Evolving networks for social optima in the “weakest link game”

Previous models have applied evolving networks based on node-level “copy and rewire” rules to simple two player games (e.g. the Prisoner’s Dilemma). It was found that such models tended to evolve toward socially optimal behavior. Here we apply a similar technique to a more tricky co-ordination game (the weakest link game) requiring interactions from several players (nodes) that may play several strategies. We define a variant of the game with several equilibria—each offering increasing social benefit. We found that the evolving network functions to select and spread more optimal equilibria while resisting invasion by lower ones. Hence the network acts as a kind of “social ratchet” selecting for increasing social benefit. Such networks have applications in peer-to-peer computing and may have implications for understanding social systems.

Bennett and Hacker on Neural Materialism

In their recent book Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Max Bennett and Peter Hacker attack neural materialism (NM), the view, roughly, that mental states (events, processes, etc.) are identical with neural states or material properties of neural states (events, processes, etc.). Specifically, in the penultimate chapter entitled “Reductionism,” they argue that NM is unintelligible, that “there is no sense to literally identifying neural states and configurations with psychological attributes.” This is a provocative claim indeed. If Bennett and Hacker are right, then a sizeable number of philosophers, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, etc., subscribe to a view that is not merely false, but strictly meaningless. In this article I show that Bennett and Hacker's arguments against NM, whether construed as arguments for the meaninglessness of or the falsity of the thesis, cannot withstand scrutiny: when laid bare they are found to rest upon highly dubious assumptions that either seriously mischaracterize or underestimate the resources of the thesis.

Closure,Defeasibility and Conclusive Reasons

It is argued, on the basis of new counterexamples, that neither knowledge nor epistemic justification (or “epistemic rationality”) can reasonably be thought to be closed under logical implication. The argument includes an attempt to reconcile the fundamental intuitions of the opposing parties in the debate.

Meta-ethics and Justification

The author takes up three metaphysical conceptions of morality — realism, projectivism, constructivism — and the account of justification or reason that makes these pictures possible. It is argued that the right meta-ethical conception should be the one that entails the most plausible conception of reason-giving, rather than by any other consideration. Realism and projectivism, when understood in ways consistent with their fundamental commitments, generate unsatisfactory models of justification; constructivism alone does not. The author also argues for a particular interpretation of how “objective moral obligation” is to be understood within constructivism.

The dynamics of functioning investigating societal transitions with partial differential equations

In this article a mathematical framework is introduced and explored for the study of processes in societal transitions. A transition is conceptualised as a fundamental shift in the functioning of a societal system. The framework views functioning as a real-valued field defined upon a real variable. The initial status quo prior to a transition is captured in a field called the regime and the alternative that possibly takes over is represented in a field called a niche. Think for example of a transition in an energy supply system, where the regime could be centrally produced, fossil fuel based energy supply and a niche decentralised renewable energy production. The article then proceeds to translate theoretical notions on the interactions and dynamics of regimes and niches from transition literature into the language of this framework. This is subsequently elaborated in some simple models and studied analytically or by means of computer simulation.

No Lacuna and No Vicious Regress: A Reply to Le Poidevin

In his “Space, supervenience and substantivalism”, Le Poidevin proposes a substantivalism in which space is discrete, implying that there are unmediated spatial relations between neighboring primitive points. This proposition is motivated by his concern that relationism suffers from an explanatory lacuna and that substantivalism gives rise to a vicious regress. Le Poidevin implicitly requires that the relationist be committed to the “only x and y” principle regarding spatial relations. It is not obvious that the relationist is committed to this principle in such a context. An additional motivation for Le Poidevin's argument, that space should be considered to be discrete, is that he believes that substantivalists are committed to a vicious regress. I show that the regress is in fact not of the vicious variety. These two main arguments show that Le Poidevin's suggestion that we drop the density postulate for space is unnecessary.

Two-dimensionalism and the “Knowing Which” Requirement

Two-dimensional semantics aims to eliminate the puzzle of necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori truths. Recently many argue that even assuming two-dimensional semantics we are left with the puzzle of necessary and a posteriori propositions. Stephen Yablo (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 81, 98–122, 2000) and Penelope Mackie (Analysis, 62(3), 225–236, 2002) argue that a plausible sense of “knowing which” lets us know the object of such a proposition, and yet its necessity is “hidden” and thus a posteriori. This paper answers this objection; I argue that given two-dimensional semantics you cannot know a necessary proposition without knowing that it is true.

Some Remarks on “Language-Created Entities”

Some entities, such as fictional characters, propositions, properties, events and numbers are prima facie promising candidates for owing their existence to our linguistic and conceptual practices. However, it is notoriously hard to pin down just what sets such allegedly “language-created” entities apart from ordinary entities. The present paper considers some of the features that are supposed to distinguish between entities of the two kinds and argues that, on an independently plausible account of what it takes to individuate objects, the criteria let in more than friends of the strategy might be happy with.

Errors associated with simple versus realistic models

This paper addresses the relative errors associated with simple versus realistic (or science-based) models. We take the perspective of trying to predict what the model will predict as we begin to build the model. Any model building process can get the model “wrong” to a greater or lesser extent by making a theoretical mistake in constructing the model. In addition, every model needs data of some sort, whether it be obtained by experiments, surveys or expert judgment, and the data collection process is filled with error sources. This paper suggests a hypothesis that

Transglobal Evidentialism-Reliabilism

We propose an approach to epistemic justification that incorporates elements of both reliabilism and evidentialism, while also transforming these elements in significant ways. After briefly describing and motivating the non-standard version of reliabilism that Henderson and Horgan call “transglobal” reliabilism, we harness some of Henderson and Horgan’s conceptual machinery to provide a non-reliabilist account of propositional justification (i.e., evidential support). We then invoke this account, together with the notion of a transglobally reliable belief-forming process, to give an account of doxastic justification.

A (computational) social science perspective on societal transitions

This paper aims to illustrate how social sciences, sociology in particular, have theorized on societal transitions. The first section introduces some preliminary definitions. The assumption is that a societal transition is more than a social, economic or technological change. It is a large-scale and long-term macro process through which a given social system radically changes its structural basis, in terms of new socio-technical practices, governance rules, social and economic institutions, cultural frames, and patterns of social life. The second section provides an excursus on social science accounts on transitions. In particular, the attention has been given to Norbert Elias’ famous study on the rise and fall of the court society in France, between 17th and 18th century and to Manuel Castells’ recent analysis of the emergence of the network society. The third section discusses problems and challenges of standard approaches and suggests some building blocks of societal transition models, taken from complexity and social simulation literature. The concluding section suggests some way-forward measures towards a computational social science approach to societal transitions.

Understanding the Small Object Argument

The small object argument is a transfinite construction which, starting from a set of maps in a category, generates a weak factorisation system on that category. As useful as it is, the small object argument has some problematic aspects: it possesses no universal property; it does not converge; and it does not seem to be related to other transfinite constructions occurring in categorical algebra. In this paper, we give an “algebraic” refinement of the small object argument, cast in terms of Grandis and Tholen’s natural weak factorisation systems, which rectifies each of these three deficiencies.

Virtue -Based Epistemology and the Centrality of Truth (Towards a Strong Virtue-Epistemology)

A strong, strictly virtue-based, and at the same time truth-centered framework for virtue epistemology (VE) is proposed that bases VE upon a clearly motivating epistemic virtue, inquisitiveness or curiosity in a very wide sense, characterizes the purely executive capacities-virtues as a means for the truth-goal set by the former, and, finally, situates the remaining, partly motivating and partly executive virtues in relation to this central stock of virtues. Character-trait epistemic virtues are presented as hybrids, partly moral, partly purely epistemic. In order to make the approach virtue-based, it is argued that the central virtue (inquisitiveness or curiosity) is responsible for the value of truth: truth is valuable to cognizers because they are inquisitive, and most other virtues are a means for satisfying inquisitiveness. On can usefully combine this virtue-based account of the motivation for acquiring knowledge with a Sosa-style analysis of the concept “knowledge”, which brings to the forefront virtues-capacities, in order to obtain a full-blooded, “strong” VE.

Is Believing at Will ‘Conceptually Impossible’?

In this paper I discuss the claim that believing at will is ‘conceptually impossible’ or, to use a formulation encountered in the debate, “that nothing could be a belief and be willed directly”. I argue that such a claim is only plausible if directed against the claim that believing itself is an action-type. However, in the debate, the claim has been univocally directed against the position that forming a belief is an action-type. I argue that the many arguments offered in favor of the ‘conceptual impossibility’ of performing such actions fail without exception. If we are to argue against doxastic voluntarism we are better off by resorting to more modest means.

Studying transition dynamics via focusing on underlying feedback interactions

The emerging need for societal transitions raises the need for a better understanding of the dynamic nature of large scale societal systems, and therefore the development of an analytical approach for drawing dynamic conclusions based on system’s dynamic mechanisms, feedback relationships and interacting components. The objective of this study is to explore the degree to which System Dynamics as an approach enhances the process of understanding transition dynamics in socio-technical systems. In other words, it is aimed to reveal the type of insights that can be developed about such systems and their dynamic behaviour using the approach, as well as the shortcomings of the approach in this challenging task. In order to do so, a modeling study aiming to understand the underlying mechanisms of the waste management transition in the Netherlands is conducted. The quantitative model developed is based on the historical case of the waste management transition of the Netherlands, and it portrays issues as the dynamics of actors’ preferences, development of infrastructure and environmental consequences of dominant mode of functioning and provides an instance for demonstrating and evaluating the feedback-focused perspective discussed in this paper. Finally, the paper discusses a set of points regarding the utilized approach, System Dynamics, observed during this study both in general and in the specific context of transitions. In short, System Dynamics stands as a promising approach mainly due to its strength in explaining the source of complex dynamics based on interacting feedback loops, but it also has certain drawbacks in the context of transitions.

A Warranted-assertability Defense of a Moorean Response to Skepticism

According to a Moorean response to skepticism, the standards for knowledge are invariantly comparatively low, and we can know across contexts all that we ordinarily take ourselves to know. It is incumbent upon the Moorean to defend his position by explaining how, in contexts in which S seems to lack knowledge, S can nevertheless have knowledge. The explanation proposed here relies on a warranted-assertability maneuver: Because we are warranted in asserting that S doesn’t know that p, it can seem that S does in fact lack that piece of knowledge. Moreover, this warranted-assertability maneuver is unique and better than similar maneuvers because it makes use of H. P. Grice’s general conversational rule of Quantity—“Do not make your contribution more informative than is required”—in explaining why we are warranted in asserting that S doesn’t know that p.

Models as lab equipment: science from computational experiments

Computer models are artifacts that facilitate conducting computational experiments. In that sense they are laboratory equipment. The utility of a piece of laboratory equipment comes from the range of useful experiments it supports. However, general purpose models are in general much more costly to create and maintain. Consequently, issues regarding the design of computer models are best understood as pragmatic questions regarding the costs and utility of alternative designs.

Margins for Error and Sensitivity: What Nozick Might Have Said

Timothy Williamson has provided damaging counterexamples to Robert Nozick’s sensitivity principle. The examples are based on Williamson’s anti-luminosity arguments, and they show how knowledge requires a margin for error that appears to be incompatible with sensitivity. I explain how Nozick can rescue sensitivity from Williamson’s counterexamples by appeal to a specific conception of the methods by which an agent forms a belief. I also defend the proposed conception of methods against Williamson’s criticisms.

Measuring in dynamic geometry environments as a tool for conjecturing and proving

This paper sits within the research on the affordances of new technologies in the mathematics classroom and focuses on a specific feature that is available in dynamic geometry environments, i.e. measuring tools, within the context of conjecturing and proving in open geometry problems. We develop a classification of different modalities of measuring, based on our previous work on dragging. The modalities are illustrated through the analysis of 15–16 year-old students’ proving processes, which focuses on how these modalities relate to the moves between the spatio-graphical field and the theoretical field and may either support or hinder the proving process. The classification of the modalities of measuring enables researchers to access students’ cognitive processes and teachers to be aware of the different possible uses and interpretation of measuring, giving them tools to support students when difficulties arise.

Do we self-regulate actions or perceptions? A test of two computational models

Self-regulation theories in applied psychology disagree about whether action or perceptions are the focus of regulation. Computational models based on the two conceptualizations were constructed and simulated. In one scenario, they performed identically and in conjunction with participants in a study of the goal-level effect (Vancouver et al., Organ Res Methods 8:100–127, 2005). In another scenario they created differentiating predictions and only the computational model based on the self-regulation of perceptions matched the data of participants. Implications for research and practice are discussed.