Against Against Intuitionism

The main ideas behind Brouwer’s philosophy of Intuitionism are presented. Then some critical remarks against Intuitionism made by William Tait in “Against Intuitionism” [Journal of Philosophical Logic, 12, 173–195] are answered.     

The tunneling method for global optimization in multidimensional scaling

This paper focuses on the problem of local minima of the STRESS function. It turns out that unidimensional scaling is particularly prone to local minima, whereas full dimensional scaling with Euclidean distances has a local minimum that is global. For intermediate dimensionality with Euclidean distances it depends on the dissimilarities how severe the local minimum problem is. For city-block distances in any dimensionality many different local minima are found. A simulation experiment is presented that indicates under what conditions local minima can be expected. We introduce the tunneling method for global minimization, and adjust it for multidimensional scaling with general Minkowski distances. The tunneling method alternates a local search step, in which a local minimum is sought, with a tunneling step in which a different configuration is sought with the same STRESS as the previous local minimum. In this manner successively better local minima are obtained, and experimentation so far shows that the last one is often a global minimum.This paper is based on the 1994 Psychometric Society's outstanding thesis award of the first author. The authros would like to thank Robert Tijssen of the CWTS Leiden for kindly making available the co-citation data of the Psychometric literature. This paper is an extended version of the paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society at Champaign-Urbana, Illin., June 1994.     

Against Couples

ABSTRACT The essay attacks the convention that a person should at any period in their life have not more than one sexual partner. The issues of the care of children and the desirability of a shared household are here bracketed out. The main argument proceeds by seeing conflicts between the requirement of exclusivity in sexual life, authenticity, and the principle that sexual communion should be an expression of love. A general social inertia, defined by the possessive introversion of couples, means that individuals will inevitably sometimes have to choose between sexual solitude and cultivating a more or less artificial relationship. The ideal of a single, central relationship is criticised on the grounds that (i) in some respects it is not desirable and (ii) it is in any case unrealistic to suppose that we can choose to create such an ideal relationship at will.     

Against Fallibilism

In this paper I argue for a doctrine I call ‘infallibilism’, which I stipulate to mean that If S knows that p, then the epistemic probability of p for S is 1. Some fallibilists will claim that this doctrine should be rejected because it leads to scepticism. Though it's not obvious that infallibilism does lead to scepticism, I argue that we should be willing to accept it even if it does. Infallibilism should be preferred because it has greater explanatory power than fallibilism. In particular, I argue that an infallibilist can easily explain why assertions of ‘p, but possibly not-p’ (where the ‘possibly’ is read as referring to epistemic possibility) is infelicitous in terms of the knowledge rule of assertion. But a fallibilist cannot. Furthermore, an infallibilist can explain the infelicity of utterances of ‘p, but I don't know that p’ and ‘p might be true, but I'm not willing to say that for all I know, p is true’, and why when a speaker thinks p is epistemically possible for her, she will agree (if asked) that for all she knows, p is true. The simplest explanation of these facts entails infallibilism. Fallibilists have tried and failed to explain the infelicity of ‘p, but I don't know that p’, but have not even attempted to explain the last two facts. I close by considering two facts that seem to pose a problem for infallibilism, and argue that they don't.     

Against alief

A physicalist holds, in part, that what properties are instantiated depends on what physical properties are instantiated; a physicalist thinks that mental properties, for example, are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of physical “realizer” properties. One issue that arises in this context concerns the relationship between the “causal powers” of instances of physical properties and instances of dependent properties, properties that are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of physical properties. After explaining the significance of this issue, I evaluate two core lines of thought that have been advanced in favor of Subset Inheritance, the view that instances of dependent properties typically have some, but not all, of the powers of physical realizers, and do not have any powers that are not also powers of physical realizers. The first argument that I address turns on our intuitive reactions to certain cases; the second appeals to the phenomenon of multiple realization. I argue that neither line of thought succeeds, and thus that insofar as we grant that an instance of a dependent property inherits some of the powers of its physical realizer, defenders of subset inheritance have not provided a compelling reason to think that it will not inherit all of the powers of its physical realizer.     

Against relativism

Recent years have brought relativistic accounts of knowledge, first-person belief, and future contingents to prominence. I discuss these views, distinguish non-trivial from trivial forms of relativism, and then argue against relativism in all of its substantive varieties.     

Against Propositionalism

‘Propositionalism’ is the widely held view that all intentional mental relations—all intentional attitudes—are relations to propositions or something proposition‐like. Paradigmatically, to think about the mountain is ipso facto to think that it is F, for some predicate ‘F’. It seems, however, many intentional attitudes are not relations to propositions at all: Mary contemplates Jonah, adores New York, misses Athens, mourns her brother. I argue, following Brentano, Husserl, Church and Montague among others, that the way things seem is the way they are, and that propositionalism must be abandoned.     

Against liberty

Conclusion There are no private particular actions that should be altogether free of social interference. No absolute distinction can be made between types of actions affecting others and those affecting only the agent. Relative to a purpose in formulating an act of law, for instance, such a distinction can, however, be made. The idea of social freedom could therefore be thought to imply that even if there are no absolutely private particular actions, and even if society could interfere for any purpose to regulate the actions of the individual, not any reason for such interference is acceptable from the point of view of liberty. Acts of law should not be made unnecessarily inclusive with respect to their purpose and they should be designed to further public security. Not even in this weak formulation, however, can the principle of social liberty be defended against moral criticism. Some illiberal laws, in this sense, should after all be passed. Examples can be found in taxation law.The only reasonable conclusion to draw from all this is that there is no tenable principle of liberty.That there is no tenable principle of liberty does not mean that everything that has been condemned in the name of liberty should now be regarded as right. Many things said to result in a limitation of freedom could be wrong for other reasons. But probably not all of them are. So it will, I think, have some effects on our political views in general, if we accept the conclusion of this essay.     

Against simplicity

Sometimes metaphysicians appeal to simplicity as a reason to prefer one metaphysical theory to another, especially when a philosophical dispute has otherwise reached a state of equilibrium. In this paper, I show that given a Quinean conception of metaphysics, several initially plausible justifications for simplicity as a metaphysical criterion do not succeed. If philosophers wish to preserve simplicity as a metaphysical criterion, therefore, they must radically reconceive the project of metaphysics.