This book offers a readable introduction to the main aspects of thought experimenting in philosophy and science. It presents the main options in understanding thought experiments, from empiricism to Platonism, and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. However, it also provides some original perspectives on the topic. Firstly, it provides a new definition and analysis of thought experimenting that brings it closer to laboratory experimenting. Secondly, it develops the author’s earlier theory of “mental modelling”, proposed some decades ago by him, and (...) some other researchers in the field as the crucial procedure in thought experimenting. The mental modelling approach links work with thought experimenting to cognitive science and to research on mental simulation which is a hot topic in present-day research. Thirdly, it proposes a principled way to respond to criticism of thought experimenting by “experimental philosophers” as they have been dominating the present-day debates. The response suggests a possible ameliorative, self-help project for thought experimenting. Finally, the book provides a way to systematize the history of important thought experiments in science and philosophy and thus connects, in an original way, the systematic investigation of experimenting to the historical work of famous thought experiments. It is of interest to scholars interested in history of ideas and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Nenad Miščević; IX*—Computationalism and the Kripke-Wittgenstein Paradox, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 215–23.

The contemporary global crisis can be explored in different perspectives. This text focuses on constitutionalism. It asks whether constitutionalism still matters. Responding to this question requires revisiting the basic analytical and normative concepts that shape individual autonomy, polity, law and democracy in the context of globalization. Part I of the article introduces the question of the crisis of constitutionalism. It briefly explores the dispute between proponents of state and post-state constitutionalism, and proceeds with an analysis of societal constitutionalism. The critical (...) reading of this theory prepares the ground for a positive normative argument. Part II of the article argues for the return to the moral core of constitutionalism. It defends the claim that justice at the global stage requires establishing a minimum common denominator that would be composed of universalizable substantive principles. The institutional question follows. Its focus should be on the authoritative identification, protection and advancement of the core values of constitutionalism in the social and legal-political realms of the world society. (shrink)

Autonomy, understood as self-rule, is almost routinely accepted as one of the core liberal concepts. Still, a closer view reveals that both the status and meaning of autonomy are controversial. The text departs from a short summary of the main theoretical disputes surrounding the concept. A critique of the standard internalist account is followed by an attempt to offer reasons for accepting a relational reading of autonomy. The central question of the text is context-specific. It asks about the possibility and (...) meaning of liberal autonomy in a society whose past is marked by mass regime-sponsored crimes. The background assumption is that mass crime leaves actors in heteronomous condition. At stake is reestablishing individual autonomies of two types of actors, whose group-specific identities have been created by crime: the ethical community of those who share collective identity with victims, and the ethical community of those who share collective identity with perpetrators. nema. (shrink)

In this paper we shall concentrate on the issue of those ways of knowing in mathematics that have traditionally been taken to support apriorism. We shall do it by critizing pragmatic naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics, and in particular its historical approach in denying any role to apriority in mathematical epistemology. The version of pragmatic naturalism we shall be analyzing is Kitcher’s. In the paper we shall first set out a brief survey of the relevant features of Kitcher’s pragmatic (...) naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics and then indicate the points that provoke our disagreement.U ovome radu ćemo se koncentrirati na pitanje onih načina spoznaje u matematici za koje se tradicionalno smatralo da podržavaju apriorizam. To ćemo učiniti kritizirajući pragmatički naturalizam u filozofiji matematike, posebice njegov povijesni pristup u negiranju ikakve uloge apriorizma u matematičkoj epistemologiji. Verzija pragmatičkog naturalizma koju ćemo razmatrati je Kitcherova. U radu ćemo prvo iznijeti sažeti pregled relevantnih obilježja Kitcherovog pragmatičkog naturalizma u filozofiji matematike te potom naznačiti točke koje izazivaju naše neslaganje.Dans cet article, nous nous concentrerons sur la question des modes de la connaissance en mathématiques qui ont traditionnellement été considérés comme soutenant l’apriorisme. Nous le ferons en critiquant le naturalisme pragmatique dans la philosophie des mathématiques, notamment son approche historique de la négation de tout rôle de l’apriorité dans l’épistémologie mathématique. La version du naturalisme pragmatique que nous analyserons est celle de Philip Kitcher. Dans l’article, nous présenterons d’abord un court examen des aspects pertinents du naturalisme pragmatique de Philip Kitcher dans la philosophie des mathématiques, puis indiquerons les points qui suscitent notre désaccord.Im vorliegenden Paper konzentrieren wir uns auf die Problematik jener Wege der Erkenntnis innerhalb der Mathematik, denen traditionell Unterstützung des Apriorismus beigemessen wird. Wir verwirklichen dies, indem wir den pragmatischen Naturalismus in der Philosophie der Mathematik kritisieren, namentlich dessen historische Herangehensweise bei der Verneinung jeglicher Rolle der Apriorität in der mathematischen Epistemologie. Die Version des pragmatischen Naturalismus, der wir auf den Grund gehen, ist die von Kitcher. In der Abhandlung machen wir erstens einen Streifzug durch die relevanten Wesenszüge von Kitchers pragmatischem Naturalismus in der Philosophie der Mathematik und geben anschließend Anhaltspunkte an, die unseren Dissens hervorrufen. (shrink)

We present a direct proof of the consistency of the existence of a five element basis for the uncountable linear orders. Our argument is based on the approach of König, Larson, Moore and Veličković and simplifies the original proof of Moore.

The paper investigates some mechanisms of thought-experimenting, and explores the role of perspective taking, in particular of mental simulation, in political thought-experiments, focusing for the most part on contractualist ones. It thus brings together two blossoming traditions: the study of perspective taking and methodology of thought-experiments. How do contractualist thought-experiments work? Our moderately inflationist mental modelling proposal is that they mobilize our imaginative capacity for perspective taking, most probably perspective taking through simulation. The framework suggests the answers to questions that (...) are often raised for other kinds of thought-experiments as well, concerning their source of data, heuristic superiority to deduction, experiential, qualitative character and ease in eliminating alternatives. In the case of contractualist political thought-experiments, the data come from perspective taking and the capacity to simulate. Mental simulation is way more accessible to subjects than abstract political reasoning from principles and facts. There is a new experience for the subject, the one of simulating. Simulation normally is quick and effortless; the simulator does not go through alternatives, but is constrained in an unconscious way. We distinguish two kinds of political thought-experiments and two manners of imagining political arrangements, building third-person mental models, and fi rst-person perspective taking. The two mechanisms, the fi rst of inductive model building, the second for simulation, and their combination(s), exhaust the range of cognitive mechanism underlying political thought-experimenting. (shrink)

T. Williamson argues against the thesis he recognizes as one of the inferentialist basic idea that he formulates as understanding/assent link, the claim that the assent to a sentence is constitutive for understanding it. This paper aims to show that appropriately articulated dispositional theory, could plausibly account for a weak version of inferentialism.

The subject of the book is responsibility for collective crime. Collective crime is an act committed by a significant number of the members of a group, in the name of all members of that group, with the support of the majority of group members, and against individuals targeted on the basis of their belonging to a different group.The central claim is that all members of the group in whose name collective crime is committed share responsibility for it. This book's special (...) interest is with analytical and normative defense of arguments that purport to explain reasons for, and the character of, responsibility of decent people. Those who did not intend, support, or committed wrong, are still accountable in a non-vicarious manner. The basis of their responsibility is the crime-specific relationship between group identity and personal identity. (shrink)

The paper considers a possible relevantist treatment, in the spirit of Wilson and Sperber’s work, of pejoratives and argues for three claims concerning them. On the level of synchronic issues it suggests that the negative content of pejoratives, at least in its minimal scope, is the normal part of their lexical meaning, and not a result of extra-semantic enrichment. It thus suggests an evaluative-content approach for the relevantist, in contrast to its neutral-content alternative. On the more general side, it suggests (...) that the relevance theorist owes us a clear story about what kind of material is normally encoded. Concerning the issues of diachronic behavior of pejoratives, the paper suggests primarily the application of relevantist theory of irony, and secondarily some links with theory of metaphor. A relevantist theory of echoic use, and proposed for irony, can be used to understand the appropriation of pejoratives by their original target group, and the reversal of valence that goes with it. There is an interesting parallel between the echoing-cum-reversal processes Wilson and Sperber propose for irony and the repeating-and-reversing process typicall of appropriation of pejoratives. Finally, a brief application of the relevantist understanding of metaphor is proposed as a tool for understanding the genealogy of pejoratives of fi gurative origin. The dynamics, history and development of pejoratives has not been systematically addressed by philosophical theories of pejoratives: a collaboration with relevance theory might prove a useful strategy. (shrink)

Philosophy should avoid isolation, and should return to being curious and enthusiastic about explanation: about why- and how possibly-questions. The analytic and continental philosophical cultures should establish a dialogue, where each side brings out the distinctive qualities of its work while widening the scope of its concerns.

I agree with Rey that concepts can yield analytic falsities. Both Rey and I have been discussing empirical concepts, mostly kind concepts that are to some extent adequate, but contain some inadequate elements in their accepted definitions.The second kind are superstitious terms and empirical kind concepts, like the full- blown astrological ones, or concepts characterizing professions ascribing to them magic powers. They usually concern human-social kinds, ascribing to them characteristics or powers in a problematic manner. Propositions analytic in such concepts (...) are both false and a priori. The third kind encompasses positive and negative descriptive-evaluative terms and corresponding thick concepts, that are not empty, but that ascribe positive or negative features to members of a presumed social kind just in virtue of their belonging to the kind. The most common example in nowadays languages are on the negative side, namely slurs ; nowadays rather rare positive counterparts are misplaced laudatives. Again, typical propositions analytic in such concepts are false, and knowable in virtue of being competent in the respective language. (shrink)

Snježana Prijić-Samaržija’s book discusses the epistemic grounding of democracy, stressing the epistemic role of experts in her political-epistemological favorite, the project of “reliability democracy”. Her proposal, inspired by Christiano, lets citizens play an important role in setting the aims, whereas experts deliberate about means of reaching them. I argue that it is not easy to reach consensus about goals and values. What is needed is democratic deliberation in deciding, encompassing both experts and laypersons. We should retain the duality of less (...) ideal deliberation in real world and of hypothetical contractualist deliberation, within moral-political thought-experiments, in the tradition of Habermas and Scanlon in the ideal theory. I leave it open whether our author might ultimately agree with this picture of reliability democracy. (shrink)

Building on Crane’s intentionalism, the paper proposes a variant of response-dependentist view of colors. To be of a color C is to have a disposition to cause in normal observers a response, namely, intentional phenomenal C-experience. The view is dubbed “response-intentionalism”. It follows from the following considerations, with the red of a tomato surface taken as an example of color C. Full phenomenal red is being visaged as being on the surface of the tomato. Science tells us that full phenomenal (...) red is not on the surface of the tomato. Equally, full phenomenal red is not a property of subjective state but its intentional object. Response-intentionalism follows by considerations of charity, i.e. minimizing and rationalizing the error of the cognizer, and of inference to the best explanation: being red in scientific sense is being such as to cause the response visaging phenomenal red in normal observers under normal circumstances. (shrink)

The paper explores the rift between continental and analytic style of doing philosophy, looking at the following main philosophical thesis that arguably characterize the continental turn, from Hegel to post-structuralists: first, the anthropological and historical is deeply ontological (Hegel, Heidegger). Second, the central element of human mind is a-rational, it is either will, desire or affect (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche). Third, the basic reality of the world is akin to this a-rational element of human mind (Nietzsche). Fourth, the cognitive style, the language-style (...) and the method of studying a given domain of philosopher investigates shouldfollow the language-style and the manner of domain itself. In particular, for a-rational domains, the cognitive style and the linguistic expression should minimize the use of traditional rationalist methods of enquiry and presentation in favor of more literary ones. Fifth, philosophy has reached its end, so that philosophers should abandon the traditional philosophical reflection in favor of participating in more concrete theoretical and political practices (Marx, poststructuralist “Theory”). Any future building of continentalanalytic bridges has to take into account the complexity of the rift, and the impact of the five theses on the contemporarycontinental thought. (shrink)

This paper proposes an outline of a view concerning intuitions, tying them to our basic cognitive competences, or virtues-capacities, a view that is here called The Moderate Voice-of-Competence view. This view claims that intuitions form a kind, albeit a relatively superficial one, united by their phenomenal appearance, but linked to capacities for understanding various domains. Further, intuitions are extroverted, turned towards the items they are explicitly about, and normatively answerable to them; they teach us about things “outside”, not merely about (...) our representation(s) of them. This view also takes seriously the actual dialectics of having intuitions: asking (or being asked) a question, imagining a scenario, giving a simple, preliminary answer to the question, formulating the immediate intuition which is often developed by considering other examples, and so on. This work involves more than mere inference following rules of logic. Further, this view is for the most part committed to realism about the objects of intuitions, and is very keen on their explainability. Finally, this view offers a complex answerabout the normative epistemic status of intuitions, tilted towards a posteriority: although intuitions are prima face a priori, their reflective justification has a rich structure in which a posteriori elements play a crucial role. (shrink)

Dealing with deductive reasoning, performed by ‘real-life’ reasoners and expressed in natural language, the paper confronts Harman’s denying of normative relevance of logic to reasoning with a logicist thesis, a principle that is supposed to contribute for solving the problem of incongruence between descriptive nature of logic and normativity of reasoning. The paper discusses in detail John MacFarlane’s (2004) and Hartry Field’s (2009) variants of “bridge principle”. Taking both variants of bridge principles as its starting point, the paper proceeds arguing (...) that there is more than one logical formalism that can be normatively suitable for deductive reasoning, due to the fact that reasoning can assume different forms that are guided by different goals. A particular reasoning processing can be modelled by specific formalism that can be shown to be actually used by a real human agent in a real reasoning context. (shrink)

The paper joins Horwich’s criticism of stipulationist accounts of a priori knowledge, and raises some problems for his own account of the a priori. It first questions the assumed separability of scientific investigation and non-scieentific assertoric practices in regard to norms of adequacy. It also questioned Horwich’s Restriction Assumption according to which only the former are answerable to the standards of empirical adequacy and overall simplicity (which threaten apriority in the case of science). Finally, it criticises his argument that inability (...) to think otherwise might guarantee apriority, pointing to science-driven reflective revisability of possibly innate beliefs. (shrink)

The paper places the work of G. Gaus into the tradition of political thought experimenting. In particular, his strategy of modeling moral decision by the heuristic device of idealized Members of the Public is presented as an iterated thought experiment, which stands in marked contrast with more traditional devices like the veil of ignorance. The consequences are drawn, and issues of utopianism and realism briefly discussed.

Virtually all epistemologists agree that truth is a necessary condition for knowledge. Assuming that our three-dimensional world is nested within a higher-dimensional space, I use multidimensional geometry to present a type of case which undermines this fundamental principle of epistemology. I further argue that we would be unlikely to revise our epistemic practices in light of new discoveries even if our world turned out to be substantially different and many of our beliefs turned out to be false.

Democracy is in serious difficulties. Three features of the crisis stand out. First is the dominant culture of disillusionment in democracy, which transpires as the mistrust in constitutionalist institutions and values. Second, political authority, both at domestic and international levels, is largely substituted by the rule of non-transparent and unpredictable social powers. Third, democratic states are deprived of much of their capacity to govern, but they retain a non-negligible capacity to coerce.The article is structured as follows. Section I introduces Karl (...) Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness and juxtaposes it to the theoretical defense of market disembeddedness advanced by the classical political economy. It then points to the challenge that the complexity of the contemporary society poses to the idea of embeddedness and identifies the need for further analytical clarification of the idea. Section II tries to explain why the idea of embeddedness is intuitively suspect. One reason is found in the domi... (shrink)

The paper critically discusses the Chalmers-and-Jackson strategy of accounting for the dynamics of conceptual intuitions. In contrast to this strategy, it is argued that concepts alone do not determine in advance rational responses to new evidence. An initial concept is often revised in the light of new data, the revision being guided by the goal of detecting the deep causal structure of the domain investigated. Using examples from the history of science (concept REFLEX ARC) as an illustration, it is argued (...) that the dilemma of either irrational messy updating of intuitions (Yablo) or strict rails of conceptual pre-determination (Chalmers-Jackson) is a false one. Rationality does not lie in the alleged conceptual apriority, but in the flexible pursuit of reasonable epistemic goals. (shrink)