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148268.778525
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. …
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214918.778735
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.
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411129.778749
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. …
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447148.778756
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.
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498821.778762
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.
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561650.778768
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.
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597286.778777
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. …
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606555.778784
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. …
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687749.77879
Whenever we communicate, we inevitably have to say one thing before another. This means introducing particularly subtle patterns of salience into our language. In this paper, I introduce ‘order-based salience patterns,’ referring to the ordering of syntactic contents where that ordering, pretheoretically, does not appear to be of consequence. For instance, if one is to describe a colourful scarf, it wouldn’t seem to matter if one were to say it is ‘orange and blue’ or ‘blue and orange.’ Despite their apparent triviality, I argue that order-based salience patterns tend to make the content positioned first more salient – in the sense of attention-grabbing – in a way that can have surprising normative implications. Giving relative salience to gender differences over similarities, for instance, can result in the activation of cognitively accessible beliefs about gender differences. Where those beliefs are epistemically and/or ethically flawed, we can critique the salience pattern that led to them, providing an instrumental way of evaluating those patterns. I suggest that order-based salience patterns can also be evaluated on constitutive grounds; talking about gender differences before similarities might constitute a subtle form of bias. Finally, I reflect on how the apparent triviality of order-based salience patterns in language gives them an insidious strength.
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687820.778797
For several decades, intercultural philosophers have produced an extensive body of scholarly work aimed at mutual intercultural understanding. They have focused on the ideal of intercultural dialogue that is supported by dialogue principles and virtuous attitudes. However, this ideal is challenged by decolonial scholarship as one which neglects power inequalities. Decolonial scholars have emphasized the differences between cultures and worldviews, shifting the focus to colonial history and radical alterity. In return, intercultural philosophers have worried about the very possibility of dialogue and mutual understanding in frameworks that use coloniality as their singular pole of analysis. In this paper, we explore the complex relations between decolonial
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687845.778806
Past philosophical analyses of bullshit have generally presented bullshit as a formidable threat to truth. However, most of these analyses also reduce bullshit to a mere symptom of a greater evil (e.g. indifference towards truth). In this paper, I introduce a new account of bullshit which, I argue, is more suited to understand the threat posed by bullshit. I begin by introducing a few examples of “truth-tracking bullshit”, before arguing that these examples cannot be accommodated by past, process-based accounts of bullshit. I then introduce my new, output-based account of bullshit, according to which a claim is bullshit when it is presented as or appears as interesting at first sight but is revealed not to be that interesting under closer scrutiny. I present several arguments in favor of this account, then argue that it is more promising than past accounts when it comes to explaining how bullshit spreads and why it is a serious threat to truth.
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728265.778812
Most philosophers agree that lies are assertions. Most also agree that to presuppose information is different from asserting it. In a series of papers, Viebahn (2020), (2021), along with an empirical study in Viebahn, Wiegmann, Engelmann, and Williemsen (2021), has recently argued that one can lie with presuppositions, and therefore one can assert that p by presupposing that p. The latter conclusion is a rejection of a cornerstone of modern philosophy of language and linguistics, and as such we should require strong reasons for accepting it. I argue here that the reasons for thinking that presuppositions can be lies are too weak to motivate giving up either the view that lies are assertions or the traditional distinction between presuppositions and assertions.
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775412.778818
When do two sentences say the same thing, that is, express the same content? We defend two-component (2C) semantics: the view that propositional contents comprise (at least) two irreducibly distinct constituents: (1) truth-conditions and (2) subject-matter. We contrast 2C with one-component (1C) semantics, focusing on the view that subject-matter is reducible to truth-conditions. We identify exponents of this view and argue in favor of 2C. An appendix proposes a general formal template for propositional 2C semantics.
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1257711.778824
This question does not ask for the maximal number of eggs that is sufficient for baking this cake. Instead, Beck & Rullmann proposed a more sophisticated maximal informativity account, according to which (1) asks for the most informative number n such that n eggs are sufficient for the cake. This will in fact be the minimum number eggs needed. Along the way, Beck & Rullmann discussed the notion of sufficiency, proposing ideas that had not been made explicit before. They did this not because sufficiency is a primary target of their investigation but to make sure that the technical implementation of their theory of maximal informativity of questions is explicit and plausible.
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1598935.77883
In Michael Sipser’s Introduction to the Theory of Computation textbook, he has one Platonically perfect homework exercise, so perfect that I can reconstruct it from memory despite not having opened the book for over a decade. …
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1697810.778836
Drawing on the puzzling behavior of ordinary knowledge ascriptions that embed an epistemic (im)possibility claim, we tentatively conclude that it is untenable to jointly endorse (i) an unfettered classical logic for epistemic language, (ii) the general veridicality of knowledge ascription, and (iii) an intuitive ‘negative transparency’ thesis that reduces knowledge of a simple negated ‘might’ claim to an epistemic claim without modal content. We motivate a strategic trade-off: preserve veridicality and (generalized) negative transparency, while abandoning the general validity of contraposition. We criticize various approaches to incorporating veridicality into domain semantics, a paradigmatic ‘information-sensitive’ framework for capturing negative transparency and, more generally, the non-classical behavior of sentences with epistemic modals. We then present a novel information-sensitive semantics that successfully executes our favored strategy: stable acceptance semantics, extending a vanilla bilateral state-based semantics for epistemic modals with a knowledge operator loosely inspired by the defeasibility theory of knowledge.
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1737800.778842
I’m listening to In a Silent Way, the Miles Davis album that opened his electric period, but I’m not really listening. Also drawing my attention are reviews of all of his other albums, which I’m scanning as I contemplate which to listen to next. …
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1758829.778848
Crispin Wright and Filippo Ferrari have accused relativism of not accounting for ‘parity’ – the idea that, when we argue over matters of taste, we take our opponents’ opinions to be ‘as good as ours’ from our own committed perspective. In this paper, I show that (i) explaining parity has not been taken to be a desideratum by relativists and thus they cannot be accused of failing to fulfil a promise; (ii) Wright’s and Ferrari’s reasons for claiming that parity should be a desideratum are unconvincing.
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2091658.778855
Framing effects concern the having of different attitudes towards logically or necessarily equivalent contents. Framing is of crucial importance for cognitive science, behavioral economics, decision theory, and the social sciences at large. We model a typical kind of framing, grounded in (i) the structural distinction between beliefs activated in working memory and beliefs left inactive in long term memory, and (ii) the topic- or subject matter-sensitivity of belief: a feature of propositional attitudes which is attracting growing research attention. We introduce a class of models featuring (i) and (ii) to represent, and reason about, agents whose belief states can be subject to framing effects. We axiomatize a logic which we prove to be sound and complete with respect to the class.
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2233051.778861
In the course of presenting his own solution to the insolubles (logical paradoxes such as the Liar), Marsilius of Inghen criticises four earlier theories, which appear to be those of Albert of Saxony, (the early) Buridan, Roger Swyneshed and a modification of William Heytesbury’s solution which we find in many textbooks and anonymous treatises known as presentations of the Logica Oxoniensis. Marsilius’s solution bears interesting resemblances to all four, but has its own distinctive features. The core idea of his solution is that all propositions have a two-fold signification, a material signification and a formal one. The material signification, also called the primary or direct signification, is what most would call the proposition’s usual signification; e.g., the material signification of ‘This proposition is false’ is that that proposition is false. Its formal, aka indirect or reflexive, signification is, in the case of affirmative propositions, that the subject and predicate supposit for the same thing, and in the case of negative propositions, that they do not. This reflexive signification derives from the meaning of the (affirmative resp. negative) copula. Thus the reflexive signification of ‘This proposition is false’ is that ‘this proposition’ and ‘false’ supposit for the same thing, that is, that it is false that that proposition is false. Presenting Marsilius’s formal signification in such cases as stating of that proposition’s being false, for example (which is the material signification of ‘This proposition is false’), that it is false (that is, falls under the supposition of ‘false’) suggested to Paul Spade that Marsilius’s solution was a development of Gregory of Rimini’s account. I will argue that any resemblance here is, in the absence of any external evidence, superficial and coincidental, and that Marsilius’s view is much closer to the Oxford solutions and Albert’s—Albert and Marsilius being, after all, members of the English Nation at Paris. Marsilius’s arguments in favour of his theory, and his application of the solution to a range of insolubles, are well worth looking at in detail, which I will do, though not at the length which Marsilius devotes to it.
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2233073.778867
Paul Vincent Spade contrasts the calm and measured reaction of medieval thinkers to the “insolubles” (logical paradoxes such as the Liar) with the troubled response of philosophers and mathematical logicians more recently to the semantic antinomies in modern logic and set theory. The latter is often described as a crisis in the foundations of mathematics. But there was a comparable crisis in medieval philosophy and theology, namely over the apparent incompatibility of the newly rediscovered Aristotelian logic and Christian theology, specifically in the latter’s doctrine of the Trinity. According to that doctrine, codified at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, God is undivided in his essence but distinct according to the properties of the three persons. This appears to open the faithful to heresy through the following expository syllogism: Haec essentia est filius Haec essentia est pater Ergo pater est filius, contradicting the distinctness of the Son and the Father. The paralogism can also be formulated as a first-figure syllogism in Darii as follows: Omnis deus est pater Filius in divinis est deus Igitur Filius in divinis est pater.
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2407277.778873
This chapter reviews empirical research on the rules governing assertion and retraction, with a focus on the normative role of truth. It examines whether truth is required for an assertion to be considered permissible, and whether there is an expectation that speakers retract statements that turn out to be false. Contrary to factive norms (such as the influential “knowledge norm”), empirical data suggests that there is no expectation that speakers only make true assertions. Additionally, contrary to truth-relativist accounts, there is no requirement for speakers to retract statements that are false at the context of assessment. We conclude by suggesting that truth still plays a crucial role in the evaluation of assertions: as a standard for evaluating their success, rather than permissibility.
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2782304.778879
Kennedy (Linguist Philos 30:1–45, 2007) forcefully proposes what is now a widely assumed semantics for absolute gradable adjectives. On this semantics, maximum standard adjectives like “straight” and “dry” ascribe a maximal degree of the underlying quantity. Meanwhile, minimum standard adjectives like “bent” and “wet” merely ascribe a non-zero, non-minimal degree of the underlying quantity. This theory clashes with the ordinary intuition that sentences like “The stick is straight” are frequently true while sentences like “The stick is bent” are frequently informative, and fans of the indicated theory of absolute gradable adjectives appeal to loose talk in response. One goal of this paper is to show that all extant theories of loose talk are inconsistent with this response strategy. Another goal is to offer a revised version of Hoek’s (Philos Rev 127:151–196, 2018, in: Proceedings of the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium, 2019) recent theory of loose talk that accommodates absolute gradable adjectives after all, while being defensible against a range of important concerns.
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2839876.778885
Discourse involving predicates of personal taste (PPT) such as ‘delicious,’ ‘disgusting,’ ‘fun,’ and ‘cool’ has been a focal point in a large, interdisciplinary body of research spanning the past 20 years. This research has shown that PPT are connected to numerous topics, including disagreement, meaning, context-sensitivity, subjectivity and objectivity, truth, aesthetic and gustatory taste, evaluation, speech acts, and so on. Researchers involved in the PPT debates have developed many subtle and inventive analyses of PPT, so that anyone interested in their behaviour must traverse a complex theoretical landscape. Despite the massive amount of work on the topic, there is a crucial methodological question about PPT that remains underexplored: what sorts of evidence should be called upon to evaluate an analysis of PPT? So far, most researchers have operated from the armchair, using their own intuitions about various linguistic phenomena to evaluate analyses of PPT. In recent years, however, certain philosophers and linguists have found this method wanting, noting that hypotheses about PPT are empirical, and thus need to be evaluated empirically.
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3317316.77889
There is a strikingly rich array of messages that Alphie could, given the right background conditions, communicate to Betty by means of this utterance. For a few examples among many, consider (1)-(26). 1. Carrie will be in the ballroom of the Palmer House Hilton at 1:05pm. 2. Alphie believes that Carrie will be in the ballroom of the Palmer House Hilton at 1:05pm. 3. Alphie has compelling evidence that Carrie will be in the ballroom of the Palmer House Hilton at 1:05pm. 4. Whether Carrie will be in the ballroom of the Palmer House Hilton at 1:05pm is relevant for the purposes of Alphie and Betty’s conversation. 5. Alphie believes that Betty didn’t already know that Carrie will be in the ballroom of the Palmer House Hilton at 1:05pm. 6. Carrie is not presently in the ballroom of the Palmer House Hilton. 7. Carrie will be able to give her talk. 8. Carrie will be late for her talk. 9. Carrie is not in San Francisco. 10. Betty should stall, rather than canceling the session and asking everybody to leave the ballroom. 11. Alphie believes that whether Carrie will be in the ballroom of the Palmer House Hilton at 1:05pm is relevant for the purposes of Alphie and Betty’s conversation.
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3735177.778903
The aim of this paper is to present a constructive solution to Frege’s puzzle (largely limited to the mathematical context) based on type theory. Two ways in which an equality statement may be said to have cognitive significance are distinguished. One concerns the mode of presentation of the equality, the other its mode of proof. Frege’s distinction between sense and reference, which emphasizes the former aspect, cannot adequately explain the cognitive significance of equality statements unless a clear identity criterion for senses is provided. It is argued that providing a solution based on proofs is more satisfactory from the standpoint of constructive semantics.
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3817968.778909
Let’s start with some uncontroversial facts. In 1817–1818, Beethoven composed the Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Opus 106, which is known as the Hammerklavier Sonata. In 1970, Glenn Gould performed the Hammerklavier in Toronto. In 1995, András Schiff performed the Hammerklavier in New York. We can conclude that there is something— the Hammerklavier—that Beethoven composed and that Gould and Schiff performed. But what sort of thing is this?
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3908343.778914
We give a new and elementary construction of primitive positive decomposition of higher arity relations into binary relations on finite domains. Such decompositions come up in applications to constraint satisfaction problems, clone theory and relational databases. The construction exploits functional completeness of 2-input functions in many-valued logic by interpreting relations as graphs of partially defined multivalued ‘functions’. The ‘functions’ are then composed from ordinary functions in the usual sense. The construction is computationally effective and relies on well-developed methods of functional decomposition, but reduces relations only to ternary relations. An additional construction then decomposes ternary into binary relations, also effectively, by converting certain disjunctions into existential quantifications. The result gives a uniform proof of Peirce’s reduction thesis on finite domains, and shows that the graph of any Sheffer function composes all relations there.
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3908412.77892
We argue that traditional formulations of the reduction thesis that tie it to privileged relational operations do not suffice for Peirce’s justification of the categories, and invite the charge of gerrymandering to make it come out as true. We then develop a more robust invariant formulation of the thesis by explicating the use of triads in any relational operations, which is immune to that charge. The explication also allows us to track how Thirdness enters the structure of higher order relations, and even propose a numerical measure of it. Our analysis reveals new conceptual phenomena when negation or disjunction are used to compound relations.
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4232345.778926
We study the anchoring effect in a computational model of group deliberation on preference rankings. Anchoring is a form of path-dependence through which the opinions of those who speak early have a stronger influence on the outcome of deliberation than the opinions of those who speak later. We show that anchoring can occur even among fully rational agents. We then compare the respective effects of anchoring and three other determinants of the deliberative outcome: the relative weight or social influence of the speakers, the popularity of a given speaker’s opinion, and the homogeneity of the group. We find that, on average, anchoring has the strongest effect among these. We finally show that anchoring is often correlated with increases in proximity to single-plateauedness. We conclude that anchoring can constitute a structural bias that might hinder some of the otherwise positive effects of group deliberation.