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372378.880774
Two views on the direction of time can be distinguished—primitivism and nonprimitivism. According to the former, time’s direction is an in-built, fundamental property of the physical world. According to the latter, time’s direction is a derivative property of a fundamentally directionless reality. In the literature, non-primitivism has been widely supported since most (if not all) our fundamental dynamical laws are time-reversal invariant. In this paper, I offer a way out to the primitivist. I argue that we do have good grounds to support a primitive direction of time in the quantum realm. The rationale depends on exploiting the metaphysical and dynamical underdetermination of quantum theories to make a case in favor of primitivism. In particular, primitivism can be grounded in spontaneous collapse theories (e.g., GRW and CSL). The specific sense in which these theories capture a primitive direction of time is that, when the ontology of the theory is seriously taken into account, it does not remain invariant under time reversal. In taking GRW with a matter-density field (GRWm), I will argue that primitivism about the direction of time can be defended in the quantum case.
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372411.88089
It has been argued that measurement-induced collapses in Orthodox Quantum Mechanics generates an intrinsic (or built-in) quantum arrow of time. In this paper, I critically assess this proposal. I begin by distinguishing between an intrinsic and non-intrinsic arrow of time. After presenting the proposal of a collapse-based arrow of time in some detail, I argue, first, that any quantum arrow of time in Orthodox Quantum Mechanics is non-intrinsic since it depends on external information about the measurement context, and second, that it cannot be global, but just local. I complement these arguments by assessing some criticisms and considerations about the implementation of time reversal in contexts wherein measurement-induced collapses work. I conclude that the quantum arrow of time delivered by Orthodox Quantum Mechanics is much weaker than usually thought.
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393200.880903
Our first stop in 2025 on the leisurely tour of SIST is Excursion 4 Tour I which you can read here. I hope that this will give you the chutzpah to push back in 2025, if you hear that objectivity in science is just a myth. …
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487742.880924
Recently Chiao and his collaborators proposed a new version of the electric Aharonov-Bohm effect [Phys. Rev. A 107, 042209 (2023)]. They argued that a quantum system confined in a Faraday cage with a time varying but spatially uniform electric scalar potential can pick up the Aharonov-Bohm phase, and the observable consequence is the energy level shift of the quantum system. In this paper, I argue that Chiao et al’s analysis is problematic, and a time varying, spatially uniform electric scalar potential cannot result in observable energy level shift of quantum systems. A possible explanation of this seemingly puzzling result is also given based on the one true gauge principle.
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487758.880935
The paper analyzes the notion of exploration that can be found in the distinction between exploratory and confirmatory research, which is sometimes appealed to in the metascience literature. We argue that this notion (a) differs in important respects from previous works in exploratory data analysis and (b) contains some counterintuitive assumptions about the nature of exploration. Engaging with works in the history and philosophy of experimentation and modeling, we develop and defend a more comprehensive and accurate notion of exploration and argue that it is better suited for a normative analysis of exploratory research.
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487775.880952
The paper makes a novel case to vindicate social sciences as substantially a priori against the mainstream view that rejects apriorism as unscientific. After a brief review of the state of the art and the open options to defend a science that is a priori, we lay out a methodological dualism according to which human action is not accessible to the methods of empirical science but requires a normative stance to identify its subject matter as the expression of intentional action. Against this background, we then bring the apriorism of Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe together with the normative turn in philosophy established by the Pittsburgh School of Philosophy, resulting in normative apriorism as a firmly established scientific method that is specific to the social sciences. In brief, the strategy thus is to bring in normativity as a characteristic trait of human action in order to show why a science of human action has to be a priori in order to capture its subject.
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487799.880962
Symmetry fundamentalism claims that symmetries should be taken metaphysically seriously as part of the fundamental ontology. The main aim of this paper is to bring some novel objections against this view. I make two points. The first places symmetry fundamentalism within a broader network of philosophical commitments. I claim that symmetry fundamentalism entails idealization realism which, in turn, entails the reification of further theoretical structures. This might lead to an overloaded ontology as well as open the way to criticisms from metaphysical frameworks that reject such reifications. The second point contrasts symmetry fundamentalism with the now common view that regards symmetries as stipulations guiding empirical research and theory construction. I claim that both views clash each other and cannot be held together. I finish the paper with a more positive prospect that will be developed in future work—symmetry deflationism.
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487822.880973
In this paper, I critically assess two recent proposals for an interpretation-independent understanding of non-relativistic quantum mechanics: the overlap strategy (Fraser & Vickers, 2022) and the textbook account (Egg, 2021). My argument has three steps. I first argue that they presume a Quinean-Carnapian meta-ontological framework that yields flat, structureless ontologies. Second, such ontologies are unable to solve the problems that quantum ontologists want to solve. Finally, only structured ontologies are capable of solving the problems that quantum ontologists want to solve. But they require some dose of speculation. In the end, I defend the conservative way to do quantum ontology, which is (and must be) speculative and non-neutral.
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487842.880983
Symmetry-based inferences have permeated many discussions in philosophy of physics and metaphysics of science. It is claimed that symmetries in our physical theories would allow us to draw metaphysical conclusions about the world, a view that I call ‘symmetry inferentialism’. This paper is critical to this view. I claim that (a) it assumes a philosophically questionable characterization of the relevant validity domain of physical symmetries, and (b) it overlooks a distinction between two opposing ways through which relevant physical symmetries become established. My conclusion is that symmetry inferentialism loses persuasive force when these two points are taken into consideration.
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499396.880998
Miles Tucker’s (2022) ‘Consequentialism and Our Best Selves,’ defends a “maximizing theory of moral motivation”, on which we should have just those motives (among those “available” to us) that would make things go best. …
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584283.881013
As promised, here is my reply to Tanmay Khale’s recent guest post. He’s in blockquotes, I’m not. Dear Prof. Caplan,
I have a quick question regarding your arguments in favor of open borders, and particularly the influence of adverse selection. …
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600076.881023
A farmer with a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage must cross a river by boat. The boat can carry only the farmer and a single item. If left unattended together, the wolf would eat the goat, or the goat would eat the cabbage. …
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620313.881034
It is increasingly easy to acquire a large amount of data about a problem before formulating a hypothesis. The idea of exploratory data analysis (EDA) predates this situation, but many researchers find themselves appealing to EDA as an explanation of what they are doing with these new resources. Yet there has been relatively little explicit work on what EDA is or why it might be important. I canvass several positions in the literature, find them wanting, and suggest an alternative: exploratory data analysis, when done well, shows the expected value of experimentation for a particular hypothesis.
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620348.881049
Scientific theories always presuppose an ontology: a set of entities, relationships, and processes that together form the basic building blocks of theories. Chemistry has atoms, molecules, and ways of making and breaking bonds. Evolutionary biology has species and processes of reproduction, competition, and natural selection. A cognitive ontology is the set of entities presupposed by a theory in the behavioral and cognitive sciences. A theory that postulates a lexical and a phonological route for reading written words, for example, posits two decoding processes, each of which is part of a larger process of reading. Debates about the correct ontology are as old as cognitive theorizing itself, but the term cognitive ontology is usually discussed in the context of challenges to traditional ontologies stemming from neuroimaging research beginning in the early 2000s. The extent to which traditional cognitive theorizing must line up with discoveries in cognitive neuroscience remains a central question in the cognitive ontology debate.
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620384.881059
An increasing number of authors are willing to attribute phenomenal consciousness to relatively simple organisms like insects. Yet it is not at all clear what functional role the substrates of consciousness would play. Here we argue phenomenal consciousness is a consequence of how mobile animals with spatial senses and a capacity for goal-directed behaviour resolve the complex problem of action selection. To adjudicate between possible goals an animal must use sensory inputs, representations of internal state, and stored knowledge of values to estimate expected value vectors for different options. Brains solve this problem by taking such heterogenous information and transform it into a common framework – a phenomenal interface - and then use this to compute multi-objective Q-values. We use insects to flesh out the details of the phenomenal interface. A consequence of this type of processing is that it naturally generates a distinction between self and non-self and a first-person perspective in which external stimuli have a subjective value. We discuss the consequences of this theory for understanding the evolution and distribution of phenomenal consciousness, and suggest an underappreciated problem that arises when thinking about how consciousness might have expanded and changed as it evolved from its simplest origins.
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650809.881069
The Cosmic Microwave Background: His- torical and Philosophical Lessons, by Slobodan Perović and Milan M. Ćirković.
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660748.881086
In this essay, I explore the idea of using large language models (LLMs) not as full models of general artificial intelligence themselves, but as components that can help bootstrap cognitive architectures comprised of other components to greater degrees of cognitive flexibility and agency. In particular, I explore the idea that LLMs could perform some of the roles that inner speech plays in human cognitive development and adult problem-solving. Researchers are currently exploring many questions of the form: can an LLM (such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or AnthropicAI’s Claude) have cognitive/mental property X (where X =… represent world models, reason, be conscious, exhibit theory of mind, communicate, and more). If instead of evaluating language models themselves as the sole bearer of X, we instead tried to use LLMs to play the role in the developmental process of acquiring X played by inner speech—as an internal, linguistically-vehicled coordinator and scaffold for diverse other processes—then the significance of research on LLMs as a path towards AI deserves fresh reevaluation, and a different research agenda for philosophically-motivated, deep-learning-based AI comes into focus.
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660766.881097
Traditional attempts to understanding inductive reasoning in science have typically involved analyzing language, focusing on statements or propositions. However, recent arguments suggest that this approach misconceives induction, prompting the need for a new perspective. This study offers a fresh view on induction by integrating William Whewell's theory of induction, which distinguishes two forms of reasoning: interpretation and representation. This perspective suggests that induction can be seen as a reasoning process based on semantic and pragmatic models rather than statements or propositions.
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660782.881112
The label French Conventionalism has generally been used to refer to Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem, who were seen as having the same view. Current scholarship presents a more complex picture of French philosophy of science in the early twentieth century. There are many conflicting interpretations of both Poincaré and Duhem, but at least we have learned that they do not have the same viewpoint. However, Duhem and Poincaré do share the idea that in some areas of science, we make a choice that is not empirically determinable. We can certainly say that there was an important set of issues being debated in French philosophy of science in the very early twentieth century and that these debates centered on the views of Poincaré and Duhem, no matter what label we use.
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660799.881123
An often-voiced concern about emancipatory approaches to modelling human kinds is that they are unlikely to reach their goals unless they rely on accurate knowledge of the kinds they target; knowledge, it is assumed, which can only be obtained by representing the kinds as accurately as possible independently of any particular social or political goal. We argue that this argument is problematic for several reasons. We show that even if the pursuit of emancipation should indeed rely on accurate knowledge about kinds, a merely representational approach is neither necessary nor sufficient to obtain such knowledge.
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708970.881135
Sam: Let’s dive right in, the book’s main ideas don’t take long to explain. Iambic pentameter, the dominant verse form used by Shakespeare, permits a great deal of rhythmic flexibility; and that flexibility can be exploited for expressive purposes. …
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818852.881146
The past is settled and the assertion in the past is either true or false. The future (even if deterministic) is cannot be known and what we say about the future is perceived as a prediction that can turn out to be true or false. Will is not a tense but a modal.
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833720.881156
The question of the reduction of chemistry to quantum mechanics has been inextricably linked with the development of the philosophy of chemistry since the field began to develop in the early 1990s. In the present chapter I would like to describe how my own views on the subject have developed over a period of roughly 30 years. A good place to begin might be the frequently cited reductionist dictum that was penned in 1929 by Paul Dirac, one of the founders of quantum mechanics.
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833745.881166
This article begins by examining a recent claim by Brad Wray that the discovery of atomic number and isotopy constitutes a scientific revolution in the sense of the later writings of Thomas Kuhn. I argue that although Kuhn’s criteria may apply to the change from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican model of the universe, they do not apply in the above chemical or atomic case. I also examine the wider issue of Kuhn’s turning away from internal scientific issues to a consideration of lexical issues. I conclude, as others have done before me, that this may have been a wrong turn in view of the emphasis being placed on questions of sense rather than reference.
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833766.881178
The article begins with a response to a recent contribution by Jensen, in which he has criticized several aspects of the use of triads of elements, including Döbereiner’s original introduction of the concept and the modern use of atomic number triads by some authors including myself. Such triads are groups of three elements, one of which has approximately the average atomic weight of the other two elements, as well as having intermediate chemical reactivity. I also examine Jensen’s attempted reconstruction Mendeleev’s use of triads in predicting the atomic weights of three hitherto unknown elements, that were subsequently named gallium, germanium and scandium. The present article then considers the use of atomic number triads, in conjunction with the phenomenon of first member anomaly, in order to offer support for Janet’s left-step periodic table, in which helium is relocated into group 2 of the table. Such a table features triads in which the 2nd and third elements of each group, without fail, fall into periods of equal length, a feature that is absent in the conventional 18-column or the conventional 32-column table. The dual sense of the term element, which is the source of much discussion in the philosophy of chemistry, is alluded to in further support of such a relocation of helium that may at first appear to contradict chemical intuition.
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891455.881188
This paper addresses some apparent philosophical tensions between realism and enactiv-ism by means of Charles Peirce’s pragmatism. Enactivism’s Mind-Life Continuity thesis has been taken to commit it to some form of anti-realist ‘world-construction’ which has been considered controversial. Accordingly, a new realist enactivism is proposed by Zahidi (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 13(3), 461–475, 2014), drawing on Ian Hacking’s ‘entity realism’, which places subjects in worlds comprised of the things that they can successfully manipulate. We review this attempt, and argue that whilst Zahidi rightly urges enactivists towards ‘internal realism’, he cannot sustain a non-negotiable aspect of realism that is crucial for scientific progress – the claim that multiple subjects inhabit the same world. We explore Peirce’s pragmatism as an alternative solution, foregrounding his distinction between existence and reality, and his inquiry-based account of cognition. These theoretical innovations, we argue, fruitfully generalize Zahidi’s manipulation-based enactivist realism to a richer, inquiry-based enactivist realism. We explore how this realism’s pan-species monism about truth encourages and supports the investigation of non-human animal cognition, and conclude by considering some implications of our discussion for long-standing realism debates within pragmatism.
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891476.8812
Mainstream philosophy has seen a recent flowering in discussions of intellectualism which revisits Gilbert Ryle’s famous distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’, and challenges his argument that the former cannot be reduced to the latter. These debates so far appear not to have engaged with pragmatist philosophy in any substantial way, which is curious as the relation between theory and practice is one of pragmatism’s main themes. Accordingly, this paper examines the contemporary debate in the light of Charles Peirce’s habit-based epistemology. We argue both that knowing-that can be understood as a particularly sophisticated form of knowing-how, and that all bodily competencies—if sufficiently deliberately developed—can be analysed as instantiating propositional structure broadly conceived. In this way, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism are seen to be not opposed, and both true, although Peirce’s original naturalistic account of propositional structure does lead him to reject what we shall call ‘linguistic intellectualism’.
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891500.881211
Jack Spencer and Ian Wells have recently argued that Causal Decision Theory faces special difficulty in cases of decision-instability where a play-it-safe option is present. They argue that CDT recommends taking a risky option, while the rational thing to do is to play it safe. In this paper I will show that CDT only recommends the risky option if we assume risk neutrality—a risk-averse CDT can play it safe. This opens two lines of response to Causalists: They can embrace a risk-averse CDT. Or they can reject the intuition to play it safe on the general grounds that risk-aversion is irrational. I will also generalise this argument to several other examples involve decision-instability. Of course, risk-aversion cannot explain all CDT’s problems and I will bolster the case for risk-aversion playing a special role in these cases by showing it cannot help in all such cases.
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931129.881241
We discuss a challenge for expressivism in metaethics. According to expressivism, the meaning of normative sentences is explained by their playing a practical role, or by facts about what desire-like, or action- or attitude-guiding states of mind, normative sentences express. We first explain how expressivism can be understood as a view about the metasemantics of normative language (section 1). The challenge, which we may call the problem of diverse uses (Väyrynen 2022), is based on the simple observation that while terms such as “good” or “ought” plausibly have a unified meaning across a wide variety of different uses, not all uses of sentences that contain these terms seem to play a suitably practical role. How, then, can the expressivist explain the meaning of such sentences by appealing to the idea that they play a practical role (section 2)? We suggest that expressivists can deal with this challenge. Our response is based on two ideas. First, understanding expressivism as a view in metasemantics rather than in semantics creates space for the possibility that both the practical and the descriptive uses of normative terms might carry the same meaning. This requires adopting a metasemantics that has some complexity, which leads to what we may call the problem of disunified metasemantics (Wodak 2017, Väyrynen 2022). However, we argue that this problem may nevertheless be dealt with, given that the extra complexity is required in order to capture the relevant phenomena (section 3). Second, in order to avoid a remaining challenge that we may call the problem of unexplained metasemantic coincidence (Wodak 2017), the expressivist account should take a certain kind of form.
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931651.881256
We consider a model of case-based planning, where a position is a vector of numbers, and a case is an edge in the directed graph of positions. The planner generates new plans by using cases that are similar to those she has observed in the past. In the benchmark model presented here, similarity is de…ned by equality of differences (between the target and the source position). We prove a complexity result that shows why planning requires imagination and is not easily done algorithmically. We put this result in the context of learning and expertise in case-based models, distinguishing among information, insight, and imagination.