While psychological egoism “A”, the theory that all human actions are selfish, is easily defeated, an alternative formulation, “B”, is defended: “AU deliberate human actions are either self-interested or self-referential.” While “B” is not empirically testable, neither is any alternative altruistic theory. “B” escapes criticisms leveled at “A”, including those of Joseph Butler. “B” is shown to be theoretically superior to any theory of altruism since it brings coherence to moral theory by explaining the nature of moraI (...) motivation. (shrink)

While psychological egoism “A”, the theory that all human actions are selfish, is easily defeated, an alternative formulation, “B”, is defended: “AU deliberate human actions are either self-interested or self-referential.” While “B” is not empirically testable, neither is any alternative altruistic theory. “B” escapes criticisms leveled at “A”, including those of Joseph Butler. “B” is shown to be theoretically superior to any theory of altruism since it brings coherence to moral theory by explaining the nature of moraI (...) motivation. (shrink)

Nijhawan argues convincingly that predictive mechanisms are pervasive in the central nervous system (CNS). However, scientific understanding of visual prediction requires one to formulate empirically testable neurophysiological models. The author's suggestions in this direction are to be evaluated on the basis of more realistic experimental methodologies and more plausible assumptions on the hierarchical character of the human visual cortex.

The quest for an all-encompassing theory, finally intended to give a solution to the problem of the unification of all natural forces, is seen today as one of the most important objectives of theoretical high-energy physics. This so-called 'Theory of Everything' is, actually, identified by some theoretical physicists with superstring theory. But superstring theory is in a crucial way incomplete. And, above all, it has fundamental problems with empirical testability – problems that make questionable its status as a physical theory (...) at all. (shrink)

Knauff and Gazzo Castañeda (2022) criticise the use of the term “new paradigm” in the psychology of reasoning and raise important issues about how to advance research in the field. In this commentary I argue that for the latter it would be helpful to clarify further the concepts that reasoning theories rely on, and to strengthen the links between the theories and the empirical observations that would and would not be compatible with them.

The question of whether perception can be penetrated by cognition is in the limelight again. The reason this question keeps coming up is that there is so much at stake: Is it possible to have theory-neutral observation? Is it possible to study perception without recourse to expectations, context, and beliefs? What are the boundaries between perception, memory, and inference (and do they even exist)? Are findings from neuroscience that paint a picture of perception as an inherently bidirectional and interactive process (...) relevant for understanding the relationship between cognition and perception? We have assembled a group of philosophers and psychologists who have been considering the thesis of cognitive (im)penetrability in light of these questions (Abdel Rahman & Sommer, 2008; Goldstone, Landy, & Brunel, 2011; Lupyan, Thompson-Schill, & Swingley, 2010; Macpherson, 2012; Stokes, 2011). Rather than rehashing previous arguments which appear, in retrospect, to have been somewhat ill-posed (Pylyshyn, 1999), this symposium will present a thesis of cognitive (im)penetrability that is at once philosophically satisfying, empirically testable, and relevant to the questions that cognitive scientists find most interesting. (shrink)

Since rationality is a normative ideal, it is difficult to see how a theory of rationality might be subjected to empirical evaluation. This paper explores various aspects of this problem in relation to the work of L. J. Cohen, Amos Tversky and Daviel Kahneman, Ellery Eells, Isaac Levi, and Henry Kyburg. Special consideration is given to its significance for testing systems of inductive logic.

Empirical adaptationism is often said to be an empirical claim about nature, which concerns the overall relative causal importance of natural selection in evolution compared with other evolutionary factors. Philosophers and biologists who have tried to clarify the meaning of empirical adaptationism usually share, explicitly or implicitly, two assumptions: (1) Empirical adaptationism is an empirical claim that is scientifically testable; (2) testing empirical adaptationism is scientifically valuable. In this article, I challenge these two assumptions and argue that both are (...) unwarranted given how empirical adaptationism is currently formulated. I identify a series of conceptual and methodological difficulties that makes testing empirical adaptationism in a biologically non-arbitrary way virtually impossible. Moreover, I show that those in favor of testing empirical adaptationism have yet to demonstrate the distinctive value and necessity of conducing such a test. My analysis of the case of empirical adaptationism also provides reasons for scientists to reconsider the value and necessity of engaging in scientific debates involving the notion of overall relative causal importance. (shrink)

Mathematical models can be profitably used to establish whether our perception of the external world is accurate. Donald Hoffman and his collaborators have developed a promising mathematical framework within which this question can be addressed and which is based on an exhaustive taxonomy of the different possible relations between perceptual representations and the external world. After reformulating their framework by means of an improved formal system, we discuss their application of evolutionary game theory, which appears to show that an essentially (...) anti-realistic perceptual strategy would in the long run biologically outcompete its rivals. We argue that their model does not take the crucial biological significance of environmental changes into due consideration and propose alternative models which do. We conclude that a partially realistic representation would be favoured in our models. (shrink)

In the present paper I wish to argue that psychological egoism may well have a basis in the empirical facts of human psychology. Certain contemporary learning theorists, e.g., Hull and Skinner, have put forward behavioristic theories of the origin and functioning of human motives which posit a certain number of basically "selfish, " unlearned primary drives or motives (like hunger, thirst, sleep, elimination, and sex), explain all other, higher-order, drives or motives as derived genetically from the primary ones via (...) certain "laws of reinforcement," and, further, deny the "functional autonomy" of those higher-order drives or motive. Now it is a hotly debated issue in contemporary Learning Theory whether any theory such as we have described briefly above could adequately explain adult human behavior. I shall, however, argue only that a theory of the above kind may well be true, and that from such a theory, fortified only by one additional psychological premise, the truth of egoism (non-altruism) logically follows. I hope to show, thereby, that the question of psychological egoism is still an open empirical issue, however fallacious be the philosophical arguments for it. (shrink)

Roughly, psychological egoism is the thesis that all of a person's intentional actions are ultimately self-interested in some sense; psychological altruism is the thesis that some of a person's intentional actions are not ultimately self-interested, since some are ultimately other-regarding in some sense. C. Daniel Batson and other social psychologists have argued that experiments provide support for a theory called the "empathy-altruism hypothesis" that entails the falsity of psychological egoism. However, several critics claim that there are egoistic explanations (...) of the data that are still not ruled out. One of the most potent criticisms of Batson comes from Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. I argue for two main theses in this paper: (1) we can improve on Sober and Wilson’s conception of psychological egoism and altruism, and (2) this improvement shows that one of the strongest of Sober and Wilson's purportedly egoistic explanations is not tenable. A defense of these two theses goes some way toward defending Batson‘s claim that the evidence from social psychology provides sufficient reason to reject psychological egoism. (shrink)

The fields of positive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and goal-setting have all demonstrated that individuals can modify their beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors to improve their subjective happiness. But which ethical beliefs affect happiness positively? In comparison to ethical belief systems such as deontology, consequentialism, and altruism, rational egoism appears to be alone in suggesting that an individual’s long-term self-interest and subjective happiness is possible, desirable, and moral. Albeit an important theoretical foundation of the rational egoism philosophy, (...) the relationship between rational egoism and subjective happiness has yet to be investigated empirically. Using (Overall and Gedeon, Business and Professional Ethics. 38:43–78, 2018) 24-item rational egoism scale, we test this relationship on a random sample of 534 full-time American workers using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Consistent with rational egoism theory, the main contribution to knowledge of this research is finding a statistically significant relationship between rational egoism and subjective happiness. Implications for practice and areas for future study are suggested. (shrink)

In the egoism philosophical framework, it is contended that when organizations focus on their long-term interests, they, without knowing it, advance the interests of society as a whole, which is perceived as ethical. In this research, this premise is challenged using data collected from the social media outlets of 29 randomly selected companies from the 2013 Fortune 500 list. Through qualitative comparative analysis, the exact opposite was found. In fact, the organizations that focused on striving for their long-term success (...) are perceived as unethical. It was also found that socially responsible organizations are perceived as ethical whereas those that misrepresent their positions and attempt to influence the decisions of others are perceived as unethical. Implications for managers are discussed, and future directions are suggested. (shrink)

The predictive processing account of action, cognition, and perception is one of the most influential approaches to unifying research in cognitive science. However, its promises of grand unification will remain unfulfilled unless the account becomes theoretically robust. In this paper, we focus on empirical commitments of PP, since they are necessary both for its theoretical status to be established and for explanations of individual phenomena to be falsifiable. First, we argue that PP is a varied research tradition, which may employ (...) various kinds of scientific representations, differing in the scope of empirical commitments they entail. Two major perspectives on PP qua cognitive theory may then be distinguished: generalized vs. hierarchical. The first one fails to provide empirical detail, and the latter constrains possible physical implementations. However, we show that even hierarchical PP is insufficiently restrictive to disallow incorrect models and may be adjusted to explain any neurocognitive phenomenon–including non-existent or impossible ones–through flexible adjustments. This renders PP a universal modeling tool with an unrestricted number of degrees of freedom. Therefore, in contrast with declarations of its proponents, it should not be understood as a unifying theoretical perspective, but as a computational framework, possibly informing further theory development in cognitive science. (shrink)

[Emerging Scholar Prize Essay for Spindel Supplement] Some philosophers and psychologists have evaluated psychological egoism against recent experimental work in social psychology. Dan Batson (1991; forthcoming), in particular, argues that empathy tends to induce genuinely altruistic motives in humans. However, some argue that there are egoistic explanations of the data that remain unscathed. I focus here on some recent criticisms based on the idea of self-other merging or "oneness," primarily leveled by Robert Cialdini and his collaborators (1997). These authors (...) argue that the putatively altruistic subjects are acting on ultimately egoistic motives because empathic feelings for someone in distress tend to cause them to blur the distinction between themselves and the other. Employing a conceptual framework for the debate, I argue that the self-other merging explanation fails to explain the empathy-helping relationship on primarily non-empirical grounds, regardless of the empirical results Cialdini and colleagues report. (shrink)

Provides an overview of the theory of psychological egoism—the thesis that we are all ultimately motivated by self-interest. Philosophical arguments for and against the view are considered as well as some empirical evidence.

Psychological egoism is the doctrine that all of our actions are ultimately motivated by self-interest, even including seemingly altruistic actions. Although this view is commonly referred to as \vacuous" or \trivially true" because of its immunity to counterexamples, I argue that there are possible observations that can refute this thesis. I describe the experiments, identify the results that could in principle falsify the strongest possible version of psychological egoism and formulate a probabilistic argument against this view. Ultimately, I (...) conclude that a \trivially true" formulation of psychological egoism is an empirical theory that is in all likelihood false. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Average utilitarianism and several related axiologies, when paired with the standard expectational theory of decision-making under risk and with reasonable empirical credences, can find their practical prescriptions overwhelmingly determined by the minuscule probability that the agent assigns to solipsism—that is, to the hypothesis that there is only one welfare subject in the world, namely, herself. This either (i) constitutes a reductio of these axiologies, (ii) suggests that they require bespoke decision theories, or (iii) furnishes an unexpected argument for ethical (...) egoism. (shrink)

The paper begins by contrasting the unitary nature of conscious experience with the demonstrable localization of neural events. Philosophers and neuroscientists have developed models to account for this paradox, but they have yet to be tested empirically. The author proposes a `Conscious Mental Field', which is produced by, but is phenomenologically distinct from, brain activity. The hypothesis is, in principle, open to experimental verification. The paper suggests appropriate surgical procedures and some of the difficulties that would need to be (...) overcome in such an experiment. (shrink)

In this paper I put forward a new micro realistic, fundamentally probabilistic, propensiton version of quantum theory. According to this theory, the entities of the quantum domain - electrons, photons, atoms - are neither particles nor fields, but a new kind of fundamentally probabilistic entity, the propensiton - entities which interact with one another probabilistically. This version of quantum theory leaves the Schroedinger equation unchanged, but reinterprets it to specify how propensitons evolve when no probabilistic transitions occur. Probabilisitic transitions occur (...) when new "particles" are created as a result of inelastic interactions. All measurements are just special cases of this. This propensiton version of quantum theory, I argue, solves the wave/particle dilemma, is free of conceptual problems that plague orthodox quantum theory, recovers all the empirical success of orthodox quantum theory, and at the same time yields as yet untested predictions that differ from those of orthodox quantum theory. (shrink)

Consciousness is targeted by both philosophers and neuroscientists; but different methodological premises and even different conceptions about what conscious experience is and how the challenges and potential problems associated with consciousness research should be formulated underlie the different approaches. Namely, whereas empirical data and the constant refinement of experimental procedures to expand and modify this body of empirical data and resulting empirical theories are crucial to neuroscience, the significance of empirical knowledge to philosophy is less clear: Although empirical data certainly (...) can influence philosophical concepts, the latter are nonetheless prerequisites of empirical research itself and thus may themselves not be empirically testable. The present paper elaborates from a multidisciplinary, neuroscientist-philosopher’s perspective the relation of philosophical concepts and empirical research on consciousness, drawing on two exemplary controversies from the philosophy of mind – on the ontological status of experiential properties and on free will. Consequences from both the scientific and the philosophical standpoint are discussed. (shrink)

Contextualism is the view that the extension of perspectival claims (involving e.g. predicates of personal taste or epistemic modals) depends on the context of utterance. Relativism is the view that the extension of perspectival claims depends on the context of assessment. Both views make concrete, empirically testable predictions about how such claims are used by ordinary English language speakers. This chapter surveys some of the recent empirical literature on the topic and presents four new experiments (total N=724). Consistent (...) with contextualism and inconsistent with relativism, the results suggest that the extension of perspectival claims depends on the context of utterance, not the context of assessment. (shrink)

Much recent work in neuroscience aims to shed light on whether we have free will. Can it? Can any science? To answer, we need to disentangle different notions of free will, and clarify what we mean by ‘empirical’ and ‘testable’. That done, my main conclusion is, duly interpreted: that free will is not a testable hypothesis. In particular, it is neither verifiable nor falsifiable by empirical evidence. The arguments for this are not a priori but rather are based (...) on a posteriori consideration of the relevant neuroscientific investigations, as well as on standard philosophy of science work on the notion of testability. (shrink)

Most economists are committed to some version of egoism. After distinguishing among the various sorts of egoistic claims, l cite the empirical literature against psychological egoism and show that attempts to account for this data make these economists' previous empirical claims tautological. Moreover, the assumption of egoism has undesirable consequences, especially for students; if people believe that others behave egoistically, they are more likely to behave egoistically themselves. As an alternative to egoism I recommend the commitment (...) model of Robert Frank. The equivalent of egoism at the organizational level is that business firms seek (should seek) to maximize profits. I present arguments to show that a conscious attempt by managers to maximize profits is likely to fail. A committed altruism is more likely to raise profits. I suggest that a firm should take as its primary purpose providing meaningful work for employees. (shrink)

Michael Huemer argues that there is a tension between two principles putatively essential to Rand's ethics: the principle of egoism, which states that the only reason for doing (or not doing) anything is that it will serve (or frustrate) one's own interests; and the principle that one must not sacrifice others. Huemer considers several arguments that Rand offers for the second principle but finds that each involves either implausible empirical assumptions or assumptions that conflict with egoism. Huemer suggests (...) that Rand may not be an egoist in the usual sense; her positions are much more consistent with the second principle. (shrink)

It is not the aim of the present essay to defend the principle of empiricism against apriorism or anti-empiricist metaphysics. Taking empirism for granted, we wish to discuss, the question what is meaningful. The word ‘meaning’ will here be taken in its empiricist sense; an expression of language has meaning in this sense if we know how to use it in speaking about empirical facts, either actual or possible ones. Now our problem is what expressions are meaningful in this sense. (...) We may restrict this question to sentences because expressions other than sentences are meaningful if and only if they can occur in a meaningful sentence. (shrink)

We provide a philosophical reconstruction and analysis of the debate on the scientific status of cosmic inflation that has played out in recent years. In a series of critical papers, Ijjas et al. have questioned the scientificality of the current views on cosmic inflation. Proponents of cosmic inflation have in turn defended the scientific credentials of their approach. We argue that, while this defense, narrowly construed, is successful against Ijjas et al., the latter's reasoning does point to a significant epistemic (...) issue that arises with respect to inflation. A broadening of the concept of theory assessment is needed to address that issue in an adequate way. (shrink)

Psychological egoism says that a purposive action is self-interested in a certain sense. The trick is to say in what sense. On the one hand, the psychological egoist wants to avoid a thesis that can be falsified by trivial examples. On the other hand, what is wanted is a thesis that lacks vacuity. The paper’s purpose is to arrive at such a thesis and show that it is a reasonable guess with empirical content.

Rosenberg argues that intentional generalizations in the human sciences cannot be law-like because they are not amenable to significant empirical refinement. This irrefinability is said to result from the principle that supposedly controls in intentional explanation also serving as the standard for successful interpretation. The only credible evidence bearing on such a principle would then need conform to it. I argue that psychological generalizations are refinable and can be nomic. I show how empirical refinement of psychological generalizations is possible by (...) considering concrete cases. A sufficiently detailed view of the role of psychological generalizations in interpretation allows us to find in psychological investigations instances of bootstrap testing. (shrink)

Economics is a science - at least positive economics must be. And science is in part applied mathematics, in part empirical observations and tests. Looking at the history of economics, one cannot find much testing done before the twentieth century, and even the collection of data, even in the manner Marx engaged in, was not common in his day. It is true that economic policy is an older field, and in that field much information is deployed for the purpose of (...) prescribing a course of action. But this is not to say that the information procured for that purpose is either based on observation or has been tested. In the seventeenth century some alchemists and economists hoped to boost the economy by manufacturing gold, others feared inflation; and the British Parliament legislated against manufacturing gold. David Hume proved in the eighteenth century - quite a priori - that doubling the quantity of gold will only double the price of each commodity and he thus set things at rest for a while. Later the question was opened again when Marx, for example, showed historically how the gold robbed from the Americas started Europe's boom. Yet the theory - the quantity theory of money, as it is called - which Hume proved a priori, is still contested and still hardly tested to economists' satisfaction: is the price level fixed mainly by the amount of available money? Some economists answer yes, others no. (shrink)

Provides an overview of empirical research relevant to philosophical questions about moral thought, feeling, reasoning, and motivation. Topics include: free will and moral responsibility, egoism and altruism, moral judgment and motivation, weakness and strength of will, moral intuitions, and moral knowledge. [Originally published in 2012. Updated and expanded in 2017.].

Rosenberg argues that intentional generalizations in the human sciences cannot be law-like because they are not amenable to significant empirical refinement. This irrefinability is said to result from the principle that supposedly controls in intentional explanation also serving as the standard for successful interpretation. The only credible evidence bearing on such a principle would then need conform to it. I argue that psychological generalizations are refinable and can be nomic. I show how empirical refinement of psychological generalizations is possible by (...) considering concrete cases. A sufficiently detailed view of the role of psychological generalizations in interpretation allows us to find in psychological investigations instances of bootstrap testing. (shrink)

There is no problem more paradigmatically philosophical than the mind-body problem. Nevertheless, I will argue that the problem is empirical. I am not even suggesting that conceptual analysis of the various mind-body theories be abandoned – just as I could not suggest it be abandoned for theories in physics or biology. But unlike the question, ‘Is every even number greater than 2 equal to the sum of two primes?’ the mind-body problem cannot be solved a priori, by analysis alone; though (...) I will not argue this thesis here, it is nearly obvious, since purported solutions must make matter of fact claims, heavy with existential import, about the real world. By contrast, an investigation of the sensitivity of the mind-body problem to empirical evidence will show that purported solutions to the problem are empirically testable, to a degree consistent with philosophy giving a clarified mind-body problem to the sciences. I offer the bold outlines of such an investigation here. (shrink)

One principal challenge to the rationalist thesis that the demands of morality are requirements of rationality has been that posed by the "rational egoist." In attempting to answer's the egoist's challenge, some rationalists have supposed that an adequate reply must take the form of a deductive argument that "converts" the egoist by showing that her position is contradictory, arbitrary, or violates some precept that defines practical rationality as such. Here I argue (a) that such rationalist replies will fail to persuade (...) the egoist to adopt a recognizably moral way of life; (b) that this failure can be traced to epistemic assumptions that underlie typical rationalist replies; (c) that egoist conversion can better be understood by rejecting these assumptions and seeing egoist conversion as akin to a paradigm shift in the sciences; and (d) that conceptualizing egoist conversion as a paradigm shift accords with empirical psychological evidence regarding the acquisition and modification of individuals' moral attitudes and beliefs. (shrink)

The connection between scientific knowledge and our empirical access to realityis not well explained within the structuralist approach to scientific theories. I arguethat this is due to the use of a semantics not rich enough from the philosophical pointof view. My proposal is to employ Sellars–Brandom's inferential semantics to understand how can scientific terms have empirical content, and Hintikka's game-theoretical semantics to analyse how can theories be empirically tested. The main conclusions are that scientific concepts gain their meaning through (...) `basic theories' grounded on `common sense’, and that scientific method usually allows the pragmatic verification and falsification of scientific theories. (shrink)

Moral psychology investigates human functioning in moral contexts, and asks how these results may impact debate in ethical theory. This work is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on both the empirical resources of the human sciences and the conceptual resources of philosophical ethics. The present article discusses several topics that illustrate this type of inquiry: thought experiments, responsibility, character, egoism v . altruism, and moral disagreement.

The sheer multitude of criteria of empirical significance has been taken as evidence that the pre-analytic notion being explicated is too vague to be useful. I show instead that a significant number of these criteria—by Ayer, Popper, Przełęcki, Suppes, and David Lewis, among others—not only form a coherent whole, but also connect directly to the theory of definition, the notion of empirical content as explicated by Ramsey sentences, and the theory of measurement; two criteria by Carnap and Sober are trivial, (...) but can be saved and connected to the other criteria by slight modifications. A corollary is that the ordinary language defense of Lewis, the conceptual arguments by Ayer and Popper, the theoretical considerations by Przełęcki, and the practical considerations by Suppes all apply to the same criterion or closely related criteria. Furthermore, the equivalence of some criteria allows for their individual justifications to be taken cumulatively and, together with the entailment relations between nonequivalent criteria, suggest criteria for general auxiliary assumptions, comparative criteria, and more liberal conceptions of observation. (shrink)

According to Husserl’s self-description, his phenomenological project was “completely apolitical.” Husserl’s phenomenology did not provide a political philosophy in the classical sense, a normative description of a functioning social order and its respective institutional structures. Nor did Husserl have much to say about the day-to-day politics of his time. Yet his reflections on community and culture were not completely without political implications. This article deals with an often-neglected strand of Husserl’s philosophy, namely his critique of liberalism. In this article, liberalism (...) is understood in the manner of Leo Strauss, as a tradition of individualist philosophy emerging from Hobbes’s political thought. As the article shows, Husserl followed many of his contemporaries in criticizing Hobbes’s abstract individualism, which could provide only a preventative function for political institutions. More importantly, Husserl’s engagement with Hobbes can be understood as a kind of ethical counterpart to his analysis of Galileo in the Crisis, as a critique of formal apriorism in the political domain. What Galileo did for physical nature with his “garb of ideas,” Hobbes did for human nature, reducing human sociality to interactions between atomistic individuals. In doing so, Hobbes ended up presenting a “mathematics of sociality” in an empirical garb. Going against the liberal view of the human person, Husserl presented his theory of social ethics founded on an original co-existence of subjects and a theory of human renewal. (shrink)

Commentators have tended to focus on the conceptual framework of our article, the contrast between genetic and associative accounts of mirror neurons, and to challenge it with additional possibilities rather than empirical data. This makes the empirically focused comments especially valuable. The mirror neuron debate is replete with ideas; what it needs now are system-level theories and careful experiments – tests and testability.

In what follows, I shall first outline Broad's description of, and attitude to, psychological egoism. Then, I shall examine briefly the form which a defense against his criticisms might take. This raises the query whether such a defense is consistent with the doctrine's empirical character. It is suggested that the egoist could evade this difficulty by questioning an assumption which Broad (and others) make about psychological egoism. By abandoning this assumption, we can state the doctrine in a more (...) adequate form-a form which emphasizes the point that men, although psychological egoists, are also rational beings, capable of acting on principle! (shrink)

There is no problem more paradigmatically philosophical than the mind-body problem. Nevertheless, I will argue that the problem is empirical. I am not even suggesting that conceptual analysis of the various mind-body theories be abandoned – just as I could not suggest it be abandoned for theories in physics or biology. But unlike the question, ‘Is every even number greater than 2 equal to the sum of two primes?’ the mind-body problem cannot be solved a priori, by analysis alone; though (...) I will not argue this thesis here, it is nearly obvious, since purported solutions must make matter of fact claims, heavy with existential import, about the real world. By contrast, an investigation of the sensitivity of the mind-body problem to empirical evidence will show that purported solutions to the problem are empirically testable, to a degree consistent with philosophy giving a clarified mind-body problem to the sciences. I offer the bold outlines of such an investigation here. (shrink)

Weak psychological egoism is the doctrine that anything an agent does intentionally, that agent does at least expecting thereby to realize one of her self-regarding ends. (Strong psychological egoism, by contrast, is the doctrine that agents act always intending thereby to realize a self-regarding end.) Though weak psychological egoism is a doctrine ultimately answerable to empirical evidence, we presently have excellent a priori reasons for accepting it and attempting to construct psychological theories that include it as an (...) organizing principle. These reasons have mainly to do with the idea that to understand the motivation behind an action, we need to understand the force of the consideration that motivates the agent, and the way to do this is to find a self-regarding end associated in the agent''s mind with acting on that consideration. (shrink)

I discuss two versions of the doomsday argument. According to ``Gott's Line'',the fact that the human race has existed for 200,000 years licences the predictionthat it will last between 5100 and 7.8 million more years. According to ``Leslie'sWedge'', the fact that I currently exist is evidence that increases the plausibilityof the hypothesis that the human race will come to an end sooner rather than later.Both arguments rest on substantive assumptions about the sampling process thatunderlies our observations. These sampling assumptions have (...) testable consequences,and so the sampling assumptions themselves must be regarded as empirical claims.The result of testing some of these consequences is that both doomsday argumentsare empirically disconfirmed. (shrink)

Elliott Sober has suggested his criterion of contrastive testability as an improvement over previous criteria of empirical significance like falsifiability. I argue that his criterion renders almost any theory empirically significant because its restrictions on auxiliary assumptions are to weak. Even when the criterion is modified to avoid this trivialization, it fails to meet other conditions of adequacy for a criterion of empirical significance that follow from Sober's position. I suggest to define empirical significance as empirical non-equivalence to a (...) tautology, because this definition does meet the conditions of adequacy. Specifically, it is equivalent to the standard Bayesian criterion of empirical significance whenever all probabilities are defined and contains falsifiability as a special case. This latter feature is important because those conditions of adequacy that apply to criteria of deductive empirical significance single out falsifiability. (shrink)

Part I presents a model of interactive computation and a metric for expressiveness, Part II relates interactive models of computation to physics, and Part III considers empirical models from a philosophical perspective. Interaction machines, which extend Turing Machines to interaction, are shown in Part I to be more expressive than Turing Machines by a direct proof, by adapting Gödel's incompleteness result, and by observability metrics. Observation equivalence provides a tool for measuring expressiveness according to which interactive systems are more expressive (...) than algorithms. Refinement of function equivalence by observation of outer interactive behavior and inner computation steps is examined. The change of focus from algorithms specified by computable functions to interaction specified by observation equivalence captures the essence of empirical computer science. Part II relates interaction in models of computation to observation in the natural sciences. Explanatory power in physics is specified by the same observability metric as expressiveness in interactive systems. Realist models of inner structure are characterized by induction, abduction, and Occam's Razor. Interactive realism extends the hidden-variable model of Einstein to hidden interfaces that provide extra degrees of freedom to formulate hypotheses with testable predictions conforming with quantum theory. Greater expressiveness of collaborative computational observers (writers) than single observers implies that hidden-interface models are more expressive than hidden-variable models. By providing a common foundation for empirical computational and physical models we can use precise results about computational models to establish properties of physical models. Part III shows that the evolution in computing from algorithms to interaction parallels that in physics from rationalism to empiricism. Plato's cave metaphor is interactively extended from Platonic rationalism to empiricism. The Turing test is extended to TMs with hidden interfaces that express interactive thinking richer than the traditional Turing test. Interactive (nonmonotonic) extensions of logic such as the closed-world assumption suggest that interactiveness is incompatible with monotonic logical inference. Procedure call, atomicity of transactions, and taking a fixed point are techniques for closing open systems similar to "preparation" followed by "observation" of a physical system. Pragmatics is introduced as a framework for extending logical models with a fixed syntax and semantics to multiple-interface models that support collaboration among clients sharing common resources. (shrink)

The primary impediment to formulating a general theory for adaptive evolution has been the unknown distribution of fitness effects for new beneficial mutations. By applying extreme value theory, Gillespie circumvented this issue in his mutational landscape model for the adaptation of DNA sequences, and Orr recently extended Gillespie's model, generating testable predictions regarding the course of adaptive evolution. Here we provide the first empirical examination of this model, using a single-stranded DNA bacteriophage related to phiX174, and find that our (...) data are consistent with Orr's predictions, provided that the model is adjusted to incorporate mutation bias. Orr's work suggests that there may be generalities in adaptive molecular evolution that transcend the biological details of a system, but we show that for the model to be useful as a predictive or inferential tool, some adjustments for the biology of the system will be necessary. (shrink)

The connection between scientific knowledge and our empirical access to realityis not well explained within the structuralist approach to scientific theories. I arguethat this is due to the use of a semantics not rich enough from the philosophical pointof view. My proposal is to employ Sellars–Brandom's inferential semantics to understand how can scientific terms have empirical content, and Hintikka's game-theoretical semantics to analyse how can theories be empirically tested. The main conclusions are that scientific concepts gain their meaning through (...) `basic theories' grounded on `common sense, and that scientific method usually allows the pragmatic verification and falsification of scientific theories. (shrink)

Leibniz said that the universe, if God-created, would exist at a unique, conjoint, physical maximum: Of all possible worlds, it would be richest in phenomena, but its richness would arise from the simplest physical laws and initial conditions. Using concepts of ‘‘variety’’ and algorithmic informational complexity, Leibniz’ claim can be reframed as a testable theory. This theory predicts that the laws and conditions of the actual universe should be simpler, and the universe richer in phenomena, than the presence of (...) observers would require. Tegmark has shown that inhabitants of an infinite multiverse would likely observe simple laws and conditions, but also phenomenal richness just great enough to explain their existence. Empirical observations fit the claim of divine choice better than the claim of an infinite multiverse. The future of the universe, including its future information-processing capacity, is predicted to be endless. -/- . (shrink)