Degrees of belief are familiar to all of us. Our confidence in the truth of some propositions is higher than our confidence in the truth of other propositions. We are pretty confident that our computers will boot when we push their power button, but we are much more confident that the sun will rise tomorrow. Degrees of belief formally represent the strength with which we believe the truth of various propositions. The higher an agent’s degree (...) of belief for a particular proposition, the higher her confidence in the truth of that proposition. For instance, Sophia’s degree of belief that it will be sunny in Vienna tomorrow might be .52, whereas her degree of belief that the train will leave on time might be .23. The precise meaning of these statements depends, of course, on the underlying theory of degrees of belief. These theories offer a formal tool to measure degrees of belief, to investigate the relations between various degrees of belief in different propositions, and to normatively evaluate degrees of belief. (shrink)

هو أول كتاب باللغة العربية يعرض لمراحل وآليات تطور المنطق الرمزي المعاصر متعدد القيم بأنساقه المختلفة، مركزًا على مشكلة الغموض المعرفي للإنسان بأبعادها اللغوية والإبستمولوجية والأنطولوجية، والتي تتجلى – على سبيل المثال – فيما تحفل به الدراسات الفلسفية والمنطقية والعلمية من مفارقات تمثل تحديًا قويًا لثنائية الصدق والكذب الكلاسيكية، وكذلك في اكتشاف «هيزنبرج» لمبدأ اللايقين، وتأكيده وعلماء الكمّ على ضرورة التفسيرات الإحصائية في المجال دون الذري، الأمر الذي يؤكد عدم فعالية قانون الثالث المرفوع في التعامل مع معطيات الواقع الفعلي، واستحالة (...) مشروع إقامة لغة مثالية أو اصطناعية أو كاملة منطقيًا تتجاوز عيوب ونقائص اللغة العادية التي نفكر ونتعامل بها. وينتهي الكتاب إلى نتيجة مؤداها أن ما واجهه المنطق الكلاسيكي – ثنائي القيم – من مشكلات أدت إلى تطويره، لاسيما مشكلة الغموض، لابد وأن يواجهه بالمثل المنطق متعدد القيم، ذلك أن الغموض ظاهرة إبستمولوجية في المحل الأول، مردودها إلى الذات العارفة وقصور إمكاناتها الإدراكية والقياسية، لا إلى الوجود ذاته. وأننا حتى لو سمحنا لأية قضية منطقية بقيمة صدق ثالثة، أو بأكثر من قيمة تتوسط بين الصدق التام والكذب التام، فسوف تظل القضية – كتمثيل لغوي لإحدى وقائع العالم – صادقة أو كاذبة، سواء أدركنا ذلك أو لم ندركه، وذلك تأكيد لنزعة أفلاطون الواقعية القائلة بوجود أزلي وثابت للحقائق في عالم المثل، تحول دون معرفتنا الظنية بظلالها في عالم الحس المتغير. ويعني ذلك بعبارة أخرى أن الشك في قانون الثالث المرفوع هو إسقاط من الذات على الموضوع، مبعثه عدم اكتمال العملية المعرفية ومحدوديتها، وأن ظهور الأنساق المنطقية ذات القيم المتعددة ما هو إلا حلقة من حلقات العلاقة الجدلية اللامنتهية بين الإنسان والطبيعة، أو بيم ما هو مُدرك وما هو موجود بالفعل. والكتاب بصفة عامة هو أول كتاب باللغة العربية يعرض لأنساق المنطق متعدد القيم بعد مرحلة البرينكيبيا ماثيماتيكا. (shrink)

We can classify the (truth-theoretic) paradoxes according to their degrees of paradoxicality. Roughly speaking, two paradoxes have the same degrees of paradoxicality, if they lead to a contradiction under the same conditions, and one paradox has a (non-strictly) lower degree of paradoxicality than another, if whenever the former leads to a contradiction under a condition, the latter does so under the same condition. In this paper, we outline some results and questions around the degrees of paradoxicality (...) and summarize recent progress. (shrink)

This paper examines the work of Immanuel Kant in the light of a new theory on the nature of truth, knowledge and falsehood (the Inversion Theory of Truth). Kant’s idea that knowledge could be absolutely certain, and that its truth must correspond with reality, is discredited by a dissection of the Correspondence Theory of Truth. This examination of the nature of truth, as well as knowledge and falsehood, is conducted with reference to Sir Karl Popper’s (...) writings on regulative ideas, the criterion of demarcation and the principle of falsifiability. It is argued that if truth is to be regarded as certain, it should be used to describe objects and events in the objective (noumenal) state, and that subjective knowledge must contain (and is improved by) falsehood. Perceptions and knowledge are obtained by the biological and evolutionary process of Active Subjectivism. Ideas we have knowledge of can be metaphysical or scientific, according to Popper’s Criterion of Demarcation. Kant’s “Copernican revolution” claim that our intellect imposes absolutely true laws on nature could not allow for the possibility that ideas might be constructed from fallible perceptions, and hence that all knowledge is uncertain. Instead, he developed a Critique of Practical Reason in which religion, though not provable through logical reasoning, could be proved by our innate moral sense, giving us a Categorical Imperative that could lead to perverse results. By rejecting the absolute certainty of a priori knowledge, and admitting a degree of essential falsehood, we arrive at a more reasonable grounding for moral behavior. (shrink)

A survey of Bayle's skeptical arguments regarding Descartes' criterion of truth, which Bayle refers to as "evidence." Bayle's arguments for degrees of evidence, as well as for the necessity and sufficiency of possessing a high degree of evidence in order to form virtuous beliefs, are surveyed as well.

Truth is the degree of accuracy when representing reality. We postulate three cognitive stages: the psychon, produced by perception; the construct, produced by intellection; and the speech act, produced by communication. Truth lies in the second; only constructs are alethic. Truth is a quality which takes place in degrees. Certainty is the unreachable perfect tip of this gradation, so it is an ideal concept. A thesis is deemed true if its alethical degree is acceptably efficacious, otherwise (...) the thesis is deemed false. Put in other words, we deem true any thesis not having enough fails to deem it false. (shrink)

Imagination comes with varying degrees of sensory accompaniment. Sometimes imagining is phenomenologically lean (cognitive imagining); at other times, imagining involves or requires sensory presentation such as mental imagery (sensory imagining). Philosophers debate whether contradictions can obtain in fiction and whether cognitive imagining is robust enough to explain our engagement with fiction. In this paper, I defend the Principle of Poetic License by arguing for the Permissive View of fictional truth: we can have fictions in which a contradiction is (...) true, everything is true, or nothing is true. I show that imagination-based worries about impossible, unlimited, and empty fictions can be shown to be about sensory imagination and that sensory imagination isn’t necessary for fictional truth. (shrink)

Scientific realism is a thesis about the success of science. Most traditionally: science has been so successful at prediction and guiding action because its best theories are true (or approximately true or increasing in their degree of truth). If science is in the business of doing its best to generate true theories, then we should turn to those theories for explanatory knowledge, predictions, and guidance of our actions and decisions. Views that are popular in contemporary philosophy of science about (...) scientific modeling and the centrality of idealization create several challenges for this traditional form of scientific realism. Yet the basic idea behind scientific realism that science has been and will continue to be epistemically successful is deeply appealing. This chapter explores the challenges posed by idealization and scientific modeling to motivate a scientific realism fully divorced from the idea that science is in the business of generating true theories. On the resulting view, the objects of scientific knowledge are causal patterns, so this knowledge only ever provides partial, simplified accounts of a complex reality. This variety of selective realism better accommodates the nature of our present-day scientific successes and offers an interpretation of scientific progress that resists the antirealist’s pessimism. (shrink)

Logical reasoning is not only a component of religious faith (cf., for instance, the "Golden rule"), but, in addition, the religious faith itself can be conceived as a logical pragmatic function applied to sentences and their meanings. Pragmatic role of religious faith is shown on the examples of the analogy of seed and spoken word (e.g., Mt 13:3-23) and on the degrees of faith described in the episode about Nicodemus (John 3). Pragmatics adds (different grades of) perseverance to the (...) correctness of reasoning and to the truth-preservation of the consequence relation. Correspondingly, religious faith is described by formally defined model and satisfaction relation, which are applied to and examined on the text of John 3. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories are rather a popular topic these days, and a lot has been written on things like the meaning of _conspiracy theory_, whether it’s ever rational to believe conspiracy theories, and on the psychology and demographics of people who believe conspiracy theories. But very little has been said about why people might be led to posit conspiracy theories in the first place. This paper aims to fill this lacuna. In particular, I shall argue that, in open democratic societies, citizens (...) justifiably presuppose that the epistemic authorities—journalists, academics, scientists, and so on—are engaged in a good faith pursuit of the truth. This presupposition generates certain normative expectations on the behaviors of the epistemic authorities—they ought to be open to new evidence, possess a healthy degree of skepticism, be willing to engage with opponents, and so on. So, when an epistemic authority is presented with some putatively anomalous data or an alternative hypothesis for some event or phenomena, people expect the epistemic authority to respond in a way that is consonant with these norms. In some instances, however, the epistemic authorities do not respond in this way and instead are dogmatic, dismissive, and engage in _ad hominem_. From the point of view of the citizen, there’s a tension here between how the epistemic authorities ought to behave and how they have, in fact, behaved which is best resolved either by taking the epistemic authorities less seriously or by positing a conspiracy theory. Put another way, the failure of the epistemic authorities to adhere to the norms by which we take them to be governed when presented with apparent anomalies or alternative hypotheses is one reason for which one might initially posit a conspiracy theory. (shrink)

Answers to the questions of what justifies conscientious objection in medicine in general and which specific objections should be respected have proven to be elusive. In this paper, I develop a new framework for conscientious objection in medicine that is based on the idea that conscience can express true moral claims. I draw on one of the historical roots, found in Adam Smith’s impartial spectator account, of the idea that an agent’s conscience can determine the correct moral norms, even if (...) the agent’s society has endorsed different norms. In particular, I argue that when a medical professional is reasoning from the standpoint of an impartial spectator, his or her claims of conscience are true, or at least approximate moral truth to the greatest degree possible for creatures like us, and should thus be respected. In addition to providing a justification for conscientious objection in medicine by appealing to the potential truth of the objection, the account advances the debate regarding the integrity and toleration justifications for conscientious objection, since the standard of the impartial spectator specifies the boundaries of legitimate appeals to moral integrity and toleration. The impartial spectator also provides a standpoint of shared deliberation and public reasons, from which a conscientious objector can make their case in terms that other people who adopt this standpoint can and should accept, thus offering a standard fitting to liberal democracies. (shrink)

I argue for two claims: that the ordinary English truth predicate is a gradable adjective and that truth is a property that comes in degrees. The first is a semantic claim, motivated by the linguistic evidence and the similarity of the truth predicate’s behavior to other gradable terms. The second is a claim in natural language metaphysics, motivated by interpreting the best semantic analysis of gradable terms as applied to the truth predicate. In addition to (...) providing arguments for these two claims, I draw out consequences for debates about deflationism and truth-based analyses of notions such as assertion and logical consequence. (shrink)

Popper's account of science is an endeavour in establishing the relationship between universality and truth. The idea is that the more an empirical law is universal, by precluding certain realities from obtaining in an evidentially falsifiable way, the more the law is supported by instances of its predictions being evidentially verified. The logical structure of this dynamic is captured by Popper's notion of 'corroboration'. However, this notion is suspect, for, depending on one's interpretation of evidential givenness, the relation between (...) a law's degree of universality and evidential corroborability could instead invert, thereby contradicting Popper. This paper also explores how a conceptualization of universality in terms of necessary simplicity-i.e., a measure of simplicity that is also sensitive to the evidence at hand-can better recontextualize evidential givenness to be about evidential support for a theory's predictive truth conduciveness, against Popper's understanding of evidential support for a theory's veracity concerning the evidence at hand. However, it is argued that employing necessary simplicity to attain truth conduciveness in a theory's predictions must appeal to specific background assumptions concerning the state of affairs the evidence is supposed to be about. When these background assumptions are denied as being necessarily instantiated, then a relation between necessary simplicity and truth conduciveness becomes contingently uncertain. (shrink)

[Ronald de Sousa] Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations (...) such as emotions; belief-like states, by contrast, are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem-objectivity-is not insurmountable. /// [Adam Morton ] It is accuracy rather than truth itself that is valuable. Emotional truth is a dubious though attractive notion, but emotional accuracy is much easier to make sense of. My approach to accuracy goes via an account of what makes a story accurate. Stories can be accurate but not true, and emotions can be accurate whether or not they are true. The capacity for emotional accuracy, for emotions that fit a person's situation, is an aspect of emotional intelligence, which is as important an aspect of rational human agency as the intelligent formation of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

Truth seems to be an indispensable element of authority which presents itself as being based on more than just power and efficiency. In the domain of law,there is not only and primarily the problem of establishing the truth about the facts which are to be judged; there is also the problem of norms—does their authority rest solely on the act of establishing them, or is there “something behind”, a truth which contributes to the strength of law, and (...) which provides legitimacy to both legislator and to the legal norms themselves. In theoretical reflection, the very possibility of talking about true norms or true evaluations is under challenge, and this view dominates in the academic education of lawyers and other professionals. At the basis of this project lies the conviction that the problem of true norms, and the more general problem of the place of truth in law, is worth re-examining. In the course of such a re-examination, it is also worth returning to certain points in the tradition of thinking about the foudations of law. In the tradition recalled by the papers presented here—by both Italian and Polish authors—a prominent place is occupied by Polish thinkers such as Leon Petrażycki, Czesław Znamierowski, and Zygmunt Ziembiński. The book consists of three major parts. The titles—Tradition, Theory, Practice mark important points of reference in the reflection on truth in the context of law. The contributions relate to these points in different degrees, and each, though placed in one of these parts, also refer to the others. (shrink)

Reliabilists hold that a belief is doxastically justified if and only if it is caused by a reliable process. But since such a process is one that tends to produce a high ratio of true to false beliefs, reliabilism is on the face of it applicable to binary beliefs, but not to degrees of confidence or credences. For while beliefs admit of truth or falsity, the same cannot be said of credences in general. A natural question now arises: (...) Can reliability theories of justified belief be extended or modified to account for justified credence? In this paper, I address this question. I begin by showing that, as it stands, reliabilism cannot account for justified credence. I then consider three ways in which the reliabilist may try to do so by extending or modifying her theory, but I argue that such attempts face certain problems. After that, I turn to a version of reliabilism that incorporates evidentialist elements and argue that it allows us to avoid the problems that the other theories face. If I am right, this gives reliabilists a reason, aside from those given recently by Comesaña and Goldman, to move towards such a kind of hybrid theory. (shrink)

We regularly make graded normative judgements in the epistemic domain. Recent work in the literature examines degrees of justification, degrees of rationality, and degrees of assertability. This paper addresses a different dimension of the gradeability of epistemic normativity, one that has been given little attention. How should we understand degrees of epistemic criticizability? In virtue of what sorts of factors can one epistemic failing be worse than another? The paper develops a dual-factor view of degrees (...) of epistemic criticizability. According to the view, degrees of epistemic criticizability are (i) an inverse function of degrees of doxastic justification and (ii) a function of degrees of agent culpability. The paper develops an account of each factor, and explains how they should be weighted. The paper also addresses the importance of modelling degrees of epistemic criticizability in a broader context. I focus on the role that such a model can play in the ethics of epistemic criticism. (shrink)

How is the burden of proof to be distributed among individuals who are involved in resolving a particular issue? Under what conditions should the burden of proof be distributed unevenly? We distinguish attitudinal from dialectical burdens and argue that these questions should be answered differently, depending on which is in play. One has an attitudinal burden with respect to some proposition when one is required to possess sufficient evidence for it. One has a dialectical burden with respect to some proposition (...) when one is required to provide supporting arguments for it as part of a deliberative process. We show that the attitudinal burden with respect to certain propositions is unevenly distributed in some deliberative contexts, but in all of these contexts, establishing the degree of support for the proposition is merely a means to some other deliberative end, such as action guidance, or persuasion. By contrast, uneven distributions of the dialectical burden regularly further the aims of deliberation, even in contexts where the quest for truth is the sole deliberative aim, rather than merely a means to some different deliberative end. We argue that our distinction between these two burdens resolves puzzles about unevenness that have been raised in the literature. (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

Most discussion in population ethics has concentrated how to order populations by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. The topic is characterized by paradoxes which show that our considered beliefs are inconsistent in cases where the number of people and their welfare varies. The best known and most discussed example shattering our intuitions is Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox. But why are paradoxes prevalent in population ethics? Can the analysis of Buddhist intuitions contribute to answer this question? (...) -/- The comparison of classical utilitarian and Buddhist intuitions demonstrates the close tie between intuitions and interests. The perplexing Buddhist intuition about non-existence can be explained (except for metaphysical reasons) by a radically different priority given to survival. -/- The method of measuring the quality of life is not decisive for the existence of paradoxes. The Buddhist axiology changes but doesn’t remove counter-intuitive combinations. -/- If the conflict of interest (quantity versus quality) is described within a two-parameter model, it causes conflicting intuitions. In axiologies which favour quantity (utilitarianism) or quality (perfectionism) the conflicting intuitions inevitably lead to paradoxes. -/- In order to find a compromise, one would have to find a universal interest and a corresponding universal intuition. The obvious candidate to meet this request is sympathy. But since there is no universal consensus on the desirable degree of sympathy, the normative force of such an approach is limited. -/- Breaking out of the two-parameter model and accepting the incommensurability of certain qualities threatens the normative claim of population ethics. (shrink)

Mind, according to cognitive neuroscience, is a set of brain functions. But, unlike sets, our minds are cohesive. Moreover, unlike the structureless elements of sets, the contents of our minds are structured. Mutual relations between the mental contents endow the mind its structure. Here we characterize the structural essence and the logical form of the mind by focusing on thinking. Examination of the relations between concepts, propositions, and syllogisms involved in thinking revealed the reflexive graph structure of the conceptual mind. (...) Objective logic of the conceptual mind is calculated from its structure. Noteworthy features of the logic of conceptual mind are: degrees of truth, varieties of negation, admission of contradiction, and the failure of a de Morgan's law. Furthermore, cohesion of the conceptual mind follows from its reflexive graph structure. Our characterization of the structure and logic of mind constitutes a substantial refinement of the contemporary cognitive neuroscientific conceptualization of the mind as a set. (shrink)

This article arises indirectly out of the development of a particular approach, called ATT-Meta, to the understanding of some types of metaphorical utterance. However, the specifics of the approach are not the focus of the present article, which concentrates on some general issues that have informed, or arisen from, the development of the approach. The article connects those issues to the questions of metaphorical meaning and truth. -/- A large part of the exploration of metaphor in fields such as (...) Cognitive Linguistics and natural language Pragmatics takes metaphor to rest on complex mappings between a target subject matter and a source subject matter (see, e.g., Lakoff 1993, 2008). This is one main way in which some aspects of the source, generally including some structural aspects, can have parallels in the target. It is typical for much, and perhaps the whole, of the meaning of a metaphorical expression to be explained by means of these parallels. We will talk about “parallelism” rather than “isomorphism,” or even “analogy,” because “isomorphism” implies a strict one-to-one correspondence between items in the source scenario and items in the target scenario, and analogy theorists often hold that analogy rests on isomorphism. We wish not to prejudge the question of whether looser, messier forms of parallelism are sometimes needed. Also, we will talk about parallels rather than mappings, because our discussion will embrace the question of parallelism that may be discernible, albeit implicitly, in accounts of metaphor that are not presented as being based on mappings. Three main cases of such accounts are Relevance Theory (RT: e.g., Sperber & Wilson 2008, Wilson & Carston 2006), the categorization-based or "class-inclusion“ approach (Glucksberg 2008), and Ritchie’s (2006) CLST account (Context-Limited Simulation Theory). -/- One main issue we will address is that of substantial non-parallelism that can exist between source and target subject-matters in metaphor: more precisely, the issue that there may be source aspects that are exploited by the utterance and have a deep effect on metaphorical interpretation but that do not themselves have a natural parallel in the target subject-matter (although we will point out that artificial parallels can generally be created). This is part of a broader point that the content of metaphorical discourse should often be seen as being derived in a rather holistic way from several metaphorical bits of the discourse, which conspire to describe some source-domain scenario, rather than being derived by putting together metaphorical meanings of each metaphorical bit (even if each bit could in principle be assigned its own separate metaphorical meaning). As a result, we suggest that it is misguided to think of the propositions making up the content (or, if you like, "meaning“) about the target scenario that is being described is a matter of metaphorical meaning of specific grammatical units such as sentences, clauses or other constituents that a traditional semantic theory would assign propositional meaning to. Rather, grammatical units (that are to be taken metaphorically) have meanings in source-domain terms; content in target-domain terms is derived from the source-domain scenario depicted by those units and fleshed out through inference; and the target-domain content is only (in general) fuzzily relatable to particular grammatical units. This view is on a spectrum at whose extreme point we could place Davidson’s (1984) view that metaphors only have literal (i.e., source-domain) meanings, with other effects on the understander not being a matter of propositional content. However, on our view it is proper to take metaphorical discourse as having non-literal meaning, couched as a collection of propositions, among other things possibly; it is just that the propositions are not to be thought of (in general) as meaning of specific sentences, clauses or other grammatical units rather than of a possibly only fuzzily delineated piece of discourse. -/- A second main concern of the article is the question of how much, and what types of, inference are involved in the derivation of metaphorical meaning. While our own ATT-Meta approach accords with, amongst other accounts, Relevance Theory (RT) as to the centrality of inference in metaphor interpretation, we disagree with RT on its claim that metaphor interpretation is a matter of (a relatively high degree of) concept "broadening“ and (often) "narrowing“. We argue that almost all inference can in fact be theoretically re-described as concept broadening and/or narrowing, and what is left over should be included in the metaphor interpretation process anyway. Thus, the RT claim about broadening and narrowing really just says that inference, of unrestricted type, is involved in metaphor understanding, in accord with what ATT-Meta claims. (shrink)

The dissertation has two parts, each dealing with a problem, namely: 1) What is the most adequate account of fuzziness -the so-called phenomenon of vagueness?, and 2) what is the most plausible solution to the sorites, or heap paradox? I will try to show that fuzzy properties are those which are gradual, amenable to be possessed in a greater or smaller extent. Acknowledgement of degrees in the instantiation of a property allows for a gradual transition from one opposite to (...) the other, each intermediate stage constituting an overlap in certain proportion of both contraries. Hence, degrees in the possession of a property give rise to simple contradictions. The reason why I have chosen those two questions is that they provide the main philosophical motivation for a particular brand of an infinite valued and paraconsistent logic. I will claim that Classical logic (CL) is not adequate to handle fuzzy situations, and, being deficient, is in need of being expanded to make room for degrees of truth and weak contradictions. One can hardly deny the importance of the debate, since what is ultimately at stake is what the limits of truth, rationality, intelligibility and possibility are. The main disciplines within which the research moves are the philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, and ontology. (shrink)

Is a human more conscious than an octopus? In the science of consciousness, it’s oftentimes assumed that some creatures (or mental states) are more conscious than others. But in recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that the notion of degrees of consciousness is conceptually confused. This paper (1) argues that the most prominent objections to degrees of consciousness are unsustainable, (2) examines the semantics of ‘more conscious than’ expressions, (3) develops an analysis of what it is (...) for a degreed property to count as degrees of consciousness, and (4) applies the analysis to various theories of consciousness. I argue that whether consciousness comes in degrees ultimately depends on which theory of consciousness turns out to be correct. But I also argue that most theories of consciousness entail that consciousness comes in degrees. (shrink)

Privacy is valued by many. But what it means to have privacy remains less than clear. In this paper, I argue that the notion of privacy should be understood in epistemic terms. What it means to have (some degree of) privacy is that other persons do not stand in significant epistemic relations to those truths one wishes to keep private.

Since the time of Aristotle's students, interpreters have considered Prior Analytics to be a treatise about deductive reasoning, more generally, about methods of determining the validity and invalidity of premise-conclusion arguments. People studied Prior Analytics in order to learn more about deductive reasoning and to improve their own reasoning skills. These interpreters understood Aristotle to be focusing on two epistemic processes: first, the process of establishing knowledge that a conclusion follows necessarily from a set of premises (that is, on the (...) epistemic process of extracting information implicit in explicitly given information) and, second, the process of establishing knowledge that a conclusion does not follow. Despite the overwhelming tendency to interpret the syllogistic as formal epistemology, it was not until the early 1970s that it occurred to anyone to think that Aristotle may have developed a theory of deductive reasoning with a well worked-out system of deductions comparable in rigor and precision with systems such as propositional logic or equational logic familiar from mathematical logic. When modern logicians in the 1920s and 1930s first turned their attention to the problem of understanding Aristotle's contribution to logic in modern terms, they were guided both by the Frege-Russell conception of logic as formal ontology and at the same time by a desire to protect Aristotle from possible charges of psychologism. They thought they saw Aristotle applying the informal axiomatic method to formal ontology, not as making the first steps into formal epistemology. They did not notice Aristotle's description of deductive reasoning. Ironically, the formal axiomatic method (in which one explicitly presents not merely the substantive axioms but also the deductive processes used to derive theorems from the axioms) is incipient in Aristotle's presentation. Partly in opposition to the axiomatic, ontically-oriented approach to Aristotle's logic and partly as a result of attempting to increase the degree of fit between interpretation and text, logicians in the 1970s working independently came to remarkably similar conclusions to the effect that Aristotle indeed had produced the first system of formal deductions. They concluded that Aristotle had analyzed the process of deduction and that his achievement included a semantically complete system of natural deductions including both direct and indirect deductions. Where the interpretations of the 1920s and 1930s attribute to Aristotle a system of propositions organized deductively, the interpretations of the 1970s attribute to Aristotle a system of deductions, or extended deductive discourses, organized epistemically. The logicians of the 1920s and 1930s take Aristotle to be deducing laws of logic from axiomatic origins; the logicians of the 1970s take Aristotle to be describing the process of deduction and in particular to be describing deductions themselves, both those deductions that are proofs based on axiomatic premises and those deductions that, though deductively cogent, do not establish the truth of the conclusion but only that the conclusion is implied by the premise-set. Thus, two very different and opposed interpretations had emerged, interestingly both products of modern logicians equipped with the theoretical apparatus of mathematical logic. The issue at stake between these two interpretations is the historical question of Aristotle's place in the history of logic and of his orientation in philosophy of logic. This paper affirms Aristotle's place as the founder of logic taken as formal epistemology, including the study of deductive reasoning. A by-product of this study of Aristotle's accomplishments in logic is a clarification of a distinction implicit in discourses among logicians--that between logic as formal ontology and logic as formal epistemology. (shrink)

Alfred Mele's deflationary account of self-deception has frequently been criticised for being unable to explain the “tension” inherent in self-deception. These critics maintain that rival theories can better account for this tension, such as theories which suppose self-deceivers to have contradictory beliefs. However, there are two ways in which the tension idea has been understood. In this article, it is argued that on one such understanding, Mele's deflationism can account for this tension better than its rivals, but only if we (...) reconceptualize the self-deceiver's attitude in terms of unwarranted degrees of conviction rather than unwarranted belief. This new way of viewing the self-deceiver's attitude will be informed by observations on experimental work done on the biasing influence of desire on belief, which suggests that self-deceivers don’t manage to fully convince themselves of what they want to be true. On another way in which this tension has been understood, this account would not manage so well, since on this understanding the self-deceiver is best interpreted as knowing, but wishing to avoid, the truth. However, it is argued that we are under no obligation to account for this since it is a characteristic of a different phenomenon than self-deception, namely, escapism. (shrink)

Despite the recent increase in interest in philosophy about ignorance, little attention has been paid to the question of what makes it possible for a being to become aware of their own ignorance. In this paper, I try to provide such an account by arguing that, for a being to become aware of their own ignorance, they must have the mental capacity to represent something as being unknown to them. For normal adult humans who have mastered a language, mental representation (...) of an unknown is enabled by forming linguistic expressions whose content is grasped, but whose referent is unknown. I provide a neo-Fregean, a neo-Russellian, and then a unified account of this. On that basis, I then argue further that the content of ignorance can always be captured by a question. I then distinguish between propositional ignorance and non-propositional ignorance and argue that propositional ignorance attributions can be of three types, that-ignorance, whether-ignorance, and fact-ignorance. I conclude by arguing that the acquisition of truths, even when it yields knowledge that is certain, does not always eliminate one’s ignorance and that there is a degree of ignorance in almost everything we claim to know. (shrink)

Since his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft was first published in 1786, controversy has surrounded Immanuel Kant’s conception of matter. In particular, the justification for both his dynamical theory of matter and the related dismissal of mechanical philosophy are obscure. In this paper, I address these longstanding issues and establish that Kant’s dynamism rests upon Leibnizian, metaphysical commitments held by Kant from his early pre-Critical texts on natural philosophy to his major critical works. I demonstrate that, throughout his corpus and inspired (...) by Leibniz, Kant endorses the a priori law of continuity of alteration as a truth of metaphysics, according to which all alterations in experience must occur gradually through all intervening degrees. The principle thus legislates against mechanical philosophy’s absolutely impenetrable atoms, as they would would involve instantaneous changes of velocity in impact. This reveals the metaphysical incoherencies in mechanical philosophy and leaves Kant’s own dynamical theory of matter, grounded on material forces, as the only viable approach to physical explanation. Subsequently, I demonstrate that Kant nevertheless made conceptual space in his system for the theoretical consideration of mechanical explanations, which makes manifest one of the positive roles that the faculty of reason can play with respect to natural science. (shrink)

The concept of truth and competing philosophical theories on what truth amounts to have an important place in contemporary philosophy. The aim of this chapter is to give a synopsis of different theories of truth and the particular philosophical issues related to the concept of truth. The literature on this topic is vast, and we must necessarily be rather selective and very brief about complex questions of interpretation of various philosophers. The focus of the chapter is (...) mainly on selected systematic issues and the most influential and well-established philosophical theories and key concepts. (shrink)

In their paper Nothing but the Truth Andreas Pietz and Umberto Rivieccio present Exactly True Logic, an interesting variation upon the four-valued logic for first-degree entailment FDE that was given by Belnap and Dunn in the 1970s. Pietz & Rivieccio provide this logic with a Hilbert-style axiomatisation and write that finding a nice sequent calculus for the logic will presumably not be easy. But a sequent calculus can be given and in this paper we will show that a calculus (...) for the Belnap-Dunn logic we have defined earlier can in fact be reused for the purpose of characterising ETL, provided a small alteration is made—initial assignments of signs to the sentences of a sequent to be proved must be different from those used for characterising FDE. While Pietz & Rivieccio define ETL on the language of classical propositional logic we also study its consequence relation on an extension of this language that is functionally complete for the underlying four truth values. On this extension the calculus gets a multiple-tree character—two proof trees may be needed to establish one proof. (shrink)

At the end of one side of a manuscript entitled “On Kant” and housedin the Scholem Archive in Jerusalem, one reads the following pro-nouncement: “it is impossible to understand Kant today.” 1 Whatever it might mean to “understand” Kant, or indeed, whatever “Kant” is heremeant to be understood, it is certain, according to the manuscript,that such understanding cannot come about by way of purporting tohave returned to or spoken in the name of “Kant.” For “[t]oday,” sothe document begins, “there are (...) many people who call themselvesKantians, and who profess to have—or actually do have—cognitions inKantian terminology.” Whatever the degree of truth or falsity to suchcognitions, however, neither those who produce these cognitions nor aphilosophy consisting in these cognitions have a right to call themselves“Kantian,” since it is “obvious” that “such terminology is not equivalent to Kantian language” but is abstracted from “language” as innovationstowards the better description of the world. (shrink)

A Plithogenic Logical proposition P is a proposition that is characterized by many degrees of truth-values with respect to many corresponding attribute-values (or random variables) that characterize P. Each degree of truth-value may be classical, fuzzy, intuitionistic fuzzy, neutrosophic, or other fuzzy extension type logic. At the end, a cumulative truth of P is computed.

Why are conditional degrees of belief in an observation E, given a statistical hypothesis H, aligned with the objective probabilities expressed by H? After showing that standard replies are not satisfactory, I develop a suppositional analysis of conditional degree of belief, transferring Ramsey’s classical proposal to statistical inference. The analysis saves the alignment, explains the role of chance-credence coordination, and rebuts the charge of arbitrary assessment of evidence in Bayesian inference. Finally, I explore the implications of this analysis for (...) Bayesian reasoning with idealized models in science. (shrink)

This chapter has four central aims. First, in §1, I distinguish two ideas within epistemology that sometimes travel under the name ‘contextualism’ — the ‘situational contextualist’ idea that an individual’s context, especially their social context, can make for a difference in what they know, and the ‘linguistic contextualist’ idea that discourse using the word ‘knows’ and its cognates is context-sensitive, expressing dif- ferent contents in different conversational contexts. -/- Second, in §2, I situate contextualism with respect to several influential ideas (...) in feminist epistemology. These ideas are thoroughgoingly contextualist in the situational sense; I’ll explore the prospects for linguistic contextualist analogues or implementations of them. Simple connections between these feminist ideas and linguistic contextualism will prove elusive, but more subtle ones are possible, and sometimes attractive. -/- §3 considers the degree to which contextual epistemic parameters are determined interpersonally, as opposed to individualistically. Should contextualists hold that speakers can individually determine the contextual parameters that influence the truth- conditions of their utterances? Or are they fixed at a broader social level? I’ll rehearse some influential reasons to opt for the latter, more social, form of contextualism. -/- In §4 I discuss the practical and moral significance of speakers’ choices of epistemic parameters, given contextualism. For example, I’ll consider how standards-raising can be used to discredit evidential sources, with an eye towards the social and moral consequences of such moves. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the concepts of Pythagorean fuzzy valued neutrosophic set (PFVNS) and Pythagorean fuzzy valued neutrosophic (PFVNV) constructed by considering Pythagorean fuzzy values (PFVs) instead of numbers for the degrees of the truth, the indeterminacy and the falsity, which is a new extension of intuitionistic fuzzy valued neutrosophic set (IFVNS). By means of PFVNSs, the degrees of the truth, the indeterminacy and the falsity can be given in Pythagorean fuzzy environment and more sensitive (...) evaluations are made by a decision maker in decision making problems compared to IFVNSs. In other words, such sets enable a decision maker to evaluate the degrees of the truth, the indeterminacy and the falsity as PFVs to model the uncertainty in the evaluations. (shrink)

Vector models of language are based on the contextual aspects of language, the distributions of words and how they co-occur in text. Truth conditional models focus on the logical aspects of language, compositional properties of words and how they compose to form sentences. In the truth conditional approach, the denotation of a sentence determines its truth conditions, which can be taken to be a truth value, a set of possible worlds, a context change potential, or similar. (...) In the vector models, the degree of co-occurrence of words in context determines how similar the meanings of words are. In this paper, we put these two models together and develop a vector semantics for language based on the simply typed lambda calculus models of natural language. We provide two types of vector semantics: a static one that uses techniques familiar from the truth conditional tradition and a dynamic one based on a form of dynamic interpretation inspired by Heim’s context change potentials. We show how the dynamic model can be applied to entailment between a corpus and a sentence and provide examples. (shrink)

An examination of conditionals in di¤erent languages leads to a distinction of three types of conditionals instead of the usual two (indicative and subjunctive). The three types can be explained by the degree of acceptance or as-if acceptance of the truth of the antecedent. The labels subjunctive and indicative are shown to be inadequate. So-called indicative conditionals comprise two classes, the very frequent uncertain-fact conditionals and the quite rare accepted-fact conditionals. Uncertain-fact conditionals may have a time shift in contemporary (...) English and the future subjunctive in Portuguese (though not all of them do). Moreover, paraphrases of if with in case or supposing are usually possible with approximately the same meaning. Accepted-fact conditionals never have these features. (shrink)

How demanding is the virtuous life? Can virtue exist alongside hints of vice? Is it possible to be virtuous within a vicious society? A line of thinking running through Diogenes and the Stoics is that even a hint of corruption is inimical to virtue, that participating in a vicious society makes it impossible for a person to be virtuous. One response to this difficulty is to claim that virtue is a threshold concept, that context sets a threshold for what is (...) considered virtuous. On this way of thinking, what counts as virtuous in one society may be more demanding than what passes for virtuous in another. This response seems plausible when considering that virtue-theoretic terms like `honest' are gradable adjectives. Many gradable adjectives, like `tall' and `expensive,' have contextual thresholds that shift depending on the situation, and so is tenable that virtue-theoretic adjectives might function with contextual thresholds as well. A major difficulty for this response, however, is that virtue terms are absolute gradable adjectives, a variety of gradable adjectives that do not require a contextual threshold. Absolute gradable adjectives instead draw their truth conditions from their maximal degree, suggesting that Diogenes and the Stoics were correct to think that virtue is incompatible with even a small degree of vice. (shrink)

Sense-certainty is the consciousness that Truth (what is/being) lies in particular external objects. For example, considering that the mountain is true, the tree is true, and so on. But truth is not immediate. Truth is necessarily mediated, i.e. a result, implying that it is arrived at. Thus, if a crime is claimed against someone before a judge, the judge does not accept it immediately as true. The truth of the claim has to be established, arrived at, (...) through due process of presenting evidence, circumstances and arguments. The naïve realist accepts the evidence of his/her senses as true, as does the empirical scientist, but is unaware of the fact that there is process involved in making that determination. Divine Reason acts within all of creation, in which Man participates to some finite degree and, accordingly, is able to articulate that in the world. It is not so clear-cut as this, however, as the understanding would like it to be. The principle of the identity of identity and difference blurs the distinctions between God and Man so that, although the distinction is there, identity is also to be accounted for. It is this principle of simultaneous oneness and difference beyond understanding, and comprehensible only to what Hegel calls Speculative Reason that unlocks the door to the sphere of Spirit, or Absolute Knowledge. This is of course the broader perspective—the real science is in the details. Study of the Phenomenology is useful because it deals with the perspective of Reality from within consciousness and gradually leads to the comprehension of the Concept of which consciousness is only one aspect. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotle believes that virtue comes in degrees. After dispatching with initial concerns for the view, I argue that we should accept it because Aristotle conceives of heroic virtue as the highest degree of virtue. I support this interpretation of heroic virtue by considering and rejecting alternative readings, then showing that heroic virtue characterized as the highest degree of virtue is consistent with the doctrine of the mean.

Abstract— This study aimed to identify the degree of use of the capabilities of decision-support systems in Palestinian institutions higher education, Aqsa University in Gaza - a case study. The study used a analytical descriptive approach, and the researchers used the of questionnaire tool to collect the data, the researchers using stratified random sample distributed (150) questioners to the study population and (126) was obtained back with rate of 84%. The study showed that the most important results are: that senior (...) management supports the existence of decision support systems and that there is approval by the respondents on the paragraphs of the use of the capabilities of decision support systems in general. And that there are no significant differences between the averages of the answers of respondents differences about the degree of use of decision support systems capabilities attributed to personal data. The study also concluded a series of recommendations including: increasing the adoption of the senior management decision support in their decision-making systems. And increased regulatory attention to the potential available to decision support systems directly to the senior management in the Palestinian universities in the Gaza Strip. There is an increased interest in the physical and technical possibilities available for the use of decision support systems. There is an increased interest in human potential available for the use of decision support systems. Investment of information available to universities in building the capacities of integration techniques and other information technology capabilities. The empowerment of human resources in universities and participating in making decisions concerning the construction of the capabilities of information technology. (shrink)

According to dispositionalism about modality, a proposition <p> is possible just in case something has, or some things have, a power or disposition for its truth; and <p> is necessary just in case nothing has a power for its falsity. But are there enough powers to go around? In Yates (2015) I argued that in the case of mathematical truths such as <2+2=4>, nothing has the power to bring about their falsity or their truth, which means they come (...) out both necessary and not possible. Combining this with axiom (T), it is easy to derive a contradiction. I suggested that dispositionalists ought to retreat a little and say that <p> is possible just in case either p, or there is a power to bring it about that p, grounding the possibility of mathematical propositions in their truth rather than in powers. Vetter’s (2015) has the resources to provide a response to my argument, and in her (2018) she explicitly addresses it by arguing for a plenitude of powers, based on the idea that dispositions come in degrees, with necessary properties a limiting case of dispositionality. On this view there is a power for <2+2=4>, without there being a power to bring about its truth. In this paper I argue that Vetter’s case for plenitude does not work. However, I suggest, if we are prepared to accept metaphysical causation, a case can be made that there is indeed a power for <2+2=4>. (shrink)

Researchers have argued that believing in conspiracy theories is dangerous and harmful, both for the individual and the community. In the philosophical debate, the divide is between the generalists, who argue that conspiracy theories are prima facie problematic, and the particularists, who argue that since conspiracies do occur, we ought to take conspiracy theories seriously, and consider them on merit. Much of the empirical research has focused on correlations between conspiracy belief and personality traits, such as narcissism, illusory pattern perception, (...) and paranoia, in the spirit of a generalist account. However, there is also ample empirical evidence that conspiracy belief is widespread in the population at large, which would be surprising and in need of explanation if the generalists were correct. In sociology and political science studies have demonstrated the role of group motivation and social aspects of belief in conspiracies. There is currently lacking a unified account of what motivates conspiracy belief that can capture the different intuitions, if possible, in one framework. This is the lacuna I wish to address, by introducing a framework that incorporate the many dimensions of conspiracy theories. The framework identifies three motivating factors for endorsing a conspiracy theory: group cohesion, cognitive needs, and truth seeking. A fourth dimension is the isolation value, or the level of ‘knowledge-anomie’ that the conspiracy theory takes. Thus, the framework is able to capture more normal cognitive functions that drive conspiracy beliefs, such as adopting to the in-group’s beliefs and the quest for truth, but also the plausibly more abnormal ones. Conspiracy theories can be positioned in a three-dimensional space depending on the degree to which they exemplify each motivating factor and the extent they deviate from the ‘knowledge-norm’. I suggest that the generalist and the particularist have focused on different parts of this common three-dimensional space. I also indicate a relatively small area where I believe pathological conspiracy belief is to be positioned. Ultimately, it is an empirical question what part of the space (pathological or otherwise) conspiracy theories occupy. (shrink)

Assuming that votes are independent, the epistemically optimal procedure in a binary collective choice problem is known to be a weighted supermajority rule with weights given by personal log-likelihood-ratios. It is shown here that an analogous result holds in a much more general model. Firstly, the result follows from a more basic principle than expected-utility maximisation, namely from an axiom (Epistemic Monotonicity) which requires neither utilities nor prior probabilities of the ‘correctness’ of alternatives. Secondly, a person’s input need not be (...) a vote for an alternative, it may be any type of input, for instance a subjective degree of belief or probability of the correctness of one of the alternatives. The case of a profile of subjective degrees of belief is particularly appealing, since here no parameters such as competence parameters need to be known. (shrink)

What is the relationship between degrees of belief and binary beliefs? Can the latter be expressed as a function of the former—a so-called “belief-binarization rule”—without running into difficulties such as the lottery paradox? We show that this problem can be usefully analyzed from the perspective of judgment-aggregation theory. Although some formal similarities between belief binarization and judgment aggregation have been noted before, the connection between the two problems has not yet been studied in full generality. In this paper, we (...) seek to fill this gap. The paper is organized around a baseline impossibility theorem, which we use to map out the space of possible solutions to the belief-binarization problem. Our theorem shows that, except in limiting cases, there exists no belief-binarization rule satisfying four initially plausible desiderata. Surprisingly, this result is a direct corollary of the judgment-aggregation variant of Arrow’s classic impossibility theorem in social choice theory. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 1, Page 19-49, January 2022.

The paper looks at three big ideas that have been associated with the term “relativism.” The first maintains that some property has a higher-degree than might have been thought. The second that the judgments in a particular domain of discourse are capable only of relative truth and not of absolute truth And the third, which I dub with the oxymoronic label “absolutist relativism,” seeks to locate relativism in our acceptance of certain sorts of spare absolutist principles. -/- The (...) first idea is well illustrated by the famous cases drawn from physics, but is ill suited for providing a model for the sorts of relativism about normative domains that have most interested philosophers. -/- The second idea – according to which it is the truth of certain judgments that is relative – seems subject to a very difficult dilemma. -/- The final idea provides a coherent model of cases like etiquette but is not plausibly applied to the moral or epistemic domains. (shrink)

Notions of fitting seem to be attractive in explaining language understanding. This paper tries to interpret "fitting" in terms of holistic (cheng, 誠) intentionality rather than the dualistic one. I propose to interpret “cheng” as a notion of integration: The cheng of an entity is the power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others; "Mind" refers to the ability of not a single kind of entity but to that of all entities (...) of complex degrees in processing informations and to any agent that integrates. I would like to discuss some cases where this notion of fitting is working. First, building of a primitive language could have been done by fittings of primitive expressions which came out of people's basic needs and desires, their forms of life. Second, we do not identify an object on the basis of a criterion of similarity, but by asking questions like whether it would be more fitting to identify two objects in the present context than not to.Third, what is involved in our recognition of a fact is a context. A context does not dictate one single description but does allow any number of descriptions, some of which are more or less fitting and others of which are more or less unfitting. It may take time for the community of language involved to come to a more fitting description. For the sake of convenience, this description may come to have a grammar for the community where it can be classified as true and others as false. (shrink)