Is Conditioning Really Incompatible with Holism?

Jonathan Weisberg claims that certain probability assessments constructed by Jeffrey conditioning resist subsequent revision by a certain type of after-the-fact defeater of the reasons supporting those assessments, and that such conditioning is thus “inherently anti-holistic.” His analysis founders, however, in applying Jeffrey conditioning to a partition for which an essential rigidity condition clearly fails. Applied to an appropriate partition, Jeffrey conditioning is amenable to revision by the sort of after-the-fact defeaters considered by Weisberg in precisely the way that he demands.     

Holistic Conditionalization and Underminable Perceptual Learning

Seeing a red hat can (i) increase my credence in the hat is red, and (ii) introduce a negative dependence between that proposition and potential undermining defeaters such as the light is red. The rigidity of Jeffrey Conditionalization makes this awkward, as rigidity preserves independence. The picture is less awkward given ‘Holistic Conditionalization’, or so it is claimed. I defend Jeffrey Conditionalization's consistency with underminable perceptual learning and its superiority to Holistic Conditionalization, arguing that the latter is merely a special case of the former, is itself rigid, and is committed to implausible accounts of perceptual confirmation and of undermining defeat.     

Desires,beliefs and conditional desirability

Does the desirability of a proposition depend on whether it is true? Not according to the Invariance assumption, held by several notable philosophers. The Invariance assumption plays an important role in David Lewis’ famous arguments against the so-called Desire-as-Belief thesis (DAB), an anti-Humean thesis according to which a rational agent desires a proposition exactly to the degree that she believes the proposition to be desirable. But the assumption is of interest independently of Lewis’ arguments, for instance since both Richard Jeffrey and James Joyce make the assumption (or, strictly speaking, accept a thesis that implies Invariance) in their influential books on decision theory. The main claim to be defended in this paper is that Invariance is incompatible with certain assumptions of decision theory. I show that the assumption fails on the most common interpretations of desirability and/or choice-worthiness found in decision theory. I moreover show that Invariance is inconsistent with Richard Jeffrey’s decision theory, on which Lewis’ arguments against DAB are based. Finally, I show that Invariance contradicts how we in general do and should think about conditional desirability.     

The Principle of Sufficient Reason Defended: There Is No Conjunction of All Contingently True Propositions

Toward the end of his classic treatise An Essay on Free Will, Peter van Inwagen offers a modal argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason which he argues shows that the principle “collapses all modal distinctions.” In this paper, a critical flaw in this argument is shown to lie in van Inwagen’s beginning assumption that there is such a thing as the conjunction of all contingently true propositions. This is shown to follow from Cantor’s theorem and a property of conjunction with respect to contingent propositions. Given the failure of this assumption, van Inwagen’s argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason cannot succeed, at least not without the addition of some remarkable and previously unacknowledged qualifications.     

IN DEFENSE OF THE WHAT‐IT‐IS‐LIKENESS OF EXPERIENCE

It is common parlance among philosophers who inquire into the nature of consciousness to speak of there being something it is like for the subject of a mental state to be in it. The popularity of the ‘what‐it‐is‐like’ phrase stems, in part, from the assumption that it enables us to distinguish, in an intuitive and illuminating way, between conscious and unconscious mental states: conscious mental states, unlike unconscious mental states, are such that there is something it is like for their subjects to be in them. The ‘what‐it‐is‐like’ phrase, however, has not gone unopposed; some very clever philosophers have vigorously disputed it. Peter Hacker, for example, argues that the phrase should be abandoned because it is ungrammatical, and Paul Snowdon argues that it should be abandoned because the propositions expressed by its usage are either trivial or false. This paper mounts a case for the claim that neither of these conclusions is warranted. Against Hacker, it is argued that the arguments he produces for the ungrammaticality of the phrase are unpersuasive; and, against Snowdon, it is argued that he fails to consider a plausible and independently motivated interpretation of the phrase and that on this interpretation, the propositions expressed by its usage are nontrivially true.     

Brown

In Remarks on Colour Wittgenstein discusses a number of puzzling propositions about brown, e.g. that it cannot be pure and that there cannot be a brown light. He does not actually answer the questions he asks, and the status of his projected ‘logic of colour concepts’ remains unclear. I offer a real definition of brown from which the puzzle propositions follow logically. It is based on two experiments from Helmholtz. Brown is shown to be logically complex in the sense that the concept of brown can be ‘unpacked’ or resolved into simpler concepts. If my solutions to Wittgenstein's puzzles are the right ones, then science does bear upon the ‘logic of colour concepts’, and the contrast between logic and science which Wittgenstein sets up is a false one. At best it will appear as the contrast between the demands of logic and the demands of a particular kind of scientific theory and a particular mode of scientific theorizing. The solutions to the puzzles about brown are distinguished from psychological explanations, and the paper ends by suggesting what it was in his own doctrine that prevented Wittgenstein from answering the questions he had set himself.     

The Role of Schizotypy in Predicting Performance on Figural and Verbal Imagery-Based Measures of Creativity

Harrington (2018) raised a number of points in response to my proposal that we use intentional novelty (IN) as the basis for defining creativity (Weisberg, 2015). He argued first that there would be problems in objectively determining novelty. Second, even if we could obtain such a measure, it was not clear to Harrington how it could be used. Third, Harrington also raised several broader problems that he saw arising from the IN definition. In this commentary, I respond to each of those criticisms, showing that they are not the problems that Harrington believed that they were, and that the IN definition can serve its proposed function. Also, Harrington did not address what I raised as a critically important problem arising from any definition that uses value as a criterion: a person’s creativity changing after death. That issue is also revisited.     

Unicorn Atheism

Kripshe treats `god’ as an empty natural kind term such as `unicorn’. She applies Saul Kripke's fresh views about empty natural kinds to `god’. Metaphysically, says Kripshe, there are no possible worlds in which there are gods. Gods could not have existed, given that they do not actually exist and never did. Epistemologically, godlessness is an a posteriori discovery. Kripshe dismisses the gods in the same breath that she dismisses mermaids. Semantically, the perspective Kripshe finds most perspicacious, no counterfactual situation is properly describable as one in which there are gods. Perhaps it is not quite a necessary truth that there are no gods. According to Saul Kripke, failed natural kind terms are ill‐defined. Incorporating ill‐defined terms into declarative sentences yields only mock propositions. Just as the meteorologist has no professional interest in mock thunder, the logician has no professional interest in mock propositions. Kripshe disagrees with agnostics who assign a low probability to `There is at least one god’. The bearers of probabilities must be propositions. Despite this deference to science, Kripshe agrees with the a priori atheist that, necessarily, no future experience could constitute an encounter with a god. Divine revelation is impossible. Kripshe's a posteriori necessary atheism compares favorably to familiar forms of atheism and to non‐cognitivists. It reveals interesting challenges to a coherent formulation of atheism.     

‘My Future Son is Possibly Alive’. Existential Presupposition and Empty Terms in Abelard's Modal Logic

The aim of this paper is to investigate the problem of existential import in Abelard's modal logic, and to ask whether the system of logical relationships that he proposes for modal propositions maintains its validity when some of the terms included in these propositions are empty. In the following, I first argue that, just as in the case of non-modal propositions, Abelard interprets modal propositions as having existential import, so that it is a necessary condition for the truth of propositions like ‘It is possible for my son to be alive’ or ‘it is necessary that all men are animals’ that their subjects’ referents exist. Then, I present the schemata of inferences that Abelard proposes to describe the logical behaviour of de rebus modal propositions. I argue that these systems of relations are valid only as long as all the terms contained in the formulas have an existing referent. I also claim that Abelard was aware of this difficulty (at least in the Logica Ingredientibus), and, accordingly, he explicitly decided to restrict the validity of his modal system to propositions that do not contain empty terms.     

Diachronic Dutch Books and Evidential Import

A handful of well‐known arguments (the ‘diachronic Dutch book arguments’) rely upon theorems establishing that, in certain circumstances, you are immune from sure monetary loss (you are not ‘diachronically Dutch book‐able’) if and only if you adopt the strategy of conditionalizing (or Jeffrey conditionalizing) on whatever evidence you happen to receive. These theorems require non‐trivial assumptions about which evidence you might acquire—in the case of conditionalization, the assumption is that, if you might learn that e, then it is not the case that you might learn something else that is consistent with e. These assumptions may not be relaxed. When they are, not only will non‐(Jeffrey) conditionalizers be immune from diachronic Dutch bookability, but (Jeffrey) conditionalizers will themselves be diachronically Dutch bookable. I argue: 1) that there are epistemic situations in which these assumptions are violated; 2) that this reveals a conflict between the premise that susceptibility to sure monetary loss is irrational, on the one hand, and the view that rational belief revision is a function of your prior beliefs and the acquired evidence alone, on the other; and 3) that this inconsistency demonstrates that diachronic Dutch book arguments for (Jeffrey) conditionalization are invalid.     

Too much ado about belief

Three commitments guide Dennett’s approach to the study of consciousness. First, an ontological commitment to materialist monism. Second, a methodological commitment to what he calls ‘heterophenomenology.’ Third, a ‘doxological’ commitment that can be expressed as the view that there is no room for a distinction between a subject’s beliefs about how things seem to her and what things actually seem to her, or, to put it otherwise, as the view that there is no room for a reality/appearance distinction for consciousness. We investigate how Dennett’s third doxological commitment relates to his first two commitments and whether its acceptance should be seen as a mere logical consequence of acceptance of the first two. We will argue that this is not the case, that Dennett’s doxological commitment is in need of independent motivation, and that this independent motivation is not forthcoming.     

Are Propositions Essentially Representational?

Jeffrey King argues that nothing has truth conditions except by being taken to be true or false by rational agents. But – for good reason – King claims that propositions possess truth conditions essentially and intrinsically. I will argue that King cannot have both: if the truth conditions of a proposition depend on the reactions of rational agents, then the possession of truth conditions can't follow from the intrinsic nature or existence of the proposition. This leaves two options. Either, nothing can do the job that motivates positing propositions. Or, there is no need to explain what bestows a truth condition on a proposition.     

PRESENTISM,TRUTH AND SUPERVENIENCE

Truthmaker theory is commonly thought to pose a challenge for presentism. Presentism seems to lack the ontological and ideological resources required to adequately underwrite the truth of propositions concerning the past. That is because if presentism is true, then the past does not exist. According to the standard response to this challenge, the truth of propositions concerning the past supervenes on surrogate entities that ‘stand proxy’ for past things. I argue that in order for the standard response to the truthmaker challenge to succeed these surrogate entities must stand in necessary connections to the past. I go on to argue that because the standard response is already committed to denying the existence of cross‐temporal modal connections of this kind, by its own lights that response is in error. 1     

The existential assumptions of traditional logic

There have been and continue to be disagreements about how to consider the traditional square of opposition and the traditional inferences of obversion, conversion, contraposition and inversion from the perspective of contemporary quantificational logic. Philosophers have made many different attempts to save traditional inferences that are invalid when they involve empty classes. I survey some of these attempts and argue that the only satisfactory way of saving all the traditional inferences is to make the existential assumption that both the subject and predicate classes and their complement classes are non-empty for all the propositions we admit. I briefly indicate the room for continued controversy over how properly to interpret Aristotle’s statements regarding these inferences, but find some plausibility in the views of Manley Thompson and A.N.Prior that Aristotle had in mind a particular arrangement of existential import unfamiliar to most contemporary logicians     

DO I HAVE TO BE HERE NOW?

Kaplan claims that (1) ‘I am here now’, though analytic, is not a necessary truth. But this sentence is not a proposition, in a sense of proposition in which some, but not all, sentences are propositions. Since it is not a proposition, it is not true, and consequently not analytic. It is in fact a fragment of a proposition, the same fragment as ‘he was there then’ in (2) ‘CJFW said in Oxford on 23 September 1991 that he was there then’. Sentences containing indexicals in general owe their sense to the corresponding fragments of sentences containing ‘quasi-indexicals’(‘then’, for example, is the quasi-indexical to ‘now’ as indexical). Someone uttering (1) assertively will thereby make a proposition like (2) true. (2) entails (3) ‘CJFW said in Oxford on 23 September 1993 that CJFW was in Oxford on 23 September 1991′. So by uttering (1) in the appropriate circumstances I made it true that I had asserted the proposition (4) ‘CJFW was in Oxford on 23 September 1991′. What is analytic and necessarily true is the proposition ‘If (3) then (4)’.     

Assessing Parameter Invariance in the BLIM: Bipartition Models

In knowledge space theory, the knowledge state of a student is the set of all problems he is capable of solving in a specific knowledge domain and a knowledge structure is the collection of knowledge states. The basic local independence model (BLIM) is a probabilistic model for knowledge structures. The BLIM assumes a probability distribution on the knowledge states and a lucky guess and a careless error probability for each problem. A key assumption of the BLIM is that the lucky guess and careless error probabilities do not depend on knowledge states (invariance assumption). This article proposes a method for testing the violations of this specific assumption. The proposed method was assessed in a simulation study and in an empirical application. The results show that (1) the invariance assumption might be violated by the empirical data even when the model’s fit is very good, and (2) the proposed method may prove to be a promising tool to detect invariance violations of the BLIM.     

Propositions, semantic values, and rigidity

Jeffrey King has recently argued: (i) that the semantic value of a sentence at a context is (or determines) a function from possible worlds to truth values, and (ii) that this undermines Jason Stanley's argument against the rigidity thesis, the claim that no rigid term has the same content as a non-rigid term. I show that King's main argument for (i) fails, and that Stanley's argument is consistent with the claim that the semantic value of a sentence at a context is (or determines) a function from worlds to truth values.     

Peirce on facts and true propositions

Peirce maintains that facts and propositions are structurally isomorphic. When we understand how Peirce thinks they are isomorphic, we find that a common objection raised against epistemic conceptions of truth – that there are facts beyond the ken of discovery – holds no water against Peirce’s claim that truth is what would be believed after a sufficiently long and rigorous course of inquiry.     

The “Once and Future” Focus of a Relational Psychoanalysis: Discussion of “Vitalizing Enactment”

In this discussion of Amy Schwartz Cooney’s paper (this issue) I focus on the current interest in relational theorizing on the analyst’s proactive role vis-à-vis her patient, that is, what she actually does for or gives to her patient. I consider the role of the analyst’s own internal “bad” objects in facilitating or inhibiting the therapeutic process. I end with a set of theoretical propositions about the ways in which an intense and deadening shame can lead to dissociation and/or repression of hopeful fantasies about the future.     

Propositions as Structured Cognitive Event-Types

According to act theories, propositions are structured cognitive act-types. Act theories appear to make propositions inherently representational and truth-evaluable, and to provide solutions to familiar problems with alternative theories, including Frege’s and Russell’s problems, and the third-realm and unity problems. Act theories have critical problems of their own, though: acts as opposed to their objects are not truth evaluable, not structured in the right way, not expressed by sentences, and not the objects of propositional attitudes. I show how identifying propositions with other cognitive event-types, namely thoughts, has the perceived virtues of act theories without the defects.