Conviction Narrative Theory bears a close resemblance to the Theory of Narrative Thought, although the two were designed to address different questions. In this commentary, we detail some of the more pronounced similarities and differences and suggest that resolving the latter could produce a third theory of narrative cognition that is superior to either of these two.

Physicists regularly invoke universal laws, such as those of motion and electromagnetism, to explain events. Biological and medical scientists have no such laws. How then do they acquire a reliable body of knowledge about biological organisms and human disease? One way is by repeatedly returning to, manipulating, observing, interpreting, and reinterpreting certain subjects—such as flies, mice, worms, or microbes—or, as they are known in biology, “model systems.” Across the natural and social sciences, other disciplinary fields have developed canonical examples that (...) have played a role comparable to that of biology’s model systems, serving not only as points of reference and illustrations of general principles or values but also as sites of continued investigation and reinterpretation. The essays in this collection assess the scope and function of model objects in domains as diverse as biology, geology, and history, attending to differences between fields as well as to epistemological commonalities. Contributors examine the role of the fruit fly Drosophila and nematode worms in biology, troops of baboons in primatology, box and digital simulations of the movement of the earth’s crust in geology, and meteorological models in climatology. They analyze the intensive study of the prisoner’s dilemma in game theory, ritual in anthropology, the individual case in psychoanalytic research, and Athenian democracy in political theory. The contributors illuminate the processes through which particular organisms, cases, materials, or narratives become foundational to their fields, and they examine how these foundational exemplars—from the fruit fly to Freud’s Dora—shape the knowledge produced within their disciplines. Contributors Rachel A. Ankeny Angela N. H. Creager Amy Dahan Dalmedico John Forrester Clifford Geertz Carlo Ginzburg E. Jane Albert Hubbard Elizabeth Lunbeck Mary S. Morgan Josiah Ober Naomi Oreskes Susan Sperling Marcel Weber M. Norton Wise. (shrink)

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventise terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas,sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri 5per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli.sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenereedita doctrina sapientum templa serena,despicere unde queas alios passimque videreerrare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, 10certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,noctes atque dies niti praestante laboread summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.o miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca!qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque (...) periclis 15degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest! nonne viderenil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi utquicorpore seiunctus dolor absit, mensque fruaturiucundo sensu cura semota metuque?(Lucr. 2.1–19)It is pleasant, when the winds stir up the waters on the great sea,to watch the great struggle of another from land;not because it is a great pleasure that anyone be troubled,but because it is pleasant to observe the troubles you yourself lack.It is also pleasant to watch the great contests of war 5spread out over the plains without taking any part in the danger.But nothing is more pleasing than to hold lofty yet calm templesthat are well defended by the teachings of wise men,from which you can look down and see others everywherego astray and wander while seeking the path of their life, 10competing in wits and contending over their nobility;throughout nights and days they strive with outstanding labourto come out at the peak of riches and have power over everything.O wretched minds of men, O blind hearts!In what shadows of life and in how many dangers 15is this bit of life, whatever it may be, being spent by you! Do you not seethat nature barks for nothing other than this – thatgrief be separated from the body and far away, and that the mind enjoypleasant feelings cut off from anxiety and fear?Epicurus' advice to his young friend Pythocles to ‘flee all education, raising up the top sail’ (παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, ϕεῦγε τἀκάτιον ἀράμενος, Diog.Laert. 10.6 = Epicurus fr. 163 Us.) contains an allusion to Circe's advice to Odysseus inOdyssey12.37–58. For much of the Greek (and Roman) world, education was based on the Homeric epics, and thus Epicurus' statement represents a complicated position towards Homer in particular and poetry in general. Epicurean philosophy rejects poetry because it is misleading about the gods and the nature of the soul, but Epicurus and his followers, most notably Philodemus and Lucretius, engage in poetic allusion and even the composition of poetry. Much work has been done on allusions to poetry in all three writers, but I hope here to bring out a heretofore unnoticed poetic allusion at the start ofDe rerum naturaBook 2, in which Lucretius makes a programmatic statement about not only his philosophy, but also his poetry and its place in the poetic tradition. (shrink)

In this book, Sorensen presents the first general theory of the thought experiment. He analyses a wide variety of thought experiments, ranging from aesthetics to zoology, and explores what thought experiments are, how they work, and what their positive and negative aspects are. Sorensen also sets his theory within an evolutionary framework and integrates recent advances in experimental psychology and the history of science.

Sorensen here offers a unified solution to a large family of philosophical puzzles and paradoxes through a study of "blindspots": consistent propositions that cannot be rationally accepted by certain individuals even though they might by true.

Written for undergraduates, the educated layperson, and scholars in fields other than philosophy, _The Myth of Religious Neutrality _offers a radical reinterpretation of the general relations between religion, science, and philosophy. This new edition has been completely revised and updated by the author.

Roy Sorenson offers a unique exploration of an ancient problem: vagueness. Did Buddha become a fat man in one second? Is there a tallest short giraffe? According to Sorenson's epistemicist approach, the answers are yes! Although vagueness abounds in the way the world is divided, Sorenson argues that the divisions are sharp; yet we often do not know where they are. Written in Sorenson'e usual inventive and amusing style, this book offers original insight on language and logic, the way world (...) is, and our understanding of it. (shrink)

Sorensen presents a general theory of thought experiments: what they are, how they work, what are their virtues and vices. On Sorensen's view, philosophy differs from science in degree, but not in kind. For this reason, he claims, it is possible to understand philosophical thought experiments by concentrating on their resemblance to scientific relatives. Lessons learned about scientific experimentation carry over to thought experiment, and vice versa. Sorensen also assesses the hazards and pseudo-hazards of thought experiments. Although he grants that (...) there are interesting ways in which the method leads us astray, he attacks most scepticism about thought experiments as arbitrary. They should be used, he says, as they generally are used--as part of a diversified portfolio of techniques. All of these devices are individually susceptible to abuse, fallacy, and error. Collectively, however, they provide a network of cross-checks that make for impressive reliability. (shrink)

A Brief History of the Paradox is the first narrative history of paradoxes. Sorenson draws us deep inside the tangles of riddles, paradoxes and conundrums by answering the questions which are seemingly unanswerable. Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Filled with illuminating anecdotes, A Brief History of the Paradox is vividly written and will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable (...) questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavour. (shrink)

The eclipse riddle -- Seeing surfaces -- The disappearing act -- Spinning shadows -- Berkeley's shadow -- Para-reflections -- Para-refractions : shadowgrams and the black drop -- Goethe's colored shadows -- Filtows -- Holes in the light -- Black and blue -- Seeing in black and white -- We see in the dark -- Hearing silence.

Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums--for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible. Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before (...) He made the world, he was told: "Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that." A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at "questions like that" and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with such thinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken toward these puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out. Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor. (shrink)

Stepping into the other guy’s shoes works best when you resemble him. After all, the procedure is to use yourself as a model: in goes hypothetical beliefs and desires, out comes hypothetical actions and revised beliefs and desires. If you are structurally analogous to the empathee, then accurate inputs generate accurate outputs---just as with any other simulation. The greater the degree of isomorphism, the more dependable and precise the results. This sensitivity to degrees of resemblance suggests that the method of (...) empathy works best for average people. The advantage of being a small but representative sample of the population will create a bootstrap effect. For as average people prosper, there will be more average descendants and so the degree of resemblance in subsequent generations will snowball. Each increment in like-mindedness further enhances the reliability and validity of mental simulation. With each circuit along the spiral, there is tighter and tighter bunching and hence further empowerment of empathy. The method is self-strengthening and eventually molds a population of hyper-similar individuals---which partly solves the problem of other minds. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments help us learn about laws. After providing examples of this kind of nomic illumination in the first section, I canvass explanations of our modal knowledge and opt for an evolutionary account. The basic application is that the laws of nature have led us to develop rough and ready intuitions of physical possibility which are then exploited by thought experimenters to reveal some of the very laws responsible for those intuitions. (...) The good news is that natural selection ensures a degree of reliability for the intuitions. The bad news is that the evolutionary account seems to limit the range of reliable thought experiment to highly practical and concrete contexts. In the fifth section, I provide reasons for thinking that we are not as slavishly limited as a pessimistic construal of natural selection suggests. Nevertheless, I promote the idea that biology is a promising source of predictions and diagnoses of thought experiment failures. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments help us learn about laws. After providing examples of this kind of nomic illumination in the first section, I canvass explanations of our modal knowledge and opt for an evolutionary account. The basic application is that the laws of nature have led us to develop rough and ready intuitions of physical possibility which are then exploited by thought experimenters to reveal some of the very laws responsible for those intuitions. (...) The good news is that natural selection ensures a degree of reliability for the intuitions. The bad news is that the evolutionary account seems to limit the range of reliable thought experiment to highly practical and concrete contexts. In the fifth section, I provide reasons for thinking that we are not as slavishly limited as a pessimistic construal of natural selection suggests. Nevertheless, I promote the idea that biology is a promising source of predictions and diagnoses of thought experiment failures. (shrink)

This is a defense and extension of Stephen Yablo's claim that self-reference is completely inessential to the liar paradox. An infinite sequence of sentences of the form 'None of these subsequent sentences are true' generates the same instability in assigning truth values. I argue Yablo's technique of substituting infinity for self-reference applies to all so-called 'self-referential' paradoxes. A representative sample is provided which includes counterparts of the preface paradox, Pseudo-Scotus's validity paradox, the Knower, and other enigmas of the genre. I (...) rebut objections that Yablo's paradox is not a genuine liar by constructing a sequence of liars that blend into Yablo's paradox. I rebut objections that Yablo's liar has hidden self-reference with a distinction between attributive and referential self-reference and appeals to Gregory Chaitin's algorithmic information theory. The paper concludes with comments on the mystique of self-reference. (shrink)

An entertaining history of the idea of nothing - including absences, omissions, and shadows - from the Ancient Greeks through the 20th century How can nothing cause something? The absence of something might seem to indicate a null or a void, an emptiness as ineffectual as a shadow. In fact, 'nothing' is one of the most powerful ideas the human mind has ever conceived. This short and entertaining book by Roy Sorensen is a lively tour of the history and philosophy (...) of nothing, explaining how various thinkers throughout history have conceived and grappled with the mysterious power of absence -- and how these ideas about shadows, gaps, and holes have in turned played a very positive role in the development of some of humankind's most important ideas. Filled with Sorensen's characteristically entertaining mix of anecdotes, puzzles, curiosities, and philosophical speculation, the book is ordered chronologically, starting with the Taoists, the Buddhists, and the ancient Greeks, moving forward to the middle ages and the early modern period, then up to the existentialists and present day philosophy. The result is a diverting tour through the history of human thought as seen from a novel and unusual perspective. (shrink)

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

I present here a modal extension of T called KTLM which is, by several measures, the simplest modal extension of T yet presented. Its axiom uses only one sentence letter and has a modal depth of 2. Furthermore, KTLM can be realized as the logical union of two logics KM and KTL which each have the finite model property (f.m.p.), and so themselves are complete. Each of these two component logics has independent interest as well.

The argument proceeds by exploiting the gradually decreasing vagueness of a certain sequence of predicates. the vagueness of 'vague' is then used to show that the thesis that all vague predicates are incoherent is self-defeating. a second casualty is the view that the probems of vagueness can be avoided by restricting the scope of logic to nonvague predicates.

This chapter lays out a classification scheme for thought experiments. A good scheme consolidates knowledge in a way that minimizes the demand on your memory and expedites the acquisition of new knowledge by raising helpful leading questions. Thought experiments are all reducible to two highly specific forms of paradox — one targeting statements implying necessities, the other targeting statements implying possibilities. By treating a thought experiment as a stylized paradox, the idea that it reveals inconsistencies is matured. The chapter also (...) exposes the structure of our ensuing ambivalence, as well as the structure of resolutions. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the suspicion that “thought experiment” is systematically misleading. It itemizes how “thought experiment” is actually a systematically leading expression. This catalogue of hot tips raises a variety of issues ranging from how thought experiments differ from simulations to the ethics of fantasy.

This chapter focuses on the property that excited Kuhn's interest in thought experiments: conflict vagueness. This property often generates inconsistent beliefs but is not itself inconsistency. Although it is absent from most thought experiments, a substantial portion of the most provocative thought experiments do spring from this species of vagueness; for they motivate conceptual reform by touching a nerve of indeterminacy. Hence, study of conflict vagueness reveals the ways thought experiments restructure our conceptual scheme.

This chapter examines the hazards and pseudohazards of thought experiment. It attacks most skepticism about thought experiment as arbitrary. It argues that once the standards that are customary for compasses, stethoscopes, and other testing devices are applied, thought experiments measure up. They should be used as part of a diversified portfolio of techniques. Although all these devices are individually susceptible to abuse, fallacy, and error, they provide a network of cross-checks that make for impressive collective reliability.

This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of the purpose of this book, which is to present a general theory of thought experiments. The discussion includes thought experiments from many disparate fields, ranging from aesthetics to zoology. The primary goal is to establish true and interesting generalizations about them. Success here will radiate to the secondary goal of understanding philosophical thought experiments. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This chapter focuses on the views of Australian philosopher-physicist Ernst Mach, the earliest and most systematic writer on thought experiments. It discusses Mach's response to the problem of informativeness. It then details the book's disagreements with Mach. It is argued that Mach's mistakes can be traced to his sensationalism and a one-sided diet of examples. His sensationalism led him to overemphasize the mentalistic aspects of thought experiment and to throw away tools needed to explain its genuinely a priori features. Perhaps (...) because of this, Mach's attention gravitated toward thought experiments he could explain and away from the recalcitrant normative examples. To get a complete account of thought experiments, we should reject sensationalism and consider how armchair inquiry works in general. (shrink)

This chapter illustrates the power of thought experiments by assembling influential thought experiments from the history of science. It lays out the book's plan to understand philosophical thought experiments by concentrating on their resemblance to scientific relatives. Points of difference between philosophical and scientific thought experiments give a preview of obstacles that must be overcome in the course of the campaign. Naive and sophisticated reservations about the philosophical cases are registered for the same purpose.

This chapter presents and motivates the issues surrounding thought experiments by assembling the case against their use. It begins by exploring the more specific charge that thought experiment is just introspection, then concentrates on the charge that it is merely an atavistic appeal to ordinary language. Even if thought experiment is distinct from either of these methods, it strongly resembles them. Hence, details of both introspection and the appeal to ordinary language will be discussed in the hope of illuminating thought (...) experiment at least by analogy. Finally, a more general problem about the informativeness of thought experiment is developed. (shrink)

This chapter seeks to define “thought experiment” and dig to its origin. It argues that thought experiments evolved from experiment through a process of attenuation. This builds inductive momentum behind the theme that thought experiments are experiments.

This chapter focuses on armchair inquiry. Thought experiment has the feel of clairvoyance, thus eliciting awe in some and suspicion in others. But the wonder of thought experiment is just a special case of our vague puzzlement about how a question could be answered by merely thinking. There is no mystery when investigators look, measure, and manipulate. Their answers come from the news borne by observation and experiment. But if you just ponder, then the information you have leaving the armchair (...) is the same as the information you had when you sat down. It is argued that part of our wonder is based on a modal fallacy. The theories of armchair inquiry that promise answers to the legitimate portion of our wonder are surveyed. Finally, a cleansing model of rationality that sets the stage for a detailed analysis of how thought experiments work is developed. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on Thomas Kuhn's account of thought experiments. It begins with what Kuhn takes to be the smart talk about thought experiments. It then details Kuhn's amendments to this view and raises objections, most of which are directed against the notion of local incoherence. Finally, Kuhn's error is reconstructed in order to salvage the considerable insight that it contains.

Verisimilitude has the potential to deepen the understanding of mathematical progress, the principle of charity, and the psychology of regret. One obstacle is the widely held belief that two statements can vary in truthlikeness only if they vary in what they entail. This obstacle is removed with four types of counterexamples. The first concerns necessarily coextensive measurements that differ only with respect to their units. The second class of counterexamples is composed of mathematical falsehoods. The third class features inconsistent scientific (...) theories. The fourth class of cases features statements that are instructive but meaningless. (shrink)

(1984). Conditional blindspots and the knowledge squeeze: A solution to the prediction paradox. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 62, No. 2, pp. 126-135.