We argue that stereotypes associated with concepts like he-said–she-said, conspiracy theory, sexual harassment, and those expressed by paradigmatic slurs provide “normative inference tickets”: conceptual permissions to automatic, largely unreflective normative conclusions. These “mental shortcuts” are underwritten by associated stereotypes. Because stereotypes admit of exceptions, normative inference tickets are highly flexible and productive, but also liable to create serious epistemic and moral harms. Epistemically, many are unreliable, yielding false beliefs which resist counterexample; morally, many perpetuate bigotry and oppression. Still, some (...) normative inference tickets, like some activated by sexual harassment, constitute genuine moral and hermeneutical advances. For example, our framework helps explain Miranda Fricker’s notion of “hermeneutical lacunae”: what early victims of “sexual harassment” — as well as their harassers — lacked before the term was coined was a communal normative inference ticket — one that could take us, collectively, from “this is happening” to “this is wrong.”. (shrink)

Stereotypes shape inferences in philosophical thought, political discourse, and everyday life. These inferences are routinely made when thinkers engage in language comprehension or production: We make them whenever we hear, read, or formulate stories, reports, philosophical case-descriptions, or premises of arguments – on virtually any topic. These inferences are largely automatic: largely unconscious, non-intentional, and effortless. Accordingly, they shape our thought in ways we can properly understand only by complementing traditional forms of philosophical analysis with experimental (...) methods from psycholinguistics. This paper seeks, first, to bring out the wider philosophical relevance of stereotypical inference, well beyond familiar topics like gender and race. Second, we wish to provide philosophers with a toolkit to experimentally study these ubiquitous inferences and what intuitions they may generate. This paper explains what stereotypes are, and why they matter to current and traditional concerns in philosophy – experimental, analytic, and applied. It then assembles a psycholinguistic toolkit and demonstrates through two studies how potentially questionnaire-based measures can be combined with process measures to garner evidence for specific stereotypical inferences and study when they ‘go through’ and influence our thinking. (shrink)

An audiovisual correspondence (AVC) refers to an observer’s seemingly arbitrary yet consistent matching of sensory features across the two modalities; for example, between an auditory pitch and visual size. Research on AVCs has frequently used a speeded classification procedure in which participants are asked to rapidly classify an image when it is either accompanied by a congruent or an incongruent sound (or vice versa). When, as is typically the case, classification is faster in the presence of a congruent stimulus, researchers (...) have inferred that the AVC is automatic and bottom-up. Such an inference is incomplete because the procedure does not show that the AVC is not subject to top-down influences. To remedy this problem, we devised a procedure that allows us to assess the degree of “bottom-up-ness” and “top-down-ness” in the processing of an AVC. We did this in studies of AVCs between pitch and five visual features: size, height, spatial frequency, brightness, and angularity. We find that all the AVCs we studied involve both bottom-up and top-down processing, thus undermining the prevalent generalization that AVCs are automatic. (shrink)

Psycholinguistic methods hold great promise for experimental philosophy. Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments proceed from verbal descriptions of possible cases. Many relevant intuitions and conclusions are driven by spontaneous inferences about what else must also be true in the cases described. Such inferences are continually made in language comprehension and production. This chapter explains how methods from psycholinguistics can be employed to study such routine automatic inferences, with a view to assessing intuitions and reconstructing arguments. (...) We demonstrate how plausibility ratings, pupillometry, and reading time measurements can be used to examine hypotheses about automatic inferences in speech and text comprehension. Two experiments on inferences from polysemous (perception-)verbs provide evidence of a potentially consequential ‘salience bias’. Findings help assess intuitions about unusual cases and analyse a philosophical paradox (‘argument from hallucination’). The paper thus illustrates how we can adapt psycholinguistic methods for philosophical purposes and demonstrates the methods’ philosophical usefulness. (shrink)

Epistemic closure refers to the assumption that humans are able to recognize what entails or contradicts what they believe and know, or more accurately, that humans’ epistemic states are closed under logical inferences. Epistemic closure is part of a larger theory of mind ability, which is arguably crucial for downstream NLU tasks, such as inference, QA and conversation. In this project, we introduce a new automatically constructed natural language inference dataset that tests inferences related to epistemic closure. We (...) test and further fine tune the model RoBERTa-large-mnli on the new dataset, with limited positive results. (shrink)

We explore the question of whether machines can infer information about our psychological traits or mental states by observing samples of our behaviour gathered from our online activities. Ongoing technical advances across a range of research communities indicate that machines are now able to access this information, but the extent to which this is possible and the consequent implications have not been well explored. We begin by highlighting the urgency of asking this question, and then explore its conceptual underpinnings, in (...) order to help emphasise the relevant issues. To answer the question, we review a large number of empirical studies, in which samples of behaviour are used to automatically infer a range of psychological constructs, including affect and emotions, aptitudes and skills, attitudes and orientations (e.g. values and sexual orientation), personality, and disorders and conditions (e.g. depression and addiction). We also present a general perspective that can bring these disparate studies together and allow us to think clearly about their philosophical and ethical implications, such as issues related to consent, privacy, and the use of persuasive technologies for controlling human behaviour. (shrink)

The paper builds on a methodological idea from experimental philosophy and on findings from psycholinguistics, to develop and defend ordinary language analysis (OLA) as practiced in J.L. Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia. That attack on sense-datum theories of perception focuses on the argument from illusion. Through a case-study on this paradoxical argument, the present paper argues for a form of OLA which is psychologically informed, seeks to expose epistemic, rather than semantic, defects in paradoxical arguments, and is immune to the main (...) objections to ordinary language philosophising, including those arising from the semantic/pragmatics distinction: A key project in current experimental philosophy is to develop psychological explanations of philosophically relevant intuitions that help us determine what warrant thinkers have for accepting them. Psycholinguistic work on the role of stereotypes in verb-comprehension has shown that intuitive judgments can be generated by automatic cognitive processes that duplicate both semantic and pragmatic inferences and are shaped by dominant uses of words. For systematic reasons, philosophers are prone to unwittingly deviate from such dominant uses. Where this happens, they are liable to automatically infer unwarranted conclusions that strike them as intuitively compelling. OLA helps us to determine those dominant uses, to identify unwitting deviations from them, and thus to expose unwarranted intuitions – e.g., in the premises of paradoxical arguments. Ordinary language does not determine the bounds of sense but shapes our leaps of thought. The paper shows how this enables its ‘Austinian’ analysis to contribute to a novel, epistemic, resolution of philosophical paradoxes and problems. (shrink)

This paper investigates the emotive (or expressive) meaning of words commonly referred to as “loaded” or “emotive,” which include slurs, derogative or pejorative words, and ethical terms. We claim that emotive meaning can be reinterpreted from a pragmatic and argumentative perspective, which can account for distinct aspects of ethical terms, including the possibility of being modified and its cancellability. Emotive meaning is explained as a defeasible and automatic or automatized evaluative and intended inference commonly associated with the use of (...) specific terms, which can be represented and assessed considering its logical structure and its defeasibility conditions. This automatic inference is conceived as part of the connotation of an ethical term, and is not necessarily stable. By means of quasi-definitions, it is possible to modify the emotive meaning while maintaining the descriptive one, automaticizing the inferences drawn from an ethical word. Through examples drawn from the recent US presidential campaign, we show how re-contextualization and emotive contexts can affect emotive meaning. (shrink)

Background: Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT, hereafter abbreviated SCT) is acomprehensive medical terminology used for standardizing the storage, retrieval, and exchange of electronic healthdata. Some efforts have been made to capture the contents of SCT as Web Ontology Language (OWL), but theseefforts have been hampered by the size and complexity of SCT. Method: Our proposal here is to develop an upper-level ontology and to use it as the basis for defining the termsin SCT in a way that will (...) support quality assurance of SCT, for example, by allowing consistency checks ofdefinitions and the identification and elimination of redundancies in the SCT vocabulary. Our proposed upper-levelSCT ontology (SCTO) is based on the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS). Results: The SCTO is implemented in OWL 2, to support automatic inference and consistency checking. Theapproach will allow integration of SCT data with data annotated using Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundryontologies, since the use of OGMS will ensure consistency with the Basic Formal Ontology, which is the top-levelontology of the OBO Foundry. Currently, the SCTO contains 304 classes, 28 properties, 2400 axioms, and 1555annotations. It is publicly available through the bioportal athttp://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/SCTO/. Conclusion: The resulting ontology can enhance the semantics of clinical decision support systems and semanticinteroperability among distributed electronic health records. In addition, the populated ontology can be used forthe automation of mobile health applications. (shrink)

Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments involve unusual cases. We present empirical reasons to doubt the reliability of intuitive judgments and conclusions about such cases. Inferences and intuitions prompted by verbal case descriptions are influenced by routine comprehension processes which invoke stereotypes. We build on psycholinguistic findings to determine conditions under which the stereotype associated with the most salient sense of a word predictably supports inappropriate inferences from descriptions of unusual (stereotype-divergent) cases. We conduct an experiment that combines (...) plausibility ratings with pupillometry to document this “salience bias.” We find that under certain conditions, competent speakers automatically make stereotypical inferences they know to be inappropriate. (shrink)

In his well-known Mind and World and in line with Wilfrid Sellars (1991) or “that great foe of ‘immediacy’” (ibid., 127) Hegel, McDowell claims that “when Evans argues that judgments of experience are based on non-conceptual content, he is falling into a version of the Myth of the Given” (1996, 114). In this talk and on the basis of a Berkeleyio-Kantian ‘realist idealist’ world view (sect. 1) and an explication of Kant’s concept of the “given manifold” (CPR, e.g. B138; sect. (...) 2), I will argue that Kant and Evans (1982, chs. 5.1–5.2) were indeed mistaken in their versions of the given (sect. 3), but that Sellars and his student McDowell were even more mistaken (sects. 4–5) and that, in the end, there would appear to be a non-conceptual and (thus) non-propositional and essentially (Kantio-)Schopenhauerian given (1816, ch. 1) in perceptual experience from which we unconsciously (Helmholtz 1867, ch. 26) and automatically infer to our first perceptual beliefs. (shrink)

Neuroscience has studied deductive reasoning over the last 20 years under the assumption that deductive inferences are not only de jure but also de facto distinct from other forms of inference. The objective of this research is to verify if logically valid deductions leave any cerebral electrical trait that is distinct from the trait left by non-valid deductions. 23 subjects with an average age of 20.35 years were registered with MEG and placed into a two conditions paradigm (100 trials (...) for each condition) which each presented the exact same relational complexity (same variables and content) but had distinct logical complexity. Both conditions show the same electromagnetic components (P3, N4) in the early temporal window (250–525 ms) and P6 in the late temporal window (500–775 ms). The significant activity in both valid and invalid conditions is found in sensors from medial prefrontal regions, probably corresponding to the ACC or to the medial prefrontal cortex. The amplitude and intensity of valid deductions is significantly lower in both temporal windows (p = 0.0003). The reaction time was 54.37% slower in the valid condition. Validity leaves a minimal but measurable hypoactive electrical trait in brain processing. The minor electrical demand is attributable to the recursive and automatable character of valid deductions, suggesting a physical indicator of computational deductive properties. It is hypothesized that all valid deductions are recursive and hypoactive. (shrink)

Many scientists routinely generalize from study samples to larger populations. It is commonly assumed that this cognitive process of scientific induction is a voluntary inference in which researchers assess the generalizability of their data and then draw conclusions accordingly. We challenge this view and argue for a novel account. The account describes scientific induction as involving by default a generalization bias that operates automatically and frequently leads researchers to unintentionally generalize their findings without sufficient evidence. The result is unwarranted, overgeneralized (...) conclusions. We support this account of scientific induction by integrating a range of disparate findings from across the cognitive sciences that have until now not been connected to research on the nature of scientific induction. The view that scientific induction involves by default a generalization bias calls for a revision of the current thinking about scientific induction and highlights an overlooked cause of the replication crisis in the sciences. Commonly proposed interventions to tackle scientific overgeneralizations that may feed into this crisis need to be supplemented with cognitive debiasing strategies against generalization bias to most effectively improve science. (shrink)

Intuitive judgments elicited by verbal case-descriptions play key roles in philosophical problem-setting and argument. Experimental philosophy's ‘sources project’ seeks to develop psychological explanations of philosophically relevant intuitions which help us assess our warrant for accepting them. This article develops a psycholinguistic explanation of intuitions prompted by philosophical case-descriptions. For proof of concept, we target intuitions underlying a classic paradox about perception, trace them to stereotype-driven inferences automatically executed in verb comprehension, and employ a forced-choice plausibility-ranking task to elicit the (...) relevant stereotypical associations of perception- and appearance-verbs. We obtain a debunking explanation that resolves the philosophical paradox. (shrink)

In philosophical thought experiments, as in ordinary discourse, our understanding of verbal case descriptions is enriched by automatic comprehension inferences. Such inferences have us routinely infer what else is also true of the cases described. We consider how such routine inferences from polysemous words can generate zombie intuitions: intuitions that are ‘killed’ (defeated) by contextual information but kept cognitively alive by the psycholinguistic phenomenon of linguistic salience bias. Extending ‘evidentiary’ experimental philosophy, this paper examines whether the (...) ‘zombie argument’ against materialism is built on zombie intuitions. We examine the hypothesis that contextually defeated stereotypical inferences from the noun ‘zombie’ influence intuitions about ‘philosophical zombies’. We document framing effects (‘zombie’ vs ‘duplicate’) predicted by the hypothesis. Findings undermine intuitions about the conceivability of ‘philosophical zombies’ and address the philosophical ‘hard problem of consciousness’. Findings support a deflationary response: The impression that principled obstacles prevent scientific explanation of how physical processes give rise to conscious experience is generated by philosophical arguments that rely on epistemically deficient intuitions. (shrink)

I aim to develop an alternative theoretical model for the direct cognition of the elementary states of others called the theory of interaction (henceforth TI), also known as the “second person” approach. The model I propose emerges from a critical reformulation of the displaced perception model proposed by FRED DRETSKE (1995) for the introspective knowledge of our own mental states. Moreover, against Dretske, I argue that no meta-representation (second-order representation of a first-order representation as a representation) is involved in the (...) process, but only concepts, rudimentary enough, of others’ emotions: contentment and discontentment. Strictly speaking, all the empirical data and findings in developmental psychology only support the hypothesis that children in the pre-linguistic phase understand perceptual facial expressions of contentment and discontentment. My proposal consists of the following thesis: The direct perception of others' elementary mental states is not a perception in the usual sense of the word according to which we just perceive things, but rather a “perception of facts.” But how to understand that? It is nothing more than an epistemological process that is automatic and reliable at the same time. It is reliable in the epistemological-externalist sense of not involving any inference, reflection, theorizing or epistemic justification: a baby’s perception of her mom’s facial expression of discontentment (in the usual sense of “per- ception”) does not constitute a reason supporting the belief that mommy is discontent. The very word “belief” should not be understood in the usual sense but rather in the sense of a natural inclination for truth. But at the same time, it is automatic because the belief is a result or output of a process entirely subliminal and computational in nature. Thus, for instance, a child perceives that her mom is discontent (fact-awareness) by perceiving consciously (“perception” in the usual sense) a facial expression of discontentment (sensorial input) but recognizes that her mother is discontent as a result (output) of an entirely subliminal process. (shrink)

An influential view in the epistemology of testimony is that typical or paradigmatic beliefs formed through testimonial uptake are noninferential. Some epistemologists in particular defend a causal version of this view: that beliefs formed from testimony (BFT) are generated by noninferential processes. This view is implausible, however. It tends to be elaborated in terms that do not really bear it out – e.g. that BFT is fixed directly, immediately, unconsciously or automatically. Nor is causal noninferentialism regarding BFT plausibly expressed in (...) terms of belief-independent belief formation; the complex cognitive details of BFT fixation do not accord well with such a view. But perhaps the most significant issue is that the relevant causal notion of inference itself is not particularly well-defined, at least with respect to BFT. Causal noninferentialism in this domain is obscure as a result, but this does not in turn clearly vindicate any interesting version of inferentialism. (shrink)

In order to describe my findings/conclusions systematically, a new semantic system (i.e., a new language) has to be intentionally defined by the present article. Humans are limited in what they know by the technical limitation of their cortical language network. A reality is a situation model (SM). For example, the conventionally-called “physical reality” around my conventionally-called “physical body” is actually a “geometric” SM of my brain. The universe is an autonomous objective parallel computing automaton which evolves by itself automatically/unintentionally – (...) wave-particle duality and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle can be explained under this “first-order” SM of my brain. Each elementary particle (as a building block of the universe) is an autonomous mathematical entity itself (i.e., a thing in itself). If we are happy to accept randomness, it is obviously possible that all other worlds in the many-worlds interpretation do not exist objectively. The conventionally-called “space” does not exist objectively. “Time” and “matter” are not physical. Consciousness is the subjective-form (aka quale) of the mathematical models (of the objective universe) which are intracorporeally/subjectively used by the control logic of a Turing machine’s program objectively-fatedly. A Turing machine’s consciousness or deliberate decisions/choices should not be able to actually/objectively change/control/drive the (autonomous or objectively-fated) world line of any elementary particle within this world. Besides the Schrodinger equation (or its real-world counterpart) which is a valid/correct/factual causality of the universe, every other causality (of the universe) is either invalid/incorrect/counterfactual or can be proved by deductive inference based on the Schrodinger equation only. If the “loop quantum gravity” theory is correct, time/space does not actually/objectively exist in the objective-evolution of the objective-reality, or in other words, we should not use the subjective/mental concept of “time”, “state” or “space” to describe/imagine the objective-evolution of the universe. (shrink)

Research on moral judgment is refueling public interest in an old debate concerning the general foundation of morals. Are moral judgments based on reason or on feeling? Recent research in moral psychology and neuroscience concludes that moral judgments occur rapidly, automatically, and largely without the aid of inference. Such findings are utilized to criticize moral theories that require deliberation to precede moral judgment as its cause. The main targets of this criticism are the moral theories of Piaget and Kohlberg, but (...) Kant's moral philosophy is also criticized for this failing. This essay defends Kant from this charge by clarifying the role of deliberation in his moral theory and by demonstrating that, for Kant, moral judgment invokes a self-organizing system that has the capacity to rapidly determine the moral permissibility of any desired purpose - real or imagined. Further support for Kant's moral theory is gleaned from recent work on self-organization in the brain. (shrink)

As soon as you believe an imagination to be nonfictional, this imagination becomes your ontological theory of the reality. Your ontological theory (of the reality) can describe a system as the reality. However, actually this system is only a theory/conceptual-space/imagination/visual-imagery of yours, not the actual reality (i.e., the thing-in-itself). An ontological theory (of the reality) actually only describes your (subjective/mental) imagination/visual-imagery/conceptual-space. An ontological theory of the reality, is being described as a situation model (SM). There is no way to prove/disprove (...) that there is only one reality, or there are two realities (i.e., “subjective reality” and “objective reality”). So, every ontology talk/theory/imagination about the two realities is only a talk/theory/imagination – we will never know whether it is true or not. The conventionally-called “physical/objective reality/world” around my conventionally-called “physical/objective body” is actually a geometric mathematical model (being generated/mathematically-modeled by my brain) – it's actually a subset/component/part/element of my brain’s mind/consciousness/manifest-image. Our cosmos is an autonomous objective parallel computing automaton (aka state machine) which evolves by itself automatically/unintentionally – wave-particle duality and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle can be explained under this SM of my brain. Each elementary particle (as a building block of our cosmos) is an autonomous mathematical entity itself (i.e., a thing in itself). Our cosmos has the same nature as a Game of Life system – both are autonomous objective parallel-computing automata. Cosmos (as a state machine) is indistinguishable from a digital simulation – my consciousness (as something nonphysical) is not cosmos (as a state machine). If we are happy to accept randomness/stochasticity, then it is obviously possible that all other worlds in the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) actually do not exist (objectively). As one metaphysical option, we can treat all other worlds as subjective only (even if they are actually objective). Under the context of this metaphysical option, we are only living in one world (i.e., the world we are currently living in; this world) – we are not living in many worlds at the same time parallelly. Under the context of this metaphysical option, there is only one possible future. The relationship among any number of elementary particles, is governed/described by Schrodinger equation. If (in theory) Schrodinger equation can’t be used to reliably forecast whether I will go to McDonald for dinner in this world (based on the current state of all elementary particles of the cosmos), then what can Schrodinger equation do? The conventionally-called “space” does not exist objectively. “Time” and “matter” are not physical. Consciousness is the subjective-form (aka quale) of the mathematical models (of the objective cosmos) which are intracorporeally/subjectively used by the control logic of a Turing machine’s program fatedly. A Turing machine’s mind/consciousness/manifest-image or deliberate decisions/choices should not be able to actually/objectively change/control/drive the (autonomous or fated) worldline of any elementary particle within this world (i.e., the world we are currently living in, under the context of MWI). Besides the Schrodinger equation (or another mathematical equation/function which is yet to be discovered) which is a valid/correct/factual causality of our cosmos/state-machine, every other causality (of our cosmos/state-machine) is either invalid/incorrect/counterfactual or can be proved by deductive inference based on the Schrodinger equation (or the aforementioned yet-to-be-discovered mathematical equation/function) only. Closed causality entails no causality. Consciousness plays no causal role (“epiphenomenalism”), or in other words, any cognitive/behavioural activity can in principle be carried out without consciousness (“conscious inessentialism”). If the “loop quantum gravity” theory is correct, then time/space does not actually/objectively exist in the objective-evolution of the objective cosmos, or in other words, we should not use the subjective/mental concept of “time”, “state” or “space” to describe/imagine the objective-evolution of our cosmos. (shrink)

The base texts of most of the philosophical systems of ancient India are in the form of a collection of aphorisms (sūtra-s). The aphorisms are so brief and tersely worded that their significance can seldom be understood without the help of a commentary or commentaries. Sometimes, the literal meaning of an aphorism needs to be qualified or modified by an explanation found in the commentary. If a reader relies exclusively on the literal meaning of the aphorisms in the base text (...) without having recourse to any commentary or disregards all commentaries, he or she may miss the point. Contrariwise, if a reader relies exclusively on a commentary and disregards the literal meaning of an aphorism, he or she will commit another kind of blunder. Ideally, equal attention should be paid to the base text as well as the commentary or commentaries. Even then, all problems are not automatically solved, for it is an uphill task to decide when to go by the literal meaning of the aphorisms and when to follow the commentary. In their polemics against the Cārvāka/Lokāyata, Jayantabhaṭṭa (c. ninth century C.E.) and Hemacandra (eleventh century C.E.) erred because they did not follow the golden rule stated above and consequently misunderstood and misrepresented their opponents’ contentions. (shrink)

The review first discusses componential explanations of automaticity, which specify non/automaticity features (e.g., un/controlled, un/conscious, non/efficient, fast/slow) and their interrelations. Reframing these features as factors that influence processes (e.g., goals, attention, and time) broadens the range of factors that can be considered (e.g., adding stimulus intensity and representational quality). The evidence reviewed challenges the view of a perfect coherence among goals, attention, and consciousness, and supports the alternative view that (a) these and other factors influence the quality of representations in (...) an additive way (e.g., little time can be compensated by extra attention or extra stimulus intensity) and that (b) a first threshold of this quality is required for unconscious processing and a second threshold for conscious processing. The review closes with a discussion of causal explanations of automaticity, which specify factors involved in automatization such as repetition and complexity, and a discussion of mechanistic explanations, which specify the low-level processes underlying automatization. (shrink)

Perceptual processes, in particular modular processes, have long been understood as being mandatory. But exactly what mandatoriness amounts to is left to intuition. This paper identifies a crucial ambiguity in the notion of mandatoriness. Discussions of mandatory processes have run together notions of automaticity and ballisticity. Teasing apart these notions creates an important tool for the modularist's toolbox. Different putatively modular processes appear to differ in their kinds of mandatoriness. Separating out the automatic from the ballistic can help the (...) modularist diagnose and explain away some putative counterexamples to multimodal and central modules, thereby helping us to better evaluate the evidentiary status of modularity theory. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to characterize the rich interplay between automatic and cognitive control processes that we propose is the hallmark of skill, in contrast to habit, and what accounts for its flexibility. We argue that this interplay isn't entirely hierarchical and static, but rather heterarchical and dynamic. We further argue that it crucially depends on the acquisition of detailed and well-structured action representations and internal models, as well as the concomitant development of metacontrol processes that can (...) be used to shape and balance it. (shrink)

Some arguments include imperative clauses. For example: ‘Buy me a drink; you can’t buy me that drink unless you go to the bar; so, go to the bar!’ How should we build a logic that predicts which of these arguments are good? Because imperatives aren’t truth apt and so don’t stand in relations of truth preservation, this technical question gives rise to a foundational one: What would be the subject matter of this logic? I argue that declaratives are used to (...) produce beliefs, imperatives are used to produce intentions, and beliefs and intentions are subject to rational requirements. An argument will strike us as valid when anyone whose mental state satisfies the premises is rationally required to satisfy the conclusion. For example, the above argument reflects the principle that it is irrational not to intend what one takes to be the necessary means to one’s intended ends. I argue that all intuitively good patterns of imperative inference can be explained using off-the-shelf formulations of our rational requirements. I then develop a formal-semantic theory embodying this view that predicts a range of data, including free-choice effects and Ross’s paradox. The resulting theory shows one way that our aspirations to rational agency can be discerned in the patterns of our speech, and is a case study in how the philosophy of language and the philosophy of action can be mutually illuminating. (shrink)

This paper presents a new problem for the inference rule commonly known as Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). The problem is that uncertainty about parts of one’s evidence may undermine the inferrability of a hypothesis that would provide the best explanation of that evidence, especially in cases where there is an alternative hypothesis that would provide a better explanation of only the more certain pieces of evidence. A potential solution to the problem is sketched, in which IBE is generalized (...) to handle uncertain evidence by invoking a notion of evidential robustness. (shrink)

Defenders of Inference to the Best Explanation claim that explanatory factors should play an important role in empirical inference. They disagree, however, about how exactly to formulate this role. In particular, they disagree about whether to formulate IBE as an inference rule for full beliefs or for degrees of belief, as well as how a rule for degrees of belief should relate to Bayesianism. In this essay I advance a new argument against non-Bayesian versions of IBE. My argument focuses on (...) cases in which we are concerned with multiple levels of explanation of some phenomenon. I show that in many such cases, following IBE as an inference rule for full beliefs leads to deductively inconsistent beliefs, and following IBE as a non-Bayesian updating rule for degrees of belief leads to probabilistically incoherent degrees of belief. (shrink)

Inferences from the absence of evidence to something are common in ordinary speech, but when used in scientific argumentations are usually considered deficient or outright false. Yet, as demonstrated here with the help of various examples, archaeologists frequently use inferences and reasoning from absence, often allowing it a status on par with inferences from tangible evidence. This discrepancy has not been examined so far. The article analyses it drawing on philosophical discussions concerning the validity of inference from (...) absence, using probabilistic models that were originally developed to show that such inferences are weak and inconclusive. The analysis reveals that inference from absence can indeed be justified in many important situations of archaeological research, such as excavations carried out to explore the past existence and time-span of sedentary human habitation. The justification is closely related to the fact that archaeology explores the human past via its material remains. The same analysis points to instances where inference from absence can have comparable validity in other historical sciences, and to research questions in which archaeological inference from absence will be problematic or totally unwarranted. (shrink)

Actions performed in a state of automatism are not subject to moral evaluation, while automatic actions often are. Is the asymmetry between automatistic and automatic agency justified? In order to answer this question we need a model or moral accountability that does justice to our intuitions about a range of modes of agency, both pathological and non-pathological. Our aim in this paper is to lay the foundations for such an account.

Recently, philosophers have appealed to empirical studies to argue that whenever we think that p, we automatically believe that p (Millikan 2004; Mandelbaum 2014; Levy and Mandelbaum 2014). Levy and Mandelbaum (2014) have gone further and claimed that the automaticity of believing has implications for the ethics of belief in that it creates epistemic obligations for those who know about their automatic belief acquisition. I use theoretical considerations and psychological findings to raise doubts about the empirical case for the (...) view that we automatically believe what we think. Furthermore, I contend that even if we set these doubts aside, Levy and Mandelbaum’s argument to the effect that the automaticity of believing creates epistemic obligations is not fully convincing. (shrink)

Is imagination a source of knowledge? Timothy Williamson has recently argued that our imaginative capacities can yield knowledge of a variety of matters, spanning from everyday practical matters to logic and set theory. Furthermore, imagination for Williamson plays a similar epistemic role in cognitive processes that we would traditionally classify as either a priori or a posteriori, which he takes to indicate that the distinction itself is shallow and epistemologically fruitless. In this chapter, I aim to defend the a priori-a (...) posteriori distinction from Williamson’s challenge by questioning his account of imagination. I distinguish two notions of imagination at play in Williamson’s account – sensory vs. belief-like imagination – and show that both face empirical and normative issues. Sensory imagination seems neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. Whereas, belief-like imagination isn’t adequately disentangled from inference. Additionally, Williamson’s examples are ad hoc and don’t generalize. I conclude that Williamson’s case against the a priori-a posteriori distinction is unconvincing, and so is the thesis that imagination is an epistemic source. (shrink)

I argue that inference can tolerate forms of self-ignorance and that these cases of inference undermine canonical models of inference on which inferrers have to appreciate (or purport to appreciate) the support provided by the premises for the conclusion. I propose an alternative model of inference that belongs to a family of rational responses in which the subject cannot pinpoint exactly what she is responding to or why, where this kind of self-ignorance does nothing to undermine the intelligence of the (...) response. (shrink)

This paper is about four inferences patterns governing conditionals: Transitivity, Simplification, Contraposition, and Antecedent Strengthening. Transitivity, Simplification, and Contraposition are intuitively compelling. Although Antecedent Strengthening may seem less attractive at first, close attention to the full range of data reveals that it too has considerable appeal. An adequate theory of conditionals should account for these facts. The strict theory does so by validating them. But the variably strict theory invalidates them. So the variably strict theorist faces a question: why (...) do we find these inferences so compelling? In this paper, I suggest an answer on her behalf: that they are reasonable inferences in the sense introduced by Stalnaker (1975). -/- . (shrink)

What is the connection between justification and the kind of consequence relations that are studied by logic? In this essay, I shall try to provide an answer, by proposing a general conception of the kind of inference that counts as justified or rational.

Consider the following three claims. (i) There are no truths of the form ‘p and ~p’. (ii) No one holds a belief of the form ‘p and ~p’. (iii) No one holds any pairs of beliefs of the form {p, ~p}. Irad Kimhi has recently argued, in effect, that each of these claims holds and holds with metaphysical necessity. Furthermore, he maintains that they are ultimately not distinct claims at all, but the same claim formulated in different ways. I find (...) his argument suggestive, if not entirely transparent. I do think there is at least an important kernel of truth even in (iii), and that (i) ultimately explains what’s right about the other two. Consciousness of an impossibility makes belief in the obtaining of the corresponding state of affairs an impossibility. Interestingly, an appreciation of this fact brings into view a novel conception of inference, according to which it consists in the consciousness of necessity. This essay outlines and defends this position. A central element of the defense is that it reveals how reasoners satisfy what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition and do so without engendering regress. (shrink)

The paper offers an account of inference. The account underwrites the idea that inference requires that the reasoner takes her premises to support her conclusion. I reject views according to which such ‘takings’ are intuitions or beliefs. I sketch an alternative view on which inferring consists in attaching what I call ‘inferential force’ to a structured collection of contents.

Explanation is asymmetric: if A explains B, then B does not explain A. Tradition- ally, the asymmetry of explanation was thought to favor causal accounts of explanation over their rivals, such as those that take explanations to be inferences. In this paper, we develop a new inferential approach to explanation that outperforms causal approaches in accounting for the asymmetry of explanation.

The attendance is taken in every organization. Traditional approach for attendance is, professor calls student name & record attendance. For each lecture this is wastage of time. To avoid these losses, we are about to use automatic process which is based on image processing. In this project approach, we are using face detection & face recognition system. The first phase is pre-processing where the face detection is processed through the step image processing. It includes the face detection and face (...) recognition process. Second phase is feature extraction. Step by step execution of these techniques (Image Processing) helps to achieve the final output. The working of this project is to detect and recognize the face and mark the attendance for the corresponding face in the database. Input of this project is face detection and recognition and output is to mark the attendance. Our project is being presented as a solution for the Automatic Attendance Marking System. It is designed to be reliable and low power. The Automatic face detection and recognition proposed to attendance marking in database acts as the solution for the automatic attendance marking system.. (shrink)

In this article, I will provide a critical overview of the form of non-deductive reasoning commonly known as “Inference to the Best Explanation” (IBE). Roughly speaking, according to IBE, we ought to infer the hypothesis that provides the best explanation of our evidence. In section 2, I survey some contemporary formulations of IBE and highlight some of its putative applications. In section 3, I distinguish IBE from C.S. Peirce’s notion of abduction. After underlining some of the essential elements of IBE, (...) the rest of the entry is organized around an examination of various problems that IBE confronts, along with some extant attempts to address these problems. In section 4, I consider the question of when a fact requires an explanation, since presumably IBE applies only in cases where some explanation is called for. In section 5, I consider the difficult question of how we ought to understand IBE in light of the fact that among philosophers, there is significant disagreement about what constitutes an explanation. In section 6, I consider different strategies for justifying the truth-conduciveness of the explanatory virtues, e.g., simplicity, unification, scope, etc., criteria which play an indispensable role in any given application of IBE. In section 7, I survey some of the most recent literature on IBE, much of which consists of investigations of the status of IBE from the standpoint of the Bayesian philosophy of science. (shrink)

This thesis brings together two concerns. The first is the nature of inference—what it is to infer—where inference is understood as a distinctive kind of conscious and self-conscious occurrence. The second concern is the possibility of doxastic agency. To be capable of doxastic agency is to be such that one is capable of directly exercising agency over one’s beliefs. It is to be capable of exercising agency over one’s beliefs in a way which does not amount to mere self-manipulation. Subjects (...) who can exercise doxastic agency can settle questions for themselves. A challenge to the possibility of doxastic agency stems from the fact that we cannot believe or come to believe “at will”, where this in turn seems to be so because belief “aims at truth”. It must be explained how we are capable of doxastic agency despite that we cannot believe or come to believe at will. On the orthodox ‘causalist’ conception of inference for an inference to occur is for one act of acceptance to cause another in some specifiable “right way”. This conception of inference prevents its advocates from adequately seeing how reasoning could be a means to exercise doxastic agency, as it is natural to think it is. Suppose, for instance, that one reasons and concludes by inferring where one’s inference yields belief in what one infers. Such an inference cannot be performed at will. We cannot infer at will when inference yields belief any more than we can believe or come to believe at will. When it comes to understanding the extent to which one could be exercising agency in such a case the causalist conception of inference suggests that we must look to the causal history of one’s concluding act of acceptance, the nature of the act’s being determined by the way in which it is caused. What results is a picture on which such reasoning as a whole cannot be action. We are at best capable of actions of a kind which lead causally to belief fixation through “mental ballistics”. The causalist account of inference, I argue, is in fact either inadequate or unmotivated. It either fails to accommodate the self-consciousness of inference or is not best placed to play the very explanatory role which it is put forward to play. On the alternative I develop when one infers one’s inference is the conscious event which is one’s act of accepting that which one is inferring. The act’s being an inference is determined, not by the way it is caused, but by the self-knowledge which it constitutively involves. This corrected understanding of inference renders the move from the challenge to the possibility of doxastic agency to the above ballistics picture no longer tempting. It also yields an account of how we are capable of exercising doxastic agency by reasoning despite being unable to believe or come to believe at will. In order to see how such reasoning could amount to the exercise of doxastic agency it needs to be conceived of appropriately. I suggest that paradigm reasoning which potentially amounts the exercise of doxastic agency ought to be conceived of as primarily epistemic agency—agency the aim of which is knowledge. With inference conceived as suggested, I argue, it can be seen how to engage in such reasoning can just be to successfully exercise such agency. (shrink)

"Correlation is not causation" is one of the mantras of the sciences—a cautionary warning especially to fields like epidemiology and pharmacology where the seduction of compelling correlations naturally leads to causal hypotheses. The standard view from the epistemology of causation is that to tell whether one correlated variable is causing the other, one needs to intervene on the system—the best sort of intervention being a trial that is both randomized and controlled. In this paper, we argue that some purely correlational (...) data contains information that allows us to draw causal inferences: statistical noise. Methods for extracting causal knowledge from noise provide us with an alternative to randomized controlled trials that allows us to reach causal conclusions from purely correlational data. (shrink)

Dharmakīrti argues that there is no pramāṇa (valid means of cognition or source of knowledge) for a thesis that is a self-contradiction (svavacanavirodha). That is, self-contradictions such as ‘everything said is false’ and ‘my mother is barren’ cannot be known to be true or false. The contemporary scholar Tillemans challenges Dharmakīrti by arguing that we can know that self-contradictions are false by means of a formal logical inference. The aims of the paper are to answer Tillemans’ challenge from what we (...) take to be Dharmakīrti’s or Dharmakīrtian (someone who is like Dharmakīrti) perspective and to demonstrate the unique features of Dharmakīrti’s view of inference. By so doing, we show that the epistemology in relation to the formal conception of logic that underlies Tillemans’ challenge is problematic from Dharmakīrti’s or Dharmakīrtian perspective. The paper, thus, presents Dharmakīrti’s view of inference and logical reasoning as well as a Dharmakīrtian challenge to the formal conception of logic that is the dominant contemporary conception. (shrink)

Many classically valid meta-inferences fail in a standard supervaluationist framework. This allegedly prevents supervaluationism from offering an account of good deductive reasoning. We provide a proof system for supervaluationist logic which includes supervaluationistically acceptable versions of the classical meta-inferences. The proof system emerges naturally by thinking of truth as licensing assertion, falsity as licensing negative assertion and lack of truth-value as licensing rejection and weak assertion. Moreover, the proof system respects well-known criteria for the admissibility of inference rules. (...) Thus, supervaluationists can provide an account of good deductive reasoning. Our proof system moreover brings to light how one can revise the standard supervaluationist framework to make room for higher-order vagueness. We prove that the resulting logic is sound and complete with respect to the consequence relation that preserves truth in a model of the non-normal modal logic _NT_. Finally, we extend our approach to a first-order setting and show that supervaluationism can treat vagueness in the same way at every order. The failure of conditional proof and other meta-inferences is a crucial ingredient in this treatment and hence should be embraced, not lamented. (shrink)

This paper argues that the historical conception of knowing as a presentational factive mental state (‘presentationalism’) is not best understood as an alternative to belief-based and knowledge-first epistemology, but rather as an account of epistemic architecture that is compatible with these paradigms. To defend this claim, the paper focuses on a challenge to presentationalism raised by inferential knowledge and argues that the problem can be solved only if presentationalism is understood as I suggest. The paper is structured as follows. §1 (...) explains presentationalism and its recent revival. §2 considers a flat-footed argument that presentationalism cannot get any cases of inferential knowledge right. §3 suggests that this problem can and should be solved by drawing a distinction between two kinds of epistemic priority, and by holding that inferential knowledge can be immediate in an epistemologically significant sense. But §4 argues that this only goes so far, since not all inferential knowledge is alike. This further problem can also be solved, but only if presentationalism is reframed as a proposal about epistemic architecture that does not compete with belief-based and knowledge-first accounts, §5 concludes. (shrink)

Christian apologists, like Willian Lane Craig and Stephen T. Davis, argue that belief in Jesus’ resurrection is reasonable because it provides the best explanation of the available evidence. In this article, I refute that thesis. To do so, I lay out how the logic of inference to the best explanation (IBE) operates, including what good explanations must be and do by definition, and then apply IBE to the issue at hand. Multiple explanations—including (what I will call) The Resurrection Hypothesis, The (...) Lie Hypothesis, The Coma Hypothesis, The Imposter Hypothesis, and The Legend Hypothesis—will be considered. While I will not attempt to rank them all from worst to best, what I will reveal is how and why The Legend Hypothesis is unquestionably the best explanation, and The Resurrection Hypothesis is undeniably the worst. Consequently, not only is Craig and Davis’ conclusion mistaken, but belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus is irrational. In presenting this argument, I do not take myself to be breaking new ground; Robert Cavin and Carlos Colombetti have already presented a Bayesian refutation of Craig and Davis’ arguments. But I do take myself to be presenting an argument that the average person (and philosopher) can follow. It is my goal for the average person (and philosopher) to be able to clearly understand how and why the hypothesis “God supernaturally raised Jesus from the dead” fails utterly as an explanation of the evidence that Christian apologist cite for Jesus’ resurrection. (shrink)

What is involved in making an inference? This chapter argues against what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition: "Inferring necessarily involves the thinker taking his premises to support his conclusion and drawing his conclusion because of that fact" (2014: 5). I won’t argue that the Taking Condition is incoherent: that nothing can coherently play the role that takings are supposed to play in inference. Instead, I’ll argue that it cannot plausibly explain all the inferential knowledge that we ordinarily take ourselves (...) to have. Moreover, I’ll argue that we don’t need it to understand the nature of inference. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that theories of perception that appeal to Helmholtz’s idea of unconscious inference (“Helmholtzian” theories) should be taken literally, i.e. that the inferences appealed to in such theories are inferences in the full sense of the term, as employed elsewhere in philosophy and in ordinary discourse. -/- In the course of the argument, I consider constraints on inference based on the idea that inference is a deliberate acton, and on the idea that inferences (...) depend on the syntactic structure of representations. I argue that inference is a personal-level but sometimes unconscious process that cannot in general be distinguished from association on the basis of the structures of the representations over which it’s defined. I also critique arguments against representationalist interpretations of Helmholtzian theories, and argue against the view that perceptual inference is encapsulated in a module. (shrink)

The paper is dedicated to particular cases of interaction and mutual impact of philosophy and cognitive science. Thus, philosophical preconditions in the middle of the 20th century shaped the newly born cognitive science as mainly based on conceptual and propositional representations and syntactical inference. Further developments towards neural networks and statistical representations did not change the prejudice much: many still believe that network models must be complemented with some extra tools that would account for proper human cognitive traits. I address (...) some real implemented connectionist models that show how ‘new associationism ’ of the neural network approach may not only surpass Humean limitations, but, as well, realistically explain abstraction, inference and prediction. Then I stay on Predictive Processing theories in a little more detail to demonstrate that sophisticated statistical tools applied to a biologically realist ontology may not only provide solutions to scientific problems or integrate different cognitive paradigms but propose some philosophical insights either. To conclude, I touch on a certain parallelism of Predictive Processing and philosophical inferentialism as presented by Robert Brandom. (shrink)

There is wide support in logic, philosophy, and psychology for the hypothesis that the probability of the indicative conditional of natural language, $P(\textit{if } A \textit{ then } B)$, is the conditional probability of $B$ given $A$, $P(B|A)$. We identify a conditional which is such that $P(\textit{if } A \textit{ then } B)= P(B|A)$ with de Finetti's conditional event, $B|A$. An objection to making this identification in the past was that it appeared unclear how to form compounds and iterations of (...) conditional events. In this paper, we illustrate how to overcome this objection with a probabilistic analysis, based on coherence, of these compounds and iterations. We interpret the compounds and iterations as conditional random quantities which, given some logical dependencies, may reduce to conditional events. We show how the inference to $B|A$ from $A$ and $B$ can be extended to compounds and iterations of both conditional events and biconditional events. Moreover, we determine the respective uncertainty propagation rules. Finally, we make some comments on extending our analysis to counterfactuals. (shrink)

Recent epistemology of modality has seen a growing trend towards metaphysics-first approaches. Contrastingly, this paper offers a more philosophically modest account of justifying modal claims, focusing on the practices of scientific modal inferences. Two ways of making such inferences are identified and analyzed: actualist-manipulationist modality and relative modality. In AM, what is observed to be or not to be the case in actuality or under manipulations, allows us to make modal inferences. AM-based inferences are fallible, but (...) the same holds for practically all empirical inquiry. In RM, modal inferences are evaluated relative to what is kept fixed in a system, like a theory or a model. RM-based inferences are more certain but framework-dependent. While elements from both AM and RM can be found in some existing accounts of modality, it is worth highlighting them in their own right and isolating their features for closer scrutiny. This helps to establish their relevant epistemologies that are free from some strong philosophical assumptions often attached to them in the literature. We close by showing how combining these two routes amounts to a view that accounts for a rich variety of modal inferences in science. (shrink)