Showing papers in "Noûs in 1991"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce quantum field theory as an object of philosophical study and discuss the problems of virtual components and renormalization of quantum field theories, as well as the algebraic notation of quantum fields.
Abstract: Rom Harre & Harvey Brown both of the University of Oxford: Introduction I. QUANTUM FIELD THEORY AS AN OBJECT OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY: TWO VIEWS: Michael Redhead, University of Cambridge: A philosopher looks at quantum field theory James T. Cushing, University of Notre Dame: Foundational problems in and methodological lessons from quantum field theory II. THE PROBLEMS OF VIRTUAL PARTICLES AND RENORMALIZATION: Robert Weingard, Rutgers University: Virtual particles and the interpretation of quantum field theory Rom Harre: Parsing the amplitudes Paul Teller, University of Illinois: Three problems of renormalization III. COVARIANCE PRINCIPLES IN QUANTUM FIELD THEORY: Gordon N. Fleming, Pennsylvania State University: Hyperplane-dependent quantized fields and Lorentz invariance Tian-yu Cao, Trinity College, Cambridge: Gauge theory and the geometrization of fundamental physics IV. MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS OF QUANTUM FIELD THEORY: Ray F. Streater, King's College, London: Why should anyone want to axiomatize quantum field theory? Simon Saunders, Wolfson College, Oxford: The algebraic notation of quantum field theory.
89 citations
77 citations
TL;DR: Pears as mentioned in this paper describes the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy from the Notebooks and the Tractatus to Philosophical Investigations and his other later writings, and provides an unusually clear insight into the philosopher's thought.
Abstract: This is the first of two volumes describing the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy from the Notebooks and the Tractatus to Philosophical Investigations and his other later writings. Volume I is divided into two parts: Part I surveys the whole of Wittgenstein's work, while Part II examines in detail the central ideas of his early system. Although Pears focuses on the internal organization of Wittgenstein's thought, he also investigates the origins of Wittgenstein's philosophy, relating it to the philosophies of his predecessors and contemporaries. Revealing how the details of Wittgenstein's work fit into its general pattern, Pears offers scholars, students, and non-specialists alike unusually clear insight into the philosopher's thought.
67 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that an agent's plans can be used to constrain practical reasoning; they can suggest solutions to means-end reasoning problems that the agent subsequently encounters, and such solutions can often be accepted without further deliberation about possible alternatives.
Abstract: : Agents, whether biological or artificial, have bounded reasoning capabilities. As a result, they cannot make reasoned decision instantaneously; reasoning takes time. Agents in dynamic environments face a potential difficulty when they must make decisions what to do. They run the risk the world may change in ways that undermine the very assumptions upon which their reasoning is proceeding. Dynamic environments and computational resource bounds thus pose a challenge that has led some researchers in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to propose that artificial agents be designed to avoid execution-time practical reasoning. In this paper, the author argues that there is a way in which an agent's plans can be used to constrain practical reasoning; they can suggest solutions to means-end reasoning problems that the agent subsequently encounters. Moreover, such solutions can often be accepted without further deliberation about possible alternatives. An agent will often be able to guide its search for a way to achieve some goal G by looking for an action A that it already intends that can also subserve G, or by looking for an intention that can be overloaded. If it is successful in this, it can typically avoid attempting to find alternative ways of achieving G; it need not weigh the solution involving A against competing options. The author argues such a strategy, fine-tuned in appropriate ways, is rational, despite the fact it may sometimes lead to suboptimal behavior.
43 citations
TL;DR: Time passes. Time passes. This is surely the most important thing about time, and it is also the most mysterious. as discussed by the authors proposes an account of what it is that we believe time to be like.
Abstract: Time passes. Time passes. This is surely the most important thing about time. Yet it is also the most mysterious. The more you think about the passage of time, the less coherent it seems. I will describe one way we might try to make sense of the passing of time. What I propose, more precisely, is an account of what it is that we believe time to be like. I will not give an argument to prove that we are correct in our conception of time as something which passes. Einstein's theory of relativity suggests that, as a matter of fact, our naive conception of time is deeply mistaken. I will not argue that the folk theory of time can be defended against physics: only that it can be defended from purely philosophical objections, from allegations of internal incoherence, from arguments which seem to show that folk theory can be shown on its own terms to be inconsistent. I have long been intrigued by J.M.E. McTaggart's notorious argument for the Unreality of Time (see McTaggart, 1908, 1927, 1934, and Broad, 1938, for a full exposition and critique, and Dummett, 1960 for a sympathetic exposition and defense, and Gale, 1967 for bibliographic leads). On my reading, the argument hinges on two plausible premises. The first is that it is one of the essential properties of time that it is something which passes. The second is that the notion of the passage of time is incoherent, and involves either a logical contradiction, or a vicious circularity, or a vicious regress. Together, these premises seem to entail that time is unrealthat there is no time, that nothing ever really occurs before or after anything else, but only appears to do so. Many are less bold than McTaggart. They think time is real. Yet they have a hard time dispelling the notion that time is essentially something which passes. So they search for some watered down, logically consistent sense in which time can coherently be described
39 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors define the notion of duty and divine goodness as a function of the nature of the body of a human being, and demonstrate the necessity of duty in the creation of the human body.
Abstract: Functionalism and theological language, William P. Alston Divine necessity, Robert Merrihew Adams Does traditional theism entail pantheism?, Robert Oakes God's body, William J. Wainwright Must God create the best?, Robert Merrihew Adams Duty and divine goodness, Thomas V. Morris The definition of omnipotence, Anthony Kenny Maximal power, Thomas P. Flint & Alfred J. Freddoso On Ockham's way out, Alvin Plantinga On the compossibility of the divine attributes, David Blumenfeld Eternity, Eleonore Stump & Norman Kretzmann Simplicity and immutability in God, William E. Mann.
TL;DR: The authors identify two contexts in which the propositional content of a specific reference is not understood with respect to this set-subjective and objective sentences in third-person fictional narrative text-and identify some implications of this for understanding specific references in these contexts.
Abstract: The propositional content of a reference is the proposition attributing to the referent the properties that correspond to the nouns and modifiers in the reference (for example, the propositional content of 'Mary' is that the referent is named 'Mary'). During language comprehension, the hearer or reader must determine the set of beliefs with respect to which the propositional content of a reference is to be understood. In the prototypical case, this set consists of the propositions that she believes that the speaker or writer believes that she and the speaker or writer mutually believe. This paper identifies two contexts in which the propositional content of a specific reference is not understood with respect to this set-subjective and objective sentences in third-person fictional narrative text-and identifies some implications of this for understanding specific references in these contexts.
TL;DR: In this article, Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail, and shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology.
Abstract: The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is, yet until now there has been no full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. This has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of such classical philosophical concepts as identity, individual, class, substance and accident, matter, form, essence, dependence, and integral whole. It also enables the author to offer new solutions to longstanding problems surrounding these concepts, such as the Ship of Theseus Problem and the issue of mereological essentialism. The author shows by his use of formal techniques that classical philosophical problems are amenable to rigorous treatment, and the book represents a synthesis of issues and methods from the analytical tradition and from the older continental realist tradition of Brentano and the early Husserl. The book is aimed at philosophers, logicians, and linguists.
TL;DR: The ontology of musical works has also attracted the interest of philosophers in the past twenty years as discussed by the authors, and there is an important connection between any theory of musical ontology and a specification of the characteristics which must be exhibited in an authentic performance of a musical work, though this connection has not received much comment in the literature.
Abstract: The authentic performance movement is a phenomenon of the last twenty years. Once one could rarely find a recording of Baroque music played on the original instruments, and such performances often were lame and faltering because of the players' unfamiliarity with the instruments and with the appropriate performance practices. Now it is difficult to find a recording of such music not played in the "authentic manner" and different orchestras vie with each other in the vibrancy of their interpretations. Not surprisingly, the authentic performance movement has raised a hue and cry among performers and musicologists, since it challenges entrenched traditions of performance. Very recently some philosophers also have turned their attention to the subject of authentic performance. The ontology of musical works has also attracted the interest of philosophers in the past twenty years. There is an important connection between any theory of the ontology of musical works and a specification of the characteristics which must be exhibited in an authentic performance of a musical work, though this connection has not received much comment in the literature (but see Levinson 1987). If an authentic performance is (at least) an accurate performance of a work, then theories of musical ontology should tell us the type and range of properties which must be produced in an authentic performance of a work. In the main part of this paper I hope to characterize the debate about the ontology of musical works in a way which draws out this connection. The main section is preceded by an outline of some of the objections which have been raised to the authentic performance movement and offers replies to those objections. In the final section I draw some morals from the preceding, largely descriptive, account. NOUS 25 (1991) 21-41 ? 1991 by Nous Publications 21
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TL;DR: The relation between causes and laws of nature is discussed in this paper, where the authors show how causes and law of nature are related and how a law is ontologically no more than a regularity in the behaviour of things.
Abstract: Our object in this paper is to show how causes and laws of nature are related Contemporary scientific commonsense finds little problem here If one token event (state, or whatever are taken to be causal relata) is taken to cause another, then it is assumed that, in general at least, this pair of tokens instantiates a law The law may be probabilistic (statistical) only The present state of scientific inquiry suggests that the fundamental laws that govern causal processes may be no more than probabilistic But, barring controversial cases involving such things as free will and miracles, it is assumed that a law is always involved Contemporary philosophy of science also finds little problem in the relation of cause and law This is because it is orthodoxy, although now perhaps an orthodoxy on the defensive, that tokencausation is ontologically no more than the instantiation of a regularity in the behaviour of things, and equally that a law is ontologically no more than a regularity in the behaviour of things Given this general approach, which can be and has been sophisticated in various ways, cause and law come naturally together Because tokencausation instantiates a regularity, it automatically instantiates a law It is not necessary to hold that each instantiation of a law is a case of causation The causal laws might merely be a sub-species of the regularities that are laws, without contravening the spirit of a Regularity theory of causation and a Regularity theory of laws We, however, reject both the Regularity theory of causation and the Regularity theory of laws Once this is done, the relation between causes and laws becomes more problematic
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this article, a mathematical analysis of the Paradoxe du menteur and its variants is proposed. But the analysis is restricted to the theory of chaos and fractales, and not to other semantiques.
Abstract: L'A. propose une analyse mathematique, faisant appel aux theories du chaos et aux fractales, des patterns semantiques du Paradoxe du menteur et de ses variantes, ainsi que d'autres paradoxes semantiques
TL;DR: In this paper, the two competing versions of this fundamental question, the "philosophical" version and the "psychological" version, are discussed, although they are hardly the exclusive property of philosophers and psychologists respectively-hence the scare quotes.
Abstract: Underlying the practice of cognitive science is a basic tension in its goals that to me has much the flavor of a paradigm split in the sense of Kuhn. The tension has to do with how one phrases the fundamental question for a theory of mind. I have been trying to articulate this split for some time, at least since Jackendoff 1983, but its history certainly goes back much further than that. For convenience, I will call the two competing versions of this fundamental question the "philosophical" version and the "psychological" version, although they are hardly the exclusive property of philosophers and psychologists respectively-hence the scare quotes.2 The "philosophical" version grows out of questions of epistemology and might be stated something like this:
TL;DR: The authors argue that there cannot be any vague identities, and outline reasons for scepticism about the view that the world contains vague objects, and also argue that even if there were vague identity, this would lend no support to the vague-objects view.
Abstract: In this paper, I want to argue-with certain qualifications-that there cannot be any vague identities, and to outline reasons for scepticism about the view that the world contains vague objects. I also argue that, even if there were vague identities, this would lend no support to the vague-objects view. 1. What would constitute a defence of the vague-identity thesis? It would be an example in which a sentence of numerical identity is indeterminate in truth-value (i.e., neither true nor false), where the indeterminacy is due to vagueness. (Thus we are not concerned with identity sentences whose indeterminacy is due, e.g., to referencefailure or to cross-category identification.) It seems clear that there are such examples: where the vagueness of an identity is a consequence of the vagueness of one or both of its singular terms. For example, the singular term 'the world's greatest ruler' is vague because of the vagueness of the predicate '. . . great ruler'. This predicate is vague, not because it lacks sharp boundaries, but because of its multi-criterial application conditions. Many different factors contribute to the greatness of a ruler-wisdom, fortitude, diplomacy, prudence, etc.,-and the rules of our language do not fix in advance what weight to assign to each factor. Because of this vagueness, the singular term 'the world's greatest ruler' has no determinate reference: it is vague which person it singles out. (Though, as Wiggins has emphasised, from the fact that it is vague which object a term singles out, it does not follow that it singles out something vague.)' Consequently, an utterance of, e.g., 'the world's greatest ruler was the world's wisest ruler' is a plausible example of a vague identity.2
TL;DR: Naturalism and Rationality as mentioned in this paper is a collection of essays and commentaries written by a group of scholars at the State University of New York at Buffalo to share their thoughts on the nature of humans as rational animals.
Abstract: A distinguished group of scholars met at the State University of New York at Buffalo to share their thoughts on the nature of humans as rational animals. The result is this compelling collection of essays and commentaries titled Naturalism and Rationality. We are affected by all sorts of stimuli that influence our beliefs and actions. How does our understanding of what it means to be rational affect our interpretation of the world around us? What problems arise as a result of our attempts to analyze rationality within the scope of naturalism? These essays offer fascinating discussion about the nature and extent of rationality - its content, focus, and the intrinsic guidelines for using the term "rational" when describing persons or actions. The distinguished contributors to this collection include Max Black, Steven J. Brams, James H. Bunn, Christopher Cherniak, Murray Clarke, Marjorie Clay, Paul Diesing, Antony Flew, John T. Kearns, D. Mark Kilgour, Hilary Kornblith, Charles H. Lambros, Duncan MacIntosh, Alistair MacLeod, Robert G. Meyers, Erwin Segal, Zeno G. Swijtink, Brice R. Wachterhauser, and Paul Weirich. In addition to provoking discussion, these papers will prove to be a lasting source of stimulation for those in the field of contemporary philosophy.
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TL;DR: In this article, Marsaglia's work at the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute at Florida State University is well-known, and he admits that he is a sinner.
Abstract: "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." I John von Neumann's famous dictum points an accusing finger at all who set their ordered minds to engender disorder. Much as in times past thieves, pimps, and actors carried on their profession with an uneasy conscience, so in this day scientists who devise random number generators suffer pangs of guilt. George Marsaglia, perhaps the preeminent worker in the field, quips when he asks his colleagues, "Who among us has not sinned?" Marsaglia's work at the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute at Florida State University is well-known. Inasmuch as Marsaglia's design and testing of random number generators depends on computation, and inasmuch as computation is fundamentally arithmetical, Marsaglia is by von Neumann's own account a sinner. Working as he does on a supercomputer, Marsaglia is in fact a gross sinner. This he freely admits. Writing of the best random number generators he is aware of, Marsaglia states, "they are the result of arithmetic methods and those using them must, as all sinners must, face Redemption [sic] Day. But perhaps with better understanding we can postpone it. "2 Despite the danger of being branded a heretic, I want to argue that randomness entails no moral deficiency. I will even advocate that random number generators be constructed with reckless abandon-though a reckless abandon that is well thought out. Randomness, properly to be randomness, must leave nothing to chance. It must look like chance, like a child of the primeval chaos. But underneath a keen intelligence must be manipulating and calculating, taking advantage of this and that expedient so as systematically to concoct confusion. I am reminded of the photo-journalists in Viet-
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce the notion of "suspect" welfare, of which welfare from meddlesome preferences, offensive tastes, expensive tastes, etc. are special cases.
Abstract: I shall address a familiar, yet persistent, problem confronted by welfare-based moral theories. Welfare is often based on suspect attitudes. Many people's pleasure, happiness, or preference satisfaction, for example, are based on racist, sexist, envious, meddlesome, or malicious attitudes. Is welfare derived from such sources relevant to the determination of what is morally permissible? Almost everyone has at least some "suspect" attitudes, so to ignore welfare based on suspect attitudes is to ignore things that people actually care about. To take such welfare at face value, however, seems to give it too much of a role in determining what is permissible. The welfare that a sadist gains from torturing others, it seems, does not have the same status as the welfare that victims lose. This problem has already been discussed by a number of authors.' Typically, however, authors take one of two extreme positions: they hold that all welfare should be taken at face value, or they hold that "suspect" welfare should be completely ignored. My contribution here is the following: First, I introduce the notion of unauthorized (suspect) welfare, of which welfare from meddlesome preferences, offensive tastes, expensive tastes, etc. are special cases. Second, I formulate four conditions of adequacy, applicable to any welfare-based theory, for dealing with unauthorized welfare. These conditions require that unauthorized welfare be "discounted" (play a restricted role) but not be completely ignored. Thus, I shall be exploring a position intermediate between taking "unauthorized" welfare at face value and simply ignoring it. Moreover, the four conditions jointly determine exactly how existing welfare-based
TL;DR: This part, even more than its ancestor, should be read as a footnote to B. Russell's "On Denoting", specifically the first six pages, pp. 41-7, in Marsh (ed.) Logic and Knowledge, Allen Unwin 1956.
Abstract: This part, even more than its ancestor, should be read as a footnote to B. Russell's "On Denoting", specifically the first six pages, pp. 41-7, in Marsh (ed.) Logic and Knowledge, Allen Unwin 1956. I also quote and rely on pp. 228-37 of "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism" (hence, PLA) in the same volume and pp. 69-75 in "Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types" (hence, ML) in the same volume. Finally, pp. 161-73 of the ever so vivid Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (hence, IMP), London, 1919 will also be alluded to. I owe thanks to K. Donnellan, H. Kamp, P. Leonardi, T. Reinhart, and especially D. Braun, E. Napoli and D. Kaplan. It was an observation, six years ago, of this last regarding the improper treatment given by first order symbolizations to the English "Your shirt is missing two buttons" that got me started.