Philosophy Papers

Any paper of mine that isn't technical is probably philosophical and is presented on this page. The first one is from my undergraduate years and the content and depth is at that level. Further papers are more recent ones from courses or later revisions of those course papers for conferences or journal submissions. As already mentioned, there is additional research content on my ComplexityBlog under the philosophy category, as well as non-technical ideas in other areas. Some of those projects may become developed and end up here in time as completed papers. Feedback is, as always, extremely welcome and greatly appreciated.

Title: Hartry Field's Truth Characterization
Date: April 20, 1999
Objective: Course paper
Abstract: Hartry Field, in his famous 1972 paper, criticizes Alfred Tarski’s work on truth on three important points. He (i) suggests using sentence tokens instead of sentence types as the primary truth bearers, (ii) thinks the need to change the truth theory for every change in vocabulary is undesirable, and (iii) claims that Tarski merely provides an elimination of semantic terms and not a proper reduction. In this paper I will (a) analyze Field’s attacks against Tarski’s work, (b) consider the arguments presented by several objectors, and (c) determine the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments on both sides.
Full Text: PDF document

Title: Ethics Without Free Will
Date: December 19, 2005
Objective: Course paper
Abstract: Moral theories typically rest upon the assumption that conscious deliberation plays a causal role in action; however, a growing body of scientific evidence supports a physicalist account of causation that leaves no causal role for mental activity. In response, I develop a moral theory (including moral truth, motivation, and meaning) that excludes considerations of conscious free will. I then consider how an acceleration in social evolution compared with biological evolution affected our moral knowledge and motivations. The idea of a normative model is offered to replace normative ethical theorizing, and finally various problems of the theory are identified for future work.
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Title: Models of Science and the Role of Causation
Date: June 14, 2007
Objective: Course paper
Abstract: Hume calls causation "the cement of the universe" which seems to imply that there is a universe "out there" and it needs causation to hold it together (though it seems highly unlikely that Hume himself held such a view). The position argued for here is that for some reason our perceptions admit to regularities that we encode into models and the behavior of models is entirely determined by such rules and so these rules really do hold these models together. Because we completely rely on (explicit and implicit) mental models to govern our behavior and understanding we project some of these rules into the world in the form of causes. Realizing that our concept of causation applies only to our models, and taking the skeptical thesis seriously that models are all we really have, we gain a concept of causation that does all the work it previously did to relate events but does not depend on an external world that may not be there.
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Title: Uncertainty in Newcomb Problems
Date: December 10, 2007
Objective: Course Paper
Abstract: The general decision-theoretic notion of uncertainty is any scenario under which an aspect of it is not known with certainty. The lack of certainty usually applies to the state of the world before the decision is made or the outcome of the decision or sometimes to the type of the agent (which is really just part of the state of the world). These are cases of decision under risk, known probabilities for each of the possible states or outcomes. There is often some indeterminacy in these probabilities; and while updating techniques abound, principles for initial probabilities are rare and usually would be nonsensical.1 The technical term for scenarios including unknown states, unknown outcomes, unknown probabilities, unknown preferences, or other unknown features that render some stage of the utility maximizing process valueless are ones of deep uncertainty. One of the antecedent conditions for applying decision theory to a problem is that it is not a case of deep uncertainty because the choice function of classical decision theory is "choose the outcome with the greatest expected utility" and if there is no expected utility for some option then the choice function does not apply. There simply isn’t a thing that you should or would do according to decision theory. There are several standard, common sources of deep uncertainty, but in this short paper I will propose a new kind of uncertainty.
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Title: Heuristics as Normative Decision Theory
Date: January 7, 2008
Objective: Course Paper
Abstract: In order to better understand whether heuristics can comprise a normative decision theory I first explore some common support for heuristics and comment against their importance for the normative questions. Then I examine the role that any normative theory must fill and how we can evaluate and compare them. I conclude (tentatively) that normativity rests on the actions rather than the technique and hence we need some higher-level theory to tell us which sets of actions have greater normative force. Nevertheless there are some identifiable benefits of a heuristic normative theory that lend strong credibility to its superiority as a general decision mechanism and more usefully employed for normative tasks. I finish up by addressing points that are off the main normativity questions but nonetheless often addressed in relation to this topic. Though this paper falls far short of establishing the superiority (or inferiority) of heuristics as a normative decision theory, it does touch upon those factors that must be included in an analysis sufficient to demonstrate superiority (or inferiority) and could serve as a springboard for that later analysis.
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Title: Model-Based Representation of Cognition
Date: January 25, 2008
Objective: Course paper
Abstract: Propositional representation is the dominant paradigm in decisionmaking, imagination, fictionality, and psychology; but it is not the only option for representation. The current paper investigates how using a model-based representation changes our understanding of immersion in pretense, engaging with fictional worlds, and acting in everyday life. To use this representation, ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ must be reinterpreted and certain derivative notions (liking, wanting, expecting, imagining) must be examined under this alternative interpretation. This paper is intended to provide a foundational account of the alternative representation technique via definitions, descriptions, and examples. Additional remarks are made towards identifying features of cognition that the classical approach has difficulty capturing but that can be included with the model-based representation and what benefits that provides us for addressing issues in pretense, fictionality, and ordinary behavior.
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