A venerable tradition in the metaphysics of science commends ontological reduction: the practice of analysis of theoretical entities into further and further proper parts, with the understanding that the original entity is nothing but the sum of these. This tradition implicitly subscribes to the principle that all the real action of the universe (also referred to as its "causation") happens at the smallest scales-at the scale of microphysics. A vast majority of metaphysicians and philosophers of science, covering a wide swath (...) of the spectrum from reductionists to emergentists, defend this principle. It provides one pillar of the most prominent theory of science, to the effect that the sciences are organized in a hierarchy, according to the scales of measurement occupied by the phenomena they study. On this view, the fundamentality of a science is reckoned inversely to its position on that scale. This venerable tradition has been justly and vigorously countered-in physics, most notably: it is countered in quantum theory, in theories of radiation and superconduction, and most spectacularly in renormalization theories of the structure of matter. But these counters-and the profound revisions they prompt-lie just below the philosophical radar. This book illuminates these counters to the tradition principle, in order to assemble them in support of a vaster (and at its core Aristotelian) philosophical vision of sciences that are not organized within a hierarchy. In so doing, the book articulates the principle that the universe is active at absolutely all scales of measurement. This vision, as the book shows, is warranted by philosophical treatment of cardinal issues in the philosophy of science: fundamentality, causation, scientific innovation, dependence and independence, and the proprieties of explanation. (shrink)

Traditional articulations of the conception of dirty hands, as the doing of wrong in order to do right, invite construals of the issues raised thereby as mired in conceptual confusions and inconsistencies, and moreover as generating unproductive discussions of the scope of the proposed notion itself. The status of the concept of dirty hands is thus precarious, in spite of its provenance in the work of political thinkers such as Machiavelli. This essay articulates one nonparadoxical conception of dirty hands, as (...) the uncomfortable phenomenology of agents authorized to act on behalf of others, when they are called upon to do things that, while morally correct, are also personally or morally distasteful. The key point is that the dirt of action remains on these agents’ hands, even if moral responsibility for the relevant actions should be conceived as falling on the persons in whose name they take the said action. This articulation opens up for investigation questions about the phenomenology of authorized agency, as well as the moral labor involved in leadership and in other contexts of authorized distasteful action. These are questions of social ontology. Here there is important philosophical work that remains to be done. (shrink)

Practitioners of science treat evidence as a separate and objective body of materials that is independent of, and possibly also prior to, all of theorizing. Philosophers of science, by contrast, are increasingly wary of the role of theory in testing and measurement contexts, and hence have problematized the notion of evidence as prior or independent, even in the context of measurement. This paper argues that there is an important sense in which empirical certification of a quantity, via measurement, is indeed (...) prior to theorizing, albeit not necessarily in order of time. The case for this priority distinguishes between the certification of the measurability of a given quantity, as a quantity appropriately measured on a specified scale, and the epistemic warrant due to an assignment of a specific magnitude to that quantity on a given occasion. The result is an account of the certification of a measurable quantity, independent of any theory in which that quantity features. The effect is to render certification of quantities theory-neutral. The aim of the essay is thus to bolster and re-establish a more nuanced empiricist view, via building a case for quantity certification as the epistemic basis (i.e., foundation) of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

This article aims to show that fundamentality is construed differently in the two most prominent strategies of analysis we find in physical science and engineering today: (1) atomistic, reductive analysis and (2) Systems analysis. Correspondingly, atomism is the conception according to which the simplest (smallest) indivisible entity of a certain kind is most fundamental; while systemism, as will be articulated here, is the conception according to which the bonds that structure wholes are most fundamental, and scale and/or constituting entities are (...) of no significance whatsoever for fundamentality. Accordingly, atomists maintain that the basic entities—the atoms—are fundamental, and together with the “external” interactions among them, are sufficient for illuminating all the features and behaviors of the wholes they constitute; whereas systemists proclaim that it is instead structural qualities of systems, that flow from internal relations among their constituents and translate directly into behaviors, that are fundamental, and by themselves largely (if not entirely) sufficient for illuminating the features and behaviors of the wholes thereby structured. Systemism, as will be argued, is consistent with the nonexistence of a fundamental “level” of nondecomposable entities, just as it is consistent with the existence of such a level. Still, systemism is a conception of the fundamental in quite different, but still ontological terms. Systemism can serve the special sciences—the social sciences especially—better than the conception of fundamentality in terms of atoms. Systemism is, in fact, a conception of fundamentality that has rather different uses—and importantly, different resonances. This conception of fundamentality makes contact with questions pertaining to natural kinds and their situation in the metaphysics of the special sciences—their situation within an order of autonomous sciences. The controversy over fundamentality is evident in the social sciences too, albeit somewhat imperfectly, in the terms of debate between methodological individualists and functionalists/holists. This article will thus clarify the difference between systemism and holism. (shrink)

I shall endeavor to show that every physical theory since Newton explains without drawing attention to causes–that, in other words, physical theories as physical theories aspire to explain under an ideal quite distinct from that of causal explanation. If I am right, then even if sometimes the explanations achieved by a physical theory are not in violation of the standard of causal explanation, this is purely an accident. For physical theories, as I will show, do not, as such, aim at (...) accommodating the goals or aspirations of causal explanation. This will serve as the founding insight for a new theory of explanation, which will itself serve as the cornerstone of a new theory of scientific method. (shrink)

This essay offers a motivational conception of solidarity that can be employed across the entire range of sciences and humanities, while also filling a gap in the motivational spectrum conceived by decision theorists and economists—and expanding the two-part division between altruistic and selfish motivations into a tripartite analysis that suggests a spectrum instead. According to the present proposal, solidarity is a condition of action-readiness on behalf of a group or its interests. The proposal will admit of measuring the extent to (...) which Prisoner’s Dilemmas are overcome in real life via acts of solidarity. (shrink)

Social sciences face a well-known problem, which is an instance of a general problem faced as well by psychological and biological sciences: the problem of establishing their legitimate existence alongside physics. This, as will become clear, is a problem in metaphysics. I will show how a new account of structural explanations, put forward by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, which is designed to solve this metaphysical problem with social sciences in mind, fails to treat the problem in any importantly new (...) way. Then I will propose a more modest approach, and show how it does not deserve the criticism directed at a prototype by Jackson and Pettit. (shrink)

This paper documents a wide range of nonreductive scientific treatments of phenomena in the domain of physics. These treatments strongly resist characterization as explanations of macrobehavior exclusively in terms of behavior of microconstituents. For they are treatments in which macroquantities are cast in the role of genuine and irreducible degrees of freedom. One is driven into reductionism when one is not cultivated to possess an array of distinctions rich enough to let things be what they are. In contrast, making the (...) decisive distinction has an illuminating and liberating effect because it lets the concrete occurrence stand forth for what it is. We understand it not in terms of a decipherment, but on its own terms. –Robert Sokolowski (“Making Distinctions”, 1992). (shrink)

This chapter focuses on finding better ways to conceptualize precaution. Precaution has now become an established principle of environmental governance, although it has not been distinguished from conventional risk assessment. It has been considered by some as the antithesis of risk assessment in the sense that it is done to avoid serious potential harm, without scientific certainty as to the likelihood, magnitude, or causation of that harm. The first and foremost task of this chapter is to show that these concepts (...) are non-overlapping. It also elaborates on the reasons why precaution should be taken seriously, and that, on the flipside, traditional risk assessment, or cost-benefit analysis, does not take precaution seriously because of its pervasive nature. This fact represents the ascendancy of a decision-making calculus that grew out of twentieth-century British moral theory and culminated in 1944 with the presentation of the doctrine now familiarly known as the theory of expected utility. (shrink)

In spite of its infinite expectation value, the St. Petersburg game is not only a gamble without supply in the real world, but also one without demand at apparently very reasonable asking prices. We offer a rationalizing explanation of why the St. Petersburg bargain is unattractive on both sides (to both house and player) in the mid-range of prices (finite but upwards of about $4). Our analysis – featuring (1) the already-established fact that the average of finite ensembles of the (...) St. Petersburg game grows with ensemble size but is unbounded, and (2) our own simulation data showing that the debt-to-entry fee ratio rises exponentially – explains why both house and player are quite rational in abstaining from the St. Petersburg game. The house will be unavoidably (and intentionally) exposed to very large ensembles (with very high averages, and so very costly to them), while contrariwise even the well-heeled player is not sufficiently capitalized (as our simulation data reveals) to be able to capture the potential gains from large-ensemble play. (Smaller ensembles, meanwhile, enjoy low means, as others have shown, and so are not worth paying more than $4 to play, even if a merchant were to offer them at such low prices per trial.) Both sides are consequently rational in abstaining from entry into the St. Petersburg market in the mid-range of asking prices. We utilize the concept of capitalization vis-à-vis a gamble to make this case. Classical analyses of this question have paid insufficient attention to the question of the propriety of using expected values to assess the St. Petersburg gamble. And extant analyses have not noted the average-maximum-debt-before-breaking-even figures, and so are incomplete. (shrink)

Science seems generally to aim at truth. And governmental support of science is often premised on the instrumental value of truth in service of advancing our practical objectives, both as individuals and as communities, large and small. While there is some political expediency to this view, it is not correct. The value of truth is nowise that it helps us achieve our aims. In fact, just the contrary: truth deserves to be believed only on the condition that its claim upon (...) us is orthogonal to any utility it might have in the service of (any and all) practical ends. (shrink)

This paper argues that the doctrines of determinism and supervenience, while logically independent, are importantly linked in physical mechanics—and quite interestingly so. For it is possible to formulate classical mechanics in such a way as to take advantage of the existence of mathematical devices that represent the advance of time—and which are such as to inspire confidence in the truth of determinism—in order to prevent violation of supervenience. It is also possible to formulate classical mechanics-and to do so in an (...) observationally equivalent, and thus equally empirically respectable, way—such that violations of supervenience are (on the one hand) routine, and (on the other hand) necessary for achieving complete descriptions of the motions of mechanical systems—necessary, therefore, for achieving a deterministic mechanical theory. Two such formulations—only one of which preserves supervenience universally—will conceive of mechanical law in quite different ways. What's more, they will not admit of being extended to treat thermodynamical questions in the same way. Thus we will find that supervenience is a contingent matter, in the following rather surprising and philosophically interesting way: we cannot in mechanics separate our decisions to conceive of physical law in certain ways from our decisions to treat macroscopic quantities in certain ways. (shrink)

The twin conceptions of (1) natural law as causal structure and (2) explanation as passage from phenomenon to cause, are two sides of a certain philosophical coin, to which I shall offer an alternative – Humean – currency. The Humean alternative yokes together a version of the regularity conception of law and a conception of explanation as passage from one regularity, to another which has it as an instance but of which it is not itself an instance. I will show (...) that the regularity conception of law is the basis of a distinguished branch of physical mechanics; thus the Humean conception of law, like its better-loved rival, enjoys the support of a venerated tradition in mechanical theory – in fact, that strand which culminates in quantum theory. I shall also offer an account of explanatory asymmetry, a natural companion to the Humean conception of explanation as passage from one regularity to another of greater scope, as an alternative to van Fraassen’s unsatisfactory account. My account of asymmetry is just as free of reliance on context as it is free of reliance on cause. I shall thus proclaim that explanatory asymmetry is at once a reality deserving of philosophical treatment – one not to be given over to the care of psychology or linguistics – and at the same time susceptible of an account worthy of Hume. (shrink)

THOMAS SCHELLING taught us that in ordinary human affairs, conflict and common interest are ubiquitously intertwined. For when it comes to variety, the occasion of pure conflict (known to some of its friends as the zerosum game) is as under-represented in human affairs as the occasion of undiluted common interest (known as the pure coordination game). The undiluted extremes are the exceptions, when it comes to counting kinds, while the mixed-motive kind of occasion is the rule. Things look a bit (...) different, however, when one looks at sheer numbers of true-life occasions, as I will explain. Schelling also taught us that in the diverse space of mixed-motive affairs, intermediate between pure conflict and pure coordination, there is more true-life collaborative behavior—more trustings and promise-keepings—than our prescriptive decision theories can accommodate, never mind explain. This collaborative behavior, as long ago another Thomas—Thomas Hobbes—was painfully aware, requires some explaining precisely because of the presence of ineliminable conflict of interest. The problem confronting those who aspire to explain such collaboration is to identify weighty motivations in its favor, in the face of the weighty, but countervailing motivations. What shall concern me here is not the collaboration that transpires in the face of conflict of interest, but the success which meets us more than halfway in those limiting cases of pure coordination, so as (for example) not to collide in roadways and corridors. For in sheer quantity, the occasions for pure coordination outnumber the occasions for anything else perhaps a hundredfold. (shrink)

This collection represents the best recent work on the subject and includes essays by Clark Glymour, James H. Fetzer, and Wesley C. Salmon.

Social sciences face a well-known problem, which is an instance of a general problem faced as well by psychological and biological sciences: the problem of establishing their legitimate existence alongside physics. This, as will become clear, is a problem in metaphysics. I will show how a new account of structural explanations, put forward by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, which is designed to solve this metaphysical problem with social sciences in mind, fails to treat the problem in any importantly new (...) way. Then I will propose a more modest approach, and show how it does not deserve the criticism directed at a prototype by Jackson and Pettit. (shrink)

Is it possible to measure a people’s capacity for containing the ambitions of any regime at its helm—its ability to resist the power of a tyrant? We begin here from the premise that this power has to be in proportion to individuals’ capacity (both individually and in groups) for communicating, at least among themselves, dissatisfaction with the regime. As the paper subsequently shows, by articulating an ontology of information diffusion on a communication network structure, it is possible to take some (...) stock of the features of a communications network that facilitate resistance to tyranny (among other things), and so to begin answering questions about the sort of power that people living within them might be able to mobilize, while not yet answering outright the question of how to measure the power to resist. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes two conceptions of collectivity, each of which tracks the targets of classification according to their aetiology. Collectivities falling under the first conception are founded on (more-or-less) explicit negotiations amongst the members who are known to one another personally. Collectivities falling under the second (philosophically neglected) conception are founded – at least initially – purely upon a shared conception of “we”, very often in the absence of prior acquaintance and personal interaction. Th e paper argues that neglect of (...) collectivities of the second kind renders certain social phenomena (for example, sense of place and certain kinds of conflicted loyalty) inexplicable or invisible. And the paper also stresses that a conception referring to the second kind of collectivity will put us in position to revitalize a variety of important questions, including: Which conception of collectivity best serves the needs of a theory of justice? Th e paper will contrast the distinction between these two conceptions with the classical Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft distinction, as well as with the more recent attempts to articulate differences between groups according to membership-structuring norms. (shrink)

Dynamical-systems analysis is nowadays ubiquitous. From engineering (its point of origin and natural home) to physiology, and from psychology to ecology, it enjoys surprisingly wide application. Sometimes the analysis rings decisively false—as, for example, when adopted in certain treatments of historical narrative; other times it is provocative and controversial, as when applied to the phenomena of mind and cognition. Dynamical systems analysis (or “Systems” with a capital “S,” as I shall sometimes refer to it) is simply a tool of analysis. (...) It mobilizes the language and mathematical technology of differential equations, and brings into play the distinctive concepts of equilibrium and attractor, as well as gain, coupling and neighborhood, that are not obviously proprietary property of any particular domain of objects or regime in the world. It is the ecumenical language of engineers, universal in scope. Still, Systems, as a mode of analysis, itself stands in need of clarification. Once that clarity has been attained, one can then ask: are there limitations or bounds on proper application of Systems analysis, that are themselves premised upon considerations internal to the analysis itself? This is one of several questions to which the present essay is devoted. Before it can be attempted, however, we shall require some groundwork that clarifies the mode of analysis that is Systems—the family of analyses to which it belongs. This will begin to bring out (among other things) the precise difference of subject matter between biology and physics. And the ecumenicality of Systems analysis is bound to have its own distinctive commitments, as we shall see. Practitioners attuned to the signal characteristics of Systems analysis—characteristics that set it apart—proclaim its many advantages. (shrink)

The goal of the essay is to articulate some beginnings for an empirical approach to the study of agency, in the firm conviction that agency is subject to scientific scrutiny, and is not to be abandoned to high-brow aprioristic philosophy. Drawing on insights from decision analysis, game theory, general dynamics, physics and engineering, this essay will examine the diversity of planning phenomena, and in that way take some steps towards assembling rudiments for the budding science, in the process innovating (parts (...) of) a technical vocabulary. The key is focus upon the organization of effort in time. This paper categorizes forms of organization of effort in time, and yields an analysis of both individual agency and coalitions of agents as forms of effort organized in time. Finally, it articulates precise questions pertaining to the natural (evolutionary) history of forms of agency (once upon a time referred to as ‘Will’) that we now find on the ground. (shrink)

A superselection rule advanced in the course of a quantum-mechanical treatment of some phenomenon is an assertion to the effect that the superposition principle of quantum mechanics is to be restricted in the application at hand. Superselection accounts of measurement all have in common a decision to represent the indicator states of detectors by eigenspaces of superselection operators named in a superselection rule, on the grounds that the states in question are states of a so-called classical quantity and therefore not (...) subject to quantum interference effects. By this strategy superselectionists of measurement expect to dispense with use of projection postulates in treatments of measurement. I shall argue that superselection accounts of measurement are self-contradictory, and that treatments of infinite systems, if they can avoid the contradiction, are not true superselection accounts. (shrink)

This paper challenges Gardiner’s (2006) contention that his Core Precautionary Principle (CPP) “tracks our [precautionary] intuitions about some core cases, including the paradigmatic environmental ones”. And instead sketches a handful of precautionary practices in navigational systems that (collectively) do better at tracking these “intuitions”. There is no way of measuring these diverse practices as to relative weakness or strength against each other. And ultimately it makes little sense to talk about precautionary principles on any strength scale—as Gardiner (2006) aspires to (...) do (and in such a way as locates CPP firmly in the middle). Indeed, it makes little sense to proclaim that precaution can be captured in any one decision rule or formula because, as will be illustrated here, precaution is many nonoverlapping things, each of which is appropriate in different stages of the navigation process, from confrontation of a dilemma to ultimate resolution of it. (shrink)

We seek to illuminate the prevalence of cooperation among biologically unrelated individuals via an analysis of agency that recognizes the possibility of bonding and challenges the common view that agency is invariably an individual-level affair. Via bonding, a single individual’s behavior patterns or programs are altered so as to facilitate the formation, on at least some occasions, of a larger entity to whom is attributable the coordination of the component entities. Some of these larger entities will qualify as agents in (...) their own right, even when the comprising entities also qualify as agents. In light of the many possibilities that humans actually enjoy for entering into numerous bonding schemes, and the extent to which they avail themselves of these possibilities, there is no basis for the assumption that cooperative behavior must ultimately emerge as either altruistic or self-interested; it can instead be the product of collective agency. (shrink)

The principle that causes always render their effects more likely is fundamental to the enterprise of reducing facts of causation to facts about (objective) chances. This reductionist enterprise faces famous difficulties in accommodating common-sense intuitions about causal processes, if it insists on cashing out causal processes in terms of streams of events in which every event that belongs to the stream is a cause of the adjoining event downstream of it. I shall propose modifications to this way of cashing out (...) causal processes, still well within the reductionist faith. These modifications will allow the reductionist to handle processes successfully, on the assumption that the reductionist proposal is itself otherwise satisfactory. I shall then argue that the reductionist enterprise lies squarely behind the Theory of Relativity, and so has all the confirmatory weight of Relativity behind it. However this is not all good news for reductionists. For throughout I shall simply assume that the reductionist proposal, to the effect that causes are just chance-raisers, is correct. And I shall sidestep problems with that proposal as such. And so I shall show that, if in the end we find the reductionist proposal unsatisfactory, it cannot be on grounds of its treatment of causal processes as such. Thus, while I shall argue that causal processes pose no extra trouble for reductionists, I shall be making a case that all the action between reductionists and their opponents should be focused upon the proposal to reduce the two-term causal relation itself to relations amongst probabilities. (shrink)

Can victims of the oracle paradox, which is known primarily through its unexpected hanging and surprise examination versions, extricate themselves from their difficulties of reasoning? No. For they do not, contrary to recent opinion, commit errors of fallacious elimination. As I shall argue, the difficulties of reasoning faced by these victims do not originate in the domain of concepts, propositions and their entailment relations; nor do they result from misapprehensions about limitations on what can be known. The difficulties of reasoning (...) flow, instead, from conflicts that arise in the practical dimension of life. The oracle paradox is in this way more evocative of problems faced in the theory of computation than it is like the celebrated Russell’s paradox. (shrink)

This essay argues that, in place of the present hit-and-miss system of specialist advisement (a system of scientific experts performing case-by-case studies at numerous regulatory agencies, the US Office of Technology Assessment, for example), we require a corps of professional public servants for the dissemination of credible, learned, relevant and useful information pertaining to the issues of the day. This is necessary because scientists as a group are poorly prepared for the task of advising (as contrasted with the quite different (...) task of conducting research in their subject area), and, more importantly, because governments cannot ask scientists to provide that information without also incentivizing third parties (albeit unintentionally) to compromise the institution of science itself. This corps must also be poised to perform such aggregations of opinion (or arbitrations between conflicting opinions and interests) when requests are duly submitted by both governmental and citizen bodies. The product of this corps will be a dynamic, massively cross-referential, virtual document that I shall refer to as the Citizenpedia. This essay is devoted to justifying the government subsidy of such a document, as well as to evaluating the best role for scientists in a democracy. It will contrast the Citizenpedia proposal with practices that have been tried: (1) governmental agencies and (2) citizen panels. Most importantly, it is devoted to showing that a world in which the Citizenpedia advises governments is substantially different from one in which either citizens or “experts” do, just as it is substantially different from a world (our own) in which the media plays the largest role in educating the public on science policy matters. (shrink)

Decision theory cannot be a purely formal theory, free of all metaphysical assumptions and ascertainments. It must instead rely upon the end user for the wisdom it takes to prime the decision formalism – with principles and assumptions about the metaphysics of the application context – so that the formalism in its turn can generate good advice. Appreciating this idea is fundamental to understanding the true rivalry between evidential decision theory (EDT) and causal decision theory (CDT) in specific cases. I (...) shall argue that no decision theory can deliver a verdict unless assumptions are made about the degrees of freedom in the context of decision, that EDT and CDT disagree fundamentally about how to diagnose the degrees of freedom in any given situation, and that from this fundamental disagreement flow their surface disagreements in iconic cases. (shrink)

In his magnum opus, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (first published in German in 1934, English translation, 1959), Karl Popper make two fundamental philosophical moves. First, he relocates the center of gravity of the philosophical treatment of science around what he calls the problem of demarcation. This is the problem of distinguishing between science, on the one hand, and everything else on the other. (By contrast, his contemporaries of the Vienna Circle, whose positivism would prove the most influential brand of (...) empiricism of the day, located the center of gravity around the problem of linguistic meaning, and use a criterion according to which a statement is meaningful to the extent that one can identify verification conditions for it.) Popper excludes from science such things as logic, metaphysics, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Marx’s theory of history. Second, Popper propounds the doctrine of falsification, which handles the problem of demarcation, as well as answers David Hume’s shattering attack on science as the premier form of knowledge centuries before. The arguments he mounts for falsification would function also as an attack on any account of the scientific enterprise that, like positivism, adheres to the idea that science progresses logically from instances (given in observation or experience) to the high-order generalizations characteristic of mature scientific theory. In this small space I shall undertake neither to illuminate the nuances of Popper’s position, nor to trace the (numerous) lines of criticism that have accumulated against it some seventy years later. I shall busy myself instead with tracing a trajectory of thought on the subject of scientific reasoning and its relation to individual decision-making, reflecting on Popper’s contribution and on how his legacy might be further enlarged. (shrink)

This chapter explores connections among death, meaning, and belief in a divine being. It wrestles with questions around whether it is possible for an atheist to live a meaningful life, especially in the face of the twin realities of individual death, on the one hand, and human extinction, on the other. Can theists and atheists think about the meaning of life in the same way? The conclusion is that most likely there are unbridgeable chasms between the theists’ and the atheists’ (...) conceptions of meaningfulness – more specifically, around questions of whether meaningfulness can be objective. (shrink)

In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the philosophical theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory that employs tools of phenomenology, rather than a theory that locates itself in relation to canonical positions regarding the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social (...) identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of fit between that agent’s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic—it is the logic of fit between one’s aspirations and one’s circumstances, what Thalos calls the logic of agency. The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one’s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one’s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a social one. (shrink)

In this introduction we shall array a family of fundamental questions pertaining to probability, especially as it has been judged to bear upon the guidance of life. Applications and uses of probability theory need either to address some or all of these questions, or to tell us why they don’t. The essays assembled in this volume bring integrative perspectives on this family of questions. We asked the authors to describe in their own voices the intellectual histories of their contributions, so (...) as to shed further light upon the philosophical interest of their projects, and their particular integrative approaches, within the broader context we have sketched. The authors’ comments precede the essays. (shrink)

The apparent ineffectuality of quantum physics to reconcile its evolution rule with measurement phenomena has polarized the community of scholars working on the subject into, roughly, two sorts of camps. On the one side there are those who perceive the problem to be that of finding an interpretation of the conceptual structures of quantum theory whereon the two elements can be reconciled without having to revise the canonical understanding of either. On the other side are those who see measurement phenomena (...) as posing a challenge: the challenge of revising either the canonical equation or its canonical application in such a way that no conflict arises between it and laboratory data. ;This dissertation focuses on proposals of the latter sort. The centerpiece of the thesis is a reinterpretation of the Theory of Macrosystems of Daneri, Loinger and Prosperi. I show that this theory is most charitably interpreted as a proposal for reconciling measurement phenomena, not so much with Schrodinger dynamics, but rather with a constraint on the evolution map. It is, in other words, an account of how measurement phenomena is consistent with a certain set of dynamical behaviors. The focus on behaviors rather than equations and their solutions is characteristic of recent approaches to studying phenomena in classical contexts, both of phenomena to do with the approach to equilibrium and in situations involving far-from-equilibrium phenomena. The focus on behaviors is motivated by recognition that equations of motion for microscopic subcomponents of many-body systems do not wear on their countenances anything useful about the macroscopic behaviors of the systems they collectively describe--and are, in addition, virtually unsolvable. Therefore it profits an investigator to do without microscopic equations of motion in analyzing phenomena. The Theory of Macrosystems likewise "does without" equations of motion; I show that the account it gives is independent of closed-form rules of evolution. For this reason I call it an agnostic solution to the measurement problem--and show that this is an altogether different approach to the problem than any other so far conceived. (shrink)

The apparent ineffectuality of quantum physics to reconcile its evolution rule with measurement phenomena has polarized the community of scholars working on the subject into, roughly, two sorts of camps. On the one side there are those who perceive the problem to be that of finding an interpretation of the conceptual structures of quantum theory whereon the two elements can be reconciled without having to revise the canonical understanding of either. On the other side are those who see measurement phenomena (...) as posing a challenge: the challenge of revising either the canonical equation or its canonical application in such a way that no conflict arises between it and laboratory data. ;This dissertation focuses on proposals of the latter sort. The centerpiece of the thesis is a reinterpretation of the Theory of Macrosystems of Daneri, Loinger and Prosperi. I show that this theory is most charitably interpreted as a proposal for reconciling measurement phenomena, not so much with Schrodinger dynamics, but rather with a constraint on the evolution map. It is, in other words, an account of how measurement phenomena is consistent with a certain set of dynamical behaviors. The focus on behaviors rather than equations and their solutions is characteristic of recent approaches to studying phenomena in classical contexts, both of phenomena to do with the approach to equilibrium and in situations involving far-from-equilibrium phenomena. The focus on behaviors is motivated by recognition that equations of motion for microscopic subcomponents of many-body systems do not wear on their countenances anything useful about the macroscopic behaviors of the systems they collectively describe--and are, in addition, virtually unsolvable. Therefore it profits an investigator to do without microscopic equations of motion in analyzing phenomena. The Theory of Macrosystems likewise "does without" equations of motion; I show that the account it gives is independent of closed-form rules of evolution. For this reason I call it an agnostic solution to the measurement problem--and show that this is an altogether different approach to the problem than any other so far conceived. (shrink)

There is a certain tangle of philosophical questions around which much philosophy, especially in our time, has circled, to the point where now there is something that deserves to be called a holding pattern around these issues: What are causes? How do they compare with reasons? What is Reason, with a capital R? How does it participate in the production of intentions that lead to action, particularly in arenas rife with uncertainty? Where do formal systems of symbols come into all (...) of this? And how - if at all - can formal methods be harnessed to serve science and public policy, through guiding belief formation and decision-making? Henry Kyburg, Jr., has himself circled around this tangle of questions, at least once or twice. And so in his honor, and in the no-nonsense spirit of empiricism that marks his work as the work of a scientist, I'd like to sketch a way to cut through some of the Gordian knots at the center of this tangle. The theme will be that natural science has much of value to offer that has been willfully neglected by philosophers. This by itself is nowise surprising, as philosophy, particularly in the most exclusive parts of the academy, has suffered from an excessive transcendentalism - a theme to which I will return in this piece periodically. Now Kyburg has not been guilty of contributing to the causes for the decline of philosophy. He has, instead, been courageously working out the implications of his convictions regarding the virtues of vigorous formal systems, contributing to the advancement of empiricist methodologies, and generously supporting the causes of realism. In emulation of that courage, I offer this essay in the service of bold and vigorous formal systems, realism and - most emphatically - empiricism. (shrink)

Talk abounds regarding the loss of public trust in such institutions as science or mainstream news media, but there is little clarity about the nature of public trust. Public trust, as this paper explains, is a correlate of a certain type of power in the sphere of communication—one enjoyed by a broadcast source (such as a scientific publication or a news outlet) in proportion to a number of recipients in its broadcast area who adopt its messages, or at least are (...) open to receiving them. This essay proposes new language and ontological tools for the analysis of this sort of power, because the present crop of concepts currently in circulation for handling questions around power broadly construed, and communicative power specifically, are inadequate. The possibilities of communication, and therefore of power in and through communication, differ—as the paper will also explain—according to whether the network through which they flow is governed by an authoritarian regime or instead a western-style democracy. Communicative power is the fundament of what will be referred to here as “people power”, consonant with its usage by Chenoweth et al. (2019), a nonviolent power that constitutes a natural and enormously potent check on the power of tyrants, and thereby forms one natural limit on tyranny. Communicative power has in recent memory been associated with Science and with the free press. The concepts about power articulated here will also contribute to clear formulation of numerous research questions in connection with the internet. (shrink)

Prevailing in the survey industry is the conception that public sentiment is a simple arithmetic function of individuals’ sentiments, many of them held only privately, maybe even secretly. Against this conception, the present paper argues that public sentiment is better construed as strategic deductions from publicly available evidence—a matter of the public working out a common sentiment from publicly available information. This conception diverges dramatically from a conception of public sentiment as the weight of private thoughts or beliefs—items that may (...) be measured by a poll, at least when the appropriate survey methodologies are correctly administered and analyzed. The reason to prefer a conception emphasizing public materials is perhaps obvious: only that which enjoys public visibility has a chance of effecting change. If measuring public sentiment is truly in service of taking stock of forces at work on the social-political stage, that is quite sufficient—as the arguments presented here will show—to prefer the approach on offer here over those currently prevailing. (shrink)

Practitioners of science treat evidence as separate and objective body of materials, potentially quite diverse, but importantly “prior to,” or at any rate independent of, all theory. Philosophers of science, by contrast, are increasingly wary about the role of theory in testing and measurement contexts, and hence have problematized the notion of evidence as prior or independent, even in the context of measurement. This paper argues that there is a very real and important sense in which empirical certification of a (...) quantity, via measurement, is indeed prior to theorizing, albeit not necessarily in order of time. The case for this priority distinguishes between the certification of the measurability of a given quantity, as a quantity appropriately measured on a specified scale, and the epistemic warrant due to an assignment of a specific magnitude to that quantity on a given occasion. The result is an account of the certification of a measurable quantity, independent of any theory in which that quantity features. And the effect is to render certification of quantities theory-neutral. The aim of the essay is thus to bolster and re-establish a more nuanced empiricist view, via building a case for quantity certification as the epistemic basis (i.e. foundation) of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

If—as many scholars aver—gender is not a biological but rather a social fact, then how is it possible for someone assigned to the category Man at birth at some point later to feel or otherwise experience a personal (as contrasted with social) reality as a woman? If gender is social, how could a statement of the form “I feel like a woman” be true for such a person? This paper aims to defuse the apparent tension, by articulating an account of (...) the construction of oneself-as-gendered (which we may refer to as a gender token), within the wider context of social construction. The aim is to illuminate the differences between constructions of gender tokens, on the one hand, and the social constructions of gender types (known just as gender), on the other. Illuminating both as constructions, but of distinct origins and requiring differential degrees of social collaboration, defuses the tension. (shrink)