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I defend the idea that there are universal fictions, and that the Routley-Deutsch-Kapsner way of generating them – namely, with a story including deliberately and explicitly the proposition Everything is true – is still the best one. I reconstruct Wildman and Folde’s Finean criticisms to universal fictions a la Routley-Deutsch-Kapsner based on the idea that the universal quantifier in such fictions may not target the intended range of quantification, that is, all propositions. I show that Wildman and Folde’s argument does not succeed, for they fail to show that every universal sentence has to be understood as involving a restricted quantifier.

We consider here how a generalized signaling game may self-assemble as the saliences of the agents evolve by reinforcement on those sources of information that in fact lead to successful action. On the present account, generalized signaling games self-assemble even as the agents coevolve meaningful representations and successful dispositions for using those representations. We will see how reinforcement on successful information sources also provides a mechanism whereby simpler games might compose to form more complex games. Along the way, we consider how an old game might be appropriated to a new context by reinforcement on successful associations between old and new saliences.

Enjoying great popularity in decision theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science, Bayesianism as understood here is fundamentally concerned with epistemically ideal rationality. It assumes a tight connection between evidential probability and ideally rational credence, and usually interprets evidential probability in terms of such credence. Timothy Williamson challenges Bayesianism by arguing that evidential probabilities cannot be adequately interpreted as the credences of an ideal agent. From this and his assumption that evidential probabilities cannot be interpreted as the actual credences of human agents either, he concludes that no interpretation of evidential probabilities in terms of credence is adequate. I argue to the contrary. My overarching aim is to show on behalf of Bayesians how one can still interpret evidential probabilities in terms of ideally rational credence and how one can maintain a tight connection between evidential probabilities and ideally rational credence even if the former cannot be interpreted in terms of the latter. By achieving this aim I illuminate the limits and prospects of Bayesianism.

Resume Cet article presente les premiers resultats d’une recherche sur les modifications de l’attachement en ante- et en post-natal, dans une population de femmes primipares, au sein d’un service de maternite d’un Centre Hospitalier Regional Universitaire. La maternite, percue dans notre societe comme une source d’epanouissement et de plenitude, resulte de processus psychiques complexes et delicats. Le style d’attachement est considere comme une donnee constante tout au long de la vie. Nous faisons l’hypothese de sa variation durant la periode perinatale. Pour la mesurer et la comprendre, nous nous appuyons sur la notion de strategies d’attachement. Sur le plan methodologique, nous avons mene une etude longitudinale en suivant des meres, primipares, du troisieme mois de grossesse jusqu’au sixieme mois du post-partum, avec quatre temps de recueil de donnees. Nous presentons les resultats d’un cas representatif de notre population etudiee. Grâce a une approche qualitative et quantitative, l’attachement est chaque fois observe de maniere clinique a l’aide d’un entretien semi-directif de recherche et mesure avec l’auto-questionnaire Relationship Scale Questionnaire (RSQ). L’etude de cas choisie illustre cette variation du style d’attachement. L’analyse clinique de ces transformations dans la vie d’une femme devenant mere se traduit par la variation du modele de soi et des autres au cours de la maternite. Des souffrances presentes des le debut de la grossesse ont pu trouver une voie d’elaboration pour la mere au sein de son entourage. Ce resultat confirme l’importance de soutenir les meres durant la grossesse.

As is well known, implication is transitive but probabilistic support is not. Eells and Sober, followed by Shogenji, showed that screening off is a sufficient constraint for the transitivity of probabilistic support. Moreover, this screening off condition can be weakened without sacrificing transitivity, as was demonstrated by Suppes and later by Roche. In this paper we introduce an even weaker sufficient condition for the transitivity of probabilistic support, in fact one that can be made as weak as one wishes. We explain that this condition has an interesting property: it shows that transitivity is retained even though the Simpson paradox reigns. We further show that by adding a certain restriction the condition can be turned into one that is both sufficient and necessary for transitivity.

How do we inferentially unify separately acquired empirical information into a single comprehensive picture of the lives of persistent particulars? This paper argues that hidden in such inferences is a Fregean puzzle that can only be solved by individuating our demonstratives thoughts in terms of object-dependent Fregean Senses. I begin by characterizing some constraints on a non-skeptical account of our inferential unification of empirical information. I then go on to show that traditional Fregean views of Sense cannot explain the rationality of such inferences; the consequence of which would be widespread skepticism concerning fundamental aspects of our empirical worldview. I show how the theory of object-dependent Senses can account for the rationality of the puzzling inferences. Lastly, I consider the alternative that we abandon a Fregean explanation of the rationality of inferences. While not fully dismissing that option, I briefly raise, what I take to be, a daunting challenge that uniquely faces non-Fregean views of rational inference.

Philosophers of well-being have tended to adopt a foundationalist approach to the question of theory and measurement, according to which theories are conceptually prior to measures. By contrast, social scientists have tended to adopt operationalist commitments, according to which they develop and refine well-being measures independently of any philosophical foundation. Unfortunately, neither approach helps us overcome the problem of coordinating between how we characterize well-being and how we measure it. Instead, we should adopt a coherentist approach to well-being science.

Intuitively, when all goes well, we adopt beliefs based on inference because we realize that their truth is established by the truth of the involved premises. If this intuitive picture of our successful reasoning is correct, then it must be possible that our reasoning is motivated by our sensitivity to the soundness of the involved inference. This paper argues that such a view of ideal reasoning can only be upheld if we accept the minority view that the proper inferential role of our thoughts is individuated in terms of object dependent Fregean senses. I consider respectively Millian, Guise–Fregean, and object dependent Fregean views, and show how only the latter view provides a picture of our theoretical reasoning where sensitivity to soundness can be what motivates a subject’s reasoning.

Since Kripke, philosophers have distinguished a priori true statements from necessarily true ones. A statement is a priori true if its truth can be established before experience, and necessarily true if it could not have been false according to logical or metaphysical laws. This distinction can be captured formally using two-dimensional semantics.There is a natural way to extend the notions of apriority and necessity so they can also apply to questions. Questions either can or cannot be resolved before experience, and either are or are not about necessary facts. Classical two-dimensionalism has no account of question meanings, so it has to be combined with a framework for question semantics in order to capture these observations. It is shown in [14] how two-dimensional semantics can be combined with inquisitive semantics, in which questions are analyzed in terms of information. The present paper investigates the logic of two-dimensional inquisitive semantics, and provides a complete proof system.

The received view of computation is methodologically bifurcated: it offers different accounts of computation in the mathematical and physical cases. But little in the way of argument has been given for this approach. This paper rectifies the situation by arguing that the alternative, a unified account, is untenable. Furthermore, once these issues are brought into sharper relief we can see that work remains to be done to illuminate the relationship between physical and mathematical computation.

Callender claims that `time is the great informer' (Callender 2017, chapter 7), meaning that the direction(s) in which our `best' physical theories inform are temporal. This is intended to be a metaphysical claim, and as such expresses a relationship between the physical world and information-gathering systems such as ourselves. This paper gives two counterexamples to this claim, illustrating the fact that time and informative strength doubly dissociate, so the claim cannot be about physical theories in general. The first is a case where physical theories inform in directions that we have no reason to regard as temporal. The second is a case where our best physical theories fail to inform in directions that we have independent (pre-theoretic) reasons to regard as temporal. Taking these two cases into account suggests that the connection Callender makes between time and informativeness is perspectival. The second case demonstrates that, although scientists often seek information in temporal directions, the behaviour of the physical world can present serious difficulties for finding it. In response, this paper proposes a perspectival reading of Callender's claim, according to which the connection between time and informative strength has more to do with the aims and objectives of science than the workings of the physical world.

Moral virtue is, for Aristotle, a state to which an agent’s motivation is central. For anyone interested in Aristotle’s account of moral development this invites reflection on two questions: how is it that virtuous motivational dispositions are established? And what contribution do the moral learner’s existing motivational states make to the success of her habituation? I argue that views which demand that the learner act with virtuous motives if she is to acquire virtuous dispositions misconstrue the nature and structure of the habituation process, but also obscure Aristotle’s crucial insight that the very practice of virtuous actions affords a certain discovery and can be transformative of an agent’s motivational states. Drawing attention, in Aristotle’s account, to an asymmetry between the agential perspective and the observation of others, I consider what the agential perspective affords the learner, and offer a novel interpretation of the role a learner’s existing motives play in her habituation.

I examine several alleged grounds of the principle of sufficient reason in Leibniz’s philosophy. These include the nature of a requisite and a sufficient condition, the nature of truth, and the nature of harmony. I argue that Leibniz does not ground the PSR in any of these ways. Instead, he is committed to a value-based grounds of the PSR: God creates the best possible world, and the fact that the PSR obtains in this world contributes to it being the best. I conclude by considering some objections to this way of grounding the PSR.

This paper considers Berkeley’s use of Plato in Siris. Berkeley’s engagement with ancient thinkers in Siris has been a source of puzzlement for many readers. In this paper I focus on Siris § 266. In particular, I consider why Berkeley says of the Platonists that they “distinguished the primary qualities in bodies from the secondary” and why, given his own well-known misgivings about the distinction, he characterizes this as part of a “notion of the true system of the world.” I argue that in Siris Berkeley accepts a distinctive form of corpuscularianism, and that he thinks a distinction between primary and secondary qualities follows from this. I further argue that in § 266, and elsewhere in Siris, Berkeley engages in a careful reading of Plato’s Timaeus, which he uses to bolster his defense of the compatibility between corpuscularianism and his immaterialist idealism.

This paper reconstructs (in natural language) and discusses a proof of God’s existence by Anselm of Canterbury’s friend Ralph of Battle (1040–1124), developed in his recently edited De nesciente, a fictitious dialogue between a Christian and an atheist. Without precedent in antiquity and the Middle Ages, Ralph’s proof has never been examined in detail. It combines a “cogito” argument with a two-part cosmological argument. The paper first presents the textual basis and an exegetical interpretation of Ralph’s reasoning, classifies the parts of the proof historically and systematically, and then compares these with the proofs of God’s existence as well as other arguments in Anselm’s Proslogion and Monologion. Finally, it points out some similarities between Ralph’s “cogito” argument and a passage in the Liber pro insipiente, which may suggest that this anonymous critique of Anselm’s Proslogion proof was authored not by Gaunilo, as traditionally thought, but by Ralph.

Resume Le cancer est une maladie largement connue du grand public. Elle represente par ailleurs une des maladies les plus redoutees en France. C’est ainsi que lorsqu’elle frappe, tout est bouleverse, tout devient incertain. La pathologie est source d’incertitude pour le patient mais aussi pour sa famille et ses proches. Mais alors comment s’accommode-t-on a celle-ci, a ces changements et a ces nouveaux reperes de vie ? Ce questionnement marque le point de depart de notre reflexion autour du processus d’incertitude en oncologie. Cet article s’interesse au vecu de l’incertitude de patients atteints du cancer, de leur entourage et des partenaires de soins. Ici nous nous centrerons sur la question des liens du sujet malade, au regard du transfert et nous nous attacherons a comprendre comment le cancer et l’incertitude qui s’y rattache vont impacter ces liens, les attaquer ou encore les creer et plus generalement comment la relation transferentielle va venir moduler l’incertitude. Tout au long de cet ecrit, nous faisons le choix d’illustrer nos propos a travers le vecu d’une patiente, rencontree a differents temps de sa maladie, afin d’apprehender ce processus complexe.

We propose a new account of calibration according to which calibrating a technique shows that the technique does what it is supposed to do. To motivate our account, we examine an early 20th century debate about chlorophyll chemistry and Mikhail Tswett’s use of chromatographic adsorption analysis to study it. We argue that Tswett’s experiments established that his technique was reliable in the special case of chlorophyll without relying on either a theory or a standard calibration experiment. We suggest that Tswett broke the Experimenters’ Regress by appealing to material facts in the common ground for chemists at the time.

There is widespread excitement in the literature about the method of arbitrary functions: many take it to show that it is from the dynamics of systems that the objectivity of probabilities emerge. In this paper, I differentiate three ways in which a probability function might be objective, and I argue that the method of arbitrary functions cannot help us show that dynamics objectivise probabilities in any of these senses.

We discuss the proposal by Sebens and Carroll to derive the Born rule in Everettian quantum mechanics from a principle they call ‘ESP-QM’. We argue that the proposal fails: ESP-QM is not, as Sebens and Carroll argue, a ‘less general version’ of an independently plausible principle, ESP, and can only be motivated by the empirical success of quantum mechanics, including use of the Born rule. Therefore, ESP-QM cannot have the status of a meta-theoretical principle of reasoning and provides no viable basis for deriving the Born rule.

This paper puts forward a new account of rigorous mathematical proof and its epistemology. One novel feature is a focus on how the skill of reading and writing valid proofs is learnt, as a way of understanding what validity itself amounts to. The account is used to address two current questions in the literature: that of how mathematicians are so good at resolving disputes about validity, and that of whether rigorous proofs are necessarily formalizable.

Negative existentials containing empty NPs are understood colloquially as representing how things stand in the world. Moreover, utterances of such sentences seem to express propositions or thoughts that are informative and true. Standard static semantic theories cannot provide a straightforward account of these intuitive phenomena. In such frameworks, sentences with empty NPs are considered as being unable to express truth-evaluable contents. This paper investigates two alternative theories of negative existentials. A common feature of these theories is that they adopt a dynamic approach to meaning. I will argue that neither of these alternatives provides a reassuring solution to the apparent truth-conditional problem generated by the utterances of negative existentials.

The present study examined the recordings of naturally occurring conversations among native speakers of Japanese, and analyzed the cases of iya ‘no’ that are uttered in response to yes-no questions. The analysis has shown that iya can be uttered in response to a yes-no question even when the response to the question is ‘yes,’ as long as the propositional information that follows iya signals ‘yes’ to the question. When iya prefaces a response of ‘yes,’ the speaker can express a stronger message of ‘yes’ since it creates a pragmatic effect of expressing needless to ask… along with signaling ‘yes’ with the propositional information that follows iya.

This paper puts forward a new interpretation of the argument at Philebus 36c–40d that pleasures can be false. Protarchus raises an objection at 37e–38a, and in response Socrates presents the elaborate painter-scribe analogy (38e–40c). Most previous interpretations do not explain how the analogy answers Protarchus’ objection. On my account, Protarchus’ objection relies on the plausible intuition that pleasure is simply not in the business of assessing the world, and so it cannot be charged with doing so incorrectly. Socrates responds by demonstrating that pleasure can be mistaken about the world, despite not making an independent assessment of it. The painter-scribe analogy demonstrates how pleasure comes to be mistaken about the world by reproducing the mistake of a judgment. Socrates persuades Protarchus that pleasure can be mistaken in part by preserving his intuition that pleasure itself is not the source of the mistake.

Spinoza’s own words seem to commit him to necessitarianism. Nonetheless attempts have been made to make room for contingency in Spinozism. Two impressive arguments of this kind are Curley 1969 and Newlands 2010. Both these arguments appeal to Spinoza’s claim that all finite things are locked in an infinite nexus of causal relations (1p28). The question central to this paper is whether contingency can indeed be derived from an infinity of causal ancestors. The goal of the paper is twofold. First, I aim to present an alternative reading of the relation between infinity and Spinoza’s concept of contingency. On my reading, while the infinity of the causal ancestry of finite things does not ground any objective metaphysical contingency on their part, it is a condition which must obtain if they are to appear as contingent. Second, I aim to challenge the derivations of contingency from infinity mentioned above. I will do so by targeting Curley’s assumption that propositions rather than things are the main bearers of modality. On Newlands’ interpretation, the conceivability of things as either contingent or necessary makes the world more perfect than it would otherwise have been. By drawing upon Spinoza’s analysis of “negative” properties (such as evil), I question whether beliefs about contingency contribute to the perfection of the world in virtue of truly attributing the property of objective contingency to things.

We present epistemic multilateral logic, a general logical framework for reasoning involving epistemic modality. Standard bilateral systems use propositional formulae marked with signs for assertion and rejection. Epistemic multilateral logic extends standard bilateral systems with a sign for the speech act of weak assertion (Incurvati & Schlöder, 2019) and an operator for epistemic modality. We prove that epistemic multilateral logic is sound and complete with respect to the modal logic $\mathbf {S5}$ modulo an appropriate translation. The logical framework developed provides the basis for a novel, proof-theoretic approach to the study of epistemic modality. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of the approach, we show how the framework allows us to reconcile classical logic with the contradictoriness of so-called Yalcin sentences and to distinguish between various inference patterns on the basis of the epistemic properties they preserve.

The article discusses the accusation advanced by Plutarch and Cicero, according to which the Epicureans are unjust, as they would break the law to pursue pleasure if certain of impunity, and deals with this criticism by analyzing the Epicurean theory of law and justice and comparing it with friendship. The article argues that, from a doctrinal standpoint, philia has a higher place in the Epicurean’s priorities and a stronger efficacy than positive law in serving the naturally just. It thus concludes that, as Plutarch and Cicero suspected, the Epicurean’s ultimate loyalty does not lie with positive law, in spite of its importance for social order, but rather with the naturally just (dikaion), better secured by friendship.

This paper focuses on two passages of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, one in Z 3, the other in H1, in which Aristotle seems to assert that the hupokeimenon is said in three ways, as matter, form, and the compound of matter and form. From these two passages it is often said that subjecthood is a criterion for being substance (alongside two other criteria, separateness and being a tode ti). A consequence of this is that, if form is to be substance, and form is substance, namely first substance, it has to comply with the subject-criterion. This paper challenges this reading, purporting to show that these two passages need not commit Aristotle to the subject-criterion, and that there are good reasons not to commit him to it.

This paper defends three claims about concrete or physical models: (i) these models remain important in science and engineering, (ii) they are often essentially idealized, in a sense to be ...

Absolutism about mass within Newtonian gravity claims that mass ratios obtain in virtue of absolute masses. Comparativism denies this. Defenders of comparativism promise to recover all the ...

I consider how complex logical operations might self-assemble in a signalling-game context via composition of simpler underlying dispositions. On the one hand, agents may take advantage of pre-evolved dispositions; on the other hand, they may co-evolve dispositions as they simultaneously learn to combine them to display more complex behaviour. In either case, the evolution of complex logical operations can be more efficient than evolving such capacities from scratch. Showing how complex phenomena like these might evolve provides an additional path to the possibility of evolving more or less rich notions of compositionality. This helps provide another facet of the evolutionary story of how sufficiently rich, human-level cognitive or linguistic capacities may arise from simpler precursors.

It seems like we care about at least two features of our credence function: gradational-accuracy (high credences in truths, low credences in falsehoods) and verisimilitude (investing higher...

I argue that philosophical issues concerning reductive explanations help constrain the construction of quantum theories with appropriate state spaces. I illustrate this general proposal with two examples of restricting attention to physical states in quantum theories: regular states and symmetry-invariant states.

The paper offers an argument against an intuitive reading of the Stone-von Neumann theorem as a categoricity result, thereby pointing out that, against what is usually taken to be the case, this theorem does not entail any model-theoretical difference between the theories that validate it and those that don't., 20 pages

Achievements are among the things that make a life good. Assessing the plausibility of this intuitive claim requires an account of the nature of achievements. One necessary condition for achievement appears to be that the achieving agent acted competently, i.e. was not just lucky. I begin by critically assessing existing accounts of anti-luck conditions for achievements in both the ethics and epistemology literature. My own proposal is that a goal is reached competently (and thus an achievement), only if the actions of the would-be-achiever make success likely, and that this is the reason why she acts that way.

Institutions are often regarded either as rules or as equilibria sustained by self-interested agents. I ask how these two theories can be combined. According to Philip Pettit’s Virtual Control Theory, they explain different things: rules explain why regularities persist; self-interest why they are resilient. Thus, his theory reconciles the two theories by adjusting their domains of application. However, the available evidence suggests that rules and self-interest often combine as sources of motivation. Because of this, it is better to integrate the theories rather than to reconcile them. Inspired by Cristina Bicchieri’s theory of social norms, I incorporate the notion of rule-following into a game-theoretic account of institutions. According to the resulting Rules-and-Equilibrium Theory, institutions are rule- or norm-governed social practices. The theory does not only explain their persistence and resilience, but also their fragility, which provides another reason for preferring the proposed integration to Pettit’s reconciliation.

This paper examines Hume’s ‘Title Principle’ (TP) and its role in a response to one of the ‘manifest contradictions’ he identifies in the conclusion to Book I of A Treatise on Human Nature. This ‘contradiction’ is a tension between two ‘equally natural and necessary’ principles of the imagination, our causal inferences and our propensity to believe in the continued and distinct existence of objects. The problem is that the consistent application of causal reason undercuts any grounds with have for the belief in continued and distinct existence, and yet that belief is as ‘natural and necessary’ as our propensity to infer effects from causes. The TP appears to offer a way to resolve this ‘contradiction’. It statesWhere reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it never can have any title to operate upon us.’ (T 1.4.7.11; SBN 270)In brief, if it can be shown that the causal inferences that undermine the belief in external world are not ‘lively’ nor mixed with some propensity’ then we have grounds for think that they have no normative authority (they have no ‘title to operate on us). This is in part a response to another ‘manifest contradiction’, namely the apparently self-undermining nature of reason. In this paper I examine the nature and grounds of the TP and its relation to these ‘manifest contradictions’.

This manuscript presents a topological argumentation framework for modelling notions of evidence-based (i.e., justified) belief. Our framework relies on so-called topological evidence models to represent the pieces of evidence that an agent has at her disposal, and it uses abstract argumentation theory to select the pieces of evidence that the agent will use to define her beliefs. The tools from abstract argumentation theory allow us to model agents who make decisions in the presence of contradictory information. Thanks to this, it is possible to define two new notions of beliefs, grounded beliefs and fully grounded beliefs. These notions are discussed in this paper, analysed and compared with the existing notion of topological justified belief. This comparison revolves around three main issues: closure under conjunction introduction, the level of consistency and their logical strength.

Studies in experimental philosophy claim to document intuition variation. Some studies focus on demographic group-variation; Colaço et al., for example, claim that age generates intuition variation regarding knowledge attribution in a fake-barn scenario. Other studies claim to show intuition variation when comparing the intuition of philosophers to that of non-philosophers. The main focus has been on documenting intuition variation rather than uncovering what underlying factor(s) may prompt such a phenomenon. We explore a number of suggested explanatory hypotheses put forth by Colaço et al., as well as an attempt to test Sosa's claim that intuition variance is a result of people ‘filling in the details’ of a thought experiment differently from one another. We show (i) that people respond consistently across conditions aimed at ‘filling in the details’ of thought experiments, (ii) that risk attitude does not seem relevant to knowledge ascription, (iii) that people's knowledge ascriptions do not vary due to views about defeasibility of knowledge. Yet, (iv) we find no grounds to reject that a large proportion of people appear to adhere to so-called subjectivism about knowledge, which may explain why they generally have intuitions about the fake-barn scenario that vary from those of philosophers.

The ‘cosmological constant problem’ (CCP) has historically been understood as describing a conflict between cosmological observations in the framework of general relativity (GR) and theoret...

The trustworthiness (or otherwise) of AI has been much in discussion of late, not least because of the recent publication of the EU Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. Discussions range from how we might make people trust AI to AI being not possible to trust, with many points inbetween. In this article, we question whether or not these discussions somewhat miss the point, which is that people are going ahead and basically doing their own thing anyway, and that we should probably help them. Acknowledging that trust is a heuristic that is widely used by humans in a range of situations, we lean on the literature concerning how humans make trust decisions, to arrive at a general model of how people might consider trust in AI (and other artefacts) for specific purposes in a human world. We then use a series of thought experiments and observations of trust and trustworthiness, to illustrate the use of the model in taking a functionalist perspective on trust decisions, including with machines. Our hope is that this forms a useful basis upon which to develop intelligent systems in a way that considers how and when people may trust them, and in doing so empowers people to make better trust decisions about AI.

In the philosophical literature concerning scientific experimentation, the notion of robustness has been solely discussed in relation to experimental results. In this article, I propose a novel sense of experimental robustness that applies to experimental procedures. I call the foregoing sense of robustness 'procedure robustness' (PR) and characterize it as the capacity of an experimental procedure to maintain its intended function invariant during the experimental process despite possible variations in its inputs. I argue that PR is a precondition for what I call 'result robustness' (RR), which refers to the traditional sense of experimental robustness, namely, the existence of convergent experimental results obtained through different and independent means of detection. Furthermore, I argue, PR and RR constitute useful experimental strategies in the context of high-energy physics experiments, but these strategies are not without limitations.

Can the second law of thermodynamics explain our mental experience of the direction of time? According to an influential approach, the past hypothesis of universal low entropy (required to ...

In this paper, we argue that the new demarcation problem does not need to be framed as the problem of defining a set of necessary and jointly sufficient criteria for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable roles that non-epistemic values can play in science. We introduce an alternative way of framing the problem and defend an open-ended list of criteria that can be used in demarcation. Applying such criteria requires context-specific work that clarifies which principles should be used, and possibly leads to the identification of new principles – which then can be added to the open-ended list. We illustrate our approach by examining a context where distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable value influences in science is both needed and tricky: transdisciplinary research. publishedVersion

Idealization is commonly understood as distortion: representing things differently than how they actually are. In this paper, we outline an alternative artifactual approach that does not make misrepresentation central for the analysis of idealization. We examine the contrast between the Hodgkin-Huxley (1952a, b, c) and the Heimburg-Jackson (2005, 2006) models of the nerve impulse from the artifactual perspective, and argue that, since the two models draw upon different epistemic resources and research programs, it is often difficult to tell which features of a system the central assumptions involved are supposed to distort. Many idealizations are holistic in nature. They cannot be locally undone without dismantling the model, as they occupy a central position in the entire research program. Nor is their holistic character mainly related to the use of mathematical and statistical modeling techniques as portrayed by Rice (2018, 2019). We suggest that holistic idealizations are implicit theoretical and representational assumptions that can only be understood in relation to the conceptual and representational tools exploited in modeling and experimental practices. Such holistic idealizations play a pivotal role not just in individual models, but also in defining research programs.

Critical theories often express scepticism towards the idea that social critique should draw on general normative principles, seeing such principles as bound to dominant conceptual frameworks. However, even the models of immanent critique developed in the Frankfurt School tradition seem to privilege principles over particular moral experiences. Discussing the place that particular moral experience has in the models of Honneth, Ferrara and Adorno, the article argues that experience can play an important negative role even for a critical theory that is committed to the necessity of conceptual mediation, as moral experiences can undermine our confidence in the appropriateness of our moral concepts. Building on McDowell’s account of moral perception and Brandom’s interpretation of Hegel’s theory of experience, one can reconstruct Adorno as providing a “radically negativist” approach to immanent critique that takes particular moral experience seriously.

Linear first order Riemann-Liouville fractional differential equations are studied. These new equations unify and generalize the Riemann-Liouville, modified Caputo and Caputo fractional differential equations. The equivalences between the fractional differential equations and the corresponding perturbed Abel's integral equations are obtained. These results are useful not only to study the initial or boundary value problems for nonlinear first order Riemann-Liouville fractional differential equations but also to study the solutions of the perturbed Abel's integral equations arising in a problem of mechanics and many other physical problems. The well-known Tonelli's result on solvability of the Abel's integral equation is generalized. We exhibit that there are nonconstant equilibria for some first order Caputo fractional equations. This is different from nonlinear first order ordinary differential equations which have only constant equilibria. The equivalence results are applied to generalize the classical Mean Value Theorem to the first order Riemann-Liouville fractional derivatives.

In this paper, I am going to cast doubt on an idea that is shared, explicitly or implicitly, by most contemporary pragmatic theories: that the inferential interpretation procedure described by Grice, neo-Griceans, or post-Griceans applies only to the interpretation of ostensive stimuli. For this special issue, I will concentrate on the relevance theory (RT) version of this idea. I will proceed by putting forward a dilemma for RT and argue that the best way out of it is to accept that the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure applies to certain non-ostensive stimuli, contrary to what is generally claimed within RT. In particular, I will argue that relevance theorists should accept that (ceteris paribus) non-ostensive emotional expressions in interactions guarantee a presumption of relevance such that they are interpreted through the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure. This leads me to propose what I call 'the expressive principle of relevance'.

We extend classical Propositional Logic (PL) by adding a new primitive binary connective $\varphi|\psi$, intended to represent the "superposition" of sentences $\varphi$ and $\psi$, an operation motivated by the corresponding notion of quantum mechanics, but not intended to capture all aspects of the latter as they appear in physics. To interpret the new connective, we extend the classical Boolean semantics by employing models of the form $\langle M,f\rangle$, where $M$ is an ordinary two-valued assignment for the sentences of PL and $f$ is a choice function for all pairs of classical sentences. In the new semantics $\varphi|\psi$ is strictly interpolated between $\varphi\wedge\psi$ and $\varphi\vee\psi$. By imposing several constraints on the choice functions we obtain corresponding notions of logical consequence relations and corresponding systems of tautologies, with respect to which $|$ satisfies some natural algebraic properties such as associativity, closedness under logical equivalence and distributivity over its dual connective. Thus various systems of Propositional Superposition Logic (PLS) arise as extensions of PL. Axiomatizations for these systems of tautologies are presented and soundness is shown for all of them. Completeness is proved for the weakest of these systems. For the other systems completeness holds if and only if every consistent set of sentences is extendible to a consistent and complete one, a condition whose truth is closely related to the validity of the deduction theorem., Comment: 55 pages

This article considers the principle in the tort of private nuisance that the level of protection to which one is entitled from certain kinds of interference is sensitive to one's locality. It argues that the principle can be partly justified by the different costs of avoiding an interference which different localities create. However, it shows that, if the principle is to be justified in its entirety, a further justification is necessary. The article considers further justifications based on social rules, autonomy, cost minimisation, the idea of a system of equal right and an analogy to the rules on hypersensitive claimants. It largely rejects these explanations and concludes that, to the extent the locality principle requires individuals to bear substantial burdens that they would not have to bear were collective interests set aside, without compensation, it is difficult to justify.