Philosophical Progress

Articles and blog posts found on 26 July 2024

2024-07-26T23:59:00Z

Erich H. Rast: Better-Making Properties and the Objectivity of Value Disagreement (pdf, 10022 words)

A light form of value realism is defended according to which objective properties of comparison objects make value comparisons true or false. If one object has such a better-making property and another lacks it, this is sufficient for the truth of a corresponding value comparison. However, better-making properties are only necessary and usually not sufficient parts of the justifications of value comparisons. The account is not reductionist; it remains consistent with error-theoretic positions and the view that there are normative facts.

Martin Glazier: The Contingency of Actuality (pdf, 9632 words)

Most philosophers accept Necessity of Actuality: whenever ‘actually ’ is true, it is true with metaphysical necessity. The logic that results from rejecting this principle has recently been studied by Glazier and Krämer (2024); the present paper develops its philosophical foundations. Although Necessity of Actuality may seem to be required by actuality’s role in comparing what is with what might have been, I argue that the principle is false and that such comparisons are in good standing even without the principle. The rejection of Necessity of Actuality reopens the following question: for which ? is ‘actually ’ metaphysically possible? I propose an answer that appeals to the idea that actuality has an essence, and I explore some hypotheses about what this essence might be.

Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez, Jack Himelright: Getting Back in Shape: Persistence, Shape, and Relativity (pdf, 13805 words)

In this paper, we will introduce a novel argument (the “Region Argument”) that objects do not have frame-independent shapes in special relativity. The Region Argument lacks vulnerabilities present in David Chalmers’ argument for that conclusion based on length contraction. We then examine how views on persistence interact with the Region Argument. We argue that this argument and standard four-dimensionalist assumptions entail that nothing in a relativistic world has any shape, not even stages or the regions occupied by them. We also argue that endurantists have viable ways of preserving shape despite the Region Argument. The upshot of these arguments is that contrary to conventional wisdom, considerations about shape in relativity support endurantism rather than four-dimensionalism. We conclude by examining the implications of our discussion for the debate over Edenic shapes, noting that endurantists have a satisfying response to skeptical arguments about Edenic shapes similar to the one they have against the Region Argument.

Thomas William Barrett, JB Manchak: What Do Privileged Coordinates Tell Us About Structure? (pdf, 10373 words)

The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which the ‘privileged coordinates’ of a physical theory provide a window into how much structure it posits. We first isolate a problem for this idea. We show that there are geometric spaces that admit the same privileged coordinates, but have different amounts of structure. We then compare this ‘coordinate approach’ to comparing amounts of structure to the familiar ‘automorphism approach,’ and we conclude with some brief remarks about implicit definability.

Alexander Pruss's Blog: Perfect nomic correlations (html, 501 words)

Here is an interesting special case of Ockham’s Razor: - If we find that of nomic necessity whenever A occurs, so does B, then it is reasonable to assume that B is not distinct from A. Here are three examples. …

The Archimedean Point: [Repost] A Rawlsian Account of Populism? (html, 1933 words)

This is the summer break and I’m publishing old essays written when the audience of this newsletter was confidential. This post has been originally published April 5, 2022. In a previous post, I briefly mentioned the suggestion made by the philosopher Paul Weithman about a possible Rawlsian account of the populist vote. …

Articles and blog posts found on 25 July 2024

2024-07-25T23:59:00Z

Nathan Nobis: Truth in Ethics and Epistemology: A Defense of Normative Realism (pdf, 102770 words)

In this work I defend moral realism, the thesis that there are objective moral truths, by defending “epistemic realism.” Epistemic realism is the thesis that epistemic judgments, e.g., judgments that some belief is epistemically reasonable, or justified, or known or should be held, are sometimes true and made true by stance-independent epistemic facts and properties.

Zoe Drayson: Personal/Subpersonal Distinction (pdf, 3996 words)

When we say that someone recognizes a famous painting, prefers Mexican food, or judges the winner of a competition, we are attributing cognitive capacities to the person. These personal-level attributions of cognition can be contrasted with the subpersonal-level attributions made by cognitive scientists when they claim that the fusiform gyrus in the brain recognizes faces, that pyloric neurons prefer a certain frequency, or that the early visual system judges depth from retinal disparity. In each of these latter cases, the cognitive capacity (e.g., recognition, preference, judgment) is attributed not to the person but to some part of their cognitive system. This distinction between personal-level and subpersonal-level attributions of cognition raises interesting questions, including about the relationship between personal-level and subpersonal-level attributions of cognition, and whether the personal/subpersonal distinction picks out two different kinds of cognitive processes or merely reflects two different kinds of explanatory projects we might have.

Alexander Pruss's Blog: Aggression and self-defense (html, 676 words)

Let’s assume that lethal self-defense is permissible. Such self-defense requires an aggressor. There is a variety of concepts of an aggressor for purposes of self-defense, depending on what constitutes aggression. …

D. G. Mayo's blog: Abandon Statistical Significance and Bayesian Epistemology: some troubles in philosophy (html, 2746 words)

Has the “abandon significance” movement in statistics trickled down into philosophy of science? A little bit. Nowadays (since the late 1990’s [i]), probabilistic inference and confirmation enter in philosophy by way of fields dubbed formal epistemology and Bayesian epistemology. …

Good Thoughts: Adversarial Ethics (html, 1523 words)

Ethics is easy when autonomy and beneficence converge: of course people should be allowed to do good things.1 And I’m enough of a Millian to think that in general, promoting human capacities and individual autonomy may be our most robustly secure route to creating a better future. …

Articles and blog posts found on 24 July 2024

2024-07-24T23:59:00Z

Elena Popa: Just Pluralism: Thinking About Concepts of Mental Disorder in Global Context (pdf, 9551 words)

This paper will investigate justice requirements that a pluralist stance on concepts of mental disorder should meet for use on a global scale. This is important given that different concepts of mental disorder are connected to particular interventions which may be more or less successful in specific contexts. While taking a broadly normative view on mental disorders, I will describe relevant concepts in a more fine grained manner, referring to their connections to particular approaches to biology, the self, or community. Drawing on research on epistemic injustice, I highlight the requirement that the set of multiple concepts be sufficiently flexible to enable the participation of those possessing relevant local knowledge. Using insights from health justice, I point out that the set of concepts should be conducive to distributive and procedural justice with regard to mental health and should support interventions on social determinants of health. These requirements apply to two dimensions of pluralism: regarding what concepts to include and how to relate them to one another. I conclude by explaining how an ontology of partial overlaps connected to a concept of health as metaphysically social can help address the challenges arising particularly regarding the latter dimension.

Joshua Spencer: Moral Responsibility and Time Travel in an Indeterministic World (pdf, 3287 words)

According to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, someone is morally responsible for an action only if she could have done otherwise. More formally: (PAP) necessarily, for any person S and any action A, S is morally responsible for performing A only if there is some action A* such that S could have done A* while failing to do A.

Paul E. Smaldino: Signaling (pdf, 2052 words)

In the forests of the Indian subcontinent, a tiger rears up to scratch marks high on a tree trunk, letting other tigers know the individual claiming this territory is a big one. Over in the Okavango Delta of Botswana, a dominant female baboon grunts to a subordinate female as she approaches, assuaging the subordinate female that she is not under threat. Meanwhile, a college freshman sets out for the day wearing a t-shirt with a picture of her favorite band, in the hopes that it will allow her to find friends whose sensibilities match her own. All of these are examples of signals, acts in which a sender communicates information to influence the behavior of a receiver. Signals can have instrumental functions and consequences from the perspective of both the senders and receivers of those signals.

Shan Gao: Understanding Branching in the Many-worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (pdf, 4037 words)

It has been recently debated whether world branching in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (MWI) is global or local. In this paper, I present a new analysis of the branching process in MWI. First, I argue that branching is not global. Next, I argue that branching is not necessarily local either, and it can be nonlocal for particles being in an entangled state. Third, I argue that for nonlocal branching there is action at a distance in each branching world, and as a result, there is also a preferred Lorentz frame in the world. However, the action at a distance in each world is apparent in the sense that there is no action at a distance and resulting preferred Lorentz frame in the whole worlds, and thus MWI is consistent with special relativity.

Sharon Crasnow: Objectivity of Measurement in Political Science (pdf, 4945 words)

A recent dispute in political science raises issues about the objectivity of measures of democracy. Political scientists Little and Meng argue that democracy indices using country experts as coders show a greater degree of democratic backsliding than measures that are objective. They worry that this discrepancy may reflect coder bias. I distinguish three aspects of objectivity and offer a reconceptualization of objectivity as coherence objectivity. I argue that coherence objectivity is better suited for evaluating measures of social science concepts like democracy than the understanding of objectivity implicit in Little and Meng’s discussion.

Alexander Pruss's Blog: Knowing what it's like to see green (html, 542 words)

You know what it’s like to see green. Close your eyes. Do you still know what it’s like to see green? I think so. Maybe you got lucky and saw some green patches while closing your eyes. But I am not assuming that happened. …

Azimuth: Agent-Based Models (Part 13) (html, 342 words)

Our 6-week Edinburgh meeting for creating category-based software for agent-based models is done, yet my collaborators are still busy improving and expanding this software. I want to say more about how it works. …

Good Thoughts: Beyond Right and Wrong (html, 1284 words)

With three books down—Parfit’s Ethics, An Introduction to Utilitarianism, and Questioning Beneficence1—I’m finally writing a monograph that sets out my own approach to ethical theory. With apologies to Nietzsche, I couldn’t resist the title: Beyond Right and Wrong. …

Articles and blog posts found on 22 July 2024

2024-07-22T23:59:00Z

Emma Jaura: Anti-foundationalist Coherentism as an Ontology for Relational Quantum Mechanics (pdf, 8996 words)

There have been a number of recent attempts to identify the best metaphysical framework for capturing Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM). All such accounts commit to some form of fundamentalia, whether they be traditional objects, physical relations, events or ‘flashes’, or the cosmos as a fundamental whole. However, Rovelli’s own recommendation is that ‘a natural philosophical home for RQM is an anti-foundationalist perspective' (2018:10). This gives us some prima facie reason to explore options beyond these foundationalist frameworks, and take seriously a picture that lacks fundamentalia.

Jacob Glazer: Coordinating with a “Problem Solver” (pdf, 6603 words)

A “problem solver” (PS) is an agent who when interacting with other agents does not “put himself in their shoes” but rather chooses a best response to a uniform distribution over all possible configurations consistent with the information he receives about the other agents’ moves.

Jacob Glazer, Ariel Rubinstein: Magical Implementation (pdf, 8100 words)

A principal would like to decide which of two parties deserves a prize. Each party privately observes the state of nature that determines which of them deserves the prize. The principal presents each party with a text that truthfully describes the conditions for deserving the prize and asks each of them what the state of nature is. The parties can cheat but the principal knows their cheating procedure. The principal “magically implements” his goal if he can come up with a pair of texts satisfying that in any dispute, he will recognize the cheater by applying the “honest-cheater asymmetry principle”. According to this principle, the truth is with the party satisfying that if his statement is true, then the other party (using the given cheating procedure) could have cheated and made the statement he is making, but not the other way around. Examples are presented to illustrate the concept.

Peter Baumann: What’s a(t) stake? On stakes, encroachers, knowledge (pdf, 8333 words)

According to subject-sensitive invariantism (SSI), whether S knows that p depends not only on the subject’s epistemic position (the presence of a true belief, sufficient warrant, etc.) but also on non-epistemic factors present in the subject’s situation; such factors are seen as “encroaching” on the subject’s epistemic standing. Not the only such non-epistemic factor but the most prominent one consists in the subject’s practical stakes. Stakes-based SSI holds that two subjects can be in the same epistemic position with respect to some proposition but with different stakes for the two subjects so that one of them might know the proposition while the other might fail to know it. It is remarkable that the notion of stakes has not been discussed much in great detail at all so far. This paper takes a closer look at this notion and proposes a detailed, new analysis. It turns out that there is more than one kind of stakes, namely event-stakes, knowledge-stakes and action-stakes. I discuss several issues that even plausible notions of stakes raise and propose solutions.

Samuel John Andrews: Ultimate-Humeanism (pdf, 10085 words)

Super-Humeans (Esfeld & Deckert, 2017) argue that the most parsimonious ontology of the natural world compatible with our best physical theories consists exclusively of particles and the distance relations between them. This paper argues by contrast that Super-Humean reduction goes insufficiently far, by showing there to be a more parsimonious ontology compatible with physics: Ultimate-Humeanism. This novel view posits an ontology consisting solely of the particles and distance relations required for the existence of a single brain. Super-Humeans impose conditions on what counts as an ontology of the natural world to avoid their view slipping into this kind of ontology, but these conditions are arbitrarily imposed and once this is exposed, Super-Humeans face a dilemma. Either they can embrace Ultimate-Humeanism as the minimal ontology of the natural world compatible with physics, or (more likely) they can rethink the methodology that got them there. Overall, this paper argues that Super-Humeanism currently lacks principled motivation, outlines a framework for naturalistic ontological reductions, and exposes the consequences of unchecked adherence to a simplicity-driven methodology.

Samuel Schindler: Kuhn on Scientific Discovery (pdf, 6591 words)

In this chapter I review Kuhn’s account of discovery. Kuhn held that a scientific discovery requires both a discovery that an object exists and a discovery what that object is. Accordingly, Kuhn held that there are two kinds of discovery, which may be referred to what-that discovery and that-what discovery. The latter are Kuhn’s focus in SSR but considering both kinds of discovery allow for a fuller understanding of Kuhn’s view. Interestingly, Kuhn implied that one needs a correct conception of what one discovers, even though he failed to say how correct that conception needs to be. I propose a solution to this problem.

Shan Gao: Does the Conscious Mind Obey the Laws of Physics? (pdf, 1576 words)

According to the laws of physics, the state of a physical system can only be measured by another system (usually a particular measuring device) via a physical interaction. However, when our brain is in a conscious mental state, it can in principle output the information about its physical state based on the psycho-physical correspondance between the mental state and the physical state. It is argued that this suggests that the conscious mind violates physical laws and it is not physical as physicalism claims.

The Archimedean Point: [Repost] An Interactive Toxin Puzzle (html, 1051 words)

This is the summer break and I’m publishing old essays written when the audience of this newsletter was confidential. This post has been originally published March 17, 2022. Spoiler Alert: the following lines reveal important details of the story told by Ken Follett in his novel Never. …

Articles and blog posts found on 21 July 2024

2024-07-21T23:59:00Z

Teresa Marques: How slurs enact norms, and how to retract them (pdf, 10707 words)

The present paper considers controversial utterances that were erroneously taken as derogatory. These examples are puzzling because, despite the audiences’ error, many speakers retract and even apologise for what they didn’t say and didn’t do. In recent years, intuitions about retractions have been used to test semantic theories. The cases discussed here test the predictive power of theories of derogatory language and help us to better understand what is required to retract a slur. The paper seeks to answer three questions: are the cases considered genuine retractions? If the speakers didn’t derogate by using a slur, how are the cases retractions of derogatory acts? Do these examples support expressive accounts of slurs? I argue that the examples provide evidence for an expressivist account of slurs: a slurring utterance (defeasibly) makes a derogatory speech act where the speaker expresses a commitment to a morally questionable appraisal state, such as disgust or contempt for a target group. A retraction of a derogatory speech act requires undoing the enactment of that commitment, which can be achieved with a genuine apology. This helps explain the conduct of audiences who misunderstand what the speaker says, and the speakers’ reactions.

Mostly Aesthetics: King Lear as Tragedy (html, 880 words)

In grand ceremony King Lear parcels out his kingdom, intending afterwards to retire, and “unburdened crawl toward death.” But who shall get what? For this he runs a royal bonus round, and the contestants, his daughters, must answer, “Which of you shall we say doth love us most?” After insincere speeches from Goneril and Regan, Cordelia, his favorite, won’t play—“I love your Majesty according to my bond, no more nor less.” Furious, Lear disowns her: “I disclaim all my parental care...and as a stranger to my heart and me hold thee from this forever.” Soon the elder sisters, newly-empowered, strip Lear of his armed attendants and his dignity, in a delicious Shakespearean phrase: Be then desired By her that else will take the thing she begs, A little to diquantity your train, and Lear is left out in a storm, helpless, in the company of fools and madness. …

Articles and blog posts found on 20 July 2024

2024-07-20T23:59:00Z

David Wallace: What Gibbsian Statistical Mechanics Says: In Defense of Bare Probabilism (pdf, 7188 words)

Mainstream statistical physics proceeds by assigning probability functions to classical systems, and mixed quantum states to quantum systems, and then calculating synchronic and diachronic properties of those functions. Recent philosophy of physics refers to this mainstream approach as “Gibbsian statistical mechanics” (henceforth GSM) and contrasts it, usually unfavorably, to (so-called) “Boltzmannian statistical mechanics”, in which the role of probability is lessened and in some versions eliminated altogether.

Nir Fresco, Marc Artiga, Marty J. Wolf: Teleofunction in the Service of Computational Individuation (pdf, 9753 words)

One type of computational indeterminacy arises from partitioning a system’s physical state space into state types that correspond to the abstract state types underlying the computation concerned. The mechanistic individuative strategy posits that computation can be uniquely identified through either narrow physical properties exclusively or wide, proximal properties. The semantic strategy posits that computation should be uniquely identified through semantic properties. We develop, and defend, an alternative functional individuative strategy that appeals—when needed—to wide, distal functions. We claim that there is no actual computation outside of a functional context. Desiderata for the underlying notion of teleofunction are discussed.

Stijn Conix, Vincent Cuypers, Charles H. Pence: Measuring and Explaining Disagreement in Bird Taxonomy (pdf, 10724 words)

Species lists play an important role in biology and practical domains like conservation, legislation, biosecurity and trade regulation. However, their effective use by non-specialist scientific and societal users is sometimes hindered by disagreements between competing lists. While it is well-known that such disagreements exist, it remains unclear how prevalent they are, what their nature is, and what causes them. In this study, we argue that these questions should be investigated using methods based on taxon concept rather than methods based on Linnaean names, and use such a concept-based method to quantify disagreement about bird classification and investigate its relation to research effort. We found that there was disagreement about 38% of all groups of birds recognized as a species, more than three times as much as indicated by previous measures. Disagreement about the delimitation of bird groups was the most common kind of conflict, outnumbering disagreement about nomenclature and disagreement about rank. While high levels of conflict about rank were associated with lower levels of research effort, this was not the case for conflict about the delimitation of bird groups. This suggests that taxonomic disagreement cannot be resolved simply by increasing research effort.

Azimuth: What is Entropy? (html, 508 words)

I wrote a little book about entropy; here’s the current draft: If you see mistakes in it, please let me know! An alternative title would be 91 Tweets on Entropy, but people convinced me that title wouldn’t age well: in decade or two few people may remember what ‘tweets’ were. …

Stranger Apologies: Only Fools Avoid Hindsight Bias (html, 1888 words)

TLDR: You’re unsure about something. Then it happens—and you think to yourself, “I kinda expected that.” Such hindsight bias is commonly derided as irrational. But any Bayesian who is (1) unsure of exactly what they think, and (2) trusts their own judgment should exhibit hindsight bias. …

Under the Net: Voice (html, 1491 words)

I led a session of a workshop, recently, on how to write a “trade book” in philosophy. I don’t love the phrase “trade book,” which I’ve put in protective scare-quotes. And I feel some discomfort, too, in being cast as an authority. …