Showing papers in "Synthese in 1982"

Unreliable probabilities, risk-taking, and decision-making

Abstract: A central part of Bayesianism is the doctrine that the decision maker's knowledge in a given situation can be represented by a subjective probability measure defined over the possible states of the world. This measure can be used to determine the expected utility for the agent of the various alternatives open to him. The basic decision rule is then that the alternative which has the maximal expected utility should be chosen. A fundamental assumption for this strict form of Bayesianism is that the decision maker's knowledge can be represented by a unique probability measure. The adherents of this assumption have produced a variety of arguments in favor of it, the most famous being the so-called Dutch book arguments. A consequence of the assumption, in connection with the rule of maximizing expected utility, is that in two decision situations which are identical with respect to the probabilities assigned to the relevant states and the utilities of the various outcomes the decisions should be the same. It seems to us, however, that it is possible to find decision situations which are identical in all the respects relevant to the strict Bayesian, but which nevertheless motivate different decisions. As an example to illustrate this point, consider Miss Julie who is invited to bet on the outcome of three different tennis matches. 1 As regards match A, she is very well-informed about the two players - she knows everything about the results of their earlier matches, she has watched them play several times, she is familiar with their present physical condition and the setting of the match, etc. Given all this information, Miss lulie predicts that it will be a very even match and that a mere chance will determine the winner. In match B, she knows nothing whatsoever about the relative strength of the contestants (she has not even heard their names before) and she has no other information that

The Charybdis of Realism: Epistemological Implications of Bell’s Inequality

Abstract: In scepticism and realism, empiricist epistemology has its Scylla and Charybdis. The main role of scepticism today is in reductio: if a position is shown to lead to scepticism, it is thereby refuted. But fleeing from that danger, we are hard put to steer clear of the metaphysical rocks and shoals of realism. I shall leave the first danger aside for now. 1 Concerning epistemic realism I shall argue that, given one plausible way to make it precise, it is refuted by Bell 's Inequali ty Argument. Realists will presumably wish to formulate their views on epistemology so as to avoid this refutation, and I shall end with some helpful suggestions.

Why Reason can’t be Naturalized

Abstract: The preceding lecture described the failure of contemporary attempts to “naturalize” metaphysics; in the present lecture I shall examine attempts to naturalize the fundamental notions of the theory of knowledge, for example the notion of a belief’s being justified or rationally acceptable.

Contemporary philosophy of mind

Abstract: The question as to the place of Mind in Nature is a reformulation of the question as to the place of human beings in nature. T. H. Huxley's essay on 'Man's Place in Nature' * was an attempt to break down the distinction between human beings and animals by viewing our species in the light of biological evolution. For most people at least, Huxley settled the question of whether the existence of our species required a different sort of explanation than did the existence of other kinds of animals. But this result simply transferred the problem to philosophy. The question now became: granted that what is special about human beings was produced by the same sorts of causes as produced the special faculties of the other animal species, are these human facul ties nonetheless so different that there is a special, philosophical problem about their nature? Granted, in other words, that what we call "mind" came into the world by spatio-temporal mechanisms homogeneous with those which produced the rest of the world's contents, what is it that we call "mind"? Something which is simply a special case of the other physical things which emerged? Or something "irreducible" to the physical? This is a vague question because "irreducible" is a multiply am biguous word. Most discussions of "the mind-body problem" argue for reducibility or irreducibility by tacitly choosing a sense, or senses, of "reducible" favorable to their own side. There are many such senses, stretching along a spectrum between a purely causal sense at one end and a purely definitional sense at the other. Those inclined to reduce mind to matter like to think that Huxley's point that mind emerged from matter is enough to show that there can be no ontolo gical discontinuity. So this side employs a sense of "reducible" in which X's are reducible to Y's if all the causes of X's are Y's. Those inclined to proclaim the irreducibility of mind like to think that since you cannot communicate what tarragon tastes like by telling a story about molecules there obviously is an ontological discontinuity. So

Some local models for correlation experiments

Abstract: This paper constructs two classes of models for the quantum correlation experiments used to test the Bell-type inequalities, synchronization models and prism models. Both classes employ deterministic hidden variables, satisfy the causal requirements of physical locality, and yield precisely the quantum mechanical statistics. In the synchronization models, the joint probabilities, for each emission, do not factor in the manner of stochastic independence, showing that such factorizability is not required for locality. In the prism models the observables are not random variables over a common space; hence these models throw into question the entire random variables idiom of the literature. Both classes of models appear to be testable.

Three forms of realism

Abstract: The debate surrounding realism is hampered by an aversion to expli cit formulation of the doctrine The literature is certainly replete with resounding one-liners: There are objective facts', Truth is cor respondence with reality', 'Reality is mind-independent', 'Statements are determinately either true or false', Truth may transcend our capacity to recognize it' But such slogans are rarely elaborated upon All too often the arguments, for or against, will proceed as though the nature of realism were so well-understood that no careful statement of the position is required Consequently, several distinct and in dependent positions have at various times been identified with real ism, and the debate is marked by confusion, equivocation and arguments at cross-purposes to one another I think it is worth distinguishing the following three doctrines, each deserving to be regarded as a separate form of realism For the sake of definiteness I shall write mainly about theoretical entities in science But the points are intended to apply more generally to issues surrounding realism in other areas, concerning, for example, numbers, mental states, values, and ordinary material objects First, there is what might be called epistemological realism This consists in the commonplace claim concerning some specified class of postulated entities that they really do exist In this sense we are almost all realists about prime numbers and bacteria, but not about dragons and tachyons No particular conception of truth is involved, nor any commitment to what the existence of the supposed entities would have to consist in However, this brand of realism is not without philosophical interest Concerning material things and the entities proposed by established scientific theories, the view will be opposed only by the rare sceptic with the courage of his convictions, who denies that our beliefs may be justified and is able to confine his own convictions accordingly Thus, epistemological realists about X's are opposed to those who, for either philosophical or non-philoso phical reasons, deny that there are such things1 Secondly, there is what I'll call semantic realism By this I mean the

The Semantics of English Aspectual Complementation

Abstract: I. Methodology and Theoretical Assumptions.- 1.1. Theoretical Framework.- 1.2. Methods of Analysis: Presupposition and Consequence.- 1.3. Aspect.- 1.3.1. Aspectual Constructions.- 1.3.2. Aspectual Distinctions.- 1.3.3. Aspectualizers Defined.- 1.4. The Corpus.- II. Aspectualizers and Events.- 2.1. Why an Event Analysis.- 2.2. The Philosophical Treatment of Events.- 2.3. A Temporal Analysis of Events.- 2.3.1. A Description of Onset, Nucleus, and Coda.- 2.3.2. Formal Conditions for Onset, Nucleus, and Coda.- 2.4. Other Philosophical Categories.- 2.4.1. Events as Compared with Activities, Actions, and Processes.- 2.4.2. Events as Distinct from Propositions and Objects.- III. Events and Aspectual Verb-Types: Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, States, and Series.- 3.1. Events and Aspectual Verb-types.- 3.2. Distinguishing Among Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, States, and Series.- IV. A Detailed Characterization of Aspectualizers - I: Begin and Start Compared.- 4.1. Descriptive Approach: Syntactic and Semantic Properties.- 4.2. Begin and Start.- V. A Detailed Characterization of Aspectualizers - II: Continue, Keep, Resume, and Repeat Compared.- 5.1. Keep and Continue compared.- 5.2. Resume.- 5.3. Repeat.- VI. A Detailed Characterization of Aspectualizers - III: Stop, Quit, and Cease Compared.- 6.1. Stop and Quit Compared.- 6.2. Stop and Cease.- VII. A Detailed Characterization of Aspectualizers - IV: Finish, End, and Complete Compared.- 7.1. Finish and End Compared.- 7.2. Finish and Complete.- VIII. A Summary of the Syntactic and Semantic Characteristics of Aspectualizers.- 8.1. The Syntactic Form of the Complements.- 8.2. to V and V-ing Compared.- 8.3. Presuppositions, Consequences, and Co-occurrences with Different Aspectual Verb-types.- 8.4. Other Properties of Aspectualizers Summarized.- Table I: Aspectualizers with Noun Objects.- Table II: Presuppositions and Consequences of Aspectualizers.- Table III: Aspectualizers with Different Complement Verb-types.- Data Sources.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.

Comments on Dennett

Abstract: Professor Dennett suggests that we can study consciousness empirically by keeping track of the linguistic behavior of organisms which are believed to be conscious. This proposal will strike some people as obvious, but there are some to whom it will seem evidently false. Some philosophers, like Gabriel Marcel and Thomas Nagel, cling to a sense of mystery which they believe distinguishes philosophy from science. They will say that Dennett has once again managed to miss the point about consciousness namely, that it lies beyond the reach of language, and can only be known from the inside. To illuminate the disagreement between Dennett and this sort of opponent, I would like to point out some analogies between the problem of how to study consciousness empirically and that of how to study motion empirically. It is widely believed, nowadays, that one can study motion empirically by plotting the positions, over a sequence of times, of those bodies which are believed to move. But there have been many philosophers who viewed this suggestion as simple-minded, as failing to realize that motion had an inside as well as an outside, a very mysterious inside. Aristotle, in defining motion as \"the actualization of the potential qua potential\", wished to link natural motion, the paradigm case of motion (standing to violent motion as zombies to humans) to the notion of substance. For him, natural motion (including growth, qualitative change and change of place) was to be understood by reference to the more fundamental fact of substantial change the actualization of the potential tout court, rather than merely \"qua potential.\" Descartes followed Galileo in mocking this Aristotelian definition, saying that it was unintelligible and that no definition was necessary, since \"everyone knows what motion is.\" Leibniz, however, retreated to the Aristotelian view, arguing that motion required a metaphysical treatment, in terms of the ~lan vital, of monads as well as a mathematico-physical treatment. In our century this Leibnizian claim has been restated by Bergson, James, Whitehead, Weiss, and a host of others sympathetic to the idea of

Negative, infinite, and hotter than infinite temperatures

Abstract: We examine the notions of negative, infinite and hotter than infinite temperatures and show how these unusual concepts gain legitimacy in quantum statistical mechanics. We ask if the existence of an infinite temperature implies the existence of an actual infinity and argue that it does not. Since one can sensibly talk about hotter than infinite temperatures, we ask if one could legitimately speak of other physical quantities, such as length and duration, in analogous terms. That is, could there be longer than infinite lengths or temporal durations? We argue that the answer is surprisingly yes, and we outline the properties of a number system that could be employed to characterize such magnitudes.

Models and methodologies in current theoretical high-energy physics

Abstract: A case study of the development of quantum field theory and of S-matrix theory, from their inceptions to the present, is presented. The descriptions of science given by Kuhn and by Lakatos are compared and contrasted as they apply to this case study. The episodes of the developments of these theories are then considered as candidates for competing research programs in Lakatos' methodology of scientific research programs. Lakatos' scheme provides a reasonable overall description and a plausible assessment of the relative value of these two programs in terms of progressive and degenerating problem shifts. Also discussed are the roles of various types of models as they have been used in these areas of theoretical high-energy physics.

Personal identity and rationality

Abstract: There are two main views about the nature of personal identity. I shall briefly describe these views, say without argument which I believe to be true, and then discuss the implications of this view for one of the main conceptions of rationality. This conception I shall call \"Classical Prudence.\" I shall argue that, on what I believe to be the true view about personal identity, Classical Prudence is indefensible.

Stochastic Einstein-locality and the Bell theorems

Abstract: Standard proofs of generalized Bell theorems, aiming to restrict stochastic, local hidden-variable theories for quantum correlation phenomena, employ as a locality condition the requirement of conditional stochastic independence. The connection between this and the no-superluminary-action requirement of the special theory of relativity has been a topic of controversy. In this paper, we introduce an alternative locality condition for stochastic theories, framed in terms of the models of such a theory (§2). It is a natural generalization of a “light-cone determination” condition that is essentially equivalent to mathematical conditions that have been used to derive Bell inequalities in the deterministic case. Further, it is roughly equivalent to a condition proposed by Bell that, in one investigation, needed to be supplemented with a much stronger assumption in order to yield an inequality violated by some quantum mechanical predictions. It is shown here that this reflects a very general situation: from the proposed locality condition, even adding the strict anticorrelation condition and the auxiliary hypotheses needed to derive experimentally useful (and theoretically telling) inequalities, no Bell-type inequality is derivable. (These independence claims are the burden of §4.) A certain limitation on the scope of the proposed stochastic locality condition is exposed (§5), but it is found to be rather minor. The conclusion is thus supported that conditional stochastic independence, however reasonable on other grounds, is essentially stronger than what is required by the special theory. Our results stand in apparent contradiction with a class of derivations purporting to obtain generalized Bell inequalities from “locality” alone. It is shown in Appendix (B) that such proofs do not achieve their goal. This fits with our conclusion that generalized Bell theorems are not straightforward generalizations of theorems restricting deterministic hidden-variable theories, and that, in fact, such generalizations do not exist. This leaves open the possibility that a satisfactory, non-deterministic account of the quantum correlation phenomena can be given within the framework of the special theory.

How moral agents became ghosts or why the history of ethics diverged from that of the philosophy of mind

Abstract: At the very beginning of modern moral philosophy which for reasons that will become clear, I date in the 1780s the moral agent as traditionally understood almost, if not quite, disappeared from view. The moral agent's character, the structure of his desires and dispositions, became at best a peripheral rather than a central topic for moral philosophy, thus losing the place assigned to it by the vast majority of moral philosophers from Plato to Hume. And with this displacement the history of moral philosophy was divorced to a large and quite new extent from the philosophy of mind and action. The implications for the philosophy of mind are not inconsiderable, for it is in part at least because of this divorce, and not only because of Cartesian influences upon epistemology, that that part of philosophy became merely the philosophy of mind rather than the philosophy of mind-and-action. But the alterations in the preoccupations of moral philosophy itself were even more drastic. What replaced and still too often replaces the concept of moral character at the core of philosophical thinking about morality was and is a conception of choice of a particular kind as central to moral agency. Originally in the writings of Reid and Kant this choice was conceived of as that which individuals make between the promptings of desire and the requirements of morality; much later in the writings of Sartre it has become the individual's choice of those principles obedience to whose prescriptions constitutes morality. In both earlier and later writers it is common to find this notion of choice closely connected with the praise of individual autonomy as a defining property of morality. A. N. Prior summarised Reid's view of the matter accurately: "In

The Logical Study of Science

Abstract: The relation between logic and philosophy of science, often taken for granted, is in fact problematic. Although current fashionable criticisms of the usefulness of logic are usually mistaken, there are indeed difficulties which should be taken seriously — having to do, amongst other things, with different “scientific mentalities’ in the two disciplines (section 1). Nevertheless, logic is, or should be, a vital part of the theory of science. To make this clear, the bulk of this paper is devoted to the key notion of a “scientific theory” in a logical perspective. First, various formal explications of this notion are reviewed (section 2), then their further logical theory is discussed (section 3). In the absence of grand inspiring programs like those of Klein in mathematics or Hilbert in metamathematics, this preparatory ground-work is the best one can do here. The paper ends on a philosophical note, discussing applicability and merits of the formal approach to the study of science (section 4).

Caring about caring: A reply to Frankfurt

Abstract: In his deep (and, I think, deeply Spinozistic) paper Frankfurt offers us a distinction, which I find important, between the things which are important to us, because they affect our lives in ways we find important, and things or persons we care about, where this caring makes something important which need not have been so. We invest ourselves in what we care about, make ourselves vulnerable in ways we need not have been to the losses and griefs we will suffer when what we care about is defeated, or tortured, or dead, or permanently absent from our lives. To care is to make something important, above and beyond what must be important to us simply as sentient beings with desires. I think this distinction is important, and I want to push a bit further what Frankfurt says about caring about our carings in the last section of his paper. He says of the one who cares about his caring about a person or cause, that "he therefore guides himself away from being critically affected by anything, in the outside world or within himself, which might divert him or dissuade him ... from caring as much as he does." This sounds to me like the fanatic, the one whose objects of care are so important to him that he will not risk scrutinizing them. But, for Frankfurt, to care about anything, presumably including one's caring, is to take risks of loss and defeat. The one who carefully insulates herself against losing her loves or cared-about causes, then, is precisely the one who is not willing to take the risks caring involves in this case the risks of finding out that one's objects of care, and so one's actual carings, are not worth one's while. Frankfurt later does want an evaluative dimension to enter into caring about caring, but it seems a very cautious sort of higher order caring, too cautious to qualify as caring by Frankfurt's own account of that risky investment of self in some other person or cause. He says that

A dialogical model of teaching

Abstract: This paper is motivated in part by the belief that in order to understand such key educational concepts as \"teach,\" \"learn,\" etc., it is not enough to study individual acts instantiating teaching, learning, or whatever the concept in question may be. We also have to study the more complicated rule-governed behavioral complexes in which their \"logical home\" is. These are what Wittgenstein often calls languagegames. ~ Wittgenstein at least the Ludwig of the Blue and Brown Books also offers a recipe for studying such complexes of language and behavior, viz. to build concrete but simple models of them. These are also sometimes labelled by him \"language-games.\" (Language-games in the latter sense can be considered simplified models of language-games in the former sense.) Recently, it has turned out that a most fruitful approach to Wittgensteinian languagegames is to take the game aspect seriously, that is, to construct language-games so that they are also games in the strict sense of the mathematical theory of games. 2 In this spirit, we shall sketch in this paper certain simple \"languagegames\" of teaching and learning, that is, simplified game-like models of instructional situations. A major technical tool in doing so is offered by my recent analysis of questions and answers and in particular of the question-answer relationship. 3 By means of this theory of questions and answers, we can set up a simple model of teacher-student interaction in which questions and their answers play an important role. It can be set up in the form of a game which proceeds through different kinds of moves. The structure of this \"game\" we might call it \"the language-game of teaching and learning\" is as follows. (1) There are two players (speakers), Teacher (T) and Student (S). Each of them has a store of information in the form of a list of sentences. Moreover, a separate store of information in the form of a list of assertive sentences is given. It is called \"the sources,\" and referred to as \"O.\" I don't want to specify the nature of O (otherwise known in what

Conceptual scheming or confessions of a metaphysical realist

Abstract: I suppose that everyone holds that in some contexts, what one is talking about, and whether what one says is true, depends upon a body of beliefs. If the beliefs were to change appropriately, so would what a sentence says, or the truth of what is said, or both. The questions raised by Davidson's and Putnam's claims concern how typical this dependence is, whether the dependence is necessary or accidental, and whether the connection between assertion, truth, and belief goes beyond dependence to something stronger. The views expressed in the two sentences quoted are not the same, and Putnam's is much the more radical, at least to appearance. Davidson's thesis is that, of necessity, the \"large features\" or the \"majority\" of our beliefs about the world are true. Furthermore, as Davidson makes clear elsewhere, the sort of necessity (or the source of necessity) is conceptual, not causal. It is not, say, that Davidson holds that because of the laws of nature no community of speakers could develop whose picture of the world was, in its large features, false. Rather he holds that we cannot coherently imagine such a community. Putnam holds that, again of necessity, the best of all possible theories would be true, not just in its large features but in every detail. Both contentions are vague in their fashion, for we have no precise idea as to what \"most\" of our beliefs or \"large features\" of our picture of the world, come to, just as we have no precise idea as to what, if anything, could make a theory in most cases ideal. Both stand opposed to a view which regards belief and truth as logically

Analyticity and the indeterminacy of translation

Abstract: The subject of this paper is the analytic-synthetic distinction and its relation to the indeterminacy of translation. In particular, I am con cerned with the question of whether a denial of the analytic-synthetic distinction need involve one in the general scepticism about meaning which is dramatized by the claim that translation is indeterminate. My answer to this question is complex, largely because of a complexity or unclarity in the way in which the analytic-synthetic distinction has been thought of. Proponents of that distinction have taken it to be an epistemological cleavage among statements; they have also assumed that analyticity is simply truth by virtue of meaning, and so must be acceptable if the notion of meaning is. They have thus assumed that the notion of meaning has the power to divide statements into two epistemologically quite distinct kinds. Once articulated in this way, this assumption is at least not obvious; I hope to cast doubt upon it. My strategy is as follows. Drawing largely on the work of Quine, I present two arguments (in sections 1 and 2, respectively). The second is an attack on the notion of meaning, and rests upon, or is equivalent to, the indeterminacy of translation. The first argument seems to rely upon nothing so controversial, and is explicitly an attack on the idea that the analytic-synthetic distinction is of general epistemological importance. Separating the two arguments illuminates the complex debate between Carnap and Quine over analyticity; it also suggests that one can accept the first argument (thereby rejecting the philoso phical use of the analytic-synthetic distinction) without accepting the general scepticism about meaning which is the burden of the second argument.1

Who was dr who's father?

Abstract: In setting a recent Analysis competition, z Jonathan Harrison has told a story so extravagant in its implications that it will be regarded by many as an effective reductio ad absurdum of the one dubious assumption on which the story rests: the possibility of time travel. Those who, like me, believe in the possibility of time travel are faced with a choice between (1) unearthing some other assumption which, rather than the time-travel assumption, can be shown to be responsible for the unacceptable implications of Harrison's story, and (2) accepting the implications of the story. The implications in question include these: that a man can be his own father, that he can eat himself (that is, eat himself up), and that he can die before he is born. In this paper I take the view that there are no logical obstacles to adopting course of action (2): I hold that there is, despite the shock that they occasion on first acquaintance, nothing logically unacceptable about those implications of Harrison's story which I have just mentioned. A full-scale defence of the coherence of Harrison's story would involve considerable discussion of several knotty philosophical problems: those of backward causation, personal identity, and necessary truth among others. There have been in recent years several valuable discussions of these problems in respect of their bearing on the question whether time travel is possible, 3 and some of the arguments that have been advanced will here be taken for granted. After retelling Harrison's story, I shall engage in a clarification and limited defence of some of the aspects of his story that might be thought to be unacceptable. My version of the story, however, will differ from Harrison's in two important ways, as well as in many insignificant details. I think that these two important alterations, though they affect none of the implications mentioned above, greatly increase the plausibility of the story. However, considerations of plausibility deriving from a somewhat unexpected source will finally lead to the conclusion that both Harrison's story and my story, though logically possible, are scientifically impossible. (I shall speak quite often of what follows in the next five

On Chomskyan mentalism: A reply to Peter Slezak

Abstract: Introducing his paper, Slezak (p. 428) proposes “to examine Botha's criticisms in detail with a view to demonstrating that they are without foundation and are based on the most fundamental misunderstandings”. Concluding his paper, Slezak (p. 439) expresses the hope that he has shown “that the conceptions on which these criticisms rest are so seriously flawed as to make it unprofitable to attempt to unravel the rest of his analysis”. These formulations, by all standards, represent rather strong rhetoric. But, as the preceding paragraphs have shown, Slezak's discussion sadly lacks the relevant and accurate analyses needed to give substance to his rhetoric.

A logical form for the propositional attitudes

Abstract: The author puts forth an approach to propositional attitude contexts based upon the view that one does not have beliefs of ordinary extensional entitiessimpliciter. Rather, one has beliefs of such entities as presented in various manners. Roughly, these are treated as beliefs of ordered pairs — the first member of which is the ordinary extensional entity and the second member of which is a predicate that it satisfies. Such an approach has no difficulties with problems involving identity, such as of The Morning Star and The Evening Star (section 1). Given the second members of the pairs, the “modes of presentation”, it is quite natural to allow exportation everywhere. There is no need for “essentialism”. (One also can have non-essentialistic modal logic if one grants analyticity or the like.) (section 2). Given that the second member of the pair need only be one that is satisfied by the entity that is the first member (and need not be specificative), the method has no difficulties when one is concerned only with discriminations (and not specifications) (section 3). When this method is combined with the Frege-Carnap method of descriptions, fictional “entities” can be accommodated; Goodman's unicorn-picture and the like can be brought within a Tarskian semantics; and Geach's difficulties with “intentional identity” appear to be handled (section 4). Given the author's ordered pair construals, there appears to be no additional need for notional construals; i.e., the author's one unified method appears satisfactory for dealing with both traditionalde re (relational) andde dicto (notional) construals. The Paradox of the Knower and the like do not appear formulatable against the author's approach. (section 5). The author also argues against the basic principles behind the Church-Langford translation argument (section 6).

The significance of the ergodic decomposition of stationary measures for the interpretation of probability

Abstract: De Finetti's representation theorem is a special case of the ergodic decomposition of stationary probability measures. The problems of the interpretation of probabilities centred around de Finetti's theorem are extended to this more general situation. The ergodic decomposition theorem has a physical background in the ergodic theory of dynamical systems. Thereby the interpretations of probabilities in the cases of de Finetti's theorem and its generalization and in ergodic theory are systematically connected to each other.

Realism and logic

Abstract: Michael Dummet t may fairly be said to have given theory of meaning a new complexion by firmly identifying, as one of its foundational issues, the tension between what he labels realism and anti-realism. The former is the view that the meaning of a declarative sentence consists in its possibly unrecognisable or verification-transcendent truth condition; i.e., the view that a speaker 's multifarious semantic competences are all in the last analysis to be accounted for in terms of his implicitly associating, with each declarative sentence of his language, a state of affairs whose possibly unrecognisable obtaining is necessary and sufficient for its truth. The crux is the contention that the association is effected in the teeth of the fact that the question whether the state of affairs obtains or not is wholly independent of the speaker 's capacity, even in principle, to determine that it does. Anti-realists argue that we cannot be credited with a grasp of such t ranscendent truth conditions: they urge there is nothing in our verbal behaviour to warrant the attribution to us of an implicit association of sentences and t ranscendent states of affairs; nor is it possible to see how such an association could be taught and learned in the first place, l The thought is a natural one that this dispute must harbour metaphysical implications. In the case of nearly all kinds of sentence, most of us presumably feel a compulsive attraction towards the belief that those sentences deal with an objective or mind-independent reality, a reality, that is, that exists irrespective of any capacity on our part to attain knowledge about it. Surely, one wants to say, that intuitive b e l i e f call it ontological realism i s vindicated just in case a realist t reatment of those sentences can be sustained. Likewise, contraposing one half of that bi-implication, it seems evident that anti-realism or \"verif icationism\", in its insistence on an essential link between human intellectual capacity on the one hand and on the other the boundaries of what we can make intelligible to ourselves, i.e.,

Einstein and Bell: Strengthening the case for microphysical randomness

Abstract: It is by now widely recognized that a powerful case for the in deterministic or ultimately random behavior of certain quantum mechanical systems can be based on Bell's theorem together with two types of empirical data: (i) data of several experiments on polariza tion correlations of photon pairs, showing excellent agreement with the QM predictions and sharp disagreement with inequalities like Bell's constraining local, deterministic, hidden-variable theories (meeting certain auxiliary conditions designed to take into account current experimental limitations, cf. [3], ?5); (ii) all the diverse data supporting the special theory of relativity ("STR"), specifically its requirement of no superluminary action ("nsa"). Three features of this case contribute to its strength: (1) Although a sophisticated understanding of Quantum Theory led to the derivations of inequalities and to the design of experiments to test them, the argument for indeterminism based on the results does not rest on any general acceptance of QM at all. This is in marked contrast to all earlier arguments for indeterminism based on the alleged complete ness of QM. A class of experimental statistics has now been obtained, violating the inequalities; the argument that no deterministic, local account of these exists makes no further reference to QM what soever. (2) An important instance of the first point, the case does not depend on any "realistic interpretation" of the quantum magnitudes. In contrast to arguments based on the no-embedding theorem of Kochen-Specker or the inexistence of dispersion-free measures (corollary to Gleason's theorem), no special assumption as to the representation of QM observables is needed. They needn't be treated as random variables over a common phase-space; nor need it be supposed that they have values apart from interaction with a measur ing device. In fact, they needn't be represented at all (by any putative deterministic theory): only the corresponding phenomenological