It is widely recognized that ‘global’ symmetries, such as the boost invariance of classical mechanics and special relativity, can give rise to direct empirical counterparts such as the Galileo-ship phenomenon. However, conventional wisdom holds that ‘local’ symmetries, such as the diffeomorphism invariance of general relativity and the gauge invariance of classical electromagnetism, have no such direct empirical counterparts. We argue against this conventional wisdom. We develop a framework for analysing the relationship between Galileo-ship empirical phenomena on the one hand, and (...) physical theories that model such phenomena on the other, that renders the relationship between theoretical and empirical symmetries transparent, and from which it follows that both global and local symmetries can give rise to Galileo-ship phenomena. In particular, we use this framework to exhibit an analogue of Galileo’s ship for the local gauge invariance of electromagnetism. 1 Introduction2 Analogues of Galileo’s Ship? Faraday’s Cage and t’Hooft’s Beam-Splitter2.1 Faraday’s cage2.2 t’Hooft’s beam-splitter3 A Framework for Symmetries I: Systems and Subsystems4 An Example: Coulombic Electrostatics5 A Framework for Symmetries II: The Relationship between Theoretical and Empirical Symmetries6 Newtonian Gravity7 Local Symmetries that Are Not Boundary-Preserving: Classical Electromagnetism and Faraday’s Cage8 Local Boundary-Preserving Symmetries: Klein-Gordon-Maxwell Gauge Theory and t’Hooft’s Beam-Splitter9 Summary10 Conclusions. (shrink)

It is often objected that the Everett interpretation of QM cannot make sense of quantum probabilities, in one or both of two ways: either it can’t make sense of probability at all, or it can’t explain why probability should be governed by the Born rule. David Deutsch has attempted to meet these objections. He argues not only that rational decision under uncertainty makes sense in the Everett interpretation, but also that under reasonable assumptions, the credences of a rational agent in (...) an Everett world should be constrained by the Born rule. David Wallace has developed and defended Deutsch’s proposal, and greatly clarified its conceptual basis. In particular, he has stressed its reliance on the distinguishing symmetry of the Everett view, viz., that all possible outcomes of a quantum measurement are treated as equally real. The argument thus tries to make a virtue of what has usually been seen as the main obstacle to making sense of probability in the Everett world. In this note I outline some objections to the Deutsch-Wallace argument, and to related proposals by Hilary Greaves about the epistemology of Everettian QM. (In the latter case, my arguments include an appeal to an Everettian analogue of the Sleeping Beauty problem.) The common thread to these objections is that the symmetry in question remains a very significant obstacle to making sense of probability in the Everett interpretation. (shrink)

Nick Bostrom and others have suggested treating decision-making under moral uncertainty as analogous to parliamentary decision-making. The core suggestion of this “parliamentary approach” is that the competing moral theories function like delegates to the parliament, and that these delegates then make decisions by some combination of bargaining and voting. There seems some reason to hope that such an approach might avoid standard objections to existing approaches (for example, the “maximise expected choiceworthiness” (MEC) and “my favourite theory” approaches). However, the parliamentary (...) approach is so far extremely underspecified, making it largely indeterminate how such a model will in fact behave in the respects that those concerned with moral uncertainty care about. This paper explores one way of making it precise. We treat predicaments of moral uncertainty as analogous to bargaining situations alone (setting aside voting), and apply a version of the Nash solution that is standard in bargaining theory. The resulting model does indeed perform in many of the hoped-for ways. However, so also does a version of MEC that employs a structural approach to intertheoretic comparisons. It seems to us an open question which, regarding this version of MEC and the bargaining-theoretic approach, is superior to the other. We identify the key points on which the two differ. (shrink)

Since the nineteenth century the theory and practice of mainstream Western medicine has been grounded in the biomedical model. In the later years of the twentieth century, however, it has faced a range of serious problems, which when viewed collectively, remain unresolved despite a variety of responses. The question we now face is whether these problems can be dealt with by modifying and extending the principles underlying the biomedical model, or whether a more radical solution is required. Recent critiques of (...) Western medicine have focused mainly on the biopsychosocial model in relation to the former approach, but it will be contended that this cannot deal adequately with the challenges that medicine currently faces, because although it addresses both the scientific and humanistic aspects of medicine it fails to harmonise them. I shall therefore argue for the necessity of a more radical approach, and suggest that what is required to accomplish this is the development of a new medical cosmology, rooted in an older and more global framework. Such a fundamental change would inevitably involve a long term process which it is not yet possible to fully comprehend let alone specify in detail. Some of the necessary features of such a new medical cosmology can, however, already be distinguished and the outline of these is described. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The assumptions underlying the traditional biomedical model of health and illness and criticisms of it are described. An examination of the historical development of ideas concerning cot (crib) deaths shows how early explanations, which were congruent with this model, came to be discredited. Because subsequent explanations have also been considered unsatisfactory, cot deaths have come to be regarded as medically problematic. The relationship of models of health and illness to cot deaths has therefore been exposed to an unusual degree (...) of scrutiny. Two possible contending models, social epidemiological and socio‐economic are identified, and their status vis‐à‐vis the biomedical model is considered. The choice as to which of these models is applied to cot deaths is shown to be not only of theoretical interest but also to have ethical implications for health care policy and medical practice. (shrink)

Armstrong describes the rise of a new mode of medical practice that he calls in the following terms: Surveillance medicine gives rise to a novel and underexplored aspect of the long-standing tension between the different goals of clinical medicine and public health.

Richard Feynman has claimed that anti-particles are nothing but particles `propagating backwards in time'; that time reversing a particle state always turns it into the corresponding anti-particle state. According to standard quantum field theory textbooks this is not so: time reversal does not turn particles into anti-particles. Feynman's view is interesting because, in particular, it suggests a nonstandard, and possibly illuminating, interpretation of the CPT theorem. In this paper, we explore a classical analog of Feynman's view, in the context of (...) the recent debate between David Albert and David Malament over time reversal in classical electromagnetism. (shrink)

According to Bayesian epistemology, the epistemically rational agent updates her beliefs by conditionalization: that is, her posterior subjective probability after taking account of evidence X, pnew, is to be set equal to her prior conditional probability pold(·|X). Bayesians can be challenged to provide a justification for their claim that conditionalization is recommended by rationality—whence the normative force of the injunction to conditionalize? There are several existing justifications for conditionalization, but none directly addresses the idea that conditionalization will be epistemically rational (...) if and only if it can reasonably be expected to lead to epistemically good outcomes. We apply the approach of cognitive decision theory to provide a justification for conditionalization using precisely that idea. We assign epistemic utility functions to epistemically rational agents; an agent’s epistemic utility is to depend both upon the actual state of the world and on the agent’s credence distribution over possible states. We prove that, under independently motivated conditions, conditionalization is the unique updating rule that maximizes expected epistemic utility. (shrink)

Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in ques- tion may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. Extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and “person-affecting” theories. Each of these the- ories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. A series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no coincidence: (...) it can be proved, for various sets of prima facie intuitively compelling desiderata, that no axiology can simultaneously satisfy all the desiderata on the list. One’s choice of population axiology appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up. (shrink)

I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an epistemic decision theory, in a consequentialist spirit. Previous work has focused on cases in which the truth-values of the propositions in which the agent is selecting credences do not depend, either causally or merely evidentially, on the agent’s choice of credences. Relaxing that restriction leads to a proliferation of puzzle cases and theories to deal with them, including epistemic analogues of evidential and causal decision theory, and (...) of the Newcomb Problem and ‘Psychopath Button’ Problem. A variant of causal epistemic decision theory deals well with most cases. However, there is a recalcitrant class of problem cases for which no epistemic decision theory seems able to match our intuitive judgements of epistemic rationality. This lends both precision and credence to the view that there is a fundamental mismatch between epistemic consequentialism and the intuitive notion of epistemic rationality; the implications for understanding the latter are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Decisions, whether moral or prudential, should be guided at least in part by considerations of the consequences that would result from the various available actions. For any given action, however, the majority of its consequences are unpredictable at the time of decision. Many have worried that this leaves us, in some important sense, clueless. In this paper, I distinguish between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ possible sources of cluelessness. In terms of this taxonomy, the majority of the existing literature on cluelessness focusses (...) on the simple sources. I argue, contra James Lenman in particular, that these would-be sources of cluelessness are unproblematic, on the grounds that indifference-based reasoning is far less problematic than Lenman (along with many others) supposes. However, there does seem to be a genuine phenomenon of cluelessness associated with the ‘complex’ sources; here, indifference-based reasoning is inapplicable by anyone’s lights. This ‘complex problem of cluelessness’ is vivid and pressing, in particular, in the context of Effective Altruism. This motivates a more thorough examination of the precise nature of cluelessness, and the precise source of the associated phenomenology of discomfort in forced-choice situations. The latter parts of the paper make some initial explorations in those directions. (shrink)

Attention has been given to cross-cultural differences in adolescent growth, but far less is known about developmental variability during juvenility (ages 3–10). Previous research among the Pumé, a group of South American foragers, found that girls achieve a greater proportion of their adult stature during juvenility compared with normative growth expectations. To explain rapid juvenile growth, in this paper we consider girls’ activity levels and energy expended in subsistence effort. Results show that Pumé girls spend far less time in subsistence (...) tasks in proportion to their body size compared with adults, and they have lower physical activity levels compared with many juveniles cross-culturally. Low activity levels help to explain where the extra energy comes from to support rapid growth in a challenging environment. We suggest that activity levels are important to account for the variation of resource and labor transfers in mediating energy availability. (shrink)

True benevolence is, most fundamentally, a desire that the world be better. It is natural and common, however, to frame thinking about benevolence indirectly, in terms of a desire to make a difference to how good the world is. This would be an innocuous shift if desires to make a difference were extensionally equivalent to desires that the world be better. This paper shows that at least on some common ways of making a “desire to make a difference” precise, this (...) extensional equivalence fails. Where it fails, “difference-making preferences” run counter to the ideals of benevolence. In particular, in the context of decision making under uncertainty, coupling a “difference-making” framing in a natural way with risk aversion leads to preferences that violate stochastic dominance, and that lead to a strong form of collective defeat, from the point of view of betterness. Difference-making framings and true benevolence are not strictly mutually inconsistent, but agents seeking to implement true benevolence must take care to avoid the various pitfalls that we outline. GPI Working Paper No. 16-2022. (shrink)

This article is a critical survey of the debate over the value of the social discount rate, with a particular focus on climate change. The ma- jority of the material surveyed is from the economics rather than from the philosophy literature, but the emphasis of the survey itself is on founda- tions in ethical and other normative theory rather than highly technical details. I begin by locating the standard approach to discounting within the overall landscape of ethical theory, and explaining (...) the assumptions and simplifications that are needed in order to arrive at the model that is standard in the discounting literature. The article then covers the general theory of the Ramsey equation and its relationship to observed interest rates, arguments for and against a positive rate of pure time preference, the consumption elasticity of utility, and the effect of various sorts of uncertainty on the discount rate. Finally, it turns specifically to the ap- plication of this debate to the case of climate change, focussing on the recent controversy over the low discount rate used in the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change. (shrink)

Difficulties over probability have often been considered fatal to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Here I argue that the Everettian can have everything she needs from `probability' without recourse to indeterminism, ignorance, primitive identity over time or subjective uncertainty: all she needs is a particular *rationality principle*. The decision-theoretic approach recently developed by Deutsch and Wallace claims to provide just such a principle. But, according to Wallace, decision theory is itself applicable only if the correct attitude to a future (...) Everettian measurement outcome is subjective uncertainty. I argue that subjective uncertainty is not to be had, but I offer an alternative interpretation that enables the Everettian to live without uncertainty: we can justify Everettian decision theory on the basis that an Everettian should *care about* all her future branches. The probabilities appearing in the decision-theoretic representation theorem can then be interpreted as the degrees to which the rational agent cares about each future branch. This reinterpretation, however, reduces the intuitive plausibility of one of the Deutsch -Wallace axioms. (shrink)

Dispersal of individuals from their natal communities at sexual maturity is an important determinant of kin association. In this paper we compare postmarital residence patterns among Pumé foragers of Venezuela to investigate the prevalence of sex-biased vs. bilateral residence. This study complements cross-cultural overviews by examining postmarital kin association in relation to individual, longitudinal data on residence within a forager society. Based on cultural norms, the Pumé have been characterized as matrilocal. Analysis of Pumé marriages over a 25-year period finds (...) a predominant pattern of natalocal residence. We emphasize that natalocality, bilocality, and multilocality accomplish similar ends in maximizing bilateral kin affiliations in contrast to sex-biased residential patterns. Bilateral kin association may be especially important in foraging economies where subsistence activities change throughout the year and large kin networks permit greater potential flexibility in residential mobility. (shrink)

The Everett (many-worlds) interpretation of quantum mechanics faces a prima facie problem concerning quantum probabilities. Research in this area has been fast-paced over the last few years, following a controversial suggestion by David Deutsch that decision theory can solve the problem. This article provides a non-technical introduction to the decision-theoretic program, and a sketch of the current state of the debate.

Given the deep disagreement surrounding population axiology, one should remain uncertain about which theory is best. However, this uncertainty need not leave one neutral about which acts are better or worse. We show that, as the number of lives at stake grows, the Expected Moral Value approach to axiological uncertainty systematically pushes one toward choosing the option preferred by the Total View and critical-level views, even if one’s credence in those theories is low.

Much of the evidence for quantum mechanics is statistical in nature. The Everett interpretation, if it is to be a candidate for serious consideration, must be capable of doing justice to reasoning on which statistical evidence in which observed relative frequencies that closely match calculated probabilities counts as evidence in favour of a theory from which the probabilities are calculated. Since, on the Everett interpretation, all outcomes with nonzero amplitude are actualized on different branches, it is not obvious that sense (...) can be made of ascribing probabilities to outcomes of experiments, and this poses a prima facie problem for statistical inference. It is incumbent on the Everettian either to make sense of ascribing probabilities to outcomes of experiments in the Everett interpretation, or to find a substitute on which the usual statistical analysis of experimental results continues to count as evidence for quantum mechanics, and, since it is the very evidence for quantum mechanics that is at stake, this must be done in a way that does not presuppose the correctness of Everettian quantum mechanics. This requires an account of theory confirmation that applies to branching-universe theories but does not presuppose the correctness of any such theory. In this paper, we supply and defend such an account. The account has the consequence that statistical evidence can confirm a branching-universe theory such as Everettian quantum mechanics in the same way in which it can confirm a probabilistic theory. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is supposed to be a theory of the overall good that captures the common intuition of . But it is difficult to give precise content to the prioritarian claim. Over the past few decades, prioritarians have increasingly responded to this by formulating prioritarianism not in terms of an alleged primitive notion of quantity of well-being, but instead in terms of von NeumannPrimitivistTechnicalpriority to the worse offMorgenstern utility is a retrograde step.

Harsanyi claimed that his Aggregation and Impartial Observer Theorems provide a justification for utilitarianism. This claim has been strongly resisted, notably by Sen and Weymark, who argue that while Harsanyi has perhaps shown that overall good is a linear sum of individuals’ von Neumann-Morgenstern utilities, he has done nothing to establish any con- nection between the notion of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility and that of well-being, and hence that utilitarianism does not follow. The present article defends Harsanyi against the Sen-Weymark cri- (...) tique. I argue that, far from being a term with precise and independent quantitative content whose relationship to von Neumann-Morgenstern utility is then a substantive question, terms such as ‘well-being’ suffer (or suffered) from indeterminacy regarding precisely which quantity they refer to. If so, then (on the issue that this article focuses on) Harsanyi has gone as far towards defending ‘utilitarianism in the original sense’ as could coherently be asked. (shrink)

An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that these theories cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi () attempts to respond to this objection by appeal to so-called extended preferences: very roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes agents’ preferences. This paper examines the prospects for defending the preference-satisfaction theory via this extended preferences program. We argue that making conceptual sense of extended preferences is less problematic than others have supposed, but (...) that even so extended preferences do not provide a promising way for the preference satisfaction theorist to make interpersonal well-being comparisons. Our main objection takes the form of a trilemma: depending on how the theory based on extended preferences is developed, either the result will be inconsistent with ordinary preference-satisfaction theory, or it will fail to recover sufficiently rich interpersonal well-being comparisons, or it will take on a number of other arguably odd and undesirable commitments. (shrink)

Recent work in the Everett interpretation has suggested that the problem of probability can be solved by understanding probability in terms of rationality. However, there are *two* problems relating to probability in Everett --- one practical, the other epistemic --- and the rationality-based program *directly* addresses only the practical problem. One might therefore worry that the problem of probability is only `half solved' by this approach. This paper aims to dispel that worry: a solution to the epistemic problem follows from (...) the rationality-based solution to the practical problem. (shrink)

Recent work in the Everett interpretation has suggested that the problem of probability can be solved by understanding probability in terms of rationality. However, there are *two* problems relating to probability in Everett --- one practical, the other epistemic --- and the rationality-based program *directly* addresses only the practical problem. One might therefore worry that the problem of probability is only `half solved' by this approach. This paper aims to dispel that worry: a solution to the epistemic problem follows from (...) the rationality-based solution to the practical problem. (shrink)

As incoming Editor and Deputy Editor we describe our impression of the current situation that those committed to understanding and upholding environmental values find themselves in. We consider some of the factors that make enviornmental concern difficult to maintain, including conditions that affect us as academics, publishers, global citizens and activists. We describe some of the emerging trends that have appeared in Environmental Values in recent years, in philosophy, ecological economics, critical social science and widening interdisciplinarity in the environmental humanities. (...) We highlight the journal's commitment to engaged, plural and open investigation of environmental values and consider what we might expect and hope for in the coming years. (shrink)

The key role that animals play in our aesthetic appreciation of the natural world has only gradually been highlighted in discussions in environmental aesthetics. In this article I make use of the phenomenological notion of 'perceptual sense' as developed by Merleau-Ponty to argue that open-ended expressive-responsive movement is the primary aesthetic ground for our appreciation of animals. It is through their movement that the array of qualities we admire in animals are manifest qua animal qualities. Against functionalist and formalist accounts, (...) I defend and develop an account of expressive-responsive movement as the primary perceptual sense of animals. I go on to suggest that the primacy of movement in the aesthetic appreciation of animals is also the primary sense of animal 'wildness', and that a key part of the rewilding paradigm should be the development of such appreciation. (shrink)

An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that they cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi :434, 1953) attempts to solve this problem by appeal to people’s so-called extended preferences. This paper presents a new problem for the extended preferences program, related to Arrow’s celebrated impossibility theorem. We consider three ways in which the extended-preference theorist might avoid this problem, and recommend that she pursue one: developing aggregation rules that violate Arrow’s Independence of (...) Irrelevant Alternatives condition. (shrink)

Harsanyi claimed that his Aggregation and Impartial Observer Theorems provide a justification for utilitarianism. This claim has been strongly resisted, notably by Sen and Weymark, who argue that while Harsanyi has perhaps shown that overall good is a linear sum of individuals’ von Neumann–Morgenstern utilities, he has done nothing to establish any connection between the notion of von Neumann–Morgenstern utility and that of well-being, and hence that utilitarianism does not follow. -/- The present article defends Harsanyi against the Sen–Weymark critique. (...) I argue that, far from being a term with precise and independent quantitative content whose relationship to von Neumann–Morgenstern utility is then a substantive question, terms such as ‘well-being’ suffer (or suffered) from indeterminacy regarding precisely which quantity they refer to. If so, then (on the issue that this article focuses on) Harsanyi has gone as far towards defending ‘utilitarianism in the original sense’ as could coherently be asked. (shrink)

This is the first collective study of the thinking behind the effective altruism movement. This movement comprises a growing global community of people who organise significant parts of their lives around the two key concepts represented in its name. Altruism is the idea that if we use a significant portion of the resources in our possession—whether money, time, or talents—with a view to helping others then we can improve the world considerably. When we do put such resources to altruistic use, (...) it is crucial to focus on how much good this or that intervention is reasonably expected to do per unit of resource expended (as a gauge of effectiveness). We can try to rank various possible actions against each other to establish which will do the most good with the resources expended. Thus we could aim to rank various possible kinds of action to alleviate poverty against one another, or against actions aimed at very different types of outcome, focused perhaps on animal welfare or future generations. The scale and organisation of the effective altruism movement encourage careful dialogue on questions that have perhaps long been there, throwing them into new and sharper relief, and giving rise to previously unnoticed questions. In this volume a team of internationally recognised philosophers, economists, and political theorists present refined and in-depth explorations of issues that arise once one takes seriously the twin ideas of altruistic commitment and effectiveness. (shrink)

This dissertation explores the reasons why structured graphics have been largely ignored in the representation and reasoning components of contemporary theories of axiomatic systems. In particular, it demonstrates that for the case of modern logic and geometry, there are systematic forces in the intellectual history of these disciplines which have driven the adoption of sentential representational styles over diagrammatic ones. These forces include: the changing views of the role of intuition in the procedures and formalisms of formal proof; the historical (...) contrast between the universalist subject matter of logic and the specific subject matter of geometry; and the ways in which both logic and geometry were affected by the changes that swept through mathematics during the nineteenth century. This dissertation traces the effects of each of these influences in the evolution of logic and geometry from antiquity to the early twentieth-century work of David Hilbert. For each discipline, it examines the historical factors impacting the creation and development of important diagrammatic systems, the reasons for the adoption or abandonment of these systems, and the philosophical context and debates surrounding the use of these systems. It concludes by arguing that the history of diagrammatic representations in logic and geometry cannot be adequately understood without essential reference to their philosophical background. (shrink)

I argue that excessive reliance on the notion of “the badness of death” tends to lead theorists astray when thinking about healthcare prioritisation. I survey two examples: the confusion surrounding the “time-relative interests account” of the badness of death, and a confusion in the recent literature on cost-benefit analyses for family planning interventions. In both cases, the confusions in question would have been avoided if (instead of attempting to theorise in terms of the badness of death) theorists had forced themselves (...) first to write down an appropriate value function, and then focused on the question of how to maximize value. (shrink)