-
7Two Accounts of Similarity ComparedIn Alexander Hieke & Hannes Leitgeb (eds.), Reduction, abstraction, analysis: proceedings of the 31th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, 2008, De Gruyter. pp. 389-402. 2009.
-
44A Defence of van Fraassen’s Critique of Abductive Inference: Reply to PsillosPhilosophical Quarterly 47 (188): 305-321. 1997.
-
90The role of explanatory considerations in updatingCognition 142 (C): 299-311. 2015.There is an ongoing controversy in philosophy about the connection between explanation and inference. According to Bayesians, explanatory considerations should be given weight in determining which inferences to make, if at all, only insofar as doing so is compatible with Strict Conditionalization. Explanationists, on the other hand, hold that explanatory considerations can be relevant to the question of how much confidence to invest in our hypotheses in ways which violate Strict Conditionalizati…Read more
-
437Delving deeper into color spaceI-Perception 9 (4): 1-27. 2018.So far, color-naming studies have relied on a rather limited set of color stimuli. Most importantly, stimuli have been largely limited to highly saturated colors. Because of this, little is known about how people categorize less saturated colors and, more generally, about the structure of color categories as they extend across all dimensions of color space. This article presents the results from a large Internet-based color-naming study that involved color stimuli ranging across all available ch…Read more
-
215Vagueness: A Conceptual Spaces ApproachJournal of Philosophical Logic 42 (1): 137-160. 2013.The conceptual spaces approach has recently emerged as a novel account of concepts. Its guiding idea is that concepts can be represented geometrically, by means of metrical spaces. While it is generally recognized that many of our concepts are vague, the question of how to model vagueness in the conceptual spaces approach has not been addressed so far, even though the answer is far from straightforward. The present paper aims to fill this lacuna.
-
48Conditionals, inference, and evidentialityProceedings of the Logic and Cognition Workshop at ESSLLI 2012; Opole, Poland, 13-17 August, 2012 - Vol. 883 of CEUR Workshop Proceedings. 2012.At least many conditionals seem to convey the existence of a link between their antecedent and consequent. We draw on a recently proposed typology of conditionals to revive an old philosophical idea according to which the link is inferential in nature. We show that the proposal has explanatory force by presenting empirical results on two Dutch linguistic markers.
-
10Truly Empiricist SemanticsDialectica 52 (2): 127-150. 1998.In van Fraassen's The Scientific Image we are told that the scientific anti‐realist need not appeal to some special semantics for scientific language. He can allegedly hold – just like his direct opponents typically do – that truth‐conditional semantics is appropriate both for claims about the observable and claims about the unobservable. However, I shall point out that this kind of semantics goes badly with the anti‐realist's epistemic attitude vis‐his the unobservable. In this paper an alterna…Read more
-
114Verities, the sorites, and Theseus’ shipSynthese 194 (10): 3867-3878. 2017.Edgington has proposed a degree-theoretic account of vagueness that yields a highly elegant solution to the sorites paradox. This paper applies her account to the paradox of Theseus’ ship, which is generally classified among the paradoxes of material constitution and not as a sorites paradox
-
11How group members contribute to group performance: Evidence from agent-based simulationsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 39. 2016.
-
53Theoretical terms and the principle of the benefit of doubtInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 14 (2). 2000.The Principle of the Benefit of Doubt dictates that, whenever reasonably possible, we interpret earlier-day scientists as referring to entities posited by current science. Putnam has presented the principle as supplementary to his Causal Theory of Reference in order to make this theory generally applicable to theoretical terms. The present paper argues that the principle is of doubtful standing. In particular, it will be argued that the principle lacks a justification and, indeed, is unjustifiab…Read more
-
77Constraints on Colour Category FormationInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (2): 171-196. 2012.This article addresses two questions related to colour categorization, to wit, the question what a colour category is, and the question how we identify colour categories. We reject both the relativist and universalist answers to these questions. Instead, we suggest that colour categories can be identified with the help of the criterion of psychological saliency, which can be operationalized by means of consistency and consensus measures. We further argue that colour categories can be defined as …Read more
-
114Nozick’s experience machine: An empirical studyPhilosophical Psychology 31 (2): 278-298. 2018.Many philosophers deny that happiness can be equated with pleasurable experiences. Nozick introduced an experience machine thought experiment to support the idea that happiness requires pleasurable experiences that are “in contact with reality.” In this thought experiment, people can choose to plug into a machine that induces exclusively pleasurable experiences. We test Nozick’s hypothesis that people will reject this offer. We also contrast Nozick’s experience machine scenario with scenarios th…Read more
-
47The ecological rationality of explanatory reasoningStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 79 1-14. 2020.
-
1Conditionals and inferential connections: A hypothetical inferential theoryCognitive Psychology 101 50-81. 2018.
-
2045What are natural concepts? A design perspectiveMind and Language (3): 313-334. 2019.Conceptual spaces have become an increasingly popular modeling tool in cognitive psychology. The core idea of the conceptual spaces approach is that concepts can be represented as regions in similarity spaces. While it is generally acknowledged that not every region in such a space represents a natural concept, it is still an open question what distinguishes those regions that represent natural concepts from those that do not. The central claim of this paper is that natural concepts are represen…Read more
-
161Unger's argument for skepticism revisitedTheoria 74 (3): 239-250. 2008.Unger (1974/2000) presents an argument for skepticism that significantly differs from the more traditional arguments for skepticism. The argument is based on two premises, to wit, that knowledge would entitle the knower to absolute certainty, and that an attitude of absolute certainty is always inadmissible from an epistemic viewpoint. The present paper scrutinizes the arguments that Unger provides in support of these premises and shows that none of them is tenable. It thus concludes that Unger'…Read more
-
158Probability of inconsistencies in theory revisionEuropean Physical Journal B 85 (1). 2012.We present a model for studying communities of epistemically interacting agents who update their belief states by averaging the belief states of other agents in the community. The agents in our model have a rich belief state, involving multiple independent issues which are interrelated in such a way that they form a theory of the world. Our main goal is to calculate the probability for an agent to end up in an inconsistent belief state due to updating. To that end, an analytical expression is gi…Read more
-
86The Lottery Paradox and the Pragmatics of BeliefDialectica 66 (3): 351-373. 2012.The thesis that high probability suffices for rational belief, while initially plausible, is known to face the Lottery Paradox. The present paper proposes an amended version of that thesis which escapes the Lottery Paradox. The amendment is argued to be plausible on independent grounds
-
94Inferential Conditionals and EvidentialityJournal of Logic, Language and Information 22 (3): 315-334. 2013.Many conditionals seem to convey the existence of a link between their antecedent and consequent. We draw on a recently proposed typology of conditionals to argue for an old philosophical idea according to which the link is inferential in nature. We show that the proposal has explanatory force by presenting empirical results on the evidential meaning of certain English and Dutch modal expressions
-
469Returning the Gift of LifeArs Disputandi 4. 2004.The gift of life argument, the claim that suicide is immoral because our lives are not ours to dispose of as we are their guardians or stewards, is a persistent theme in debates about the morality of suicide, assisted-suicide, and euthanasia. I argue that this argument suffers from a fatal internal incoherence. The gift can either be interpreted literally or analogically. If it is interpreted literally there are serious problems in understanding who receives the gift. If it is understood analogi…Read more
-
Van Willigenburg on ‘P, but I Lack Sufficient Evidence for P’: A RejoinderArs Disputandi 4. 2004.In a review of Adler’s Belief’s Own Ethics , I had challenged the book’s main argument for the thesis that we cannot but believe in accordance with our evidence. Van Willigenburg replied to the review , defending Adler’s argument against my critique. In the present note, I briefly respond to van Willigenburg
-
New Foundations for Fuzzy Set TheoryIn Andrew Aberdein & Matthew Inglis (eds.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 173--199. 2019.
-
Clustering ColorsCognitive Systems Research 45 70-81. 2017.Regier, Kay, and Khetarpal report the results of computer simulations that cluster color stimuli on the basis of their coordinates in CIELAB space, one of two commonly used perceptual color spaces. Regier and coauthors find partitions of those stimuli that are strikingly similar to the way actual color lexicons partition color space. They do not argue for the custom-made clustering method used in their simulations, nor for the assumption of CIELAB space. The present paper aims to answer the ques…Read more
-
141The Pragmatics of BeliefJournal of Pragmatics 42 (1): 35-47. 2010.This paper argues that pragmatic considerations similar to the ones that Grice has shown pertain to assertability pertain to acceptability. It further shows how this should affect some widely held epistemic principles. The idea of a pragmatics of belief is defended against some seemingly obvious objections.
Areas of Specialization
Other Academic Areas |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |