There are few more unsettling philosophical questions than this: What happens in attempts to reduce some properties to some other more fundamental properties?

이 글은 행복이 감정 상태로 설명될 수 있다는 헤이브론의 주장을 비판적으로 검토하여 문제점을 제시하는 것을 목표로 한다. 문제점을 제시하기 전에 우선 헤이브론의 행복론을 설명한다. 헤이브론에 따르면, 긍정적인 감정을 가지는 성향으로 인해 지속적으로 긍정적인 감정 상태를 가지는 것이 행복한 상태이다. 이 주장의 첫 번째 문제점으로 동일시(identification)라는 조건이 제시된다. 헤이브론이 제시하는 조건들을 다 충족시켜도, 그러한 모습을 자신의 모습으로 동일시하지 않으면 행복한 상태일 수 없다고 논자는 주장한다. 또한 헤이브론의 행복론은 행복의 다양한 양상을 포섭하지 못한다고 주장한다. 논자는 공시적인(synchronic) 행복과 통시적인(diachronic) 행복 그리고 전체적인 행복과 (...) 부분적인 행복 등에 대해서 제시한다. 이에 덧붙여, 헤이브론이 말하는 바대로 긍정적인 감정을 가진다 해도 그것이 다른 사람에게 속은 결과로 인해 가지게 된 것이라면 그것은 행복한 상태일 수 없다고 논자는 주장한다. (shrink)

C. L. Hardin has argued that the colour opponency of the vision system leads to chromatic subjectivism: chromatic sensory states reduce to neurophysiological states. Much of the force of Hardin's argument derives from a critique of chromatic objectivism. On this view chromatic sensory states are held to reduce to an external property. While I agree with Hardin's critique of objectivism it is far from clear that the problems which beset objectivism do not apply to the subjectivist position as well. I (...) develop a critique of subjectivism that parallels Hardin's anti-objectivist argument. (shrink)

C. L. Hardin has argued that the colour opponency of the vision system leads to chromatic subjectivism: chromatic sensory states reduce to neurophysiological states. Much of the force of Hardin's argument derives from a critique of chromatic objectivism. On this view chromatic sensory states are held to reduce to an external property. While I agree with Hardin's critique of objectivism it is far from clear that the problems which beset objectivism do not apply to the subjectivist position as well. I (...) develop a critique of subjectivism that parallels Hardin's antiobjectivist argument. (shrink)

Pietraszewski proposes four triadic “primitives” for representing social groups. We argue that, despite surface differences, these triads can all be reduced to similar underlying welfare trade-off ratios, which are a better candidate for social group primitives. Welfare trade-off ratios also have limitations, however, and we suggest there are multiple computational strategies by which people recognize and reason about social groups.

This paper argues against Papineau's claim that causal relations can be reduced to correlations and defends Cartwright's thesis that they can be nevertheless boot-strapped from them, given sufficiently rich causal background knowledge.

Increased unemployment and its banalization provoke different responses from the population than those which occur in periods of full employment. As it becomes scarcer, work appears less as a constraint, while unemployment, by becoming normal, loses its attractiveness and becomes increasingly viewed as a constraint. It is the law of the market. Consequently, it is not advisable to begin by assuming that all decreases of working time would be experienced as social progress by wage-earners. Non-work too can be experienced as (...) a constraint. This is especially the case for the great majority of pre-retirees and retirees. If work is considered as a rare commodity, its regulation is presented in totally different terms than when it was abundant. (shrink)

Can an ontology which treats properties as really out there in the world be combined vvith the view that necessity is not out there? What about the necessity by which redness excludes greenness, or weighing 8 kg excludes weighing 6 kg? Armstrong, who combines property realism with logical atomism, argues that such exclusions reflect just the trivial necessity that a whole cannot be any of its proper parts. Buthis argument fails for colors themselves and for other cases of contrary properties. (...) Property realism must be necessity realism. (shrink)

Many Hume scholars have partially anticipated the essential links between his magnum opus—the History of England—and other writings, but we lacked an appropriate theoretical framework. According to Andrew Sabl,2 the key to the breakthrough is provided by “coordination theory.” The approach to Hume’s work through the lens of twentieth-century political theories has been preceded, to take one example, by Russell Hardin, who envisions Hume’s notion of convention as a prototype of game theory. Hardin also mentions coordination theory in relation to (...) game theory,3 but it is Sabl who elucidates its comprehensiveness and significance, and successfully grasps the essential features of Hume as a political theorist. The most... (shrink)

A combination of policy changes and wider socio-economic trends led to a dramatic increase in child poverty in New Zealand during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Higher rates of child poverty have now become embedded in the system and show little sign of resolving themselves. For a country which once took pride in being comparatively egalitarian and, more particularly, a great place to bring up children, the tolerance of much greater child poverty is surprising. It is also concerning. Child (...) poverty imposes many costs. This is especially the case, according to the available evidence, when poverty occurs during early childhood and when it is severe and/or persistent. These costs afflict not only the children directly exposed to poverty, but also the whole society. This article briefly explores the available evidence concerning the nature, magnitude, causes and consequences of child poverty in New Zealand and considers why substantial rates of child poverty have been tolerated for an extended period. Drawing on the lessons of anti-poverty approaches in other OECD countries, it then outlines a strategy for securing substantial and durable reductions in child poverty rates in New Zealand. Finally, it considers the prospects of such a strategy being implemented and suggests ways of enhancing the focus of the political system on child-related social issues. (shrink)

Some philosophers, most notably Hempel and Salmon, have tried to reduce explanation to probability by proposing analyses of explanation in probabilistic terms. Hempel claims, roughly, that a hypothesis H explains a datum D if and only if the conditional probability P is close to 1. It is well known that such an account fails in cases where H is irrelevant for D. Even though it is highly likely that Tom will not become pregnant, given that he regularly takes his wife’s (...) birth control pills, the latter does not explain the former. Neither does an idea work which is in the proximity of Salmon’s, namely, that H explains D if and only if P > P. Suppose Susan swallows a pound of arsenic in order to commit suicide. Shortly after, however, she dies because she is run over by a bus. The probability of dying, given that one ingests a pound of arsenic, is usually higher than the prior probability of dying. Nonetheless, it is not the arsenic but the collision with the bus which explains Susan’s death. The aforementioned objections are directed against …. (shrink)

The notion of reduction continues to play an important role in contemporary analytic philosophy. Being Reduced is a collection of essays that not only presents novel contributions to our understanding of reduction, but also aims at finding connections between the debates in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, which have surprisingly remained rather detached from each other. Being reduced succeeds in this difficult task, and is a very welcome addition to the growing philosophical literature on reduction.

We applaud Notini and colleagues for highlighting the clinical and ethical complexities of a case in which a non-binary individual desires indefinite treatment with puberty blockers.1 While we agree discontinuing treatment may cause psychological distress, we believe there are potential physical and neurocognitive harms caused by prolonged treatment that have been underestimated given the limited research conducted to date. Specifically, the impact of permanent pubertal suppression on the brain and decision-making capacity should be considered. In this context, we outline the (...) potential risks of ongoing pubertal suppression on bone and cardiovascular health, sexual and reproductive function, and brain development—all noted in the article but perhaps in an overly simplistic manner.1 First, the authors’ note OPS will almost certainly result in reduced bone density.1 Although we agree the absolute fracture risk is low in studies among older adults, there is less clarity about implications during adolescence and young adulthood when peak bone accrual occurs.2 Further, the authors propose ongoing monitoring with bone density scans, but no clear guidelines for clinicians if bone density becomes critically low—so we ask, at what point would a potential fracture risk outweigh the proposed benefits …. (shrink)

We applaud Notini and colleagues for highlighting the clinical and ethical complexities of a case in which a non-binary individual desires indefinite treatment with puberty blockers. 1 While we agree discontinuing treatment may cause psychological distress, we believe there are potential physical and neurocognitive harms caused by prolonged treatment that have been underestimated given the limited research conducted to date. Specifically, the impact of permanent pubertal suppression on the brain and decision-making capacity should be considered. In this context, we outline (...) the potential risks of ongoing pubertal suppression on bone and cardiovascular health, sexual and reproductive function, and brain development—all noted in the article but perhaps in an overly simplistic manner. 1 First, the authors’ note OPS will almost certainly result in reduced bone density. 1 Although we agree the absolute fracture risk is low in studies among older adults, there is less clarity about... (shrink)

We investigate the question of whether one can characterize complexity classes in terms of efficient reducibility to the set of Kolmogorov-random strings . This question arises because and , and no larger complexity classes are known to be reducible to in this way. We show that this question cannot be posed without explicitly dealing with issues raised by the choice of universal machine in the definition of Kolmogorov complexity. What follows is a list of some of our main results.• (...) Although Kummer showed that, for every universal machine U there is a time bound t such that the halting problem is disjunctive truth-table reducible to in time t, there is no such time bound t that suffices for every universal machine U. We also show that, for some machines U, the disjunctive reduction can be computed in as little as doubly-exponential time.• Although for every universal machine U, there are very complex sets that are -reducible to , it is nonetheless true that . • Any decidable set that is polynomial-time monotone-truth-table reducible to is in .• Any decidable set that is polynomial-time truth-table reducible to via a reduction that asks at most f queries on inputs of size n lies in. (shrink)

This study reports the findings of a 2.5 year intervention project to reduce psychosocial risks and increase employee well-being in 15 emergency departments in the Netherlands. The project uses the psychosocial risk management approach “PRIMA” which includes cycles of risk assessment, designing and implementing changes, evaluating changes and adapting the approach if necessary. In addition, principles of participative action research were used to empower the departments in designing and implementing their own actions during the project. Next to determining overall effects, (...) the study aims to assess potential moderators including the level of intervening, process variables and partaking in a Psychosocial Safety Climate intervention offered during the second half of the project. The results of linear mixed-model analyses showed that all job factors improved with the exception of autonomy, which did increase halfway the project but not when considering the entire timeframe. In addition, work engagement decreased and symptoms of burnout remained stable. Emergency departments that implemented more fitting actions, communicated better and involved their employees more in the process, had more favorable changes in job factors and more stable well-being. More activity and a multilevel approach regarding stress management did not lead to greater improvements. The Psychosocial Safety Climate intervention was effective in improving Psychosocial Safety Climate, but a longer follow-up period seems required to evaluate its effect on job factors and well-being. Overall, the project resulted in positive changes in most job factors, and its findings emphasize the importance of process variables in stress management interventions. Longer follow-up and higher quality multilevel interventions seem essential to also improve well-being. (shrink)

Light adaptation is modulated almost exclusively by changes in intracellular Ca2+ concentration, and other Ca2+-independent mechanisms are likely to play only a minor role. Changes in Ca2+i may be not only necessary for light adaptation to take place but sufficient to cause it.

Perhaps the hottest topic in the philosophy of chemistry is that of the relationship between chemistry and physics. The problem finds one of its main manifestations in the debate about the nature of molecular structure, given by the spatial arrangement of the nuclei in a molecule. The traditional strategy to address the problem is to consider chemical cases that challenge the definition of molecular structure in quantum–mechanical terms. Instead of taking that top-down strategy, in this paper we face the problem (...) of the reduction of molecular structure to quantum mechanics from a bottom-up perspective: our aim is to show how the theoretical peculiarities of quantum mechanics stand against the possibility of molecular structure, defined in terms of the spatial relations of the nuclei conceived as individual localized objects. We will argue that, according to the theory, quantum “particles” are not individuals that can be identified as different from others and that can be reidentified through time; therefore, they do not have the ontological stability necessary to maintain the relations that can lead to a spatially definite system with an identifiable shape. On the other hand, although quantum chemists use the resources supplied by quantum mechanics with successful results, this does no mean reduction: their “approximations” add certain assumptions that are not justified in the context of quantum mechanics or are even inconsistent with the very formal structure of the theory. (shrink)

One of six commentaries on “Obesity: Chasing an Elusive Epidemic,” by Daniel Callahan, from the January‐February 2013 issue.

The class Matr(C) of all matrices for a prepositional logic (, C) is investigated. The paper contains general results with no special reference to particular logics. The main theorem (Th. (5.1)) which gives the algebraic characterization of the class Matr(C) states the following. Assume C to be the consequence operation on a prepositional language induced by a class K of matrices. Let m be a regular cardinal not less than the cardinality of C. Then Matr (C) is the least class (...) of matrices containing K and closed under m-reduced products, submatrices, matrix homomorphisms, and matrix homomorphic counter-images. (shrink)

Joint actions often require agents to track others’ actions while planning and executing physically incongruent actions of their own. Previous research has indicated that this can lead to visuomotor interference effects when it occurs outside of joint action. How is this avoided or overcome in joint actions? We hypothesized that when joint action partners represent their actions as interrelated components of a plan to bring about a joint action goal, each partner’s movements need not be represented in relation to distinct, (...) incongruent proximal goals. Instead they can be represented in relation to a single proximal goal – especially if the movements are, or appear to be, mechanically linked to a more distal joint action goal. To test this, we implemented a paradigm in which participants produced finger movements that were either congruent or incongruent with those of a virtual partner, and either with or without a joint action goal (the joint flipping of a switch, which turned on two light bulbs). Our findings provide partial support for the hypothesis that visuomotor interference effects can be reduced when two physically incongruent actions are represented as mechanically interdependent contributions to a joint action goal. (shrink)

This article discusses the ethics of knowledge production from a cultural point of view, in contrast with the more usual emphasis on the ethical issues facing individuals involved in KP. Here, the emphasis is on the cultural environment within which individuals, groups and institutions perform KP. A principal purpose is to suggest ways in which reliable scientific knowledge could be produced more efficiently. The distinction between ethical hazard and ethical behaviour is noted. Ethical hazards cannot be eliminated but they can (...) be reduced if the cultural ambience is suitable. The main suggestions for reducing ethical hazards in KP relate to the review process. It is argued that some defects of the current, largely anonymous, review process could be ameliorated by a process of comprehensive, open and ongoing review. This includes partial professionalisation of the work of reviewing. Review at several stages is a vital part of the long filtering that incorporates some claims into the canon of reliable knowledge. The review process would be an acknowledged and explicit part of KP—a respected, public and rewarded activity. COOR would be expensive but cost-effective. The costs should be built explicitly into research culture. Finally, the considerations about a more ‘KP friendly’ culture lead to advocacy of a ‘long-term, short-term’ synthesis; that is, of the synthesis of long-term vision, such as a more cooperative and less competitive culture, with incremental changes which may be implemented in the short term. (shrink)

Arguments for the autonomy of psychology or other higher-level sciences have often taken the form of denying the possibility of reduction. The form of reduction most proponents and critics of the autonomy of psychology have in mind is theory reduction. Mechanistic explanations provide a different perspective. Mechanistic explanations are reductionist insofar as they appeal to lower-level entities—the component parts of a mechanism and their operations— to explain a phenomenon. However, unlike theory reductions, mechanistic explanations also recognize the fundamental role of (...) organization in enabling mechanisms to engage their environments as units (as well as the role of yet higher-level structures in constraining such engagement). Especially when organization is non-linear, it can enable mechanisms to generate phenomena that are quite surprising given the operations of the components taken in isolation. Such organization must be discovered—it cannot simply be derived from knowledge of lower-level parts and their operations. Moreover, the organized environments in which mechanisms operate must also be discovered. It is typically the higher-level disciplines that have the tools for discovering the organization within and between mechanisms. Although these inquiries are constrained by the knowledge of the parts and operations constituting the mechanism, they make their own autonomous contribution to understanding how a mechanism actually behaves. Thus, mechanistic explanations provide a strong sense of autonomy for higher levels of organization and the inquiries addressing them even while recognizing the distinctive contributions of reductionistic research investigating the operations of the lower level components. (shrink)

The idea that causation can be reduced to transmission of an amount of some conserved quantity between events is spelled out and defended against important objections. Transmission is understood as a symmetrical relation of copresence in two distinct events. The actual asymmetry of causality has its origin in the asymmetrical character of certain irreversible physical processes and then spreads through the causal net. This conception is compatible with the possibility of backwards causation and with a causal theory of time. Genidentity, (...) the persistence of concrete objects, can be given an explanation in causal terms. The transmission theory is shown to escape difficulties faced by two important alternative theories of causation: Salmon's (1984) Mark Transmission Theory and Dowe's (1992a) Conserved Quantities Theory. (shrink)

There are many social psychological theories regarding the nature of prejudice, but only one major theory of prejudice reduction: under the right circumstances, prejudice between groups will be reduced with increased contact. On the one hand, the contact hypothesis has a range of empirical support and has been a major force in social change. On the other hand, there are practical and ethical obstacles to any large-scale controlled test of the hypothesis in which relevant variables can be manipulated. Here we (...) construct a spatialized model that tests the core hypothesis in a large array of game-theoretic agents. Robust results offer a new kind of support for the contact hypothesis: results in simulation do accord with a hypothesis of reduced prejudice with increased contact. The spatialized game-theoretic model also suggests a deeper explanation for at least some of the social psychological phenomena at issue. (shrink)

Background Retraction is a mechanism for alerting readers to unreliable material and other problems in the published scientific and scholarly record. Retracted publications generally remain visible and searchable, but the intention of retraction is to mark them as “removed” from the citable record of scholarship. However, in practice, some retracted articles continue to be treated by researchers and the public as valid content as they are often unaware of the retraction. Research over the past decade has identified a number of (...) factors contributing to the unintentional spread of retracted research. The goal of the Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science: Shaping a Research and Implementation Agenda (RISRS) project was to develop an actionable agenda for reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science. This included identifying how retraction status could be more thoroughly disseminated, and determining what actions are feasible and relevant for particular stakeholders who play a role in the distribution of knowledge. -/- Methods These recommendations were developed as part of a year-long process that included a scoping review of empirical literature and successive rounds of stakeholder consultation, culminating in a three-part online workshop that brought together a diverse body of 65 stakeholders in October–November 2020 to engage in collaborative problem solving and dialogue. Stakeholders held roles such as publishers, editors, researchers, librarians, standards developers, funding program officers, and technologists and worked for institutions such as universities, governmental agencies, funding organizations, publishing houses, libraries, standards organizations, and technology providers. Workshop discussions were seeded by materials derived from stakeholder interviews (N = 47) and short original discussion pieces contributed by stakeholders. The online workshop resulted in a set of recommendations to address the complexities of retracted research throughout the scholarly communications ecosystem. -/- Results The RISRS recommendations are: (1) Develop a systematic cross-industry approach to ensure the public availability of consistent, standardized, interoperable, and timely information about retractions; (2) Recommend a taxonomy of retraction categories/classifications and corresponding retraction metadata that can be adopted by all stakeholders; (3) Develop best practices for coordinating the retraction process to enable timely, fair, unbiased outcomes; and (4) Educate stakeholders about pre- and post-publication stewardship, including retraction and correction of the scholarly record. -/- Conclusions Our stakeholder engagement study led to 4 recommendations to address inadvertent citation of retracted research, and formation of a working group to develop the Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CORREC) Recommended Practice. Further work will be needed to determine how well retractions are currently documented, how retraction of code and datasets impacts related publications, and to identify if retraction metadata (fails to) propagate. Outcomes of all this work should lead to ensuring retracted papers are never cited without awareness of the retraction, and that, in public fora outside of science, retracted papers are not treated as valid scientific outputs. (shrink)

By analyzing how one obtains the Stone space of the reduced product of an indexed collection of Boolean algebras from the Stone spaces of those algebras, we derive a topological construction, the "reduced coproduct", which makes sense for indexed collections of arbitrary Tichonov spaces. When the filter in question is an ultrafilter, we show how the "ultracoproduct" can be obtained from the usual topological ultraproduct via a compactification process in the style of Wallman and Frink. We prove theorems dealing with (...) the topological structure of reduced coproducts (especially ultracoproducts) and show in addition how one may use this construction to gain information about the category of compact Hausdorff spaces. (shrink)

The mathematical tools of game theory are frequently used in the social sciences and economic consultancy. But how do they explain social phenomena and support prescriptive judgments? And is the use of game theory really necessary? I analyze the logical form of explanatory and prescriptive game theoretical statements, and argue for two claims: (1) explanatory game theory can and should be reduced to rational choice theory in all cases; and (2) prescriptive game theory gives bad advice in some cases, is (...) reducible to rational choice theory in other cases, while it makes no sense in yet other cases. (shrink)

It is argued that Newtonian mass cannot be reduced to kinematical quantities---distance, velocity and acceleration---without losing the explanatory and predictive power of Newtonian Gravity.

Is it possible to give an explicit definition of belief in terms of subjective probability, such that believed propositions are guaranteed to have a sufficiently high probability, and yet it is neither the case that belief is stripped of any of its usual logical properties, nor is it the case that believed propositions are bound to have probability 1? We prove the answer is ‘yes’, and that given some plausible logical postulates on belief that involve a contextual “cautiousness” threshold, there (...) is but one way of determining the extension of the concept of belief that does the job. The qualitative concept of belief is not to be eliminated from scientific or philosophical discourse, rather, by reducing qualitative belief to assignments of resiliently high degrees of belief and a “cautiousness” threshold, qualitative and quantitative belief turn out to be governed by one unified theory that offers the prospects of a huge range of applications. Within that theory, logic and probability theory are not opposed to each other but go hand in hand. (shrink)

The present article aims to utilize some insights from behavioral and happiness economics to discuss the consequences that the introduction of an unconditional basic income to cope with technological unemployment may hold for well-being. The impact of 21st-century technological progress on employment has only just begun to make itself felt and it will take time to realize its full extent. However, the main innovation is already common knowledge: robots are finding their way into the production process. According to several recent (...) contributions, the phenomenon is radically different from past technological revolutions and could generate high levels of unemployment, calling for innovative redistributive public policies. The present article, building on Keynes’ short essay and referring to some of the principles and models of behavioral and happiness economics, focuses on the best-known of these policies, namely provision of an unconditional basic income. A series of factors – loss aversion and hedonic adaptation, the impossibility of escalating to higher-grade consumption behaviors, social interaction in the form of active and passive envy, loss of self-esteem and social stigma – are all likely to have a negative impact on well-being if an unconditional basic income that remains unchanging over time is implemented. A policy mix combining a rising basic income with other measures is therefore proposed. (shrink)

Social decision-making involving risks ideally results in obligations to avoid expected harms or keep them within acceptable limits. Ambitious goals aimed at avoiding or greatly reducing risks might not be feasible, forcing the acceptance of higher degrees of risk (i.e. unrealistic levels of risk reduction are revised to comport with beliefs regarding abilities). In this paper, the philosophical princi- ple ‘ought implies can’ is applied to the management of complex risks, exempli- fied by the risks associated with climate change. In (...) its common interpretation, the principle states that we cannot expect an agent to perform something that lies beyond his or her abilities. However, it is here argued that this principle requires setting thresholds for legitimate claims of inabilities that justify the waiving of normative demands. This paper discuss three claims: (1) that caution is required before revising a risk-reducing goal that is perhaps exceedingly ambitious; (2) that claims on abilities are not only descriptive, but also value-laden; and (3) that the function of a goal has to be clarified before risk-reducing goals are revised. Risk-reducing goals that initially seem unrealistic arguably serve performance- enhancing purposes in risk management. Neglecting such goals could lead to choosing less desirable, but certainly feasible, risk-reducing goals. (shrink)

The most commonly heard proposals for reducing possible worlds to language succumb to a simple cardinality argument: it can be shown that there are more possible worlds than there are linguistic entities provided by the proposal. In this paper, I show how the standard proposals can be generalized in a natural way so as to make better use of the resources available to them, and thereby circumvent the cardinality argument. Once it is seen just what the limitations are on these (...) more general proposals, it can be clearly seen where the real difficulty lies with any attempt to reduce possible worlds to language. Roughly, the difficulty is this: no actual language could have the descriptive resources needed to represent all the ways things might have been. I conclude by arguing that this same difficulty spells doom for any nominalist or conceptualist proposal for reducing possible worlds. (shrink)

Nathan Salmon, in his paper Trans-World Identification and Stipulation (1996) purports to give a proof for the claim that facts concerning trans-world identity cannot be conceptually reduced to general facts. He calls this claim ‘Extreme Haecceitism.’ I argue that his proof is fallacious. However, I also contend that the analysis and ultimate rejection of his proof clarifies the fundamental issues that are at stake in the debate between the reductionist and haecceitist solutions to the problem of trans-world identity. These issues (...) hinge on the ability of modal logic and possible worlds semantics to draw a hard and fast distinction between the logic and the metaphysics of modal logic. I shall claim that the considerations in this paper call into question the viability of such a distinction. (shrink)