Infinite Regresses, Infinite Beliefs

One way of mapping part of the domain of epistemology is to represent various theories as responses to the following argument: (I) A belief (strictly, a token state of belief) is justified only if a justified belief is a reason for it. (Premiss.) (II) There are justified beliefs. (Premiss.) (III) The proper ancestral of the reason-relation is irreflexive. (Premiss.) (IV) There is an infinite sequence (strictly, a sequence with infinite range) of justified beliefs each of which is a reason for its predecessor, if any. (From (I) to (III).) (V) There is no such sequence. (Premiss.) (VI) There both is and is not such a sequence. (From (IV) and (V).) (VII) Not-(I) / not-(II) / not-(III) / not-(V). (Reductio.

The Infinite Mixture of Infinite Gaussian Mixtures

Dirichlet process mixture of Gaussians (DPMG) has been used in the literature for clustering and density estimation problems. However, many real-world data exhibit cluster distributions that cannot be captured by a single Gaussian. Modeling such data sets by DPMG creates several extraneous clusters even when clusters are relatively well-defined. Herein, we present the infinite mixture of infinite Gaussian mixtures (I2GMM) for more flexible modeling of data sets with skewed and multi-modal cluster distributions. Instead of using a single Gaussian for each cluster as in the standard DPMG model, the generative model of I2GMM uses a single DPMG for each cluster. The individual DPMGs are linked together through centering of their base distributions at the atoms of a higher level DP prior. Inference is performed by a collapsed Gibbs sampler that also enables partial parallelization. Experimental results on several artificial and real-world data sets suggest the proposed I2GMM model can predict clusters more accurately than existing variational Bayes and Gibbs sampler versions of DPMG

Infinite barbarians

This paper discusses an infinite regress that looms behind a certain kind of historical explanation. The movement of one barbarian group is often explained by the movement of others, but those movements in turn call for an explanation. While their explanation can again be the movement of yet another group of barbarians, if this sort of explanation does not stop somewhere we are left with an infinite regress of barbarians. While that regress would be vicious, it cannot be accommodated by several general views about what viciousness in infinite regresses amounts to. This example is additional evidence that we should prefer a pluralist approach to infinite regresses

Infinite Descent

Once one accepts that certain things metaphysically depend upon, or are metaphysically explained by, other things, it is natural to begin to wonder whether these chains of dependence or explanation must come to an end. This essay surveys the work that has been done on this issue—the issue of grounding and infinite descent. I frame the discussion around two questions: (1) What is infinite descent of ground? and (2) Is infinite descent of ground possible? In addressing the second question, I will consider a number of arguments that have been made for and against the possibility of infinite descent of ground. When relevant, I connect the discussion to two important views about the way reality can be structured by grounding: metaphysical foundationalism and metaphysical infinitism

Resolvability of infinite designs

In this paper we examine the resolvability of infinite designs. We show that in stark contrast to the finite case, resolvability for infinite designs is fairly commonplace. We prove that every t-(v,k,Λ) design with t finite, v infinite and k,λ<v is resolvable and, in fact, has α orthogonal resolutions for each α<v. We also show that, while a t-(v,k,Λ) design with t and λ finite, v infinite and k=v may or may not have a resolution, any resolution of such a design must have v parallel classes containing v blocks and at most λ−1 parallel classes containing fewer than v blocks. Further, a resolution into parallel classes of any specified sizes obeying these conditions is realisable in some design. When k<v and λ=v and when k=v and λ is infinite, we give various examples of resolvable and non-resolvable t-(v,k,Λ) designs