The principle of the indiscernibility of identicals requires no restrictions

Synthese - There is a certain argument against the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals (PInI), or the thesis that whatever is true of a thing is true of anything identical with that...     

Multiplicity and indiscernibility

Synthese - The indistinguishability of bosons and fermions has been an essential part of our ideas of quantum mechanics since the 1920s. But what is the mathematical basis for this...     

The identity of experiences and the identity of the subject

Philosophical Studies - Barry Dainton has developed a sophisticated version of the bundle theory of the subject of experiences. I shall focus on three claims Dainton makes: the identity-conditions...     

The contempt expression and the relativity thesis

Ekman and Freisen (1986) reported a highly recognizable, pancultural facial expression unique to contempt. This article reports three studies in which the emotion inferred from that expression, a unilaterally raised and tightened lip, varied with the context of judgment. Different contexts of judgment were created by asking subjects to judge zero, one, or six other facial expressions posed by different actors before judging the lip curl. The lip curl was labeledcontempt in one context,disgust in another, andsadness in a third. Ekman and Friesen's result was replicated, but only when the specific anchoring context used in the original studies was reinstituted. People's judgments as to which emotion is conveyed by a particular facial expression can therefore be influenced by the method of gathering judgments.This study was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I thank Dee-Ann Matsugu, Lara Weick, and Lisa Wong for their careful work on this study. I especially thank Darrin Lehman for his advice.     

The relativity of perceptual knowledge

Since the most promising path to a solution to the problem of skepticism regarding perceptual knowledge seems to rest on a sharp distinction between perceiving and inferring, I begin by clarifying and defending that distinction. Next, I discuss the chief obstacle to success by this path, the difficulty in making the required distinction between merely logical possibilities that one is mistaken and the real (Austin) or relevant (Dretske) possibilities which would exclude knowledge. I argue that this distinction cannot be drawn in the ways Austin and Dretske suggest without begging the questions at issue. Finally, I sketch and defend a more radical way of identifying relevant possibilities that is inspired by Austin's controversial suggestion of a parallel between saying I know and saying I promise: a claim of knowledge of some particular matter is relative to a context in which questions about the matter have been raised.