Quine, Ontology, and Physicalism

Quine's views on ontology and naturalism are well-known but rarely considered in tandem. According to my interpretation the connection between them is vital. I read Quine as a global epistemic structuralist. Quine thought we only ever know objects qua solutions to puzzles about significant intersections in observations. Objects are always accessed descriptively, via their roles in our best theory. Quine's Kant lectures contain an early version of epistemic structuralism with uncharacteristic remarks about the mental. Here Quine embraces mitigated anomalous monism, allowing introspection and the availability in principle of full physical descriptions of the perceptual states which get science off the ground. Later versions abandon these ideas. My epistemic-structural interpretation explains why. I argue first-personal introspective access to mental states is incompatible with global epistemic structuralism

Committing To An Individual: Ontological Commitment, Reference And Epistemology

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)When we use a directly referential expression to denote an object, do we incur an ontological commitment to that object, as Russell and Barcan Marcus held? Not according to Quine, whose regimented language has only variables as denoting expressions, but no constants to model direct reference. I make a case for a more liberal conception of ontological commitment-more wide-ranging than Quine's-which allows for commitment to individuals, with an improved logical language of regimentation. The reason for Quine's prohibition on commitment to individuals, I argue, is that his choice of regimented language is heavily informed by his holist epistemology, in which objects are introduced via a description of their explanatory role. But non-holists can coherently attempt to commit to individuals using directly referential expressions, modelled in a formal language as constants. While holding on to the insight that a logical language is a helpful medium for ontology, I propose instead a more permissive language of regimentation, one expanded to permit the use of constants to record attempts to commit to individuals, which allows us to make sense of non-holist theories with alternative name-based or name-and-variable-based criteria of ontological commitment as well as Quinean theories.193583604Capes Postdoctoral Research Fellowship GrantCoordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES

Lost voices: on counteracting exclusion of women from histories of contemporary philosophy

This paper introduces a Special Issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy on women in philosophy 1880-1970. It argues that there are social, institutional and academic reasons why women philosophers have been excluded from the history of analytic philosophy in this period. There is still time to reverse those tendencies

"Bad Philosophy" or "Derivative Philosophy": labels that keep women out of the canon

Efforts to include women in the canon have long been beset by reactionary gatekeeping, typified by the charge, 'That's Not Philosophy'. That charge does not apply to early-to-mid-analytic female philosophers – Welby, Ladd-Franklin, Bryant, Jones, de Laguna, Stebbing, Ambrose, Macdonald – with job titles like 'Lecturer in Logic' or 'Professor of Philosophy', and publications in Mind, Journal of Philosophy, and Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. It is hopeless to dismiss their work as 'Not Philosophy'. Then why aren't they in the canon of analytic philosophy? Comparable reactionary gatekeeping affects them, we argue, but typified by the labels 'Bad Philosophy' or 'Derivative Philosophy'. Virtue and vice epistemology help explain both why these women were neglected and why their own approaches are often epistemically virtuous. Both their contemporaries and historians are deficient in scholarly virtues in labelling these women's work 'bad', or derived from male mentors or partners, with no or specious justification. Their disparaged qualities - intellectual humility, modesty, critical self-reflection, crediting others, disclosing biases - are frequently outright epistemic virtues

First-personal ontological commitment, self-body dualism and contemporary psychology

No abstract available

Association of Hospital Volume with Perioperative Mortality of Endovascular Repair of Complex Aortic Aneurysms: A Nationwide Cohort Study

Objective: We evaluate nationwide perioperative outcomes of complex EVAR and assess the volume-outcome association of complex EVAR. Summary of Background Data: Endovascular treatment with fenestrated (FEVAR) or branched (BEVAR) endografts is progressively used for excluding complex aortic aneurysms (complex AAs). It is unclear if a volumeoutcome association exists in endovascular treatment of complex AAs (complex EVAR). Methods: All patients prospectively registered in the Dutch Surgical Aneurysm Audit who underwent complex EVAR (FEVAR or BEVAR) between January 2016 and January 2020 were included. The effect of annual hospital volume on perioperative mortality was examined using multivariable logistic regression analyses. Patients were stratified into quartiles based on annual hospital volume to determine hospital volume categories. Results: We included 694 patients (539 FEVAR patients, 155 BEVAR patients). Perioperative mortality following FEVAR was 4.5% and 5.2% following BEVAR. Postoperative complication rates were 30.1% and 48.7%, respectively. The first quartile hospitals performed <9 procedures/ yr; second, third, and fourth quartile hospitals performed 9-12, 13-22, and 23 procedures/yr. The highest volume hospitals treated significantly more complex patients. Perioperative mortality of complex EVAR was 9.1% in hospitals with a volume of <9, and 2.5% in hospitals with a volume of 13 (P = 0.008). After adjustment for confounders, an annual volume of 13 was associated with less perioperative mortality compared to hospitals with a volume of <9. Conclusions: Data from this nationwide mandatory quality registry shows a significant effect of hospital volume on perioperative mortality following complex EVAR, with high volume complex EVAR centers demonstrating lower mortality rates