It has recently been argued that when one conducts an inquiry into some question one ought to suspend belief with respect to that question. But what about hunches? In this short note, a hunch about the cause of a phenomenon is described. The hunch plays a role in the inquiry into the cause of the phenomenon. It appears that the hunch constitutes a belief that need not be suspended during the inquiry even though belief about the precise cause of (...) the phenomenon is suspended. (shrink)

If Saul Steinberg's 1967 New Yorker cover is the metaphorical truth about consciousness, what is the literal truth? What is going on in the world that makes it the case that this gorgeous metaphor is so apt?

Many theories and models of machine consciousness emphasize the role of embodiment. However, there are different interpretations of exactly what kind of embodiment would be required for an artifact to be at least potentially conscious. This paper contrasts the sensorimotor approach, which holds that consciousness emerges from the mastery of sensorimotor knowledge resulting from the interaction between agent and environment, with the view that the living body's homeostatic regulation is crucial to self and consciousness.

Research has given little attention to the influence of incidental emotions on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), in which processing of the emotional cues associated with each decision is necessary to make advantageous decisions. Drawing on cognitive theories of emotions, we tested whether uncertainty-associated emotion can cancel the positive effect of the hunch period, by preventing participants from developing a tendency towards advantageous decisions. Our explanation is that uncertainty appraisals initiate deliberative processing that is irrelevant to process emotional cues, contrary (...) to intuitive processing (Kahneman, 2003; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). As expected, uncertainty-associated emotion cancelled the positive effect of the hunch period in the IGT compared to certainty-associated emotion: disgusted participants (certainty-associated emotion) and sad participants induced to feel certainty developed a stronger tendency towards advantageous decisions than sad participants induced to feel uncertainty. We discuss the importance of the core components that trigger incidental emotions to predict decision making. (shrink)

This collection of essays examines the wisdom of Dr. Seuss and the philosophical insights that his classic children's books hold for adults. Whether exploring morality, compassion, or conflict resolution, Dr. Seuss's works are a guide to living well, and being the best person you can be.

My hunch has always been that in the end, Fregeanism will defeat Millianism. So I suspect that my (1998) arguments on behalf of Millianism are flawed. Peter Graham (1999) is confident he has found the flaws, but he has not. I hope that some clarification will encourage others to reveal the errors.

2014 Reprint of 1954 American Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This two volume classic comprises two titles: "Patterns of Plausible Inference" and "Induction and Analogy in Mathematics." This is a guide to the practical art of plausible reasoning, particularly in mathematics, but also in every field of human activity. Using mathematics as the example par excellence, Polya shows how even the most rigorous deductive discipline is heavily dependent on techniques of guessing, inductive (...) reasoning, and reasoning by analogy. In solving a problem, the answer must be guessed at before a proof can be given, and guesses are usually made from a knowledge of facts, experience, and hunches. The truly creative mathematician must be a good guesser first and a good prover afterward; many important theorems have been guessed but no proved until much later. In the same way, solutions to problems can be guessed, and a god guesser is much more likely to find a correct solution. This work might have been called "How to Become a Good Guesser."-From the Dust Jacket. (shrink)

Intuition is sometimes derided as an abstruse or esoteric phenomenon akin to crystal-ball gazing. Such derision appears to be fuelled primarily by the suggestion, evidently endorsed by traditional rationalists such as Plato and Descartes, that intuition is a kind of direct, immediate apprehension akin to perception. This paper suggests that although the perceptual analogy has often been dismissed as encouraging a theoretically useless metaphor, a quasi-perceptualist view of intuition may enable rationalists to begin to meet the challenge of supplying a (...) theoretically satisfying treatment of their favoured epistemic source. It is argued, first, that intuitions and perceptual experiences are at a certain level of abstraction the same type of mental state, presentations, which are distinct from beliefs, hunches, inclinations, attractions, and seemings. The notion of a presentation is given a positive explication, which identifies its characteristic features, accounts for several of its substantive psychological roles, and systematically locates it in a threefold division among types of contentful states. Subsequently, it is argued that presentations, intuitive no less than sensory, are by their nature poised to play a distinctive epistemic role. Specifically, in the case of intuition, we encounter an intellectual state that is so structured as to provide justification without requiring justification in turn—something which may, thus, be thought of as ‘given’. (shrink)

It has been known for long time that intuition plays significant role in many professions and human life, including in entrepreneurship, government, and also in detective or law enforcement activities. Even women are known to possess better intuitive feelings or “hunch” compared to men. Despite these examples, such a precognitive interdiction is hardly accepted in established science. In this paper, we discuss briefly the advanced solutions of Maxwell equations, and then make connection between syntropy and precognition from classical perspective. It (...) is our hope that the new proposed method can be verified with experimental data. But we admit that our model is still in its infancy, more researches are needed to fill all the missing details. (shrink)

The interventionist account of causal explanation, in the version presented by Jim Woodward, has been recently claimed capable of buttressing the widely felt—though poorly understood—hunch that high-level, relatively abstract explanations, of the sort provided by sciences like biology, psychology and economics, are in some cases explanatorily optimal. It is the aim of this paper to show that this is mistaken. Due to a lack of effective constraints on the causal variables at the heart of the interventionist causal-explanatory scheme, as presently (...) formulated it is either unable to prefer high-level explanations to low, or systematically overshoots, recommending explanations at so high of a level as to be virtually vacuous. (shrink)

An error theory about moral reasons is the view that ordinary thought is committed to error, and that the alleged error is the thought that moral norms (expressing alleged moral requirements) invariably supply agents with sufficient normative reasons (for action). In this paper, I sketch two distinct ways of arguing for the error theorist's substantive conclusion that moral norms do not invariably supply agents with sufficient normative reasons. I am primarily interested in the somewhat neglected way, which I call the (...) alternative route. A reason for this is because it seems a genuine question whether the alternative route towards the substantive conclusion need be as troubling to the moralist as the standard route. My hunch is that it is not. Though the alternative error theory denies justification from genuinely moral acts, it also does so from acts born out of self-interest or immorality. If the alternative theory is true, the moralist can at least hold on to the claim that if genuinely moral considerations fail to provide agents with reasons for action, nothing else (of the sort) does. (shrink)

Not only our conscious expectations, wishes and intentions are directed towards the future, but also pre- or unconscious tendencies, hunches and anticipations. Using a term of Ernst Bloch, they can be summarized as thenot-yet-conscious. This not-yet-conscious mostly unfolds spontaneously and without plan; it is not directly anticipated or aimed at, but rather comes to awareness in such a way that the subject is, as it were, surprised by itself. Thus it gives rise to phenomena such as the striking, the (...) coincidental, the new, and the improvised, which are particularly important for understanding creative and therapeutic processes. The paper aims at providing a general phenomenological framework for the understanding of not-yet-conscious dynamics and their unfolding in different contexts. To this end, the structure of the not-yet-conscious is examined in light ofprotention, in which the phenomenon is fundamentally to be located. I propose to describe the general structure of protention as a future-directed horizon of graded probabilities, i.e., as a “protentional cone”. This cone is fed by current experiences and bodily tendencies and is focused to varying degrees by attention. This results in either more focused or rather defocused states of anticipation, the latter giving space to the not-yet-conscious as a meaning “in statu nascendi”. On this basis, selected manifestations of the not-yet-conscious are analyzed, including extemporaneous speech, artistic improvisation and creativity, bodily meaning implicates, decision-making, and meaningful coincidence. (shrink)

Research design is fundamentally central to all scientific endeavors, at all levels and in all institutional settings. This book is a practical, short, simple, and authoritative examination of the concepts and issues in interpretive research design, looking across this approach's methods of generating and analyzing data. It is meant to set the stage for the more "how-to" volumes that will come later in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, which will look at specific methods and the designs that they require. (...) It will, however, engage some very practical issues, such as ethical considerations and the structure of research proposals. Interpretive research design requires a high degree of flexibility, where the researcher is more likely to think of "hunches" to follow than formal hypotheses to test. Yanow and Schwartz-Shea address what research design is and why it is important, what interpretive research is and how it differs from quantitative and qualitative research in the positivist traditions, how to design interpretive research, and the sections of a research proposal and report. (shrink)

Many people feel that respecting a person’s autonomy is not sufficiently important to obligate us to stay out of their affairs in all cases; but the ground for interference may often turn out to be a hunch that the agent cannot really be competent, or cannot really know what her decision implies; for if she were both of these things, surely she would not make such a foolish decision. This paper suggests a justification of paternalism that does not rely on (...) such appeals. I argue that in cases where an agent will undergo a significant alteration in their evaluative outlook – ‘evaluative shift’ – three central, persuasive objections to paternalism lose their force, and offer a prima facie case for paternalism in some of these cases. I then suggest that we can extend this argument to some cases where evaluative alteration is not predictable, but where the risk and harm are both significant. In such cases, paternalism may be justified. (shrink)

The essays in this volume make it abundantly clear that there is no shortage of disagreement about the plausibility of the simulation theory. As we see it, there are at least three factors contributing to this disagreement. In some instances the issues in dispute are broadly empirical. Different people have different views on which theory is favored by experiments reported in the literature, and different hunches about how future experiments are likely to turn out. In 3.1 and 3.3 we (...) will consider two cases that fall under this heading. With a bit of luck these disputes will be resolved as more experiments are done and more data become available. Faulty arguments are a second source of disagreement. In 3.2 and 3.4 we will set out two dubious arguments advanced by our critics and try to explain exactly why we think they are mistaken. The third source of disagreement is terminological. Terms like "theory-theory," "simulation theory" and a number of others are often not clearly defined, and they are used in different ways by different authors. (Worse yet, we suspect they are sometimes used in different ways by a single author on different occasions). Thus it is sometimes the case that what appears to be a substantive disagreement turns out to be simply a verbal dispute. Moreover, since the labels "theory-theory" and "simulation theory" are each used to characterize a broad range of theories, it may well turn out that some of the theories falling under both headings are correct. In Sections 1 and 2, we will set out a variety of different views for which the labels "theory-theory" and "simulation theory" might be used. As we proceed we'll point out a number of places where disagreements diminish when distinctions among different versions of the theory-theory and the simulation theory are kept clearly in mind. (shrink)

Of the different modes that characterize Michael Gilbert’s multi-modal theory of argumentation, the kisceral is in many ways the most challenging to understand and employ. It appears to bypass the processes of reason that have dominated accounts in the Western tradition, diverting us toward the private worlds of hunches and gut reactions. This paper explores the nature of kisceral arguments, comparing them to the way intuition operates in William James’ examination of mystical experience. Having provided an account of kisceral (...) arguments and their operation, the discussion turns to the even more challenging issue of how such arguments should be evaluated. (shrink)

“Credit-worthiness” accounts of the value of knowledge focus on the exercise of agency as the source of value in question. This focus is shared by an approach suggested by Sally Haslanger to the value of belief. The standard examples and counterexamples from the “value of knowledge” literature treat the relevant sort of agency in fundamentally individualistic terms. But recent work on relational autonomy recommends that we think of agency as fundamentally socially embedded. This reorientation not only disarms a standard objection (...) to the “credit-worthiness” approach, but suggests that the putative counterexample is actually a paradigm-case of the exercise of epistemic agency for creatures like us. In so doing, it also exhibits the agency-based account of the value of knowledge and its main competitor, which focuses on the status of potential informants, as two sides of the same coin. Meanwhile, epistemic agency is an essential component of agency tout court. Effective action requires information. But perhaps the possession of information can take other forms than the having of true beliefs. Paul Churchland characterizes what’s peculiar to belief in terms of the sentential form in “that”-clauses in belief attributions. The alternatives that he envisages divorce informational content from sentence content. But for creatures like us, sentences are the basic units of communication of information. If our agency is paradigmatically exercised in socially embedded contexts, an essential part of the picture is that our information be in substantial measure communicable in sentences, i.e., that it take the form of beliefs. So the socially-oriented version of the agency-based approach to the value of knowledge also confirms Haslanger’s hunch that the value of belief can be vindicated and developed in terms of the role of belief in the exercise of agency for creatures like us. (shrink)

The guiding premise of this chapter is that we, as teachers in higher education, must consider how the content and form of our teaching can foster inclusivity through a responsiveness to neurodiverse learning styles. A narrow pedagogical focus on lectures, textual engagement, and essay-writing threatens to exclude neurodivergent students whose ways of learning and making sense of the world may not be best supported through these traditional forms of pedagogy. As we discuss in this chapter, we, as engineering ethics educators, (...) designed and implemented a new engineering ethics exercise with which we aimed to promote inclusivity at the levels of form and content. At the content level, students were invited to critically engage with inclusivity-undermining ableist assumptions in technology development. This took shape, at the form level, through a hands-on ‘material tinkering’ workshop in which students collaboratively and creatively altered (or ‘hacked’) artifacts used in contexts of disability and healthcare, so as to operationalize values of inclusivity and accessibility. Our hunch was that this hands-on tinkering workshop would simultaneously encourage a meaningful way of engagement with these ethical issues and values, while also enacting a more inclusive learning environment by enriching the range of pedagogical activities and learning formats available to our students.As we aim to show in this chapter, we believe this hunch largely panned out – though there are clear areas for future improvement pertaining to the pilot exercise itself and the research we conducted on the exercise. We begin by offering a description of our tinkering exercise. We discuss the exercise’s source of inspiration (Sect. 16.2.1) and its implementation (Sect. 16.2.2), which is visually captured via photographic documentation. We then discuss (Sect. 16.3) how we utilized a triangulated research method to assess the pedagogical value of the exercise. After we discuss our findings, we conclude by identifying areas for future improvement (Sect. 16.4). (shrink)

Pierre Duhem's well-known argument for the underdetermination of theory choice by evidence is often cited in current discussion of scientific realism and antirealism. I argue that the familiar account of it that participants draw on is incomplete. After studying Duhem's philosophy of scientific language, which he regards as both abstract and symbolic, I conclude that, for Duhem, underdetermination rests on the observation that instruments are ubiquitous in mathematical sciences. This ties auxiliary assumptions to the use of instruments and completes the (...) familiar account of underdetermination. Even when complete, however, this account has no obvious implications for the debates about realism, nor does it settle how Duhem's own philosophy should be interpreted. An interpretive problem arises because there is textual support for both antirealist and realist readings of his work. Accordingly, in the recent literature he has been interpreted both as a fictionalist and as a structural realist. I argue that neither of these readings will do. First, the reasoning that might motivate a fictionalist interpretation assumes a certain semantical view that Duhem would not accept. To develop his pragmatic alternative, I address his conception of theory-ladenness and his account of how scientists come to understand phenomena. Second, the realist conviction that mitigates his apparent instrumentalism---specifically, the belief that physical theory is approaching a logically unified and natural classification---does not implicate him as a structural realist. For Duhem, natural classifications are ontologically significant and preserved over conceptual revolutions because they pick out essential features of real things and order phenomena accordingly. To properly classify Duhem's philosophy, I study his realist and antirealist claims and point out that they are different. In his view, scientific reasoning leads straight to antirealism but feelings, hunches, and intuitions motivate, without justifying, a kind of realism. I argue that Duhem's approach is characteristic of motivational realism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Invisible ChildrenMaureen KelleyИсчезаю в весне,в толпе,в лужах,в синеве.И не ищите.Мне так хорошо...I fade into spring,or into a crowd,or into a puddle,sometimes into the blue.There's no sense in looking for me.I feel fine...—¾"Absentee" by Arvo Mets"You have to go through Lesha to get to Danil," Alexandra told me. Lesha was a small but unmoving dog with matted hair and a fierce growl. The dog was pressed against the little (...) boy, who looked no more than three or four years old. Alexandra later told me he was eight. Danil was wearing a Spider Man shirt that was four sizes too big and came down to his feet and mismatched sandals. He was huddled against his dog not only for security but warmth. His tiny arm circled Lesha's neck and he looked at me with a mix of curiosity and caution. I knelt and put my hand out for Lesha to smell me. Apparently I didn't pass the smell test. The dog didn't budge from his post. We stood like that for a long time, at the base of the steps to the shelter. I tried the few Russian words I had learned while visiting as a volunteer. The dog didn't understand my broken Russian, or pretended not to, but I managed to get a shy smile from Danil.Alexandra, a nurse volunteer at the shelter, eventually mediated the standoff by giving Lesha, the dog, a cookie. I introduced myself to the little boy. And just like that, he leaned up against me and put both arms around my legs. It didn't matter that I was a stranger, and a stranger who spoke terrible Russian. "Spidey" was an affectionate little guy. He gripped my hand while Alexandra led us up the steps and Lesha followed close behind. Inside was a small room, warm and full of color. One wall was covered in kids' drawings. Another had public health posters in Russian, some with instructions for condom use, others on literacy. There were about fifteen kids in the shelter that afternoon. The young ones were drawing pictures at a low table. Two teenage boys were hunched over a small TV playing a video game. There was only one teenage girl, Irina. She was cooing at the little kid's drawings, showing one girl how to draw a princess. Alexandra said quietly to me, "Most of the teenage girls are only here in the morning. The rest are back at work right now." I found out later "back at work" meant on the streets as sex workers. This city was frequented by businessmen and itinerant workers heading to the factories or lumber mills in the North. The best money for homeless girls was in prostitution. Danil unwrapped himself from me and ran over to the two older boys playing video games. One put his controller down long enough to pull Danil into his lap. The three boys stared intently as Super Mario hopped from mushroom to magic cloud, golden coins spinning above his cartoon head.To the right of the main room was a closet-sized office for the shelter director, Anya, a pediatrician who donated her time to running the shelter for homeless and orphaned youth living on the streets. Alexandra and I stood in the doorway waiting for Anya to finish a phone conversation. Her desk was covered in papers. Behind her were photos of the kids who had "graduated" from the streets. There were cards and letters pinned to a cork board. When [End Page E4] she finished, Anya greeted us with bear hugs and showed us to the clinic area. Next to her office was a small bathroom with a shower and tub. She explained that bath days were on Wednesdays. Around back, with a separate entrance was the small clinic space. The outside metal door had a sliding window that you see at some nightclubs. They ran a needle exchange program out of that door. It was funded for street youth, but from time to time they would get adult addicts. Anya was adamant that this side of the clinic remain separate from the central space for the children. In reality the distance... (shrink)

“But,” “however,” and “although” are among the most common words in a large family that, following Fogelin, I call discounts. Students universally take them to be inference indicators, like “because,” and “therefore.” While this is incorrect, paying attention to discounts can help us identify arguments. Unfortunately, accounts given by both logicians and linguists are at best unhelpful, at worst incorrect, and sometimes even inconsistent. After justifying these criticisms, I give an account that distinguishes discounts from inference indicators while doing justice (...) to students’ hunch that they can help us identify arguments. (shrink)

In recent years, governments, businesses and other organisations have increasingly been forced to attempt to survive by reorganising themselves fundamentally. Although this happens at present on a large scale, it is not unprecedented. In fact, most organisations have had to change their working practises at some time for some reason—for example, when the competition catches up or when technology threatens to make production obsolete. The usual strategy is to fire part of the staff and to redistribute tasks. This tends to (...) put a heavy burden on staff. They have to search for other jobs or attempt re-skilling. Those remaining may face substantial changes in their relations to their managers, who will require changes … ‘or else’. The study reported in the paper focuses on people’s reactions to this approach. Some employees accept and leave. Others become aware of an opportunity to damage their company. Others again see a way to resist and change the way the managers behave and thereby turn around the company and maintain or increase the number of jobs. The study focuses on two questions. The first is how one should model or describe the behaviour of people in the third category, i.e. those wishing to contribute. It does not seem useful to follow one’s first hunch, i.e. to search for quantifiable patterns. People’s behaviour will always be contextualised as a reaction to what managers do. This suggests the use of qualitative methods. The second question is whether the concept of presence may clarify the behaviour and identify ways for employees to contribute positively to changes in their organisations. An obstacle to answering the second question is that qualitative methods focus on people’s experiences in some context, and on the emergence of their behaviour, but do not necessarily lead to suggestions on how to behave with what effect. It is attempted to answer the second question and thereby the first question with the aim of identifying what people may do who are not immediately fired or made redundant when fundamental organisational changes are introduced. Data have been collected from four companies that decided to initiate such changes in 2003–2004. (shrink)

This is a chapter written for a popular audience, in which I use poker as a convenient illustration of probability, determinism and counterfactuals. More originally, I also discuss the roles of rationality versus psychological hunches, and explain why even in principle game theory cannot provide us the panacea of a perfect winning srategy. (N.B. The document I have uploaded here is slightly longer than the abbreviated version that appears in the book, and also differs in a few other minor (...) details.) . (shrink)

Barring some civilisation-ending natural or man-made catastrophe, future scientists will likely incorporate fully fledged artificially intelligent agents in their ranks. Their tasks will include the conjecturing, extending and testing of hypotheses. At present human scientists have a number of methods to help them carry out those tasks. These range from the well-articulated, formal and unexceptional rules to the semi-articulated rules-of-thumb and intuitive hunches. If we are to hand over at least some of the aforementioned tasks to artificially intelligent agents, (...) we need to find ways to make explicit and ultimately formal, not to mention computable, the more obscure of the methods that scientists currently employ with some measure of success in their inquiries. The focus of this talk is a problem for which the available solutions are at best semi-articulated and far from perfect. It concerns the question of how to conjecture new hypotheses or extend existing ones such that they do not save phenomena in gerrymandered or ad hoc ways. This talk puts forward a fully articulated formal solution to this problem by specifying what it is about the internal constitution of the content of a hypothesis that makes it gerrymandered or ad hoc. In doing so, it helps prepare the ground for the delegation of a full gamut of investigative duties to the artificially intelligent scientists of the future. (shrink)

Epistemologists often remark that knowledge precludes luck. A true belief based on a guess or hunch is not knowledge because it seems merely fortuitous, too much of an accident, and, well, lucky that one happened to get things right. Of course, true beliefs based on guesses and hunches are not justified. However, Gettier cases have persuasively shown that even justified true beliefs can admit knowledge‐precluding kinds of luck. So in what sense are justified true beliefs that don’t amount knowledge (...) lucky or ‘true only by chance’? I will address three different approaches to epistemic luck that have received significant attention in the recent literature: reliability approaches to epistemic luck, credit approaches to epistemic luck, and responsibilist or control approaches to epistemic luck. I will then turn my attention to the implications that epistemic luck has for other epistemic states. I will focus particularly on state of understanding and examine whether, and to what extent, understanding is vulnerable to epistemic luck. (shrink)

Wondrous Truths answers two questions about the steep rise of theoretical discoveries around 1600: Why in the European West? And why so quickly? The history of science's awkward assortment of accident and luck, geography and personal idiosyncrasy, explains scientific progress alongside experimental method. J.D. Trout's blend of scientific realism and epistemic naturalism carries us through neuroscience, psychology, history, and policy, and explains how the corpuscular hunch of Boyle and Newton caught on.

This article exploits the “binary license” offered by the title of the symposium in which it appears (“Comparative Relativism”) as a kind of promise of connection. The author suggests, however tentatively, that in the challenge of heterogeneity, fractality, perspective/-alism, and multiplicities lies the power of the forking pathway: the moment a relation is created through divergence. If we are invited—in the same breath—to consider forms of comparison and forms of relativism (dropping difference and similarity), we are also offered two paths, (...) one based on a world of singularities and multiplicities, and the other on a world of not-quite repetitions. The article asks if the binary is not essential to the epistemic work that Western (Euro-American) scholars might want to do, since we forever reinvent the divide between the modern and the post-/pre-modern. Strathern assumes the anthropologist's license to talk about concepts through persons, and begins by asking how Papua New Guineans who come together in a city compare themselves, and in contrast to ethnic comparisons elsewhere (e.g., contra Sarah Green's Balkan interactions). In talking about persons through concepts, it is worth asking what is entailed in relativizing one scholar's work through that of another. The author says that her “hunch” is that in both cases the analyst might wish to have the liberty of discerning—in the same breath—the multiplicities of what John Law and Annemarie Mol call perspectivalism (their very general alternative to comparison) and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's radically divergent perspectivism (a self-contained, recursive and above all socially specific relativism). (shrink)

This paper proposes a philosophically informed decision-making methodology, inspired by Aristotle, that encourages constructive discussions amongst employers and employees; is directed towards shared higher-level goals; is consistent with planning frameworks already in place in many businesses; can be amended over time without disruptive disputes; and accounts for the particularities of each industry, enterprise, workplace, and job. It seeks to establish a more fundamental basis for discussions about remote vs. in-person office work: specifically, the purpose and nature of the work of (...) those affected. If these matters can be decided, then subsequent discussions might be focused more upon the shared outcomes to which stakeholders are committed and less upon individual preferences and ‘hunches.’. (shrink)

In 1885, Georg Cantor published his review of Gottlob Frege's Grundlagen der Arithmetik . In this essay, we provide its first English translation together with an introductory note. We also provide a translation of a note by Ernst Zermelo on Cantor's review, and a new translation of Frege's brief response to Cantor. In recent years, it has become philosophical folklore that Cantor's 1885 review of Frege's Grundlagen already contained a warning to Frege. This warning is said to concern the defectiveness (...) of Frege's notion of extension. The exact scope of such speculations varies and sometimes extends as far as crediting Cantor with an early hunch of the paradoxical nature of Frege's notion of extension. William Tait goes even further and deems Frege 'reckless' for having missed Cantor's explicit warning regarding the notion of extension. As such, Cantor's purported inkling would have predated the discovery of the Russell-Zermelo paradox by almost two decades. In our introductory essay, we discuss this alleged implicit (or even explicit) warning, separating two issues: first, whether the most natural reading of Cantor's criticism provides an indication that the notion of extension is defective; second, whether there are other ways of understanding Cantor that support such an interpretation and can serve as a precisification of Cantor's presumed warning. (shrink)

An argument that what makes science distinctive is its emphasis on evidence and scientists' willingness to change theories on the basis of new evidence. Attacks on science have become commonplace. Claims that climate change isn't settled science, that evolution is “only a theory,” and that scientists are conspiring to keep the truth about vaccines from the public are staples of some politicians' rhetorical repertoire. Defenders of science often point to its discoveries (penicillin! relativity!) without explaining exactly why scientific claims are (...) superior. In this book, Lee McIntyre argues that what distinguishes science from its rivals is what he calls “the scientific attitude”—caring about evidence and being willing to change theories on the basis of new evidence. The history of science is littered with theories that were scientific but turned out to be wrong; the scientific attitude reveals why even a failed theory can help us to understand what is special about science. McIntyre offers examples that illustrate both scientific success (a reduction in childbed fever in the nineteenth century) and failure (the flawed “discovery” of cold fusion in the twentieth century). He describes the transformation of medicine from a practice based largely on hunches into a science based on evidence; considers scientific fraud; examines the positions of ideology-driven denialists, pseudoscientists, and “skeptics” who reject scientific findings; and argues that social science, no less than natural science, should embrace the scientific attitude. McIntyre argues that the scientific attitude—the grounding of science in evidence—offers a uniquely powerful tool in the defense of science. (shrink)

The debate over recombinant DNA research is a unique event, perhaps a turning point, in the history of science. For the first time in modern history there has been widespread public discussion about whether and how a promising though potentially dangerous line of research shall be pursued. At root the debate is a moral debate and, like most such debates, requires proper assessment of the facts at crucial stages in the argument. A good deal of the controversy over recombinant DNA (...) research arises because some of the facts simply are not yet known. There are many empirical questions we would like to have answered before coming to a decision-questions about the reliability of proposed containment facilities, about the viability of enfeebled strains of E. coli, about the ways in which pathogenic organisms do their unwelcome work, and much more. But all decisions cannot wait until the facts are available; some must be made now. It is to be expected that people with different hunches about what the facts will turn out to be will urge different decisions on how recombinant DNA research should be regulated. However, differing expectations about the facts have not been the only fuel for controversy. A significant part of the current debate can be traced to differences over moral principles. Also, unfortunately, there has been much unnecessary debate generated by careless moral reasoning and a failure to attend to the logical structure of some of the moral arguments that have been advanced. (shrink)

We argue that many intuitions do not have conscious propositional contents. In particular, many of the intuitions had in response to philosophical thought experiments, like Gettier cases, do not have such contents. They are more like hunches, urgings, murky feelings, and twinges. Our view thus goes against the received view of intuitions in philosophy, which we call Mainstream Propositionalism. Our positive view is that many thought-experimental intuitions are conscious, spontaneous, non-theoretical, non-propositional psychological states that often motivate belief revision, but (...) they require interpretation, in light of background beliefs, before a subject can form a propositional judgment as a consequence of them. We call our view Interpretationalism. We argue (i) that Interpretationalism avoids the problems that beset Mainstream Propositionalism and (ii) that our view meshes well with empirical results in contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

The point of psychotherapy has occasionally been associated with talk of ‘life’s meaning’. However, the literature on meaning in life written by contemporary philosophers has yet to be systematically applied to literature on the point of psychotherapy. My broad aim in this chapter is to indicate some plausible ways to merge these two tracks of material that have run in parallel up to now. More specifically, my hunch is that the connection between meaning as philosophers understand it and therapy as (...) psychotherapists ought to practice it is much closer than is suggested by the field of existential psychotherapy, which expressly addresses the topic of life’s meaning and appeals to ideas from classic philosophers such Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and the like. I instead proffer the claim that psychodynamic and humanistic therapy, clinical psychology, and counselling psychology as such, not a particular branch of them, are best understood as enterprises in search of meaning in life, in the way many present-day philosophers understand this phrase. In this chapter, I spell out what I mean by this bold hypothesis and provide some good reason to take it seriously. (shrink)

How does the experience of busyness impact democratic political life? My hunch is that those reading this essay might very well offer the following answer: busyness means that we relegate political activities to the bottom of a long and sometimes tedious laundry list of “things to get done.” In fact, many of us no longer even bother to include the basic activities of citizenship –getting informed about the issues, deliberating with our peers about matters of common concern, attending a political (...) meeting, or even voting —on the list in the first place. Like this author, many of you probably feel somewhat guilty about this as well, and thus try to compensate in some way or another… At worst, busyness generates political disinterest and apathy: many of our fellow citizens openly describe the most fundamental form of democratic participation, the vote, as “a waste of time.” At best, it seems to privilege an acceleration of political activity: we seek speedy and rapidly consummated types of involvement that do not unduly add to the enormous time pressures we already feel. Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether even such high-speed forms of citizen involvement are normatively satisfactory. Can liberal democracy flourish when a growing number of us avoid the responsibilities of citizenship altogether, while even those of us who try to remain politically involved insist that they be dealt with quickly and painlessly? In this essay, I hope at the very least to deepen our understanding of this quagmire. If I am not mistaken, it provides a useful starting point for examining one of the core challenges of contemporary political life: how can we make sure that busyness and citizenship coexist in a potentially fruitful, though by no means necessarily harmonious, relationship? (shrink)

Ethics is normative; ethics indicates, in broad terms, what researchers should do. For example, researchers should respect human participants. Empirical study tells us what actually happens. Empirical research is often needed to fine-tune the best ways to achieve normative objectives, for example, to discover how best to achieve the dual aims of gaining important knowledge and respecting participants. Ethical decision making by scientists and institutional review boards should not be based on hunches and anecdotes (e.g., about such matters as (...) what information potential research participants would want to know and what they understand, or what they consider to be acceptable risks). These questions should be answered through empirical research. Some of the preceding articles in this special issue illustrate uses of empirical research on research ethics. This article places empirical research on research ethics into broader perspective and challenges investigators to use the tools of their disciplines to proactively solve ethical problems for which there currently exist no empirically proven solutions. (shrink)

This is a chapter written for a popular audience, in which I use poker as a convenient illustration of probability, determinism and counterfactuals. More originally, I also discuss the roles of rationality versus psychological hunches, and explain why even in principle game theory cannot provide us the panacea of a perfect winning srategy. (N.B. The document I have uploaded here is slightly longer than the abbreviated version that appears in the book, and also differs in a few other minor (...) details.) . (shrink)

One August evening in a sweated Virginia field that led to a pond I frequented just to hear frogs burble up and see the west sky turn an erotic, apricot orange, I was surrounded by seven four month-old Angus calves who formed a sort of fairy ring around me. They’d grown used to me there at dusk, when I often watched them group, huddle, and hunch, like quarterbacks. Then explode unpredictably in pursuit of the first calf to break rank and (...) flee. Or they might side-butt, or utter-butt, or butt-butt a cow, who would swing her rear end, swart her deft tail, until her tormentors finally galloped off, graceful as fat butterflies. Most usually they’d lock imaginary horns in scattered pairs or in threesomes and go at it.. (shrink)

In this article, we defend the view that problematic epistemological extremism, which presents puzzles for many learners new to philosophy, is a result of earlier learning at the K–12 level. Confirming this hunch serves as a way of locating the problem and suggesting that recent learning interventions proposed by Christopher Edelman (2021) and Galen Barry (2022) are on the right track. Further, we offer that this extremism is plausibly described as what Miranda Fricker (2007) calls an epistemic injustice. This suggests (...) that disrupting the problem is a boon for learners, the discipline, and good citizenship. In our discussion we introduce work by Derek Muller suggesting that it is important to address the misconceptions involved in epistemological extremism (and its precursors) lest we simply reinforce these problematic misconceptions for the worse—inhibiting student learning, reproducing challenges to good citizenship, and leading to a discounting of many ways of knowing. (shrink)

If Americans had to select a single symbol of their country's military might, they would do well to choose the fighter jet-a carefully constructed instrument of destruction, simultaneously powerful and nimble, stealthy and loud. This essay begins with a hunch-that if American culture illuminates the social significance of a fighter jet, then learning a little about jet propulsion might reveal something about the political culture of the nation the fighter jet has come to symbolize. One of the key features that (...) distinguishes a military aircraft from a commercial one is its remarkable thrust capacity, which comes from a component called an afterburner. The power boost that allows a jet to take off from the deck of an aircraft carrier without falling into the ocean, and is useful for combat situations is also very inefficient and suitable only for short-term use. If jet engines are boosted by afterburners, wartime states may be said to add political thrust to their everyday actions by applying something analogous that we might call afterknowledge: the intense scrutiny of, and collection of information about, enemies abroad and citizens at home. This essay examines what is at stake in how the state knows: how it identifies citizens, what it knows about them, and what difference that makes for democratic political culture. (shrink)

Over the last century and a half, appeals to “privacy” have become common in American law. The result is a rather chaotic mix of concepts, which philosophers might be able to help bring into some kind of order. But I want to discuss one kind of privacy that isn’t discussed much in the law literature, what I call “natural privacy.” I strongly suspect that unlike cricket or checkers or bridge with respect to our concept of game (Wittgenstein’s example) there is (...) something very basic about natural privacy that can illuminate, at least to a certain extent, part of the web of concepts for which we have come to use the term “privacy.” The basis of this hunch is that two aspects of natural privacy, imagination and contemplation, seem to be a very important part of what it is to be a human being. The privacy we seek by building houses, fences and private offices seems to bear a close kinship with the kind of privacy with which nature endows us. And so does the sort of privacy we seek to provide, often in vain, for things we do with the help of modern technology, from the printing press to the internet. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Dualism and the Problem of Dual Religious IdentityJonathan A. SeitzThe word “dualism” is used in many senses. It can refer to the separation of mind and body in classical Western philosophy or to the separation of divine and human in some religious traditions, but religious dualism is also used in the social sciences to describe how two religious systems may relate to each other. Personally, I am interested (...) in this topic because I teach at a Taiwanese seminary, where students draw deeply on Taiwanese culture even as they assert a very clear Christian identity that often challenges or clashes with the broader culture. Like many Protestants, my students generally reject an idea of syncretism while simultaneously affirming Taiwanese culture and many popular beliefs. This dual identity fascinates me.“Dualism” in anthropological research is sometimes used to describe the attachment to two discrete religious or cultural traditions, such as Buddhism and Christianity. An important early theorist was anthropologist June Nash, whose work grew out of ethnographic research in Bolivia and Mexico. Nash looked at Bolivian miners and studied their popular devotion. She wrote that “this technique of syncretizing elements as developed by the Spaniards in the early years of conquest seems alien to the Bolivian way of thinking. It relates to a mode of thinking that accepts only a single, hierarchically defined system of ideas. Indigenous thought is capable of entertaining coexistant and apparently contradictory world views.” Nash says that she “hope[d] to clarify this point of the segmentation in time and space of the two systems, since it defies the model of acculturation as a homogenous blend.”1In this understanding, “dualism” better describes the reality with which many people live than do more general terms like “indigenization” or “acculturation,” and it also resists an understanding that religious traditions simply blend together—rather, they are segmented and retain elements of coherence even when held simultaneously.languages of dual belonging“Dualism” has been helpful because it allows for the recognition that people may belong to two or more distinct traditions. More recently, “dual religious belonging” has been used by theologians such Paul Knitter and Rose Drew. In the past, Buddhist-Christian [End Page 49] Studies has devoted considerable space to the topic.2 The theological step is a step further beyond anthropological dualism, but it is also interested in affirming the “both-ness” of holding to two traditions simultaneously.In this essay I want to grapple with the ways in which dualism can be understood. I believe this systemic language holds some real benefits over other approaches, particularly over more general process terms like “contextualization,” “accommodation,” “indigenization,” “acculturation,” “vernacularization,” and so on. These “-ation” words are helpful in pointing to how conversion or Christianization occurs over time, but they also assume a sort of final synthesis or resolution, and for most people this is probably not how it works. This paper briefly treats two approaches to dual belonging, Nicole Constable’s study of Hakka Protestants in Hong Kong and Jon Kirby’s analysis of northern Ghanaian Catholic communities, and then contrasts these with the more theological language of dual religious belonging found in papers by scholars like Paul Knitter.Essentially, dualism proposes a “both/and” understanding, a type of personal or religious emulsion where two systems are mixed together but resist a full integration. For some scholars, this is fundamentally a positive thing, since it allows for the integrity of the different systems. In others, it is seen as a type of failure to arrive at a reconciled identity, or the bifurcation of an indigenous tradition because of the arrival of Christianity (or another religion).Part of the reason I am interested in this topic is precisely because it gets at a tension—a real ambivalence (i.e., two valences)—that other approaches may not reach. For instance, there is a wide range of uses of contextualization, appropriation, enculturation, vernacularization, indigenization, and so on. My hunch is that scholars use these terms in part because they reduce the cognitive dissonance involved in simultaneously living or working in multiple cultures. Contextualization is a process that may assume a type of full integration, while with dualism the tension is... (shrink)

In his reply, Guido Vanheeswijck expresses his agreement to the central ‘hunch’ of Mendus’ article with regard to the status of the political standard narrative about the liberal view on the relation between religion and violence. However, taking some distance from Mendus, he tries to make it clear that the relation between violence and religion is obvious, but not inevitable and that the tensions between religion and modernity – couched in a terminological contrast between enchantment and disenchantment – are palpable (...) indeed but not inescapable. (shrink)