Thought experiments have a long and illustrious history. But in spite of their acknowledged importance, there has until recently been remarkably little said about them. How do they work? Why do they work? What are the different ways in which they work? And above all: How is it possible that just by thinking we can learn something new about the world? This paper surveys some of the recent approaches, including my own , and discusses their various prospects. Chief among the (...) alternatives is John Norton′s “argument” view. The paper ends by drawing attention to some of the outstanding problems in thought experiments. These are some of the issues that will likely be the focus of attention and research in the future. (shrink)

The reconstruction of bacterial evolutionary relationships has proven to be a daunting task because variable mutation rates and horizontal gene transfer (HGT) among species can cause grave incongruities between phylogenetic trees based on single genes. Recently, a highly robust phylogenetic tree was constructed for 13 γ‐proteobacteria using the combined alignments of 205 conserved orthologous proteins.1 Only two proteins had incongruent tree topologies, which were attributed to HGT between Pseudomonas species and Vibrio cholerae or enterics. While the evolutionary relationships among these (...) species appears to be resolved, further analysis suggests that HGT events with other bacterial partners likely occurred; this alters the implicit assumption of γ‐proteobacteria monophyly. Thus, any thorough reconstruction of bacterial evolution must not only choose a suitable set of molecular markers but also strive to reduce potential bias in the selection of species. BioEssays 26:463–468, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We approach the physics of \emph{minimal coupling} in general relativity, demonstrating that in certain circumstances this leads to violations of the \emph{strong equivalence principle}, which states that, in general relativity, the dynamical laws of special relativity can be recovered at a point. We then assess the consequences of this result for the \emph{dynamical perspective on relativity}, finding that potential difficulties presented by such apparent violations of the strong equivalence principle can be overcome. Next, we draw upon our discussion of the (...) dynamical perspective in order to make explicit two `miracles' in the foundations of relativity theory. We close by arguing that the above results afford us insights into the nature of special relativity, and its relation to general relativity. (shrink)

We review the dynamical approach to spacetime theories---in particular, its origins in the development of special relativity, its opposition to the contemporary `geometrical' approach, and the manner in which it plays out in general relativity. In addition, we demonstrate that the approach is compatible with the `angle bracket school'.

We discuss what we take to be three possible misconceptions in the foundations of general relativity, relating to: the interpretation of the weak equivalence principle and the relationship between gravity and inertia; the connection between gravitational redshift results and spacetime curvature; and the Einstein equivalence principle and the ability to ``transform away" gravity in local inertial coordinate systems.

When the Covid‐19 pandemic reached the United States in spring 2020, many states and hospitals announced crisis standards of care plans that used age as a categorical exclusion criterion. Such age choosing was quickly flagged as discriminatory, and so some states and hospitals shifted to embedding age as a tiebreaker deeper in their plans. Different rationales were given for using age as a tiebreaker: that younger patients were more likely to survive than older patients, that saving younger patients would save (...) more life years, and that younger patients deserved a chance to live through life's stages. We provide a critical analysis of these three rationales, noting the differences between them, and then questioning the ethical and legal justifications for such age choosing. (shrink)

Stimuli such as surprised faces are ambiguous in that they are associated with both positive and negative outcomes. Interestingly, people differ reliably in whether they evaluate these and other ambiguous stimuli as positive or negative, and we have argued that a positive evaluation relies in part on a biasing of the appraisal processes via reappraisal. To further test this idea, we conducted two studies to evaluate whether increasing the cognitive accessibility of reappraisal through a brief emotion regulation task would lead (...) to an increase in positive evaluations of ambiguity. Supporting this prediction, we demonstrated that cuing reappraisal, but not in three other forms of emotion regulation (Study 1a-d; n = 120), increased positive evaluations of ambiguous faces. In a sign of robustness, we also found that the effect of reappraisal generalised from ambiguous faces to ambiguous scenes (Study 2; n = 34). Collectively, these findings suggest that reappraisal may play a key role in determining responses to ambiguous stimuli. We discuss these findings in the context of affective flexibility, and suggest that valence bias (i.e. the tendency to evaluate ambiguity more positively or negatively) represents a novel approach to measuring implicit emotion regulation. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 109-111.

We highlight and resolve what we take to be three common misconceptions in general relativity, relating to the interpretation of the weak equivalence principle and the relationship between gravity and inertia; the connection between gravitational redshift results and spacetime curvature; and the strong equivalence principle and the local recovery of special relativity in curved, dynamical spacetime.

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Freedom of information laws promote transparency by permitting individuals and organizations to obtain government documents. However, exemptions from disclosure are necessary to protect privacy and to permit government officials to deliberate freely. Deliberative language is often the most challenging and burdensome exemption to detect, leading to high processing costs and delays in responding to open-records requests. This paper describes a novel deliberative-language detection model trained on a new annotated training set. The deliberative-language detection model is a component of a decision-support (...) system for open-records requests under the US Freedom of Information Act, the FOIA Assistant, that ingests documents responsive to an open-records requests, suggests passages likely to be subject to deliberative language, privacy, or other exemptions, and assists analysts in rapidly redacting suggested passages. The tool’s interface is based on extensive human-factors and usability studies with analysts and is currently in operational testing by multiple US federal agencies. (shrink)

Adam Smith’s contribution to economics is well-recognised but in recent years scholars have been exploring anew the multidisciplinary nature of his works. The Adam Smith Review is a refereed annual review that provides a unique forum for interdisciplinary debate on all aspects of his Adam Smith’s works, his place in history, and the significance of his writings for the modern world. It is aimed at facilitating debate between scholars working across the humanities and social sciences, thus emulating the transdisciplinary reach (...) of the Enlightenment world which Smith helped to shape. The fourth volume of the series contains contributions form a multidisciplinary range of specialists, including, Henry C. Clark, Douglas J. Den Uyl, Ryan Patrick Hanley, Neven B. Leddy, David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart, Robert Mankin, Leonidas Montes, James R. Otteson, Andrew S. Skinner, and Gloria Vivenza, who discuss: the sources and influences of Smith’s work in the classics, the Scottish Enlightenment and eighteenth-century France the Glasgow Edition of Smith’s Works and the Wealth of Nations. (shrink)

Consider the following facts about the average, philosophically untrained moral relativist: (1.1) The average moral relativist denies the existence of “absolute moral truths.” (1.2) The average moral relativist often expresses her commitment to moral relativism with slogans like ‘What’s true (or right) for you may not be what’s true (or right) for me’ or ‘What’s true (or right) for your culture may not be what’s true (or right) for my culture.’ (1.3) The average moral relativist endorses relativistic views of morality (...) without endorsing relativistic views about science or mathematics. (1.4) The average moral relativist takes moral relativism to be non-relatively true and does not think there is anything contradictory about doing so. (1.5) The average moral relativist adopts an egalitarian attitude toward a wide range of moral values, practices and beliefs, claiming they are all equally legitimate or correct. (1.6) The average moral relativist often admonishes others to be more tolerant of those who engage in alternative ethical practices and to refrain from making negative moral judgments about them. (1.7) The average moral relativist sometimes makes negative moral judgments about the behavior of others—e.g., by harshly judging moral absolutists to be intolerant—but is less inclined to do so when the relativist’s metaethical views are salient in a context of judgment. (1.8) The average moral relativist takes anthropological evidence concerning the worldwide diversity of ethical views and practices to support moral relativism. (shrink)

Recent empirical work on folk moral objectivism has attempted to examine the extent to which folk morality presumes that moral judgments are objectively true or false. Some researchers report findings that they take to indicate folk commitment to objectivism (Goodwin & Darley, 2008, 2010, 2012; Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003; Wainryb et al., 2004), while others report findings that may reveal a more variable commitment to objectivism (Beebe, 2014; Beebe et al., 2015; Beebe & Sackris, 2016; Sarkissian, et al., 2011; Wright, (...) 2018; Wright, Grandjean, & McWhite, 2013; Wright, McWhite, & Grandjean, 2014). However, the various probes that have been used to examine folk moral objectivism almost always fail to be good direct measures of objectivism. Some critics (Beebe, 2015; Pölzler, 2017, 2018) have suggested that the problems with existing probes are serious enough that they should be viewed as largely incapable of shedding any light on folk metaethical commitments. Building upon the work of Justin Khoo and Joshua Knobe (2018), I argue that many of the existing probes can be seen as good measures of the extent to which people think that the truth of one moral judgment excludes the possibility that a judgment made by a disagreeing party is also true and that the best explanation of the findings obtained using these measures is significant folk support for indexical moral relativism—the view that the content of moral judgments is context-sensitive. If my thesis is correct, many contemporary moral philosophers are deeply mistaken about the metaethical contours of folk morality in one very important respect. (shrink)

"In this study, James R. Harrison compares the modern cult of celebrity to the quest for glory in late republican and early imperial society. He shows how Paul's ethic of humility, based upon the crucified Christ, stands out in a world obsessed with mutual comparison, boasting, and self-sufficiency." --.

The goal of this unique text is to provide an "experience" that would facilitate a better transition for mathematics majors to the advanced proof-based courses required for their major. If you "love mathematics, but I hate proofs" this book is for you. Example-based courses such as introductory Calculus transition somewhat abruptly, and without a warning label, to proof-based courses, and may leave students with the unpleasant feeling that a subject they loved has turned into material they find hard to understand. (...) The book exposes students and readers to the fundamental nature and principles of constructing mathematical proofs and in the context of main courses required for the major, e.g., probability, linear algebra, real analysis, and abstract algebra. Four short chapters, each chapter focusing on a particular course, provide a short but rigorous introduction. Students then get a preview of the discipline, its focus, language, mathematical objects of interests, and common methods of proof presented in those courses. Because which ideas apply to which future courses may not be obvious in many transition courses, this structure addresses this need. The book may also be used as a review tool at the end of course and for readers who want to learn the language and scope of the broad disciplines of linear algebra, abstract algebra, real analysis, and probability, before transitioning to these courses. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have investigated various ways in which non‐epistemic evaluations can affect knowledge attributions. For example, several teams of researchers (Beebe and Buckwalter 2010; Beebe and Jensen 2012; Schaffer and Knobe 2012; Beebe and Shea 2013; Buckwalter 2014b; Turri 2014) report that the goodness or badness of an agent’s action can affect whether the agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. These findings raise important questions about how patterns of folk knowledge attributions should influence philosophical theorizing about knowledge.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:James's Faith-Ladder JAMES C. S. WERNHAM JAMES WROTE OFTEN of a "faith-ladder."' What he said about it has drawn some side-glances from critics, but not yet any sustained and careful look.' That is surprising, for what he says is puzzling enough to invite inquiry. It is also important enough to deserve it. His presentations of the ladder show significant variation, so it is useful to look (...) at a generous sample. In the interest of brevity the following six passages have been extracted from contexts which sometimes have an important bearing on them. The unquoted contexts will get attention as needed. 1. "The inner process is a succession of 'synthetic judgments'. What is so good, may be, ought to be, must be, shall be,--so far as I am concerned, I won't admit the opposite. ''s 2. "[W]e have a conception which being opposed by another is only probab /e. But we feel, it is so good that it isfit to be true, it ought to be true, it must be true etc. And then we say it shall be true for me, it/s true. ''4 3- "Its [faith's] natural logic is the Sorites: fit to be, ought to be, may be, must be, shall be, is etc.''5 4. "The following steps may be called the 'faith-ladder': ~. There is nothing absurd in a certain view of the world being true, nothing self-contradictory; ' To the best of my knowledge, the name "faith-ladder'"does not occur before 19o6. It occurs in "Faith and Reason" and in "Faith and the Right to Believe," both written in that year. But expositions of the thing predate the name. They are found as early as 1899, and in close connection with the will-to-believe doctrine. 9 Levinson's discussion is a partial exception. His treatment is more extended than most. See H. S. Levinson, $c/ence, Metaphysicsand the Chan~e of Salvation (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978), 161--67; also his The Religious Investigations of Wdliam James (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 198 0, 231-34. s Letter to Baldwin, quoted in'R. B. Perry, The Thoughtand Characterof WilliamJames, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1935), 2: 243. 4 Letter to Marshall, Feb. 9, 1899, quoted in Perry, Thought and Character,2: 24~. 5 William James, A Pluralistic Universe (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard Universit~t Press, 1977), 199. [1o5] lO6 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28" 1 JANUARY I990 2. If might have been true under certain conditions; 3- It may be true even now; 4. It isfit to be true; 5- It ought to be true; 6. It must be true; 7- It s/m//be true, at any rate true for me. ''6 5. "Faith's form of argument is something like this: Considering a view of the world: 'It isfit to be true', she feels; 'it would be well if it were true; it might be true; it may be true; it ought to be true', she says; 'it must be true', she continues; 'it shall be true', she concludes, 'for me; that is, I will treat it as if it were true so far as my advocacy and actions are concerned'. ''7 6. "A conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. Is it true or not? you ask. It might be true somewhere, you say, for it is not self-contradictory. It may be true, you continue, even here and now. It is fit to be true, it would be well if it were true, it ought to be true, you presently feel. It must be true, something persuasive in you whispers next; and then--as a final result--it shall be held for true, you decide; it shall be as if true, for you. ''s 9. Between these statements there are clear similarities and clear differences too. Some of them deserve to be noted, some to be noted and explored. a. In these accounts of it the ladder varies in the number of its rungs. By James's own count in one place, it has as many as seven. In... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dewey on Metaphysics, Meaning Making, and Maps James W. Garrison Blueprints and maps are propositions and they exemplify what it is to be propositional.1 [E]very characteristic trait is a quality.... produced and destroyed by existential conditions.2 John Dewey's claim that there are metaphysical generic traits of existence the theory of which provides "a ground-map" for cultural criticism remains controversial. I will work along two intertwining lines to try (...) and clear things up a bit. First, many assume that his reference to a metaphysical map is a metaphor. My paper will show that he uses the idea of a map consistently in many different places throughout his career. Second, my paper will examine how Dewey functionally coordinates ordinary existential traits and their maps within his theory of judgment. We will find that the generic traits and the ground-map of criticism connect in much the same way. Before examining Dewey's theory of judgment, I want to say something about where Dewey's metaphysics fits into his empirical "denotative method." In the conclusion, we wiU look at where metaphysics fits into the architectonic of his entire phUosophy. In between, we wiU examine maps functioning as propositions (especiaUy logical and mathematical universals) as weU as ever-evolving guides to unending inquiry in an unfinished and unfinishable universe. Eventually we wiU see why Dewey insists that "the social" is "The Inclusive PhUosophic Idea." Metaphysics, for Dewey, is simply one tool of cultural criticism among others. First and Last Philosophy in Dewey's Denotative Method Dewey's "denotative method" moves from the immediately given intuitive meanings of qualitative "having" of experience that impart a "sense" of a qualitative, organically whole TRANSACTIONS OFTHE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY Vol. 41, No. 4 ©2005 O situation from whence we may select traits, through the experience of "significant " linguistic meanings, such as the propositions of judgment, to the experience of "knowing" as the product of the logical process of inquiry, and back again to primary experience.4 Each phase interpenetrates every 3 other. Here is how Dewey describes the trans-action between primary, noncognitive and secondary, cognitive experience in his original (1925) >■$ introduction to Experience and Nature: ^r There are two avenues of approach to the goal of philosophy. We may " begin with experience in gross, experience in its primary and crude forms ^ [e.g., traits].... Or, we may begin with refined selective products, the a most authentic statements of commended methods of science [e.g., ¿q maps], and work from them back to the primary facts of life. ^ P TT ϕ > Philosophy may start with either immediate existential experience or the 3 experience of mediating meanings. While we may distinguish these two L starting points, we should never construct a dualism from them since both jx occur within experience.6 Dewey explains that "the subject-matter of primary experience sets the problems and furnishes the first data of reflection ""O which constructs the secondary objects of reflection."7 Further, "crude or macroscopic experience" provides the "test and verification" of the secondary objects of reflection. Secondary objects "explain the primary objects, 2 they enable us to grasp them with understanding!'9 The two starting points " differ in direction, but eventually they close to form a circle of expanding? dence. They may then pioneer new pathways, or, having different values, D choose to construct different kinds of maps. ^ Douglas Browning distinguishes "three phases of discussion of the start- 0 ing point."23 The first concerns "the designation of a certain subject matter P1 referred to under the names 'experience' and 'my life'."24 Dewey's empirical « denotative method selects aspects from immediate qualitative experience. The >% second phase involves two things: First, "a reflective moving away from and looking back upon that subject-matter" and, second, "the bringing of a puta- S tive characterization against it." Browning's example of characterization is g "the catalogue of the generic traits of experience." The generic traits are not S antecedent to inquiry; rather they are the products of reflection used to char- 5 ' acterize primary experience. Browning observes that characterization is always ^ provisional; as we wiU find, Dewey insists that the theoretical map proposi- ^ tionaUy representing the existential... (shrink)

Some philosophers working on the epistemology of disagreement claim that conciliationist responses to peer disagreement embody a kind of intellectual humility. Others contend that standing firm or ‘sticking to one's guns’ in the face of peer disagreement may stem from an admirable kind of courage or internal fortitude. In this paper, we report the results of two empirical studies that examine the relationship between conciliationist and steadfast responses to peer disagreement, on the one hand, and virtues such as intellectual humility, (...) courage, grit, and actively open-minded thinking, on the other. We observed positive correlations between measures of conciliationism, intellectual humility, and actively open-minded thinking but failed to find any reliable association between steadfastness, courage, and grit. Our studies reveal that there are at least two important intellectual virtues associated with conciliationist responses to peer disagreement (viz., intellectual humility and actively open-minded thinking) and two vices associated with steadfast responses (intellectual arrogance and myside bias). These findings shed new light on the overall epistemic goodness of the conciliationist perspective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:34 Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. James Bliss Defense, Redemption, Care: Black Feminist and Queer Studies Literary theory continues to be received by some as if it were an alien or antagonistic presence from whose leaden and reductive grasp it is imperative to keep literature protected. It is rare, however, that it is the literary, as such, that is being protected, rather (...) than a certain comfortable accommodation with it—not irreducible strangeness and surprise, but the security of knowing that one’s expectations will be fulfilled and one’s competence as a reader rewarded. The pleasures of accommodation and immediate assimilation are the first that theory asks us to forego—which may do as much to make it seem forbidding and “inhumane” as anything it actually proposes. —Elizabeth W. Bruss1 I. Theory Not for the first time, we find ourselves building new genres. Pursuing new writings. Not for the first time, the theoretical and the literary envelope, eclipse, and rearticulate one another. What’s more, the theoretical has been a mode of artistic practice for so long that every page is a palimpsest, a sedimentation of sedimentations of conceptual frames— swirled, spiraling genealogies. Fluent in invented tongues, in the idioms 1. Elizabeth W. Bruss, Beautiful Theories: The Spectacle of Discourse in Contemporary Criticism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 483. 35 James Bliss Books Discussed in This Essay Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality. By Jennifer C. Nash. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. None Like Us: Blackness, Belonging, Aesthetic Life. By Stephen Best. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance. By Amber Jamilla Musser. New York: NYU Press, 2018. Queer Times, Black Futures. By Kara Keeling. New York: NYU Press, 2019. of invention, in the fluid looseness of disintegrated discourses, our works turn singular. The monograph as signature. The page promises to freeze the text, the object, the artwork, the lifeworld, the performance, and in that stillness to teach us its movements. New moves, secret passageways, lines of escape and gaps in the walls of institutions that die, dissolve, and ossify around and inside us. And here we are. The permanent apocalypse that racial capitalism has been for most life has reached the quadrangles of the college campus. What are we even doing anymore? In the great and dreadful remaking of higher education, as students face permanent indebtedness as the cost of entry into a world without work, what is the ethical impetus for our researches and the systems within which we publish? What are the ethics of critical cultural studies in a debt mine? By what arithmetic do we benefit the students we teach to “steal from the university ” when the university is so much more adroit at stealing from them (and us)? At the same time that the contours of our professional lives are, apparently, unraveling, we find ourselves in (another) new renaissance in Black studies and Black study. We find ourselves within (another) new moment of textual production around the trio of race/gender/sexuality— that is, around Blackness or around Black feminism. 36 James Bliss Or, Black invention—where the Black female, femme, feminine, and maternal operate as synecdochic figures for a species of poiēsis.2 In the 1980s, Jacques Derrida wryly called California the “state of theory” as a function of its tectonic instability.3 In the 2010s, Blackness became the state of theory as a function of its coincidence of death and life, ending and beginning, absence and excess, apocalypse and invention. Blackness, in this instance, is as material as it is metaphor, a projection of meaning across both the great ephemeral skin and the body as flesh. This piece emerges from a sense of the necessity and the hazards of an intellectual history of a moment during which, to take a suggestive phrase from Jared Sexton, “Blackness is theory itself, anti-blackness the resistance to theory.”4 But already language presents an issue. What is the relationship between Sexton’s “theory” and the “theory” found in the epigraph from Elizabeth Bruss? Or, between Sexton’s “theory” and Lewis R. Gordon’s “theory,” as Sexton borrows from Gordon’s “Theory in... (shrink)

Some philosophers working on the epistemology of disagreement claim that conciliationist responses to peer disagreement embody a kind of intellectual humility. Others contend that standing firm or “sticking to one’s guns” in the face of peer disagreement may stem from an admirable kind of courage or internal fortitude. In this paper, we report the results of two empirical studies that examine the relationship between conciliationist and steadfast responses to peer disagreement, on the one hand, and virtues such as intellectual humility, (...) courage, grit, and actively open-minded thinking, on the other. We observed positive correlations between measures of conciliationism, intellectual humility, and actively open-minded thinking but failed to find any reliable association between steadfastness, courage, and grit. Our studies reveal that there are at least two important intellectual virtues associated with conciliationist responses to peer disagreement (viz., intellectual humility and actively open-minded thinking) and two vices associated with steadfast responses (intellectual arrogance and myside bias). These findings shed new light on the overall epistemic goodness of the conciliationist perspective. -/- keywords: disagreement, conciliationism, steadfastness, intellectual humility, courage, actively open-minded thinking. (shrink)