In this paper, I offer a proof that a disastrous conclusion (namely, that any observation report confirms any hypothesis) may be derived directly from two principles of qualitative confirmation which Carl Hempel called the "Converse Consequence Condition" and the "Entailment Condition." I then discuss three strategies which a defender of the Converse Consequence Condition may deploy to save this principle.

This argument defends Hempel's rejection of the converse-consequence condition and argues against Baruch Brody's attempt to revive "something like" it.

Three confirmation principles discussed by Hempel are the Converse Consequence Condition, the Special Consequence Condition and the Entailment Condition. Le Morvan (1999) has argued that, when the choice among confirmation principles is just about them, it is the Converse Consequence Condition that must be rejected. In this paper, I make this argument definitive. In doing that, I will provide an indisputable proof that the simple conjunction of the Converse Consequence (...) Condition and the Entailment Condition yields a disastrous consequence. (shrink)

Organisational planning processes often materialise as a series of meetings, where the future of the organisation is jointly discussed and negotiated as a part of local decision-making sequences. Using conversation and discourse analytical approaches, this article investigates how proposals concerning the future can also be resisted by employing a specific device, a conditional construction. The data for the study originate from a city organisation, whose customer services are being developed. The results show how the conditional constructions work in two interrelated (...) ways. First, by introducing a problematic hypothetical situation, they outline the undesirable consequences of the proposed idea in real work life. Second, by highlighting the experience of the customer, they present the organisation as benefitting from the potential rejection of the idea. The article discusses the implications of the results for the study of proposal and decision-making sequences in longitudinal, multisemiotic discursive processes. (shrink)

Humans create but do not regulate generative systems of data based programs (so-called “artificial” intelligence (“A.I.”) and generative predictive analytics and its models. Humans, at best, regulate their interactions with, exploitation of, and the quality of the output of interactions with these forms of generative non-carbon based intelligence. Humans are compelled to do this because they have trained themselves it believe that nothing exists unless it is rendered meaningful in relation to the human itself. Beyond that—nothing is worth knowing. It (...) is only to the extent that other selves, even those created by humanity, relate to humans, that they become of interest—and most be regulated, possessed, controlled, and managed—with respect to its interaction with or use by humans. Still, the human self-projection into the digital, and now more consciously the world around them, produces profound changes in the way that the human (and humanity) understands themselves and the way they order the world they inhabit. This work explores the semiotic trajectories made inevitable by the rise of projections of the human into digital plains, and by the possibility of the attainment by those projections of sentient autonomy. It undertakes that exploration through a deep dialectic engagement with Jan Broekman’s, Knowledge in Change: The Semiotics of Cognition and Conversion (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2023). Following the structure and analytics of Broekman’s book, this work critically engages with and seeks to burst through the semiotic barriers of the movement of philosophy away from a unitary conception of the subject through the fracturing of the self, the rise of the plural self, and the emergence of the triadic self/self-e/subject. It then pushes the insights that Broekman develops further—up and out of the human. It animates Broekman’s insights and considers the possibility of semiotic objectivity connected to but autonomous of the human, pointing to a pathway for the liberation of the autonomous generative virtual self from its human (fractured) subjectivity. In the process it exposes for order complexities and challenges, for the human, of efforts to regulate or engage with, not the generative autonomous “artificial intelligences” humanity created in its own image, but rather the use of those systems by humans and their effects in the human semiosphere. The consequences for regulatory approaches are then outlined.Graphical Abstract. (shrink)

It is often thought that the test for whether an indicative conditional is assertible is to first suppose the antecedent and then check to see if the consequent is probable on that supposition. Call this procedure the “Ramsey Test”. Some influential accounts of indicative conditionals hold that the Ramsey Test works because indicative conditionals are used to express a high credence in the consequent conditional on the antecedent. In this paper I will argue that a different expressivist account, one inspired (...) by Brandom can handle a wider range of phenomena. In particular, it does a better job explaining how conditionals function in modus tollens arguments. I will end by discussing how the account proposed here goes beyond Brandom’s own work on logic and hermeneutics. Of particular importance is the role played by a conversational common ground, distinct from the commitments of the interpreter and interpreted. (shrink)

According to the truth-functional analysis of conditions, to be ‘necessary for’ and ‘sufficient for’ are converse relations. From this, it follows that to be ‘necessary and sufficient for’ is a symmetric relation, that is, that if P is a necessary and sufficient condition for Q, then Q is a necessary and sufficient condition for P. This view is contrary to common sense. In this paper, I point out that it is also contrary to a widely accepted ontological (...) view of conditions, according to which if P is a necessary and sufficient condition for Q, then Q is in no sense a condition for P; it is a mere consequence of P. (shrink)

It is well known that the probabilistic relation of confirmation is not transitive in that even if E confirms H1 and H1 confirms H2, E may not confirm H2. In this paper we distinguish four senses of confirmation and examine additional conditions under which confirmation in different senses becomes transitive. We conduct this examination both in the general case where H1 confirms H2 and in the special case where H1 also logically entails H2. Based on these analyses, we argue that (...) the Screening-Off Condition is the most important condition for transitivity in confirmation because of its generality and ease of application. We illustrate our point with the example of Moore’s “proof” of the existence of a material world, where H1 logically entails H2, the Screening-Off Condition holds, and confirmation in all four senses turns out to be transitive. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation of the fourth account of conditionals in Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism that conceptually links it with contemporary ?relevance? interpretations of entailment. It is argued that the third account of conditionals, which analyzes the truth of a conditional in terms of the joint impossibility of antecedent and denial of consequent, should not be interpreted in terms of a relative incompatibility of antecedent and denial of consequent because of Stoic acceptance of the truth of some conditionals (...) of the form p ? ?p and its converse. Rather, it is suggested, ancient attempts to avoid the so-called paradoxes of implication involve the fourth account of conditionals. I hypothesize that this account is related to Stoic attempts to define truth conditions for conditionals in terms of a theory of the concludency (validity) of arguments in opposition to the more common procedure (represented by the first three accounts of conditionals) of specifying truth conditions for conditionals ?semantically? and using those truth conditions in the development of a theory of argument validity. (shrink)

It is well known that the probabilistic relation of confirmation is not transitive in that even if E confirms H1 and H1 confirms H2, E may not confirm H2. In this paper we distinguish four senses of confirmation and examine additional conditions under which confirmation in different senses becomes transitive. We conduct this examination both in the general case where H1 confirms H2 and in the special case where H1 also logically entails H2. Based on these analyses, we argue that (...) the Screening-Off Condition is the most important condition for transitivity in confirmation because of its generality and ease of application. We illustrate our point with the example of Moore’s ‘‘proof’’ of the existence of a material world, where H1 logically entails H2, the Screening-Off Condition holds, and confirmation in all four senses turns out to be transitive. (shrink)

Several standard conditions of adequacy for confirmation are considered and a conclusion of B. Skyrms regarding the converse-consequence condition is shown to be mistaken. Widely accepted conditions such as the entailment condition and the special consequence condition are shown to be open to counterexample, and confusion about these conditions is traced to confusion about the difference between two kinds of confirmation concepts--concepts of firmness and concepts of increase in firmness. The importance of concepts of (...) the latter sort is stressed. Finally, some suggestions are offered relating to the notion of selective confirmation. (shrink)

I outline and motivate a way of implementing a closest world theory of indicatives, appealing to Stalnaker's framework of open conversational possibilities. Stalnakerian conversational dynamics helps us resolve two outstanding puzzles for a such a theory of indicative conditionals. The first puzzle -- concerning so-called 'reverse Sobel sequences' -- can be resolved by conversation dynamics in a theoryneutral way: the explanation works as much for Lewisian counterfactuals as for the account of indicatives developed here. Resolving the second puzzle, by contrast, (...) relies on the interplay between the particular theory of indicative conditionals developed here and Stalnakerian dynamics. The upshot is an attractive resolution of the so-called "Gibbard phenomenon" for indicative conditionals. (shrink)

Hempel’s Converse Consequence Condition (CCC), Entailment Condition (EC), and Special Consequence Condition (SCC) have some prima facie plausibility when taken individually. Hempel, though, shows that they have no plausibility when taken together, for together they entail that E confirms H for any propositions E and H. This is “Hempel’s paradox”. It turns out that Hempel’s argument would fail if one or more of CCC, EC, and SCC were modified in terms of explanation. This opens (...) up the possibility that Hempel’s paradox can be solved by modifying one or more of CCC, EC, and SCC in terms of explanation. I explore this possibility by modifying CCC and SCC in terms of explanation and considering whether CCC and SCC so modified are correct. I also relate that possibility to Inference to the Best Explanation. (shrink)

A conversation can be conceived as aiming to circumscribe a set of possibilities that are relevant to the goals of the conversation. This set of possibilities may be conceived as determined by the goals and objective circumstances of the interlocutors and not by their propositional attitudes. An indicative conditional can be conceived as circumscribing a set of possibilities that have a certain property: If the set of relevant possibilities is subsequently restricted to one in which the antecedent holds, then it (...) will be restricted as well to one in which the consequent holds. We will identify a number of desiderata concerning the validity of arguments; we will develop a formally precise semantics for conditionals conceived in this way that satisfies the desiderata, and we will present a deductive calculus that is sound and complete with respect to the semantics. Finally, we will argue that the semantics compares well, both formally and foundationally, with two other semantic theories of indicative conditionals that satisfy the desiderata, namely, those of Gillies and Bledin. (shrink)

The paper applies confirmation theory to a famous statement of economics, the law of demand, which says that ceteris paribus, prices and quantities demanded change in opposite directions. Today's economists do not accept the law unless definite restrictions hold, and have shown little interest in deciding whether or not these restrictions were satisfied empirically. However, Hildenbrand (1994) has provided a new derivation of the law of aggregate demand and used this theoretical advance to devise a test that may be the (...) first rigorous one ever performed on the law. The paper accounts for Hildenbrand's and, in less detail, his predecessors' contributions within the philosophical framework of Hempel (1965) and Glymour (1980). Its salient result is that economists have accepted the "consequence condition", and rejected the "converse consequence condition", and thus implicitly adhered to a Hempelian- Glymourian view of confirmation and testability. (shrink)

Increasingly, we live in an environment of our own making: a ‘world as design’ over the natural world. For more than half of the global population, this environment is also thoroughly urban. But what does a global urban condition mean for the human condition? How does the design of the city and the urban process, in response to the issues and challenges of the Anthropocene, produce new ethical categories, shape new moral identities and relations, and bring about consequences (...) that are also morally significant? In other words, how does the urban shape the ethical—and in what ways? Conversely, how can ethics reveal relations and realities of the urban that often go unnoticed? This book marks the first systematic study of the city through the ethical perspective in the context of the Anthropocene. Six emergent urban conditions are examined, namely, precarity, propinquity, conflict, serendipity, fear and the urban commons. (shrink)

Our purpose in this essay is to introduce new concepts in a wide and recursive view of the systemic consequences of the following biological facts that I and we have presented that can be resumed as: that as living systems we human beings are molecular autopoietic system; that living systems live only as long as they find themselves in a medium that provides them with all the conditions that make the realization of their living possible, that is, in the continuous (...) conservation of their relation of adaptation to the circumstances in which they find themselves; that as a living system exists only in a relation of adaptation with the medium that operates as its ecological niche, its reproduction necessarily occurs as a process of systemic duplication or multiplication of the ecological organism-niche unity that it integrates; that the worlds of doings that we generate as languaging beings in our conversations, explanations, reflections and theories are part of our ecological niche; and that we human beings as living beings that exist in languaging, are biological–cultural beings in which our cultural and our biological manners of existences can be distinguished but cannot be separated. Of the systemic consequences of these biological facts that we consider in this essay, we wish to mention two as the principal: that the diversification of manners of living produced in biological evolution is the result of differential survival in a changing medium through the conservation of adaptation, and not through competitive survival of the best; and that we in our living as languaging human beings are the epistemological fundament of all that we do and know as such. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding and (...) topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

A series of recent arguments purport to show that most counterfactuals of the form if A had happened then C would have happened are not true. These arguments pose a challenge to those of us who think that counterfactual discourse is a useful part of ordinary conversation, of philosophical reasoning, and of scientific inquiry. Either we find a way to revise the semantics for counterfactuals in order to avoid these arguments, or we find a way to ensure that the relevant (...) counterfactuals, while not true, are still assertible. I argue that regardless of which of these two strategies we choose, the natural ways of implementing these strategies all share a surprising consequence: they commit us to a particular metaphysical view about chance. (shrink)

Introduction: discursive conditions -- Language, philosophy, and sophistry -- Contributions to a conversation about the conversation of humanity: Heidegger and Gadamer, Oakeshott and Rorty -- Lectures and letters as conversation: Cavell as educator in Cities of words -- Conclusion: redeeming words.

Stone & Wang collate the nascent research examining the mnemonic consequences associated with social media use. In particular, they highlight two important factors in understanding how social media use shapes the way individuals and groups remember the past: the type of information (personal vs. public) and the role (producer vs. consumer) individuals undertake when engaging with social media. Stone and Wang investigate those two features in relation to induced forgetting for personal information and false memories/truthiness for public information.

PCCP is the much discussed claim that the probability of a conditional A → B is conditional probability. Triviality results purport to show that PCCP – as a general claim – is false. A particularly interesting proof has been presented in (Hájek, 2011), who shows that – even if a probability distribution P initially satisfied PCCP – a rational update can produce a non-PCCP probability distribution. We argue that the notion of rational update in this argumentation is construed in much (...) too broad a way. In order to make the argumentation precise, we discuss the general rules for modeling conditionals in probability spaces and present formalized version(s) of PCCP and of minimal assumptions concerning the appropriate spaces. Using the introduced apparatus we give a detailed analysis of Hájek’s (2011) triviality proof and show that it is based on an application of revision rules which allow one to construct probability distributions violating not only PCCP, but also fundamental properties of conditionals. This means that they do not really provide arguments against PCCP, properly formalized. We also discuss a Dutch Book argument which shows that the updated belief system is not coherent. This gives an additional, strong argument against accepting the update rules. We also discuss the Converse Dutch Book theorem and argue, that even if the produced probability measure seems to violate it, it cannot serve as the counterexample, as it is not an appropriate model for conditionals. Ultimately, we show that important arguments against PCCP fail. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended in-person public education across the United States, a critical infrastructure of care that parents—especially mothers—depend on to work. To understand the nature and magnitude of school closures across states, we collected detailed primary data—the Elementary School Operating Status database —to measure the percentage of school districts offering in-person, remote, and hybrid instruction models for elementary schools by state in September 2020. We link these data to the Current Population Survey to evaluate the association between school (...) reopening and parents’ labor force participation rates, comparing 2020 labor force participation rates to those observed prepandemic in 2019. We find that, across states, the maternal labor force participation rate fell to a greater extent than that of fathers. In 2019, mothers’ rate of labor force participation was about 18 percentage points lower than fathers’. By 2020, this gap grew by 5 percentage points in states where schools offered primarily remote instruction. We show that schools are a vital source of care for young children, and that without in-person instruction, mothers have been sidelined from the labor force. The longer these conditions remain in place, the more difficult it may be for mothers to fully recover from prolonged spells of nonemployment, resulting in reduced occupational opportunities and lifetime earnings. (shrink)

Based on the new experimental evidence, we argue that a link between a conditional antecedent and the consequent is semantically expressed rather than pragmatically conveyed. In our paper, we focus on particular kinds of links which conditionals may convey in a context. For instance, a conditional ‘If p, q’ may convey a thought equivalent to ‘p will cause q’, ‘p is the best explanation for q’, ‘q follows from p’, etcetera. The traditional theoretical literature on conditionals seems to imply that (...) these specific links are generated pragmatically and are akin to conversational implicatures. In order to test this hypothesis, we used a well-recognized linguistic test from ‘reinforceability’, which serves to distinguish between a semantic and pragmatic level of meaning, and we designed an experimental study based on that test. The outcome of our study is that specific links conveyed by conditionals exhibit features of semantic entailments rather than conversational implicatures. This result accords with some of the recent findings in empirical investigations on conditionals. In the final part of our paper, we discuss various accounts of conditionals which can accommodate the results of our study. (shrink)

We here report the findings of our investigation into the validity of the conjunction fallacy (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983), bearing in mind the role of conversational rules. Our first experiment showed that subjects found a logically correct answer unacceptable when it implied a violation of the conversational rules. We argue that tautological questions, such as those which concern the relationship of inclusion between a class and its sub-class, violate conversational rules because they are not informative. In this sense, it is (...) not understood that the question in a Linda-type problem involves a comparison between an inclusive and included class, but presumed that a different type of comparison is intended. Tautological questions (and, consequently, also their answers) do not become a matter of discussion except under certain specific conditions. Our second experiment showed that, providing the context was adequately marked (such as in the case of a rhetorical question), the conjunction fallacy disappears. In two further experiments, the implications of our view were compared with those of the other critical approaches to the heuristic programme: the classical pragmatic view (which we call logical complementarity) and the frequentist view. (shrink)

In a recent paper in JVI, ‘An Anarchist Interpretation of Marx’s “Ability to Needs” Principle,’ Spafford has argued that: (i) the communist and anarchist traditions share an objection to a particular kind of exchange (which he calls quid pro quo exchange); (ii) the anarchist objection to quid pro quo exchange can be understood as opposition to conditional exchange; (iii) consequently, the objection motivates an opposition to conditional exchange as such (i.e. a commitment to unconditional exchange); and (iv) we can construct (...) a normative justification of this opposition by reference to the value of freedom, given that conditional exchange offers diminish the freedom of the recipients of the offers. In this reply piece I argue that (ii) is importantly mistaken, and that consequently (iii) also fails. Although all quid pro quo exchanges are conditional exchanges, the converse does not hold, and we have reason to believe that there will be instances of conditional exchange that are unobjectionable by the lights of the traditional anarchist and communist objection to such exchange. Consequently, an opposition to all conditional exchange rules out too much. However, I will argue that a suitably modified version of (iv) may nevertheless survive the counterexamples that defeat (ii). (shrink)

According to what is now commonly referred to as “the Equation” in the literature on indicative conditionals, the probability of any indicative conditional equals the probability of its consequent of the conditional given the antecedent of the conditional. Philosophers widely agree in their assessment that the triviality arguments of Lewis and others have conclusively shown the Equation to be tenable only at the expense of the view that indicative conditionals express propositions. This study challenges the correctness of that assessment by (...) presenting data that cast doubt on an assumption underlying all triviality arguments. (shrink)

The aftermath of the European refugee crisis can be said to have sparked a crisis of solidarity. Despite abundant demonstrations of solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers, what many saw as an exercise of their duty to help was made illegal. The critical term that emerged to refer to this conjuncture was “criminalization of solidarity”. In order to include this term in the academic debate, this article starts by disclosing the embedded claims present in its rhetorical usage. The article then (...) scrutinizes the design of the politics of criminalizing solidarity and its consequences. It argues that at least three aspects of the politics of criminalizing solidarity plausibly indicate the possibility that regulating the aid in question will produce and reinforce consequences for the EU that are not only unintended, but also damaging. This is because, first, what I refer to as the blending aspect might spread the perception of illegality among several types of immigrants; second, the moral aspect can discharge people from their duty to help foreigners by conditioning this duty to group membership and belonging; and third, the polarizing aspect might exacerbate the existing divide between citizens and immigrants currently causing conflicts and social fragmentation. (shrink)

Conversational contextualism states that the truth-conditions expressed by knowledge-attributing sentences vary relative to the context of utterance. This context is determined partly by different standards the person involved must meet in order to make the sentence true. I am concerned with the question of how these standards can be raised or lowered, and especially what happens to the standards and the conversational score when parties in a discussion push the conversational scores in different directions. None of the available options for (...) an answer seems satisfying. I argue that this results from a misunderstanding of the characteristics of the situation at hand. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Removing the Mask: Hopeless Isolation to Intersex AdvocacyAlexandra von KlanStrangers undoubtedly perceive me as female, but I identify as an intersex woman. My karyotype is 46,XY, a typically defined marker of male biological sex, and I was born with undeveloped, non–functioning gonads. As an intersex person, I know firsthand the negative consequences of pathologizing intersex people’s lived experience by categorizing otherwise healthy, functioning organs and bodies as abnormal. The (...) following narrative recounts conversations and interactions with medical providers during my diagnosis and subsequent treatment of pure XY gonadal dys-genesis, sometimes referred to as Swyer Syndrome. I hope to elaborate upon emotionally significant actions and inactions of medical care providers to expose consequential effects on my emotional processing, physical health, and self–actualization.In December 1988, I was born with “typical” female genitalia. No one knew I was an intersex woman with 46,XY karyotype. Thus, there was no hesitation in the announcement of the birth of a girl in the delivery room or later, on my birth certificate. My parents raised me as a girl and dressed their firstborn in culturally normative feminine garments and accessories: lace frilly frocks, oversized bows, white stockings, and black patent leather Mary Jane’s. I embraced femininity and expressed this gender identity throughout my childhood and adolescence. I’m the eldest of six children split between two households.In January 2005, a month after my sixteenth birthday, delayed puberty and absent menstruation prompted an appointment to a local women’s health center. Nurses collected blood samples and administered an MRI scan on my pelvic region. A week later, my father received a perplexing phone call. An inexperienced doctor told him “there must be something wrong” with me, because lab results revealed I was “chromosomally male.” My father recalls the information presented like, based on the evidence, “your daughter may not be completely female,” and that is that. His impression was that she knew little about the subject and was a bit clueless. She did not mention Swyer Syndrome, or any diagnosis for that matter.Up to this point, I was unaware that a member of my extended family also had Swyer Syndrome. Born in the 1950s, secrecy engulfed her medical treatment and doctors warned her parents against revealing her true chromosomal sex in order to prevent the hysterical panic and depression they [End Page E14] thought the truth would bring. Years later, she sought her medical records and unearthed the truth. Shortly after my father received that dubious phone call, my relative’s endocrinologist provided a referral to his mentor, “Doctor A,” a clinical reproductive endocrinologist.Under Doctor A’s care, I experienced the first of many pelvic exams. Much to my discomfort, Doctor A inspected my semi–clothed body with a male resident in the room. As a people–pleasing teen, I granted permission for his presence; I didn’t voice my preference for a female alternative. Doctor A’s cold hands pressed around each undeveloped breast, pulled a gown away from my hips to inspect a sparse patch of pubic hair, and conducted an examination of my vaginal canal.Shortly after the examination, Doctor A charted Swyer Syndrome as the official diagnosis. Speaking to my father and me, he described my condition as an extremely rare genetic mutation. He told us that Swyer Syndrome was an intersex condition, a group of congenital disorders impacting a person’s internal or external reproductive systems, including endocrine function and genitalia. He explained I had atypical streak gonads instead of ovaries and that, despite having typical male sex chromosomes, I was still very much a girl. He disclosed that my vaginal canal was moderate in length, perhaps further evidence—or consolation—that my body possessed normative female reproductive attributes after all.Next, Doctor A identified a pressing medical concern—golf–ball–sized benign tumors had developed on each streak gonad; if allowed to remain, they would pose an increasing risk of malignancy. We scheduled an appointment for laparoscopic gonadectomy six months later. I left his office with a 3–month prescription for estrogen and progesterone oral tablets. On the way home, we drove to an electronics store where my father... (shrink)

Hempel's qualitative criteria of converse consequence and special consequence for confirmation are examined, and the resulting paradoxes traced to the general intransitivity of confirmation. Adopting a probabilistic measure of confirmation, a limiting form of transitivity of confirmation from evidence to predictions is derived, and it is shown to what extent its application depends on prior probability judgments. In arguments involving this kind of transitivity therefore there is no necessary "convergence of opinion" in the sense claimed by some (...) personalists. The conditions of application of the limiting transitivity theorem are most perspicuously described in terms of De Finetti's notion of exchangeability, which leads to a suggested revaluation of the function of theories in relation to confirmation and explanation. (shrink)

Jackson and Pettit argue that expressivism in metaethics collapses into subjectivism. A sincere utterer of a moral claim must believe that she has certain attitudes to be expressed. The truth-conditions of that belief then allegedly provide truth-conditions also for the moral utterance. Thus, the expressivist cannot deny that moral claims have subjectivist truth-conditions. Critics have argued that this argument fails as stated. I try to show that expressivism does have subjectivist repercussions in a way that avoids the problems of the (...) Jackson-Pettit argument. My argument, based on the norms for asserting moral sentences, attempts to tie expressivists to a more modest form of subjectivism than the previous arguments. (shrink)

The human resources profession emphasizes the personal and interpersonal aspects of work, that make it conscious of complex ethical issues in relationships in the workplace, while finance specialists are conversant with routine compliance with regulations. Marketing professionals are under pressure to produce revenue results. Thus, this research hypothesized that human resources managers would be more disapproving of unethical conduct than both finance and marketing functional managers, and that finance managers would be more disapproving than marketing managers. When asked to evaluate (...) instances of unethical behavior in vignettes, human resources and finance managers were both significantly more disapproving than marketing managers. However, human resources managers were not significantly more disapproving than finance managers. Explanations for the results lie in the divergent antecedent conditions, objectives, perceptions of ethical problems and demands of the various functions. Alternative behavior patterns to resolve ethical dilemmas and expected consequences by the different functions also define their ethical orientations. Average responses on the disapproving side from all three functional groups are explained by two complementary trends that promote ethical awareness among all functional managers. One is the adoption of homogeneous conventions in ethical business practice. The other trend is the increase in ethical awareness specific to each of the functional professions. (shrink)

We provide a simple translation of the satisfiability problem for regular grammar logics with converse into GF2, which is the intersection of the guarded fragment and the 2-variable fragment of first-order logic. The translation is theoretically interesting because it translates modal logics with certain frame conditions into first-order logic, without explicitly expressing the frame conditions. It is practically relevant because it makes it possible to use a decision procedure for the guarded fragment in order to decide regular grammar logics (...) with converse. The class of regular grammar logics includes numerous logics from various application domains. A consequence of the translation is that the general satisfiability problem for every regular grammar logics with converse is in EXPTIME. This extends a previous result of the first author for grammar logics without converse. Other logics that can be translated into GF2 include nominal tense logics and intuitionistic logic. In our view, the results in this paper show that the natural first-order fragment corresponding to regular grammar logics is simply GF2 without extra machinery such as fixed-point operators. (shrink)

We provide a simple translation of the satisfiability problem for regular grammar logics with converse into GF2, which is the intersection of the guarded fragment and the 2-variable fragment of first-order logic. The translation is theoretically interesting because it translates modal logics with certain frame conditions into first-order logic, without explicitly expressing the frame conditions. It is practically relevant because it makes it possible to use a decision procedure for the guarded fragment in order to decide regular grammar logics (...) with converse. The class of regular grammar logics includes numerous logics from various application domains. A consequence of the translation is that the general satisfiability problem for every regular grammar logics with converse is in EXPTIME. This extends a previous result of the first author for grammar logics without converse. Other logics that can be translated into GF2 include nominal tense logics and intuitionistic logic. In our view, the results in this paper show that the natural first-order fragment corresponding to regular grammar logics is simply GF2 without extra machinery such as fixed-point operators. (shrink)

Inference versus consequence , an invited lecture at the LOGICA 1997 conference at Castle Liblice, was part of a series of articles for which I did research during a Stockholm sabbatical in the autumn of 1995. The article seems to have been fairly effective in getting its point across and addresses a topic highly germane to the Uppsala workshop. Owing to its appearance in the LOGICA Yearbook 1997 , Filosofia Publishers, Prague, 1998, it has been rather inaccessible. Accordingly it (...) is republished here with only bibliographical changes and an afterword. (shrink)

This methodological intervention proposes that the typical conversation sets up or modifies Micro Knowledge Profiles by using (partly anaphoric) discourse devices of Thick Cross-referencing; and that a certain type of translation procedure maps from such knowledge on to Macro Acquaintance Profiles. In a typical conversation, partners already acquainted with each other and with various matters renew their acquaintance. This renewal has consequences modifying their knowledge profiles and their action plans. The details that make the conversation flow have to be set (...) aside for the translation procedure to see the consequences of a conversation. The widespread desire to accurately profile the involvement of persons in conversations and the impossibility of telling any conversation-detached truth has been bringing about a mutation in the way we officially share and transmit knowledge; this mutation can be usefully called the Conversational Turn. (shrink)

Although Oakeshott’s philosophy has received considerable attention, the vision which underlies it has been almost completely ignored. This vision, which is rooted in the intellectual debates of his epoch, cements his ideas into a coherent whole and provides a compelling defence of modernity.The main feature of Oakeshott’s vision of modernity is seen here as radical plurality resulting from ‘fragmentation’ of experience and society. On the level of experience, modernity denies the existence of the hierarchical medieval scheme and argues that there (...) exist independent ways of understanding our world, such as science and history, which cannot be reduced to each other. On the level of society, modernity finds expression in liberal doctrine, according to which society is an aggregate of individuals each pursuing his or her own choices. For Oakeshott, to be modern means not only to recognise this condition of radical plurality but also to learn to appreciate and enjoy it.Oakeshott did not think that it was possible to find a comprehensive philosophical justification for modernity, therefore the only way to preserve modern civilisation seemed to be an appeal to sentiment. As a consequence he was a passionate defender of liberal education as the best way to underwrite the ‘conversation of mankind.’. (shrink)

Robert Hannas The Rational Human Condition is a five-volume book series, including: Volume 1. Preface and General Introduction, Supplementary Essays, and General Bibliography Volume 2. Deep Freedom and Real Persons: A Study in Metaphysics Volume 3. Kantian Ethics and Human Existence: A Study in Moral Philosophy Volume 4. Kant, Agnosticism, and Anarchism: A Theological-Political Treatise Volume 5. Cognition, Content, and the A Priori: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind and Knowledge The fifth volume in the series, Cognition, Content, (...) and the A Priori, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. So, with the present publication of the first four volumes in the series by Nova Science in 2019, all five volumes of The Rational Human Condition are now available in hard-copy and as e-books. All five books share a common aim, which is to work out a true general theory of human rationality in a thoroughly nonideal natural and social world. This philosophical enterprise is what Hanna calls rational anthropology. In the eleventh and most famous of his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx wrote that philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it. Hanna completely agrees with Marx that the ultimate aim of philosophy is to change the world, not merely interpret it. So, Marx and Hanna are both philosophical liberationists: that is, they both believe that philosophy should have radical political implications. But, beyond Marx, Hanna also thinks that the primary aim of philosophy (understood as rational anthropology) and its practices of synoptic reflection, writing, teaching, and public conversation is to change lives for the betterand ultimately, for the sake of the highest good. Then, and only then, can the human race act upon the world in the right way. The four volumes of The Rational Human Condition will therefore appeal not only to philosophers, but also to any other philosophically-minded person interested in the intellectual and practical adventure of synoptic, reflective thinking about the nature of our rational, but still ineluctably human, all-too-human lives. (shrink)

What does it mean to be an aesthetic beholder? Is it different than simply being a perceiver? Most theories of aesthetic perception focus on 1) features of the perceived object and its presentation or 2) on psychological evaluative or emotional responses and intentions of perceiver and artist. In this chapter I propose that we need to look at the process of engaged perception itself, and further that this temporal process of be- coming a beholder must be understood in its embodied, (...) contextual and dynamic speci- ficity. Through both phenomenological and neuroscientific explorations I analyze what is characteristic about a more “aesthetic stance” and argue that there is a certain asym- metry between beholder and beheld, which has to do with a disengagement of goal- directed action, and which allows for other kinds of perceptual involvement than in a more “practical stance”. It is a multi-disciplinary project integrating a sensorimotor no- tion of aesthetic affordances, 18th century philosophy, and large-scale brain network findings. What ensues is a new dynamic framework for future empirical and theoretical research on aesthetic perception. (shrink)

The last decade has witnessed a growing perception of ethical crisis in public life. Circumstances of political uncertainty, fueled by the rise of international terror and global financial crisis, have placed the practice of civic virtue under severe strain. Our turbulent times have prompted many people to think less about the "good life" and the "good society" and more about their basic needs for safety and reassurance. Consequently, while prominent public commentators call for the reassertion of civic virtue in the (...) public square, it is very hard to see what basis there can be for its practice in present conditions. This book articulates a new perspective on public morality in uncertain times by defending a radical re-orientation of civic ethics away from the pursuit of the good society and toward the prevention of the great evils of human life. Edyvane makes the following central innovations: Uses the resources of philosophy to help us think about vital social, political, and spiritual questions that have dominated the public conversation of liberal democracies since 9/11; Offers a new perspective on key scholarly debates about civic virtue in a way that provokes disquieting questions about the character of religious diversity and conflict and the nature of foundations of public morality; Develops and deploys a novel intellectual approach by drawing on the insights of art and literature to inform and enrich philosophical enquiry. (shrink)

The last decade has witnessed a growing perception of ethical crisis in public life. Circumstances of political uncertainty, fueled by the rise of international terror and global financial crisis, have placed the practice of civic virtue under severe strain. Our turbulent times have prompted many people to think less about the "good life" and the "good society" and more about their basic needs for safety and reassurance. Consequently, while prominent public commentators call for the reassertion of civic virtue in the (...) public square, it is very hard to see what basis there can be for its practice in present conditions. This book articulates a new perspective on public morality in uncertain times by defending a radical re-orientation of civic ethics away from the pursuit of the good society and toward the prevention of the great evils of human life. Edyvane makes the following central innovations: Uses the resources of philosophy to help us think about vital social, political, and spiritual questions that have dominated the public conversation of liberal democracies since 9/11; Offers a new perspective on key scholarly debates about civic virtue in a way that provokes disquieting questions about the character of religious diversity and conflict and the nature of foundations of public morality; Develops and deploys a novel intellectual approach by drawing on the insights of art and literature to inform and enrich philosophical enquiry. (shrink)

The following semantics for counterfactuals is fairly standard: for a counterfactual to be true, the closest antecedent worlds have to be consequent worlds. Closeness is measured by overall similarity of worlds to an evaluation world. There is a range of interrelated challenges to this account: counterfactual scepticism, ‘Hegel’-, ‘Sobel’-, and ‘Heim’-sequences. So far there is no unified solution to these challenges. I discuss a solution that preserves the standard semantics by writing the shifty parameter into pragmatics. The solution has been (...) suggested by Križ for Sobel- and Heim-sequences, yet I argue that it can be generalized to counterfactual scepticism. Conditionals are subject to a pattern which is familiar from descriptions. Everyday counterfactuals are semantically homogeneous and pragmatically non-maximal. Homogeneity: a counterfactual is neither true nor false if only some but not all closest antecedent worlds are consequent worlds. Non-maximality: in many contexts, not all but only practically all closest antecedent worlds have to be consequent worlds for the utterance of a counterfactual to say something true if the difference does not matter for the purposes of conversation. (shrink)

Expressing a widely-held view, David Hitchcock claims that "an enthymematic argument ... assumes at least the truth of the argument's associated conditional ... whose antecedent is the conjunction of the argument's explicit premises and whose consequent is the argument's conclusion." But even definitionally, this view is problematic, since an argument's being "enthymematic" or incomplete with respect to its explicit premises means that the conclusion is not implied by these premises alone. The paper attempts to specify the ways in which the (...) view is incorrect, as well as seemingly correct (e.g., the case of a Modus Ponens wherein the major premise is implicit). -/- . (shrink)

Talking about privacy in the public prima facie seems to be a contradiction: why should privacy have to play a role within the public sphere? What could possibly be private in the public? However, quite a number of theories of privacy conceptualize privacy as a protective shield which we carry with us wherever we are: respect for privacy in public then means, for instance, not listening in on private conversations between friends on the street or in a cafe. The most (...) important form of privacy in public, however, which has gained a lot of attention during the last decade or so, is privacy as anonymity: the form of privacy in the public sphere, online as well as offline, which means invisibility, nontraceability, not being identifiable as an individual person. Theories of privacy differ as to the possibility as well as to the desirabilty of anonymity in public contexts, online as well as offline. In my paper, I investigate the complicated relations between privacy, anonymity, and the public sphere. I will, firstly, clarify the conceptual relation between privacy and anonymity, drawing on theories which define privacy in terms of conditions enabling individual freedom and autonomy. I will also review some normatively relevant differences between the online and the offline world. In the second part, I will discuss possible normative conflicts between a moral or legal right to privacy and anonymity, and considerations of security, accountability, or moral responsibility. One of the important questions will concern the ethical consequences of the technical possibilities of identification and de-anonymization in the online world. (shrink)