One of the concerns that citizen science shares with the evolving practice of precision medicine is how to approach oversight for N-of-1 or N-of-many-1’s research. In their target article, Wiggins...

MIGHT AND RIGHT IN ANTIQUITY BY HARTVIG FRISCH TRANSLATED BY CC MARTINDALE "DIKE " I FROM HOMER TO THE PERSIAN WARS GYLDENDALSKE BOGHANDEL ...

In this paper, a propositional logic Q is presented. This logic is more attractive than classical propositional logic P for explicating actual proofs. Moreover, while Q and P assign the same consequence set to consistent premise sets, Q assigns a sensible and non-trivial consequence set to inconsistent premise sets.

The simplest story about modals—might, must, possibly, necessary, have to, can, ought to, presumably, likelier, and the rest—is also the canon: modals are context-dependent quantifiers over a domain of possibilities. Different flavors of modality correspond to quantification over different domains of possibilities. Logical modalities quantify over all the possibilities there are, physical modalities over possibilities compatible with the..

The mainstream science of consciousness offers a few predominate views of how the brain gives rise to awareness. Chief among these are the Higher-Order Thought Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, and hybrids thereof. In parallel, rapid development in predictive processing approaches have begun to outline concrete mechanisms by which interoceptive inference shapes selfhood, affect, and exteroceptive perception. Here, we consider these new approaches in terms of what they might offer our empirical, phenomenological, and philosophical understanding of (...) consciousness and its neurobiological roots. (shrink)

In this paper it is shown that Lewis' MWD (might/would duality) and imaging principles lead to wildly implausible probability assignments for would counterfactuals.

Had more philosophers of science come from chemistry, their thinking would have been different. I begin by looking at a typical chemical paper, in which making something is the leitmotif, and conjecture/refutation is pretty much irrelevant. What in fact might have been, might be, different? The realism of chemists is reinforced by their remarkable ability to transform matter; they buy into reductionism where it serves them, but make no real use of it. Incommensurability is taken without a blink, (...) and actually serves. The preeminence of synthesis in chemistry could have led philosophers of science to take more seriously questions of aesthetics within science, and to find a place in aesthetics for utility. The necessary motion twixt macroscopic and microscopic views of matter in modern chemistry leads to the coexistence of symbolic and iconic representations. And in another way to the deliberate, creative violation of categories. (shrink)

What we can call asymmetric disagreement occurs when one agent is in disagreement with another, but not vice-versa. In this paper, I give an example of and develop a framework for understanding this phenomenon. One pivotal feature of my example is that one of the agents in the scenario has a belief about what might be the case—a might-belief. I show that a traditional account of might-beliefs and disagreement cannot explain the initially surprising phenomenon of asymmetric disagreement. (...) In order to provide an explanation, I develop a dynamic account of might-beliefs and a corresponding account of disagreement. I close by exploring a choice point for our account—showing that the simple dynamic account has some controversial (though, perhaps, true) consequences. I explore how revisionary notions of validity, inconsistency, and disagreement can allow us to avoid these consequences if we wish. (shrink)

Might Interjections Encode Concepts? More Questions than Answers This paper reflects on the conceptual nature of interjections. Although there are convincing reasons to claim that interjections do not encode concepts, arguments can be adduced to question such claim. In fact, some pragmatists have contended that they may be conceptual elements. After reviewing both the non-conceptualist and conceptualist approaches to interjections, this paper discusses some reasons that can be given to reconsider the conceptuality of interjections. Nevertheless, it adopts an intermediate (...) standpoint by arguing that the heterogeneity of interjections, with items incorporated from other lexical categories, and the openness of the word class they constitute, which results in the coinage of certain interjections or the innovative usage of some elements, could indicate the existence of a continuum of more and less conceptual items. In any case, this paper suggests that those items with conceptual content would not encode full concepts, but some schematic material requiring subsequent pragmatic adjustments. (shrink)

Here I discuss the conceptual structure and core semantic commitments of reason-involving thought and discourse needed to underwrite the claim that ethical normativity is not uniquely queer. This deflates a primary source of ethical scepticism and it vindicates so-called partner in crime arguments. When it comes to queerness objections, all reason-implicating normative claims—including those concerning Humean reasons to pursue one's ends, and epistemic reasons to form true beliefs—stand or fall together.

Invariantism proposed by Braun (Linguistics and Philosophy 35(6):461–489, 2012) aims to maintain full identity of semantic content between all uses of ‘might’. I invoke well-known facts regarding diachronic change in meanings of modals to argue that invariantism commits us to implausible duplication of familiar processes of lexical semantic change on the level of “lexical pragmatics”, with no obvious payoff.

In this paper, I show that, given seemingly plausible assumptions about the epistemic ‘might’ and conditionals, we cannot explain why in some circumstances it is appropriate to utter conditional ‘might’-sentences, like “If Angelica has crumbs in her pocket, then she might be the thief” and not the corresponding simple ones, like “Angelica might be the thief.” So, one of our assumptions must be incorrect. I argue that the root of the problem is an umbrella thesis about (...) the pragmatics of ‘might’-communication - one that says that the communicative impact of an utterance of a ‘might’-sentence is the performance of a consistency check on the information of the context. I conclude that we must reject this thesis. And I close the paper by sketching an alternative view about what assertive uses of ‘might’-sentences typically do - one which avoids the problem. Such uses typically present a possibility as a serious option in reasoning and deliberation. (shrink)

How do generics interact with modals? This note offers one observation about an interaction with 'might' that presents a challenge for standard theories.

This paper explores two different versions of ‘the realist turn’ in recent political theory. It begins by setting out two principal realist criticisms of liberal moralism: that it is both descriptively and normatively inadequate. It then pursues the second criticism by arguing that there are two fundamentally different responses among realists to the alleged normative inadequacy of ideal theory. First, prescriptive realists argue that the aim of realism is to make political theory more normatively adequate by making it more realistic. (...) Interpretative realists, on the other hand, argue that realist theorising should detach itself from such an aspiration, and instead aim at theoretical understanding rather than normative prescription. After some further elaboration of what interpretative realism might look like, it is acknowledged that both approaches still need to address the question of political normativity. (shrink)

This volume looks outward to the twenty-first century and to the dynamics of this first truly global age. It asks the fundamental question: how might human societies live? In contrast to the orthodoxies of academic Philosophy and International Relations in much of the twentieth century, which marginalised or rejected the study of ethics, the contributors here believe that there is nothing more political than ethics, and therefore deserving of scholarly analysis. By exploring some of the oldest questions about duties (...) and obligations within and beyond humanly constructed boundaries, the essays help us ponder the most profound question in world politics today: who will the twenty-first century be for? (shrink)

Analytic philosophers usually think about modality in terms of possible worlds. According to the possible worlds framework, a proposition is necessary if it is true according to all possible worlds; it is possible if it is true according to some possible world. There are as many possible worlds as there are ways the actual world might be. Only one world is actual.

People often act in ways that appear incompatible with their sincere assertions. But how might we explain such cases? On the shifting view, subjects’ degrees of belief may be highly sensitive to changes in context. This paper articulates and refines this view, after defending it against recent criticisms. It details two mechanisms by which degrees of beliefs may shift.

The epistemic thesis is the thesis that a 'might' counterfactual like 'If Matt had gone to the parade, David might have gone to the parade' has the same meaning as 'Maybe, if Matt had gone to the parade, David would have gone to the parade.' I offer a new theory of the counterfactual interpretation of the modal 'might' on which 'might' has the same meaning as 'maybe would'. And I show that, when coupled with a plausible (...) semantics for 'if' clauses, my theory validates the epistemic thesis. (shrink)

Plantinga’s Free Will Defense (FWD) employs the following proposition as a premise:◊TD. Possibly, every essence is transworld depraved.I argue that he fails to establish his intended conclusion because the denial of ◊TD is epistemically possible. I then consider an improved version of the FWD which relies on◊TU. Possibly, every essence is transworld untrustworthy.(The notion of transworld untrustworthiness is the might-counterfactual counterpart to Plantinga’s would-counterfactual notion of transworld depravity.) I argue that the denial of ◊TU is also epistemically possible and, (...) therefore, that the improved FWD fares no better than the original at establishing the compatibility of God and evil. (shrink)

We face grave global problems. One might think universities are doing all they can to help solve these problems. But universities, in successfully pursuing scientific knowledge and technological know-how in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental concern with problems of living, have actually made possible the genesis of all our current global problems. Modern science and technology have led to modern industry and agriculture, modern medicine and hygiene, modern armaments, which in turn have led to habitat (...) destruction, extinction of species, population growth, the lethal character of modern war, and the impending disasters of climate change. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that they put problems of living at the heart of the academic enterprise and take, as their basic task, to help humanity learn how to make progress towards as good a world as possible. (shrink)

Discussions often end before the issues that started them have been resolved. For example, in the late sixties and early seventies, a hot topic in philosophical logic was the development of an adequate semantics for the language of modal predicate logic. However, the result of this discussion was not one single system that met with general agreement, but a collection of alternative systems, each defended most ably by its proponents.

Feminist proposals for reforming scientific method often ask that political evaluations be introduced into the context of justification. How might this work in practice? Fausto‐Sterling's alternative conceptualization of biological sex is analyzed and criticized. We then use this case study to comment on recent work on the role of social values in science by Longino and Kitcher.

Kai von Fintel and Anthony Gillies have proposed a revised contextual analysis of sentences that make use of “might” epistemically. On their view, when a speaker uses an epistemic modal term, several propositions are made available to his conversational partners and, as a result, there are several propositions that may be picked up on by those partners. Because there is no concrete “context of utterance,” there is no one proposition that the speaker could be said to have asserted. This (...) is meant to resolve conflicting truth evaluations by different speakers of a single utterance. I argue that the position is unworkable for two reasons: First, on their view there is no single proposition that counts as being asserted or semantically expressed by a “might” utterance; this has several counterintuitive consequences. Second, their position does not address several of the original problems that led many to abandon a contextual account. (shrink)

Quasi-realism aspires to preserve the intelligibility of the realist-sounding moral judgments of ordinary people. These judgments include ones of the form, “I believe that p, but I might be mistaken,” where “p” is some moral content. The orthodox quasi-realist strategy is to understand these in terms of the agent’s worrying that some improving change would lead one to aban-don the relevant moral belief. However, it is unclear whether this strate-gy generalizes to cases in which the agent takes their error (...) to be funda-mental in a sense articulated by Andy Egan. In an influential paper, Egan argues that it does not. Egan suggests that Blackburn’s approach is the only game in town for the quasi-realist when it comes to making sense of judgment of fallibility, and therefore concludes that Blackburn’s ina-bility to handle worries about fundamental moral error refutes quasi-realism tout court. Egan’s challenge has generated considerable discus-sion. However, in my view, we have not yet gotten to the heart of the matter. I argue that what is still needed is a fully general, quasi-realist-friendly theory of the nature of first-person judgments of fallibility, such that these judgments are demonstrably consistent with judging that the belief is stable in Egan’s sense. In this article, I develop and defend a fully general quasi-realist theory of such judgments, which meets this demand. With this theory in hand, I argue that Egan’s challenge can be met. Moreover, my discussion of how the challenge is best met provides an elegant diagnosis of where Egan’s argument against goes wrong. On my account, Egan’s argument equivocates at a key point between a “could” and a “would.”. (shrink)

Contextualism about ‘might’ says that the property that ‘might’ expresses varies from context to context. I argue against contextualism. I focus on problems that contextualism apparently has with attitude ascriptions in which ‘might’ appears in an embedded ‘that’-clause. I argue that contextualists can deal rather easily with many of these problems, but I also argue that serious difficulties remain with collective and quantified says-that ascriptions. Herman Cappelen and John Hawthorne atempt to deal with these remaining problems, but (...) I argue that their attempt fails. (shrink)

What would my life have been like if I had been born more intelligent? Or taller? Or a member of the opposite sex? Or a non-biological being? It is plausible that some of these questions make sense, while others stretch the limits of sense making. In addressing questions of how I might have been, genetic essentialism is popular, but this article argues that genetic essentialism, and other versions of origin essentialism for organisms, must be rejected. It considers the prospects (...) for counterpart theory and shows how counterpart theory can be used to illuminate volitional accounts of identity as proposed by Harry Frankfurt. This enables one to make sense of claims that, say, being gay, or Deaf, or Black, can be essential to someone's identity. The discussion is then extended to show how it can be made applicable to the transworld identity theorist who denies that individuals possess essential properties. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Feeble Versions Robust Versions The Body View Who's Who? The Soul View The Reincarnation View Is There an Afterlife? Might I Live On?

It might be that the phrase ‘local holism’ covers a range of explanatory possibilities spreading to consistencies of theories generally, that we can take something from Peacocke’s caution about delimiting and differentiating modes of support for abstracts to sort something in the varieties of tensions at work in settling contents of theories self-determined to be consistent (facing a barrage of neo-consistencies). The subject-matter becomes then a holism in its entirety in self-consistent self-representation underpinned by that recognition operating over items (...) formulated in a vocabulary supporting consistent representations and operations. In A Study of Concepts scenarios—described by me as ‘containers’— associate a type of primitive to a grammar worked on transitions paralleling a proposed familiar egocentric type of orientation’s handling of objects in a vicinity. The value of scenarios though is distanced from origination, it lies in the depiction of support for and delineation and record of separable coordinate valuations and conceptual transcribing. (shrink)

A ‘might’ counterfactual is a sentence of the form ‘If it had been the case that A, it might have been the case that C’. Recently, John Hawthorne has argued that the truth of many ‘might’ counterfactuals precludes the truth of most ‘would’ counterfactuals. I examine the semantics of ‘might’ counterfactuals, with one eye towards defusing this argument, but mostly with the aim of understanding this interesting class of sentences better.

By Gregory M. Mikkelson School of Environment and Department of Philosophy McGill University, 3534 University Street Montréal, QC H3A 2A7 CANADA [email protected] Keynote contribution to the session "Integrating Ecological and Social Scales" Electronic conference "Landscape Scale Biodiversity Assessment" European Platform for Biodiversity, www.bioplatform.info Posted March 9th, 2005..

Invariantism about ‘might’ says that ‘might’ semantically expresses the same modal property in every context. This paper presents and defends a version of invariantism. According to it, ‘might’ semantically expresses the same weak modal property in every context. However, speakers who utter sentences containing ‘might’ typically assert propositions concerning stronger types of modality, including epistemic modality. This theory can explain the phenomena that motivate contextualist theories of epistemic uses of ‘might’, and can be defended from (...) objections of the sort that relativists mount against contextualist theories. (shrink)

We examine an objection to analysing the epistemic ‘might’ and ‘may’ as existential quantifiers over possibilities. Some claims that a proposition “might” be the case appear felicitous although, according to the quantifier analysis, they are necessarily false, since there are no possibilities in which the proposition is true. We explain such cases pragmatically, relying on the fact that ‘might’-sentences are standardly used to convey that the speaker takes a proposition as a serious option in reasoning. Our account (...) explains why it makes sense to utter these sentences despite their being literally false and why their falsity is easily missed. (shrink)

are ambiguous. In the mouth of someone who cannot remember whether it was Michael, or rather someone else, who was top scorer, can express the epistemic possibility that Michael led the league in scoring. But from someone who knows that Michael did not even play last season, but is wondering what would have happened if he had, means something quite different. Now where it has this quite different meaning, may still turn out to be the expression of some epistemic possibility. (...) Perhaps where does not express the epistemic possibility of ‘Michael led the league in scoring’, it expresses the epistemic possibility of ‘Michael would have led the league in scoring’. Analysis of this ‘would have’ statement, together with an exploration of the suspicion that the ‘might have’ statement is ambiguous between these two epistemic possibilities, will have to await another occasion. The important point for present purposes is that is ambiguous between an expression of the epistemic possibility of ‘Michael led the league in scoring’ and some quite different reading. (shrink)

We could have been characters in a huge computer simulation. It is a familiar idea that the whole world might be simulated on a computer, and things would seem exactly the same to us (and indeed, who is to say that we are not).

This note is on cautious cut elimination for one of Veitman's might logics. Syntactically, the logic is presented as an extension of a sequent system for classical proposition logic . I show that this extension preserves the completeness and decidability of CPL. The proof has cautious cut elimination as a corollary. I also give a rather general syntactic proof of cautious cut elimination. It states that any ‘base’ logic which has a reflexive, monotone consequence relation that allows cautious cut (...) to be eliminated preserves cautious cut elimination when extended to a might logic. (shrink)