Logically Incorrect Arguments

What do we learn when we find out that an argument is logically incorrect? If logically incorrect means the same as not logically correct, which in turn means not having a valid logical form, it seems that we do not learn anything too useful—an argument which is logically incorrect can still be conclusive. Thus, it seems that it makes sense to fix a stronger interpretation of the term under which a logically incorrect argument is guaranteed to be wrong (and is such for purely logical reasons). In this paper, we show that pinpointing this stronger sense is much trickier than one would expect; but eventually we reach an explication of the notion of (strong) logical incorrectness which we find non-trivial and viable.     

Is Explanatoriness a Guide to Confirmation? A Reply to Climenhaga

We (2013, 2014) argued that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant in the following sense: Let H be a hypothesis, O an observation, and E the proposition that H would explain O if H and O were true. Then our claim is that Pr(H | O & E) = Pr(H | O). We defended this screening-off thesis (SOT) by discussing an example concerning smoking and cancer. Climenhaga (Philos Sci, forthcoming) argues that SOT is mistaken because it delivers the wrong verdict about a slightly different smoking-and-cancer case. He also considers a variant of SOT, called “SOT*”, and contends that it too gives the wrong result. We here reply to Climenhaga’s arguments and suggest that SOT provides a criticism of the widely held theory of inference called “inference to the best explanation”.     

An automated behavioral measure of mind wandering during computerized reading

Mind wandering is a ubiquitous phenomenon in which attention shifts from task-related to task-unrelated thoughts. The last decade has witnessed an explosion of interest in mind wandering, but research has been stymied by a lack of objective measures, leading to a near-exclusive reliance on self-reports. We addressed this issue by developing an eye-gaze-based, machine-learned model of mind wandering during computerized reading. Data were collected in a study in which 132 participants reported self-caught mind wandering while reading excerpts from a book on a computer screen. A remote Tobii TX300 or T60 eyetracker recorded their gaze during reading. The data were used to train supervised classification models to discriminate between mind wandering and normal reading in a manner that would generalize to new participants. We found that at the point of maximal agreement between the model-based and self-reported mind-wandering means (smallest difference between the group-level means: M _model = .310, M _self = .319), the participant-level mind-wandering proportional distributions were similar and were significantly correlated (r = .400). The model-based estimates were internally consistent (r = .751) and predicted text comprehension more strongly than did self-reported mind wandering (r _model = ?.374, r _self = ?.208). Our results also indicate that a robust strategy of probabilistically predicting mind wandering in cases with poor or missing gaze data led to improved performance on all metrics, as compared to simply discarding these data. Our findings demonstrate that an automated objective measure might be available for laboratory studies of mind wandering during reading, providing an appealing alternative or complement to self-reports.     

Metaphilosophy of Mind: how Do Minds Investigate Minds? Refutation of the Theocentric View

I shall propose metaphilosophy of mind as the philosophy of mind investigating mind. That is to say, I pose the question of how knowledge of mind provided by cognitive science, broadly construed, is constrained by the epistemic position of the knower, i.e. by the very fact that it is undertaken by a mind. Here I would like to propose a minimal framework, based on two distinctions: (i) the standard one between empirical and conceptual analysis; (ii) a new one, between the internal questions of mind and the boundary questions of mind. I shall then combine these distinctions to arrive at several ways of investigating the mind, the brain and cognition. On this ground, I will discuss the notion of epistemological theocentrism as outlined by Henry Allison and argue against the perspective I call theocentric philosophy of mind. From this angle I will be able to address skepticism which cannot be defeated but actually can be, as I put it, disarmed. Finally, metaphilosophy of mind based on the abovementioned distinctions elicits a perspective that is not sufficiently delineated by cognitive scientists and philosophers: empirical way of addressing the boundary questions of mind.     

Understanding Mind/Body Medicine from Muslim Religious Practices of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Salat</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dhikr</Emphasis>

There has been an increasing medical interest in Muslim religious practices in promoting well-being. Central to Muslim religious practices are salat (prayer) and dhikr (chanting). These two religious forms may be argued as comprising elements of mind/body medicine due to their positive effect on the psychoneuroimmunological response. The aim of this article was to further understand the mind/body aspects of Muslim salat and dhikr.     

Contextual-Hierarchical Reconstructions of the Strengthened Liar Problem

In this paper we shall introduce two types of contextual-hierarchical (from now on abbreviated by ‘ch’) approaches to the strengthened liar problem. These approaches, which we call the ‘standard’ and the ‘alternative’ ch-reconstructions of the strengthened liar problem, differ in their philosophical view regarding the nature of truth and the relation between the truth predicates T r ⁿ and T r ⁿ⁺¹ of different hierarchy-levels. The basic idea of the standard ch-reconstruction is that the T r ⁿ⁺¹-schema should hold for all sentences of \(\mathcal {L}^{n}\). In contrast, the alternative ch-reconstruction, for which we shall argue in section four, is motivated by the idea that T r ⁿ and T r ⁿ⁺¹ are coherent in the sense that the same sentences of \(\mathcal {L}^{n}\) should be true according to T r ⁿ and T r ⁿ⁺¹. We show that instances of the standard ch-reconstruction can be obtained by iterating Kripke’s strong Kleene jump operator. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how instances of the alternative ch-reconstruction can be obtained by a slight modification of the iterated axiom system KF and of the iterated strong Kleene jump operator.     

Subjunctive Conditional Probability

There seem to be two ways of supposing a proposition: supposing “indicatively” that Shakespeare didn’t write Hamlet, it is likely that someone else did; supposing “subjunctively” that Shakespeare hadn’t written Hamlet, it is likely that nobody would have written the play. Let P(B//A) be the probability of B on the subjunctive supposition that A. Is P(B//A) equal to the probability of the corresponding counterfactual, A □→B? I review recent triviality arguments against this hypothesis and argue that they do not succeed. On the other hand, I argue that even if we can equate P(B//A) with P(A □→B), we still need an account of how subjunctive conditional probabilities are related to unconditional probabilities. The triviality arguments reveal that the connection is not as straightforward as one might have hoped.     

Substance concepts and personal identity

According to one argument for Animalism about personal identity, animal, but not person, is a Wigginsian substance concept—a concept that tells us what we are essentially. Person supposedly fails to be a substance concept because it is a functional concept that answers the question “what do we do?” without telling us what we are. Since person is not a substance concept, it cannot provide the criteria for our coming into or going out of existence; animal, on the other hand, can provide such criteria. This argument has been defended by Eric Olson, among others. I argue that this line of reasoning fails to show Animalism to be superior to the Psychological Approach, for the following two reasons: (1) human animal, animal, and organism are all functional concepts, and (2) the distinction between what something is and what it does is illegitimate on the reading that the argument needs.     

Hillel and Confucius: The prescriptive formulation of the golden rule in the Jewish and Chinese Confucian ethical traditions

A prospective convert asked Hillel to teach him the entire Torahwhile standing on one foot. Hillel replied, “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That isthe whole of Torah and the remainder is but commentary. Go and study it.” (Hillel:Shab. 31; emphasis added)Zigong: “Is there asingle word that can serve as a guide to conduct throughout one’s life?” Confucius said: “Perhaps the word ‘shu’, ‘reciprocity’: ‘Do not do to others what you would not want others to do to you’.” (Analects: 15.24; see alsoAnalects. 12 andZhongyong. 13.3; emphasis added)¹     

Pragmatism and the predictive mind

Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Yin-Yang</Emphasis> and the Heart-Mind

The East Asian notion of a heart-mind (Chinese xin 心, Japanese kokoro こころ, and Korean maum ??) is arguably more accurate to our psychology than the Western term “mind” and its equivalents are: the latter term implies the possibility of psychological functioning in the absence of all emotion, and it can be shown that that is impossible. But then it turns out that we can update the traditional Chinese notions of yin 陰 and yang 陽 in such a way as to help us philosophically explain how our functioning psychology involves emotion and why any possible psychology has to rest on such a basis. Yin-yang is the essence of heart-mind, and heart-mind is essential to any functioning psychology.     

Reasoning defeasibly about probabilities

In concrete applications of probability, statistical investigation gives us knowledge of some probabilities, but we generally want to know many others that are not directly revealed by our data. For instance, we may know prob(P/Q) (the probability of P given Q) and prob(P/R), but what we really want is prob(P/Q&;R), and we may not have the data required to assess that directly. The probability calculus is of no help here. Given prob(P/Q) and prob(P/R), it is consistent with the probability calculus for prob(P/Q&;R) to have any value between 0 and 1. Is there any way to make a reasonable estimate of the value of prob(P/Q&;R)? A related problem occurs when probability practitioners adopt undefended assumptions of statistical independence simply on the basis of not seeing any connection between two propositions. This is common practice, but its justification has eluded probability theorists, and researchers are typically apologetic about making such assumptions. Is there any way to defend the practice? This paper shows that on a certain conception of probability—nomic probability—there are principles of “probable probabilities” that license inferences of the above sort. These are principles telling us that although certain inferences from probabilities to probabilities are not deductively valid, nevertheless the second-order probability of their yielding correct results is 1. This makes it defeasibly reasonable to make the inferences. Thus I argue that it is defeasibly reasonable to assume statistical independence when we have no information to the contrary. And I show that there is a function Y(r, s, a) such that if prob(P/Q) = r, prob(P/R) = s, and prob(P/U) = a (where U is our background knowledge) then it is defeasibly reasonable to expect that prob(P/Q&;R) = Y(r, s, a). Numerous other defeasible inferences are licensed by similar principles of probable probabilities. This has the potential to greatly enhance the usefulness of probabilities in practical application.     

Who Does the Sounding? The Metaphysics of the First-Person Pronoun in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Zhuangzi</Emphasis>

In classical Chinese wu 吾 is commonly employed as the first-person pronoun, similar to wo 我 that retains its use in modern Chinese. Although these two words are usually understood as stylistic variants of “I,” “me,” and “myself,” Chinese scholars of the Zhuangzi 莊子 have long been aware of the possible differences in their semantics, especially in the philosophical context of discussing the relation between the self and the person, as evinced by their occurrences in the much-discussed line “Now I have lost myself” (jin zhe wu sang wo 今者吾喪我) in the chapter “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” (“Qiwulun 齊物論”). In this essay, I first provide an exegesis of the proffered explanations of the semantical differences between wu and wo as an introduction to two ways of understanding them in the Zhuangzi literature, viz. the single-reference view and the double-reference view. Then I shall argue against these two views in favor of the no-reference view, meaning that both pronouns in “Now I have lost myself” do not function referentially, given the peculiarity of the verb “lose.” I believe the no-reference view has not been explicitly articulated and defended in the literature, although some scholars who want to read the no-self view into the Zhuangzi might have implied it. My argument is supported by a close reading of the targeted passage in the Zhuangzi, premised on the assumption that the part on the “piping of Heaven” (tian lai 天籟) immediately following the discussion of losing oneself is an indirect explanation rather than a digression. My explanation is framed within a similar discussion of “I” by the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. This comparative interpretation, I believe, not only provides the grounds for understanding Zhuangzi’s ideal of attaining the state where “the ten thousand things are one with me,” but also demonstrates how metaphysics and the philosophy of language are two interwoven threads in Zhuangzi’s reasoning.     

Analysis of the Talmudic Argumentum A Fortiori Inference Rule (Kal Vachomer) using Matrix Abduction

We motivate and introduce a new method of abduction, Matrix Abduction, and apply it to modelling the use of non-deductive inferences in the Talmud such as Analogy and the rule of Argumentum A Fortiori. Given a matrix \({\mathbb {A}}\) with entries in {0, 1}, we allow for one or more blank squares in the matrix, say a _i,j =?. The method allows us to decide whether to declare a _i,j = 0 or a _i,j = 1 or a _i,j =? undecided. This algorithmic method is then applied to modelling several legal and practical reasoning situations including the Talmudic rule of Kal-Vachomer. We add an Appendix showing that this new rule of Matrix Abduction, arising from the Talmud, can also be applied to the analysis of paradoxes in voting and judgement aggregation. In fact we have here a general method for executing non-deductive inferences.     

Verbal reaction times to hues vs hue names and forms vs form names

Iwo choice reaction time (RI) studies were carried out in which different classes of stimuli—hues vs hue names in one study and forms vs form names in the other—occurred in independent lists of2, 4, and6 equally probable alternatives. Mean choice RIs were faster for hue names and form names than for hues and forms with4 and6 alternatives, but no significant differences were found in the2-stimulus lists. In both studies, significant list length by stimulus type (e.g., hues vs hue names) interactions indicated greater increase in mean RI with increases in list length for forms and hues than for form names and hue names. It was concluded that differential amounts of generalization of interference aceounted for the interactions. Effects of experimental variables on inferred components of RI were also examined.     

No I,No Problems: The Quintessence of Buddhist Psychology of Awakening

If psychology is viewed as the science of human mind, the Buddha could unarguably be termed as the finest depth psychologist humanity has seen. Not only did he penetrate deep into the hidden recesses of human mind and uncovered the machinations of the latent tendencies, he also found the way out of their stranglehold on mankind. As a compassionate teacher, he focused his entire teaching primarily on the later practical aspect. He often mentioned that he taught only two things: there is unhappiness (dukkha) and there is a way out of this unhappiness. The root cause of this unhappiness, he identified as the primeval ignorance avijja, which creates the notion of ‘I’ as an individual entity, the doer, the feeler and the thinker. This in turn gives rise to the concepts of ‘I and mine’, ‘thee and thine’ from which originate craving (raga) and aversion (dosa). The Buddha’s penetrative insight into the nature of human reality revealed that what we call ‘I’ or a ‘being’ is only a concatenation of the five impermanent aggregates, viz. the body, consciousness, intellect, feelings and volitional mental formations, which work interdependently, changing from moment to moment in accordance with the law of cause and effect. By a systematic cultivation of the mindfulness of these aggregates anyone can progressively uproot the ego and purify the mind by extinguishing this fire of defilements continuously burning within it. As the mind gets progressively purified, it awakens from the illusion of ‘personality’ and naturally abides in loving kindness (maîtri), compassion (karuna), altruistic joy (mudita) and equanimity (upekkha) to increasing degree. ‘No I, No problems’, as one contemporary Master puts it.     

The Fallaciousness of Threats: Character and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ad Baculum</Emphasis>

Robert Kimball, in “What’s Wrong with Argumentum Ad Baculum?” (Argumentation, 2006) argues that dialogue-based models of rational argumentation do not satisfactorily account for what is objectionable about more malicious uses of threats encountered in some ad baculum arguments. We review the dialogue-based approach to argumentum ad baculum, and show how it can offer more than Kimball thinks for analyzing such threat arguments and ad baculum fallacies.     

The Modal Logic of Gödel Sentences

The modal logic of Gödel sentences, termed as GS, is introduced to analyze the logical properties of ‘true but unprovable’ sentences in formal arithmetic. The logic GS is, in a sense, dual to Grzegorczyk’s Logic, where modality can be interpreted as ‘true and provable’. As we show, GS and Grzegorczyk’s Logic are, in fact, mutually embeddable. We prove Kripke completeness and arithmetical completeness for GS. GS is also an extended system of the logic of ‘Essence and Accident’ proposed by Marcos (Bull Sect Log 34(1):43–56, 2005). We also clarify the relationships between GS and the provability logic GL and between GS and Intuitionistic Propositional Logic.     

One Thought Too Few: Where <Emphasis Type="Italic">De Dicto</Emphasis> Moral Motivation is Necessary

De dicto moral motivation is typically characterized by the agent’s conceiving of her goal in thin normative terms such as to do what is right. I argue that lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation (at least in a certain broad sense of this term) would put the agent in a bad position for responding in the morally-best manner (relative to her epistemic state) in a certain type of situations. Two central features of the relevant type of situations are (1) the appropriateness of the agent’s uncertainty concerning her underived moral values, and (2) the practical, moral importance of resolving this uncertainty. I argue that in some situations that are marked by these two features the most virtuous response is deciding to conduct a deep moral inquiry for a de dicto moral purpose. In such situations lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would amount to a moral shortcoming. I show the implications for Michael Smith’s (1994) argument against Motivational Judgment Externalism and for Brian Weatherson’s (2014) argument against avoiding moral recklessness: both arguments rely on a depreciating view of de dicto moral motivation, and both fail; or so I argue.