Can identity itself be vague? Can there be vague objects? Does a positive answer to either question entail a positive answer to the other? In this paper we answer these questions as follows: No, No, and Yes. First, we discuss Evans’s famous 1978 argument and argue that the main lesson that it imparts is that identity itself cannot be vague. We defend the argument from objections and endorse this conclusion. We acknowledge, however, that the argument does not by itself establish (...) either that there cannot be vague objects or that there cannot be identity statements that are indeterminate for ontic reasons. And we further acknowledge that it does not by itself establish that there cannot be identity statements that are indeterminate in virtue of the existence of vague objects. We then go on to argue that, despite this, one who believes in vague objects cannot endorse Evans’s argument. To establish this we offer supplementary arguments that show that if vague objects exist then identity is vague, and that if identity is vague then vague objects exist. Finally we draw attention to an argument parallel to that of Evans’s, but safer, which can be employed against the putative ontic indeterminacy in identity of vague objects which can be differentiated by identity-free properties. (shrink)

Filósofos modernos como Berkeley y Hume desplegaron una argumentación de corte escéptico en contra del llamado realismo ingenuo: la idea de que la experiencia perceptual provee un accesodirecto al mundo. Dicha argumentación ha sido criticada por Michael Martin y John Campbell, quienes reclaman justicia por una nueva forma de realismo ingenuo llamado relacionalista. Se argumenta que tanto el realismo ingenuo como el relacionalista son falsos, y se defiende la tesis central de Berkeley y Hume: no hay experiencias perfectamente verídicas de (...) objetos materiales. (shrink)

The paper challenges Williamson’s safety based explanation for why we cannot know the cut-off point of vague expressions. We assume throughout (most of) the paper that Williamson is correct in saying that vague expressions have sharp cut-off points, but we argue that Williamson’s explanation for why we do not and cannot know these cut-off points is unsatisfactory. -/- In sect 2 we present Williamson's position in some detail. In particular, we note that Williamson's explanation relies on taking a particular safety (...) principle ('Meta-linguistic belief safety' or 'MBS') as a necessary condition on knowledge. In section 3, we show that even if MBS were a necessary condition on knowledge, that would not be sufficient to show that we cannot know the cut-off points of vague expressions. In section 4, we present our main case against Williamson's explanation: we argue that MBS is not a necessary condition on knowledge, by presenting a series of cases where one's belief violates MBS but nevertheless constitutes knowledge. In section 5, we present and respond to an objection to our view. And in section 6, we briefly discuss the possible directions a theory of vagueness can take, if our objection to Williamson's theory is taken on board. (shrink)

Might it be that world itself, independently of what we know about it or how we represent it, is metaphysically indeterminate? This article tackles in turn a series of questions: In what sorts of cases might we posit metaphysical indeterminacy? What is it for a given case of indefiniteness to be 'metaphysical'? How does the phenomenon relate to 'ontic vagueness', the existence of 'vague objects', 'de re indeterminacy' and the like? How might the logic work? Are there reasons for postulating (...) this distinctive sort of indefiniteness? Conversely, are there reasons for denying that there is indefiniteness of this sort? (shrink)

Epistemicism seems to be the most dominating approach to vagueness in the recent twenty years. In the logical and philosophical tradition, e.g. Peirce, vagueness does not depend on human knowledge. Epistemicists deny this fact and contend that vagueness is merely the result of our imperfect mind, our dearth of knowledge, sort of phantom, finally, that it simply does not exist. In my opinion, such a stance not only excludes vagueness comprehended in terms of human knowledge, but which is worse, stems (...) from spurious logical arguments. The part of arguments called Sorensen’s Arguments or even Proofs were the subject of my analysis in the book Paradoksy and in the paper “Epistemicism and Roy Sorensen Arguments” published in the Bulletin of the Section of Logic. Here I shall only briefly refer to these works and focus mainly on the arguments launched by Tymothy Williamson. One of them is to uncover why we are not able to recognize the alleged sharp boundary between positive and negative extensions of any vague predicates. Williamson’s reasoning is based on his margin for error principle. Another argumentation of Williamson aims at the refutation of the principle I know that I know. It should be emphasized that all the aforementioned arguments are fundamental for epistemicism and all of them are fallacious because of either formal or false-premise fallacy. There is the circumstance that we cannot deem epistemicism logical. Finally, we show that within the epistemic frame the following thesis is valid: if what epistemicism states is the case, then what epistemicism states is not the case. This immediately implies → ¬p’) that it is not the case what epistemicism states. So, either epistemicism or logic. (shrink)

We present an objection to Beall & Henderson’s recent paper defending a solution to the fundamental problem of conciliar Christology using qua or secundum clauses. We argue that certain claims the acceptance/rejection of which distinguish the Conciliar Christian from others fail to so distinguish on Beall & Henderson’s 0-Qua view. This is because on their 0-Qua account, these claims are either acceptable both to Conciliar Christians as well as those who are not Conciliar Christians or because they are acceptable to (...) neither. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is commonly described as the view that there is more than one correct logic. It has been claimed that, in order for that view to be interesting, there has to be at least a potential for rivalry between the correct logics. This paper offers a detailed assessment of this suggestion. I argue that an interesting version of logical pluralism is hard, if not impossible, to achieve. I first outline an intuitive understanding of the notions of rivalry and correctness. (...) I then discuss a natural account of rivalry in terms of disagreement about validity claims and the argument from meaning variance that has been raised against it. I explore a more refined picture of the meaning of validity claims that makes use of the character-content distinction of classical two dimensional semantics. There are three ways in which pluralists can use that framework to argue for the view that different logics may be rivals but could nevertheless be equally correct. I argue that none of them is convincing. (shrink)

Vagueness demands many boundaries. Each is permissible, in that a thinker may without error use it to distinguish objects, though none is mandatory. This is revealed by a thought experiment—scrambled sorites—in which objects from a sorites series are presented in a random order, and subjects are required to make their judgments without access to any previous objects or their judgments concerning them.

Art historians have long viewed southern Italy, especially the Salento region in Apulia, as a Byzantine artistic province even centuries after Byzantine rule ended there in c. 1070. The Orthodox monastery of Santa Maria di Cerrate, near Lecce, is widely considered to possess some of the region’s “most Byzantine” paintings (twelfth to fourteenth centuries). Yet a close examination of these frescoes reveals significant iconographic and stylistic differences from alleged Byzantine norms. A historiographic synopsis and review of problematic definitions of “Byzantine” (...) art are followed in this article by a critique of reductionist labels. Embracing the concept of vagueness offers an alternative way to think about Cerrate and similar borderline cases—not in terms of fixed categories (“Byzantine” or “Western”), but as points on an art-historical continuum that is enriched by acknowledging complexity. (shrink)

Biological dysfunction is regarded, in many accounts, as necessary and perhaps sufficient for disease. But although disease is conceptualized as all-or-nothing, biological functions often differ by degree. A tension is created by attempting to use a continuous variable as the basis for a categorical definition, raising questions about how we are to pinpoint the boundary between health and disease. This is the line-drawing problem. In this paper, we show how the line-drawing problem arises within “dysfunction-requiring” accounts of disease, such as (...) those of Christopher Boorse and Jerome Wakefield. We then provide several detailed examples to establish that biological dysfunction cannot provide a boundary. We examine potential ways of resolving the line-drawing problem, either by dropping one of the claims that generates it, or by appealing to additional criteria. We argue that two of these options are plausible, and that each of these can be applied with regard to different diseases. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally held that propositions mark the domain of rational thought and inference. Many philosophers have held that only conceptually sophisticated creatures like us could have propositional attitudes. But in recent decades, philosophers have adopted increasingly liberal views of propositional attitudes that encompass the mental states of various non-human animals. These views now sit alongside more traditional views within the philosophical mainstream. In this paper I argue that liberalized views of propositional attitudes are so liberal that they encompass states (...) of all sorts of apparently mindless systems like circadian clocks in plants. I begin by arguing that on the most well-developed and widely endorsed theories of underived representation in philosophy, circadian clocks qualify as representations. I then argue that standard reasons for thinking that perceptual states and pictures have propositional content carry over to circadian clocks. Finally, I argue that circadian representations in plants play the kind of functional role that is widely taken to be partly constitutive of belief-like attitudes. So according to mainstream theories of representation, propositions, and attitudes, plants have propositional attitudes. Yet on other more traditional views, this conclusion would seem absurd. So, contrary to appearances, there is no shared, stable understanding of what propositional attitudes are in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally held that propositions mark the domain of rational thought and inference. Many philosophers have held that only conceptually sophisticated creatures like us could have propositional attitudes. But in recent decades, philosophers have adopted increasingly liberal views of propositional attitudes that encompass the mental states of various non-human animals. These views now sit alongside more traditional views within the philosophical mainstream. In this paper I argue that liberalized views of propositional attitudes are so liberal that they encompass states (...) of all sorts of apparently mindless systems like circadian clocks in plants. I begin by arguing that on the most well-developed and widely endorsed theories of underived representation in philosophy, circadian clocks qualify as representations. I then argue that standard reasons for thinking that perceptual states and pictures have propositional content carry over to circadian clocks. Finally, I argue that circadian representations in plants play the kind of functional role that is widely taken to be partly constitutive of belief-like attitudes. So according to mainstream theories of representation, propositions, and attitudes, plants have propositional attitudes. Yet on other more traditional views, this conclusion would seem absurd. So, contrary to appearances, there is no shared, stable understanding of what propositional attitudes are in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

The claim that all vagueness must be a feature of language or thought is the current orthodoxy. This is a claim about the “location” of vagueness. “Locating Vagueness” argues that this claim is false, largely by defending the possibility of borderline cases in the absence of language and thought. If the orthodoxy about the location of vagueness is false, then so too is any account of the “nature” of vagueness that implies that orthodoxy. So this paper concludes that various accounts (...) of the nature of vagueness are false. Among such accounts, so this paper argues, are the standard versions of supervaluationism and the standard versions of epistemicism. So I conclude that those accounts are false. Along the way, I present, and uncover ways to motivate, several heretical accounts of the nature of vagueness, including nonstandard versions of both supervaluationism and epistemicism. (shrink)

Imagine advanced computers that could, by virtue merely of being programmed in the right ways, act, react, communicate, and otherwise behave like humans. Might such computers be capable of understanding, thinking, believing, and the like? The framework developed in this paper for tackling challenging questions of concept application (in any realm of discourse) answers in the affirmative, contrary to Searle’s famous ‘Chinese Room’ thought experiment, which purports to prove that ascribing such mental processes to computers like these would be necessarily (...) incorrect. The paper begins by arguing that the core issue concerns language, specifically the discourse-community-guided mapping of phenomena onto linguistic categories. It then offers a model of how people adapt language to deal with novel states of affairs and thereby lend generality to their words, employing processes of assimilation, lexemic creation, and accommodation (in intersense and intrasense varieties). Attributions of understanding to some computers lie in the middle range on a spectrum of acceptability and are thus reasonable. Possible objections deriving from Searle’s writings require supplementing the model with distinctions between present and future acceptability, and between contemplated and uncontemplated word uses, as well as a literal-figurative distinction that is more sensitive than Searle’s to actual linguistic practice and the multiplicity of subsenses possible within a single literal sense. The paper then critiques two misleading rhetorical features of Searle’s Chinese Room presentation, and addresses a contemporary defense of Searle that seems to confront the sociolinguistic issue, but fails to allow for intrasense accommodation. It concludes with a brief consideration of the proper course for productive future discussion. (shrink)

Classically, vagueness has been considered something bad. It leads to the Sorites paradox, borderline cases, and the (apparent) violation of the logical principle of bivalence. Nevertheless, there have always been scholars claiming that vagueness is also valuable. Many have pointed out that we could not communicate as successfully or efficiently as we do if we would not use vague language. Indeed, we often use vague terms when we could have used more precise ones instead. Many scholars (implicitly or explicitly) assume (...) that we do so because their vagueness has a positive function. But how and in what sense can vagueness be said to have a function or value? This paper is an attempt to give an answer to this question. After clarifying the concepts of vagueness and value, it examines nine arguments for the value of vagueness, which have been discussed in the literature. The (negative) result of this examination is, however, that there is not much reason to believe that vagueness has a value or positive function at all because none of the arguments is conclusive. A tenth argument that has not been discussed so far seems most promising but rests on a solely strategic notion of function. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) pervades humanity in 2022, and it is notoriously difficult to understand how certain aspects of it work. There is a movement—_Explainable_ Artificial Intelligence (XAI)—to develop new methods for explaining the behaviours of AI systems. We aim to highlight one important philosophical significance of XAI—it has a role to play in the elimination of vagueness. To show this, consider that the use of AI in what has been labeled _surveillance capitalism_ has resulted in humans quickly gaining the capability (...) to identify and classify most of the occasions in which languages are used. We show that the knowability of this information is incompatible with what a certain theory of vagueness—_epistemicism_—says about vagueness. We argue that one way the epistemicist could respond to this threat is to claim that this process brought about the end of vagueness. However, we suggest an alternative interpretation, namely that epistemicism is false, but there is a weaker doctrine we dub _technological epistemicism_, which is the view that vagueness is due to ignorance of linguistic usage, but the ignorance can be overcome. The idea is that knowing more of the relevant data and how to process it enables us to know the semantic values of our words and sentences with higher confidence and precision. Finally, we argue that humans are probably not going to believe what future AI algorithms tell us about the sharp boundaries of our vague words unless the AI involved can be explained in terms understandable by humans. That is, if people are going to accept that AI can tell them about the sharp boundaries of the meanings of their words, then it is going to have to be XAI. (shrink)

Panmetaphoricism is the view that our speech about God can only be metaphorical. In this essay, I do not assess the reasons that have been given for the view. Rather, I assess the view itself. My aim is to develop the most plausible version of panmetaphoricism in order to gain a clear view of the God it offers for our consideration.

The need for a ‘many-valued logic’ in linguistics has been evident since the 1970s, but there was lack of clarity as to whether it should come from the family of fuzzy logics or from the family of probabilistic logics. In this regard, Fine [14] and Kamp [26] pointed out undesirable effects of fuzzy logic (the failure of idempotency and coherence) which kept two generations of linguists and philosophers at arm’s length. (Another unwanted feature of fuzzy logic is the property of (...) truth functionality.) While probabilistic logic is not fraught by the same problems, its lack of constructiveness, i.e. its inability to compose complex truth degrees from atomic truth degrees, did not make it more attractive to linguists either. In the absence of a clear perspective in ‘many-valued logic’, scholars chose to proliferate ontologies grafted atop the classical bivalent logic: ontologies for truth, individuals, events, situations, possible worlds and degrees. The result has been a collection of incompatible classical logics. In this paper, I present sample logic, in particular its semantics (not its axiomatization). Sample logics is a member of the family of probabilistic logics, which is constructive without being truth functional. More specifically, I integrate all the important linguistic data on which the classical logics are predicated. The concepts of (in)dependency and conditional (in)dependency are the cornerstones of sample logic. (shrink)

:The Small Improvement Argument is the leading argument for value incomparability. All vagueness-based accounts of the SIA have hitherto assumed the truth of supervaluationism, but supervaluationism has some well-known problems. This paper explores the implications of epistemicism, a leading rival theory. We argue that if epistemicism is true, then options are comparable in small improvement cases. Moreover, even if SIAs do not exploit vagueness, if epistemicism is true, then options cannot be on a par. The epistemicist account of the SIA (...) has an advantage over leading existing rival accounts of the SIA because it accounts for higher-order hard cases. (shrink)

This study aims at investigating vagueness in Security Council Resolutions by focussing on a selection of nouns and phrases used as the main casus belli for the Second Gulf War. Analysing a corpus of Security Council Resolutions relating to the conflict, the study leads a qualitative and quantitative analysis drawing upon Mellinkoff’s theories on “weasel words”, which are “words and expressions with a very flexible meaning, strictly dependent on context and interpretation”. Special attention is devoted to the historical/political consequences of (...) such vague and indeterminate expressions. The findings indicate that excessive vagueness might have led to biased or even strategically-motivated interpretations of the Resolutions, triggering the Iraqi conflict instead of a diplomatic solution. The analysis of the “weasel words” used in the Resolutions suggests the double-faced strength of such expressions: though they can guaranteed a wide degree of applicability of the Resolutions, their subjective interpretability might become a source of manipulation and elusiveness, with the overall legislative intent of using intentional vagueness as a political strategy. (shrink)

This paper will discuss the role of modality in UN Security Council resolutions. As a work in progress on whether the use of strategic vagueness in UN resolutions has contributed to the outbreak of the second Gulf war, this work proposes a qualitative and quantitative analysis on the role of vagueness of the central modal verbs shall, should, and may in the institutional language of the UN, drawing upon Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach and Jenkins, Gotti, and Trosborg's theories on modality. Observing (...) the semantic and linguistic values of these modals, the analysis investigates their double-faced strength: though they can be used to guarantee a wide degree of applicability of the resolutions, their subjective interpretability might become a source of manipulation and elusiveness, supporting a legislative intent of using vagueness as a political strategy. (shrink)

The status of risk factors and disease remains a disputed question in the theory and practice of medicine and healthcare, and so does the related question of delineating disease boundaries. I present a framework based on Bernard Lonergan’s account of emergent probability for differentiating (1) generically distinct levels of systematic function within organisms and between organisms and their environments and (2) the methods of functional, genetic, and statistical investigation. I then argue on this basis that it is possible to understand (...) disease in terms of biological or higher intra-level dysfunction, risk factors—including genetic risk factors—in terms of statistical inter-level conditioning of a given stage or developmental sequence of systematic functioning, and the empirical boundaries of disease in terms of the limits of both functional categorization (from an epistemic standpoint) and upper-level integration of lower-level processes and events (from an ontological standpoint). (shrink)

ABSTRACT Alice Ambrose is best known as Wittgenstein’s student during the 1930s. Her association with probably the most famous philosopher of the twentieth century contributes to her obscurity. Ambrose is referred to in historiography of this period as ‘follower’ or ‘disciple’ but never considered in her own right as a philosopher. The neglect of her place in the history of philosophy needs to be resisted. This paper explores some of Ambrose’s most interesting ideas from the early 1950s, when she developed (...) and expanded some of Wittgenstein’s inchoate suggestions and contributed to on-going debates about how to do philosophy and the role of language in the discipline. By combining an analysis of the 1950 paper “The Problem of Linguistic Inadequacy” and the 1952 paper “Linguistic Approaches to Philosophical Problems”, it will be seen that Ambrose rejects the idea that ordinary language can be improved and begins to develop the view that philosophical language adapts to usage. Thus, Ambrose does not blindly follow Wittgenstein but breaks with his idea that there is something inherently wrong with the way philosophers communicate. The paper also seeks to show how marginalized philosophers become obscured in the history of the subject through the example of Ambrose. (shrink)

It is held by some philosophers that it is possible that x has a disposition D but, if the stimulus condition obtains, it won’t manifest D because of an intrinsic interference. I will criticize this position on the ground that it has a deeply sceptical consequence, for instance, that, assuming that I am not well informed of the micro-properties of a metal coin, I do not know that it is not water-soluble. But I urge that this is beyond the pale, (...) especially in light of the weight of the practical considerations we take when we use dispositional concepts in everyday life or science. In doing so, further, I will formulate a type of belief-forming inference and claim that it confers justification on commonsensical dispositional beliefs like the one that a metal coin isn’t water-soluble. (shrink)

If there are fundamental laws of nature, can they fail to be exact? In this paper, I consider the possibility that some fundamental laws are vague. I call this phenomenon 'fundamental nomic vagueness.' I characterize fundamental nomic vagueness as the existence of borderline lawful worlds and the presence of several other accompanying features. Under certain assumptions, such vagueness prevents the fundamental physical theory from being completely expressible in the mathematical language. Moreover, I suggest that such vagueness can be regarded as (...) 'vagueness in the world.' For a case study, we turn to the Past Hypothesis, a postulate that (partially) explains the direction of time in our world. We have reasons to take it seriously as a candidate fundamental law of nature. Yet it is vague: it admits borderline (nomologically) possible worlds. An exact version would lead to an untraceable arbitrariness absent in any other fundamental laws. However, the dilemma between fundamental nomic vagueness and untraceable arbitrariness is dissolved in a new quantum theory of time's arrow. (shrink)

Taking Carnap’s classic exposition as a starting point, this paper develops a pragmatic account of the method of explication, defends it against a range of challenges and proposes a detailed recipe for the practice of explicating. It is then argued that confusions are involved in characterizing explications as definitions, and in advocating precising definitions as an alternative to explications. Explication is better characterized as conceptual re-engineering for theoretical purposes, in contrast to conceptual re-engineering for other purposes and improving exactness for (...) purely practical reasons. Finally, three limitations which call for further development of the method of explication are discussed. (shrink)

This unique anthology of new, contributed essays offers a range of perspectives on various aspects of ontic vagueness. It seeks to answer core questions pertaining to onticism, the view that vagueness exists in the world itself. The questions to be addressed include whether vague objects must have vague identity, and whether ontic vagueness has a distinctive logic, one that is not shared by semantic or epistemic vagueness. The essays in this volume explain the motivations behind onticism, such as the plausibility (...) of mereological vagueness and indeterminacy in quantum mechanics and they offer various arguments both for and against ontic vagueness; onticism is also compared with other, competing theories of vagueness such as semanticism, the view that vagueness exists only in our linguistic representation of the world. Gareth Evans’s influential paper of 1978, “Can There Be Vague Objects?” gave a simple but cogent argument against the coherence of ontic vagueness. Onticism was subsequently dismissed by many. However, in recent years, researchers have become aware of the logical gaps in Evans’s argument and this has triggered a new wave of interest in onticism. Onticism is now widely regarded as at least a coherent view. Reflecting this growing consensus, the present anthology for the first time puts together essays that are focused on onticism and its various facets and it fills in the lacuna in the literature on vagueness, a much-discussed subject in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Recent analytic theology has seen a wave of excellent work on the fundamental problem of Christology, the question of how one and the same person can be human full stop and divine full stop. Along the way, new objections have been raised for a venerable family of Christological views, whose distinctive is the employment of qua-devices to dissolve the difficulties stemming from the dual nature doctrine of Chalcedon and its successors. My objective in this article is twofold. First, I propose (...) to lay out a hierarchy of principles that should guide the search for a Christological theory. I then use these principles to illuminate the best qua-theoretic approach to Christology. Finally, I argue that the best qua-theory is at worst on a par with major recent views. (shrink)

'Transgender’ is often described either as an identity, or else as the full spectrum of gender nonconformity. In this essay, I suggest that these descriptions do not align with the conceptual labor that we often ask ‘transgender’ to do: highlighting people who engage in forms of self-directed gender nonconformity that are heavily penalized.

As anyone who has flown out of a cloud knows, the boundaries of a cloud are a lot less sharp up close than they can appear on the ground. Even when it seems clearly true that there is one, sharply bounded, cloud up there, really there are thousands of water droplets that are neither determinately part of the cloud, nor determinately outside it. Consider any object that consists of the core of the cloud, plus an arbitrary selection of these droplets. (...) It will look like a cloud, and circumstances permitting rain like a cloud, and generally has as good a claim to be a cloud as any other object in that part of the sky. But we cannot say every such object is a cloud, else there would be millions of clouds where it seemed like there was one. And what holds for clouds holds for anything whose boundaries look less clear the closer you look at it. And that includes just about every kind of object we normally think about, including humans. Although this seems to be a merely technical puzzle, even a triviality, a surprising range of proposed solutions has emerged, many of them mutually inconsistent. It is not even settled whether a solution should come from metaphysics, or from philosophy of language, or from logic. Here we survey the options, and provide several links to the many topics related to the Problem. (shrink)

Throughout this paper, we are trying to show how and why our Mathematical frame-work seems inappropriate to solve problems in Theory of Computation. More exactly, the concept of turning back in time in paradoxes causes inconsistency in modeling of the concept of Time in some semantic situations. As we see in the first chapter, by introducing a version of “Unexpected Hanging Paradox”,first we attempt to open a new explanation for some paradoxes. In the second step, by applying this paradox, it (...) is demonstrated that any formalized system for the Theory of Computation based on Classical Logic and Turing Model of Computation leads us to a contradiction. We conclude that our mathematical frame work is inappropriate for Theory of Computation. Furthermore, the result provides us a reason that many problems in Complexity Theory resist to be solved.(This work is completed in 2017 -5- 2, it is in vixra in 2017-5-14, presented in Unilog 2018, Vichy). (shrink)

In this paper, I present and criticize a number of influential contemporary anti-skeptical strategies inspired by G.E. Moore’s “proof of an external world”. I argue that these accounts cannot represent a valid response to skeptical worries. Furthermore, drawing on Wittgenstein’s criticisms of Moore, I argue that Radical skeptical hypotheses should be considered nonsensical combinations of signs, excluded from our epistemic practices.

This dissertation focuses on teleology and functions in biology. More precisely, it focuses on the scientific legitimacy of teleofunctional attributions and explanations in biology. It belongs to a multi-faceted debate that can be traced back to at least the 1970s. One aspect of the debate concerns the naturalization of functions. Most authors try to reduce, translate or explain functions and teleology in terms of efficient causes so that they find their place in the framework of the natural sciences. Our approach (...) here is radically different, as we question the premise that teleological explanations are disguised causal explanations. On the contrary, we defend that they are acceptable in natural sciences and in biology in particular. We challenge the idea that teleological explanations are immature causal explanations, as well as the idea that teleology and functions are some sort of intentional explanations. We therefore reject the accusations of anthropomorphism, vitalism and finalism. On the contrary, we defend that teleology, causality and intentionality correspond to different, autonomous and complementary modes of representation of the outside world. -/- ———[FRANÇAIS]——— -/- Ce travail de thèse porte sur la téléologie et les fonctions en biologie. Plus précisément, il porte sur la légitimité scientifique des attributions et des explications téléofonctionnelles en biologie. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un débat à plusieurs facettes que l’on peut faire remonter au moins jusqu’aux années 1970 et qui est encore très actif aujourd’hui. L’un des aspects du débat porte sur la naturalisation des fonctions, c’est-à-dire sur la manière de les réduire, de les traduire ou de les expliciter en termes de causes efficientes de sorte qu’elles trouvent leur place dans le cadre des sciences de la nature. Notre approche ici est radicalement différente, car nous remettons en question la prémisse selon laquelle les explications téléologiques seraient des explications causales déguisées. Nous défendons au contraire qu’elles sont acceptables en tant que telles aussi bien de façon générale que dans le domaine scientifique et en particulier en biologie. De façon générale, nous remettons en question l’idée selon laquelle la pensée téléologique serait une pensée causale immature, ainsi que sa dépendance présumée vis-à-vis de la psychologie, c’est-à-dire de l’intentionnalité. Nous rejetons donc les accusations d’anthropomorphisme, de vitalisme et de finalisme formulées contre elle. Nous défendons au contraire que la téléologie, la causalité et l’intentionnalité correspondent à des modes différents, autonomes et complémentaires de représentation du monde extérieur. (shrink)

This thesis was on how God is related to the truth-values of propositions on possible worlds - specifically, those propositions that do not seem to be about Him and constitute His ideas for what to create. It opened with a survey of some historical positions with special emphasis on Aquinas, Leibniz, Spinoza and Kant. Next, some criticisms were given for these so-called deity theories with the most space given to Brian Leftow’s critiques. The second chapter detailed Brian Leftow’s theological modality. (...) In it, secular modality is excogitated in an instant from eternity when God gets a set of creaturely natures in one imaginative act. His preferences that are based on His nature then determine the modality of what God thinks up. A number of objections were raised for the Leftowian project and the last chapter attempted to supplement an older deity theory with some insights from Leftow in order to avoid his initial criticisms. (shrink)

It is important to have an adequate model of uncertainty, since decisions must be made before the uncertainty can be resolved. For instance, flood defenses must be designed before we know the future distribution of flood events. It is standardly assumed that probability theory offers the best model of uncertain information. I think there are reasons to be sceptical of this claim. I criticise some arguments for the claim that probability theory is the only adequate model of uncertainty. In particular (...) I critique Dutch book arguments, representation theorems, and accuracy based arguments. Then I put forward my preferred model: imprecise probabilities. These are sets of probability measures. I offer several motivations for this model of uncertain belief, and suggest a number of interpretations of the framework. I also defend the model against some criticisms, including the so-called problem of dilation. I apply this framework to decision problems in the abstract. I discuss some decision rules from the literature including Levi’s E-admissibility and the more permissive rule favoured by Walley, among others. I then point towards some applications to climate decisions. My conclusions are largely negative: decision making under such severe uncertainty is inevitably difficult. I finish with a case study of scientific uncertainty. Climate modellers attempt to offer probabilistic forecasts of future climate change. There is reason to be sceptical that the model probabilities offered really do reflect the chances of future climate change, at least at regional scales and long lead times. Indeed, scientific uncertainty is multi-dimensional, and difficult to quantify. I argue that probability theory is not an adequate representation of the kinds of severe uncertainty that arise in some areas in science. I claim that this requires that we look for a better framework for modelling uncertainty. (shrink)

In a quantum universe with a strong arrow of time, it is standard to postulate that the initial wave function started in a particular macrostate---the special low-entropy macrostate selected by the Past Hypothesis. Moreover, there is an additional postulate about statistical mechanical probabilities according to which the initial wave function is a ''typical'' choice in the macrostate. Together, they support a probabilistic version of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: typical initial wave functions will increase in entropy. Hence, there are two (...) sources of randomness in such a universe: the quantum-mechanical probabilities of the Born rule and the statistical mechanical probabilities of the Statistical Postulate. I propose a new way to understand time's arrow in a quantum universe. It is based on what I call the Thermodynamic Theories of Quantum Mechanics. According to this perspective, there is a natural choice for the initial quantum state of the universe, which is given by not a wave function but by a density matrix. The density matrix plays a microscopic role: it appears in the fundamental dynamical equations of those theories. The density matrix also plays a macroscopic / thermodynamic role: it is exactly the projection operator onto the Past Hypothesis subspace. Thus, given an initial subspace, we obtain a unique choice of the initial density matrix. I call this property "the conditional uniqueness" of the initial quantum state. The conditional uniqueness provides a new and general strategy to eliminate statistical mechanical probabilities in the fundamental physical theories, by which we can reduce the two sources of randomness to only the quantum mechanical one. I also explore the idea of an absolutely unique initial quantum state, in a way that might realize Penrose's idea of a strongly deterministic universe. (shrink)

This thesis is about the notions of health and pathology in medical theory. I develop a theory, which defines ‘health’ and ‘pathology’ in a way that solves several problems with earlier suggestions of how to define these terms. I call the theory ‘the disposition profile efficiency theory’, abbreviated ‘the DPE-theory’. According to the DPE-theory, a trait token is healthy, roughly, if and only if all of its dispositions for performing physiological functions are efficient enough. A trait token is pathological, roughly, (...) if and only if at least one of its dispositions for performing a physiological function is not efficient enough. The notion of efficiency, I suggest, is reference class-relative: the efficiency of a trait token’s disposition for performing a physiological function expresses a relation between the trait token and a health standard for the trait token’s bearer’s reference class. The thesis also examines the most discussed theory of health and pathology, “the biostatistical theory” proposed by Boorse. Both the DPE-theory and the biostatistical theory are evaluated against a number of desiderata: the theory should be theoretically sound; only use empirical, statistical, and logical terms; not involve values; be clear; both account for health and pathology as reference class-relative properties, and account for the importance of integration of different physiological functions for health; and have reasonable implications. It is argued that the DPE-theory satisfies the desiderata, and that it does so better than the biostatistical theory. The main contributions of the thesis are the DPE-theory’s models of dispositions, its approach to defining reference classes, its efficiency measure, and its way of drawing the line between high enough efficiencies and too low efficiencies. Other important contributions concern the desideratum about reasonable implications. It is shown how the DPE-theory contributes to solving two much discussed objections directed towards the biostatistical theory, “the problem of common diseases” and “Kingma’s dilemma”. Further, the DPE-theory is used to illuminate discussions about certain types of conditions for which it is contested whether they should count as healthy or pathological. (shrink)