18,833 research outputs found
Explanation, confirmation, and Hempel's paradox
Hempelâs Converse Consequence Condition (CCC), Entailment Condition (EC), and Special Consequence Condition (SCC) have some prima facie plausibility when taken individually. Hempel, though, shows that they have no plausibility when taken together, for together they entail that E confirms H for any propositions E and H. This is âHempelâs paradoxâ. It turns out that Hempelâs argument would fail if one or more of CCC, EC, and SCC were modified in terms of explanation. This opens up the possibility that Hempelâs paradox can be solved by modifying one or more of CCC, EC, and SCC in terms of explanation. I explore this possibility by modifying CCC and SCC in terms of explanation and considering whether CCC and SCC so modified are correct. I also relate that possibility to Inference to the Best Explanation
Anomalous Dualism: A New Approach to the Mind-Body Problem
In this paper, I explore anomalous dualism about consciousness, a view that has not previously been explored in any detail. We can classify theories of consciousness along two dimensions: first, a theory might be physicalist or dualist; second, a theory might endorse any of the three following views regarding causal relations between phenomenal properties (properties that characterize states of our consciousness) and physical properties: nomism (the two kinds of property interact through deterministic laws), acausalism (they do not causally interact), and anomalism (they interact but not through deterministic laws). I suggest that a kind of anomalous dualism, nonreductive anomalous panpsychism, promises to offer the best overall answer to two pressing issues for dualist views, the problem of mental causation and the mapping problem (the problem of predicting mind-body associations)
Bell's Theorem and Locally-Mediated Reformulations of Quantum Mechanics
Bell's Theorem rules out many potential reformulations of quantum mechanics,
but within a generalized framework, it does not exclude all "locally-mediated"
models. Such models describe the correlations between entangled particles as
mediated by intermediate parameters which track the particle world-lines and
respect Lorentz covariance. These locally-mediated models require the
relaxation of an arrow-of-time assumption which is typically taken for granted.
Specifically, some of the mediating parameters in these models must
functionally depend on measurement settings in their future, i.e., on input
parameters associated with later times. This option (often called
"retrocausal") has been repeatedly pointed out in the literature, but the
exploration of explicit locally-mediated toy-models capable of describing
specific entanglement phenomena has begun only in the past decade. A brief
survey of such models is included here. These models provide a continuous and
consistent description of events associated with spacetime locations, with
aspects that are solved "all-at-once" rather than unfolding from the past to
the future. The tension between quantum mechanics and relativity which is
usually associated with Bell's Theorem does not occur here. Unlike conventional
quantum models, the number of parameters needed to specify the state of a
system does not grow exponentially with the number of entangled particles. The
promise of generalizing such models to account for all quantum phenomena is
identified as a grand challenge.Comment: 61 pages, 2 figures; accepted for publication by Rev. Mod. Phy
Deterministic Dynamics and Chaos: Epistemology and Interdisciplinary Methodology
We analyze, from a theoretical viewpoint, the bidirectional interdisciplinary
relation between mathematics and psychology, focused on the mathematical theory
of deterministic dynamical systems, and in particular, on the theory of chaos.
On one hand, there is the direct classic relation: the application of
mathematics to psychology. On the other hand, we propose the converse relation
which consists in the formulation of new abstract mathematical problems
appearing from processes and structures under research of psychology. The
bidirectional multidisciplinary relation from-to pure mathematics, largely
holds with the "hard" sciences, typically physics and astronomy. But it is
rather new, from the social and human sciences, towards pure mathematics
Manipulationism, Ceteris Paribus Laws, and the Bugbear of Background Knowledge
According to manipulationist accounts of causal explanation, to explain an event is to show how it could be changed by intervening on its cause. The relevant change must be a âserious possibilityâ claims Woodward 2003, distinct from mere logical or physical possibilityâapproximating something I call âscientific possibilityâ. This idea creates significant difficulties: background knowledge is necessary for judgments of possibili-ty. Yet the primary vehicles of explanation in manipulationism are âinvariantâ generali-sations, and these are not well adapted to encoding such knowledge, especially in the social sciences, as some of it is non-causal. Ceteris paribus (CP) laws or generalisa-tions labour under no such difficulty. A survey of research methods such as case and comparative studies, randomised control trials, ethnography, and structural equation modeling, suggests that it would be more difficult and in some instances impossible to try to represent the output of each method in invariant generalisations; and that this is because in each method causal and non-causal background knowledge mesh in a way that cannot easily be accounted for in manipulationist terms. Ceteris paribus-generalisations being superior in this regard, a theory of explanation based on the latter is a better fit for social science
On the Nature of Models: The Unfinished Debate
Review: Ippoliti, Emiliano, Sterpetti, Fabio, Nickles Thomas : Models and Inferences in Science
Geometry, pregeometry and beyond
This article explores the overall geometric manner in which human beings make
sense of the world around them by means of their physical theories; in
particular, in what are nowadays called pregeometric pictures of Nature. In
these, the pseudo-Riemannian manifold of general relativity is considered a
flawed description of spacetime and it is attempted to replace it by
theoretical constructs of a different character, ontologically prior to it.
However, despite its claims to the contrary, pregeometry is found to
surreptitiously and unavoidably fall prey to the very mode of description it
endeavours to evade, as evidenced in its all-pervading geometric understanding
of the world. The question remains as to the deeper reasons for this human,
geometric predilection--present, as a matter of fact, in all of physics--and as
to whether it might need to be superseded in order to achieve the goals that
frontier theoretical physics sets itself at the dawn of a new century: a
sounder comprehension of the physical meaning of empty spacetime.Comment: 41 pages, Latex. v2: Date added. v3: Main arguments refined,
secondary discussions abridged; expands on the published versio
How Robust Are the Linkages Between Religiosity and Economic Growth
Do variations in the degree of religiosity across countries translate into predictable differences in cross-country growth experiences? We apply a model averaging procedure to investigate the empirical robustness of linkages between religiosity and growth when other fundamental growth determinants, such as institutions, fractionalization, and geography, are simultaneously considered. Our results suggest that while religiosity variables such as belief in hell, belief in heaven, and monthly church attendance are potentially relevant to growth there is no evidence to suggest that they are either quantitatively significant or important.Economic growth, Religion, Model Uncertainty
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