This paper deals with Ramsey's theory of truth and its aim is twofold: on the one hand, it will explain what position about truth Ramsey actually defended, and, on the other hand, we will pursue Ramsey's insight in the 20th Century. When the name of Frank Ramsey is mentioned, one of the things that comes to mind is the theory of truth as redundancy. In the following pages we will argue that Ramsey never supported such a (...) class='Hi'>theory, but rather an analysis of truth noticeably similar to the prosentential account. In fact, the very word "pro-sentence" appears for the first time in the 20th Century in Ramsey's unfinished work "The nature of truth," written around 1929. Besides, we will show that the prosentential account of truth is a neglected trend throughout the history of analytic philosophy, even though relevant analytic philosophers, such as Prior, Strawson, Williams, Grover, and Brandom, have endorsed it. (shrink)

This paper argues that Information Theoretic Redundancy (ITR) is fundamentally a composite concept that has been continually misinterpreted since the very inception of Information Theory. We view ITR as compounded of true redundancy and partial redundancy. This demarcation of true redundancy illustrates a limiting case phenomenon: the underlying metric (number of alternatives) differs only by degree but the properties of this concept differ in kind from those of partial redundancy. Several other studies are instanced (...) which also imply the composite nature of ITR. We thus provide broadly based but particular support for earlier generalized suggestions that it is the underlying calculus of Information Theory rather than the ill-named concepts themselves that provides something of a unitary language for the description of phenomena. (shrink)

A strong and weak version of the redundancy theory of truth are distinguished. An argument put forth by Michael Dummett concludes that the weak version is vitiated by truth-value gaps. The weak version is defended against this argument. The strong version, however, is vitiated by truth-value gaps.

Advocates of the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics have long claimed that other interpretations needlessly invoke "new physics" to solve the measurement problem. Call the argument fashioned that gives voice to this claim the Redundancy Argument, or ’Redundancy’ for short. Originating right in Everett’s doctoral thesis, Redundancy has recently enjoyed much attention, having been advanced and developed by a number of commentators, as well as criticized by a few others.[1] Although versions of this argument can target collapse (...) theories of quantum mechanics, it is usually conceived with no-collapse "hidden variable" interpretations in mind, e.g., modal and Bohmian interpretations. In particular, the argument is an attack against theories committed to both realism about the quantum state and realism about entities – what Bell 1987 calls "beables" – that supplement this state. Particles, fields, value states, and more have been suggested as possible ontology to supplement the quantum state. Redundancy is the argument that this supplementation is methodologically otiose, the superfluous pomp that Newton scorned. (shrink)

Living organisms are exposed to numerous influencing factors. This holds also true for their infrastructures that are processing and transducing information like endocrine networks or nerval channels. Therefore, the ability to compensate for noise is crucial for survival. An efficient mechanism to neutralise disturbances is instantiated in form of parallel complementary communication channels exerting antagonistic effects at their common receivers. Different signal processing types share the ability to suppress noise, to widen the system’s regulation capacity, and to provide for variable (...) gains while leaving the transferred signal to a large extent unchanged. (shrink)

Journal of Economic Methodology, Volume 19, Issue 2, Page 159-163, June 2012.

Abstract Since their inception, distributional models of semantics have been criticized as inadequate cognitive theories of human semantic learning and representation. A principal challenge is that the representations derived by distributional models are purely symbolic and are not grounded in perception and action; this challenge has led many to favor feature-based models of semantic representation. We argue that the amount of perceptual and other semantic information that can be learned from purely distributional statistics has been underappreciated. We compare the representations (...) of three feature-based and nine distributional models using a semantic clustering task. Several distributional models demonstrated semantic clustering comparable with clustering-based on feature-based representations. Furthermore, when trained on child-directed speech, the same distributional models perform as well as sensorimotor-based feature representations of children’s lexical semantic knowledge. These results suggest that, to a large extent, information relevant for extracting semantic categories is redundantly coded in perceptual and linguistic experience. Detailed analyses of the semantic clusters of the feature-based and distributional models also reveal that the models make use of complementary cues to semantic organization from the two data streams. Rather than conceptualizing feature-based and distributional models as competing theories, we argue that future focus should be on understanding the cognitive mechanisms humans use to integrate the two sources. (shrink)

In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein is sometimes claimed to hold a redundancy theory of truth. The main evidence to support this view, however, comes from a single passage, number 136, which has been misinterpreted. In this essay I argue for an alternative interpretation of the critical passage in question. The purpose behind Wittgenstein’s remarks is not to provide a general theory of truth, per se. Rather, Wittgenstein uses the section as a way to introduce his notion of (...) fit, a notion that will play a more substantial role in his later arguments on following rules. Furthermore, if Wittgenstein did hold something close to a redundancy theory of truth, such a view would illuminate remarks from the earlier notebooks about a crucial Tractarian view rather than his later view from the Investigations: the so-called “Picture Theory”. (shrink)

Deflationists argue that the truth predicate does not express a substantive property, but is only required for expressive purposes. Using the resources of a fully schematic, inferentialist account of higher-order logic, truth predicates are purely logical and indeed eliminable, since they are logically definable, for any reasonable language, when we extend the language by the appropriate higher-order quantifiers. Accordingly, the truth predicate is not required for expressive purposes. Alethic deflationism thus appears to collapse into a redundancy theory of (...) truth. In this chapter, I take first steps into investigating whether such an inferentialist redundancy theory could serve as a philosophically satisfactory account of truth. I investigate the charge that semantic paradoxes are merely avoided rather than solved and the assumption that providing a philosophically satisfactory account of truth must be based on the way truth predicates behave in natural languages. (shrink)

There are often said to be five main 'theories of truth': correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, redundancy, and semantic theories. The coherence theory of truth equates the truth of a judgment with its coherence with other beliefs. Different versions of the theory give different accounts of coherence, but in all its forms the point is to exhibit truth as an internal relation between beliefs. The pragmatic theory of truth is akin to a coherence theory of this Kantian (...) kind. No coherence theorist need deny the uncontentious claim that for a judgment to be true is for it to stand in a certain relationship, which can be called correspondence, with some state of affairs in the world. The conflict with the redundancy theory may be more apparent than real. For the redundancy theory is not a theory of what truth consists in, but a theory about the meaning of the words 'is true'. (shrink)

The theory that structured propositions are complex act-types has been independently articulated by Peter Hanks and Scott Soames. The present paper argues that the role of the act in such theories is supererogatory, for the individuation conditions of the act-based propositions remain wholly at the level of concepts and their formal combination, features which the traditional structured proposition theorist endorses. Thus, it is shown that the traditional problems for structured propositions are only ameliorable on the act conception by appeal (...) to the very resources of the traditional conception. It is also shown that the act theories have no act-based account of quantification and other operator-involving relations. An elementary account of propositions is sketched, after Fodor, which retains the virtues of the traditional structural conception without falling into ’Platonism’. (shrink)

This paper is a defence of T.M. Scanlon's contractualism - the view that an action is wrong if it is forbidden by the principles which no one could reasonably reject. Such theories have been argued to be redundant in two ways. They are claimed to assume antecedent moral facts to explain which principles could not be reasonably rejected, and the reasons they provide to follow the non-rejectable principles are said to be unnecessary given that we already have sufficient reasons not (...) to do the acts that are forbidden by those principles. In this paper, I try to argue that neither one of these claims is true. (shrink)

The results of an empirical study of 150 justifications of verdicts of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal are discussed. CT justifies its decisions mostly on authoritative references to previous decisions and other doxa- type arguments. It thus does not convince the audience of a decision's validity, but rather documents it. Further, the methodology changes depending on features of the case. The results are analysed using a conceptual framework of sociological systems theory. It is shown that CT's justification methodology ignores the (...) redundancy of the legal system, finding redundancy redundant. This is a risky strategy of decision- making, enabling political influence. (shrink)

Theories of Truth provides a clear, critical introduction to one of the most difficult areas of philosophy. It surveys all of the major philosophical theories of truth, presenting the crux of the issues involved at a level accessible to nonexperts yet in a manner sufficiently detailed and original to be of value to professional scholars. Kirkham's systematic treatment and meticulous explanations of terminology ensure that readers will come away from this book with a comprehensive general understanding of one of philosophy's (...) thorniest set of topics. -/- Included are discussions of the correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, semantic, performative, redundancy, appraisal, and truth-as-justification theories. There are also chapters or sections of chapters on the liar paradox, three-valued logic, Field's critique of Tarski, Davidson's program, Dummett's theory of linguistic competence, satisfaction, recursion, the extension/intension distinction, and an explanation of how theories of justification, properly understood, differ from theories of truth. -/- A persistent theme is that philosophers have too often failed to recognize that not all theories of truth are intended to answer the same question. When the various questions are made distinct, it is apparent that many of the "debates" in this field are really cases of philosophers talking past one another. There is much less disagreement within the field than has commonly been thought. (shrink)

Grush has proposed a fairly comprehensive version of the idea of internal models within the framework of the emulation theory of representation. However, the formulation suffers from assumptions that render such models biologically infeasible. Here I present some problems from physiological principles of human movement production to illustrate why. Some alternative views to emulation are presented.

Fara and Williamson (Mind, 2005) argue that counterpart theory is unable to account for modal claims that use an actuality operator. This paper argues otherwise. Rather than provide a different counterpart translation of the actuality operator itself, the solution presented here starts out with a quantified modal logic in which the actuality operator is redundant, and then translates the sentences of this logic into claims of counterpart theory.

In Group Agency, List and Pettit defend ‘non-redundant realism’ about group agency, a view on which facts about group agents are not ‘readily reducible’ to facts about individuals, and the dependence of group agents on individuals is so holistic that one cannot predict facts about group agents on the basis of facts about their members. This paper undermines L&P's case in three stages. §1 shows that L&P's core argument is invalid. L&P infer and from two facts: that group agents must (...) often believe what few members personally believe, and that a group agent's beliefs in certain propositions must often ‘depend on’ member attitudes to distinct propositions. I note that is ambiguous, and that the only true reading of it is irrelevant to the status of. I argue further that cannot support, since a group agent's belief in P may neatly constitutively depend on member attitudes to P that are weaker than personal belief. §2 makes this idea concrete with a plausible toy theory of group belief that implies it. While this kind of theory is popular in the literature on joint belief, L&P never discuss it – a striking fact, since it explains why is true. Having made these points, I turn to argue in §3 that is either false or uncontroversial.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.HOW TO BE A REDUNDANT REALISTVolume 9, Issue 3Kurt L. SylvanDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.16Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. HOW TO BE A REDUNDANT REALISTVolume 9, Issue 3Kurt L. SylvanDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.16Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. HOW TO BE A REDUNDANT REALISTVolume 9, Issue 3Kurt L. SylvanDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.16Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

The challenges that normative redundancies and normative conflicts pose to legal theory have been traditionally addressed by either altering the rules that trigger them, or by including preference rules that deactivate them. As an alternative to these routes, this paper argues that the problems with both redundancies and conflicts only arise as a consequence of a mistaken understanding of legal reasoning that ignores the material relations between the rules at issue. By resorting to inferential semantics, this material dimension is (...) taken into account and the challenges met without having to introduce new rules nor altering the original ones. (shrink)

We raise and attempt to resolve the charge that the third noble truth of the core Buddhist teachings is redundant. If the second noble truth asserts a causal relation between craving and suffering, and if James Woodward’s interventionist account of causation is correct, we argue that these premises are sufficient to entail the difference-making described by the third noble truth. Thus, the third noble truth would be superfluous insofar as it merely makes explicit what must be the case, according to (...) a plausible theory of causation, if the second noble truth is true. Having raised the possibility that the third noble truth is redundant, we consider five possible responses to the charge, the last of which we endorse. Even if the redundancy charge is found not to stick, we believe an investigation into why this is so highlights features of the third noble truth that might be suppressed under standard glosses of its meaning. (shrink)

Entering the challenging and promising knowledge era, it is clear that enterprises should leverage knowledge management activities in improving innovation performance to maintain competitive advantages. This study sheds light on the improvement path of innovation ambidexterity from the perspectives of knowledge redundancy and typical leadership style. It is noted that we determined the research theme through quantitative analysis and conducted qualitative analysis through 209 questionnaire data collected from respondents in different regions and industries in China. The empirical results indicated (...) that knowledge redundancy significantly improves exploratory and exploitative innovation, and transactional leadership negatively moderates the above relationships. This study is of managerial implications to encourage employees to fully master and apply the existing knowledge to strengthen their innovation abilities in value creation. We also contribute to the theories pertaining to knowledge management, innovation, and ambidexterity by providing a deeper understanding of the influencing mechanism of knowledge redundancy in innovation ambidexterity while elaborating on the indirect effects of transactional leadership. (shrink)

Political realists’ rejection of the so-called ‘ethics first’ approach of political moralists, has raised concerns about their own source of normativity. Some realists have responded to such concerns by theorizing a distinctively political normativity. According to this view, politics is seen as an autonomous, independent domain with its own evaluative standards. Therefore, it is in this source, rather than in some moral values ‘outside’ of this domain, that normative justification should be sought when theorizing justice, democracy, political legitimacy, and the (...) like. For realists the question about a distinctively political normativity is important, because they take the fact that politics is a distinct affair to have severe consequences for both how to approach the subject matter as such and for which principles and values can be justified. Still, realists have had a hard time clarifying what this distinctively political normativity consists of and why, more precisely, it matters. The aim of this paper is to take some further steps in answering these questions. We argue that realists have the choice of committing themselves to one of two coherent notions of distinctively political normativity: one that is independent of moral values, where political normativity is taken to be a kind of instrumental normativity; another where the distinctness still retains a justificatory dependence on moral values. We argue that the former notion is unattractive since the costs of commitment will be too high, and that the latter notion is sound but redundant since no moralist would ever reject it. Furthermore, we end the paper by discussing what we see as the most fruitful way of approaching political and moral normativity in political theory. (shrink)

This chapter discusses formal theories of truth: the redundancy theory and its ilk, distinguished by the attempt to characterize truth in terms of its structural properties, in the context of the position adopted by Putnam in his John Dewey Lectures, here styled ‘Common-sense Realism’. This position is described, combining two principles called the Thesis of the Internality and the Thesis of World-Embeddedness, with a formal account of truth. It is argued that Common-sense Realism, along with all theories comprising (...) a formal account of truth, should be committed to the flames, because they are cut off from exploiting the Fregean model of meaning, based on a recursion on truth. (shrink)

Informational theories of semantic content have been recently gaining prominence in the debate on the notion of mental representation. In this paper we examine new-wave informational theories which have a special focus on cognitive science. In particular, we argue that these theories face four important difficulties: they do not fully solve the problem of error, fall prey to the wrong distality attribution problem, have serious difficulties accounting for ambiguous and redundant representations and fail to deliver a metasemantic theory of (...) representation. Furthermore, we argue that these difficulties derive from their exclusive reliance on the notion of information, so we suggest that pure informational accounts should be complemented with functional approaches. (shrink)

Homo sapiens have evolved a dual-process cognitive architecture that is adaptive but prone to systematic errors. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that nested or overlapping class-inclusion relations create processing interference, resulting in denominator neglect: behaving as if one ignores marginal denominators in a 2 × 2 table. Ignoring marginal denominators leads to fallacies in base-rate problems and conjunctive and disjunctive probability estimates.

Can Rawlsian theory provide us with an adequate response to the practical question of how we should proceed in the face of widespread and intractable disagreement over matters of justice? Recent criticism of ideal theorizing might make us wonder whether this question highlights another way in which ideal theory can be too far removed from our non-ideal circumstances to provide any practical guidance. Further reflection on it does not show that ideal theory is redundant, but it does (...) indicate that there is a need for a non-ideal theory that does not consist simply in an account of how to apply the principles which are yielded by ideal theory to non-ideal circumstances in the light of what is feasible and an assessment of the costs of implementation. Indeed any non-ideal theory that can adequately address this question will have to be partially autonomous, drawing on a notion of legitimacy that is rather different to the one which lies at the heart of Rawlsian ideal theory. (shrink)

The prevalent reading of Darwin's achievements today is adaptationist. Darwin, so the usual story goes, succeeded in providing a naturalistic explanation of the fact that organisms are adapted to their environments, a fact that served and continues to serve, as a chief argument for creationism. This stands in a curious tension with Darwin's own fascination with phenomena whose adaptive value was problematic, like vicariance, ornaments, atavisms, and rudiments, as well as the various "contraptions" and "contrivances" by which organisms take advantage (...) of each other. I will explore this "dark side" of Darwin's evolutionism with respect to three themes that run through his work: heredity, which provided one of the corner stones of Darwin's theory and yet was defined as an essentially capricious, not necessarily adaptive force; mimicry, which for Darwin exemplified a general tendency of nature to produce deceiving semblances that turn actual relations on their head; and extinction, a phenomenon that pointed towards the redundancy of life, which for Darwin, in the double sense of that word, was both a fundamental condition and necessary consequence of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

This study presents and develops in detail (a new version of) the argumental conception of meaning. The two basic principles of the argumental conception of meaning are: i) To know (implicitly) the sense of a word is to know (implicitly) all the argumentation rules concerning that word; ii) To know the sense of a sentence is to know the syntactic structure of that sentence and to know the senses of the words occurring in it. The sense of a sentence is (...) called immediate argumental role of that sentence. According to the argumental conception of meaning a theory of meaning for a particular language yields a systematic specification of the understanding of every sentence of the language which consists in a specification of the immediate argumental role of the sentence. The immediate argumental role is a particular aspect of the use of a sentence in arguments. But it is not the whole use in arguments, nor is the whole use in arguments reducible to the immediate argumental role. That is why, by accepting the argumental conception of meaning, we can have epistemological holism without linguistic holism. The argumental conception distinguishes between the understanding and the correctness of a language. Such a distinction makes it possible to account for our understanding of paradoxical languages. Redundancy theory of truth, realistic conceptions of truth or epistemic conceptions of truth are all compatible with an argumental conception of sense. But here it is argued that an epistemic conception of truth is preferrable. Acceptance of the argumental conception of meaning and of an epistemic conception of truth leads to a rejection of the idea of analytic truth. The argumental conception is pluralistic with respect to the understandability of different logics, and neutral with respect to their correctness. (shrink)

In this paper the authors recapitulate, justify, and defend against criticism the extension of the redundancy theory of truth to cover a wide range of uses of ‘true’ and ‘false’. In this they are guided by the work of A. N. Prior. They argue Prior was right about the scope and limits of the redundancy theory and that the line he drew between those uses of ‘true’ which are and are not susceptible to treatment via (...) class='Hi'>redundancy serves to distinguish two important and mutually irreducible types of truth: redundancy truth and predicative truth. Only the latter serves for semantic theorizing. (shrink)

The concept of distal similarity that plays a crucial role in Edelman's theory of representation is called into question in this commentary on theoretical as well as empirical grounds. A possible confusion between shape and (knowledge of) its referent, the problem of the subjective world, redundancy, and large individual differences in subjective space encountered in contrived universes are discussed.

We address a recent proposal concerning ‘surplus structure’ due to Nguyen et al.. We argue that the sense of ‘surplus structure’ captured by their formal criterion is importantly different from—and in a sense, opposite to—another sense of ‘surplus structure’ used by philosophers. We argue that minimizing structure in one sense is generally incompatible with minimizing structure in the other sense. We then show how these distinctions bear on Nguyen et al.’s arguments about Yang-Mills theory and on the hole argument.

I defend the Deutsch-Wallace (DW) theorem against a dilemma presented by Dawid and Thébault (2014), and endorsed in part by Read (2018), and Brown and Porath (2020), according to which the theorem is either redundant or in conflict with general frequency-to-chance inferences. I argue that neither horn of the dilemma is well-posed. On the one hand, the DW theorem is not in conflict with general frequency-to-chance inferences on the most natural way of stating the theorem. On the other hand, the (...) DW theorem is crucial for establishing the Born rule as a prediction of Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM), and so cannot be redundant within the theory. (shrink)

In this article I critically engage with Robert Craig’s constitutive metamodel of communication theory from the vantage point of an integrational semiology, as developed by Oxford Professor Roy Harris in his book Signs, Language and Communication (1996). I argue that Harris’ dichotomy of a ‘segregational’ vs. an ‘integrational’ tradition of theorizing language and communication makes the metamodel redundant on the grounds that Craig’s communicational perspective on social reality is replaced by two semiologies sponsoring mutually exclusive ontologies and epistemologies.

Nomological dispositionalism has occupied a center stage in contemporary metaphysics about laws, holding the view that laws of nature derive from an ontology of intrinsically modal dispositional properties. This view faces, though, various challenges, some of which are worth revisiting. Among them, dispositionalism about properties condemns laws to ontological redundancy; its reconstruction of properties does not seem to fit with experimentalism; it introduces a view of metaphysical modality that ambiguously moves between (_de dicto_) logical modality and (_de re_) physical (...) modality; and it assumes fundamentalist meta-metaphysical presuppositions. Rather than dismantling nomological dispositionalism –quite the contrary, we believe it is a valuable theory–, we aim at identifying those nodes where alternative strategies could be followed in a theory of laws. (shrink)

permits a sound and rigorously definable notion of ‘originating cause’ or causa causans—a type of transition event—of an outcome event. Mackie has famously suggested that causes form a family of ‘inus’ conditions, where an inus condition is ‘an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition’. In this essay the needed concepts of BST theory are developed in detail, and it is then proved that the causae causantes of a given outcome event have exactly the structure of (...) a set of Mackie inus conditions. The proof requires the assumption that there is no EPR-like ‘funny business’. This seems enough to constitute a theory of ‘causation’ in at least one of its many senses. Introduction The cement of the universe Preliminaries 3.1 First definitions and postulates 3.2 Ontology: propositions 3.3 Ontology: initial events 3.4 Ontology: outcome events 3.5 Ontology: transition events 3.6 Propositional language applied to events Causae causantes 4.1 Causae causantes are basic primary transition events 4.2 Causae causantes of an outcome chain 4.3 No funny business Causae causantes and inns and inus conditions 5.1 Inns conditions of outcome chains: not quite 5.2 Inns conditions of outcome chains 5.3 Inns conditions of scattered outcome events 5.4 Inus conditions for disjunctive outcome events 5.5 Inns and inus conditions of transition events Counterfactual conditionals Appendix: Tense and modal connectives in BST. (shrink)

The elimination of ambiguity and redundancy are unquestioned goals in the exact sciences, and yet, as this paper shows, there are inescapable lower bounds that constrain our wish to eliminate them. The author discusses contributions by Richard Hamming (inventor of the Hamming code) and Satosi Watanabe (originator of the Theorems of the Ugly Duckling). Utilizing certain of their results, the author leads readers to recognize the unavoidable, central roles in effective communication, of redundancy, and of ambiguity of meaning, (...) reference, and identification. (shrink)

Manifold learning and effective model building are generally viewed as fundamentally different types of procedure. After all, in one we build a simplified model of the data, in the other, we construct a simplified model of the another model. Nonetheless, I argue that certain kinds of high-dimensional effective model building, and effective field theory construction in quantum field theory, can be viewed as special cases of manifold learning. I argue that this helps to shed light on all of (...) these techniques. First, it suggests that the effective model building procedure depends upon a certain kind of algorithmic compressibility requirement. All three approaches assume that real-world systems exhibit certain redundancies, due to regularities. The use of these regularities to build simplified models is essential for scientific progress in many different domains. (shrink)

Contra Lewis, it is argued that the correspondence theory is a genuine rival theory of truth: it goes beyond the redundancy theory; it competes with other theories of truth; it is aptly summarized by the slogan 'truth is correspondence to fact'; and it really is a theory of truth.

In social psychology, we need to establish a general theory of the self, which can attend to both macro and micro processes, and which avoids the redundancies of separate theories on different aspects of the self. For this purpose, we present core components of identity theory and social identity theory and argue that although differences exist between the two theories, they are more differences in emphasis than in kind, and that linking the two theories can establish a (...) more fully integrated view of the self. The core components we examine include the different bases of identity (category/group or role) in each of the theories, identity salience and the activation of identities as discussed in the theories, and the cognitive and motivational processes that emerge from identities based on category/group and on role. By examining the self through the lens of both identity theory and social identity theory, we see how, in combination, they can move us toward a general theory of the self. (shrink)

Prominent neo-Marxists have recently acknowledged longstanding criticisms of Marx's labor theory of value as at best a cumbersome and redundant price model but continue to variously defend the doctrine as an interpretation of historically observed class conflict between exploiters and exploited. This essay counters that value theory also fails badly as a "labor theory of exploitation." The fundamental flaw is the canonical premise that labor alone is productive, with normative implications closer to the entrepreneurial work ethic than (...) to socialist standards of distributive justice. The essay then identifies an alternative theory of exploitation implied by Marx's earlier writings on alienation but obscured by his later association of exploitation with surplus value. What capital appropriates is not "surplus value" produced by labor, but the capacity to produce it, creating asymmetric interdependence within the division of labor. Exploitation arises in the mediation of this interdependence through the exchange of commodities. (shrink)

There is no distinct correspondence theory of truth, truth is correspondence to fact. If facts are taken to be true propositions, we wind up with just another version of the correspondence theory's ostensible competitor, the redundancy theory of truth. If instead facts are taken to be Armstrong's states of affairs, or Tractarian facts, or Mellor's _facta<D>, we get a _truthmaker<D> principle, that for every truth there is a truthmaker; something whose existence implies the proposition in question. (...) Truthmaker principles are interesting and useful, but go far beyond truth as correspondence with fact, and so are not really theories of truth at all. (shrink)

This paper discusses the possibility of a metaphysical event theory that incorporates the concept of hope as a disposition. Hope is interp- reted as an expectation regarding future events while representing certain manifestations expected to occur in certain future events. In this sense, for ontologies that deny change or claim that its degree is purely fundamental, hope is a redundant concept in a metaphysical context. Additionally, in a world governed by fatalism or theological determinism it is meaningless to hope (...) for an alternative result. These two interpretations are compatible with a form of Stoicism as they depict a world where hope is redundant. To make hope more meaningful within the framework of event theory, we can propose an alternative view in which hope is considered not merely a psychological pheno- menon but also related and more active to metaphysical events. To strengthen this relation, we will change our perspective on our feature ontology and argue that what is hoped for can exist as a dispositional property that is realized as a particular consequence of an event, when it encounters certain stimuli. In examining the relationship between hope and event theory from different ontological perspectives, the first two view hope as a redundant concept for event theories. In contrast, the third perspective reinterprets hope as a disposition, making it more significant for a fundamental ontology. (shrink)

Complex diseases involve both a genetic component and a response to environmental factors or lifestyle changes. Recently, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have succeeded in identifying hundreds of polymorphisms that are statistically associated with complex diseases. However, the association is usually weak and none of the associated allelic forms is either necessary or sufficient for the disease occurrence. We argue that this promotes a network view, centred on functional redundancy. We adapted reliability theory to the concerned sub-network, modelled as (...) a parallel array of functional modules. In our model, as long as one module remains active, the function correlated with the respective disease is ensured and disease does not occur. Genetic factors reduce the initial number of available modules while environment, contingent surroundings, personal history, epigenetics, and some intrinsic stochasticity influence their persistence time. This model reproduces age-specific incidence curves and explains the influence of environmental changes. It offers a new paradigm, according to which disease occurs due to a lack of functional elements, depending on many idiosyncratic factors. Genetic risk assessed from GWAS is only a statistical notion with no direct interpretation at the individual level. However, genomic profiling could be useful at population level in devising models to guide decisions in health care policy. (shrink)

According to an influential view, when it comes to representing reality, some words are better suited for the job than others. This is elitism. There is reason to believe that the set of the best, or elite, words should not be redundant or arbitrary. However, we are often forced to choose between these two theoretical vices, especially in cases involving theories that seem to be mere notational variants. This is the riddle of redundancy: both redundancy and arbitrariness are (...) vicious, but there are cases in which one must be picked. Logical realists admit that there are some logical constants among the elite words. This leads to awkward questions, such as which among conjunction and disjunction is elite. In this paper, I show how the riddle of redundancy arises for logical realists, and offer a solution. This approach requires us to change how we represent negation. Instead of using some particular symbol, we represent negation by flipping formulae over the horizontal axis. (shrink)

In their extensive overview of various concepts of presumption Godden and Walton recognise “the heterogeneous picture of presumptions that exists in argumentation theory today”. I argue that this heterogeneity results from an epiphenomenal character of the notion of presumption. To this end, I first distinguish between three main classes of presumptions. Framework presumptions define the basic conditions of linguistic understanding and meaningful conversation. The “presumption of veracity” is their paradigm case. I argue that such presumptions are satisfactorily covered by (...) the Principle of Charity, or else Gricean maxims or satisfaction conditions for speech acts. Formal presumptions are general presumptive rules of argument, theorised as topoi or acceptable inference warrants, including institutional warrants. Material presumptions are acceptable outcomes of nested or outsourced arguments, which entitles arguers to use them as acceptable premises or opinions in further arguments without the typical burden of proof. If this is correct, then the study of presumption always collapses into the study of other, likely more fundamental, concepts. Does it render presumptions, by Occam’s Razor, altogether redundant in argumentation theory? I tentatively answer this question from a consistently conversational perspective on argumentation; I argue that the pragmatic grounds for presumptions are to be found in the conditions for speech act performance in the institutional social world, as developed by Searle. (shrink)

Jonathan Dancy, in his 1994 Aristotelian Society Presidential Address, set out to show ''why there is really no such thing as the theory of motivation''. In this paper I want to agree that there is no such thing, and to offer reasons of a different kind for that conclusion. I shall suggest that the so-called theory of motivation misconstrues the question which it purports to answer, and that when we properly analyse the question and distinguish it clearly from (...) other questions with which it should not be confused, we do not need a theory of motivation at all. (shrink)

This paper repudiates Manuel Vargas’s attempt to supplant the traditional moral influence theory of responsibility with his ‘agency cultivation model’. By focusing on fostering responsiveness to moral considerations, ACM purports to avoid the chief pitfalls of MIT. However, I contend that ACM is far less distinctive than it initially appears and so possesses all of MIT’s defects. I also assail Vargas’s counterfactual test for assessing whether a wrongdoer can respond to moral considerations. It is argued that the counterfactual test (...) is epistemically redundant because it can only be fleshed out once we have settled the issues it is supposed to resolve. Moreover, it tacitly inverts the relation between freedom and responsibility—we cannot attribute free will to wrongdoers unless we have already established their blameworthiness. The upshot of this is that enquiries into an agent’s freedom are irrelevant to the ethics of holding her responsible. (shrink)

Plamondon's kinematic theory is very powerful from a descriptive point of view. Unfortunately, the fact that it neglects some fundamental features of the motor system, such as nonlinear inertial torque interactions or joint redundancies, limits its explanatory power and biological validity. As a consequence, the data presented by Plamondon & Alimi should be analyzed and interpreted with caution. There appears to be a gap between the observations reported by the authors and some of the conclusions they draw.