MINDPub Date : 2024-10-21DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae058
Fabio Lampert
{"title":"Freedom, Omniscience and the Contingent A Priori","authors":"Fabio Lampert","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae058","url":null,"abstract":"One of the major challenges in the philosophy of religion is theological fatalism — roughly, the claim that divine omniscience is incompatible with free will. In this article, I present new reasons to be sceptical of what I consider to be the strongest argument for theological fatalism. First, I argue that divine foreknowledge is not necessary for an argument against free will if we take into account divine knowledge of contingent a priori truths. Second, I show that this argument can be generalized so that ordinary human knowledge of contingent a priori truths also leads to an argument against free will. This, I believe, results in an absurd conclusion that is unacceptable to both theists and non-theists. But if there is something wrong with this argument, there is something wrong, too, with the argument for theological fatalism. Although there is a range of possible responses, I suggest that the core issue in all cases is a closure principle — specifically, the principle that ‘no choice about’ is closed under entailment (or strict implication).","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142487057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MINDPub Date : 2024-10-17DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae053
Mikel Burley
{"title":"Conceptual Decolonization, Conceptual Justice, and Religious Concepts","authors":"Mikel Burley","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae053","url":null,"abstract":"Calls for decolonization are on the rise in social and academic life, but ‘decolonization’ can mean various things. This article expounds and critically evaluates the programme of conceptual decolonization, chiefly as promulgated in relation to African philosophy by Kwasi Wiredu. The programme involves both resisting the unreflective acceptance of non-indigenous concepts and constructively utilizing indigenous conceptual resources to address philosophical questions. Examining recent objections from Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò and giving particular attention to Wiredu’s treatment of religious concepts, I concur with Wiredu that conceptual decolonization can encourage conceptual enlargement but argue that care is needed to avoid oversimplifying the non-indigenous concepts that are subjected to scrutiny.","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142448157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MINDPub Date : 2024-10-16DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae048
Zachary Goodsell, Jacob M Nebel
{"title":"Symmetry, Invariance, and Imprecise Probability","authors":"Zachary Goodsell, Jacob M Nebel","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae048","url":null,"abstract":"It is tempting to think that a process of choosing a point at random from the surface of a sphere can be probabilistically symmetric, in the sense that any two regions of the sphere which differ by a rotation are equally likely to include the chosen point. Isaacs, Hájek and Hawthorne (2022) argue from such symmetry principles and the mathematical paradoxes of measure to the existence of imprecise chances and the rationality of imprecise credences. Williamson (2007) has argued from a related symmetry principle to the failure of probabilistic regularity. We contend that these arguments fail, because they rely on auxiliary assumptions about probability which are inconsistent with symmetry to begin with. We argue, moreover, that symmetry should be rejected in light of this inconsistency, and because it has implausible decision-theoretic implications. The weaker principle of probabilistic invariance says that the probabilistic comparison of any two regions is unchanged by rotations of the sphere. This principle supports a more compelling argument for imprecise probability. We show, however, that invariance is incompatible with mundane judgements about what is probable. Ultimately, we find reason to be suspicious of the application of principles like symmetry and invariance to non-measurable regions.","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142444490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MINDPub Date : 2024-10-15DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae050
Simon Goldstein, John Hawthorne
{"title":"KK is Wrong Because We Say So","authors":"Simon Goldstein, John Hawthorne","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae050","url":null,"abstract":"This paper offers a new argument against the KK thesis, which says that if you know p, then you know that you know p. We argue that KK is inconsistent with the fact that anyone denies the KK thesis: imagine that Dudley says he knows p but that he does not have 100 iterations of knowledge about p. If KK were true, Dudley would know that he has 100 iterations of knowledge about p, and so he wouldn’t deny that he did. We consider several epicycles, and also explore whether the argument type also challenges other structural conditions on knowledge, such as closure under deduction.","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142440156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MINDPub Date : 2024-10-08DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae041
Tyke Nunez
{"title":"Not Quite Yet a Hazy Limbo of Mystery: Intuition in Russell’s An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry","authors":"Tyke Nunez","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae041","url":null,"abstract":"I argue that in Bertrand Russell’s An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897), his forms of externality serve the same fundamental role in grounding the possibility of geometry that Immanuel Kant’s forms of intuition serve in grounding geometry in his critical philosophy. Specifically, both provide knowledge of bare numerical difference, where we have no concept of this difference. Because geometry deals with such conceptually homogeneous magnitudes and their composition on both accounts, forms of intuition or externality (respectively) are at its foundation.","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142386244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MINDPub Date : 2024-10-01DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae056
Daniel C Friedman
{"title":"Intentions and Inquiry","authors":"Daniel C Friedman","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae056","url":null,"abstract":"This paper defends the Intention Account of Individual Inquiry. On this account, inquiry is best understood by appeal to a ‘question-directed intention’ (QDI), an intention to answer a question broadly construed. This account’s core commitments help meet recent challenges plaguing extant approaches to characterizing inquiry. First, QDIs are the type of mental state central to inquiry, not attitudes like curiosity or wonder. Second, holding a QDI towards a question and acting in service of it constitutes the start of inquiry. Third, controversial norms which mandate a rational inquirer’s ignorance towards the answer to her question can be reformulated and defended by appeal to rational constraints on intention. Fourth, instrumental pressures inquirers face are the standard pressures of plan-rationality. In defending these theses, I show that the Intention Account provides compelling explanations to standing challenges, in ways competitors cannot. It does so by advancing understanding of how our epistemic and practical agency are intertwined.","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142384026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MINDPub Date : 2024-09-20DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae052
Chloé de Canson
{"title":"On Algebra Relativisation","authors":"Chloé de Canson","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae052","url":null,"abstract":"Katie Steele and H. Orri Stefánsson argue that, to reflect an agent’s limited awareness, the algebra of propositions on which that agent’s credences are defined should be relativised to their awareness state. I argue that this produces insurmountable difficulties. But the project of relativising the agent’s algebra to reflect their partial perspective need not be abandoned: the algebra can be relativised, not to the agent’s awareness state, but to what we might call their subjective modality.","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142306394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MINDPub Date : 2024-09-18DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae051
Lucy Campbell
{"title":"Practical Knowledge and the Structural Challenge","authors":"Lucy Campbell","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae051","url":null,"abstract":"Elizabeth Anscombe characterised practical knowledge as knowledge ‘in intention’. As Anscombe recognised, accepting this view involves rejecting certain basic orthodox epistemological assumptions. But even once this is done, a challenge remains for a conception of practical knowledge as knowledge ‘in intention’. For while practical knowledge would appear to be a kind of propositional knowledge, intentions would appear to be a kind of non-propositional attitude. I call this the ‘Structural Challenge’ for an intention-based account of practical knowledge. After rejecting two suggested responses – one which views intentions as propositional attitudes; one which views practical knowledge as non-propositional knowledge – I offer my own solution by showing how simply having and carrying out an intention to φ will ordinarily meet a plausible neutral condition on propositional knowledge. Knowing a fact will in general involve being mentally related to it via a successful exercise of relevant concepts. The account I develop turns on viewing a person’s carrying out an intention to φ as their constituting the fact that they are φ-ing, through a practical exercise of their concept of φ-ing. The resulting account sheds light both on the analogies, and on the crucial formal differences, between practical and theoretical knowledge.","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142245470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MINDPub Date : 2024-09-11DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae047
Zach Barnett
{"title":"Six Roles for Inclination","authors":"Zach Barnett","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae047","url":null,"abstract":"Initially, you judge that p. You then learn that most experts disagree. All things considered, you believe that the experts are probably right. Still, p continues to seem right to you, in some sense. You don’t yet see what, if anything, is wrong with your original reasoning. In such a case, we’ll say that you are ‘inclined’ toward p. This paper explores various roles that this state of inclination can play, both within epistemology and more broadly. Specifically, it will be argued that: (i) inclinations can promote the accuracy of inquiring groups; (ii) they can support rational participation within philosophy despite pervasive disagreement; (iii) they allow us to make sense of an important way in which two people can continue to disagree even after they ‘conciliate’; (iv) inclinations carry information about individuals’ independent judgments and for this reason must be accounted for when updating on the opinions of others; (v) inclinations are connected to understanding in a way that belief is not; (vi) and awareness of the inclination-belief distinction enables us to respond to a provocative challenge purporting to show that critical thinking, or ‘thinking for oneself’, typically reduces expected accuracy and hence should be discouraged.","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142171399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MINDPub Date : 2024-09-02DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzae039
Benjamin A Levinstein, Jack Spencer
{"title":"Bigger, Badder Bugs","authors":"Benjamin A Levinstein, Jack Spencer","doi":"10.1093/mind/fzae039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae039","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we motivate the ‘principles of trust’, chance-credence principles that are strictly stronger than the New Principle yet strictly weaker than the Principal Principle, and argue, by proving some limitative results, that the principles of trust conflict with Humean Supervenience.","PeriodicalId":48124,"journal":{"name":"MIND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142117981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}