Conceivability and Possibility Research Papers (original) (raw)

2024, Oxford Philosophy Society Annual Review

I challenge the increasingly popular view that mental states are both causally inert and non-existent. Firstly, I consider Frankish’s illusionism which claims that mental states are merely introspective illusions that do not exist.... more

2024, P. Allen, F. Marcacci (eds.) Divined Explanations. The Theological and Philosophical Context for the Development of the Sciences (1600-2000), Brill

In light of a specific reading of Descartes’ theory of the creation of the eternal truths, this chapter analyzes and interprets the figure of the evil genius in the Meditations. In sections 1 and 2, I reconstruct Descartes’s theory of eternal truths, highlighting its relationship with Suárez’s and Mersenne’s ideas, and setting out what I call Descartes’ “instituted innatism,” i.e. the theory that God was not only absolutely free in creating the essences of the world, but also instituted their truths by endowing all his intelligent creatures with the same notions about them. In section 3, I argue that Descartes’s First Meditation is wholly built upon “instituted innatism” as a fundamental and self-evident assumption, and that Descartes’s text is structured as a reductio ad absurdum argument; indeed, here he accepts the possibility of a world not created by an absolutely good and omnipotent God, which is for him a plain contradiction, given that God necessarily exists. Here I stress the role played by the evil genius in Descartes’s argument. In section 4, I dwell more specifically on the character of the evil genius, arguing that Descartes draws from medieval and early modern angelological and demonological debates, and contending that he especially plays with the topic of the ordered/disordered thought of separate substances.

2024

To begin, then, with epistemic possibility, this can be said. This use of "possibility" is relative to knowledge, hence its close affiliation with the terra "probable". This use is common in ordinary language; for example, when we see dark, low clouds rolling in from the West at evening, we say, "It's possible that it will rain tomorrow." 1. M.R. Ayers, The Refutation of Determinism.(Methuen. 1968) pp. 12-13. 1. ibid, p. 14. 1. ibid, p. 103. 2. ibid, p. 69.

2023

In this paper, I provide a different perspective on the concept of grounding, arguing that panprotopsychism should be understood as a form of Russellian physicalism, which can ultimately be regarded as a variant of Type-B Physicalism. I then propose an analysis of how the notion of the physical can be expanded, and how such an expansion can lead to an elegant solution to the hard problem of consciousness. Combining some scientific research in neuroscience and quantum mechanics, and adding an element of metaphysics to these studies, I argue that visual phenomenal experience may be essentially a phenomenon of bioluminescence, a complex effect of the interaction between biophotons and organic matter.

2023, Philosophies

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

2023, Philosophies

The philosophy of time travel has an illustrious pedigree, having seen ground-breaking physical and philosophical treatments in the late 1940s and early 1950s from Kurt Gödel [...]

2022, 63- “The Proslogion: Philosophy and Logic”, with Matteo Casarosa, in Edukacja Filozoficzna, n. 73/2022, pp. 79-121

This article proposes an interpretation of St Anselm’s Proslogion that highlights its
overall structure and theoretical core. The analysis is conducted in two stages: (a)
discussion of the text and its previous interpretations in order to clarify Anselm’s
premises and reasoning; (b) formal analysis of the arguments through symbolic
logic, and comparison with other ontological arguments. More precisely, we describe
a first-order theory corresponding to our interpretation of Anselm’s commitments
and show that his conclusions follow from these axioms. The theses
that this study will defend are the following: (a) the unum argumentum applies
only to “id quo maius cogitari nequit” and not to other similar concepts, such as
that of “most perfect being”; (b) the treatise has an overall unity that has an ascending
trend; (c) our original formalization of the unum argumentum not only
captures the essence of the Proslogion, but also clarifies some features of conceivability.
Key words: Proslogion, St Anselm, symbolic logic, conceivability, natural theology
Publiseh with Matteo Casarosa in Edukacja Filozoficzna, n. 73/2022, pp. 79-121

2022, Logic and Logical Philosophy

In view of the limitations of classical, free, and modal logics to deal with fictional names, we develop in this paper a four-valued logical framework that we see as a promising strategy for modeling contexts of reasoning in which those names occur. Specifically, we propose to evaluate statements in terms of factual and fictional truth values in such a way that, say, declaring ‘Socrates is a man’ to be true does not come down to the same thing as declaring ‘Sherlock Holmes is a man’ to be so. As a result, our framework is capable of representing reasoning involving fictional characters that avoids evaluating statements according to the same semantic standards. The framework encompasses two logics that differ according to alternative ways one may interpret the relationships among the factual and fictional truth values.

2022, Proceedings of the Fourth International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation. Borzhomi, Georgia

This paper introduces a semantic system based on relevance logic (hence "relevance semantics"). It is motivated by the inability of a Montague-style semantics based on the modal notion of strict implication to distinguish between mutually entailing expressions, which becomes a problem in "hyperintensional" contexts. Relevance logic isolates implication (rather than the necessity operator) as the locus of the problem. By dropping the structural rule of Weakening, it provides a consequence relation which is not truth-functional, thus avoiding the "paradoxes of strict implication". In the semantics, the absence of Weakening gives rise to partial and inconsistent points of evaluation ("worlds"). Hence, logical truths do not hold at all indices and mutually entailing expressions do not have the same extensions. The paper includes an application of this semantics to attitude reports, which is intended to preserve the insights of existing approaches, while avoiding the problem of hyperintensionality. * This research was funded by grant number AN2687/APN9387 from the Arts and Humanities Research Board of the United Kingdom. I am grateful to Dov Gabbay and Shalom Lappin, to an anonymous referee and to the participants of several NLP colloquia at King's College London for helpful comments.

2022, Proceedings of the 7th conference on Formal Grammar, Trento, Italy

2022

The subject of this paper is the notion of similarity between the actual and impossible worlds. Many believe that this notion is governed by two rules. According to the first rule, every non-trivial world is more similar to the actual world than the trivial world is. The second rule states that every possible world is more similar to the actual world than any impossible world is. The aim of this paper is to challenge both of these rules. We argue that acceptance of the first rule leads to the claim that the rule ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet is invalid in classical logic. The second rule does not recognize the fact that objects might be similar to one another due to various features.

2022, MA Thesis

Ordinarily, philosophers arguing for the possibility of time travel restrict themselves to defending time travel against allegations of inconsistency and contradiction. These objections are usually based on particular theories about time... more

2022, The Architecture of the Imagination

2022, … of the imagination: new essays on …

2018

The negative zombie argument has as premises that p ∧ ¬q is ideally negatively conceivable, that what is ideally negatively conceivable is possible, and that physicalism is incompatible with p ∧ ¬q being possible and as conclusion that physicalism is false. In the argument, p is the conjunction of the fundamental physical truths and laws and q is an
arbitrary phenomenal truth. A sentence φ is ideally negatively conceivable if and only if an ideal reasoner does not believe that ¬φ on a priori reflection. The argument presupposes a version of the scrutability thesis stating that, for all φ that supervene on p, the ideal reasoner
believes that p → φ on a priori reflection. In this paper, I argue that, given relevant interpretation of probabilities, the ideal reasoner believes truly, for all φ, that p → pr(φ) = x on a priori reflection. But then, depending on the value of pr(q) and the correlations between q and other sentences, the ideal reasoner also believes (probably, truly) that p → q on a priori
reflection. Then, for some relevant qs, p ∧ ¬q is not ideally negatively conceivable and the zombie argument has a false premise. The choice of an adequate q depends on empirical information, what makes the zombie argument neither conclusive nor a priori.

2018, Australasian Journal of Logic

2018

Forthcoming in Graham Priest on Dialetheism and Paraconsistency, Can Bașkent and Thomas Ferguson (eds.), Dordrecht: Springer

2017, Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology

The negative zombie argument concludes that physicalism is false from the premises that p ∧¬q is ideally negatively conceivable and that what is ideally negatively conceivable is possible, where p is the conjunction of the fundamental physical truths and laws and q is a phenomenal truth (Chalmers 2002; 2010). A sentence φ is ideally negatively conceivable iff φ is not ruled out a priori on ideal rational reflection. In this paper, I argue that the negative zombie argument is neither a priori nor conclusive. First, I argue that the premises of the argument are true only if there exists an adequate finite ideal reasoner that believes ◊(p ∧ ¬q) on the basis of not believing p → q on a priori basis. Roughly, a finite reasoner is a reasoner with cognitive limitations (e.g. finite memory). I argue that is finite only if reasons nonmonotonically and only approach ideal reflection at the limit of a reasoning sequence. This would render the argument nonconclusive. Finally, I argue that, for some q, does not believe ◊(p ∧ ¬q) on the basis of not believing p → q on a priori basis (e.g. for q ='something is conscious'). This would render the choice of an adequate q dependent on empirical information (and the argument a posteriori). I conclude that the negative zombie argument (and, maybe, all zombie arguments) is neither a priori nor conclusive.

2017, The Philosophy of Perception and Observation. Papers of the 40th International Wittgenstein Symposium. Ed. by C. Limbeck-Lilienau and F. Stadler. Kirchberg am Wechsel 2017, 150-152.

(*This paper was awarded the Elisabeth and Werner Leinfellner Award 2017 for outstanding contributions.) This paper provides an explanation of the skeptical puzzle. I argue that we can take two distinct points of view towards... more

2017

The Humean view that conceivability entails possibility can be criticized via input from cognitive psychology. A mainstream view here has it that there are two candidate codings for mental representations (one of them being, according to some, reducible to the other): the linguistic and the pictorial, the difference between the two consisting in the degree of arbitrariness of the representation relation. If the con-ceivability of P at issue for Humeans involves the having of a linguistic mental representation, then it is easy to show that we can conceive the impossible, for impossibilities can be represented by meaningful bits of language. If the conceivability of P amounts to the pictorial imaginability of a situation verifying P , then the question is whether the imagination at issue works purely qualitatively, that is, only by phenomenological resemblance with the imagined scenario. If so, the range of situations imaginable in this way is too limited to have a significant role in modal epistemology. If not, imagination will involve some arbitrary labeling component, which turns out to be sufficient for imagining the impossible. And if the relevant imagination is neither linguistic nor pictorial, Humeans will appear to resort to some representational magic, until they come up with a theory of a 'third code' for mental representations.

2016

We will discuss the problem of the appearance of contingency in the case of a posteriory identity of mind and body. This is the so-called Kripke's challenge. Most aposteriory identities are not problematic because the appearance of... more

2016

In various arguments, Descartes relies on the principles that conceivability implies possibility and that inconceivability implies impossibility. Those principles are in tension with another Cartesian view about the source of modality, i.e. the doctrine of the free creation of eternal truths. In this paper, I develop a ‘two-modality’ interpretation of the doctrine of eternal truths which resolves the tension and I discuss how the resulting modal epistemology can still be relevant for the contemporary
discussion.

2016, Organon F

In the paper, I discuss Robert Kirk’s attempt to refute the zombie argument against materialism by demonstrating, “in a way that is intuitively appealing as well as cogent”, that the idea of phenomenal zombies involves incoherence. Kirk’s argues that if one admits that a world of zombies z is conceivable, one should also admit the conceivability of a certain transformation from such a world to a world z* that satisfies a description D, and it is arguable that D is incoherent. From which, Kirk suggests, it follows that the idea of zombies is incoherent. I argue that Kirk’s argument has several minor deficiencies and two major flaws. First, he takes for granted that cognitive mental states are physical (cognitive physicalism), although a zombist is free to—and would better—reject this view. Second, he confuses elements of different scenarios of transformation, none of which results in the incoherent description D.

2016

Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar makes creative use of Descartes’s meditative
method by applying it to practical life. This ‘misuse’ of the Cartesian
method highlights the limits of the thinking thing as a ground for
morality. Taking practical philosophy as first philosophy, the Vicar
finds bedrock certainty of the self as an agent in the world and of moral
truths while distancing himself from Cartesian positions on the
distinction, union and interaction of mind and body. Rousseau’s
Moral Letters harmonize with the Vicar’s view. Descartes would reject
the Vicar’s appropriation, as real-life problems cannot wait on
meditation to answer them.

2016, The Cartesian Mind

A draft summary of my paper forthcoming in a collection of essays edited by Jorge Secada: "The Cartesian Mind" (Routledge 2022)

2016

I want to model a finite, fallible cognitive agent who imagines that p in the sense of mentally representing a scenario – a configuration of objects and properties – correctly described by p. I propose to capture imagination, so understood, via variably strict world quantifiers, in a modal framework including both possible and so-called impossible worlds. The latter secure lack of classical logical closure for the relevant mental states, while the variability of strictness captures how the agent imports information from actuality in the imagined non-actual scenarios. Imagination turns out to be highly hyperintensional, but not logically anarchic.
§1 sets the stage and impossible worlds are quickly introduced in §2. §3 proposes to model imagination via variably strict world quantifiers. §4 introduces the formal semantics. §5 argues that imagination has a minimal mereological structure validating some logical inferences. §6 deals with how imagination under-determines the represented contents. §7 proposes additional constraints on the semantics, validating further inferences. §8 describes some welcome invalidities. §9 examines the effects of importing false beliefs into the imag- ined scenarios. Finally, §10 hints at possible developments of the theory in the direction of two-dimensional semantics.

2015, Midwest Studies in Philosophy

In this paper, I present the following argument: (1) All knowledge from fiction is from imagination (2) All knowledge from imagination is of possibility (3) So, all knowledge from fiction is of possibility Moreover, some knowledge is from... more

In this paper, I present the following argument:
(1) All knowledge from fiction is from imagination
(2) All knowledge from imagination is of possibility
(3) So, all knowledge from fiction is of possibility
Moreover, some knowledge is from fiction, so (1)-(3) are non-vacuously true.

2015, The Philosophical Forum

Conceivability arguments for metaphysical possibility play a considerable role in philosophical discussions, especially in the philosophy of mind. The most famous classical example is Rene Descartes’ conceivability argument for the possibility of the unembodied mind; the most outstanding recent example is David Chalmers’ conceivability argument for the logical possibility of phenomenal zombies (as part of the zombie argument against materialism). The general discussions about the conceivability-entails-possibility thesis (in the rest of the paper, I will refer to it as CP) – including highly sophisticated accounts and defenses by Chalmers – were not lacking too. Nevertheless, the way the entailment works – and whether it does really work – remains obscure. In this paper, I discuss Chalmers’ accounts of the CP entailment and argue that they fail because of circularity, and reconsider the gravest problems with the CP entailment. An argument is made that the judgment of conceivability cannot be made independently of the judgment of logical coherence (no a priori contradiction), which, by definition, is the same as the judgment of logical possibility. The conclusion is that although in a sense conceivability does entail possibility, this entailment boils down to logical possibility entailing itself. Therefore, it is not helpful for any substantial argument. Nevertheless, there are some points in the vicinity that seem good candidates to survive the collapse of the CP enterprise and may ground re-construal and defense of some of the arguments formerly grounded in CP.

2014

When is it wrong to imagine x and when is it not wrong to imagine x? It would appear unreasonable in the extreme to suggest that we are under an obligation not to overlook fictional characters’ moral failings in a way that would forbid us tout court from, say, liking or ‘rooting for’ Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs) or Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street). This is very different from the sense in which it seems wrong to unreflectively ‘root for’ actual serial killers in real life. However, it should also seem unreasonable to suggest that fictive preferences can never be wrong, as perhaps with a predilection for games such as Illusion’s RapeLay. In this paper I set out and defend an ethical and critical principle explaining how we should go about morally assessing different kinds of fiction-involvement or imagining. I call this principle fictive externalism. In practice not everyone subscribes to this principle, but I believe that when they do not they moralize in error, reasoning according to a mistake about the basic moral irrelevance of (fictive) imagining itself in a way which tends to mislead them into inaccurate and unfair assessments concerning both the creation of, and engagement with fiction and fictive art.

2013, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol 35

Please direct your attention to the traditional problem of the Cartesian Circle: In order to answer the skeptic, Descartes needs to show that his clear and distinct ideas (whatever they are) are true, and to show this, he needs to show that God exists and is not a deceiver. In arguing for these conclusions in the Third Meditation, Descartes seems to rely on certain premises precisely because they are clear and distinct. Thus, Descartes seems, in the course of his argument for the claim that clear and distinct ideas are true, to presuppose-illegitimately-that clear and distinct ideas are true. And that would seem to be pretty bad. This is a famous problem and I thank you for considering it. But now, forget about it because that is not the problem that I want to focus on. Instead, I want to begin by stressing the often overlooked way in which the Fourth Meditation-not the Third-threatens to generate a fascinating and perhaps more virulent form of the Cartesian circle. I will then argue that this new Cartesian circle serves as a surprising stepping stone toward the rehabilitation of the much-maligned interpretation of Descartes as holding a coherence theory of truth, an interpretation so maligned that its main (and perhaps only) defender-Harry Frankfurt-came to repudiate it. 2 I will then argue that the coherentist interpretation receives further, significant support from

2013, The Logica Yearbook 2011

World semantics for relevant logics include so-called non-normal or impossible worlds providing model-theoretic counterexamples to such irrelevant entailments as (A ∧ ¬A) → B, A → (B∨¬B), or A → (B → B). Some well-known views interpret non-normal worlds as information states. If so, they can plausibly model our ability of conceiving or representing logical impossibilities. The phenomenon is explored by combining a formal setting with philosophical discussion. I take Priest’s basic relevant logic N4 and extend it, on the syntactic side, with a representation operator, (R), and on the semantic side, with particularly anarchic non-normal worlds. This combination easily invalidates unwelcome “logical omniscience” inferences of standard epistemic logic, such as belief-consistency and closure under entailment. Some open questions are then raised on the best strategies to regiment (R) in order to express more vertebrate kinds of conceivability.

2012

Examines some existing ways of thinking about the possibility of imagining yourself in two places at the same time, suggesting that none really involve imagining you as you are, from your singular point of view, being in two places at... more