The economic calculation of a central planner has traditionally been argued to result in irrational and inefficient allocation of resources, but this can be reasonably questioned given advances in computing technology, especially artificial intelligence. We conclude that central planning coupled with AI is still unable to allocate resources with the same efficiency as price signals and market forces through examinations of the technical structure of current AI approaches. AI-driven central planning is not viable in part due to incentives, computing power, (...) knowledge/data acquisition, and speed of collection. There are deep incentive problems for planners, programmers, and ordinary participants to complicate efforts at planning and bias data. Most importantly, AI cannot easily or quickly duplicate the signals of relative scarcity that are generated in markets. Some challenges we highlight are pertinent to planning generally, but many others arise from the introduction of an AI-planner. (shrink)

Predictivists use the no miracle argument to argue that “novel” predictions are decisive evidence for theories, while mere accommodation of “old” data cannot confirm to a significant degree. But deductivists claim that since confirmation is a logical theory-data relationship, predicted data cannot confirm more than merely deduced data, and cite historical cases in which known data confirmed theories quite strongly. On the other hand, the advantage of prediction over accommodation is needed by scientific realists to resist Laudan’s criticisms of the (...) no miracle argument. So, if the deductivists are right, the most powerful argument for realism collapses. There seems to be an inescapable contradiction between these prima facie plausible arguments of predictivists and deductivists; but this puzzle can be solved by understanding what exactly counts as novelty, if novel predictions must support the no miracle argument, i.e., if they must be explainable only by the truth of theories. Taking my cues from the use-novelty tradition, I argue that (1) the predicted data must not be used essentially in building the theory or choosing the auxiliary assumptions. This is possible if the theory and its auxiliary assumptions are plausible independently of the predicted data, and I analyze the consequences of this requirement in terms of best explanation of diverse bodies of data. Moreover, the predicted data must be (2) a priori improbable, and (3) heterogeneous to the essentially used data. My proposed notion of novelty, therefore, is not historical, but functional. Hence, deductivists are right that confirmation is independent of time and of historical contingencies such as if the theorist knew a datum, used it, or intended to accommodate it. Predictivists, however, are right that not all consequences confirm equally, and confirmation is not purely a logical theory-data relation, as it crucially involves background epistemic conditions and the notion of best explanation. Conditions (1)–(3) make the difference between prediction and accommodation, and account for the confirming power of theoretical virtues such as non ad-hocness, non-fudging, non-overfitting, independence and consilience. I thus show that functional novelty (a) avoids the deductivist objections to predictivism, (b) is a gradual notion, in accordance with the common intuition that confirmation comes in degrees, and (c) supports the no miracle argument, so vindicating scientific realism. (shrink)

Cómo es posible la historia? -- Giambattista Vico : Una nueva ciencia, la historia (1725) -- Carta de Heidelberg.

Isaac Newton's Scientific Method examines Newton's argument for universal gravity and his application of it to resolve the problem of deciding between geocentric and heliocentric world systems by measuring masses of the sun and planets. William L. Harper suggests that Newton's inferences from phenomena realize an ideal of empirical success that is richer than prediction. Any theory that can achieve this rich sort of empirical success must not only be able to predict the phenomena it purports to explain, but (...) also have those phenomena accurately measure the parameters which explain them. Harper explores the ways in which Newton's method aims to turn theoretical questions into ones which can be answered empirically, by measurement from phenomena, and to establish that propositions inferred from phenomena are provisionally accepted as guides to further research. This methodology, guided by its rich ideal of empirical success, supports a conception of scientific progress that does not require construing it as progress toward Laplace's ideal limit of a final theory of everything, and is not threatened by the classic argument against convergent realism. Newton's method endorses the radical theoretical transformation from his theory to Einstein's. Harper argues that it is strikingly realized in the development and application of testing frameworks for relativistic theories of gravity, and very much at work in cosmology today. (shrink)

L'autore parte dall'analisi dei problemi etici espressi nei linguaggi della poesia, della tragedia e della storiografia, per passare poi alla lettura delle maggiori opere del pensiero antico, fornendo di ognuna puntuali introduzioni. Un'attenzione particolare, alla fine di ogni capitolo, è dedicata all'eredità moderna e al significato attuale dei problemi dell'etica antica, proponendo in modo esplicito un collegamento fra ricostruzione storica e discussione teorica contemporanea.

This book unearths and outlines the semantic foundations of white fragility and their consequences for racial justice in the United States. It argues that by expanding our racial vocabulary in certain ways, we can make progress toward justice equally enjoyed by all.

Most social scientists and philosophers claim that sociology and philosophy are disjoint fields of inquiry. Some have wondered how to trace the precise boundary between them. Mario Bunge argues that the two fields are so entangled with one another that no demarcation is possible or, indeed, desirable. In fact, sociological research has demonstrably philosophical pre-suppositions. In turn, some findings of sociology are bound to correct or enrich the philosophical theories that deal with the world, our knowledge of it, or (...) the ways of acting upon it. While Bunge's thesis would hardly have shocked Mill, Marx, Durkheim, or Weber, it is alien to the current sociological mainstream and dominant philosophical schools. Bunge demonstrates that philosophical problematics arise in social science research. A fertile philosophy of social science unearths critical presuppositions, analyzes key concepts, refines effective research strategies, crafts coherent and realistic syntheses, and identifies important new problems. Bunge examines Marx's and Durkheim's thesis that social facts are as objective as physical facts; the so-called Thomas theorem that refutes the behaviorist thesis that social agents react to social stimuli rather than to the way we perceive them; and Merton's thesis on the ethos of basic science which shows that science and morality are intertwined. He considers selected philosophical problems raised by contemporary social studies and argues forcefully against tolerance of shabby work in academic social science and philosophy alike. (shrink)

We make decisions every day. Yet we are sometimes perplexed by these decisions and the decisions of others. To complicate things further, we live in an age where there are more things to choose from than ever before – the Internet is transforming our choices and making us more accountable for them: what we choose is recorded, modelled and used to predict our future behaviour. So are we in a position to make better choices today than we were a decade (...) ago? Certainly there are some who believe so. Psychologists claim we are subject to hidden mental processes that lead us to one thing rather than another; economists offer predictions about what people will buy; and some philosophers claim that our choices echo our evolutionary past. Are these claims merited? Do they reflect the beginnings of a new science of choice? This book offers a critical overview of these and other claims, showing where they are justified and where they are exaggerated. It will be an essential reference for anyone interested in whether science can help us to understand both the ways people make choices in their everyday lives and how these may be changing. (shrink)

A re-evaluation of the notion of vacuum in quantum electrodynamics is presented, focusing on the vacuum of the quantized electromagnetic field. In contrast to the ‘nothingness’ associated to the idea of classical vacuum, subtle aspects are found in relation to the vacuum of the quantized electromagnetic field both at theoretical and experimental levels. These are not the usually called vacuum effects. The view defended here is that the so-called vacuum effects are not due to the ground state of the quantized (...) electromagnetic field. Nevertheless it is possible to maintain an empirically demonstrable notion of vacuum state that is consistent with the interpretation of the formalism of the theory. (shrink)

Philosophies and phobosophies -- The philosophical matrix of scientific progress -- Systemics and materialism -- Technoscience? -- Climate and logic -- Informatics : one or multiple? -- Wealth and well-being, economic growth and integral development -- Can standard economic theory account for crises? -- Marxist philosophy : promise and reality -- Rules of law : just and unjust -- Subjective probabilities : admissible in science? -- Does inductive logic work? -- Bridging theories to data -- Matter and energy : physical (...) or metaphysical concepts? -- Does quantum physics refute realism, materialism and determinism? -- Parallel universes? Digital physics? -- Can functionalist psychology explain anything? -- Knowledge pyramids or rosettes? -- Existence : single or double? -- Conclusion : valuation criterion. (shrink)

The papers that follow were read and discussed at the first Symposium on Exact Philosophy. This conference was held at Montreal on November 4th and 5th, 1971, to celebrate the sesquicentennial of McGill University and establish the Society for Exact Philosophy. The expression 'exact philosophy' is taken to signify mathematical phi losophy, i.e., philosophy done with the explicit help of mathematical logic and mathematics. So far the expression denotes an attitude rather than a fully blown discipline: it intends to convey (...) the intention to try and pro ceed in as exact a manner as we can in formulating and discussing phi losophical problems and theories. The kind of philosophy we wish to practice and promote is disciplined rather than wild, systematic rather than disconnected, and capable of being argued over rather than oracular. We believe that even metaphysics, notoriously riotous, can be subjected to the control of logic and mathematics. Even the history of philosophy, notoriously unsystematic, can benefit from an exact reconstruction of some classical ideas. (shrink)

This fascinating exploration of the great discoveries of history's most important mathematicians seeks an answer to the eternal question: Does mathematics hold the key to understanding the mysteries of the physical world?

It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in three-dimensional space. This approach hasn’t received the attention yet it really deserves. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, we show that the wave-function is naturally and straightforwardly construed as a multi-field; second, we show why this interpretation is superior to other interpretations (...) discussed in the literature; third, we clarify common misconceptions. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: I. METAPHYSICS -- 1. How Do Realism, Materialism, and Dialectics Fare in Contemporary Science? -- 2. New Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous -- 3. Energy: Between Physics and Metaphysics -- 4. The Revival of Causality -- 5. Emergence and the Mind -- 6 SCIENTIFIC REALISM -- 6. The Status of Concepts -- 7. Popper's Unworldly World 3 --II. METHODOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE -- 8. On Method in the Philosophy of Science -- 9. Induction in Science (...) -- 10. The GST Challenge to the Classical Philosophies of Science -- 11. The Power and Limits of Reduction -- 12. Thinking in Metaphors --III. PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS -- 13. Moderate Mathematical Fictionism -- 14. The Gap between Mathematics and Reality -- 15. Two Faces and Three Masks of Probability --IV. PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS -- 16. Physical Relativity and Philosophy -- 17. Hidden Variables, Separability, and Realism -- 18. Schrodinger's Cat Is Dead --V. PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY -- 19. From Mindless Neuroscience and Brainless Psychology to Neuropsychology -- 20. Explaining Creativity -- VI. PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE -- 21. Analytic Philosophy of Society and Social Science: -- The Systemic Approach as an Alternative to Holism and Individualism -- 22. Rational Choice Theory: A Critical Look at Its Foundations -- 23. Realism and Antirealism in Social Science --VII. PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY -- 24. The Nature of Applied Science and Technology -- 25. The Technology-Science-Philosophy Triangle in Its Social Context -- 26. The Technologies in Philosophy --VIII. MORAL PHILOSOPHY -- 27. A New Look at Moral Realism -- 28. Rights Imply Duties --IX. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY -- 29. Morality Is the Basis of Legal and Political Legitimacy -- 30. Technoholodemocracy: An Alternative to -- Capitalism and Socialism -- Bibliography -- Index of Names -- Index of Subjects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 55-64 [Access article in PDF] Delusions and Discourse:Moving beyond the Constraints of the Modernist Paradigm David J. Harper This special issue provides a good opportunity to reflect on the range of views about delusions,1 and it is good to see all the authors taking the issue of how to approach this topic seriously. Here I wish to argue that the traditional psychiatric (...) view of delusions is problematic. In the first half of this article I will group my comments on the issues raised by the papers by Klee and Bayne and Pacherie together as I think that, for their differences, they share modernist philosophical assumptions. I will argue that the modernist paradigm runs into considerable problems in considering beliefs felt by some to be unusual and I will go on to argue that we need to move beyond this paradigm and embrace different approaches, of which the work by Georgaca is an exemplar. The Trouble with (traditional Views of) Delusions The traditional psychiatric view of delusion has come under increasing attack over recent years. As Georgaca has noted, a number of problems with the assumptions in definitions of delusion can be identified when they are viewed from a social constructionist perspective (Georgaca 2000, 2004; Harper 1992, 1996; Heise 1988). For convenience I will group these under four main headings. They Are Based on a Naively Realist View of the World The criterion of inaccuracy or falsity implies that deciding on the veracity of a belief is a relatively unproblematic matter. However, the reality of claims does not always seem so important in judgments about whether a belief is delusional or not. For example, there is little evidence that mental health professionals systematically investigate the basis for people's beliefs; rather, they decide whether a belief is plausible. Thus Maher has argued that the assessment of the plausibility of beliefs is "typically made by a clinician on the basis of "common sense," and not on the basis of a systematic evaluation of empirical data" (1992, 261). He notes that it is not "customary to present counterevidence to the patient; it is not even common to present vigorous counterargument" (1992, 261) and there appears to be some empirical evidence of this (McCabe et al. 2002). Here then, we begin to see [End Page 55] how psychiatry, while claiming to have the power to judge the truth of beliefs on the basis of its status as an empirical scientific discipline, can be seen to make judgments on the basis of common sense and taken-for-granted social and cultural assumptions.Some commentators have suggested that delusions should be identified less by whether they seem to accord with reality but more by whether a person gives evidence for their belief (Gillett 1995; Spitzer 1990). However, this seems to be based on an idealized view of how people manage their beliefs in everyday life. For example, I would question how many of us have evidence for many of the beliefs (e.g., political, ethical, religious, etc.) we hold dear; indeed it would be hard to think of what evidence we could have for some of them (e.g., religious and ethical beliefs). Some recent work has suggested that the diagnosis of delusion is made on the basis of how people with delusions talk and interact; for example, some have argued that they do not appear to appreciate the hearer's point of view (Palmer 2000). However, here and in previous work, Georgaca (2000, 2004) has shown that people with delusions are able to talk about and negotiate disagreements about their beliefs and that many disputes of fact cannot be settled in conversation. People Said to Have Delusions Are Seen to Vary in the Conviction With Which Those Beliefs Are Held There is evidence that people considered to be deluded vary in the conviction with which they hold beliefs (Garety 1985) and can also be persuaded to modify their beliefs if this is conducted in a sensitive and collaborative manner (e.g., Chadwick, Birchwood, and Trower 1996). This... (shrink)

The recent decrease in public confidence in the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine has important implications for individuals and public health. This article presents moral arguments relating to conflicts between individual autonomy and collective responsibilities in vaccination decisions with a view to informing and advising health professionals and improving the effectiveness of education policies in avoiding resurgence of endemic measles. Lower population immunity, due to falling uptake, is hastening the need for greater public awareness of the consequences for the population. (...) Vaccination refusals go hand in hand with responsibilities owed to future generations and society in not knowingly contributing to preventable harms. Issues such as parents’ rights are considered and balanced against: collective responsibilities for public health; permissibility of ‘free-riding’; conflicting duties of health professionals; and possible enforcement of vaccination. It is suggested that the arguments may form a persuasive tool for the practice of health professionals involved in informing and supporting parents’ vaccination decisions. (shrink)

There are two possible realist defense strategies against the pessimistic meta-induction and Laudan’s meta-modus tollens: the selective strategy, claiming that discarded theories are partially true, and the discontinuity strategy, denying that pessimism about past theories can be extended to current ones. A radical version of discontinuity realism is proposed by Gerald Doppelt: rather than discriminating between true and false components within theories, he holds that superseded theories cannot be shown to be even partially true, while present best theories are demonstrably (...) completely true. I argue that this position, running counter both the cumulativity of science and fallibilism, is untenable; it cannot account for the success of past theories, nor for the failures of current theories, and rather than shutting the door to the pessimistic historical objections it opens it wide. The best strategy, instead, joins the selective idea there was both some truth and some falsity in discarded theories, like in current ones, with the moderate discontinuity idea that the truth rate in present best theories is much greater than in past ones. (shrink)

I want to combine two hitherto largely independent research projects, scientific understanding and mechanistic explanations. Understanding is not only achieved by answering why-questions, that is, by providing scientific explanations, but also by answering what-questions, that is, by providing what I call scientific descriptions. Based on this distinction, I develop three forms of understanding: understanding-what, understanding-why, and understanding-how. I argue that understanding-how is a particularly deep form of understanding, because it is based on mechanistic explanations, which answer why something happens in (...) virtue of what it is made of. I apply the three forms of understanding to two case studies: first, to the historical development of thermodynamics and, second, to the differences between the Clausius and the Boltzmann entropy in explaining thermodynamic processes. (shrink)

The ontological models framework distinguishes ψ-ontic from ψ-epistemic wave- functions. It is, in general, quite straightforward to categorize the wave-function of a certain quantum theory. Nevertheless, there has been a debate about the ontological status of the wave-function in the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics: is it ψ-epistemic and incomplete or ψ-ontic and complete? I will argue that the wave- function in this interpretation is best regarded as ψ-ontic and incomplete.

Deployment Realism resists Laudan’s and Lyons’ objections to the “No Miracle Argument” by arguing that a hypothesis is most probably true when it is deployed essentially in a novel prediction. However, Lyons criticized Psillos’ criterion of essentiality, maintaining that Deployment Realism should be committed to all the actually deployed assumptions. But since many actually deployed assumptions proved false, he concludes that the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism fail. I reply that the essentiality condition is required by Occam’s razor. In (...) fact, there is a simpler formulation of essentiality which escapes Lyons’ criticisms and rescues the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism from their purported historical counterexamples: a hypothesis is essential when it has no proper parts (in Yablo’s sense) sufficient to derive the same prediction. Although essentiality so conceived cannot be detected prospectively, this is just natural, and it is not a problem but an advantage for Deployment Realism. (shrink)