War of Ideas: On Feyerabend’s Epistemic Pluralism and the Polarising Effect of Alternative Truths Paul Feyerabend is generally known as one of science’s greatest advocates of (epistemic) pluralism. Throughout his work, Feyerabend rejects the notion of a monistic epistemology and defends various forms of pluralism. Consequently, he is sometimes reproached for being responsible for the emergence of alternative truths – a radical form of pluralism – in the current post-truth era. This paper discusses the negative effects of alternative truths and (...) the extent to which a solution for these effects is provided by Feyerabend’s theory of science. After narrowly defining alternative truths, it is concluded that alternative truths can have a polarising effect that may impede the progress of knowledge. At first glance, Feyerabend’s pluralistic theory does not acknowledge this downside of alternative truths. However, this paper argues that Feyerabend’s exclusion of cranks, as well as his (critical) view on reason, can be seen as possible limitations of his (epistemic) pluralism. The problem of alternative truths, therefore, is not necessarily an argument against Feyerabend’s theory of science. (shrink)

For an arbitrary similarity type of Boolean Algebras with Operators we define a class of Sahlqvist identities. Sahlqvist identities have two important properties. First, a Sahlqvist identity is valid in a complex algebra if and only if the underlying relational atom structure satisfies a first-order condition which can be effectively read off from the syntactic form of the identity. Second, and as a consequence of the first property, Sahlqvist identities are canonical, that is, their validity is preserved under taking canonical (...) embedding algebras. Taken together, these properties imply that results about a Sahlqvist variety V van be obtained by reasoning in the elementary class of canonical structures of algebras in V. We give an example of this strategy in the variety of Cylindric Algebras: we show that an important identity called Henkin's equation is equivalent to a simpler identity that uses only one variable. We give a conceptually simple proof by showing that the firstorder correspondents of these two equations are equivalent over the class of cylindric atom structures. (shrink)

We consider some modal languages with a modal operator D whose semantics is based on the relation of inequality. Basic logical properties such as definability, expressive power and completeness are studied. Also, some connections with a number of other recent proposals to extend the standard modal language are pointed at.

What are the consequences of evolutionary theory for the epistemic standing of our beliefs? Evolutionary considerations can be used to either justify or debunk a variety of beliefs. This paper argues that evolutionary approaches to human cognition must at least allow for approximately reliable cognitive capacities. Approaches that portray human cognition as so deeply biased and deficient that no knowledge is possible are internally incoherent and self-defeating. As evolutionary theory offers the current best hope for a naturalistic epistemology, evolutionary approaches (...) to epistemic justification seem to be committed to the view that our sensory systems and belief-formation processes are at least approximately accurate. However, for that reason they are vulnerable to the charge of circularity, and their success seems to be limited to commonsense beliefs. This paper offers an extension of evolutionary arguments by considering the use of external media in human cognitive processes: we suggest that the way humans supplement their evolved cognitive capacities with external tools may provide an effective way to increase the reliability of their beliefs and to counter evolved cognitive biases. (shrink)

We introduce a notion of bisimulation for graded modal logic. Using this notion, the model theory of graded modal logic can be developed in a uniform manner. We illustrate this by establishing the finite model property and proving invariance and definability results.

In a previous issue of Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, Filip Buekens argues that evolutionary psychology (EP), or some interpretations thereof, have a corrosive impact on our ‘manifest self-image’. Buekens wants to defend and protect the global adequacy of this manifest self-image in the face of what he calls evolutionary revisionism. Although we largely agree with Buekens’ central argument, we criticize his analysis on several accounts, making some constructive proposals to strengthen his case. First, Buekens’ argument fails to target EP, because his (...) notion of the ‘constitutive conditions’ of our attitudes is too wide and too extensive. Second, his defense of the global adequacy of our attitudes does not allow for sufficient differentiation to analyze the problem of potential self-refutation with respect to EP. Third, his account of knowledge about constitutive conditions, and its impact on our self-image, is problematic. We provide a more detailed explanation for the pervasiveness of evolutionary revisionism and other misconceptions about EP. Finally, we consider in what sense EP may legitimately affect our self-image, and whether it can truly inspire corrections of our view of human nature. (shrink)

A complete reconstruction of Lehmer’s ENIAC set-up for computing the exponents of p modulo two is given. This program served as an early test program for the ENIAC (1946). The reconstruction illustrates the difficulties of early programmers to find a way between a man operated and a machine operated computation. These difficulties concern both the content level (the algorithm) and the formal level (the logic of sequencing operations).

The current study investigated how work-related disagreements—coined as conflicts—relate to workplace bullying, from the perspective of the target as well as the perpetrator. We hypothesized a positive indirect association between task conflicts and bullying through relationship conflicts. This process accounted for both for targets and perpetrators of bullying. Targets are distinguished from perpetrators in our assumption that this indirect effect is boosted by distributive conflict behavior, being yielding for targets and forcing for perpetrators. Results in a large representative sample of (...) the Flemish working population confirmed our hypotheses. Additionally, our study also revealed a direct effect from task conflicts to bullying in the analyses regarding the indirect as well as the conditional indirect effects. For perpetrators, both the indirect and direct relationships are moderated by forcing, underlining the importance of distributive conflict behavior particularly for the enactment of bullying behaviors. (shrink)

Appraisal theories of emotions have gained widespread acceptance in the field of emotion research (for a recent overview, see, e.g., Scherer, Schorr, & Johnstone, 2001). In these theories, it is as...

This paper is about a special version of PDL, proposed by Marcus Kracht, for reasoning about sibling ordered trees. It has four basic programs corresponding to the child, parent, left- and right-sibling relations in such trees. The original motivation for this language is rooted in the field of model-theoretic syntax. Motivated by recent developments in the area of semi-structured data, and, especially, in the field of query languages for XML (eXtensible Markup Language) documents, we revisit the language. This renewed interest (...) comes with a special focus on complexity and expressivity aspects of the language, aspects that have so far largely been ignored. We survey and derive complexity results, and spend most of the paper on the most important open question concerning the language: what is its expressive power? We approach this question from two angles: Which first-order properties can be expressed? And which second-order properties? While we are still some way from definitive answers to these questions, we discuss two first-order fragments of the PDL language for ordered trees, and show how the language can be used to express some typical (second-order) problems, like the boolean circuit and the frontier problem. (shrink)

Peirce’s analyses of the concept of information begin in the period from 1865 to 1869 and continue until the last years of his life. In fact, the successive phases that the scholars distinguish about Peirce’s approaches to information, roughly match Fisch’s periodization of Peirce’s philosophical development. In the first phase his approach is restricted to the proposition and the terms that knock it into shape; the forms of inference prevail. In the second phase the concept of information is enriched with (...) the development of Peirce’s semiotic theory and his typology of signs. By last, his concept of information receives a more decidedly metaphysical stamp. In this paper we will just expose Peirce’s conception of information during the first of these phases, foregrounding his papers Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension (W2 [1867]: 70-86) and Questions on Reality (W2 [1868]: 162-87). Here, individuals explore and actualize possibilities in thought, once they articulate their experience through a social system of signs. That’s why, in inferring, “we ought to say that we are in thought, and not that thoughts are in us” (EP 1 [1868]: 42). (shrink)

We consider some modal languages with a modal operator $D$ whose semantics is based on the relation of inequality. Basic logical properties such as definability, expressive power and completeness are studied. Also, some connections with a number of other recent proposals to extend the standard modal language are pointed at.

In many logics dealing with information one needs to make statements not only about cognitive states, but also about transitions between them. In this paper we analyze a dynamic modal logic that has been designed with this purpose in mind. On top of an abstract information ordering on states it has instructions to move forward or backward along this ordering, to states where a certain assertion holds or fails, while it also allows combinations of such instructions by means of operations (...) from relation algebra. In addition, the logic has devices for expressing whether in a given state a certain instruction can be carried out, and whether that state can be arrived at by carrying out a certain instruction. This paper deals mainly with technical aspects of our dynamic modal logic. It gives an exact description of the expressive power of this language; it also contains results on decidability for the language with 'arbitrary' structures and for the special case with a restricted class of admissible structures. In addition, a complete axiomatization is given. The paper concludes with a remark about the modal algebras appropriate for our dynamic modal logic, and some questions for further work. The paper only contains some sketchy examples showing how the logic can be used to capture situations of dynamic interest, far more detailed applications are given in a companion to this paper (De Rijke [33]). (shrink)

A vast stream of empirical work has revealed that coach and athlete leadership are important determinants of sport teams’ functioning and performance. Although coaches have a direct impact on individual and team outcomes, they should also strive to stimulate athletes to take up leadership roles in a qualitative manner. Yet, the relation between coach leadership behavior and the extent of high-quality athlete leadership within teams remains underexposed. Based on organizational justice theory and the social identity approach, the present research tested (...) whether perceived justice of the coach positively predicts the quality of athlete leadership. Furthermore, we examined the role of group dynamic processes within this relation. Belgian volleyball and basketball players were asked to rate the justice of their coach, their team identification, the task cohesion, and the athlete leadership quality in the team. Structural equation modeling indicated that coaches’ perceived justice positively predicted the quality of athletes’ leadership, and that this relation was established through three intermediate steps. These results suggest that fair coach behavior does not only bridge the gap between leadership and followership, it also has the potential to improve the quality of athletes’ leadership within sport teams. More specifically, findings suggest that coaches’ perceived justice cultivates a shared social identity characterized by high levels of players’ identification with their team, which in turn increased their perceptions of the team’s task cohesion. Finally, this increased task cohesion encouraged the athlete leaders to demonstrate high-quality leadership. (shrink)

The present paper presents a philosophical analysis of earth science, a discipline that has received relatively little attention from philosophers of science. We focus on the question of whether earth science can be reduced to allegedly more fundamental sciences, such as chemistry or physics. In order to answer this question, we investigate the aims and methods of earth science, the laws and theories used by earth scientists, and the nature of earth-scientific explanation. Our analysis leads to the tentative conclusion that (...) there are emergent phenomena in earth science but that these may be reducible to physics. However, earth science does not have irreducible laws, and the theories of earth science are typically hypotheses about unobservable (past) events or generalised - but not universally valid - descriptions of contingent processes. Unlike more fundamental sciences, earth science is characterised by explanatory pluralism: earth scientists employ various forms of narrative explanations in combination with causal explanations. The main reason is that earth-scientific explanations are typically hampered by local underdetermination by the data to such an extent that complete causal explanations are impossible in practice, if not in principle. (shrink)

This modern, advanced textbook reviews modal logic, a field which caught the attention of computer scientists in the late 1970's.

For an arbitrary similarity type of Boolean Algebras with Operators we define a class ofSahlqvist identities. Sahlqvist identities have two important properties. First, a Sahlqvist identity is valid in a complex algebra if and only if the underlying relational atom structure satisfies a first-order condition which can be effectively read off from the syntactic form of the identity. Second, and as a consequence of the first property, Sahlqvist identities arecanonical, that is, their validity is preserved under taking canonical embedding algebras. (...) Taken together, these properties imply that results about a Sahlqvist variety V van be obtained by reasoning in the elementary class of canonical structures of algebras in V.We give an example of this strategy in the variety of Cylindric Algebras: we show that an important identity calledHenkin's equation is equivalent to a simpler identity that uses only one variable. We give a conceptually simple proof by showing that the first-order correspondents of these two equations are equivalent over the class of cylindric atom structures. (shrink)

In many logics dealing with information one needs to make statements not only about cognitive states, but also about transitions between them. In this paper we analyze a dynamic modal logic that has been designed with this purpose in mind. On top of an abstract information ordering on states it has instructions to move forward or backward along this ordering, to states where a certain assertion holds or fails, while it also allows combinations of such instructions by means of operations (...) from relation algebra. In addition, the logic has devices for expressing whether in a given state a certain instruction can be carried out, and whether that state can be arrived at by carrying out a certain instruction.This paper deals mainly with technical aspects of our dynamic modal logic. It gives an exact description of the expressive power of this language; it also contains results on decidability for the language with arbitrary structures and for the special case with a restricted class of admissible structures. In addition, a complete axiomatization is given. The paper concludes with a remark about the modal algebras appropriate for our dynamic modal logic, and some questions for further work. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Object and Aims of Earth Science The Autonomy of Earth Science Explanation in Earth Science Conclusion Acknowledgment References.

We introduce a notion of bisimulation for graded modal logic. Using this notion, the model theory of graded modal logic can be developed in a uniform manner. We illustrate this by establishing the finite model property and proving invariance and definability results.

Peirce algebras combine sets, relations and various operations linking the two in a unifying setting. This paper offers a modal perspective on Peirce algebras. Using modal logic a characterization of the full Peirce algebras is given, as well as a finite axiomatization of their equational theory that uses so-called unorthodox derivation rules. In addition, the expressive power of Peirce algebras is analyzed through their connection with first-order logic, and the fragment of first-order logic corresponding to Peirce algebras is described in (...) terms of bisimulations. (shrink)

A history of writing the history of computing is presented in its relationship to the history of mathematics. As with many historiographies, the initial history of computing was very much an internalistic history. In the late 1970s, the field became more serious and started looking at the histories of mathematics and technology for (methodological) inspiration. Whereas the history of mathematics was initially quite influential, it is the history of technology (in its U.S. form) that has become the dominant framework for (...) doing history of computing since the 1990s. (shrink)

The debate between realism and antirealism has been central in the general philosophy of science of the last decades. But ever since the heydays of the debate in the 1980s, there have been authors who have tried to argue for the overcoming or dissolution of the debate itself, by proposing a position that is neither realist nor antirealist. Prominent among these is Joseph Rouse (Rouse 1987). Yet, Jeff Kochan has recently argued that Rouse, despite his efforts to transcend the realism/antirealism (...) debate through his universal practical hermeneutics, ends up an implicit realist (Kochan 2011). Kochan furthermore uses this as an occasion to rectify what he sees as Rouse’s influential but misleading interpretation of .. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Model Theory Proof Theory Modal Predicate Logic.

When Barthes starts to conceptualize his courses at the Collège de France, he envisions a methodology which he actually considers to be an ‘anti-method’, that is to say, an ‘unscientific’ method which goes against the grain of traditional education. He pursues the method of his seminars at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, especially the seminar that ended up with the publication of A Lover's Discourse. In the conclusion to the seminar, Barthes turns to Nietzsche to ground this ‘anti-method’ and (...) to substantiate his claim that literature is a vital dimension of his research and teaching. In the introductory session of Comment vivre ensemble, Barthes labels this ‘anti-method’ – once more with the help of Nietzsche – ‘paideia’. This article aims to scrutinize the scope, the potentialities and the risks of this Greek word to Barthes's theory and ideas on life, criticism and literature. (shrink)

In [6] Albert Visser shows that ILP completely axiomatizes all schemata about provability and relative interpretability that are provable in finitely axiomatized theories. In this paper we introduce a system called $\text{ILP}^{\omega}$ that completely axiomatizes the arithmetically valid principles of provability in and interpretability over such theories. To prove the arithmetical completeness of $\text{ILP}^{\omega}$ we use a suitable kind of tail models; as a byproduct we obtain a somewhat modified proof of Visser's completeness result.