Humans typically display hindsight bias. They are more confident that the evidence available beforehand made some outcome probable when they know the outcome occurred than when they don't. There is broad consensus that hindsight bias is irrational, but this consensus is wrong. Hindsight bias is generally rationally permissible and sometimes rationally required. The fact that a given outcome occurred provides both evidence about what the total evidence available ex ante was, and also evidence about what that evidence supports. Even if (...) you in fact evaluate the ex ante evidence correctly, you should not be certain of this. Then, learning the outcome provides evidence that if you erred, you are more likely to have erred low rather than high in estimating the degree to which the ex ante evidence supported the hypothesis that that outcome would occur. (shrink)

Reinforcement schemes are a class of non-Markovian stochastic processes. Their non-Markovian nature allows them to model some kind of memory of the past. One subclass of such models are those in which the past is exponentially discounted or forgotten. Often, models in this subclass have the property of becoming trapped with probability 1 in some degenerate state. While previous work has concentrated on such limit results, we concentrate here on a contrary effect, namely that the time to become trapped may (...) increase exponentially in 1/x as the discount rate, 1− x, approaches 1. As a result, the time to become trapped may easily exceed the lifetime of the simulation or of the physical data being modeled. In such a case, the quasi-stationary behavior is more germane. We apply our results to a model of social network formation based on ternary (three-person) interactions with uniform positive reinforcement. (shrink)

Many philosophers of emotion, whether perceptual or cognitive theorists, have claimed that emotions represent evaluative properties. This is often supported by an appeal to the fittingness of emotion: that emotions can be fitting shows they represent evaluative properties. In this paper, however, I argue that this inference is much too fast. In fact, no aspect of the rational assessment of emotion directly supports the claim that emotions represent evaluative properties. This inference can, however, be matured into an inference to the (...) best explanation. But this requires coming to terms with a significant emerging rival, the attitudinal theory of emotion. In this paper, I show how this can be accomplished and the inference from fittingness to content saved. (shrink)

Logic and Reality is a collection of essays by philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, and computer scientists, celebrating the work of the late distinguished philosopher Arthur Prior on the eightieth anniversary of his birth. Topics range from philosophical discussions of the nature of time and of the nature of logic itself, to descriptions of computer systems that can reason and take account of the fact that they exist in a temporal world.

Pragmatic encroachment theories have a problem with evidence. On the one hand, the arguments that knowledge is interest-relative look like they will generalise to show that evidence too is interest-relative. On the other hand, our best story of how interests affect knowledge presupposes an interest-invariant notion of evidence. -/- The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of evidence that is interest-relative, but which allows that ‘best story’ to go through with minimal changes. The core idea is that (...) the evidence someone has is just what evidence a radical interpreter says they have. And a radical interpreter is playing a kind of game with the person they are interpreting. The cases that pose problems for pragmatic encroachment theorists generate fascinating games between the interpreter and the interpretee. They are games with multiple equilibria. To resolve them we need to detour into the theory of equilibrium selection. I’ll argue that the theory we need is the theory of risk-dominant equilibria. That theory will tell us how the interpreter will play the game, which in turn will tell us what evidence the person has. The evidence will be interest-relative, because what the equilibrium of the game is will be interest-relative. But it will not undermine the story we tell about how interests usually affect knowledge. (shrink)

A philosophical analysis of the discourses, practices, and effects of representation in political institutions, focusing on American democracy.

Approaches to Wittgenstein brings together for the first time the many varied aspects of Wittgenstein's life, philosophy and aesthetic attitudes. It draws from many of his unpublished manuscripts to illuminate his work.

Past debates surrounding wilderness have not led to constructive dialogue but instead have created a rift between dueling sides. Far from academic, this debate has important ethical, policy, and pr...

New Blackfriars, Volume 102, Issue 1101, Page 601-606, September 2021.

Although one can find a robust philosophical tradition supporting asceticism in the West, from ancient Greece to at least early modernity, very little attention has been paid to what motivated this broad support. Instead, following criticism from figures such as Hume, Voltaire, Bentham, and Nietzsche, asceticism has been largely disregarded as either eccentric or uniquely religious. In this paper, I provide what I take to be the core moral argument that motivated many philosophical ascetics. In brief, acts of deliberate self-denial (...) are practice in an important part of acting ethically and are thus practically rational as a means to acquiring virtue. And if this argument has been a core motivation for asceticism in the West then arguably philosophical ascetics have been on to something, especially given contemporary empirical research on self-control. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

This case is part of a series of case studies used as an exercise within a program on research ethics education. The case involves research on genetic birth defects in a culturally distinct, closed religious community in which elders speak for the community. The case raises ethical issues of informed consent in such a setting; of collaboration with the community; of conflicts between the researchers’ responsibilities to the community as a whole and to individual subjects; of the impact of the (...) researcher’s findings on the practices and values of the community and issues regarding how the researchers share findings with subjects and how the findings are stored. (shrink)

Being Indigenous and operating in an institution such as a university places us in a complex position. The premise of decolonizing history, literature, curriculum, and thought in general creates a tenuous space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to confront a shared colonial condition. What does decolonization mean for Indigenous peoples? Is decolonization an implied promise to squash the tropes of coloniality? Or is it a way for non-Indigenous people to create another paradigm or site for their own resistance or transgression (...) of thinking? What are the roles of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in this space of educational potential, this curriculum called decolonization? This article presents a multi-vocal reflection on these and related questions. (shrink)

Renin is the rate‐limiting enzyme in a cascade that leads to production of angiotensin II, which is perhaps our most important regulator of salt and water balance and blood pressure. In this personal perspective, I describe how I entered the renin field 33 years ago by discovering that proteases increased the level of renin activity in biological fluids, so revealing the existence of a ‘pro’ form of the molecule. This led me on a journey that encapsulated all of the major (...) milestones in molecular discovery for renin. These included (1) the elucidation of the steps in renin biosynthesis, (2) the cloning of renin cDNA and its gene, (3) demonstration of the structure of the renin protein, (4) using the renin gene in the first genetic studies in hypertension, (5) finding the mechanism by which the major controller, cyclic AMP, regulates the promoter, (6) showing that a strong enhancer and its weak promoter control this physiologically regulatable gene in accord with the variegation (on/off switching) model, and (7) being the first to identify molecules involved in posttranscriptional control. The renin molecule, its gene and molecular control are now very well understood, but more fine details on the topic of renin continue to emerge to delight ‘reninologists’ and others. BioEssays 25:520–527, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 103, Issue 1106, Page 433-435, July 2022.

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model...The editors of this interesting collection,1 Stephan Blatti and Paul Snowdon, have placed the various essays, most of which were specially written for this volume, in three categories: Part I contains articles critical of animalism; Part II contains essays defending animalism and (...) Part III contains essays drawing out the consequences and practical applications of animalism. After some introductory remarks, I will discuss two of the essays attacking animalism – those of Derek Parfit and Mark Johnston – and then comment on Paul Snowdon’s essay....First, though, a word on the definition of animalism. In their Introduction, Blatti and Snowdon define animalism as ‘… the... (shrink)

Fabi and Goldberg make the important observation that skewed funding priorities in bioethics contribute to the perpetuation of injustice. Through a lens of structural racism, the authors dem...

ABSTRACTThe idea of public reason requires that citizens in their public deliberation employ considerations stemming from a shared conception of justice. One worry is that public reason's content will be incomplete, in that it does not contain sufficient material for adequate public debate. Rawls has a way of expanding the content of public reason to address such concerns—by including in public reason all those things you and I say in our justification of the conception of justice. After arguing that this (...) strategy fails, a new way of expanding public reason's content is proposed. Instead of understanding the Supreme Court—which Rawls famously calls the “exemplar” of public reason—as an institution that appeals to exogenously determined public reasons, we should understand the judicial authority in a liberal democratic society as an endogenous fountain of public reason. (shrink)

This book examines from different perspectives the moral significance of non-human members of the biotic community and their omission from climate ethics literature. The complexity of life in an age of rapid climate change demands the development of moral frameworks that recognize and respect the dignity and agency of both human and non-human organisms. Despite decades of careful work in non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, recent anthologies on climate ethics have largely omitted non-anthropocentric approaches. This multidisciplinary volume of international scholars (...) tackles this lacuna by presenting novel work on non-anthropocentric approaches to climate ethics. Written in an accessible style, the text incorporates sentiocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric perspectives on climate change. With diverse perspectives from both leading and emerging scholars of environmental ethics, geography, religious studies, conservation ecology, and environmental studies, this book will offer a valuable reading for students and scholars of these fields. (shrink)