var pipedata = new Array();
pipedata = [
	//  delimiter is |
	//  Each line should be a pipe-delimited list of the officers with the first field giving the year.
"Marshall Abrams|Alabama-Birmingham|Toward a Mechanistic Interpretation of Probability|2009|I sketch a new objective interpretation of probability,  called "mechanistic probability", and more specifically what I call "far-flung frequency (FFF) mechanistic probability". FFF mechanistic probability is defined in terms of facts about the causal structure of devices and certain sets of collections of frequencies in the actual world.  The relevant kind of causal structure is a generalization of what Strevens (2003) calls "microconstancy". Though defined partly in terms of frequencies, FFF mechanistic probability avoids many drawbacks of well-known frequency theories.  It at least partly explains stable frequencies, which will usually be close to the values of corresponding mechanistic probabilities; FFF mechanistic probability thus satisfies what in my view is a core desideratum for any objective interpretation.  However, FFF mechanistic probabilities are not single case probabilities, and FFF mechanistic probability explains stable frequencies directly rather than by inference from combinations of single case probabilities.",
"Ken Akiba|Virginia Commonwealth|The Coherence and Significance of Conjunctive, Disjunctive and Negative Objects|2009|The idea that conjunctive, disjunctive, and negative noun phrases such as George and Laura, George or Laura, and not both George and Laura, as well as universal and existential determiner phrases such as all George‚s daughters and some of George‚s daughters, denote conjunctive, disjunctive, and negative objects such as George-and-Laura, George-or-Laura, and not-(George-and-Laura), is often dismissed as a violation of the laws of classical logic because a conjunctive object would generally be an incomplete object and a disjunctive object would generally be an inconsistent object; for instance, George-and-Laura, which is thought to have just those properties that both George and Laura have, would have neither the property being male nor the property not being male, and George-or-Laura, which is thought to have just those properties that either George or Laura has, would have both of the properties.  This paper shows, however, that such objects, called (conjunctive, disjunctive, and negative) shadows, can be understood coherently within the classical framework; so there is no logical reason to deny their existence.  The paper also sketches a semantics of determiner phrases radically different from those offered in the Frege-Russell-Montague-GQ tradition; the semantics involves no quantifiers in the logical sense, and considers, e.g., All George‚s daughters drink, to be a genuine subject-predicate sentence whose subject denotes the conjunctive shadow of all of George‚s daughters.  The paper also discusses ways to reduce shadows of the three kinds to shadows of a single kind, and, ultimately, to sets.",
"Martin W. Allen|U Mass|One View of Logical Preservation and Negation|2009|We examine the structural role of negation in a logical system. We show how a preservationist approach to consequence relations can illuminate this role. A general account of consequence is given, in terms of the preservation of any among many candidate properties of sets of sentences in a logical language. Such properties are de€ned, and important features are described. We show that it can be dif€cult to de€ne a "negation" in the resulting logical system. We then give a new account of same, using the idea of logical opposition. We prove that every sentence in a logical language has some logically opposed set, and argue that such a set can be regarded as doing the structural work of negation.",
"Roberta Ballarin|UBC|Disjunctive Effects|2009|In this paper I argue in favor of disjunctive effects, i.e., of cases in which though an event or fact C is not a cause of an effect E1 and is also not a cause of a distinct effect E2, it is nonetheless the case that C is a cause of the disjunctive effect (E1 or E2). I draw an analogy between causing and believing, wanting, owing, etc. I show how endorsing disjunctive effects allows us to retain the additivity of causation.",
"Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay, Davin Nelson, Gordon Britten, Mark Greenwood and Jesse Berwald|Montana State|Three Q’s about Simpson’s Paradox: A Logic Based Account|2009|There are three distinct questions associated with Simpson's paradox. (i) Why or in what sense is Simpson's paradox a paradox? (ii) What is the proper analysis of the paradox? (iii) How one should proceed when confronted with a typical case of the paradox? We propose a "formal" answer to the first two questions which contrasts sharply with Pearl's causal (and questionable) account of them. We argue that the "how to proceed question?" does not have a unique response, and that it depends on the context of the problem at stake.",
"William Bauer|Nebraska-Lincoln|The Being of Pure Powers|2009|The Pure Powers Thesis holds that it is possible that a dispositional property may have no causal basis. This paper defends the Pure Powers Thesis from a series of objections: the Powers Regress Argument (Psillos 2006), the Insufficient Causal Basis Argument (Psillos 2006), the Argument from the Identity Thesis (Mumford 1998, Heil 2003), and various objections advanced by Heil (2003) to the primary empirical examples of pure powers (dispositions of fundamental particles). After arguing against these objections, the key elements of the arguments against the objections are used to briefly sketch a positive account of the nature of pure powers, suggesting questions for further research.",
"Katalin Bimbó|Alberta|FOL Simplified|2009|We briefly overview some of the historical landmarks on the path leading to the reduction of the set of logical connectives of classical logic. We sketch the proofs for some of the reductions for propositional logic. Relying on the duality inherent in Boolean algebras, we introduce a new operator (nallor) that is the dual of Schoenfinkel's operator. We prove that this operator is also sufficient for FOL. After scrutinizing the proof, we pinpoint the concepts and theorems of FOL that constitute the core of the justification for the proof. Using the insights gained from the proof, we show that there are four binary operators that can serve as a primitive basis for classical first-order logic.",
"Tomas Bogardus|Austin|A New Argument for Dualism|2009|Many people would have me believe that I am a complex thing ­ a thing with parts ­ and that my mental life is somehow a result of the interaction of (some of) these parts. I am probably a brain, on this view. In this paper, I offer an argument against this Complex View. The argument turns on certainty, that highest epistemic status that precious few of our beliefs enjoy. I argue that if I am a complex thing like a brain, then introspection may be mechanistic, i.e. a causal series of events extended in time (very much like visual perception). Any causal series of events could go awry. And so, if introspection is mechanistic, it could go awry. Specifically, my introspective mechanism could malfunction, producing the higher-order belief (or perception, or awareness) that I am not experiencing excruciating pain, even though in fact I am experiencing excruciating pain. If introspection is mechanistic, I could gain evidence that would make it reasonable for me to believe that my introspective mechanism is malfunctioning in this way, i.e. to believe that I am experiencing excruciating pain even though it introspectively seems to me that I am not experiencing excruciating pain. <br><br>And so, if I am a brain, I cannot be certain that I am not experiencing excruciating pain right now. I'm not entitled to believe that come what may, since evidence concerning the malfunction of my introspective mechanism may come. But clearly I can be certain that I am not now experiencing excruciating pain. And so I am not a complex thing like a brain. Rather, I am a simple thing. Since simple material things (e.g. electrons) can't think, I'm an immaterial simple thing.",
"David Boutillier|Western Ontario|Rationalism and Logic|2009|I look at two explanations of the justification of basic logical laws that are given in terms of conditions for understanding. The first proposes a non-inferential justification, and the second, proposes one that is inferential. I argue that the non-inferential proposal flounders due to its failure to provide a substantial explanation of how logical concepts are given to us. And I argue that the inferential proposal is undermined by a counter-example.",
"Ingo Brigandt|Alberta|Scientific Reasoning is Material Inference|2009|Whereas an inference (deductive as well as inductive) is usually viewed as being valid in virtue of its argument form, the present paper argues that scientific reasoning is material inference, i.e., justified in virtue of its content. A material inference is licensed by the empirical content embodied in the concepts contained in the premises and conclusion. Understanding scientific reasoning as material inference has the advantage of combining different aspects of scientific reasoning, such as confirmation, discovery, and explanation. This approach explains why these different aspects (including discovery) can be rational without conforming to formal schemes, and why scientific reasoning is local, i.e., justified only in certain domains and contingent on particular empirical facts. The notion of material inference also fruitfully interacts with accounts of conceptual change and psychological theories of concepts.",
"Derek Brown|Brandon|On a Rational Reconstruction of Intensionalism Debates|2009|As standardly construed, intentionalists believe that all qualitative aspects of experience are part of the intentional or representational content of experience; anti-intentionalists disagree. I argue that intentional and representational content are distinct and that, in part because of this, there are two disparate intentionalism debates that can and should be distinguished. In my view the difference between these debates can be readily appreciated from an indirect realist perspective. Further, when key issues of these debates are analyzed (e.g., spectrum inversion, phantom pains, the transparency of experience), the projectivist variety of indirect realism emerges atop currently influential intentionalist accounts and anti-intentionalists ones (e.g., qualia realism).",
"Bryson Brown|Lethbridge|From Inference to Connectives|2009|The meaning of the logical connectives '&not;', '&and;' and '&or;' is often said to be determined by their special role in the consequence relation, i.e. by their introduction and elimination rules. Another view holds that they reflect and formalize (perhaps imperfectly) a prior truth-functional understanding of certain natural-language connectives. Here I want to present a somewhat different view.",
"Ben Caplan, Chris Tillman, and Patrick Reeder|OSU & Manitoba|Parts of Singletons|2009|Here's a view that we like: Cary is a part—not just a member, but a part—of his singleton, the set whose sole member is Cary. Here's another view that we like: the mereological difference between Cary and his singleton—what you get when you subtract Cary from his singleton, so to speak—is the empty set. Putting these views together, we get the view that Cary's singleton is composed of Cary and the empty set: or, more suggestively, that {Cary} is composed of Cary and {}. We like this view, too. On this view, you get Cary's singleton by adding the empty set to Cary. If in general you get the singleton of something by adding the empty set to it, then you get the singleton of Cary's singleton—the set whose sole member is Cary's singleton—by adding the empty set to Cary's singleton. But the empty set is already a part of Cary's singleton. So, it turns out, Cary's singleton and its singleton are both composed of Cary and the empty set. This violates a principle of classical mereology, according to which no two things are ever composed of the same parts. So, if, like us, you like the view that Cary's singleton is composed of Cary and the empty set, then you're going to need a non-classical mereology. In this paper, we develop a view on which Cary's singleton is composed of Cary and the empty set. We present a non-classical mereology, due to Kit Fine (1999), and explain how it can be used to vindicate the claim that Cary's singleton is composed of Cary and the empty set. We then compare this view, which we call the Fine view, with David Lewis's (1991, 1993) view, according to which neither Cary nor the empty set is a part of Cary's singleton, since Cary's singleton has no proper parts. Although we don't discuss the issue in this paper, Zermelo set theory can be recovered from the Fine view.",
"Charles Chihara|UC Berkeley|Two Nominalistic Accounts of Mathematics|2009|I describe two approaches to the problem of devising an analysis of mathematics that will account for applications of mathematics within a nominalistic framework.  The first, Hartry Field's fictionalist view of mathematics, holds that the theorems of mathematics are, like sentences in works of fiction, not true.  Applications of mathematics are explained in terms of a property that good mathematical systems are supposed to possess, namely that of being &quot;conservative&quot; over nominalistic theories.  Charles Chihara's structural account of mathematics takes a very different approach: it argues that the theorems of mathematics can be understood in such a way that the existence of mathematical objects is not asserted by the theorems.  These theorems can, however, be held to be true.  The adequacy of these accounts of mathematics are tested by the problem of explaining why the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus was so spectacularly successful and important in both mathematics and the physical sciences.",
"Roger Clarke|UBC|‘The Ravens Paradox’ is a Misnomer|2009|I argue that the standard Bayesian solution to the ravens paradox—generally accepted as the most successful solution to the paradox—is insufficiently general. I give an instance of the paradox which is not solved by the standard Bayesian solution. I defend a new, more general solution, which is compatible with the Bayesian account of confirmation. As a solution to the paradox, I argue that the ravens hypothesis ought not to be held equivalent to its contrapositive; more interestingly, I argue that how we formally represent hypotheses ought to vary with the context of inquiry. This explains why the paradox is compelling, while dealing with standard objections to holding hypotheses inequivalent to their contrapositives.",
"Murray Clarke|Concordia|Does Error Evolve?|2009|Is it possible that natural selection has produced mechanisms whose function is to systemically produce false belief? That is the question I will address in this paper. Research on Error Management , by Buss, Haselton, Saal, Johnson, Abbey, et.al.. and on the Positive Illusions by Alicke, Cross, Gilovich, Taylor et.al. suggests an evolutionary function for systemic misbelief. That is, systemic misbelief results in reproductive advantages, and better health, longevity and genetic fitness, respectively. If these theorists are even close to the mark, it would seem that to err is human, but that to err systemically, is good for your genome. After reviewing some of this literature, I will offer a response to the above question.",
"Anthony Coleman|Willamete|An Analysis of the Obvious|2009|I examine the nature of the relationship between a person and a proposition when that proposition is obvious to that person. I argue that p is obvious to S if and only if S knows p and S bears an O-state to p, where an O-state is a conscious propositional attitude in which the proposition the attitude is directed towards strikes the bearer of that state as true with a distinctive phenomenology, namely a phenomenology that is normally characterized with the words ‘obviously true’. I show how this analysis sheds light on various aspects of our discourse about the obvious.",
"Kenneth Easwaran|USC|Infinitesimal Probabilities|2009|Many defenders of a probabilistic understanding of degrees of belief have endorsed regularity, the thesis that the only propositions that should get probability zero are ones that an agent is absolutely certain are false. To save this thesis from some problems, they have suggested following Brian Skyrms and David Lewis and allowing degrees of belief to take on infinitesimal values as well as standard real-number values.<br><br>I show first that the motivations for regularity all fail. Then I show that a problem Timothy Williamson has found for some applications of infinitesimals is in fact much more general than he suggested. In fact, the only propositions that an agent can have an infinitesimal degree of belief in are propositions that themselves explicitly mention infinitesimals, or other similarly mathematically complicated objects.",
"Yvon Gauthier|Montreal|The Foundational Significance of Applied Proof Theory|2009|My discussion centers around Ulrich Kohlenbach's work Applied Proof Theory. Proof Interpretations and their Use in Mathematics in the proof mining project of recent proof theory. The emphasis is on the tradition of proof theory originating with Hilbert and his motivations. I examine also the motives that pervade the work of Herbrand and Gödel, the two central figures in in the theoretical picture of applied proof theory. I conclude that despite G. Kreisel's proposal of a shift of emphasis in traditional proof theory, Hilbert's original proof-theoretical ideal is still alive.",
"Eric Hiddleston|Wayne State|Reductionism and the Micro-Macro Mirroring Thesis|2009|This paper considers a claim I call the &quot;Micro-Macro Mirroring Thesis&quot;, roughly that causal/nomic relations among higher-order properties (e.g., mental ones) are mirrored in relations among their realizers (e.g., brain properties). I argue that the Thesis is false, and that important reductionist views in the philosophy of mind presuppose the Thesis.",
"Sam Hillier|Alberta|Mathematics in Science ­ Carnap vs. Quine|2009|The analyticity debate between Carnap and Quine ranks as one of the most important events in the history of analytic philosophy. The significance of this debate is matched only by the sense of miscommunication that pervades it. In this talk I re-examine the base issue of the debate, and I argue that underneath the layers of confusion lies a significant debate about the status of mathematics in science.",
"Christopher Hitchcock|Cal Tech|Trumping and Contrastive Causation|2009|Jonathan Schaffer introduced a new type of causal structure called 'trumping'. According to Schaffer, trumping is a species of causal preemption. Both Schaffer and I have argued that causation has a contrastive structure. In this paper, I analyze the structure of trumping cases from the perspective of contrastive causation, and argue that the case is much more complex than it first appears. Nonetheless, there is little reason to regard trumping as a species of causal preemption.",
"Glen Hoffman|Ryerson|Rationalist Infallibilism|2009|On rationalist infallibilism, a wide variety of (i) analytic and (ii) synthetic a priori propositions can be infallibly justified (or absolutely warranted), i.e., justified to a degree that entails their truth and precludes their falsity. Though rationalist infallibilism is likely running its course, adherence to at least one of the two species of infallible a priori justification refuses to vanish from mainstream epistemology. In this paper, I take aim at rationalist infallibilism by calling into question the a priori infallibility of both analytic and synthetic propositions. The upshot will be twofold: firstly, rationalist infallibilism turns out to be a defective epistemological doctrine, and secondly, the case for the a priori infallibility of one or both categories of propositions turns out to be baseless.",
"Robert Hudson|Saskatchewan|Realism and the Bullet Cluster|2009|In 2006, some astrophysicists made the startling claim to have discovered by inspection of the cosmological phenomenon, the 'Bullet Cluster', direct empirical proof of the existence of dark matter. My task in this paper is to examine what these astrophysicists mean in saying that dark matter, a theoretical construct, is 'directly observed', and on this basis formulate an analytic account of direct evidence that accommodates this usage. Using this analytic account, and also by reflecting on this Bullet Cluster episode, I assess the shortcomings of the standard 'miracle argument' for scientific realism and argue alternatively that realism is warranted where we are considering entities revealed by direct observational evidence.",
"Octavian Ion|Alberta|Two Problems with the Direct Reference Theory of Belief Reports|2009|In a recent paper, Stephen Schiffer launched an argument against the Direct Theory of Belief Reports (henceforth, DTBR). The particular targets for Schiffer's criticism are Nathan Salmon and David Braun, each of whom in his own way defends the view that all belief report sentences which differ only in the substitution of co-referential proper names express the same proposition. After a brief exposition of the theory of belief reports in question and Schiffer's criticism of it, I will discuss and evaluate the reply Salmon has offered in response. In his reply, Salmon argues that Schiffer misrepresents the DTBR by equating two logically distinct formulations of de re attitudinal beliefs, only one of which is a proper consequence of the theory. I argue that Salmon's reply is unconvincing because he fails to provide a satisfying counterexample which would render apparent the difference between Schiffer's two formulations of de re beliefs.",
"Ray E. Jennings and Yue Chen|Simon Fraser|Articular Logic|2009|We uncover a 'naturally occurring'  rst-degree system, AL of Articular Logic that is both relevant and paraconsistent. The principal semantic innovation is an informationally articulated, but nevertheless entirely classical representation of w s as simple hypergraphs on the power set of a set of possible states. The principal methodological novelty is the general observation that distinct classical representations of w s can be selected and combined with redeployments of classical inference to accommodate particular inferential requirements such as paraconsis- tency and relevance.",
"Richard Johns|UBC|Self-Organisation in Dynamical Systems: A Limiting Result|2009|There presently considerable interest in the phenomenon of &quot;self-organisation&quot; in dynamical systems.  The rough idea of self-organisation is that a structure appears &quot;by itself&quot; in a dynamical system, with reasonably high probability, in a reasonably short time, with no help from a special initial state, or interaction with an external system.  What is often missed, however, is that the standard evolutionary account of the origin of multi-cellular life fits this definition, so that complex living organisms are also products of self-organisation.  On the other hand, a simple mathematical argument shows this to be impossible.  In particular, I show that the fact that dynamical laws operate locally, and do not vary across space and time, entails that they cannot produce any specific, non-self-similar, large-scale structure with high probability in a short time.  This creates a paradox. <br><br>This result has strong connections with many important issues in the history of philosophy, such as Hume's idea that matter may have a source of order within it, and Descartes' view that an effect can be no greater than its cause.",
"Nicholaos Jones|Alabama Huntsville|Approximation and Inconsistency|2009|Roy Sorensen recently argued that some inconsistent theories can be approximately true in virtue of being close approximations to consistent theories that happen to be true. This departs from the common view that inconsistencies cannot be approximately true in virtue of being maximally distant from the truth. Arguments for the common view are either question-begging (cf. Jeffrey Barrett's) or metaphysically tendentious and dependent upon a particular metric for measuring distance from truth (cf. David Lewis'). I offer a new argument in defense of the common view. It relies upon two assumptions, namely, that inconsistencies entail everything and that approximate truth transmits across entailment. This argument has three virtues: it exhibits a hitherto overlooked connection between the nature of entailment and the nature of approximate truth; it is metric-independent; and it shows that Sorensen's argument involves a subtle equivocation on the phrase &quot;close approximation.&quot;",
"Michael Katz &amp; Olga Semyonov|Haifa|Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Feminist Bank Teller Linda&mdash;But Didn't Know You Could Ask|2009|We maintain that no statistical law is violated by some speakers who, after reading a brief paragraph about Linda's academic studies, concerns and activities, consider the compound assertion &quot;Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement&quot; as more likely then the simple assertion &quot;Linda is a bank teller&quot;. These speakers see Linda as a higher ranking bank teller when they are told that she is also active in the feminist movement. Thus the assertion &quot;Linda is a bank teller&quot; has a new meaning in the compound sentence, and hence this compound sentence is not a conjunction of its original components. Where there is no conjunction there is no Conjunction Fallacy. If the components are, say, A and B, then in the compound assertion the component A changes into, say, A1, and clearly no statistical law can be violated by the inequality P(A1&B) &gt; P(A). In support of our claim we describe an experiment we recently conducted in the psychology department at Haifa University.",
"Herbert Korté|Regina|Naturalizing Natural Deduction|2009|A simplified and improved system of natural deduction for predicate logic is presented. The inference rules of existential instantiation EI and universal generalization UG are not employed in this system. Except for universal instantiation of an individual constant and existential generalization, quantifiers are neither eliminated nor introduced in any proof procedures. A proof-theoretic role for the quantifier is introduced in the form of a commonizing quantifier. It is argued that this proof-theoretic role of the commonizing quantifier exemplifies one of Frege's basic insights, by making explicit in the context of natural deduction, the fundamental difference between the semantics of proper names and expressions of single or multiple generality. Arbitrary-object semantics, which is customarily used to justify the restrictions placed on the inference rules EI and UG, and to provide the truth conditions for these rules, is discussed and criticized. Since the notion of an arbitrary object can be entirely dispensed with, it is argued that, apart from considerations of simplicity, elegance, and parsimony, philosophical considerations decidedly favour the naturalized natural deduction system presented here. Moreover, all variables in a proof are always bound (either globally or locally) by some quantifier.",
"François Lepage|Montreal|Lesniewski’s Ontology and Naïve Set Theory|2009|Lesniewski's ontology was introduced as a contradiction free alternative to set theory for the foundation of mathematics. In this paper I suggest a way to reintroduce classical set in ontology without reintroducing contradictions.",
"Aaron Lercher|Louisiana State|Integration, Ergodic Theory and Inference to the Best Explanation|2009|Inference to the best explanation may be part of an epistemological account of mathematics used in natural science, if such inferences do indeed result in knowledge of mathematics used in natural scientific explanations. Examples presented by Colyvan (2001) and Baker (2005), however, do not result in knowledge of mathematics. Yet it is possible to meet this demand, as is shown in ergodic theory in statistical mechanics. From the explanation of equilibrium in ergodic theory we are entitled to infer that Lebesgue integration theory is the correct integration theory for description of nature. But various obstacles mean that inference to the best explanation has only limited usefulness as an epistemological strategy for mathematics.",
"Kirk Ludwig|U Florida|Ontology and Collective Action|2009|What is the ontology of collective action?  I have in mind here a number of connected questions.<br><br>1. To understand action sentences about groups, do we have to admit group agents over and above individual agents, and, if so, must we attribute to them intentions, beliefs, and desires distinct from the intentions, beliefs, and desires of their members?<br><br>2. Is there a difference, in this connection, between informal groups, a couple of people taking a walk together, and formal or institutional groups, the United States declaring war on Japan on December 8th, 1941?<br><br>3. Under what conditions does it make sense to speak of a group doing something together, and what, if anything, is a collective action?<br><br>I argue that (1) understanding action sentences about groups does not commit us to the existence of group agents per se, but only to the existence of individual agents; (2) there is no difference in this regard between sentences which attribute actions to informal groups on the one hand and institutional groups on the other; and (3) collective action can be both intentional and unintentional; any random group of agents each of whom does something is also a group which does something together; there is a sense in which there are no primitive collective actions; and therefore there is a sense in which there are no collective actions at all, only events of which there are multiple agents.",
"Genoveva Martí| &amp; Jose MartinezBarcelona|General Terms and Universals: The Question of Rigidity|2009|According to a traditional and pervasive view in semantics, general terms (terms such as 'gold', 'tiger', 'philosopher', 'computer', 'Mary's favorite color') designate universals, abstract entities such as properties, colors, substances, artifacts or species. This view (from now on, The View) ...has, as of late, come into disrepute, not for metaphysical reasons, but for purely semantic reasons: it is argued that The View does not allow for a significant characterization of the notion of rigidity for general terms.<br><br>The View appears indeed to suggest a very natural extension of the notion of rigidity that Kripke defined only for singular terms...: a general term is rigid just in case it designates the same universal with respect to all indices of evaluation.<br><br>But the View's characterization of rigidity faces three major challenges: i) it overgeneralizes, ii) it trivializes the notion of rigidity, iii) it does not account for the necessity of theoretical identifications.<br><br>We think that The View's take on rigidity can meet the challenges. Our purpose in this paper is to address and respond to the three fundamental objections. [Edited]",
"Paul McNamara|New Hampshire|Praise, Blame, Obligation and Beyond: Toward a Framework for Classical Supererogation|2009|Continuing prior work ([1-7]), I integrate a simple system for personal obligation with a fairly rich system for aretaic (agent-evaluative) appraisal. I then explore various relationships between definable aretaic statuses such as praiseworthiness and blameworthiness and deontic statuses such as obligatoriness and impermissibility. I focus on partitions of the normative statuses generated (&quot;normative positions&quot; but without explicit representation of agency). In addition to being able to model and exploring fundamental questions in ethical theory about the connection between blame, praise, permissibility and obligation, this allows me to carefully represent schemes for supererogation and kin. These controversial concepts have provided challenges to both ethical theory and deontic logic, and are among deontic logic's test cases.",
"Marc A. Moffett|Wyoming|Purposive Knowledge|2009|I will begin with a question (hereafter, the Reference Problem): Why is knowledge more of a &quot;reference magnet&quot; than mere justified, true belief (Merrill 1980; Lewis 1983, 1984)? Presumably there is something about knowledge which accounts for the fact that we have latched onto it and not one of the myriad other epistemic relations in the vicinity. Arguably, the best way of approaching this problem is to think broadly about what sort of &quot;work&quot; the concept of knowledge is supposed to be doing in our overall conceptual scheme; that is, any analysis of the concept should illuminate why the concept is apt for that sort of work.",
"Michael Morreau|Maryland|Comparative Overall Similarity|2009|Much contemporary philosophy relies on notions of overall similarity. I shall argue that they are a poor foundation. The reason for this is that similarities and differences in various respects are incommensurable. You cannot add them up or weigh them against one another; nor can you put them together in any other way, to obtain useful overall similarities.",
"Adam Morton|Alberta|Visibility Logic|2009|The standard universal and existential quantifiers are in some ways anomalous among quantifiers.  One exceptional property, which I shall focus on for expositional purposes, is that  &forall;x&forall;y  is equivalent to &forall;y&forall;x.  Many other quantifiers, such as &quot;most x most y&quot; and &quot;at most 2 x  at most 2 y&quot; are not so permutable. In this paper I give a treatment of quantifiers that makes the standard quantifiers in some respects more &quot;typical&quot;.  It rests on a non-standard way of assigning sets of individuals as ranges of bound variables, and has the effect of interpreting a quantifier within a block of quantifiers in terms of the structure of that block.  Or, put differently, it makes the interpretation of a single quantifier more like that of a block of quantifiers.  The semantics is in some respects analogous to free logic, though the main focus is not on non-referring names. One interest of the resulting variation on first order quantification theory is the connection that emerges with issues about strict finitism, and with non-standard models for arithmetic.",
"Seyed Mousavian|U Alberta &amp; Iranian Institute of Philosophy|Neo-Meinongian Neo-Russellians|2009|Neo-Russellianism, which incorporates both Millianism (with regard to proper names) and the thesis of singular Russellian propositions, has widely been defended after the publication of Kripke's Naming and Necessity. The view, however, encounters various problems regarding empty names, names that do not have semantic referents. Nathan Salmon (1987; 1998; 2002) and Scott Soames (2002, 89-95; 2005, 349-53) have defended neo-Russellianism against such problems in a novel way. Their view is considerably different from other neo-Russellian views (compare, for instance, with David Braun, Jennifer Saul, Fred Adams, Robert Stecker, and Gary Fuller). To account for various intuitions of competent and rational speakers regarding utterances of sentences containing empty names, Salmon and Soames' view neither introduces entities similar to Fregean senses, e.g. propositional guises or modes of presentation, nor appeals to Gricean implicatures. In this paper, however, I argue that their view slips into neo-Meinongianism; it is committed to nonexistent objects, assigns various properties to them, and allows quantifiers range over such entities. Neo-Russellians who hold that any neo-Meinongian view should be resisted may take this result as an objection to Salmon and Soames' view. Others, who do not take neo-Meinongianism as their antagonist, may want to embrace Salmon and Soames' view as a neo-Meinongian neo-Russellian view. Either conclusion raises some issue for neo-Russellianism.",
"Ioan Muntean|UCSD|A Nascent Work on Universals: T. Maudlin’s Fiber Bundle Metaphysics|2009|In this paper I focus on a recent proposal by Tim Maudlin (2007) to replace the standard metaphysical theory of universals with a metaphysics inspired by gauge theory. First, I secure his against several lines of criticism, second I show some of its weak points and third, given some caveats I defend a specific form of it. In the first section I discuss Maudlin's argument. In Section 2 I expose and provide some solutions to some criticisms against Maudlin's argument (mainly R. Healey's and Maudlin's own criticisms as well as a possible rebuttal coming from a metaphysician). In Section 3, I argue against Maudlin's metaphysics by showing that gauge theory understood through the fiber bundle model is open to interpretations which are not independent enough of a theory of universals. Finally I secure Maudlin's argument against some possible criticisms and I show that notwithstanding its power, Maudlin's argument still faces some philosophical problems.",
"Kent Peacock|Lethbridge|Quantum Mechanics and the de-Booleanization of Time|2009|Lee Smolin has argued that one of the barriers to understanding time in a quantum world is our tendency to spatialize time. The question is whether there is anything in physics that could lead us to mathematically characterize time so that it is not just another funny spatial dimension. This paper will explore the likelihood that Bell-Kochen-Specker experiments could be used to show that regions of spacetime, including the future, cannot have a fully determinate ontology. This would argue against the cogency of treating spacetime as simply a four-dimensional geometric object. The plausibility of this view is argued for in light of trends in the development of quantum mechanics, and some of its more radical implications are reviewed.",
"Brian Pickel|Austin|Generalizing Soames’ Argument Against Rigidified  Descriptivism|2009|Rigidified Descriptivists attempt to avoid Kripke's modal argument by claiming that the semantic content of a proper name is identical to the semantic content of a rigidified definite description of the form 'the actual F'.  Scott Soames has argued that Rigidified Descriptivism is false, because it predicts that one cannot believe, say, that Joe Strummer was born in 1952, without having a belief about the actual world.  I argue that Soames' argument extends to other actuality-involving analyses which have been popular in semantics.  I argue that in order for Soames to hold on to his argument against Rigidified Descriptivism, he must provide alternatives to these analyses.  I then argue that there is reason to think that these analyses are not forthcoming, so Soames should surrender his argument against Rigidified Descriptivism.",
"John L. Pollock|Arizona|Probable Probabilities|2009|In concrete applications of probability, statistical investigation gives us knowledge of some probabilities, but we generally want to know many others that are not directly revealed by our data. For instance, we may know prob(P/Q) (the probability of P given Q) and prob(P/R), but what we really want is prob(P/Q&R), and we may not have the data required to assess that directly. The probability calculus is of no help here. Given prob(P/Q) and prob(P/R), it is consistent with the probability calculus for prob(P/Q&R) to have any value between 0 and 1. Is there any way to make a reasonable estimate of the value of prob(P/Q&R)? <br><br>A related problem occurs when probability practitioners adopt undefended assumptions of statistical independence simply on the basis of not seeing any connection between two propositions. This is common practice, but its justification has eluded probability theorists, and researchers are typically apologetic about making such assumptions. Is there any way to defend the practice? <br><br>This paper shows that on a certain conception of probability — nomic probability — there are principles of &quot;probable probabilities&quot; that license inferences of the above sort. These are principles telling us that although certain inferences from probabilities to probabilities are not deductively valid, nevertheless the second-order probability of their yielding correct results is 1. This makes it defeasibly reasonable to make the inferences. Thus I argue that it is defeasibly reasonable to assume statistical independence when we have no information to the contrary. And I show that there is a function Y(r,s:a) such that if prob(P/Q) = r, prob(P/R) = s, and prob(P/U) = a (where U is our background knowledge) then it is defeasibly reasonable to expect that prob(P/Q&R) = Y(r,s:a). Numerous other defeasible inferences are licensed by similar principles of probable probabilities. This has the potential to greatly enhance the usefulness of probabilities in practical application.",
"Greg Ray|U Florida|How the Problem of Negative Existentials was Solved|2009|The problem of negative existentials was one of the classic problems in philosophy of language. I am going to argue that latter-day developments in semantics resolved this problem without our help, but due to accidents of history no one noticed. The aim of the current talk is to make a case for this thesis.",
"Peter Schotch & Gillman Payette|Dalhousie & Calgary|Worlds and Times|2009|In the Fourteenth Century, Duns Scotus suggested that the proper analysis of modality required not just moments of time but also &quot;moments of nature&quot;. In making this suggestion, he broke with an influential view first presented by Diodorus in the early Hellenistic period, and might even be said to have been the inventor of &quot;possible worlds&quot;. In this essay we take Scotus' suggestion seriously devising first a double-index logic and then introducing the temporal order. Finally, using the temporal order, we can think about issues connected to historical necessity and the master argument of Diodorus. The system in which this analysis is done is one of those which have come to be called a hybrid logic.",
"Gila Sher|UC San Diego|Is Logic in the Mind or in the World?|2009|My goal in this paper is to present an outline of a unified answer to the following questions: 1) Is logic in the mind or in the world? 2) Does logic need a foundation? What is the main obstacle to a foundation for logic? Can it be overcome? 3) How does logic work? What does logical form represent? Are logical constants referential? 4) Is there a criterion of logicality? 5) What is the relation between logic and mathematics? Due to limitations of space I focus primarily on the first two questions and briefly describe my answers to the last three.",
"Giacomo Sillari|Penn|Rule Following as Coordination: A Game-Theoretic Approach|2009|The community view of rules maintains that the community is essential to determine whether an action is or is not in accord with a given rule, in that rule-following presupposes the existence of social institutions and conventions. In this paper, I consider the community view of rules in the context of a game-theoretic account of convention. The game-theoretic perspective makes it possible to address questions that have otherwise proven elusive: What makes it possible for the community to be the arbiter of rule-following behavior? What kind of justification can there be for responding to a rule with a certain action rather than another? The answer to the first question involves the concordant systems of preferences and expectations that typically induce rule-following situations; the answer to the latter question involves the characteristics of reasoning shared by all individuals in the community.",
"Barry Hartley Slater|Western Australia|A Perfect Language|2009|In recent Logic, languages without indexicals have been widely studied, since they have been thought to be more 'perfect' than our normal language.  This paper shows the error in this line of thought as well as providing a plausible account of why it has been so attractive to its adherents.  The possibility of a language without indexicals has been important, as well, to recent theorists about Truth, such as Tarski; and its attraction is shown to be a large part of the motivation for later developments in this view of Truth, made by Priest.  By considering languages containing indexicals instead, it is shown that it is the removal of them that has created many of the major problems that have arisen within this recent semantic tradition.  Furthermore, one consequence of Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem is that indexicality is inescapable in languages of sufficient complexity.",
"Rachel Sterken|St. Andrews & Oslo|Generics, Semantic Blindness and Mosquitoes|2009|This paper criticizes Leslie's (2007, 2008) recent account of semantic and metaphysical truth-conditions of generics. Generics are sentences such as 'birds fly', 'lions have manes' and 'mosquitoes carry the West Nile Virus'. They do not express claims about particular individuals, but rather express something general about individuals of a kind. Yet they do not express familiar generalizations like 'all birds fly' or 'most lions have manes' since generics tolerate exceptions in puzzling and almost indeterminate ways. Leslie's approach to the troubling truth-conditional aspects of generics is to separate the semantic theory, which is disquotational, from the metaphysical truth-conditions. Once this is done, her metaphysical truth-conditions are rendered in terms of a psychological explanation of the troublesome cases of genericity such as 'mosquitoes carry the WNV'. I undermine such an approach in three steps: First, by giving four distinct types of counterexamples to Leslie's metaphysical truth-conditions. Second, by questioning the nature of troublesome generics such as 'mosquitoes carry the WNV' upon which Leslie's account is based. And finally, by positing a form of semantic blindness related to generic interpretation that explains the psychological facts central to Leslie's theory and at the same time, why the seemingly recalcitrant data is not actually so. These objections and observations taken together not only undermine the letter, but also the spirit of Leslie's broader proposal that generics give voice to our primitive cognitive mechanisms most basic default mode of generalization.",
"Allessandro Torza|Boston U|'Identity'' Without Identity|2009|The current state of possible world semantics presents us with a dilemma. If we embrace Kripke's ontology of transworld individuals, the validity of Leibniz' law will carry over to modal languages, resulting in an elegant and intuitively compelling logic. The problem with this framework is that, since no transworld identity criteria can be speci€ed, what counts as a transworld individual rests on a brute fact. <br><br>Alternatively, we can side with Lewis and accept his ontology of world-bound individuals, where de re statements are interpreted via a counterpart relation. Unlike transworld identity, counterpart relations are speci€ed by qualitative criteria. Namely, the truth conditions of de re statements boil down to non-modal facts about similarity. Counterpart theory, however, fails to validate Leibniz' law in modal contexts ­ a failure which arguably does not re�ect any signi€cant intuition about identity. In order to reinstate Leibniz' law one would have to strengthen the counterpart relation in ways that make it non-qualitative. This option is ruled out by Lewis, who claims that a counterpart relation is intelligible as long as we have qualitative criteria for its application. <br><br>I argue that this dichotomy is false. By questioning Lewis' ban on non-qualitative counterpart relations, I propose and motivate a possible world framework named perfect counterpart theory that not only makes Leibniz' law a valid modal principle, but also de€nes a modal system S5. The goal is achieved by showing that every model M of counterpart theory with qualitative counterpart relation can be mapped to a model M* of perfect counterpart theory that preserves every de re truth of M, except for those truths that violate Leibniz' law. The resulting counterpart relation is non-qualitative because it is extracted from the given one via a regimented application of the axiom of choice. Since this procedure &quot;deletes&quot; only a well-de€ned class of truth ­ those violating Leibniz' law ­ Lewis' claim that non-qualitative counterpart relations are unintelligible fails.",
"Alasdair Urquhart|Toronto|<a name='urq'></a>Counting types of Boolean functions -- from Jevons to Polya|2009|The problem of enumerating the types of Boolean functions under the group of variable permutations and complementations was first stated by Stanley Jevons in the 1870s, but not solved in a satisfactory way until the work of George Polya in 1940. My talk explains the details of Polya's solution, and also the history of the problem from the 1870s to the 1970s.",
"Susan Vineberg|Wayne State|Two Kinds of Mathematical Explanation|2009|",
"Gregory R. Wheeler|CENTRIA|Counterfactual Evidential Probability|2009|Kyburgian evidential probability assigns a probability to an event given a knowledge base containing statements about logical relationships of classes of objects as well as statements about statistical frequencies pertaining to some of those classes. While the focus of evidential probability is the assignment of probability, we might ask about the evidence backing that assignment. If, say, were to suppose that a statement of evidence in our knowledge base was in fact false, would that change our probability assignment? We present here an outline for a theory of counterfactual evidential probability and identify the main challenges raised in answering this question.",
"Michel-Antoine Xhignesse|Queens U|Stuff and Coincident Objects|2009|The problem of coincident objects is an ancient one, and concerns our mode of counting objects, and how we should proceed when faced with objects that appear to be composed of other objects. If we take the typical example of a bronze statue of a person, the question takes the form of whether there are two objects present (bronze and statue), or just one (bronze statue). This problem is widely referenced in the philosophy of time, where it has prompted mereologists such as Theodore Sider and David Lewis to formulate their four-dimensionalism so as to conclude that, in describing our ontology, we must be prepared to make room for the unlimited composition of objects (across both space and time), or mereological sums. <br><br>In this paper, I examine the problem of coincident objects not from the different perspectives of persistence/perdurance-across-time put forward by Lewis, Sider, Mellor, and others, but rather from the semantics that seem to generate the problem. I argue that the problem of coincident objects only arises for a semantics of the stuff in question (in this case, the matter, bronze) which, following Helen Cartwright, treats non-count nouns (a.k.a. stuff-nouns) as a conglomeration of distinct objects (e.g. quantities of &quot;atoms,&quot; &quot;molecules,&quot; etc.). Following Henry Laycock, I question the conclusion that bronze and statue constitute distinct objects, arguing that the language of &quot;object&quot; is inapplicable to the stuff of which the statue is composed (i.e. bronze). Finally, I argue that Laycock's analysis of non-count nouns as irreducibly non-singular and non-plural is preferable, since it generates the sort of account necessary to explain why removing the label of &quot;object&quot; from the bronze should mitigate its coincidence with the statue.",
"Byeong-Uk Yi|Toronto|Two Envelope Paradox and Causal Dependence|2009|Ali and Baba are given two envelopes with hidden amounts of money. They are told that one of the two envelopes has twice as much money, but not which is which. If they are given an opportunity to switch the envelopes, is it rational for them to do so? If Ali's envelope has $x, it seems, the expected value of Baba's envelope is greater than x because it is equally likely to have $2x as to have $1/2x. So one might conclude that it is rational for Ali to switch. But parallel reasoning leads to the opposite conclusion that it is rational for Ali to switch, resulting in a paradox. If so, what is wrong with the reasoning? This paper shows that the reasoning is faulty because no case can satisfy both of the following assumptions:<br><br>[a] (Whatever number x is) if Ali's envelope has $x, Baba's is equally likely to have $2x as to have $1/2x.<br>[b] (Whatever number x is) if Baba's envelope has $x, Ali's is equally likely to have $2x as to have $1/2x.<br><br>This solves the paradox as it is usually formulated. But there are genuinely paradoxical cases, those in which both of the following hold:<br><br>[a] (Whatever number x is) if Ali's envelope has $x, the expected value of Baba's is greater than $x.<br>[b] (Whatever number x is) if Baba's envelope has $x, the expected value of Ali's is greater than $x.<br><br>The paper examines such cases and proposes a solution to them. It argues that a proper solution to such cases requires consideration of causal relations that lie under the probability distribution, and proposes a modification of the dominance principle that takes causal dependence into account.",
"Edward N. Zalta|CSLI &amp; Stanford Ency of Philosophy|<a name='zalt'></a>A (Computational) System of the World|2009|Our best scientific and philosophical theories quantify over mathematical objects and relations, possible worlds and objects, types (as opposed to tokens), concepts, properties, truth-values, and a host of other abstract objects. In the first part of this talk, I review a theory that systematizes all of these abstracta in terms of a few axioms couched in second-order modal logic (interpreted generally, with Henkin models), i.e., using methods of the exact sciences. In the second part of the talk, I take a computational turn, and show how this system of the world can be implemented using automated reasoning tools so as to derive interesting theorems about the formal ontology, to discover interesting facts about the strength of the axioms and premises needed to derive metaphysical conclusions, and to discover countermodels to hypotheses and errors in reasoning."

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