At least since Descartes, philosophers have been interested in the special knowledge or authority that we exhibit when we speak about our own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. This book contends that even the best work in contemporary philosophy of mind fails to account for this sort of knowledge or authority because it does not pay the right sort of attention to the notion of expression. What's at stake is not only how to understand self-knowledge and first-person authority, but also what (...) it is that distinguishes conscious from unconscious psychological states, what the mental life of a nonlinguistic animal has in common with our sort of mental life, and how to think about Wittgenstein's legacy to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This new edition includes three new chapters, updating the book to take into account developments in the field over the past fifteen years.

Everything red is colored, and all squares are polygons. A square is distinguished from other polygons by being four-sided, equilateral, and equiangular. What distinguishes red things from other colored things? This has been understood as a conceptual rather than scientific question. Theories of wavelengths and reflectance and sensory processing are not considered. Given just our ordinary understanding of color, it seems that what differentiates red from other colors is only redness itself. The Cambridge logician W. E. Johnson introduced the terms (...) determinate and determinable to apply to examples such as red and colored. Chapter XI, of Johnson's Logic, Part I (1921), “The Determinate and the Determinable,” is the main text for discussion of this distinction. (shrink)

In this collection of provocative essays, historians and literary theorists assess the influence of Michel Foucault, particularly his History of Sexuality, on the study of classics. Foucault's famous work presents a bold theory of sexuality for both ancient and modern times, and yet until now it has remained under-explored and insufficiently analyzed. By bringing together the historical knowledge, philological skills, and theoretical perspectives of a wide range of scholars, this collection enables the reader to explore Foucault's model of Greek culture (...) and see how well his interpretation accounts for the full range of evidence from Greece and Rome. Not only do the essays bring to light the assumptions, ideas, and practices that constituted the intimate lives of men and women in the ancient Mediterranean world, but they also demonstrate the importance of the History of Sexuality for fields as diverse as Greco-Roman antiquity, women's history, cultural studies, philosophy, and modern sexuality. The essays include "Situating The History of Sexuality" (the editors), "Taking the Sex Out of Sexuality: Foucault's Failed History" (Joel Black), "Incipit Philosophia" (Alain Vizier), "The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault" (Page duBois), "This Myth Which Is Not One: Construction of Discourse in Plato's Symposium" (Jeffrey S. Carnes), "Foucault's History of Sexuality: A Useful Theory for Women?" (Amy Richlin), "Catullan Consciousness, the 'Care of the Self,' and the Force of the Negative in History" (Paul Allen Miller), "Reversals of Platonic Love in Petronius' Satyricon" (Daniel B. McGlathery), and an essay from Dislocating Masculinity (Lin Foxhall). (shrink)

Naive mereology studies ordinary, common-sense beliefs about part and whole. Some of the speculations in this article on naive mereology do not bear directly on Peter van Inwagen's "Material Beings". The other topics, (1) and (2), both do. (1) Here is an example of Peter Unger's "Problem of the Many". How can a table be a collection of atoms when many collections of atoms have equally strong claims to be that table? Van Inwagen invokes fuzzy sets to solve this problem. (...) I claim that an alternative treatment of vagueness, supervaluations over many-value valuations, provides a better solution. (2) The Special Composition Question asks how parts compose a whole. One who rejects van Inwagen's answer in terms of constituting a life need not provide some alternative answer. Even if all answers to the Special Question fail, there are a multitude of less general composition questions that are not so difficult. (shrink)

This study takes a Christian perspective on the entire Bible, rather than simply the New Testament. David Wenkel asks: Why did Jesus have to be beaten before his death on the cross? Christian theology has largely focused on Jesus' death but has given relatively little attention to his sufferings. Wenkel's answer contextualizes Jesus' crucifixion sufferings as informed by the language of Proverbs. He explains that Jesus' sufferings demonstrate the wisdom of God's plan to provide a substitute for foolish sinners. (...) Jesus was beaten as a fool - even though he was no fool, in order to fulfill God's loving plan of salvation. This analysis is then placed within the larger storyline of the whole bible - from the Garden of Eden to the story of Israel and beyond. (shrink)

In several works on modality, G. H. von Wright presents tree structures to explain possible worlds. Worlds that might have developed from an earlier world are possible relative to it. Actually possible worlds are possible relative to the world as it actually was at some point. Many logically consistent worlds are not actually possible. Transitions from node to node in a tree structure are probabilistic. Probabilities are often more useful than similarities between worlds in treating counterfactual conditionals.

This is the first of two papers that use off-training set (OTS) error to investigate the assumption-free relationship between learning algorithms. This first paper discusses the senses in which there are no a priori distinctions between learning algorithms. (The second paper discusses the senses in which there are such distinctions.) In this first paper it is shown, loosely speaking, that for any two algorithms A and B, there are “as many” targets (or priors over targets) for which A has lower (...) expected OTS error than B as vice versa, for loss functions like zero-one loss. In particular, this is true if A is cross-validation and B is “anti-cross-validation” (choose the learning algorithm with largest cross-validation error). This paper ends with a discussion of the implications of these results for computational learning theory. It is shown that one cannot say: if empirical misclassification rate is low, the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension of your generalizer is small, and the training set is large, then with high probability your OTS error is small. Other implications for “membership queries” algorithms and “punting” algorithms are also discussed. (shrink)

Midrash Genesis Rabbah takes aim at a variety of ideological adversaries, but the most subtle polemic is directed at sages who went beyond standard hermeneutical practices to embrace mystical approaches to Torah learning. This essay seeks to expose the use of satire and other literary forms of critique among passages treating cosmology and Torah study. Analytic tools developed by Pierre Bourdieu, especially as they pertain to exposing the use of the symbolic language intrinsic to the establishment of systems of social (...) authority, will be employed to delineate the ideological conflict among sages developing diverse approaches to ascending the religious hierarchy within early rabbinism. (shrink)

Two of the probabilistic measures of coherence discussed in this paper take probabilistic dependence into account and so depend on prior probabilities in a fundamental way. An example is given which suggests that this prior-dependence can lead to potential problems. Another coherence measure is shown to be independent of prior probabilities in a clearly defined sense and consequently is able to avoid such problems. The issue of prior-dependence is linked to the fact that the first two measures can be understood (...) as measures of coherence as striking agreement, while the third measure represents coherence as agreement. Thus, prior (in)dependence can be used to distinguish different conceptions of coherence. (shrink)

Renaissance and Baroque, two terms unknown in the ages they describe, are now an integral part of the general public's cultural vocabulary. The first encompasses European civilization from the mid-fifteenth century to around 1550, and the second refers to developments in the seventeenth century, with the intervening fifty years forming a period of transition termed Mannerism. Beginning with the appearance of Heinrich Wölfflin's Kunst geschichtliche Grundbegriffe in 1915, these two great epochs of intellectual development have been described quite successfully by (...) juxtaposing the one with the other. Wölfffin, for example, saw five great categories of discrimination between the two, namely Linear and Painterly, Plane and Recession, Closed and Open Form (Tectonic and A-tectonic Form), Multiplicity and Unity (Multiple Unity and Unified Unity), and Clearness and Unclearness (Absolute and Relative Clearness). More recently, Wylie Sypher in Four Stages of Renaissance Style has extended the list with the polar characteristics of Cyclic-Broken (Cyclothym-Schizothym), Exact-Abstract (Representational-Nonrepresentational), Visual-Haptic, Nearseeing-Farseeing, Dark-Light, Horizontal/Vertical-Oblique/Spiraling, and Points/Lines-Planes/Volumes. (shrink)

A primary purpose of argument is to increase the degree of reasonable confidence that one has in the truth of the conclusion. A question begging argument fails this purpose because it violates what W. E. Johnson called an epistemic condition of inference. Although an argument of the sort characterized by Robert Hoffman in his response (Analysis 32.2, Dec 71) to Richard Robinson (Analysis 31.4, March 71) begs the question in all circumstances, we usually understand the charge that an argument is (...) question begging with reference to the beliefs of the person, or the sort of person, to whom the argument is directed. (shrink)

This article answers John Biro's "Knowability, Believability, and Begging the Question: a Reply to Sanford" in "Metaphilosophy" 15 (1984). Biro and I agree that of two argument instances with the same form and content, one but not the other can beg the question, depending on other factors. These factors include actual beliefs, or so I maintain (against Biro) with the help of some analysed examples. Brief selections from Archbishop Whatley and J S Mill suggest that they also regard reference to (...) actual beliefs as essential to explaining begging the question. (shrink)

Two fusions can be in the same place at the same time. So long as a house made of Tinkertoys is intact, the fusion of all its Tinkertoys parts coincides with the fusion of it walls and its roof. If none of the Tinkertoys is destroyed, their fusion persists through the complete disassembly of the house. (So the house is not a fusion of its Tinkertoy parts.) The fusion of the walls and roof does not persist through the complete disassembly (...) because the walls and the roof themselves do not persist. (So the walls and the roof are also not fusions of their Tinkertoy parts.). (shrink)

The primary objects of hearing are sounds: everything we hear we hear by hearing a sound. (This claim differs from Berkeley’s that we hear only sounds and from Aristotle’s that we only hear sounds.) Colored regions are primary objects of sight, and pressure resistant regions are primary objects of perception by touch. By definition, the primary objects of perception are physical. The properties of the primary objects of perception are exactly the properties sense-datum theories attribute to sense-data. Indirect Realism holds (...) that awareness of sense-data (or something similar) mediates our perception of primary objects. Direct Realism denies this. The question when the perception of a primary object, such as parts of the surfaces of a hat and coat, is thereby the perception of a non-primary object, such as a person, is independent of the disagreement between Direct and Indirect Realism. (shrink)

A semantics of vagueness should reject the principle that every statement has a truth-value yet retain the classical tautologies. A many-value, non-truth-functional semantics and a semantics of super-valuations each have this result. According to the super-valuation approach, 'if a man with n hairs on his head is bald, then a man with n plus one hairs on his head is also bald' is false because it comes out false no matter how the vague predicate 'is bald' is appropriately made precise. (...) But why should a sentence in which components actually remain imprecise be regarded as actually false just because it would be false if its components were precise? On one of the alternative treatments of quantification allowed by the many-value approach, the sentence in question is assigned an intermediate value closer to 'false' than to 'true'. Despite the elegance of the super-valuation approach, there are reasons to prefer the many-value approach. (shrink)

This paper provides a new approach to inference to the best explanation based on a new coherence measure for comparing how well hypotheses explain the evidence. It addresses a number of criticisms of the use of probabilistic measures in this context by Clark Glymour, including limitations of earlier work on IBE. Computer experiments are used to show that the new approach finds the truth with a high degree of accuracy in hypothesis selection tasks and that in some cases its accuracy (...) is greater than hypothesis selection based on maximizing posterior probability. Hence, by overcoming some of the problems with the previous approach, this work provides a more adequate defence of IBE and suggests that IBE not only tracks truth but also has practical advantages over the previous approach. Applications of the new approach to parameter estimation and model selection are also explored. (shrink)

As theorists, developers, and practitioners of the anticipatory governance of emerging technologies, we applaud Ankeny et al.’s...

Critics of the conventional theory of biological evolution have asserted that while natural processes might result in some limited diversity, nothing fundamentally new can arise from “random” evolution. In response, biologists like Richard Dawkins have demonstrated that a computer program can generate a specific short phrase via evolution-like iterations starting with random gibberish. While such demonstrations are intriguing, they are flawed in that they have a fixed, prespecified future target, whereas in real biological evolution there is no fixed future target, (...) but only a complicated “fitness landscape.” In this study, a significantly more sophisticated evolutionary scheme is employed to produce text segments reminiscent of a Charles Dickens novel. The aggregate size of these segments is larger than the computer program and the input Dickens text, even when comparing compressed data. (shrink)

Consensus conferences, also known as citizens’ panels—a collection of lay citizens akin to a jury but charged with deliberating on policy issues with a high technical content—are a potentially important way to conduct technology assessments, inform policy makers about public views of new technologies, and improve public understanding of and participation in technological decision making. The first citizens’ panel in the United States occurred in April 1997 on the issue of “Telecommunications and the Future of Democracy.” This article evaluates the (...) impact of this citizens’ panel. The standard criteria to evaluate the impact of analyses focus on the “actual impact” and on the “impact on general thinking.” To these standard criteria, this article introduces the evaluation of two impacts related to learning: impact on the training of knowledgeable personnel and the interaction with lay knowledge. The impact evaluation is based on a nearly comprehensive set of semistructured telephone interviews with the participants in the panel. (shrink)

Many philosophic arguments concerned with infinite series depend on the mutual inconsistency of statements of the following five forms: (1) something exists which has R to something; (2) R is asymmetric; (3) R is transitive; (4) for any x which has R to something, there is something which has R to x; (5) only finitely many things are related by R. Such arguments are suspect if the two-place relation R in question involves any conceptual vagueness or inexactness. Traditional sorites arguments (...) show that a statement of form (4) can fail to be true even though it has no clear counter-example. Conceptual vagueness allows a finite series not to have any definite first member. I consider the speculative possibilities that there have been only finitely many non-overlapping hours although there has been no first hour and that space and time are only finitely divisible even though there are no smallest spatial or temporal intervals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Provoking a ConversationDavid H. PorterLee T. Pearcy's The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (Baylor University Press, Waco, Tex. 2005) is a book every classicist should read. Pearcy's focus is on the state of classics in our country today: where we are, how we got there, where we need to go. His book is wide-ranging, tightly argued, and carefully researched. Pearcy's assessment of the present state of (...) classics in America strikes me as overly bleak, but his analysis deserves our close attention. Chapters 1 and 2, which trace the history of classical studies in Europe and America since the Renaissance, are filled with valuable information and insights; chapter 3 dissects four interlinked arguments that, to Pearcy's thinking, explain the parlous state of classics today—and threaten its future survival; and chapter 4 offers thoughtful suggestions as to how classicists might respond to these challenges. I doubt that most readers will agree with all of Pearcy's analysis—I certainly do not—but I found his book consistently stimulating. He writes that his purpose is to provoke a conversation, not to solve a problem (118); it is a conversation that will benefit us all, and this book is a welcome and timely catalyst.Pearcy's starting point, and the theme to which he repeatedly returns, is what he identifies as an essential difference between classical studies in Europe (including Great Britain) and classical studies in America. To quote from Pearcy's account of Vittorino da Feltre, whom he sees as an architect of what we now call "liberal education," classical education was designed above all "to take those who would... rule and those who might be admitted to the governing class and to form their minds and souls in such a way that they would be the best rulers (8)... "Renaissance classical education... [was] designed to educate members of the governing class by exposing them to the best patterns of conduct, modes of thinking, and products of culture..." (9). In Europe this form of education made sense in that its presupposition of a governing class matched the social and political realities of the countries in question. In America, by contrast, the advent of democracy undermined the central assumptions of such education and threatened its relevance to our society: "The necessary openness of thought in a democracy has a consequence that is fatal to [End Page 595] the paradigm of classical liberal arts education. In a democratic society, the freedom and theoretical equality of all citizens make it necessary to avoid privileging any single set of beliefs or ideas" (23).Pearcy's hypothesis is thought-provoking, but it strikes me as overly neat. A quick glance at two individuals, one English, the other American, offers some corroboration and also raises some intriguing questions. Leonard Woolf majored in classics at St. Paul's School and Cambridge, and, though his origins were not "aristocratic," upon graduation he entered the ranks of the governing class as a civil servant in Ceylon. The progression matches Pearcy's model, and Woolf even comments on it in terms similar to those Pearcy uses: "The male members of the British aristocracy of intellect went automatically to the best public schools, to Oxford and Cambridge, and then into all the most powerful and respectable professions."1 By contrast, S. S. McClure, the American publisher, migrated from Ireland to the States at age nine as a virtual pauper, spent eight years putting himself through Knox College, and chose to major in classics for reasons similar to those Pearcy identifies as the basis for classical education: "During the years that he reads and studies Greek a boy gets certain standards that he uses all the rest of his life, long after he has forgotten grammar and vocabulary."2 Unlike Woolf, however, McClure found to his dismay that though he had graduated third in a class of thirty, his classical education did not open doors to a professional career: "I talked with other boys, and found that most of them had arranged for the immediate future. One classmate was going into his father's law office; another was going to enter his uncle's... (shrink)

Based on Medicine as a human experience / David E. Reiser, David H. Rosen. c1984.

A statement q is a conclusion intermediate between p and h if and only if (1) p justifies h, (2) p justifies q, and (3) (p and not-q) justifies h to a significantly lesser degree than p justifies h. I contend that Gettier-type counterexamples to definitions of factual knowledge violate the following principle: if one knows that h on the basis of p, then all the conclusions intermediate between p and h are true. This principle does not refer to anyone's (...) beliefs that intermediate conclusions are true. I test my contention against several examples which have been discussed in the literature. (shrink)

This chapter develops and defends a formal epistemology of conjunctive explanation by determining the conditions under which multiple distinct explanations are better than one. The general approach is to identify an appropriate measure of explanatory goodness that can then be applied to conjunctive explanations. If a conjunctive explanation is to be preferred it needs to have greater explanatory virtue (e.g., power or scope) with respect to the evidence, but this explanatory gain is insufficient on its own. Given a conjunctive explanation’s (...) greater complexity, it also has a cost associated with it and so a balance needs to be struck between the gain and the cost. This is achieved by employing a Bayesian measure proposed by I. J. Good. This chapter explores some properties of this measure and its application to the epistemology of conjunctive explanation. In so doing, it addresses the general question of whether it is desirable to have more informative, less probable hypotheses when seeking good explanations. (shrink)

Morton White proposes two patterns of expansion for sentences of the form "Possible (x is Q)" in "On What Could Have Happened" (Philosophical Review, 1968). His attempts in "Ands and Cans" (Mind, 1974) and in "Positive Freedom, Negative Freedom, and Possibility" (Journal of Philosophy, 1973) to simplify these two patterns and his argument for abandoning the first pattern are mistaken. Although I question a number of White's claims, my purpose is to improve his treatment of possibility rather than to refute (...) it. Our understanding of what constitutes "the same circumstances" largely determines whether a given condition is appropriately mentioned in a first-pattern expansion. This point helps support the form of compatibilism White advocates. (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument for the likelihood ratio measure of confirmation by showing that one of the adequacy criteria used in another argument can be replaced by a more plausible and better supported criterion which is a special case of the weak likelihood principle. This new argument is also used to show that the likelihood ratio measure is to be preferred to a measure that has recently received support in the literature.

Self-consciousness and the self -- Diachronic unity, diachronic singularity, and the subject of consciousness -- A modal argument for immateriality -- Intelligibility concerns and causal objections -- Concluding remarks.