The Problem of Overlappers is a puzzle about what makes it the case, and how we can know, that we have the parts we intuitively think we have. In this paper, I develop and motivate an overlooked solution to this puzzle. According to what I call the self-making view it is within our power to decide what we refer to with the personal pronoun ‘I’, so the truth of most of our beliefs about our parts is ensured by the very (...) mechanism of self-reference. Other than providing an elegant solution to the Problem of Overlappers, the view can be motivated on independent grounds. It also has wide-ranging consequences for how we should be thinking about persons. Among other things, it can help undermine an influential line of argument against the permissibility of elective amputation. After a detailed discussion and defence of the self-making view, I consider some objections to it. I conclude that none of these objections is persuasive and we should at the very least take seriously the idea that we are to some extent self-made. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether humans are more likely to trust people who are coordinated with them. We examined a well-known type of linguistic coordination, lexical entrainment, typically involving the elaboration of “conceptual pacts,” or partner-specific agreements on how to conceptualize objects. In two experiments, we manipulated lexical entrainment in a referential communication task and measured the effect of this manipulation on epistemic and practical trust. Our results showed that participants were more likely to trust a coordinated partner than an (...) uncoordinated one, but only when the latter broke previously established conceptual pacts. (shrink)

Overconfidence is typically damaging to one’s reputation as a trustworthy source of information. Previous research shows that the reputational cost associated with conveying a piece of false information is higher for confident than unconfident speakers. When judging speaker trustworthiness, individuals do not exclusively rely on past accuracy but consider the extent to which speakers expressed a degree of confidence that matched the accuracy of their claims (their “confidence-accuracy calibration”). The present study experimentally examines the interplay between confidence, accuracy and a (...) third factor, namely evidence, in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. Experiment 1 probes the hypothesis that overconfidence does not backfire when a confident but inaccurate claim is justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be wrong is restored if the confidence expressed is based on strong evidence (good confidence-evidence calibration). Experiment 2 investigates the hypothesis that confidence can backfire if a confident and accurate claim is not justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be right is damaged if the confidence expressed is based on weak evidence (bad confidence-evidence calibration). Our results support both hypotheses and thus suggest that “confidence-evidence calibration” plays a crucial role in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. (shrink)

In recent years, metaphysics has undergone what some describe as a revolution: it has become standard to understand a vast array of questions as questions about grounding, a metaphysical notion of determination. Why should we believe in grounding, though? Supporters of the revolution often gesture at what I call the Argument from Explanatoriness: the notion of grounding is somehow indispensable to a metaphysical type of explanation. I challenge this argument and along the way develop a “reactionary” view, according to which (...) there is no interesting sense in which the notion of grounding is explanatorily indispensable. I begin with a distinction between two conceptions of grounding, a distinction which extant critiques of the revolution have usually failed to take into consideration: grounding qua that which underlies metaphysical explanation and grounding qua metaphysical explanation itself. Accordingly, I distinguish between two versions of the Argument from Explanatoriness: the Unexplained Explanations Version for the first conception of grounding, and the Expressive Power Version for the second. The paper’s conclusion is that no version of the Argument from Explanatoriness is successful. (shrink)

In a series of works, Jody Azzouni has defended deflationary nominalism, the view that certain sentences quantifying over mathematical objects are literally true, although such objects do not exist. One alleged attraction of this view is that it avoids various philosophical puzzles about mathematical objects. I argue that this thought is misguided. I first develop an ontologically neutral counterpart of Field’s reliability challenge and argue that deflationary nominalism offers no distinctive answer to it. I then show how this reasoning generalizes (...) to other philosophically problematic entities. The moral is that puzzle avoidance fails to motivate deflationary nominalism. (shrink)

Many philosophers embrace grounding, supposedly a central notion of metaphysics. Grounding is widely assumed to be irreflexive, but recently a number of authors have questioned this assumption: according to them, it is at least possible that some facts ground themselves. The primary purpose of this paper is to problematize the notion of self-grounding through the theoretical roles usually assigned to grounding. The literature typically characterizes grounding as at least playing two central theoretical roles: a structuring role and an explanatory role. (...) Once we carefully spell out what playing these roles includes, however, we find that any notion of grounding that isn’t irreflexive fails to play these roles when they are interpreted narrowly, and is redundant for playing them when they are interpreted more broadly. The upshot is that no useful notion of grounding can allow a fact to ground itself. (shrink)

Kant's theory of transcendental ideas can be conceived as a sort of model theory for an empirical first-order object theory. The main features of Kant's theory of transcendental ideas (especially its antinomies and their solutions) can be recognized, in a modified way, in a religious discourse as exemplified in the dialogue of Jesus and the Samaritan woman (John 4). In this way, what is by Kant meant merely as regulative ideas obtains a sort of objective reality and becomes a religiously (...) founded metaphysics. A metaphysical theory of religious dialogue is formalized on the basis of an extended justification logic of evidence and wish agents. (shrink)

A lively debate in the literature on moral progress concerns the role of practical reasoning: Does it enable or subvert moral progress? Rationalists believe that moral reasoning enables moral progress, because it helps enhance objectivity in thinking, overcome unruly sentiments, and open our minds to new possibilities. By contrast, skeptics argue that moral reasoning subverts moral progress. Citing growing empirical research on bias, they show that objectivity is an illusion and that moral reasoning merely rationalizes pre-existing biased moral norms. In (...) this article, I argue that both the rationalists and the skeptics fail to understand fully the role of practical reasoning by focusing exclusively on moral reasoning to the neglect of social reasoning. In the first half of the article, I argue against the skeptics by vindicating moral reasoning. I identify a Democratic Model of moral reasoning which is reliable and effective in overcoming bias. In the second part of the article, I argue against the rationalists. Drawing on a paradigmatic case of moral progress, i.e., the British abolition of the slave trade, I illustrate that moral reasoning, even when sound, is insufficient to motivate progressive action. The explanation for this puzzling phenomenon is not that the moral norm against cruelty is inert, as skeptics might suggest. Rather, it is that the moral norm against cruelty was overridden by the social norm of slavery which was tied to the British joint commitments to freedom and national honour. The debate between rationalists and skeptics centers around the moral rationality of human action, failing to recognize that human action is in fact primarily about social rationality. I defend a joint commitment account of social rationality, and offer a novel Communitarian Model of social reasoning which follows the logic of social rationality to revise social norms. I defend the reliability and efficacy of the Communitarian Model of social reasoning by applying it to the abolitionist social movement to show how Britons gave fellow Britons social reasons grounded in their joint commitments to freedom and national honour to end slavery. (shrink)

Ontologies of living things are increasingly grounded on the concepts and practices of current life science. Biological development is a process, undergone by living things, which begins with a single cell and (in an important class of cases) ends with formation of a multicellular organism. The process of development is thus prima facie central for ideas about biological individuality and organismality. However, recent accounts of these concepts do not engage developmental biology. This paper aims to fill the gap, proposing the (...) lineage view of stem cells as an ontological framework for conceptualizing organismal development. This account is grounded on experimental practices of stem cell research, with emphasis on new techniques for generating biological organization in vitro. On the lineage view, a stem cell is the starting point of a cell lineage with a specific organismal source, time-interval of existence, and ‘tree topology’ of branch-points linking the stem to developmental termini. The concept of ‘enkapsis’ accommodates the cell-organism relation within the lineage view; this hierarchical notion is further explicated by considering the methods and results of stem cell experiments. Results of this examination include a (partial) characterization of stem cells’ developmental versatility, and the context-dependence of developmental processes involving stem cells. (shrink)

Supervenience is necessary co-variation between two sets of entities. In the good old days, supervenience was considered a useful philosophical tool with a wide range of applications in the philosophy of mind, metaethics, epistemology, and elsewhere. In recent years, however, supervenience has fallen out of favor, giving place to grounding, realization, and other, more metaphysically “meaty”, notions. The emerging consensus is that there are principled reasons for which explanatory theses cannot be captured in terms of supervenience, or as the slogan (...) goes: “Supervenience Is Nonexplanatory”. While SIN is widely endorsed, it is far from clear what it amounts to and why we should believe it. In this paper, I will distinguish various theses that could be meant by it, and will argue that none of them is both interesting and plausible: on some interpretations of ‘explanatory’, we have no reason to believe that supervenience is unexplanatory, while on other interpretations, supervenience is indeed unexplanatory, but widely accepted textbook cases of explanatory relations come out as unexplanatory, too. This result raises doubts as to whether there is any interesting sense in which SIN is true, and suggests that the contemporary consensus about supervenience is mistaken. (shrink)

Divine simplicity is central to Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy of God. Most important for Aquinas is his view that God’s existence (esse) is identical to God’s essence; for everything other than God, there is a distinction between existence and essence. However, recent developments in analytic philosophy about the nature of existence threaten to undermine what Aquinas thought regarding divine simplicity. In the first chapter of this dissertation, I trace Aquinas’s thinking on divine simplicity through the various texts he wrote regarding the (...) matter. I establish that it is crucial for Aquinas that God is identical to his existence. But, is it even coherent to talk about “a thing’s existence?” In Chapter Two I summarize the arguments of C.J.F. Williams that existence is not a real property that individuals have and that predicating the word “exists” after the name of an individual produces linguistic gibberish. After considering, and rejecting, in Chapter Three attempts by some philosophers to refute Williams’s arguments, I turn, in Chapter Four, to a more detailed account of what Aquinas means by esse, the Latin word often rendered in English as “existence.” The conclusion that I come to is that Aquinas does not mean by esse what contemporary philosophers have usually meant by “existence.” Rather, he understands esse to be the act by which anything can be anything at all, instead of there being nothing whatsoever. In the final chapter, I turn to implications of this for Aquinas’s views of divine simplicity, showing that rather than being incoherent, Aquinas’s thinking on esse points toward the unfathomable mystery that is God. (shrink)

A survey of the connection between grounding and modality, in particular supervenience. The survey explores three possible connections between grounding and supervenience: (1) supervenience can be analyzed in terms of grounding, (2) grounded facts supervene on their grounds, and (3) grounding and supervenience overlap in their theoretical roles.

The ecological approach to object pretend play, developed from the ecological perspective, suggests an action- and affordance based perspective to account for pretend object play. Theoretical, as well as empirical reasons, support the view that children in pretense incorporate objects into their play in a resourceful and functionally appropriate way based on the perception of affordances. Therefore, in pretense children are not distorting reality but rather, they are perceiving and acting upon action possibilities. In this paper, we argue for the (...) viability of an ecological theoretical framework to pretend object play which has been traditionally understood as a representational and metarepresentational ability. We discuss the origins and basic assumptions of the ecological approach to pretense. We layout details by presenting a qualitative analysis of a pretend play episode and discuss the results of an experimental study inspired by the ecological assumptions. We discuss pretend object play in the context of ecological work on tool use. We address the relationship between the enactive and the ecological approaches to pretend play, pointing out similarities as well as differences. We conclude that ecological and enactive approaches have shown that it is possible to challenge accepted interpretations and seek explanatory frameworks that could move the field in new directions. (shrink)

When an entity ontologically depends on another entity, the former ‘presupposes’ or ‘requires’ the latter in some metaphysical sense. This paper defends a novel view, Dependence Deflationism, according to which ontological dependence is what I call an aggregative cluster concept: a concept which can be understood, but not fully analysed, as a ‘weighted total’ of constructive and modal relations. The view has several benefits: it accounts for clear cases of ontological dependence as well as the source of disagreement in controversial (...) ones; it gives a nice story about the evidential relevance of modal, mereological and set-theoretic facts to ontological dependence; and it makes sense of debates over the relation's formal properties. One important upshot of the deflationary account is that questions of ontological dependence are generally less deep and less interesting than usually thought. (shrink)

The paper sets out from Göodel's question about primitive concepts, in connection with Gödel's proposal of the employment of phenomenological method. The author assumes that the answer that can be found in Kant is relevant as a starting point. In a modification of the approach by K. Reich, a reconstruction of Kant's "deduction'' of logical forms of judgment is presented, which serve Kant as the basis for his "metaphysical deduction of categories'' including substantiality and causality. It is proposed that different (...) aspects of Kant's "original unity of self-consciousness'' as applied and attached to concrete representations step by step yield different forms of concepts, judgments, and inferences. Categorical, hypothetical and disjunctive judgments are shown to be gradually strengthening the conditions of bringing our representations under the "objective unity of consciousness", and in this way gradually implementing logical laws. The corresponding concepts of substantiality, causality, and mutual influence appear to be grounded in the primitive forms of our thinking. (shrink)

This paper develops and motivates a unification theory of metaphysical explanation, or as I will call it, Metaphysical Unificationism. The theory’s main inspiration is the unification account of scientific explanation, according to which explanatoriness is a holistic feature of theories that derive a large number of explananda from a meager set of explanantia, using a small number of argument patterns. In developing Metaphysical Unificationism, I will point out that it has a number of interesting consequences. The view offers a novel (...) conception of metaphysical explanation that doesn’t rely on the notion of a “determinative” or “explanatory” relation; it allows us to draw a principled distinction between metaphysical and scientific explanations; it implies that naturalness and fundamentality are distinct but intimately related notions; and perhaps most importantly, it re-establishes the unduly neglected link between explanation and understanding in the metaphysical realm. A number of objections can be raised against the view, but I will argue that none of these is conclusive. The upshot is that Metaphysical Unificationism provides a powerful and hitherto overlooked alternative to extant theories of metaphysical explanation. (shrink)

Christine Overall has argued that miracles, if they exist, would be an evil committed by God and therefore disprove the existence of God. However, her notion of a miracle as an intervention presupposes a view about the relation between God and creation that posits God as an ‘outsider.’ Such a view has not been held by all theists. It was not held by Thomas Aquinas. I show that Aquinas ’s conception is not susceptible to Overall’s criticisms. The upshot is that (...) theists should avoid any view of God as an ‘outsider,’ if they wish to avoid Overall’s criticisms. (shrink)

U tekstu se obrađuju Stadlerovo i Bauerovo shvaćanje i zasnivanje formalne logike. Formalna je logika u oba slučaja postavljena u duhu novoskolastičke filozofije druge polovice 19. stoljeća. Subjektivna je strana mišljenja (samosviest, djelatba) spojena s njegovom objektivnom stranom (objektivna vriednost), a logička se načela temelje na ontologijskim. Stadler se i Bauer oddvajaju od onodobnoga formalizma i logicizma, kao i od psihologizma i voluntarizma. Pritom je Bauer izrazitije ušao u razpravljanje s drugačijim shvaćanjima (psihologizam i voluntarizam u Wundta).

The Simple Question (SQ) asks: “What are the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions any x must satisfy in order for it to be true that x is a simple?” The main motivation for asking SQ stems from the hope that it could teach us important lessons for material-object ontology. It is universally accepted that a proper answer to it has to be finite, complete and devoid of mereological expressions. This paper argues that we should stop treating SQ as the central (...) question to be asked about simples; there are a plethora of questions about simples that may even be addressed without answering the original question. The paper closes with some tentative remarks on how this lesson could be extended to van Inwagen’s Special Composition Question. (shrink)

The Question of Iterated Grounding (QIG) asks what grounds the grounding facts. Although the question received a lot of attention in the past few years, it is usually discussed independently of another important issue: the connection between metaphysical explanation and the relation or relations that supposedly “back” it. I will show that once we get clear on the distinction between metaphysical explanation and the relation(s) backing it, we can distinguish no fewer than four questions lumped under QIG. I will also (...) argue that given some plausible assumptions about what it would take for a relation to back metaphysical explanation, many salient views about grounding allow us to give “easy” answers to these questions—easy in the sense that we can straightforwardly derive them from the respective conception of grounding without getting into the sorts of complexities that typically inform answers to QIG. The paper's main upshot is that we cannot expect to make much progress on QIG without first addressing the difficult issue of how exactly grounding is related to metaphysical explanation. (shrink)

We want to show that Aristotle’s general conception of syllogism includes as its essential part the logical concept of necessity, which can be understood in a causal way. This logical conception of causality is more general then the conception of the causality in the Aristotelian theory of proof (“demonstrative syllogism”), which contains the causal account of knowledge and science outside formal logic. Aristotle’s syllogistic is described in a purely intensional way, without recourse to a set-theoretical formal semantics. It is shown (...) that the conclusion of a syllogism is justified by the accumulation of logical causes applied during the reasoning process. It is also indicated that logical principles as well as the logical concept of causality have a fundamental ontological role in Aristotle’s “first philosophy”. (shrink)

In this paper, I characterize visual epistemic representations as concrete two- or three-dimensional tools for conveying information about aspects of their target systems or phenomena of interest. I outline two features of successful visual epistemic representation: that the vehicle of representation contain sufficiently accurate information about the phenomenon of interest for the user’s purpose, and that it convey this information to the user in a manner that makes it readily available to her. I argue that actual epistemic representation may involve (...) tradeoffs between these and is successful to the extent that they are present. (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)

Chapter 20 David Kovacs’ “Essence, Grounding, and Explanation” sets out four different ways in which essence might be taken to relate to the notion of grounding or metaphysical explanation, i.e., the type of connection that is often expressed by means of non-causal “in virtue of” or “because”-claims: (i) Unity: essence and grounding belong to a unified set of explanatory concepts; (ii) Supplementation: essence and grounding both contribute in their own way to a distinctive type of explanation; (iii) Independence: essence is (...) a sui generis notion with no straightforward conceptual links to grounding; and (iv) Irrelevance: essence is not an explanatory notion at all and therefore should not be viewed as connected to explanatory notions like grounding. As Kovacs brings out in the chapter, a wide variety of attitudes are represented in the literature even among philosophers who are sympathetic to the recent “hyperintensional” turn in metaphysics when it comes to the question of how the notions of essence and grounding interact with one another. (shrink)

This paper develops the Diachronic Self-Making View, the view that we are the non-accidentally best candidate referents of our ‘I’-beliefs. A formulation and defence of DSV is followed by an overview of its treatment of familiar puzzle cases about personal identity. The rest of the paper focuses on a challenge to DSV, the Puzzle of Inconstant ‘I’-beliefs: the view appears to force on us inconsistent verdicts about personal identity in cases that we would naturally describe as changes in one’s de (...) se beliefs. To solve this problem, the paper defends the possibility of overlapping people, and addresses a number of objections to this idea. (shrink)

Aristotelian causal theories incorporate some philosophically important features of the concept of cause, including necessity and essential character. The proposed formalization is restricted to one-place predicates and a finite domain of attributes (without individuals). Semantics is based on a labeled tree structure, with truth defined by means of tree paths. A relatively simple causal prefixing mechanism is defined, by means of which causes of propositions and reasoning with causes are made explicit. The distinction of causal and factual explanation are elaborated, (...) and examples of cyclic and convergent causation are given. Soundness and completeness proofs are sketched. (shrink)

After introductory reminder of and comments on Gödel’s ontological proof, we discuss the collapse of modalities, which is provable in Gödel’s ontological system GO. We argue that Gödel’s texts confirm modal collapse as intended consequence of his ontological system. Further, we aim to show that modal collapse properly fits into Gödel’s philosophical views, especially into his ontology of separation and union of force and fact, as well as into his cosmological theory of the nonobjectivity of the lapse of time. As (...) a result, modal collapse should not be conceived in Gödel so much as a deficit, but rather as a kind of the rise of modalities to the “perfect” being. We further show that, in accordance with Gödel’s ontology, the concepts of modality and time should be derived in terms of the “fundamental philosophical concept” of cause. To give an example of how a formalization of such causative Gödelian ontology and ontological proof might look, we propose the transformation of GO into a kind of causally re-interpreted justification logic. (shrink)

Abstract:Skepticism about grounding is the view that ground-theoretic concepts shouldn’t be used in meta­physical theorizing. Possible reasons for adopting this attitude are numerous: perhaps grounding is unintelligible; or perhaps it’s never instantiated; or perhaps it’s just too heterogeneous to be theor­­­­­etically useful. Unfortunately, as currently pursued the debate between grounding enthusiasts and skeptics is insufficiently structured. This paper’s purpose is to impose a measure of conceptual rigor on the debate by offering an opinionated taxonomy of views with a reasonable claim (...) to being “skeptical.” I argue that carving up logical space into pro- and anti-grounding views isn’t especially helpful; rather, we should recognize various degrees of ground-theoretic involvement depending on how inflationary our understanding of the theoretical term ‘ground’ is. (shrink)

The reception of Kant began in Croatia at the turn of the 19th century with the writings of J.B. Horváth, whose textbooks were in use at that time in Croatia and Hungary. Unlike Horváth's decidedly negative attitude toward Kant, Šimun Čučić (Simeon Chuchich), in his systematic work Philosophia Critice Elaborata (1815), adopted some aspects of Kantian philosophy. This includes, for example, the formalistic conception of logic, Kantian apriorism and subjectivism, the formalistic approach to the moral law, and the like. However, (...) since these elements were incorporated into a schoolbook type of text, they could not always be consistently implemented. The beginning of the reception of Kant in Croatia coincided with the revival of Croatian national self-awareness. -- Die Kantrezeption setzte in Kroatien an der Wende zum 19. Jahrhundert ein mit den Schriften J. B. Horváths, dessen Lehrbuecher in Kroatien und Ungarn damals in Gebrauch waren. Im Unterschied zu Horváth's ausgeschprochen negativer Einstellung zu Kant hat Šimun Čučić in seinem systematischen Werk Philosophia critice elaborata (1815) einige Aspekte der Kantischen Philosophie uebernommen. Dies betrifft z.B. die formalistische Auffassung der Logik, die Uebernahme des kantianischen Apriorismus und Subjektivismus, die formalistische Auffassungsweise des moralischen Gesetzes und dgl. Da nun diese Momente in ein schulmaeßig konzipiertes Buch aufgenommen wurden, konnten sie nicht immer konsequent durchgefuehrt werden. Der Beginn der Kantrezeption in Kroatien koinzidierte mit der Wiedererweckung des kroatischen nationalen Selbsbewußtseins. (shrink)

Popular culture continues fuelling public imagination with things, human and non-human, that we might beco-me or confront. Besides robots, other significant tropes in popular fiction that generated images include non-human humans and cyborgs, wired into his-torically varying sociocultural realities. Robots and artificial intelligence are re-defining the natural order and its hierar-chical structure. This is not surprising, as natural order is always in flux, shaped by new scientific discoveries, especially the reading of the genetic code, that reveal and redefine relationships between (...) life forms. However, for the first time, a new, artificial, species is being introduced into the existing diagrams, and, for the first time, it appears to hybridise the anthro-pocentric natural world order. (shrink)

Scientific research is constrained by limited resources, so it is imperative that it be conducted efficiently. This paper introduces the notion of epistemic expression, a kind of representation that expedites the solution of research problems. Epistemic expressions are representations that (i) contain information in a way that enables more reliable information to place the most stringent constraints on possible solutions and (ii) make new information readily extractible by biasing the search through that space. I illustrate these conditions using historical and (...) contemporary examples of biomolecular structure determination. Then, I argue that the notion of epistemic expression parts ways with pragmatic accounts of scientific representation and an understanding of models as artifacts, neither of which require models to accurately represent. Explicating epistemic expression thus fills a gap in our understanding of scientific practice, extending Morrison and Morgan's (1999) conception of models as investigative instruments. (shrink)

[English in PhilArchive, unpublished]. Ruđer Bošković's (Rogerius Joseph Boscovich, 1711-1787) induction is described as a reasoning procedure that combines abductive, generalizing and deductive forms of inference. According to Bošković, the application of inductive reasoning extends beyond natural science. Bošković's critique of the use of the principle of sufficient reason is discussed, and constructive rules of Bošković's inductive logic are proposed from the standpoint of contemporary justification logic. To that end, justification logic could be extended with Bošković's typology of reasons. Hunter's (...) result (1965) is conceived as a confirmation that the inference from the constructive defectus rationis is a necessary component of Bošković's induction. - English version in _PhilArchive_. (shrink)

Revisionary ontologies seem to go against our common sense convictions about which material objects exist. These views face the so-called Problem of Reasonableness: they have to explain why reasonable people don’t seem to accept the true ontology. Most approaches to this problem treat the mismatch between the ontological truth and ordinary belief as superficial or not even real. By contrast, I propose what I call the “uncompromising solution”. First, I argue that our beliefs about material objects were influenced by evolutionary (...) forces that were independent of the ontological truth. Second, I draw an analogy between the Problem of Reasonableness and the New Evil Demon Problem and argue that the revisionary ontologist can always find a positive epistemic status to characterize ordinary people’s beliefs about material objects. Finally, I address the worry that the evolutionary component of my story also threatens to undermine the best arguments for revisionary ontologies. (shrink)

A close interrelationship between logic and religious faith is confirmed in many places of the Bible. In the paper, special attention is paid to the dialogue of Jesus and a Samaritan woman (John 4). In a proposed outline of a logical formalization, religious faith is described as a pragmatic function through which the linguistic and logical content is contextually realized. In the continuation of the paper, Gödel's ontological proof is commented, which in a logically rigorous way describes the ontology where (...) we can detect the systematic place of religious faith as an ontological force. (shrink)

The criticism of Hilbert's axiomatic system of geometry by Mate Meršić (Merchich, 1850-1928), presented in his work "Organistik der Geometrie" (1914, also in "Modernes und Modriges", 1914), is analyzed and discussed. According to Meršić, geometry cannot be based on its own axioms, as a logical analysis of spatial intuition, but must be derived as a "spatial concretion" using "higher" axioms of arithmetic, logic, and "rational algorithmics." Geometry can only be one, because space is also only one. It cannot be reduced (...) to manipulation with symbols but has to deal with concepts and provide real knowledge. According to Meršić, aiming at some particular proof of the consistency of the whole axiomatic system is meaningless because the consistency follows from the truth of individual axioms based on spatial intuition. It is impossible, according to Meršić, for the geometric axioms to be mutually independent because they must be interconnected as essential parts of a whole. Although Meršić did not recognize all the advantages of Hilbert's formalization of geometry, he clearly pointed out some crucial limitations of the axiomatic method. (shrink)

A brief overview of the main Croatian philosophers of the 19th century is given (regardless of whether they worked in or outside of Croatia). Special attention is paid to Šimun Čučić (logic, metaphysics, ethics) and Franjo pl. Marković (logic, aesthetics). The philosophy of other authors is briefly summarized on the ground of the existing research results.

The first beginnings of modern logic in Croatia are recognizable as early as in the middle of the 19th century in Vatroslav Bertić. At the turn of the 20th century, Albin Nagy, who was teaching in Italy, made contributions to algebraic logic and to the philosophy of logic. At that time, a distinctive author Mate Meršić stood out, also working on algebraic logic. In the Croatian academic philosophy, until the publication of Gajo Petrović's textbook (1964) and the contributions by Heda (...) Festini, a critical or indifferent attitude toward modern logic prevailed. The first comprehensive modern logic textbook in Croatian was written by mathematician Vladimir Devidé (1964), known, for example, for his axiomatizations of natural numbers and classical propositional logic. In the Croatian philosophy of the 1980s and 1990s, influential logicians are Goran Švob and mathematician Zvonimir Šikić. At the turn of the 21st century, logical investigations are being intensified and extended to various branches of the contemporary logic. (shrink)

A first-order logic of belief with identity is proposed, primarily to give an account of possible de re contradictory beliefs, which sometimes occur as consequences of de dicto non-contradictory beliefs. A model has two separate, though interconnected domains: the domain of objects and the domain of appearances. The satisfaction of atomic formulas is defined by a particular S-accessibility relation between worlds. Identity is non-classical, and is conceived as an equivalence relation having the classical identity relation as a subset. A tableau (...) system with labels, signs, and suffixes is defined, extending the basic language $\mathscr{L}_{\mathbf{QB}}$ by quasiformulas (to express the denotations of predicates). The proposed logical system is paraconsistent since $\phi \wedge \neg\phi$ does not ``explode'' with arbitrary syntactic consequences. (shrink)

Logic has a fundamental role in the philosophy of Franjo Marković (1845-1914). His theory of concepts and reasoning is analyzed, especially with respect to the essential role of the principle of sufficient reason and in connection with the concept of causality. The interplay of various types of evidence in Marković's inductive-deductive logic is analysed by means of contemporary justification logic tools.

We show how some model-theoretical devices (local reasoning, modes of presentation, an additional accessibility relation) can be combined in first-order modal logic to formalize the consequence relation that includes de dicto and de re contradictory beliefs. Instead of special ``sense objects'', appearances of objects in an agent's belief are introduced and presented as ordered pairs consisting of an object and an individual constant. A non-classical identity relation is applied. A relation S on the set of possible worlds is introduced, which (...) models possible distortions in an agent's picture of a (real) world. The application of such models in deontic logic is illustrated by a characteristic example. (shrink)

Source: Author: Agnes F. Montalbo The aim of this study was to measure the exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy that would determine an individual’s level of burnout. A convenient sample of employees was obtained from different call centers in Metro Manila. The results indicated a high level of exhaustion for the age group of 18-29 years old and for the female respondents. More than half of the respondents were high in cynicism and those who reported a low professional efficacy were (...) mostly females. Age showed a significant relationship with exhaustion and cynicism while tenure at present job showed a significant relationship with professional efficacy. Results implied that working in a call center may lead to employee burnout especially for females and those who are new in their job. ]]>. (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)

Gödel's ontological argument is related to Gödel's view that causality is the fundamental concept in philosophy. This explicit philosophical intention is developed in the form of an onto-theological Gödelian system based on justification logic. An essentially richer language, so extended, offers the possibility to express new philosophical content. In particular, theorems on the existence of a universal cause on a causal "slingshot" are formulated.

The paper shows that it is possible to obtain a "slingshot" result in Gödel's theory of positiveness in the presence of the theorem of the necessary existence of God. In the context of the reconstruction of Gödel's original "slingshot" argument on the suppositions of non-Fregean logic, this is a natural result. The "slingshot" result occurs in sufficiently strong non-Fregean theories accepting the necessary existence of some entities. However, this feature of a Gödelian theory may be considered not as a trivialisation, (...) but as an intended consequence of Gödel's ontotheological views. (shrink)

On a widely shared assumption, our mental states supervene on our microphysical properties – that is, microphysical supervenience is true. When this thesis is combined with the apparent truism that human persons have proper parts, a grave difficulty arises: what prevents some of these proper parts from being themselves thinkers as well? How can I know that I am a human person and not a smaller thinker enclosed in a human person? Most solutions to this puzzle make radical, if not (...) absurd, claims. Recently, however, Michael Burke and Howard Robinson proposed conservative solutions that, according to them, do not have such undesired consequences. This paper argues that the conservative solutions tacitly assume at least one of the radical ones, and therefore they provide no alternative to the extreme solutions. (shrink)

Publication date: 14 June 2017 Source: Author: Agnes F. Montalbo, Henry M. Agong This study described the level of work engagement and areas of worklife of 294 call center agents in Ortigas, Pasig City, Philippines. It also investigated the relationship between work engagement and areas of worklife when grouped according to gender, age, tenure at present job and course. In addition, it also explored the differences in the perception of the call center agents when grouped according to the demographic profile. (...) Gamma correlation was carried out to check if correlation exists between the variables of work engagement and variables of areas of worklife. Mood’s median test was conducted to test the differences in the level of engagement and areas of worklife when grouped according to demographic profiles. Results of work engagement showed that those who were aged 31-35 and those who stayed for less than a year in the organization had a high level of dedication. Commerce or Business graduates had a high level of absorption. Results of the areas of worklife showed that majority of the respondents when grouped according to their demographic profile had a match with the variables of fairness, control, values, workload, and community except for the age group of 36 and above who had a mismatch for the variable control. No relationship existed between work engagement and the areas of worklife. Male call center agents are perceived to be more energetic, dedicated and absorbed than female call center agents. Lastly, the areas of control and fairness were reported to differ across all demographic profile of gender, age, tenure at the present job and course. (shrink)

Constitution is the relation that holds between an object and what it is made of: statues are constituted by the lumps of matter they coincide with; flags, one may think, are constituted by colored pieces of cloth; and perhaps human persons are constituted by biological organisms. Constitution is often thought to be a.

The book discusses the development of reproductive medicine from the perspective of the parent-child relationship. -/- A könyv a reprodukciós medicina fejlődését vizsgálja a szülői felelősség szempontjából.

Mitchell & Gronenborn propose that we account for the presence of multiple models of protein structure, each produced in different contexts, through the framework of integrative pluralism. I argue that two interpretations of this framework are available, neither of which captures the relationship between a model and the protein structure it represents or between multiple models of protein structure. Further, it inclines us toward concluding prematurely that models of protein structure are right in their contexts and makes extrapolation of findings (...) from one context to another seem unwarranted. Instead, protein structure determination ought to be understood as modestly monistic. There is one model for every protein in each physicochemical context, and models of the same protein produced in different contexts are compatible with one another. ‘Integrating’ multiple models amounts to extrapolating from one context to another; this is possible because the effect of context on protein folding is relatively weak and predictable. Modest monism better describes the practice of protein structure determination than integrative pluralism and enables greater attention to how context affects protein folding. (shrink)