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Abstract: In this article I discuss whether viewing safety as a necessary condition for knowing entails that the truth-conditions for knowledge is context-sensitive. I argue that, while it is far from clear-cut, there is at least not a strict entailment between the positing of safety as necessary for knowledge and the context-sensitivity of knowledge, and so, that one can remain an invariantist about knowledge and yet view safety as necessary for knowing. PubDate: 2025-04-07
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Abstract: In recent years, notable figures within the medical community have expressed concerns about the rate of medical progress, suggesting that the rapid advances of medicine’s ‘golden age’ are now giving way to an ‘age of disappointment’. While these pessimistic pronouncements about medical progress must–implicitly if not explicitly–appeal to some criteria for what medical progress would be, the task of explicitly defining medical progress has been notably neglected. We take up this task, drawing on insights from the philosophy of science concerning both scientific progress and the aims of medicine. Among other things, we differentiate between medical scientific progress and progress in medical practice, and suggest that this distinction helps to evaluate the aforementioned concerns about the current rate of medical progress. While it is not our goal to draw conclusions relating to the state of medicine at the present time, we propose a unifying account of medical scientific progress according to which such progress leads, necessarily, to progress in medical practice, and show how this account both plausibly distinguishes between medical scientific progress and other (non-medical) instances of scientific progress, and does justice to the ‘dual character’ of medicine. PubDate: 2025-04-04
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Abstract: The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) might be our current best bet at a scientific explanation of phenomenal consciousness. IIT focuses on the distinctively subjective and phenomenological aspects of conscious experience. Currently, it offers the fundaments of a formal account, but future developments shall explain the qualitative structures of every possible conscious experience. But this ambitious project is hindered by one fundamental limitation. IIT fails to acknowledge the crucial roles of attention in generating phenomenally conscious experience and shaping its contents. Here, we argue that IIT urgently needs an account of attention. Without this account, IIT cannot explain important informational differences between different kinds of experiences. Furthermore, though some IIT proponents celebratedly endorse a double dissociation between consciousness and attention, close analysis reveals that such as dissociation is in fact incompatible with IIT. Notably, the issues we raise for IIT will likely arise for many internalist theories of conscious contents in philosophy, especially theories with primitivist inclinations. Our arguments also extend to the recently popularized structuralist approaches. Overall, our discussion highlights how considerations about attention are indispensable for scientific as well as philosophical theorizing about conscious experience. PubDate: 2025-04-03
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Abstract: We propose a novel approach to logical pluralism based on algebra-valued models of set theory, systematically demonstrating how both classical and non-classical set theories can be constructed within a unified mathematical framework. Our approach extends Shapiro’s eclectic pluralism to the specific setting of algebra-valued models. This leads us to formulate two notions of logical pluralism: liberal pluralism, which recognizes as legitimate any logic that underpins a set theory capable of capturing a significant portion of mathematical practice, and strict pluralism, which further requires that the resulting set theory satisfies a convergence constraint, ensuring its mathematical expressiveness is comparable to that of classical set theory. We argue that this latter notion of pluralism represents a departure from previous accounts, as it is based on convergence rather than divergence among classical and non-classical mathematical theories. PubDate: 2025-04-02
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Abstract: Occasionally, in science, models are used to stimulate other systems rather than to perform surrogative reasoning. More specifically, in what is called surrogative stimulation, a model is used to stimulate a focal system in order to learn how it would respond to the system represented by the model. This article proposes a methodological reconstruction of the surrogative stimulation strategy and addresses the so-called model evaluation problem in relation to it. It is argued that in order to be adequate for surrogative stimulation, the model must provide stimuli that are similar to those provided by the target system, and a tentative definition of ‘stimulus similarity’ is offered. It is also argued that whether the model and the target system are similar in this sense is a question that depends not only on the context and interests of the modeller, but more crucially on facts about how the focal system works. Representative examples are taken from ethorobotics and social robotics, but the analysis made here is not intended to be applicable only to these areas of research. While much remains to be learned about this emerging use of models, the analysis undertaken here aims to offer a preliminary methodological reconstruction that may be useful for future studies. PubDate: 2025-03-26
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Abstract: Moral and political philosophy as well as public discourse is rife with talk about joint abilities: we are able to mitigate climate change, alleviate world poverty, or end a pandemic through social distancing and high vaccination rates. However, despite its common usage, the concept of joint ability has received surprisingly little attention in the philosophical literature. What exactly does it mean to say that we can or cannot do something together' According to the dominant conception of joint ability, a joint ability is best understood as the ability of a plurality of agents. I argue that plural property accounts of joint ability violate one of the central tenets of the metaphysics of abilities, namely that abilities relate agents to actions. I offer an alternative analysis of joint abilities. I propose to understand joint abilities as relations in which two (or more) agents stand to each other. The relational model offers a way of understanding our talk about joint abilities in moral and political debates, and it does so while preserving a conceptual continuity between individual and joint abilities. PubDate: 2025-03-26
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Abstract: Carnap’s The continuum of inductive methods (University of Chicago Press, 1952) is frequently mentioned as an historical milestone in inductive logic, but seldom used in age old problem situations. In this paper it will be shown that the application of Carnapian distributions may be very plausible in certain cases, in particular in coproduction with the Bayesian way of dealing with problems. This will be illustrated in perhaps the simplest possible way, viz. in the context where the question whether a (i.i.d.) device is fair is at stake. PubDate: 2025-03-25
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Abstract: Philosophers discussing moods have been struggling with finding a principled way to distinguish moods from emotions. This paper places itself distinctly against this mainstream. Its crucial upshot is that we do not need to postulate moods as a distinctive type of mental state, different from emotions. I will argue that alleged differences between moods and emotions that one can repeatedly find in the literature can be explained away simply in terms of certain features of emotions themselves. These features stem from the inertia found in some emotional episodes. Two key such features are, first, the residual character of such episodes, according to which they tend to remain, or at least retain some of their characteristics, even after the emotional response as such is in principle over. The second key feature is that such emotional residues take the slightest opportunity to reactivate and develop as a new full-fledged emotional episode of the same kind as the one it originates from. I will also argue that my deflationary view on moods is as a matter of fact consistent with the scientific, or empirical, literature on moods and can also easily accommodate commonsense thinking about moods. PubDate: 2025-03-22
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Abstract: Functionalist theories of consciousness attribute consciousness to a system when it displays specific patterns of behaviors and state changes in response to perceptual events and its prior state. These patterns can be disrupted in ways that would intuitively not preclude consciousness. The challenge for functionalists is to explain why pattern-disrupting influences do not remove consciousness. This paper explores this issue in connection with a simple case. Bombs may make it unlikely that nearby brains will manifest typical behaviors. Non-exploding bombs do not preclude consciousness within systems in their vicinity no matter how likely they are to go off. The challenge is trickier than it may first appear: this paper surveys possible responses and raises issues for each. PubDate: 2025-03-22
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Abstract: Kripke thought that the meaning paradox articulated in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language arises due to a logical tension. This diagnosis, however, doesn’t account for the enduring controversy surrounding the paradox. I argue that the meaning paradox stems instead from a tension inherent in two conflicting philosophical methodologies: theoretical internalism and theoretical externalism. Internalism, as a philosophical methodology, takes for granted the contents of our minds, whereas externalism takes for granted empirical data and shared notions of common sense. Two of the constraints on a straight solution to the paradox—the Guidance Constraint and the Error Constraint—rely for their plausibility on theoretical internalism and theoretical externalism, respectively. A straight solution thus rests on resolving the tension between these two conflicting philosophical methods. There are, accordingly, two ways to dodge the problem. Kripke’s skeptical solution favors theoretical externalism, but a skeptical solution favoring theoretical internalism is available as well. PubDate: 2025-03-22
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Abstract: Since the introduction of the concept of testimonial injustice, it has been a matter of dispute if giving credit to a speaker in excess of their reliability is generally a wrong. This question is closely related to the applicability of theories of distributive justice to credibility: If credibility is scarce, giving one too much is withholding it from another. In this paper, we use a Bayesian reconstruction of testimony to capture these two issues. The formal analysis allows us to differentiate two competing notions of credibility, both of which seem to be at play in the debate. We show that the answer to both the above questions depends on which concept of credibility is accepted in a given dispute, thus clarifying and making more precise what is at stake and in some cases even resolving the issue. To complete the argument on potential applications of distributive justice to credibility, we discuss the question of an obviously ideal allocation of credibility, developing an alternative representation of prejudice within the model in the process. We conclude that distributive justice is, given the formal explication and specified qualifications, applicable to the allocation of credibility. PubDate: 2025-03-20
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Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Much of the focus on pain in the literature is the nature of pain’s badness. This paper addresses the relatively overlooked problem of intensity. I construe intensity as the degree to which pains demand involuntary attention, the degree to which a pain can’t be ignored. I use a global workspace framework to explain intensity, a view that is uniquely situated to explain the relevant empirical evidence. I construe intensity theoretically via a pain’s mode of representation, how pain is represented rather than what is represented. This has the advantage of integrating the major views on pain’s badness. Novel explanations result from intensity as attentional demand and each view’s perspective on badness. PubDate: 2025-03-12
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Abstract: In some cases of higher-order defeat, you rationally doubt whether your credence in p is rational without having evidence of how to improve your credence in p. According to the resilience framework proposed by Steglich-Petersen (Higher-order defeat and Doxastic Resilience), such cases require loss of doxastic resilience: retain your credence level but become more disposed to change your mind given future evidence. Henderson (Higher-Order Evidence and Losing One’s Conviction) responds that this allows for irrational decision-making and that we are better off understanding higher-order defeat in terms of imprecise probabilities. We argue first that Henderson’s imprecise probability framework models the wrong kind of thing. Credal imprecision is neither necessary nor sufficient for higher-order doubt. Second, we offer two ways of understanding the practical import of higher-order defeat given loss of doxastic resilience. PubDate: 2025-03-06
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Abstract: Nicholas J.J. Smith (2014) has argued that there are different kinds of degrees of belief, but that they must be fused into one ‘all kinds considered’ degree of belief. We provide an example which shows that different kinds of degrees of belief can have diverging impacts on the rationality of a decision: there are cases in which two rational subjects with identical preferences and the same ‘all kinds considered’ degree of belief make different decisions. Thus, different kinds of degrees of belief should not be merged into a single degree-of-belief function. PubDate: 2025-03-06
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Abstract: According to the perceptual theory of emotion, emotions are evaluative perceptions. However, emotions involve us in a way that regular perception does not and this has led to two influential objections to the perceptual theory have emerged. According to the first objection, the perceptual theory is false because the phenomenology of emotion is the phenomenology of response. According to the second objection, the perceptual theory is false because emotions are susceptible to evaluations of rationality and reason-responsiveness. In this essay, I defend the perceptual theory by disarming these two objections. In response to the first objection, I suggest that emotional phenomenology bears a striking resemblance to the phenomenology of touch. Both are non-transparent forms of experience whereby it is through our experience of being affected in a certain way that reveals to us some property of the world. I disarm the second objection by providing a developmental account as to how adult emotion acquires the features of rational and reason-responsive evaluability. In the process of childhood, we gain the ability to construe the world in certain ways and regulate our emotions in concert with the moral community, thus transforming emotions and bringing them into the space of normative evaluability. PubDate: 2025-03-03
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Abstract: It is plausible that the models of scientific theories correspond to possibilities. But how do we know which models of which scientific theories so correspond' This paper provides a novel proposal for guiding belief about possibilities via scientific theories. The proposal draws on the notion of an effective theory: a theory that applies very well to a particular, restricted domain. We argue that it is the models of effective theories that we should believe correspond, at least in part, to possibilities. It is thus effective theories that should guide modal reasoning in science. PubDate: 2025-02-26
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Abstract: I give an analysis of Dummett’s interpretation of the philosophical significance of the incompleteness theorem and its possible application to a rejection of the law of the excluded middle ($$\textsf{LEM}$$). According to Dummett, Gödel’s results question the general specifiability of a ‘principle for recognizing something true about the natural numbers’. He takes the incompleteness theorems to show that our collection of such principles is indefinitely extensible, and therefore warrant a rejection of $$\textsf{LEM}$$. First, I argue that for this claim to be successful, Dummett needs to understand general specifiability as ‘being part of a recursively enumerable collection of arithmetic truths’. I then provide a formal framework to model this notion’s indefinite extensibility. To do so, I apply potentialist ideas to extensions of theories (rather than to extensions domains) and test whether a suitable formulation of $$\textsf{LEM}$$ holds in the resulting framework. PubDate: 2025-02-25
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Abstract: In the paper, we provide a general formalism for computing probabilities of indicative conditionals. Our model is based on the idea of constructing a (labeled) Markov graph G(α), which models the sentence α, containing an arbitrarily complex conditional (exhibiting in particular its structure). The formalism makes computing these probabilities an easy task—it consists of solving simple systems of linear equations. The graph G(α) generates a canonical probability space S(α) = (Ωα, Σα, Pα), where α is given an interpretation as an event so that the probability can be computed mathematically. We present a general inductive definition of the graph G(α) for a sentence α of arbitrary complexity. It is based on the idea of defining graph-building operations which correspond to the negation and conjunction and the non-Boolean conditional connective →. The definition enables the construction of graphs and the corresponding systems of equations for arbitrarily complex conditionals in an algorithmic and efficient manner. PubDate: 2025-02-21
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