An Inchoate Universe: James's Probabilistic Underdeterminism

In this paper, I challenge the traditional narrative that William James’s arguments against determinism were primarily motivated by his personal struggles with depression. I argue that James presents an alternative argument against determinism that is motivated by his commitment to sound scientific practice. James argues that determinism illegitimately extrapolates from observations of past events to predictions about future events without acknowledging the distinct metaphysical difference between them. This occupation with futurity suggests that James’s true target is better understood as logical determinism rather than causal determinism. This has consequences for James’s proposed alternative, which I call his probabilistic underdeterminism, a conception of the universe that is built on chance, choice, and a local teleology. All of this forms part of a broader criticism of the scientific practices of his day based on their widespread failure to acknowledge the distorting effects of observation on that which is observed

Toward a Demarcation of Forms of Determinism

In the current philosophical literature, determinism is rarely defined explicitly. This paper attempts to show that there are in fact many forms of determinism, most of which are familiar, and that these can be differentiated according to their particular components. Recognizing the composite character of determinism is thus central to demarcating its various forms

Fatalism as a Metaphysical Thesis

Even though fatalism has been an intermittent topic of philosophy since Greek antiquity, this paper argues that fate ought to be of little concern to metaphysicians. Fatalism is neither an interesting metaphysical thesis in its own right, nor can it be identified with theses that are, such as realism about the future or determinism

Absoluteness of Truth and the Lvov–Warsaw School (Twardowski, Kotarbiński, Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz, Tarski, Kokoszyńska)

According to Twardowski, truth is if it is independent of temporal coordinates. This understanding was one of the main arguments against truth-relativism. Kotarbiński rejected this view as far the issue concerns sentences about the future, but he did not elaborated this idea from a logical point of view. Leśniewski offered an argument that truth is eternal if and only if it is sempiternal; Twardowski shared this opinion. Łukasiewicz rejected sempiternality but retained eternality. His main novelty consisted in applying three-valued logic to explain how it is possible that truth is not sempiternal. Łukasiewicz also pointed out that bivalence together with the principle of causality implies radical determinism. Kotarbiński accepted Leśniewski’s criticism and he defended Twardowski’s view in Elementy. Tarski did not explicitly addressed to the problem of absoluteness or temporality of truth. On the other hand, Kokoszyńska proposed an interpretation of the semantic theory of truth as absolute. It is possible to justify absoluteness of truth in semantics cum the principle of bivalence and show that bivalence does not imply determinism

Sandra Lapointe (ed.) Themes from Ontology, Mind, and Logic: Present and Past – Essays in Honour of Peter Simons

I review Sandra Lapointe (ed.) "Themes from Ontology, Mind, and Logic: Present and Past – Essays in Honour of Peter Simons"

The Arabic Sea Battle: al-Fārābī on the Problem of Future Contingents

Ancient commentators like Ammonius and Boethius tried to solve Aristotle's “sea battle argument” in On Interpretation 9 by saying that statements about future contingents are “indefinitely” true or false. They were followed by al-Fārābī in his commentary on On Interpretation. The article sets out two possible interpretations of what “indefinitely” means here, and shows that al-Fārābī actually has both conceptions: one applied in his interpretation of Aristotle, and another that he is forced into by the problem of divine foreknowledge. It also explains the relevance of al-Fārābī's remarks as a link between the non-statistical modal theories of Philo and Avicenna

The concept of free will as an infinite metatheoretic recursion

It is argued that the concept of free will, like the concept of truth in formal languages, requires a separation between an object level and a meta-level for being consistently defined. The Jamesian two-stage model, which deconstructs free will into the causally open "free" stage with its closure in the "will" stage, is implicitly a move in this direction. However, to avoid the dilemma of determinism, free will additionally requires an infinite regress of causal meta-stages, making free choice a hypertask. We use this model to define free will of the rationalist-compatibilist type. This is shown to provide a natural three-way distinction between quantum indeterminism, freedom and free will, applicable respectively to artificial intelligence (AI), animal agents and human agents. We propose that the causal hierarchy in our model corresponds to a hierarchy of Turing uncomputability. Possible neurobiological and behavioral tests to demonstrate free will experimentally are suggested. Ramifications of the model for physics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, neuropathological medicine and moral philosophy are briefly outlined.Comment: Accepted in INDECS (close to the accepted version

Two interpretations of the problem of logical determinism in Aristotle

In De Interpretatione 9 (19а7–19b4), Aristotle discusses the problem of the logical determinism. In analytic philosophy, this fragment is interpreted by means of the modern logic. There are, basically, two approaches in interpreting it. Proponents of one of them claim that Aristotle’s discussion of the problem ends in restricting the principle of bivalence. Proponents of another one argue that Aristotle intends to show that the deterministic argument is not valid and does not demand any revision of logical principles. Interpretations by Łukasiewicz and von Wright, representing these approaches, are analyzed in the present paper. The main differences between Łukasiewicz’s and von Wright’s ways of exposing and rebutting the deterministic argument are explicated. Using an argument of Fine, it is shown that von Wright’s interpretation is preferable

Causality in the Semantics of Esterel: Revisited

We re-examine the challenges concerning causality in the semantics of Esterel and show that they pertain to the known issues in the semantics of Structured Operational Semantics with negative premises. We show that the solutions offered for the semantics of SOS also provide answers to the semantic challenges of Esterel and that they satisfy the intuitive requirements set by the language designers