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270918.58846
Discussion of the Aristotelian syllogism over the last sixty years has arguably centered on the question whether syllogisms are inferences or implications. But the significance of this debate at times has been taken to concern whether the syllogistic is a logic or a theory, and how it ought to be represented by modern systems.
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275431.588635
What’s the best way for a department to make hiring (or other contentious but important) decisions? Some take a simple vote between the final-stage candidates, perhaps followed by a run-off between the top two. …
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282261.588655
Aaron Ross Powell has an interesting essay about the arguments against the use of AI to create “intellectual” content such as art or pieces of writing. Powell identifies three such arguments:
“The most common arguments against the use of LLM technology—the chatbots like ChatGPT that produce text from a prompt, or the image generators like Midjourney that produce visual works—take a few forms. …
-
292407.588674
The Turing test for machine thought has an interrogator communicate (by typing) with a human and a machine both of which try to convince the interrogator that they are human. The interrogator then guesses which is human. …
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316360.588688
(See all posts in this series here.) I conclude with Chapters 6 and 7 of the book, which apply the theory to reasoning and introspecting consciousness. Investigating these as forms of attending, mental actions, illuminates. …
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326386.588706
There’s a lot we don’t know. There’s a lot we can’t know. But can we at least know how much we can’t know? What fraction of mathematical statements are undecidable—that is, can be neither proved nor disproved? …
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328612.588719
Recent work on philosophy of technology emphasises the ways in which technology can disrupt our concepts and conceptual schemes. We analyse and challenge existing accounts of conceptual disruption, criticising views according to which conceptual disruption can be understood in terms of uncertainty for conceptual application, as well as views assuming all instances of conceptual disruption occur at the same level. We proceed to provide our own account of conceptual disruption as an interruption in the normal functioning of concepts and conceptual schemes. Moreover, we offer a multilevel taxonomy thereof, where we distinguish between instances of conceptual disruptions occurring at different levels (conceptual scheme, conceptual clusters, and individual concepts), taking on different forms (conceptual gaps and conceptual conflicts), and leading to different degrees of severity (extending from mild to severe). We also provide detailed accounts through historical examples of how conceptual gaps and conceptual conflicts can occur at different times in the very same process of conceptual disruption. Finally, we make the case that different kinds of conceptual engineering can provide meaningful ways to assess and overcome distinct types of conceptual disruption.
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336555.588731
The self-interaction spin-2 approach to general relativity (GR) has been extremely influential in the particle physics community. Leaving no doubt regarding its heuristic value, we argue that a view of the metric field of GR as nothing but a stand-in for a self-coupling field in flat spacetime runs into a dilemma: either the view is physically incomplete in so far as it requires recourse to GR after all, or it leads to an absurd multiplication of alternative viewpoints on GR rendering any understanding of the metric field as nothing but a spin-2 field in flat spacetime unjustified.
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336593.588743
The black hole information loss paradox is a catch-all term for a family of puzzles related to black hole evaporation. For almost 50 years, the quest to elucidate the implications of black hole evaporation has not only sustained momentum, but has also become increasingly populated with proposals that seem to generate more questions than they purport to answer. Scholars often neglect to acknowledge ongoing discussions within black hole thermodynamics and statistical mechanics when analyzing the paradox, including the interpretation of Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, which is far from settled. To remedy the dialectical gridlock, I have formulated an overarching, unified framework, which I call “Black Hole Paradoxes”, that integrates the debates and taxonomizes the relevant ‘camps’ or philosophical positions.
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340557.588761
Failing to capture stuff is not being wrong, so for e.g. indicative conditionals not being material conditionals does not mean that classical logic is wrong, only that it doesn’t by itself handle the validity or otherwise of arguments involving indicative conditionals. …
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368125.588775
In this chapter I explore an approach to metaphysical emergence which distinguishes between fundamentality and naturalness and endorsing the thesis that there are natural properties at non-fundamental levels. I take as my starting point Elizabeth Barnes’s proposal to characterize the emergent as fundamental but dependent, criticizing it on the ground that it undermines the theoretical work we need fundamentality to do. However, I think Barnes is on the right track: emergence is linked to a selective metaphysical privileging of higher-level subject-matters. I suggest an alternative account of the metaphysically emergent as non-fundamental but (at least relatively) natural, and show how this suggestion can be implemented in a simple subject-matter-based framework.
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382713.588786
In what sense does a large language model (LLM) have knowledge? We answer by granting LLMs ‘instrumental knowledge’: knowledge gained by using next-word generation as an instrument. We then ask how instrumental knowledge is related to the ordinary, ‘worldly knowledge’ exhibited by humans, and explore this question in terms of the degree to which instrumental knowledge can be said to incorporate the structured world models of cognitive science. We discuss ways LLMs could recover degrees of worldly knowledge and suggest that such recovery will be governed by an implicit, resource-rational tradeoff between world models and tasks. Our answer to this question extends beyond the capabilities of a particular AI system and challenges assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence.
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386349.588798
According to what Birch (2022) calls the theory-heavy approach to investigating nonhuman-animal consciousness, we select one of the well-developed theories of consciousness currently debated within contemporary cognitive science and investigate whether animals exhibit the neural structures or cognitive abilities posited by that theory as sufficient for consciousness. Birch argues, however, that this approach is in general problematic because it faces what he dubs the dilemma of demandingness— roughly, that we cannot use theories that are based on the human case to assess consciousness in nonhuman animals and vice versa. We argue here that, though this dilemma may problematize the application of many current accounts of consciousness to nonhuman animals, it does not challenge the use of standard versions of the higher-order thought theory (“HOTT”) of consciousness, according to which a creature is in a conscious mental state just in case it is aware of being in that state via a suitable higher-order thought (“HOT”). We show this in two ways. First, we argue that, unlike many extant theories of consciousness, HOTT is typically motivated by a commonsense, and more importantly, neutral condition on consciousness that applies to humans and animals alike. Second, we offer new empirical and theoretical reasons to think that many nonhuman animals possess the relevant HOTs necessary for consciousness. Considering these issues not only reveals the explanatory power of HOTT and some of its advantages over rival accounts, but also enables us to further extend and clarify the theory.
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386377.58881
In metaethics, evolutionary debunking arguments combine empirical and epistemological premises to purportedly show that our moral judgments are unjustified. One objection to these arguments has been to distinguish between those judgments that evolutionary influence might undermine versus those that it does not. This response is powerful but not well understood. In this paper I flesh out the response by drawing upon a familiar distinction in the natural sciences, where it is common to distinguish folk judgments from theoretical judgments. I argue that this in turn illuminates the proper scope of the evolutionary debunking argument, but not in an obvious way: it is a very specific type of undermining argument that targets those theories where theoretical judgments are inferred merely from folk judgments. One upshot of this conclusion is that it reveals a verboten methodology in metaethics. The evolutionary debunking argument is therefore much less powerful than its proponents have supposed, but it nevertheless rules out what is perhaps a common way of attempting to justify moral judgments.
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391345.588821
Linguistic data are commonly considered a defeasible source of evidence from which it is legitimate to draw philosophical hypotheses and conclusions. Linguistic methods popular amongst philosophers include linguistic tests, standard and comparative semantic analysis, testing language usage and use frequency with the help of language corpora, and the study of syntactical structures and etymologies. Epistemologists have applied linguistic methods to a wide range of philosophical issues, including epistemic contextualism, epistemic norms of assertion and practical reasoning, the nature of know-how, whether beliefs are states or performances, whether belief is a weak or a strong attitude, and what kind of gradability is instantiated by theoretical rationality and epistemic justification. Traditionally epistemologists have relied almost exclusively on linguistic data from western languages, with a primary focus on contemporary English. However, in the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in cross-linguistic studies in epistemology.
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391368.588832
According to pragmatic encroachment, whether an epistemic attitude towards p has some positive epistemic status (e.g., whether a belief is epistemically rational or justified, or it amounts to knowledge) partially depends on practical factors such as the costs of being wrong or the practical goals of the agent. Depending on such factors, a belief may count as justified or as knowledge in some circumstances but not in others. Pragmatic encroachment is typically contrasted with purism, according to which the epistemic status of an individual depends exclusively on truth-relevant factors, such as the quantity and quality of evidence or the reliability of belief-forming methods. Pragmatic encroachment comes in many varieties. This survey article provides an overview of different kinds of pragmatic encroachment (hereafter, PE). It focuses on three dimensions under which kinds of PE differ: the type of epistemic status affected by practical factors (§1), the type of practical factors affecting the epistemic status (§2), and the type of normative considerations encroaching on the epistemic status (§3).
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391416.588843
For much of the twentieth century, most epistemologists held views according to which the epistemic realm is independent of the practical realm, and epistemic concepts are independent from practical ones. This ‘purist’ orthodoxy has been challenged since the beginning of the twenty-first century. According to pragmatic encroachment, whether an epistemic attitude towards p has some positive epistemic status (e.g., whether a belief is epistemically rational or justified, or it amounts to knowledge) partially depends on practical factors such as the costs of being wrong or the practical goals of the subject. Depending on such factors, a belief may count as justified or as knowledge in some circumstances but not in others. Among the many varieties of pragmatic encroachment, encroachment on knowledge is one of the most important and controversial.
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395233.588857
(See all posts in this series here.) Philosophers have been debating implicit biases for some time. In Chapter 5 of MoM, I argue that automatic attention provides a scrutable type of implicit bias, scrutable because we understand well automatic attention across various domains and the automatic biases that engender it. …
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429548.588878
Analytic debates about truth are wide-ranging, but certain key themes tend to crop up time and again. The three themes that we will examine in this paper are (i) the nature and behaviour of the ordinary concept of truth, (ii) the meaning of discourse about truth, and (iii) the nature of the property truth. We will start by offering a brief overview of the debates centring on these themes. We will then argue that cross-linguistic experimental philosophy has an indispensable yet underappreciated role to play in all of these debates. Recognising the indispensability of cross-linguistic experimental philosophy should compel philosophers to significantly revise the ways in which they inquire about truth. It should also prompt analytic philosophers more generally to consider whether similar revisions might be necessary elsewhere in the field.
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444062.588891
A correct observation to the effect that a does not exist, where the ‘a’ is a singular term, could be true on any of a variety of grounds. Typically, a true, singular negative existential is true on the unproblematic ground that the subject term ‘a’ designates something that does not presently exist. More interesting philosophically is a singular, negative existential statement in which the subject term ‘a’ designates nothing at all. Both of these contrast sharply with a singular, negative existential in which the subject term is a name from fiction. I argue that such singular, negative existential statements are false. My account of fictional characters differs significantly from Kripke’s. It is shown that an objection to my account rests on a crucial misunderstanding. Finally, a crucial aspect of the account is emphasized.
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444086.588902
: We argue that S is in a position to know that p iff S can know that p. Thus, what makes position-to-know-ascriptions true is just a special case of what makes ability-ascriptions true: compossibility. The novelty of our compossibility theory of epistemic modality lies in its subsuming epistemic modality under agentive modality, the modality characterizing what agents can do.
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450809.588913
The Law of Excluded Middle says that for any statement P, “P or not P” is true. Is this law true? In classical logic it is. But in intuitionistic logic it’s not. So, in intuitionistic logic we can ask what’s the probability that a randomly chosen statement obeys the Law of Excluded Middle. …
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452483.588927
This entry offers a broad historical review of the origin and
development of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection
through the initial Darwinian phase of the “Darwinian
Revolution” up to the publication of the Descent of Man
in 1871. The development of evolutionary ideas before Darwin’s
work has been treated in the separate entry
evolutionary thought before Darwin. Several additional aspects of Darwin’s theory of evolution and
his biographical development are dealt with in other entries in this
encyclopedia (see the entries on
Darwinism;
species;
natural selection;
creationism).
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452503.588939
Many important debates in contemporary ethics centre on idealized
thought experiments in which agents are assumed to have perfect
information about the effects of their actions and other morally
relevant features of the choices they face. If Abe turns the trolley,
one person will certainly be killed; if he does not, five people will
certainly be killed (Foot 1967); how the one and the five got into
that situation, whether blamelessly or recklessly (Thomson 1976:
210–11), is also a matter of certainty. If Betty conceives a
child now, it will certainly have a life that is hard but worth
living, while if she waits, her child’s life will certainly be
better—and the two choices will certainly result in
different children being born (Parfit 1984: 358).
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474309.58895
Suppose that Mary and Twin Mary live almost exactly duplicate lives in an almost black-and-white environment. The exception to the duplication of the lives and to the black-and-white character of the environment is that on their 18th birthday, each sees a colored square for a minute. …
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474310.588962
Here’s a fun variant of the black-and-white Mary thought experiment. Mary has been brought up in a black-and-white environment, but knows all the microphysics of the universe from a big book. One day she sees a flash of green light. …
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501835.588974
This paper will be centered on Carnap’s views on rationality. More specifically, much of the focus will be on a puzzle regarding Carnap’s view on rationality that Florian Steinberger (2016) has recently discussed. Not only is Steinberger’s discussion of significant intrinsic interest: his discussion also raises general questions about Carnap interpretation. As I have discussed in earlier work, there are two very different ways of interpreting Carnap’s talk of “frameworks” – and, relatedly, different ways of interpreting Carnap’s principle of tolerance. Carnap can be interpreted as either a relativist or as what I call a language pluralist. Steinberger’s puzzle arises given the relativist interpretation; I believe the language pluralist interpretation is correct. Most of the discussion will concern the correct interpretation of Carnap, and what this means for Steinberger’s puzzle. While I will not here mount a full defense of the language pluralist interpretation, I will pause to discuss Vera Flocke’s recent criticism of it. Towards the end, I will describe a puzzle regarding rationality different from Steinberger’s. The puzzle that I describe does arise already for the language pluralist.
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501859.588985
In this paper, I will focus on AI systems (“AIs”) as very different, or at least potentially very different, kinds of language users from what humans are. Much theorizing about language is, for natural and understandable reasons, focused on human language, primarily the natural languages we use. But when asking philosophical questions about language, we often want to consider what languages in general are, and not only consider human languages. There is some reason to think that AIs are different from us in relevant respects, so asking questions about languages used by AIs may be useful for these general questions about language.
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509698.588995
I propose a revision of Cantor’s account of set size that understands comparisons of set size fundamentally in terms of surjections rather than injections. This revised account is equivalent to Cantor’s account if the Axiom of Choice is true, but its consequences differ from those of Cantor’s if the Axiom of Choice is false. I argue that the revised account is an intuitive generalization of Cantor’s account, blocks paradoxes—most notably, that a set can be partitioned into a set that is bigger than it—that can arise from Cantor’s account if the Axiom of Choice is false, illuminates the debate over whether the Axiom of Choice is true, is a mathematically fruitful alternative to Cantor’s account, and sheds philosophical light on one of the oldest unsolved problems in set theory.
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510206.589006
Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was one of the most adventurous
thinkers of the Renaissance. Supremely confident in his intellectual
abilities, he ridiculed Aristotelianism, especially its contemporary
adherents. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory provided a starting
point for his exposition of what he called a “new
philosophy”. It disproved the axioms of Aristotelian natural
philosophy, notably the idea that sublunary elements occupied or
strove to return to their natural places, that is, the elemental
spheres, at the centre of the cosmos. Concomitantly, it disproved the
existence of a superlunary region composed entirely of incorruptible
aether circling the earth and hence disproved Aristotle’s
principal argument for supposing that the universe was finite.