The Identity principle says that conditionals with the form 'If p, then p' are logical truths. Identity is overwhelmingly plausible, and has rarely been explicitly challenged. But a wide range of conditionals nonetheless invalidate it. I explain the problem, and argue that the culprit is the principle known as Import-Export, which we must thus reject. I then explore how we can reject Import-Export in a way that still makes sense of the intuitions that support it, arguing that the differences […]

The Identity principle says that conditionals with the form 'If p, then p' are logical truths. Identity is overwhelmingly plausible, and has rarely been explicitly challenged. But a wide range of conditionals nonetheless invalidate it. I explain the problem, and argue that the culprit is the principle known as Import-Export, which we must thus reject. I then explore how we can reject Import-Export in a way that still makes sense of the intuitions that support it, arguing that the differences […]

While scientific inquiry crucially relies on the extraction of patterns from data, we still have a very imperfect understanding of the metaphysics of patterns—and, in particular, of what it is that makes a pattern real. In this paper we derive a criterion of real-patternhood from the notion of conditional Kolmogorov complexity. The resulting account belongs in the philosophical tradition, initiated by Dennett, that links real-patternhood to data compressibility, but is simpler and […]

_Dialectica_ 73 (1-2):31-63. 2019 The problem of negative truth is the problem of how, if everything in the world is positive, we can speak truly about the world using negative propositions. A prominent solution is to explain negation in terms of a primitive notion of metaphysical incompatibility. I argue that if this account is correct, then minimal logic is the correct logic. The negation of a proposition A is characterised as the minimal incompatible of A composed of it and the logical […]

FILOSOFIA: CRÍTICA À METAFÍSICA PHILOSOPHY: CRITICISM TO METAPHYSICS Por: Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva - UFRPE Alana Thaís Mayza da Silva - CAP-UFPE RESUMO: A Metafísica (do grego: Μεταφυσική) é uma área inerente à Filosofia, dito isto, é uma esfera que compreende o mundo e os seres humanos sob uma fundamentação suprassensível da realidade, bem como goza de fundamentação ontológica e teológica para explicação dos dilemas do nosso mundo. Logo, não goza da […]

Accuracy-first accounts of rational learning attempt to vindicate the intuitive idea that, while rationally-formed belief need not be true, it is nevertheless likely to be true. To this end, they attempt to show that the Bayesian’s rational learning norms are a consequence of the rational pursuit of accuracy. Existing accounts fall short of this goal, for they presuppose evidential norms which are not and cannot be vindicated in terms of the single-minded pursuit of accuracy. I propose an […]

The terms "imagination'' and "imaginative'' can be readily applied to a profusion of attitudes, experiences, activities, and further phenomena. The heterogeneity of the things to which they're applied prompts the thoughts that the terms are polysemous, and that there is no single, coherent, fruitful conception of imagination to be had. Nonetheless, much recent work on imagination ascribes implicitly to a univocal way of thinking about imaginative phenomena: the imitation theory, […]

For Francisco Suárez, beings of reason are non-existent objects that we can think about, objects like goat-stags and round squares. The first section of the fifty-fourth of Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations is about the ontological status of beings of reason. Suárez’s view has been the subject of disagreement in the literature because he sometimes says that there are beings of reason, and he sometimes says there are not. In this paper, I argue for and explain an ontological pluralist […]

Leibniz's conceptual containment theory says that singular propositions of the form a is F are true when the complete concept of being a contains the concept of being F. In this paper, I provide a new semantics for first-order logic built around this idea. The semantics resolves longstanding problems for Leibniz's theory and can represent, without possible worlds, both hyperintensional distinctions among properties and a certain kind of presumably impossible situation that standard approaches […]

Pythagoreanism, the claim that ‘all is number’, is rarely taken seriously these days as a candidate for the sober metaphysical truth. This is a mistake. I distinguish various versions of Pythagoreanism. Some such versions are unmotivated, some are subject to serious objections, and some are both. But, I argue, there is a robust version of Pythagoreanism—according to which there is a true theory whose ontology and ideology are wholly mathematical from which every truth follows—that […]

"Our most elite universities are today running away from their elitism.” But elitism, argues Anthony Kronman, is "something to be cherished and cared for" Continue reading . . . News source: Arts & Letters Daily Click the title to visit philosophynews.com for mor […]

When it comes to syntax, Lionel Shriver throws in her lot with the pedants. How else to arrest semantic drift? Continue reading . . . News source: Arts & Letters Daily Click the title to visit philosophynews.com for mor […]

2019.07.13 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Scott Soames, The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Volume 2: A New Vision, Princeton University Press, 2018, 423pp., $65.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780691160030. Reviewed by Gregory Landini, University of Iowa This volume continues the history of analytic philosophy of Volume 1 (2014). A few of the chapters (p. viii) are explained as updated and substantially expanded parts of his two-volume Philosophical Analysis in the […]

2019.07.08 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews William S. Robinson, Epiphenomenal Mind: An Integrated Outlook on Sensations, Beliefs, and Pleasure, Routledge, 2019, 202pp., $140.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781138351370. Reviewed by Richard Fumerton, University of Iowa Any philosopher interested in the philosophy of mind should read William S. Robinson's book. It is a clear, thoughtful, well-argued, and sophisticated discussion of how to understand our talk about such mental […]

When it comes to syntax, Lionel Shriver throws in his lot with the pedants. How else to arrest semantic drift? Continue reading . . . News source: Arts & Letters Daily Click the title to visit philosophynews.com for mor […]