Abstract: Various scientific theories stand in a reductive relation to each other. In a recent article, the authors argue that a generalized version of the Nagel-Schaffner model (GNS) is the right account of this relation. In this article, they present a Bayesian analysis of how GNS impacts on confirmation. They formalize the relation between the reducing and the reduced theory before and after the reduction using Bayesian networks, and thereby show that, post-reduction, the two theories are confirmatory of each other. They ask when a purported reduction should be accepted on epistemic grounds. To do so, they compare the prior and posterior probabilities of the conjunction of both theories before and after the reduction and ask how well each is confirmed by the available evidence
Models and Modality
Abstract: This paper examines the connection between model-theoretic truth and necessary truth. It is argued that though the model-theoretic truths of some standard languages are demonstrably “necessary” (in a precise sense), the widespread view of model-theoretic truth as providing a general guarantee of necessity is mistaken. Several arguments to the contrary are criticized.
Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language
Abstract: Philosophy of language is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of meaning, the relationship of language to reality, and the ways in which we use, learn, and understand language. This companion provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the field, charting its key ideas and movements, and addressing contemporary research and enduring questions in the philosophy of language. Unique to this companion is clear coverage of research from the related disciplines of formal logic and linguistics, and discussion of the applications in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and philosophy of mind. The book is divided into seven sections: Core Topics; Foundations of Semantics; Parts of Speech; Methodology; Logic for Philosophers of Language; Philosophy of Language for the Rest of Philosophy; and Historical Perspectives.
Truth in Virtue of Meaning: A Defence of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
Publisher’s Note: The analytic/synthetic distinction looks simple. It is a distinction between two different kinds of sentence. Synthetic sentences are true in part because of the way the world is, and in part because of what they mean. Analytic sentences – like all bachelors are unmarried and triangles have three sides – are different. They are true in virtue of meaning, so no matter what the world is like, as long as the sentence means what it does, it will be true.
This distinction seems powerful because analytic sentences seem to be knowable in a special way. One can know that all bachelors are unmarried, for example, just by thinking about what it means. But many twentieth-century philosophers, with Quine in the lead, argued that there were no analytic sentences, that the idea of analyticity didn’t even make sense, and that the analytic/synthetic distinction was therefore an illusion. Others couldn’t see how there could fail to be a distinction, however ingenious the arguments of Quine and his supporters.
But since the heyday of the debate, things have changed in the philosophy of language. Tools have been refined, confusions cleared up, and most significantly, many philosophers now accept a view of language – semantic externalism – on which it is possible to see how the distinction could fail. One might be tempted to think that ultimately the distinction has fallen for reasons other than those proposed in the original debate.
In Truth in Virtue of Meaning, Gillian Russell argues that it hasn’t. Using the tools of contemporary philosophy of language, she outlines a view of analytic sentences which is compatible with semantic externalism and defends that view against the old Quinean arguments. She then goes on to draw out the surprising epistemological consequences of her approach.
Hursthouse’s Virtue Ethics and Abortion: Abortion Ethics without Metaphysics
Abstract: This essay explicates and evaluates the roles that fetal metaphysics and moral status play in Rosalind Hursthouse’s abortion ethics. It is motivated by Hursthouse’s puzzling claim in her widely anthologized paper Virtue Ethics and Abortion that fetal moral status and (by implication) its underlying metaphysics are in a way, fundamentally irrelevant to her position. The essay clarifies the roles that fetal ontology and moral status do in fact play in her abortion ethics. To this end, it presents and then develops her fetal metaphysics of the potential and actual human being, which she merely adumbrates in her more extensive treatment of abortion ethics in her book Beginning Lives. The essay then evaluates her fetal ontology in light of relevant research on fetal neural and psychological development. It concludes that her implied view that the late-stage fetus is an actual human being is defensible. The essay then turns to the analysis of late-stage abortions in her paper and argues that it is importantly incomplete.
Spin: All is not what it seems
Abstract: Spin is typically thought to be a fundamental property of the electron and other elementary particles. Although it is defined as an internal angular momentum much of our understanding of it is bound up with the mathematics of group theory. This paper traces the development of the concept of spin paying particular attention to the way that quantum mechanics has influenced its interpretation in both theoretical and experimental contexts. The received view is that electron spin was discovered experimentally by Stern and Gerlach in 1921, 5 years prior to its theoretical formulation by Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck. However, neither Goudsmit nor Uhlenbeck, nor any others involved in the debate about spin cited the Stern-Gerlach experiment as corroborating evidence. In fact, Bohr and Pauli were emphatic that the spin of a single electron could not be measured in classical experiments. In recent years experiments designed to refute the Bohr-Pauli thesis and measure electron spin have been carried out. However, a number of ambiguities surround these results – ambiguities that relate not only to the measurements themselves but to the interpretation of the experiments. After discussing these various issues the author raises some philosophical questions about the ontological and epistemic status of spin.
Animal Action in the Space of Reasons
Abstract: I defend the view that we should not overintellectualize the mind. Nonhuman animals can occupy islands of practical rationality: they can have contextbound reasons for action even though they lack full conceptual abilities. Holism and the possibility of mistake are required for such reasons to be the agent’s reasons, but these requirements can be met in the absence of inferential promiscuity. Empirical work with animals is used to illustrate the possibility that reasons for action could be bound to symbolic or social contexts, and connections are made to simulationist accounts of cognitive skills.
Essentialism and the Necessity of the Laws of Nature
Abstract: In this paper the author discusses and evaluates different arguments for the view that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. She conclude that essentialist arguments from the nature of natural kinds fail to establish that essences are ontologically more basic than laws, and fail to offer an a priori argument for the necessity of all causal laws. Similar considerations carry across to the argument from the dispositionalist view of properties, which may end up placing unreasonable constraints on property identity across possible worlds. None of her arguments preclude the possibility that the laws may turn out to be metaphysically necessary after all, but she argues that this can only be established by a posteriori scientific investigation. She argues for what may seem to be a surprising conclusion: that a fundamental metaphysical question – the modal status of laws of nature – depends on empirical facts rather than purely on a priori reasoning.
Models and Logical Consequence
Abstract: This paper deals with the adequacy of the model-theoretic definition of logical consequence. Logical consequence is commonly described as a necessary relation that can be determined by the form of the sentences involved. In this paper, necessity is assumed to be a metaphysical notion, and formality is viewed as a means to avoid dealing with complex metaphysical questions in logical investigations. Logical terms are an essential part of the form of sentences and thus have a crucial role in determining logical consequence.
Gila Sher and Stewart Shapiro each propose a formal criterion for logical terms within a model-theoretic framework, based on the idea of invariance under isomorphism. The two criteria are formally equivalent, and thus we have a common ground for evaluating and comparing Sher and Shapiro philosophical justification of their criteria. It is argued that Shapiro’s blended approach, by which models represent possible worlds under interpretations of the language, is preferable to Sher’s formal-structural view, according to which models represent formal structures. The advantages and disadvantages of both views’ reliance on isomorphism are discussed.
The Concept of Voluntariness – A Reply
Abstract: In his paper on ‘The Concept of Voluntariness’, Ben Colburn helpfully takes up the task of developing my view about the sense of voluntariness that is relevant for judgments of substantive responsibility, or judgments about individuals’ liability to pick up some costs of their choices. On my view, a necessary condition for holding people responsible for their choices is that those choices be voluntary in the sense that they are not made because there is no acceptable alternative, where the standard for the acceptability of options is an objective standard of well-being. […] Colburn’s first point is entirely well-taken. By way of endorsing it, I ask whether we are justified in taking some but not all kinds of beliefs to affect the voluntariness of choice, as his elaboration of my view suggests. However, I find Colburn’s second point less convincing, and argue that we should allow for the moral character of options to affect the voluntariness of choice.