Professor of Philosophy

21/02/2024

Action Theory: Cause, Structure, Identification

Action Theory: Cause, Structure, Identification It is well known that Philosophy of Action is a field that explores the foundational questions about what actions are, how they are performed, and the intentions behind them. Action Theory serves as the cornerstone of understanding how and why

20/02/2024

From Infinite Decision Theory to Transformative Experience

through Hypothesis Testing and Risk

From Infinite Decision Theory to Transformative Experience through Hypothesis Testing and Risk It is well known that decision theory is a branch of mathematics and philosophy that studies the principles governing choices between alternative courses of action. Decision Theory and Ethics explore

20/02/2024

Check out the new posts

20/02/2024

https://sites.google.com/view/metaphilosophizing/volume-52-chapter-1

Frameworks and Puzzles in Decision Theory

Frameworks and Puzzles in Decision Theory Before delving into the intricate world of decision theory, it's essential to understand that decision-making is a fundamental aspect of human behavior, influencing countless aspects of our lives from the mundane to the monumental. Decision Theory is a

20/02/2024

Moral Responsibility:

From Alternative Possibilities to the Consequence Argument

through Fatalism and Foreknowledge

Moral Responsibility: From Alternative Possibilities to the Consequence Argument through Fatalism and Foreknowledge The philosophy of action and free will delves into fundamental questions about human autonomy, the capacity for choice, determinism, and the underpinnings of moral responsibility.

16/02/2024

History and Traditions of the Philosophy of Mind

History and Traditions of the Philosophy of Mind Feminist philosophy of mind challenges traditional perspectives in the philosophy of mind by emphasizing how gender influences our understanding of consciousness, cognition, and the self. It critiques mainstream philosophical discourse for its

15/02/2024

Macrocognition and Distributed Minds?
Collective Intentionality through Belief, Action, Attention and Responsibility

Macrocognition and Distributed Minds? Collective Intentionality through Belief, Action, Attention and Responsibility Macrocognition is a term used to describe the processes involved in higher-order thinking and understanding, particularly in complex, real-world environments. It encompasses the

04/01/2024

https://sites.google.com/view/metaphilosophizing/home

03/01/2024

Self-Representational Theories of Consciousness:

This approach melds elements of both representationalism and higher-order theories.

It suggests that conscious states are not only represented by higher-order states but also possess a self-representational quality.

In other words, conscious states are capable of representing themselves, which contributes to the subjective character of conscious experience.

03/01/2024

Functionalism is a theory primarily concerned with the role mental states play, rather than their internal composition.

It posits that mental states are identified by what they do rather than what they are made of.

Functionalist theories of consciousness extend this view to consciousness itself, suggesting that conscious experiences are defined by their functional roles in the cognitive process.

These theories often emphasize the importance of the brain's processes and how they contribute to the conscious experience.

03/01/2024

Dennett's Functionalism proposes that consciousness can be understood in terms of the functional roles played by various parts of the brain.

His approach suggests that conscious experience is the outcome of these functions and can be analyzed as such.

This standpoint views consciousness as an emergent property of brain functions, shifting the focus from the physical properties of the brain to the roles played by various cognitive processes.

03/01/2024

The discussion of functionalism naturally leads to the exploration of qualia, which are the subjective, qualitative aspects of conscious experience, such as the redness of an apple or the pain of a headache.

The debate on functionalism and qualia centers around whether these subjective experiences can be fully explained by functionalist theories.

Some argue that qualia are irreducible and cannot be fully captured by functional descriptions, presenting a challenge to strict functionalist interpretations of consciousness.

08/11/2022

20/08/2021

In the hopes of finding supporting evidence for various accounts of actual causation, many philosophers have recently turned to psychological findings about the influence of norms on counterfactual cognition.

Surprisingly little philosophical attention has been paid, however, to the question of why considerations of normality should be relevant to counterfactual cognition to begin with.

In this paper, I follow two aims.

First, against the methodology of two prominent psychological accounts, I argue for a functional approach to understanding the selectivity of counterfactual cognition.

Second, I take some steps towards a systematic analysis by providing a qualitative, decision-theoretic account of one important function of counterfactual thinking, namely, inferring, in the face of undesirable outcomes, corrective policies that prevent the occurrence of similar outcomes in future circumstances.

I make a case for employing this analysis by (a) showing its value for assessing the rationality of imagination-driven counterfactual generation, (b) highlighting its use for making sense of practices in history and policy analysis where counterfactual selection plays a central role, and (c) demonstrating its diagnostic value for identifying areas where counterfactual generation may lead us into epistemic and ethical troubles.

In the hopes of finding supporting evidence for various accounts of actual causation, many philosophers have recently turned to psychological findings about the influence of norms on counterfactual c...

20/08/2021

In this paper, I argue from a metasemantic principle to the existence of analytic sentences.

According to the metasemantic principle, an external feature is relevant to determining which concept one expresses with an expression only if one is disposed to treat this feature as relevant.

This entails that if one isn’t disposed to treat external features as relevant to determining which concept one expresses, and one still expresses a given concept, then something other than external features must determine that one does.

I argue that, in such cases, what determines that one expresses the concept also puts one in a position to know that certain sentences are true—these sentences are thus analytic relative to this determination basis.

Finally, I argue that there are such cases: some sentences are analytic relative to what determines that we express certain key concepts, and these sentences include ones that have always been thought to be the best candidates for being analytic, namely, stipulative truths, and first principles of mathematics.

In this paper, I argue from a metasemantic principle to the existence of analytic sentences. According to the metasemantic principle, an external feature is relevant to determining which concept one ...

20/08/2021

Two of the most well-known regularities observed in preferences under risk and uncertainty are ambiguity aversion and the Allais paradox.

We study the behavior of an agent who can display both tendencies simultaneously.

We introduce a novel notion of preference for hedging that applies to both objective lotteries and uncertain acts.

We show that this axiom, together with other standard ones, is equivalent to a representation in which the agent 1) evaluates ambiguity using multiple priors, as in the model of Gilboa and Schmeidler [1989] and 2) evaluates objective lotteries by distorting probabilities, as in the Rank Dependent Utility model, but using the worst from a set of distortions.

We show that a preference for hedging is not sufficient to guarantee Ellsberg-like behavior if the agent violates Expected Utility for objective lotteries;

we provide a novel axiom that characterizes this case, linking the distortions for objective and subjective bets.

20/08/2021

Any new evidence that's worth its salt—that is, any evidence that ratio-
nalizes a change of belief state-is, in a trivial way, evidence against
one's previous belief state.

If I get an updated weather forecast, I may
be rationally required to decrease my credence in sun tomorrow
because my old credence in sun is not the appropriate one, given the
meteorological evidence I now have.

But while this sort of evidence
does indicate that my previous beliefs are, in a certain sense, subopti-
mal, it does not indicate that I've been anything less than a perfectly
rational believer.

The evidence that there's something suboptimal about
my pre-change beliefs is merely a byproduct of the evidence bearing
directly on the subject matter of the beliefs.

Sometimes, however, evidence rationalizes a change of belief
precisely because it indicates that my former beliefs were rationally
sub-par.

This is evidence of my own rational failure.

If I learn that I've
been systematically too optimistic in my weather predictions, I may also
be rationally required to decrease my credence in fair weather tomor-
row.

But in this case, the indication that my former beliefs are subopti-
mal is no mere byproduct of my reasoning about the weather.

What
I learn bears on meteorological matters only via indicating my rational
failings;

intuitively, one might even balk at thinking of information
about my optimistic tendencies as "evidence about the weather”.

These two ways that evidence rationalizes change of belief corre-
spond to two ways in which I'm a fallible thinker.

One dimension of
my fallibility is that my beliefs are based on limited evidence.

Click on the article title to read more.

19/08/2021

Current views of metaphysical ground suggest that a true conjunction is immediately grounded in its conjuncts, and only its conjuncts.

Similar principles are suggested for disjunction and universal quantification.

Here, it is shown that these principles are jointly inconsistent:

They require that there is a distinct truth for any plurality of truths.

By a variant of Cantor's Theorem, such a fine-grained individuation of truths is inconsistent.

This shows that the notion of grounding is either not in good standing, or that natural assumptions about it need to be revised.

Current views of metaphysical ground suggest that a true conjunction is immediately grounded in its conjuncts, and only its conjuncts. Similar principles are suggested for disjunction and universal q...

14/08/2021

There are two ways that the laws of deductive logic have been thought to provide rational constraints on belief: (1) Synchronically, the laws of deductive logic can be used to define the notion of deductive consistency and inconsistency. Deductive inconsistency so defined determines one kind of incoherence in belief, which I refer to as deductive incoherence. (2) Diachronically, the laws of deductive logic can constrain admissible changes in belief by providing the deductive rules of inference. For example, modus ponens is a deductive rule of inference that requires that one infer Q from premises P and P → Q.

Bayesians propose additional standards of synchronic coherence — standards of probabilistic coherence — and additional rules of inference — probabilistic rules of inference — in both cases, to apply not to beliefs, but degrees of belief (degrees of confidence). For Bayesians, the most important standards of probabilistic coherence are the laws of probability.
For Bayesians, the most important probabilistic rule of inference is given by a principle of conditionalization.

‘Bayesian epistemology’ became an epistemological movement in the 20th century, though its two main features can be traced back to the eponymous Reverend Thomas Bayes (c. 1701–61). Those two features are: (1) the introduction of a formal apparatus for inductive logic; (2) the introduction of a...

14/08/2021

‘Bayesian epistemology’ became an epistemological movement in the 20th century, though its two main features can be traced back to the eponymous Reverend Thomas Bayes (c. 1701–61). Those two features are: (1) the introduction of a formal apparatus for inductive logic; (2) the introduction of a pragmatic self-defeat test (as illustrated by Dutch Book Arguments) for epistemic rationality as a way of extending the justification of the laws of deductive logic to include a justification for the laws of inductive logic. The formal apparatus itself has two main elements: the use of the laws of probability as coherence constraints on rational degrees of belief (or degrees of confidence) and the introduction of a rule of probabilistic inference, a rule or principle of conditionalization.

Bayesian epistemology did not emerge as a philosophical program until the first formal axiomatizations of probability theory in the first half of the 20th century. One important application of Bayesian epistemology has been to the analysis of scientific practice in Bayesian Confirmation Theory. In addition, a major branch of statistics, Bayesian statistics, is based on Bayesian principles. In psychology, an important branch of learning theory, Bayesian learning theory, is also based on Bayesian principles. Finally, the idea of analyzing rational degrees of belief in terms of rational betting behavior led to the 20th century development of a new kind of decision theory, Bayesian decision theory, which is now the dominant theoretical model for both the descriptive and normative analysis of decisions. The combination of its precise formal apparatus and its novel pragmatic self-defeat test for justification makes Bayesian epistemology one of the most important developments in epistemology in the 20th century, and one of the most promising avenues for further progress in epistemology in the 21st century.

‘Bayesian epistemology’ became an epistemological movement in the 20th century, though its two main features can be traced back to the eponymous Reverend Thomas Bayes (c. 1701–61). Those two features are: (1) the introduction of a formal apparatus for inductive logic; (2) the introduction of a...

14/08/2021

The epistemic basing relation is the relation which holds between a reason and a belief if and only if the reason is a reason for which the belief is held. It is generally thought to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a belief’s being justified that the belief be based on a reason. The basing relation is what distinguishes good reasons which a person possesses that contribute to the personal justification of a given belief from good reasons which the person possesses but that do not contribute to the personal justification of the belief.

Basing relations may be involved in both inferential and non-inferential justification. For example, one may hold that sensory states count as reasons, and thus require that a sensory belief be based on a reason if it is to be justified by that reason. In addition, one might understand at least some self-evident beliefs to be based on the meanings of the various terms of the sentence expressing the proposition believed. For example, one’s belief that all bachelors are unmarried men may be understood to be based on the meanings of ‘all’, ‘bachelors’, ‘are’, etc.

The basing relation is most frequently analyzed in terms of a reason’s causing a belief.[1] In such analyses, the reason and the belief are understood to be mental states of a person. The cause may be a contributing cause or a sufficient cause. However, the basing relation has also been analyzed as an appropriate counterfactual cause of a belief and also as depending on an appropriate meta-belief to the effect that a reason is a good reason to hold the belief.

Analysis of the basing relation is relevant to a variety of fundamental epistemological issues. It is relevant to the nature of epistemic rationalization and to questions regarding the internalism/externalism debate. In addition, it has been argued that reliabilist theories of justification are incompatible with the correct analysis of the basing relation.

The epistemic basing relation is the relation which holds between a reason and a belief if and only if the reason is a reason for which the belief is held. It is generally thought to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a belief’s being justified that the belief be based on a reason. ...

14/08/2021

Phenomenal Conservatism is a theory in epistemology that seeks, roughly, to ground justified beliefs in the way things “appear” or “seem” to the subject who holds a belief. The theory fits with an internalistic form of foundationalism—that is, the view that some beliefs are justified non-inferentially (not on the basis of other beliefs), and that the justification or lack of justification for a belief depends entirely upon the believer’s internal mental states. The intuitive idea is that it makes sense to assume that things are the way they seem, unless and until one has reasons for doubting this.

This idea has been invoked to explain, in particular, the justification for perceptual beliefs and the justification for moral beliefs. Some believe that it can be used to account for all epistemic justification. It has been claimed that the denial of Phenomenal Conservatism (PC) leaves one in a self-defeating position, that PC naturally emerges from paradigmatic internalist intuitions, and that PC provides the only simple and natural solution to the threat of philosophical skepticism. Critics have objected that appearances should not be trusted in the absence of positive, independent evidence that appearances are reliable; that the theory allows absurd beliefs to be justified for some subjects; that the theory allows irrational or unreliable cognitive states to provide justification for beliefs; and that the theory has implausible implications regarding when and to what degree inferences produce justification for beliefs.

Phenomenal Conservatism Phenomenal Conservatism is a theory in epistemology that seeks, roughly, to ground justified beliefs in the way things “appear” or “seem” to the subject who holds a belief. The theory fits with an internalistic form of foundationalism—that is, the view that some bel...

14/08/2021

In Infinity, Causation, and Paradox, Alexander Pruss undertakes a sweeping defense of the metaphysical thesis Causal Finitism. According to causal finitists, nothing can be affected by infinitely many causes. Pruss argues for causal finitism by way of a cumulative case: accepting causal finitism allows us to eliminate a large class of paradoxes. There are broadly two types of paradoxes Pruss aims to eliminate. The first consists in paradoxes where an infinity of physical things cooperate to produce a paradoxical situation. The paradigm is the Grim Reaper paradox. The second type involves paradoxes of rationality that can occur in infinitistic situations. The paradigm is a fair countable lottery.

Daniel Rubio; Infinity, Causation, and Paradox. The Philosophical Review 1 April 2021; 130 (2): 335–338. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-8810049

14/08/2021

Øystein Linnebo's Thin Objects is an excellent book, full of good ideas and arguments, presented with exemplary clarity. As the title indicates, the book seeks to defend the idea that some objects are metaphysically thin in that their existence makes no substantial demands on the world. Much of the book is devoted to spelling out this philosophical idea in a new way, and to show that mathematical objects such as numbers and sets are thin in the way described. Central to Linnebo's defense of thin objects is the view that it is sufficient for objects of a given kind K to exist that a certain minimal requirement is satisfied: that K-terms occur in true sentences of the right kind and are supplied with a suitable (predicative) criterion of identity.

Matti Eklund; Thin Objects. The Philosophical Review 1 April 2021; 130 (2): 330–335. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-8810023

14/08/2021

The traditional interpretation of Hume's account of motives and his opposition to moral rationalism consists of four theses: (A) Only desires or similar conative states provide impulses to act. (B) Beliefs alone cannot initiate action, nor cause affective states that in turn move us to act; they can only influence action by directing already-present desires. (C) Necessarily, all moral evaluations are motives. (D) Morality is not the product of reason alone. This “Humean” view has influenced much recent philosophy. But few Hume scholars have attempted to show in detail how it emerges from and comports with all of Hume's complex writings in their historical context. Fewer still have argued that it gives Hume a consistent account of action and the foundations of morality. Indeed, several recent Hume scholars argue that the traditional interpretation is, on varying grounds, a misreading of Hume.

Rachel Cohon; Hume, Passion, and Action.. The Philosophical Review 1 April 2021; 130 (2): 303–307. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-8809932

14/08/2021

This article presents a novel challenge to epistemic internalism. The challenge rests on a set of cases which feature subjects forming beliefs under conditions of “bad ideology”—that is, conditions in which pervasively false beliefs have the function of sustaining, and are sustained by, systems of social oppression. In such cases, the article suggests, the externalistic view that justification is in part a matter of worldly relations, rather than the internalistic view that justification is solely a matter of how things stand from the agent’s individual perspective, becomes the more intuitively attractive theory. But these “bad ideology” cases do not merely yield intuitive verdicts that favor externalism over internalism. These cases are, moreover, analogous to precisely those canonical cases widely taken to be counterexamples to externalism: cases featuring brains-in-vats, clairvoyants, and dogmatists. That is, such “bad ideology” cases are, in all relevant respects, just like cases that are thought to count against externalism—except that they intuitively favor externalism. This, the author argues, is a serious worry for internalism. What is more, it bears on the debate over whether externalism is a genuinely “normative” epistemology.

Amia Srinivasan; Radical Externalism. The Philosophical Review 1 July 2020; 129 (3): 395–431. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-8311261

14/08/2021

The internalism-externalism (I-E) debate lies near the center of contemporary discussion about epistemology. The basic idea of internalism is that justification is solely determined by factors that are internal to a person. Externalists deny this, asserting that justification depends on additional factors that are external to a person. A significant aspect of the I-E debate involves setting out exactly what counts as internal to a person.

The rise of the I-E debate coincides with the rebirth of epistemology after Edmund Gettier’s famous 1963 paper, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” In that paper, Gettier presented several cases to show that knowledge is not identical to justified true belief. Cases of this type are referred to as “Gettier cases,” and they illustrate “the Gettier problem.” Standard Gettier cases show that one can have internally adequate justification without knowledge. The introduction of the Gettier problem to epistemology required rethinking the connection between true belief and knowledge, and the subsequent discussion generated what became the I-E debate over the nature of justification in an account of knowledge. Internalists maintained that knowledge requires justification and that the nature of this justification is completely determined by a subject’s internal states or reasons. Externalists denied at least one of these commitments: either knowledge does not require justification or the nature of justification is not completely determined by internal factors alone. On the latter view, externalists maintained that the facts that determine a belief’s justification include external facts such as whether the belief is caused by the state of affairs that makes the belief true, whether the belief is counterfactually dependent on the states of affairs that makes it true, whether the belief is produced by a reliable belief-producing process, or whether the belief is objectively likely to be true. The I-E discussion engages a wide range of epistemological issues involving the nature of rationality, the ethics of belief, and skepticism.

Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology The internalism-externalism (I-E) debate lies near the center of contemporary discussion about epistemology. The basic idea of internalism is that justification is solely determined by factors that are internal to a person. Externalists deny this, assertin...

14/08/2021

This essay considers how counterfactuals should be evaluated on the assumption that determinism is true. It argues against Lewis's influential view that if anything had happened that did not actually happen, the actual laws of nature would have been false, and defends the competing view that history would have been different—but only microscopically different—all the way back.

Cian Dorr; Against Counterfactual Miracles. The Philosophical Review 1 April 2016; 125 (2): 241–286. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-3453187

14/08/2021

This essay develops a joint theory of rational (all-or-nothing) belief and degrees of belief. The theory is based on three assumptions: the logical closure of rational belief; the axioms of probability for rational degrees of belief; and the so-called Lockean thesis, in which the concepts of rationa...

14/08/2021

Conscious experiences are characterized by mental qualities, such as those involved in seeing red, feeling pain, or smelling cinnamon. The standard framework for modeling mental qualities represents them via points in multidimensional spaces, where distances between points inversely correspond to degrees of phenomenal similarity. This article argues that the standard framework is structurally inadequate and develops a new framework that is more powerful and flexible. The core problem for the standard framework is that it cannot capture precision structure: for example, consider the phenomenal contrast between seeing an object as crimson in foveal vision versus merely as red in peripheral vision. The solution the article proposes is to model mental qualities using regions, rather than points. The article explains how this seemingly simple formal innovation not only provides a natural way of modeling precision but also yields a variety of further theoretical fruits: it enables one to formulate novel hypotheses about the space and structures of mental qualities, formally differentiate two dimensions of phenomenal similarity, generate a probabilistic model of the phenomenal sorites, and deploy a new theoretical tool in the empirical investigation of consciousness. A noteworthy consequence of this new framework is that the structure of the mental qualities of conscious experiences is fundamentally different from the structure of the perceptible qualities of external objects.

Andrew Y. Lee; Modeling Mental Qualities. The Philosophical Review 1 April 2021; 130 (2): 263–298. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-8809919