Proofs from assumptions are amongst the most fundamental reasoning techniques. Yet the precise nature of assumptions is still an open topic. One of the most prominent conceptions is the placeholder view of assumptions generally associated with natural deduction for intuitionistic propositional logic. It views assumptions essentially as holes in proofs, either to be filled with closed proofs of the corresponding propositions via substitution or withdrawn as a side effect of some rule, thus in effect making them an auxiliary notion subservient (...) to proper propositions. The Curry–Howard correspondence is typically viewed as a formal counterpart of this conception. I will argue against this position and show that even though the Curry–Howard correspondence typically accommodates the placeholder view of assumptions, it is rather a matter of choice, not a necessity, and that another more assumption-friendly view can be adopted. (shrink)

Placeholders enable conceptual change only if presumed to be relevant (e.g., lead to the formation of true beliefs) even though their meaning is not yet fully understood and their cognitive function not yet specified. Humans are predisposed to make such presumptions in a communicative context. Specifying the role of the presumption of relevance in conceptual change would provide a more comprehensive account of Quinian bootstrapping.

French truc and machin (‘thing’) can function as placeholders, fillers or in general extender constructions. The aim of our paper is to investigate whether the prosodic characteristics of these three different uses may give a clue as to their respective status. For our analysis, we extracted 112 occurrences of truc and 57 occurrences of machin from the audio data of the PFC Corpus, which were analysed using Praat, focusing on the acoustic duration, the individual pitch contour and the integration (...) of machin and truc into the intonation contour of the utterance. As in previous studies, our results show that the prosodic patterns vary remarkably and show a highly heterogeneous picture so that the use of prosodic properties as cues for disambiguation is problematic. However, we are able to show some weak tendencies which point to a close functional link between placeholders and fillers reflecting their pragmatic functions. There is no evidence for prosodic weakening or even phonetic reduction in placeholders. Furthermore, we detect some evidence for the detachment typical of pragmatic markers in the case of fillers. The prosodic characteristics of truc and machin in general extender constructions diverge from both the placeholder and the filler functions. Their prosody seems to be largely determined by the particular respective construction into which both forms are strongly integrated. (shrink)

본 논문의 목적은 피카소의 큐비즘을 자리지정자와 자리포기자 사이에서 자리지키는자로 재구성하는 것이다. 현대회화의 역사에서 피카소의 공헌은 다양한 시점에서 파악된 대상을 본질적 형태로 환원하여 화면을 재구성한 것이다. 이러한 피카소의 공헌은 대상의 관점에서 본질을 드러낸 것이지만 주체의 관점에서 시점권력을 포기한 것이다. 시점 권력의 포기는 분석적 큐비즘을 지나 종합적 큐비즘으로 이행한다. 화가의 자리, 즉 하나의 시점포기의 가장 과격한 실천이라고 할 수 있는 분석적 큐비즘은 다양한 시점을 수용한 가운데 대상이 알아볼 수 없는 방식으로 해체한다. 피카소는 이 시기의 일부 그림에 작가의 권력을 확인하는 서명도 하지 않는다. (...) 그러나 종합적 큐비즘 시기 및 이후의 작품에서는 시점을 2~3개로 제한한 가운데 매개자로서 작가의 자리를 포기하지 않는다. 화가의 시점권력은 타자의 시점들로 해체되는 것이 아니라 해석하고 매개한다.BR 하버마스는 현대 철학자들에 의해 자리지정자로서 철학의 지위가 해체된다고 진단한다.BR그러나 철학이 해체될 경우 분화된 문화적 영역들 간 그리고 전문가와 생활세계 간의 매개가 불가능하다고 주장한다. 하버마스는 철학이 최고재판관의 권력을 휘두르는 자리지정자를 포기하더라도 자리포기자가 아니라 자리지키는자의 역할을 담당하여 다영한 학문영역과 다양한 관점이 교직하는 자리를 포기할 수 없다고 주장한다.BR 전통회화에서 큐비즘으로의 전환 그리고 분석적 큐비즘에서 종합적 큐비즘으로의 전환은 하버마스의 자리지정자, 자리포기자 그리고 자리지키는자의 전환과 상응한다. 이 논문은 하버마스의 글과 피카소의 그림 사이에서 시점, 즉 자리의 위상 변화를 추적한다.BR 이를 위해서 첫째, 하버마스의 자리지정자 개념과 큐비즘 이전의 전통회화를 다룬다(Ⅱ장). 여기에서 최고재판관으로서 철학과 주체의 권력 그리고 전통회화에서 화가의 자리지정자로서의 권력의 유사성을 다룬다. 둘째, 하버마스가 『도덕의식과 소통적 행위』에서 다룬 이성의 요구 자체를 공격하는 현대 철학과 전통회화의 원근법을 해체하는 분석적 큐비즘을 다룬다(Ⅲ장). 여기에서 철학과 주체 해체의 공과 과를 하버마스의 입장에서 다룬다. 동시에 피카소가 브라크와 함께 분석적 큐비즘을 단행한 이유와 발생한 문제가 무엇이었는지 살펴볼 것이다. 셋째, 하버마스의 자리지키는자와 종합적 큐비즘 이후 피카소 작품의 유사성을 다룬다(Ⅳ장) 이를 통해 하버마스가 철학과 주체의 자리를 포기할 수 없었던 이유와 이와 유사하게 피카소가 화가의 자리를 고수할 수밖에 없었던 이유를 밝힌다. (shrink)

Kripke-Putnam argument for natural kind essentialism can be said to depend on placeholder essentialist intuitions. But some argue that such philosophical intuitions are merely preschooler cognitive biases which are not supported by scientific knowledge of natural kinds. Chemical substances, for instance, whether elements or compounds do not have such privileged set of underlying properties (‘same substance’ relation) which are present in all members of the kind and which provide necessary and sufficient condition for kind membership. In this paper, I argue (...) that placeholder essentialism works for at least some of the scientific natural kinds especially for the basic chemical natural kind, i.e., element. I argue that the dual sense of the element (the basic substance and the simple substance) along with microstructuralism helps explain the essence of an element not only at the abstract level but also at the more concrete level. Based on this essentialist account of element, I conclude that placeholder essentialism is not completely without merit, and it fits nicely with at least some of our scientific natural kinds. (shrink)

Despite the fact that Levinas has often been accused of having little or no room for the maternal in his writing, his rhetoric nonetheless applies maternal tendencies that complicate his ethical st...

Perhaps in addition to language being a potential medium of domain-general thought, as suggested by Carruthers, language may also play another role in conceptual development: Words are “essence placeholders.” Evidence is presented from studies on categorization, object individuation, and inductive inference in infancy. The assumption that words are essence placeholders may be a mechanism by which infants acquire kind concepts.

Placeholder essentialism is the view that there is a causal essence that holds category members together, though we may not know what the essence is. Sometimes the placeholder can be filled in by scientific essences, such as when we acquire scientific knowledge that the atomic weight of gold is 79. We challenge the view that placeholders are elaborated by scientific essences. On our view, if placeholders are elaborated, they are elaborated Aristotelian essences, a telos. Utilizing the same kinds (...) of experiments used by traditional essentialists—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2), acquired traits (study 3) and inferences about offspring (study 4)—we find support for the view that essences are elaborated by a telos. And we find evidence (study 5) that teleological essences may generate category judgments. (shrink)

:Geophilosophy is a placeholder for things we cannot yet do, things we hope to do, and things that we have failed to do so far. This issue of Angelaki aspires towards ways of doing philosophy, geography and gender studies that stray from the analytical comforts of philosophical reasoning, and from the sociological certainties that dominate the study of masculinity. In particular, it brings a sexed and gendered body to extant Deleuze-Guattarian scholarship, while prompting a thirst for creativity and ambivalence to (...) masculinity research. Each article explores the ways in which lived cultures of masculinity might be read across uneven political formations and aesthetic practices, while calling into question tacit understandings of where “masculinity” begins and ends. In doing so, the collection teases out the ethical and methodological implications of poststructuralist approaches to gender in a range of disciplines, including cultural geography, art criticism, sociology, and disability studies. (shrink)

In this paper I try to undermine complacency with a predominant conception of desire, for the sake of refocusing attention on a philosophical problem. The predominant conception holds that to have a desire is to occupy an evaluative outlook, a perspective from which the agent 'sees' the world in practically salient terms. I argue that it is not clear what this theory is a theory of, because the concept of desire at its center is deeply ambiguous. Understood as a theory (...) of desire in what I call the "placeholder" sense, the evaluative outlook theory is at bottom a theory of action explanation. So construed, its claim is relatively uncontroversial, and falls far short of being a full theory of action explanation. Understood as a theory of desire in what I call the "substantive" sense, it does not even go so far as to acknowledge the central problem such a theory has to answer. That problem is how we can be passive (in a particular sense) with respect to our own motivation. (shrink)

The article examines the role of natural kinds in semantic theorizing, which has largely been conducted in isolation from relevant work in science, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. We argue that the Kripke–Putnam account of natural kind terms, despite recent claims to the contrary, depends on a certain metaphysics of natural kinds; that the metaphysics usually assumed—micro-essentialism—is untenable even in a ‘placeholder’ version; and that the currently popular homeostatic property cluster theory of natural kinds is correct only to an extent (...) that fails to vindicate the Kripke–Putnam account. This undermines the metasemantics required for anti-descriptivist semantics. _1_ Introduction _2_ From Semantics to Metaphysics _3_ Metaphysics, Part I: The Demise of Micro-essentialism _3.1_ Original micro-essentialism _3.2_ Placeholder essentialism _4_ Metaphysics, Part II: Homeostatic Property Cluster Theory _5_ Prospects for Natural Kind Term Semantics. (shrink)

To understand why a phenomenon occurs, it is not enough to possess a correct explanation of the phenomenon: you must grasp the explanation. In this formulation, “grasp” is a placeholder, standing for the psychological or epistemic relation that connects a mind to the explanatory facts in such a way as to produce understanding. This paper proposes and defends an account of the “grasping” relation according to which grasp of a property (to take one example of the sort of entity that (...) turns up in explanations) is a matter of recognitional ability: roughly, a property is grasped to the extent to which the would-be understander is capable of recognizing instances of the property. (shrink)

The vulnerability of patients receiving significantly innovative neurosurgical procedures, either as research or as non-standard therapy, presents particularly potent challenges for those attempting to substantially advance clinical Neurosurgical practice in the most ethically and efficacious manner. This beginning formulation has built into it several important notions about research participation, balancing values, and clinical advancement in the context of neurological illness. For the time being, allow vulnerability to act as a placeholder for circumstances or states of being wherein the established checks (...) and balances of power and interest are no longer sufficient in promoting the just treatment of persons. Further, the phrase to substantially advance Neurosurgical practice encompasses radical innovation as well as significant research into new procedures. Finally, few of these explorations involve true randomized placebo controlled trials, but rather they enroll patients rightfully hoping for some benefit by means of undergoing the procedure.When a neurosurgeon asks me, as an ethicist, to meet with a patient who has medically refractory disease and no good standard therapy options remaining, he is asking for help concerning whether to offer, as a last chance, an unproven therapy as either innovation or research. (shrink)

Social Constructivism about the disease concept has generally been taken to ignore the fundamental biological reality underlying diseases, as well as to fall foul of several apparently compelling objections. In this paper, I explain how the metaphysical relation of grounding can be used to tie a socially constructed account of diseases and their classification to their underlying biological and behavioural states. I then generalize the position by disambiguating several varieties of normativism, including a particularly strong ‘placeholder’ version of social constructivism, (...) and showing that the grounding approach is available to each. I go on to provide what I believe to be the first attempt at a full semantics for disease-talk and disagreement, before using the placeholder to demonstrate on that basis that the most troublesome objections to normativism can be avoided even by very strong versions of the position. (shrink)

Some experimental studies have recently claimed to undermine semantic externalism about natural kind terms. However, it is unclear how philosophical accounts of reference can be experimentally tested. We present two externalistic adaptations of psychological placeholder essentialism, a strict externalist and a hybrid externalist view, which are experimentally testable. We examine Braisby’s et al. (1996) study which claims to undermine externalism, and argue that the study fails in its aims. We conducted two experiments, the results of which undermine internalism and the (...) hybrid theory, and support strict externalism. Ourconclusion is that lay speakers’ natural kind concepts involve a belief in an external category essence, which determines reference. (shrink)

I first outline the standard dispositionalist account and indicate how this account has been extended from the everyday to the realm of modern physics – from vases to quarks, in effect. Here I note a fundamental obstacle: the role of symmetries as constraints on the fundamental laws in physics. One of the great virtues of the standard dispositionalist account is that it supposedly yields laws from dispositions but it remains unclear, at best, how it can accommodate such symmetry principles. I (...) then outline some ways the dispositonalist might try to do that but in effect I close off each option by indicating how the problem merely gets pushed back a step or two. Ultimately, the dispositionalist will have to ascribe her dispositions to objects that are metaphysically very ‘thin’, in the sense that they are mere placeholders within the physical structure, and also give up the standard Stimulus + Manifestation account. Of course, that will be music to the ears of certain other critics within and outwith the powers camp and I conclude by considering some recent proposals and evaluating whether they might be ‘fit for purpose’ within the context of modern physics. (shrink)

One of the most common judgments of normative life takes the following form: With respect to some things that matter, one item is better than the other, with respect to other things that matter, the other item is better, but all things considered – that is, taking into account all the things that matter – the one item is better than the other. In this paper, I explore how all-things-considered judgments are possible, assuming that they are. In particular, I examine (...) the question of how the different considerations relevant to an all-things-considered judgment come together in a way that gives each relevant consideration its proper due. I propose an answer which provides a unified account of all-things-considered judgments and highlights a deep connection between value and reason. My suggestion is that ‘all things considered’ is, in effect, a placeholder for a more comprehensive, sometimes nameless, value that includes the things considered as parts, and that this more comprehensive value determines how the things considered normatively relate. (shrink)

This thesis makes two claims: first, that conflict is constitutive of human agency, and second, that this understanding of agency in terms of conflict makes politics a problem about the will. I develop an argument to show how these two claims weave together to create the fabric of Kant’s account of political willing. From this Kantian approach to conflict and agency, the systematic question animating this thesis thereby arises: what are the conditions that make political willing possible? This thesis defends (...) the notion of political willing as a placeholder for a number of inter-woven conditions that make political life in common possible. As a form of rightful interaction between free agents of choice, this form of willing emerges in Kant from the constitutive features of what it means to be an agent in a world with others agents. This relation between agents makes conflict unavoidable, a conflict which only a will that is public, omnilateral, and coercive, can rightfully resolve. I trace the development of this model of political willing in three spheres of Kant’s thought: individual ethics, teleology, and politics. I conclude that Kant’s view of politics is, in some ways, more Hobbesian than Hobbes’: for Kant, conflict cannot and should not be fully eradicated, if we are to take seriously equality between agents. Life under the state is not conflict-free, but rather it is a sphere made to preserve and to safeguard the boundaries of a shared political life, always prone to conflict. (shrink)

Prediction-based decisions, which are often made by utilizing the tools of machine learning, influence nearly all facets of modern life. Ethical concerns about this widespread practice have given rise to the field of fair machine learning and a number of fairness measures, mathematically precise definitions of fairness that purport to determine whether a given prediction-based decision system is fair. Following Reuben Binns (2017), we take ‘fairness’ in this context to be a placeholder for a variety of normative egalitarian considerations. We (...) explore a few fairness measures to suss out their egalitarian roots and evaluate them, both as formalizations of egalitarian ideas and as assertions of what fairness demands of predictive systems. We pay special attention to a recent and popular fairness measure, counterfactual fairness, which holds that a prediction about an individual is fair if it is the same in the actual world and any counterfactual world where the individual belongs to a different demographic group (cf. Kusner et al. (2018)). (shrink)

Present-day thought on the notion of species is troubled by a mistaken understanding of the nature of the issue: while the species problem is commonly understood as concerning the epistemology and ontology of one single scientific concept, I argue that in fact there are multiple distinct concepts at stake. An approach to the species problem is presented that interprets the term ‘species’ as the placeholder for four distinct scientific concepts, each having its own role in biological theory, and an explanation (...) is given of the concepts involved. To illustrate how these concepts are commonly conflated, two widely accepted ideas on species are criticized: species individualism and species pluralism. I argue that by failing to distinguish between the four concepts and their particular roles in contemporary biological theory, these ideas stand in the way of a final resolution of the species problem. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of biology has attempted to clarify and defend the use of the biodiversity concept in conservation science. I argue against these views, and give reasons to think that the biodiversity concept is a poor fit for the role we want it to play in conservation biology on both empirical and conceptual grounds. Against pluralists, who hold that biodiversity consists of distinct but correlated properties of natural systems, I argue that the supposed correlations between these properties (...) are not tight enough to warrant treating and measuring them as a bundle. I additionally argue that deflationary theories of biodiversity don’t go far enough, since a large proportion of what we value in the environment falls outside bounds of what could reasonably be called “diversity”. I suggest that in current scientific practice biodiversity is generally an unnecessary placeholder for biological value of all sorts, and that we are better off eliminating it from conservation biology, or at least drastically reducing its role. (shrink)

The present studies investigated children’s and adults’ intuitive beliefs about the physical nature of essences. Adults and children (ranging in age from 6 to 10 years old) were asked to reason about two different ways of determining an unknown object’s category: taking a tiny internal sample from any part of the object (distributed view of essence), or taking a sample from one specific region (localized view of essence). Results from three studies indicated that adults strongly endorsed the distributed view, and (...) children showed a developmental shift from a localized to distributed view with increasing age. These results suggest that even children go beyond mere placeholder notions of essence, committing to conceptual frameworks of how essences might be physically instantiated. (shrink)

It is frequently claimed that breeding animals that we know will have unavoidable health problems is at least prima facie wrong, because it harms the animals concerned. However, if we take ‘harm’ to mean ‘makes worse off’, this claim appears false. Breeding an animal that will have unavoidable health problems does not make any particular individual animal worse off, since an animal bred without such problems would be a different individual animal. Yet, the intuition that there is something ethically wrong (...) about breeding animals—such as purebred pedigree dogs—in ways that seem negatively to affect welfare remains powerful. In this paper, an animal version of what is sometimes called the non-identity problem is explored, along with a number of possible ways of understanding what might be wrong with such breeding practices, if it is not that they harm the animal itself. These possibilities include harms to others, placeholder arguments, non-comparative ideas of harm, an ‘impersonal’ approach, and concerns about human attitudes and dispositions. (shrink)

Bricks and boxes -- Between Scylla and Charybdis -- Lessons from the history of science -- Placeholders -- Black-boxing 101 -- History of science 'black-boxing style' -- Diet mechanistic philosophy -- Emergence reframed -- The fuel of scientific progress -- Sailing through the strait.

This article focuses on how young children acquire concepts for exact, cardinal numbers. I believe that exact numbers are a conceptual structure that was invented by people, and that most children acquire gradually, over a period of months or years during early childhood. This article reviews studies that explore children’s number knowledge at various points during this acquisition process. Most of these studies were done in my own lab, and assume the theoretical framework proposed by Carey. In this framework, the (...) counting list and the counting routine form a placeholder structure. Over time, the placeholder structure is gradually filled in with meaning to become a conceptual structure that allows the child to represent exact numbers A number system is a socially shared, structured set of symbols that pose a learning challenge for children. But once children have acquired a number system, it allows them to represent information that they had no way of representing before. (shrink)

This paper argues that questions have an important role to to play in logic, both semantically and proof-theoretically. Semantically, we show that by generalizing the classical notion of entailment to questions, we can capture not only the standard relation of logical consequence, which holds between pieces of information, but also the relation of logical dependency, which holds between information types. Proof-theoretically, we show that questions may be used in inferences as placeholders for arbitrary information of a given type; by (...) manipulating such placeholders, we may construct formal proofs of dependencies. Finally, we show that such proofs have a specific kind of constructive content: they do not just witness the existence of a certain dependency, but actually encode a method for transforming information of the types described by the assumptions into information of the type described by the conclusion. (shrink)

Recent scholarship emphasizes the scaffolding role of language for cognition. Language, it is claimed, is a cognition-enhancing niche (Clark, 2006), a programming tool for cognition (Lupyan and Bergen, 2016), even a neuroenhancement (Dove, 2019), and augments cognitive functions such as memory, categorization, cognitive control as well as meta-cognitive abilities (‘thinking about thinking’). Yet the notion that language enhances or augments cognition does not fit in with embodied approaches to language processing, or so we will argue. Accounts aiming to explain how (...) language enhances various cognitive functions often employ a notion of abstract representation. Yet embodied approaches to language processing have it that language processing crucially, according to some accounts even exclusively, involves embodied, modality-specific, i.e. non-abstract representations. In coming to understand a particular phrase or sentence, a prior experience has to be simulated or reenacted. The representation thus activated is embodied (modality-specific) as sensorimotor regions of the brain are thereby recruited. In the paper, we will first discuss the notion of representation, clarify what it takes for a representation to be embodied or abstract respectively, and distinguish between conceptual and (other) linguistic representations. We will then put forward a characterization of cognitive control and examine its representational infrastructure. The remainder of the paper will be devoted to arguing that language augments cognitive control. To that end, we will draw on two lines of research, which investigate how language augments cognitive control: i. research on the availability of linguistic labels, and ii. research on the active usage of a linguistic code, specifically in inner speech. Eventually, we will argue that the cognition-enhancing capacity of language can be explained once we assume that it provides us with a. abstract, non-embodied representations, and with b. abstract, sparse linguistic representations that may serve as easy-to-manipulate placeholders for fully embodied or otherwise more detailed representations. (shrink)

Mesoscale modeling is often considered merely as a practical strategy used when information on lower-scale details is lacking, or when there is a need to make models cognitively or computationally tractable. Without dismissing the importance of practical constraints for modeling choices, we argue that mesoscale models should not just be considered as abbreviations or placeholders for more “complete” models. Because many systems exhibit different behaviors at various spatial and temporal scales, bottom-up approaches are almost always doomed to fail. Mesoscale (...) models capture aspects of multi-scale systems that cannot be parameterized by simple averaging of lower-scale details. To understand the behavior of multi-scale systems, it is essential to identify mesoscale parameters that “code for” lower-scale details in a way that relate phenomena intermediate between microscopic and macroscopic features. We illustrate this point using examples of modeling of multi-scale systems in materials science and biology, where identification of material parameters such as stiffness or strain is a central step. The examples illustrate important aspects of a so-called “middle-out” modeling strategy. Rather than attempting to model the system bottom-up, one starts at intermediate scales where systems exhibit behaviors distinct from those at the atomic and continuum scales. One then seeks to upscale and downscale to gain a more complete understanding of the multi-scale system. The cases highlight how parameterization of lower-scale details not only enables tractable modeling but is also central to understanding functional and organizational features of multi-scale systems. (shrink)

Some experimental studies have recently claimed to undermine semantic externalism about natural kind terms. However, it is unclear how philosophical accounts of reference can be experimentally tested. We present two externalistic adaptations of psychological placeholder essentialism, a strict externalist and a hybrid externalist view, which are experimentally testable. We examine Braisby, Franks, and Hampton's (1996) study which claims to undermine externalism, and argue that the study fails in its aims. We conducted two experiments, the results of which undermine internalism and (...) the hybrid theory, and support strict externalism. Our conclusion is that lay speakers' natural kind concepts involve a belief in an external category essence, which determines reference. (shrink)

This article develops an intuitive idea of proportionality as a placeholder for a substantive conception of equality, and contrasts it with Ripstein’s ideas, as presented in an annual guest lecture to the Society of Applied Philosophy in 2016. It uses a discussion of racial profiling to illustrate the conceptual and normative differences between the two. The brief conclusion spells out my concern that talk of ‘proportionality’, though often helpful and, sometimes, necessary for moral reasoning, can end up concealing, rather than (...) illuminating, people’s claims to be treated as equals. (shrink)

Disease transmission is a fruitful domain in which to examine how scientific and folk theories interrelate, given laypeople’s access to multiple sources of information to explain events of personal significance. The current paper reports an in-depth survey of U.S. adults’ causal reasoning about two viral illnesses: a novel, deadly disease that has massively disrupted everyone’s lives, and a familiar, innocuous disease that has essentially no serious consequences. Participants received a series of closed-ended and open-ended questions probing their reasoning about disease (...) transmission, with a focus on causal mechanisms underlying disease contraction, transmission, treatment, and prevention; non-visible biological processes; and ontological frameworks regarding what kinds of entities viruses are. We also assessed participants’ attitudes, such as their trust in scientific experts and willingness to be vaccinated. Results indicated complexity in people’s reasoning, consistent with the co-existence of multiple explanatory frameworks. An understanding of viral transmission and viral replication existed alongside folk theories, placeholder beliefs, and lack of differentiation between viral and non-viral disease. For example, roughly 40% of participants who explained illness in terms of the transmission of viruses also endorsed a non-viral folk theory, such as exposure to cold weather or special foods as curative. Additionally, participants made use of competing modes of construal when explaining how viruses operate, such as framing the immune system response as cells trying to fight off the virus. Indeed, participants who displayed greater knowledge about viral transmission were significantly more likely to anthropomorphize bodily processes. Although comparisons of COVID-19 and the common cold revealed relatively few differences, the latter, more familiar disease elicited consistently lower levels of accuracy and greater reliance on folk theories. Moreover, for COVID-19 in particular, accuracy positively correlated with attitudes, self-protective behaviors, and willingness to be vaccinated. For both diseases, self-assessed knowledge about the disease negatively predicted accuracy. The results are discussed in relation to challenges for formal models of explanatory reasoning. (shrink)

In §21 of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik asks us to consider the forms: a a2 = 4 and a a > 0 and notices that they can be obtained from a φ(a) by replacing the function-name placeholder φ(ξ) by names for the functions ξ2 = 4 and ξ > 0 (and the placeholder cannot be replaced by names of objects or of functions of 2 arguments).

In this paper Johan Dahlbeck sets out to propose a pedagogy of “as if,” seeking to address the educational paradox of how students can be influenced to approximate a life guided by reason without assuming that they are already sufficiently rational to adhere to dictates of practical reason. He does so by outlining a fictionalist account, drawing primarily on Hans Vaihinger's systematic treatment of heuristic fictions and on Spinoza's ideas about how passive affects can be made to strengthen reason. Dahlbeck (...) suggests that such an account can help us overcome the problem of assuming that reason needs to be enlisted as an instrument in the educational endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason. The reason this is so is that fictions can use passive affects that are prosocial and that thereby strengthen the sense of community necessary for laying a cooperative foundation for successful joint striving. Dahlbeck suggests further that exemplary teachers are crucial to this endeavor insofar as they can offer educational fictions as imaginative and temporary placeholders for the truth, allowing students to act “as if” they were already guided by reason. (shrink)

The aim of my contribution is to outline three points of overlap between Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Durkheim’s sociology of morality in their respective views on social ethics: I will start by characterizing their shared conviction that the foundation of any form of morality cannot be found in some abstract principles but in actually existing, institutionalized normative rules that inform us about our role-obligations. In the second step I will show that Hegel and Durkheim also share the social-theoretical conviction (...) that we should differentiate modern societies into three different spheres all entailing different sorts of role-obligations; a part of this step will also specifically deal with the question of how both thinkers conceive of the problems raised by the modern, capitalist market economy. In the third part of my contribution I will consider the question of whether we find in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right a placeholder for what Durkheim refers to as a kind of cosmopolitan ethics, a standpoint beyond the role-obligations connected to membership in individual states. In my conclusion I will raise the question of the relevance of Hegel’s and Durkheim’s shared views on the basis for social ethics for contemporary discussions in political and social philosophy. (shrink)

This article investigates how the turn to affect within the humanities and social sciences re-imagines the relationship between cultural theory and science. We focus on how the writings of two neuroscientists (Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux) and one developmental psychologist (Daniel Stern) are used in order to ground certain claims about affect within cultural theory. We examine the motifs at play in cultural theories of affect, the models of (neuro)biology with which they work, and some fascinating missteps characterizing the taking (...) up of scientific literature. While neuroscience frames the affective as part of a system of regulation that makes both self and social coherence possible, in cultural theory’s narratives, by contrast, affectivity becomes a placeholder for the inherent dynamism and mutability of matter. The article interrogates the consequences of cultural theory’s strange borrowings from neuroscience and developmental psychology in their institution of a model of subjectivity preoccupied with a lived present in excess of the hold of habit and embodied history. (shrink)

Morality in context is a timely topic. A debate between philosophers and social scientists is a good way to approach it. Why is there such a booming interest in morality and why does it focus on context? One starting point is the change in the sociostructural and sociocultural conditions of modern societies. This involves change in the empirical conditions of moral action and in the social demand on morality. As these changes are accounted for and analyzed in the social sciences, (...) new perspectives emerge that give rise to new ways of framing issues and problems. These problems are best addressed by way of cooperation between philosophers and social scientists. As Habermas (1990) has pointed out in a much cited paper, philosophers depend on social science to fill in the data they require to answer the questions raised by philosophy in its "placeholder" function. The reverse also holds true: Social science needs the conceptual clarifications that philosophy can provide. With respect to morality, such mutual interchanges are of particular importance the contributions to this book show convincingly. (shrink)

Aquinas’s Five Ways are not to be understood as demonstrative proofs, successful or not, for the existence of God. Rather, they provide a necessary step towards supplying licensable surrogates for the essential predications that cannot logically be drawn from the incomprehensible nature of God, yet would seem needed for the Summa’s declared genre of argued theology. (Predication secundum analogiam provides surrogates for non-relational accidental predications, likewise unavailable.) What Aquinas is proving in arguing deum esse in ST I.2.3 is not God’s (...) actual existence (see ST I.3.4 ad 2) but an alternative interpretation of “God’s being something” where “God is something” is a placeholder for, say, “God is prime mover” or, more explicitly, for such (necessary) identities as “The prime mover is the necessitated necessitator,” an identity whose necessity depends at more than one place on the assumption of God’s existence from faith, not on demonstrative proof of God’s existence. (shrink)

This article examines four medieval views on the subject of theology. Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, John Duns Scotus, and Peter Auriol were all confronted with an idea based on Aristotle’s theory of knowledge according to which any scientific discipline is unified by its proper subject. In defining this subject of theology, however, the theologians had to confront one thorny problem: God, whom they considered to be the subject of theology, cannot be grasped by any concept accessible to the human (...) mind. In their respective discussions, two distinct strategies to solving this puzzle emerged. Aquinas and Giles, on the one hand, argued for a concept proportionate to human cognition. This concept or ratio functioned as a placeholder for the quidditative concept of God. Scotus and Auriol, on the other hand, elaborated on a concept which they believed grasped God’s quiddity, albeit in a somewhat approximative way. Their theories, therefore, figure as attempts to find a concept, that is, the concept of being, that in itself was as boundless as to grasp God’s immensity. (shrink)

This paper argues that the DSM diagnostic category 'major depression' is so permissive that it fails to distinguish the phenomenology of depression from a general 'feeling of being ill' that is associated with a range of somatic illnesses. We start by emphasizing that altered bodily experience is a conspicuous and commonplace symptom of depression. We add that the experience of somatic illness is not exclusively bodily; it can involve more pervasive experiential changes that are not dissimilar to those associated with (...) depression. Then we consider some recent work on inflammation and depression, which suggests that the experience of depression and the 'feeling of being ill' are, in some cases at least, much the same . However, we add that the phenomenology of depression is heterogeneous and that many cases involve additional or different symptoms. We conclude that 'major depression' is a placeholder for a range of different experiences, which are almost certainly aetiologically diverse too. (shrink)

The concept of imagination is notoriously ambiguous. Thus one must be cautious not to use ‘imagination’ as a placeholder for diverse phenomena and processes that perhaps have not much more in common than that they are difficult to assign to some other, better defined domain, such as perception, conceptual thought, or artistic production. However, this challenge also comes with great opportunities: the fecundity and openness of ‘imagination’ appeal to researchers from different disciplines with different approaches and questions, and it draws (...) together fields of enquiry that are initially considered far apart. Hence, arguably, the field of imagination is particularly poised for interdisciplinary enquiry. In the section on Imagination in Interdisciplinary Research, I will talk about some of the issues that have already entered that field of interdisciplinary inquiry. (shrink)

Some limitations of ‘category work’ in the history of psychiatry are illustrated via the example of attempts within US alienism and psychiatry since 1889 to identify psychosis and its prodromes. A slowly evolving acceptance of the need for specifiable biological disease concepts, distinct diagnostic categories and defined boundaries of the ‘before and after’ of psychosis among some elite physicians challenged widespread vernacular methods of diagnosis expressed as intuition, feelings or scent as well as local practices of creating novel placeholder terms (...) ‘as needed’ or using question marks to express liminality or confusion. When ‘error of diagnosis’ emerged as a concern circa 1909, the professional transformation of this ‘scientific self of subjectivity’ of the psychiatrist into a ‘scientific self of objectivity’ eventually resulted in the turn to numerical judgments based on rating scales for psychotic symptoms. However, rating scales do not ‘count’ anything at all and exist as instruments of liminality between subjective clinical opinion and the affection of objectivity that quantification symbolizes. (shrink)

Images have always stirred ambivalent reactions. Yet whether eliciting fascinated gazes or iconoclastic repulsion from their beholders, they have hardly ever been seen as true sources of knowledge. They were long viewed as mere appearances, placeholders for the things themselves or deceptive illusions. Today, the traditional critique of the spectacle has given way to an unconditional embrace of the visual. However, we still lack a persuasive theoretical account of how images work. -/- Emmanuel Alloa retraces the history of Western (...) attitudes toward the visual to propose a major rethinking of images as irreplaceable agents of our everyday engagement with the world. He examines how ideas of images and their powers have been constructed in Western humanities, art theory, and philosophy, developing a novel genealogy of both visual studies and the concept of the medium. Alloa reconstructs the earliest Western media theory—Aristotle’s concept of the diaphanous milieu of vision—and the significance of its subsequent erasure in the history of science. Ultimately, he argues for a historically informed phenomenology of images and visual media that explains why images are not simply referential depictions, windows onto the world. Instead, images constantly reactivate the power of appearing. As media of visualization, they allow things to appear that could not be visible except in and through these very material devices. (shrink)

The blind spot of philosophy: to live a life Age-old philosophical texts, from Plato to Montaigne or from Lao-tse to Rousseau, are still being read by many. What makes these texts so attractive and ‘contemporary’ today, other than scientific texts from long ago? Most of the time these texts do not address empirical or conceptual questions, but address the problem to understand ourselves as creatures that try to live a life. Academic philosophy has left this question more and more aside, (...) in an ongoing process of ‘scientification’, and concentrated more on conceptual and epistemological questions or on the reconstruction of the philosophical tradition. Yet, in the margins of academic philosophy, in neighboring fields of research and in the public sphere, we can discern examples of a philosophical practice that rephrases the classical philosophical question in a new manner. In this essay an attempt is made to draw the contours of this new practice of philosophy and the writings it produces. Starting with (among others) Nietzsche and Benjamin, and inspired by recent lectures by Norman Lear, a portrait is created of an author who operates somewhere on the borders between science and literature, as a placeholder – or more precise: as an ethnographer who, more than the average scholar, is closely involved with the object of his research, and who, more than the average novelist, addresses ‘the weird problem of having a life’ in a direct way, starting with the problematic and problematizing experiences of others. This philosophical attitude comes close to what Michel Foucault called ‘an ontology of the present’ that writes about the question of who or what we are here and now from a ironical involvement with everyday problematizations of our cultural, political or personal identity. The essay ends with some concrete examples of this philosophical practice and with some suggestions for a philosophical institute in which such a practice could be a central concern. (shrink)

Recently, Ernest Sosa (2007) has proposed two novel solutions to the problem of dream skepticism. In the present paper, I argue that Sosa’s first solution falls prey to what I will refer to as the conditionality problem, i.e., the problem of only establishing a conditional—in this case, if x, then I am awake, x being a placeholder for a condition incompatible with dreaming—in a context where it also needs to be established that we can know that the antecedent holds, and (...) as such can infer the consequent, i.e., I am awake. Sosa’s second solution, in terms of so-called reflective knowledge, is shown to land him in the dilemma of either facing yet another conditionality problem, or violating an internalist constraint that he explicitly grants the skeptic with respect to what kind of factors can be legitimately invoked in our account of how we may know the relevant antecedent. For these reasons, I conclude that Sosa has not solved the problem of dream skepticism. (shrink)

“The contemporary” is a phrase in frequent use in artworld discourse as a placeholder term for broader, world-picturing concepts such as “the contemporary condition” or “contemporaneity”. Brief references to key texts by philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, and Peter Osborne often tend to suffice as indicating the outer limits of theoretical discussion. In an attempt to add some depth to the discourse, this paper outlines my approach to these questions, then explores in some detail what these three theorists (...) have had to say in recent years about contemporaneity in general and contemporary art in particular, and about the links between both. It also examines key essays by Jean-Luc Nancy, Néstor García Canclini, as well as the artist-theorist Jean-Phillipe Antoine, each of whom have contributed significantly to these debates. The analysis moves from Agamben’s poetic evocation of “contemporariness” as a Nietzschean experience of “untimeliness” in relation to one’s times, through Nancy’s emphasis on art’s constant recursion to its origins, Rancière’s attribution of dissensus to the current regime of art, Osborne’s insistence on contemporary art’s “post-conceptual” character, to Canclini’s preference for a “post-autonomous” art, which captures the world at the point of its coming into being. I conclude by echoing Antoine’s call for artists and others to think historically, to “knit together a specific variety of times”, a task that is especially pressing when presentist immanence strives to encompasses everything. (shrink)

The Greek philosopher Protagoras, in the opening words of his lost book _Truth_, famously asserted, “Man is the measure of all things.” This contention—that humanity cannot know the world except by means of human aptitudes and abilities—has endured through the centuries in the work of diverse writers. In this bold and creative new investigation into the philosophical and intellectual parameters of the question of the animal, Tom Tyler explores a curious fact: in arguing or assuming that knowledge is characteristically human, (...) thinkers have time and again employed animals as examples, metaphors, and fables. From Heidegger’s lizard and Popper’s bees to Saussure’s ox and Freud’s wolves, Tyler points out, “we find a multitude of brutes and beasts crowding into the texts to which they are supposedly unwelcome.” Inspired by the medieval bestiaries, Tyler’s book features an assortment of “wild animals” —both real and imaginary—who appear in the works of philosophy as mere _ciferae_, or ciphers; each is there deployed as a placeholder, of no importance or worth in their own right. Examining the work of such figures as Bataille, Moore, Nietzsche, Kant, Whorf, Darwin, and Derrida, among others, Tyler identifies four ways in which these animals have been used and abused: as interchangeable ciphers; as instances of generalized animality; as anthropomorphic caricatures; and as repetitive stereotypes. Looking closer, however, he finds that these unruly beasts persistently and mischievously question the humanist assumptions of their would-be employers. Tyler ultimately challenges claims of human distinctiveness and superiority, which are so often represented by the supposedly unique and perfect human hand. Contrary to these claims, he contends that the hand is, in fact, a primitive organ, and one shared by many different creatures, thereby undercutting one of the foundations of anthropocentricism and opening up the possibility of nonhuman, or more-than-human, knowledge. (shrink)

Material things have material (spatial) parts. Acts, events, occurrences, have phases, which we can view as their temporal parts. Spatial surfaces and volumes, stretches of time, they all have parts again; they can all be considered "extended". Entities, on the other hand, such as directions, numbers, temperatures, colors, tones, fictional characters, prices, numbers, values, ideologies, goals, are all unextended; they are partless. Let us call such non-extended objects “nodes”, in order to express the fact that we have a tendency to (...) grasp them as pure correlates of our thinking, often at the same time viewing them effectively as placeholders within systems of coordinates in various intellectual and social domains. My aim, here, is to clarify this rough idea of “node” for the purpose of providing a corresponding clarification of Ingarden's idea of a purely intentional object. I first consider purely intentional objects in general, and then focus in particular on fictional examples. (shrink)