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39172.438892
W.D. Hamilton in 1975 wrote a book chapter that constitutes his most extensive comments on human cooperation. In it he flagged the “tribal facies of social behavior” as the problem to be solved. He was well aware of the difficulty of extending his theory of inclusive fitness to the tribal scale. He mentions the idea that cultural processes might be responsible but expresses skepticism that culture could act against genetic fitness imperatives and sought genetic answers to the puzzle. We have explored the potential of culture to generate the stable variation necessary for selection at the level of tribes and other large human groups. We have modeled three forms of cultural group selection, and reviewed the ample empirical evidence that all three forms are important in humans. The reward and punishment systems in human societies can also create social selection on genes underlying human behavior. One of the critical factors in cultural evolution is that it can be faster than genetic evolution. Here we provide a simple model that illustrates why this is important to the evolution of the tribal facies.
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57142.438966
Buckminsterfullerene is a molecule shaped like a soccer ball, made of 60 carbon atoms. If one of the bonds between two hexagons rotates, we get a weird mutant version of this molecule:
This is an example of a Stone-Wales transformation: a 90° rotation in a so-called ‘π bond’ between carbon atoms. …
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57142.438985
I confess that, when I allow myself to think about it, I am amazed that I understand so little about what it is we philosophers do. I believe I can distinguish good philosophical work from bad—I can recognize when philosophy is done well—but I do not have a clear understanding of what it is that I am recognizing, and when I try actually to say what our discipline does, my remarks turn out to be naive and crude, more like the groping efforts of a beginning student than like the contributions of an advanced scholar to the field. …
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135163.438998
Ever since Carlo Rovelli introduced Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM) to the public [1], it has attracted the interest and stimulated the imagination not only of physicists, but also, and in particular, of philosophers. There are several reasons why that is so. One of them is, quite simply, that a renowned and highly esteemed researcher had offered a new programmatic attempt to make sense of the longstanding puzzles at the foundations of quantum theory, which only happens every so often. What is more, the key to these puzzles was supposed to lie in an essentially conceptual move, in the exposure of an “incorrect notion” [1, p. 1637]. But the modern-day philosopher regards concepts as something like their natural hunting ground. If mention is made of the word, it makes them sit up as if somebody had yelled their name.
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135195.439011
The idea that qualities can be had partly or to an intermediate degree is controversial among contemporary metaphysicians, but also has a considerable pedigree among philosophers and scientists. In this paper, we first aim to show that metaphysical sense can be made of this idea by proposing a partial taxonomy of metaphysical accounts of graded qualities, focusing on three particular approaches: one which explicates having a quality to a degree in terms of having a property with an in-built degree, another based on the idea that instantiation admits of degrees, and a third which derives the degree to which a quality is had from the aspects of multidimensional properties. Our second aim is to demonstrate that the choice between these account can make a substantial metaphysical difference. To make this point, we rely on two case studies (involving quantum observables and values) in which we apply the accounts in order to model apparent cases of metaphysical gradedness.
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140304.439023
A standard view of reasons is that reasons are propositions or facts that support an action. Thus, that I promised to visit is a reason to visit, that pain is bad is a reason to take an aspirin, and that I am hungry is a reason to eat. …
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142134.439036
Journal of the American Philosophical Association () – © The Author(s), . Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/.), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the same Creative Commons licence is used to distribute the re-used or adapted article and the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained prior to any commercial use.
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143396.439056
Today I learned about ‘rabbit starvation’ and how Neanderthals avoided it. When you’re a hunter-gatherer and it’s winter, you may try to survive by eating only meat—like rabbits, but also deer and other game. …
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144891.439069
This paper investigates the epistemological problem of understanding the formative principles of living organisms, proposing that such knowledge requires a non-discursive mode of cognition. Revisiting the philosophies of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Rudolf Steiner, the study explores an alternative method of understanding life—not through mechanistic models or speculative vitalism, but through what is termed “intellectual intuition.” It is demonstrated how Goethe’s concept of the Urpflanze and Steiner’s interpretation enable a mental reconstruction of organic development as a lawful, self-generating process. Drawing parallels with Fichte’s notion of self-awareness through productive cognition, the paper argues that organisms can be known through a productive act of thinking in which the generative principle of life is intellectually intuited. This yields a scientifically grounded, though non-empirical, mode of “empirical vitalism,” in which the organism’s entelechy—its vital laws and force—can be observed through active, intuitive cognition. The study suggests that such a methodology could offer a viable epistemic and metaphysical framework to overcome the limitations of both reductionist biology and speculative vitalism.
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144917.439085
A recent result from theoretical computer science provides for the verification of answers to the Halting Problem, even when there is no plausible means by which to derive those answers using a bottom-up approach. We argue that this result has profound implications for the existence of strongly emergent phenomena. In this work we develop a computer science-based framework for thinking about strong emergence and in doing so demonstrate the plausibility of strongly emergent phenomena existing in our universe. We identify six sufficient criteria for strong emergence and detail the actuality of five of the six criteria. Finally, we argue for the plausibility of the sixth criterion by analogy and a case study of Boltzmann brains (with additional case studies provided in the appendices.)
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144941.439101
I will look at Bohr’s contentious doctrine of classical concepts - the claim that measurement requires classical concepts to be understood - and argue that measurement theory supports a similar conclusion. I will argue that representing a property in terms of a metric scale, which marks a shift from the empirical process of measurement to the informational output, introduces the inherently classical assumption of definite states and precise values, thus fulfilling Bohr’s doctrine. I examine how realism about metric scales implies that Bohr’s doctrine is ontological, while more moderate coherentist or model-based approaches to realism render it epistemological. Regardless of one’s stance towards measurement realism, however, measurement cannot be entirely quantum and quantum mechanics can model only the empirical side of measurement, not its informational output. Finally, I discuss how this might influence our understanding of the measurement problem.
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144963.439115
I argue that the epistemic aim of scientific theorizing (EAST) is producing theories with the highest possible number and degree of theoretical virtues (call this “TV-EAST”). I trace TV- EAST’s logical empiricist origins and discuss its close connections to Kuhn’s and Laudan’s problem-solving accounts of the aim of science. Despite TV-EAST’s antirealist roots, I argue that if one adopts the realist view that EAST is finding true theories, one should also endorse TV-EAST. I then defend TV-EAST by showing that it addresses the challenges raised against using the “aim of science” metaphor and offers significant advantages over the realist account.
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231340.43913
This paper proposes a dynamic temporal logic that is appropriate for modeling the dynamics of scientific knowledge (especially in historical sciences, such as Archaeology, Paleontology and Geology). For this formalization of historical knowledge, the work is divided into two topics: firstly, we define a temporal branching structure and define the terms for application in Philosophy of Science; Finally, we define a logical system that consists of a variation of Public Announcement Logic in terms of temporal logic, with appropriate rules in a tableaux method.
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290648.439142
This is Part II of my commentary on Stephen Senn’s guest post, Be Careful What You Wish For. In this follow-up, I take up two topics:
(1) A terminological point raised in the comments to Part I, and
(2) A broader concern about how a popular reform movement reinforces precisely the mistaken construal Senn warns against. …
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296054.439157
Some philosophers hold that unstructured groups themselves, as opposed to the members of these groups, can have moral duties. There are different accounts of how such collective duties might be grounded in facts about individual duties of the group members. In this paper, I highlight and discuss some questions for these accounts that seem to warrant more exploration than they have received so far. First, if there is a collective duty to ϕ that is grounded in individual duties, how does ϕ-ing feature in the individual duties? The accounts that ground a collective duty to ϕ in individual duties specify these individual duties with reference to ϕ- ing. But if a collective duty to ϕ is grounded in individual duties, then, on pain of circularity, the individual duties cannot be specified in terms of a collective duty to ϕ. Second, are the individual duties that ground collective moral duties themselves also moral duties? Or are the individual duties, rather, rational duties? I will suggest that the individual duties should be classified neither as purely moral nor as purely rational, but rather as rational duties of moral agents. Finally, are the grounding individual duties perspective-dependent, i.e., do they depend on the epistemic situation of the members, as several philosophers have suggested? I argue that accounts of collective obligations should not commit themselves to an answer to this question, but rather leave the question to general ethical theories that do not focus on contexts of collective duties.
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296106.439169
| The boundary problem in normative democratic theory is the problem of who should be entitled to participate in which democratic decision-making. The boundary problem is at the heart of many pressing political issues, including voting rights of resident aliens in their host countries and of expats in their home countries, the legitimacy of border regimes, the justi!ability of global democracy, and the democratic representation of future generations. The two most popular answers to the boundary problem are the
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297493.439182
Alice has lived a long and reasonable life. She developed a lot of good habits. Every morning, she goes on a walk. On her walk, she looks at the lovely views, she smells the flowers in season, she gathers mushrooms, she listens to the birds chirping, she climbs a tree, and so on. …
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308663.439195
This paper deals with a rather wide range of topics, each one of which probably deserves (at least) a monograph-length study of its own, and for each one of which there is an extensive literature. There is no way that one can do justice to all of that in the span of a single paper. Now that may be a good reason not to try to do so, but rather to stick with one issue, one view. However, sometimes it can be useful to take a broad perspective, treat a variety of questions and observationsas making up a single subject matter, one that can be approached from various angles. Sure, that does result in a lack of detail, but one may hope that one makes good for that by showing connections that otherwisewould go unnoticed. This paper is written in that spirit.
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313208.439206
Wouldn’t it be great if Democrats prioritized a drastic increase in American productivity, thereby deprioritizing safetyism, wokeness, and redistribution? That’s definitely my view, so I’m delighted that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (henceforth KT) have written a whole book — Abundance sans subtitle — defending that position. …
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313209.439218
Some philosophers think that for your right action to be morally worthy you have to know that the action is right. On the contrary, there are cases where an action is even more morally worthy when you don’t know it’s right. …
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316174.43923
Very short summary: In this essay, I discuss Gerald Gaus’s argument about the possibility of moral reconciliation in diverse societies. Like Gaus, I use an agent-based model to explore the conditions under which convergence toward a single social rule happens. …
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317623.439242
Advocates of the explanatory indispensability argument for platonism say two things. First, we should believe in the parts of our best scientific theories that are explanatory. Second, mathematical objects play an explanatory role within those theories. I give a two-part response. I start by using a Bayesian framework to argue that the standards many have proposed must be met to show that mathematical objects are dispensable are too demanding. In particular, nominalistic theories may be more probable than platonistic ones even if they are extremely complicated by comparison. This is true even if there are genuine cases of mathematical explanation in science. The point made here is a matter of principle, holding regardless of how one assesses nominalistic theories already on offer. I then examine my recent nominalization of second-order impure set theory in light of the correct, laxer standards. I make a tentative case that my nominalistic theory meets those standards, which would undermine the explanatory indispensability argument. While this case is provisional, I aim to bring attention to my nominalization and others in light of the revised standards for demonstrating dispensability.
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317645.439255
In this paper, I develop a “safety result” for applied mathematics. I show that whenever a theory in natural science entails some non-mathematical conclusion via an application of mathematics, there is a counterpart theory that carries no commitment to mathematical objects, entails the same conclusion, and the claims of which are true if the claims of the original theory are “correct”: roughly, true given the assumption that mathematical objects exist. The framework used for proving the safety result has some advantages over existing nominalistic accounts of applied mathematics. It also provides a nominalistic account of pure mathematics.
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317668.439269
ground assumptions of some relevant versions of anti-exceptionalism about logic. We argue that this is a sort of sociological contingency rather than a metaphilosophical necessity. Drawing parallels with the metaphysics of science (as applied to quantum foundations), we try to bring the realist assumptions of anti-exceptionalism to light, to demotivate the necessary connection between realism and anti-exceptionalism, briefly exploring the possibility of adopting antirealism as the background default view of science instead.
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317704.439291
Recent philosophical literature on the epistemology of measurement has relegated measurement uncertainty to a secondary issue, concerned with characterizing the quality of a measurement process or its product. To reveal the deeper epistemological significance of uncertainty, we articulate the problem of usefulness, which is concerned with the tension between the specificity of the conditions under which particular measurements are performed and the broader range of conditions in which measurement results are intended to be – and are – used. This is simultaneously an epistemological and a practical problem.
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317761.439304
The theory of quasi-truth was developed by Newton da Costa and collaborators as a more realistic account of truth, encompassing the incompleteness and inconsistency of scientific knowledge. Intuitively, the idea is that truth is reached when consensus is established at the end of inquiry; until that is reached, we have something less than the whole truth, we have partial or quasi-truth. Formally, the view faces some challenges that have been recently addressed in the literature; they concern a mismatch between the offered formalism and the expected claims to be formalized. In this paper we use inspiration from quasi-truth theory to develop an account of consensus in science encompassing the notion of quasi-truth. We not only present the formal system capturing the idea of a scientific consensus, but also show how quasi-truth may be represented within it too. We compare the original quasi-truth approach to ours, and argue that the latter is able to face some of the difficulties that plagued the former.
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402620.439318
Spears and Geruso’s After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People releases today! In Part 1 of my review, I explained why we should be worried about below-replacement global fertility and subsequent depopulation. …
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404073.43933
Anyone engaging with the history and philosophy of pseudoscience, particularly the demarcation problem, will quickly land on Karl Popper and the campaign of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists against irrational metaphysics. The demarcation problem – how to identify the hallmarks of a serious and universal science-pseudoscience distinction – began with demarcating science from metaphysical fraud and dilettantism. Not much is known, however, about the Circle’s attitude towards typical pseudoscientific activities like parapsychology and psychic phenomena, spiritualism, psychoanalysis, and the social role and responsibility of scientific philosophy with regard to fringe and pseudoscientific endeavors. This paper provides the first systematic approach to the early history of the demarcation problem, with a special focus on logical positivism, which is supposed to be the standard-bearer of a rational, socially engaged but fallible scientific philosophy in demented times. As it turns out, most logical positivists were not just interested in pseudoscience as skeptical experimenters, but viewed it as holding various values, merits, and promises that they even imagined to be compatible with their empiricist and scientific world conception.
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404134.439345
We argue that semiclassical gravity can be rendered consistent by assuming that quantum systems only emit a gravitational field when they interact with stable determination chains (SDCs), which are specific chains of interactions modeled via decoherence and test functions obeying a set of conditions. When systems are disconnected from SDCs, they do not emit a gravitational field. This denies the universality of gravity, while upholding a version of the equivalence principle. We argue that this theory can be tested by experiments that investigate the gravitational field emitted by isolated systems like in gravcats experiments or by investigating the gravitational interactions between entangled systems like in the (Bose- Marletto-Vedral) BMV experiment. Our theory fits into a new framework which holds that in the absence of certain conditions, quantum systems cannot emit a gravitational field. There are many possible conditions for systems to emit a gravitational field, and we will adopt a subset of them. We will show how this subset of conditions provides multiple benefits beyond rendering semiclassical gravity consistent, which includes deriving the value of the cosmological constant from first principles and providing an explanation for why the vacuum does not gravitate.
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486081.439359
Mike Huemer is the greatest philosopher. It is no hyperbole to say that he “taught me how to think.” He is also a confirmed ethical vegetarian who practices what he preaches. Nine years ago, I wrote this piece arguing that insects provide a strong reductio ad absurdum to Huemer’s view. …