106,612 research outputs found
Cognitive science and epistemic openness
Recent findings in cognitive science suggest that the epistemic subject is more complex and epistemically porous than is generally pictured. Human knowers are open to the world via multiple channels, each operating for particular purposes and according to its own logic. These findings need to be understood and addressed by the philosophical community. The current essay argues that one consequence of the new findings is to invalidate certain arguments for epistemic anti-realism
Epistemological vs. Ontological Relationalism in Quantum Mechanics: Relativism or Realism?
In this paper we investigate the history of relationalism and its present use
in some interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the first part of this article
we will provide a conceptual analysis of the relation between substantivalism,
relationalism and relativism in the history of both physics and philosophy. In
the second part, we will address some relational interpretations of quantum
mechanics, namely, Bohr's relational approach, the modal interpretation by
Kochen, the perspectival modal version by Bene and Dieks and the relational
interpretation by Rovelli. We will argue that all these interpretations ground
their understanding of relations in epistemological terms. By taking into
account the analysis on the first part of our work, we intend to highlight the
fact that there is a different possibility for understanding quantum mechanics
in relational terms which has not been yet considered within the foundational
literature. This possibility is to consider relations in (non-relativist)
ontological terms. We will argue that such an understanding might be capable of
providing a novel approach to the problem of representing what quantum
mechanics is really talking about.Comment: Welcome
Testimony and illusion
This paper considers a form of scepticism according to which sentences, along with other linguistic entities such as verbs and phonemes, etc., are never realized. If, whenever a conversational participant produces some noise or other, they and all other participants assume that a specific sentence has been realized (or, more colloquially, spoken), communication will be fluent whether or not the shared assumption is correct. That communication takes place is therefore, one might think, no ground for assuming that sentences are realized during a typical conversation. I reject both this 'folie-à-deux' view and the arguments for it due to Georges Rey. I do so by drawing on Gilbert Harman's no-false-lemmas principle. Since testimony is a form of knowledge and, according to the principle, knowledge cannot depend essentially on false assumptions, testimony is incompatible with the claim that sentence realization is but an illusion. Much of the paper is given over to defending this appeal to the no-false-lemmas principle. After all, a more attractive option might seem to be to infer instead that the principle is itself falsified by the folie-Ã -deux view
From Parmenidean Identity to Beyond Classical Idealism and Epistemic Constructivism
Rockmore’s paper offers a nice discussion on how classical German idealism provides a plausible account of the Parmenidean insight that thought and being are identical and suggests that idealist epistemic constructivism is arguably the most promising approach to cognition. In this short commentary, I will explore the implications of adopting other interpretations of Parmenidean identity thesis, which arguably lead to different conclusions than the ones drawn by Rockmore. En route to disavow the distinction between ontology and epistemology, I argue that one may adopt an approach on cognition which would be immunized to worries that prompt Rockmore’s elaboration and also embrace (at least) some of its benefits
Immanent Powers versus Causal Powers (Propensities, Latencies and Dispositions) in Quantum Mechanics
In this paper we compare two different notions of 'power', both of which
attempt to provide a realist understanding of quantum mechanics grounded on the
potential mode of existence. For this propose we will begin by introducing two
different notions of potentiality present already within Aristotelian
metaphysics, namely, irrational potentiality and rational potentiality. After
discussing the role played by potentiality within classical and quantum
mechanics, we will address the notion of causal power which is directly related
to irrational potentiality and has been adopted by many interpretations of QM.
We will then present the notion of immanent power which relates to rational
potentiality and argue that this new concept presents important advantages
regarding the possibilities it provides for understanding in a novel manner the
theory of quanta. We end our paper with a comparison between both notions of
'power', stressing some radical differences between them.Comment: Forthcoming in: Probing the Meaning and Structure of Quantum
Mechanics, D. Aerts, M.L. Dalla Chiara, C. de Ronde and D. Krause (Eds.),
World Scientific, Singapore. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1310.453
Illusionism's discontent
Frankish positions his view, illusionism about qualia (a.k.a. eliminativist physicalism), in opposition to what he calls radical realism (dualism and neutral monism) and conservative realism (a.k.a. non-eliminativist physicalism). Against radical realism, he upholds physicalism. But he goes along with key premises of the Gap Arguments for radical realism, namely, 1) that epistemic/explanatory gaps exist between the physical and the phenomenal, and 2) that every truth should be perspicuously explicable from the fundamental truth about the world; and he concludes that because physicalism is true, there could be no phenomenal truths, and no qualia. I think he is wrong to accept 2); and even if he was right to accept it, the more plausible response would be not to deny the existence of qualia but to deny physicalism. In either case, denying the existence of qualia is the wrong answer. I present a physicalist realist alterative that refutes premise 2 of the Gap Argument; I also make a general case against the scientism that accompanies Frankish’s metaphysics
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