achieved in its four decades of existence. It intends to celebrate CLE’s strong influence in Brazil and Latin America and the tradition of investigating formal methods inspired by, and devoted to, philosophical views, as well as philosophical problems approached by means of formal methods. The title of the event commemorates one of the three main areas of CLE, what has been called the “Brazilian school of paraconsistency”, combining such a pluralist view about logic and reasoning. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 46-48.

In this paper we propose a very general de nition of combination of logics by means of the concept of sheaves of logics. We first discuss some properties of this general definition and list some problems, as well as connections to related work. As applications of our abstract setting, we show that the notion of possible-translations semantics, introduced in previous papers by the first author, can be described in categorial terms. Possible-translations semantics constitute illustrative cases, since they provide a new (...) semantical account for abstract logical systems, particularly for many-valued and paraconsistent logics. (shrink)

Eliminativism is a position most readily associated with the eliminative materialism of the Churchlands, denying that there are such things as propositional states. This position has created much controversy, despite the fact that intentionality has long been seen as perhaps the core problem for naturalistic philosophy. There is a more radical interpretation of eliminativism, however, denying not only mental states, such as beliefs and desires, but also intentionality (i.e., aboutness) on a global level. This position traces its contemporary origin back (...) to Quine, but has generally been assumed to undermine naturalism or, worse, to be incoherent by the majority of philosophers who maintain that there clearly are things or mental states that are about others. In a recent paper, Hutto and Satne (2015a) offer an update that tries to revive John Haugeland’s baseball analogy from his influential 1990 review paper The Intentionality All-Stars on the state of the game to argue that the failure of Neo-Cartesians, Neo- Behaviorists, and Neo-Pragmatists should urge us to make them work together to naturalize content and “win the game.” But Hutto and Satne misunderstand what the game is ultimately about. The goal of the Intentionality All-Stars is not to naturalize content against eliminativism but to defend a naturalist “thirdperson” view of the problem against first-person phenomenalists. For this goal, a naturalist defense of global content eliminativism would equally enable them to emerge victorious. Revisiting Haugeland, I will offer my own analysis of the current state of play to argue that global content eliminativism has not received sufficient attention and deserves a more prominent place in the debate than it currently occupies. (shrink)

Here we will argue that different kinds of friendships follow different kinds of scaling laws. First, we will review Aristotle’s three types of friendship. Second, we will review three different types of scaling laws. Third, we will show how the three types of friendship roughly map on to the three types of scaling laws. After this, we will discuss some of the consequences of the scaling laws of friendship. We hope that the use of these abstract scaling laws to describe (...) social values will convince computer programmers and policy makers to temper their would-be ambitions as social engineers. (shrink)

In this paper I would like to offer a new framework for hypothetical reasoning, with the goal of predicting what scenarios we consider when we interpret a conditional or causal claim (such as a sentence containing the word ‘because‘). The idea is that when we interpret a conditional or causal claim, we identify a part of the world to change and imagine changing that. Sentences are about parts of the world: when we interpret a conditional antecedent or because clause, we (...) allow the part of the world it is about to vary. -/- My main evidence for this approach is that it gives just the right range of hypothetical scenarios to account for how we interpret both conditionals and causal claims. Some approaches (such as Stalnaker and Lewis’s semantics of conditionals based on similarity, and Kratzer’s premise semantics) consider too few scenarios, while others (such as Fine’s truthmaker semantics of conditionals) consider too many. The present approach inhabits a Goldilocks zone between these extremes: not too restrictive, not too permissive, but just right. (shrink)

Attributions of certain speech-acts, like dog-whistling and wolf-crying, have an interesting complementary and antagonistic relationship that creates a kind of hostile dialectic and emergent divergence in political discourse. In the following, we will show how the wolf-cry and the dog-whistle are both epistemically difficult speech-acts to attribute, leading to asymmetric uncertainties in attribution. These uncertainties cause the attribution of wolf-cries and dog-whistles themselves to often be both reasonable but unconfirmable epistemic claims. Then, we will show how these patterns of attributions (...) can lead to a reciprocal dialectic of entrenched and self-amplifying dog-whistling versus wolf-crying, until an unhappy status quo is developed. This leads to a number of problems, including an epistemic standoff of standpoints, the attribution saturation of the political discourse, and a condition of self-defeating truth-seeking. Seemingly, the only surefire solution is a unanimous alleviation of such attributions, a standard that may seem insurmountable, though other options can be considered. (shrink)

The debate over Hypothetical Syllogism is locked in stalemate. Although putative natural language counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism abound, many philosophers defend Hypothetical Syllogism, arguing that the alleged counterexamples involve an illicit shift in context. The proper lesson to draw from the putative counterexamples, they argue, is that natural language conditionals are context-sensitive conditionals which obey Hypothetical Syllogism. In order to make progress on the issue, I consider and improve upon Morreau’s proof of the invalidity of Hypothetical Syllogism. The improved proof (...) relies upon the semantic claim that conditionals with antecedents irrelevant to the obtaining of an already true consequent are themselves true. Moreover, this semantic insight allows us to provide compelling counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism that are resistant to the usual contextualist response. (shrink)

Diminishing Marginal Utility is widely accepted as a law of human action, and therefor has become one of the primary premises of ethics, economics, and politics. In popular parlance, “diminishing returns” has entered into the cliches of common sense; in philosophical argument, it has achieved the status of an axiomatic assumption; and indeed, in terms of personal experience or folk psychology, it seems to largely hold true for goods in general over a range of consumption. However, a theory of diminishing (...) marginal utility rests on some assumptions that we ignore at our peril. The a priori and a posteriori proofs of diminishing marginal utility, as developed by the Austrian economists like Ludwig von Mises and Hermann Heinrich Gossen, should be reassessed and critiqued from their fundamental principles to illuminate the theory’s pitfalls. Once these premises and their conclusions are not taken for granted, a more comprehensive and conscientious theory of value can be proposed: Complex or Inflecting Marginal Utility. (shrink)

In his article “If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens are also Rare”, Robin Hanson proposes the Grabby Alien Hypothesis, which proposes that extraterrestrial civilizations (ETIs) exist outside of our observable universe and are gradually expanding to fill the universe. The existence of such grabby aliens in our future expanding to fill all available niches puts a cosmic deadline on independently originating sources of life. This cosmic cutoff offers an explanation for why human observers seem to be relatively early (...) in spacetime, why the red dwarf stars seem to be inadequate for independently originating life, and why the Fermi Paradox remains unsolved. However, we should worry about Hanson’s proposal, since the Grabby Alien Hypothesis has its own paradoxical implication, namely that most observers in most reference classes should be grabby aliens themselves (Bostrom, 2002). Thus, oddly, finding ourselves not to be grabby alien observers, it seems Hanson is beholden to explain why we are not. Some possibilities for grabby alien observer alternatives can be offered, though none are particularly explanatorily appealing. In what follows, we will 1) attempt to restate in simple terms Hanson’s assumptions, and then 2) reassemble Hanson’s arguments, showing they lead to a paradox, and 3) consider which assumptions should be rejected and at what cost. (shrink)

This paper addresses what we consider to be the most pressing challenge for the emerging science of consciousness: the measurement problem of consciousness. That is, by what methods can we determine the presence of and properties of consciousness? Most methods are currently developed through evaluation of the presence of consciousness in humans and here we argue that there are particular problems in application of these methods to nonhuman cases—what we call the indicator validity problem and the extrapolation problem. The first (...) is a problem with the application of indicators developed using the differences between conscious and unconscious processing in humans to the identification of other conscious vs. nonconscious organisms or systems. The second is a problem in extrapolating any indicators developed in humans or other organisms to artificial systems. However, while pressing ethical concerns add urgency to the attribution of consciousness and its attendant moral status to nonhuman animals and intelligent machines, we cannot wait for certainty and we advocate the use of a precautionary principle to avoid causing unintentional harm. We also intend that the considerations and limitations discussed in this paper can be used to further analyze and refine the methods of consciousness science with the hope that one day we may be able to solve the measurement problem of consciousness. (shrink)

Este ha sido el mundo infantil – imposible y contradictorio – que sentimos habitar en este escrito, en esta escritura. En ese mundo, como ahora, el inicio y el final coinciden. En ese mundo, que Heráclito llamaría aión, es la infancia la que gobierna. Un gobierno infantil. Por lo tanto, es tiempo de callarnos. De estarnos sin tanta luz y sin tantas palabras. Para dormir y soñar. Es tiempo de terminar. O de comenzar. Los y las lectores infantiles (no) tienen (...) la palabra. Nosotros ya (no) la tenemos… (¡hipo!). (shrink)

This paper briefly outlines some advancements in paraconsistent logics for modelling knowledge representation and reasoning. Emphasis is given on the so-called Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs), a class of paraconsistent logics that formally internalize the very concept(s) of consistency and inconsistency. A couple of specialized systems based on the LFIs will be reviewed, including belief revision and probabilistic reasoning. Potential applications of those systems in the AI area of KRR are tackled by illustrating some examples that emphasizes the importance of (...) a fine-tuned treatment of consistency in modelling reputation systems, preferences, argumentation, and evidence. (shrink)

I argue that the best available parent view, in its present formulation, struggles to accommodate for our very weighty duty not to perpetuate historical injustices. I offer an alternative view that reconciles this tension.

Since Boorse [Philos Sci 44(4):542–573, 1977] published his paper “Health as a theoretical concept” one of the most lively debates within philosophy of medicine has been on the question of whether health and disease are in some sense ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’ or ‘subjective’ and ‘value-laden’. Due to the apparent ‘failure’ of pure naturalist, constructivist, or normativist accounts, much in the recent literature has appealed to more conciliatory approaches or so-called ‘hybrid accounts’ of health and disease. A recent paper by Matthewson (...) and Griffiths [J Med Philos 42(4):447–466, 2017], however, may bear the seeds for the revival of purely naturalist approach to health and disease. In this paper, I defend their idea of Biological Normativity against recent criticism by Schwartz [J Med Philos Forum Bioethics Philos Med 42(4):485–502, 2017] and hope to help it flower into a revival of naturalist approaches in the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)