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132Understanding Polarization: Meanings, Measures, and Model EvaluationPhilosophy of Science 84 (1): 115-159. 2017.Polarization is a topic of intense interest among social scientists, but there is significant disagreement regarding the character of the phenomenon and little understanding of underlying mechanics. A first problem, we argue, is that polarization appears in the literature as not one concept but many. In the first part of the article, we distinguish nine phenomena that may be considered polarization, with suggestions of appropriate measures for each. In the second part of the article, we apply th…Read more
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9Philosophical Perspectives, 5, Philosophy of Religion, 1991Noûs 28 (3): 405-413. 1994.A glowing review of an outstanding collection, with critical points regarding counterfactuals and God's options.
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35Editorial introduction to the Topical Issue “Computer Modeling in Philosophy”Open Philosophy 2 (1): 653-656. 2019.
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84Don’t forget forgetting: the social epistemic importance of how we forgetSynthese 198 (6): 5373-5394. 2019.We motivate a picture of social epistemology that sees forgetting as subject to epistemic evaluation. Using computer simulations of a simple agent-based model, we show that how agents forget can have as large an impact on group epistemic outcomes as how they share information. But, how we forget, unlike how we form beliefs, isn’t typically taken to be the sort of thing that can be epistemically rational or justified. We consider what we take to be the most promising argument for this claim and f…Read more
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43Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy. Language, proof and logic_. In collaboration with Gerard Allwein, Dave Barker-Plummer, and Albert Liu. CSLI Publications, Stanford, and Seven Bridges Press, New York and London, 1999, xii + 587 pp. - Gerard Allwein, Dave Barker-Plummer, Jon Barwise, John Etchemendy, and Albert Liu. _LPL software manual. CSLI Publications, Stanford, and Seven Bridges Press, New York and London, 1999, vii + 52 pp. + CD-ROM (review)Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 7 (3): 377-379. 2001.
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333Coherence and correspondence in the network dynamics of belief suitesEpisteme 14 (2): 233-253. 2017.Coherence and correspondence are classical contenders as theories of truth. In this paper we examine them instead as interacting factors in the dynamics of belief across epistemic networks. We construct an agent-based model of network contact in which agents are characterized not in terms of single beliefs but in terms of internal belief suites. Individuals update elements of their belief suites on input from other agents in order both to maximize internal belief coherence and to incorporate …Read more
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621Diversity, Ability, and Expertise in Epistemic CommunitiesPhilosophy of Science 86 (1): 98-123. 2019.The Hong and Page ‘diversity trumps ability’ result has been used to argue for the more general claim that a diverse set of agents is epistemically superior to a comparable group of experts. Here we extend Hong and Page’s model to landscapes of different degrees of randomness and demonstrate the sensitivity of the ‘diversity trumps ability’ result. This analysis offers a more nuanced picture of how diversity, ability, and expertise may relate. Although models of this sort can indeed be suggestiv…Read more
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467Representation in Models of Epistemic DemocracyEpisteme 17 (4): 498-518. 2020.Epistemic justifications for democracy have been offered in terms of two different aspects of decision-making: voting and deliberation, or ‘votes’ and ‘talk.’ The Condorcet Jury Theorem is appealed to as a justification in terms votes, and the Hong-Page “Diversity Trumps Ability” result is appealed to as a justification in terms of deliberation. Both of these, however, are most plausibly construed as models of direct democracy, with full and direct participation across the population. In this pa…Read more
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42Correction to: Rational social and political polarizationPhilosophical Studies 176 (9): 2269-2269. 2019.In the original publication of the article, the Acknowledgement section was inadvertently not included. The Acknowledgement is given in this Correction.
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936Rational social and political polarizationPhilosophical Studies 176 (9): 2243-2267. 2019.Public discussions of political and social issues are often characterized by deep and persistent polarization. In social psychology, it’s standard to treat belief polarization as the product of epistemic irrationality. In contrast, we argue that the persistent disagreement that grounds political and social polarization can be produced by epistemically rational agents, when those agents have limited cognitive resources. Using an agent-based model of group deliberation, we show that groups of deli…Read more
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23The Limits of Influence: Psychokinesis and the Philosophy Of ScienceNoûs 23 (1): 126. 1989.A mixed review of Stephen E. Braude, The Limits of Influence: Psychokinesis and the Philosophy of Science.
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Ethical Relativism in the Context of the Social SciencesDissertation, Boston University Graduate School. 1976.
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1A note on the ethics of theories of truthIn Mary Vetterling-Braggin (ed.), Sexist language: a modern philosophical analysis, Littlefield, Adams. pp. 290--298. 1981.
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19The basic questions: What is reinforced? What is selected?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2): 261-261. 2002.Any behavior belongs to innumerable overlapping types. Any adequate theory of emergence and retention of behavior, whether psychological or biological, must give us not only a general mechanism – reinforcement or selection, for example – but a reason why that mechanism applies to a particular behavior in terms of one of its types rather than others. Why is it as this type that the behavior is reinforced or selected?
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267Taking sorites arguments seriously: Some hidden costsPhilosophia 14 (3-4): 251-272. 1984.What I hope to show here is that the costs of taking sorites arguments seriously, in particular the costs with respect to hopes for precise replacement are significantly greater than proponents of sorites arguments have estimated.
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13Limitations and the World BeyondLogos and Episteme 8 (4): 425-454. 2017.This paper surveys our inescapable limits as cognitive agents with regard to a full world of fact: the well-known metamathematical limits of axiomatic systems, limitations of explanation that doom a principle of sufficient reason, limitations of expression across all possible languages, and a simple but powerful argument regarding the limits of conceivability. In ways demonstrable even from within our limits, the full world of fact is inescapably beyond us. Here we propose that there must noneth…Read more
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365Information and meaning: Use-based models in arrays of neural nets (review)Minds and Machines 14 (1): 43-66. 2004.The goal of philosophy of information is to understand what information is, how it operates, and how to put it to work. But unlike âinformationâ in the technical sense of information theory, what we are interested in is meaningful information. To understand the nature and dynamics of information in this sense we have to understand meaning. What we offer here are simple computational models that show emergence of meaning and information transfer in randomized arrays of neural nets. These we t…Read more
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120``Truth, Omniscience and Cantorian Arguments: An Exchange" (review)Philosophical Studies 71 (3): 267-306. 1993.
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3We extend previous work by modeling evolution of communication using a spatialized genetic algorithm which recombines strategies purely locally. Here cellular automata are used as a spatialized environment in which individuals gain points by capturing drifting food items and are 'harmed' if they fail to hide from migrating predators. Our individuals are capable of making one of two arbitrary sounds, heard only locally by their immediate neighbors. They can respond to sounds from their neighbors …Read more
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5Philosophy of Science and the Occult: Second Edition (edited book)State University of New York Press. 1990.This book both introduces the philosophy of science through examination of the occult and examines the occult rigorously enough to raise central issues in the philosophy of science. Placed in the context of the occult, philosophy of science issues become immediately understandable and forcefully compelling. Divergent views on astrology, parapsychology, and quantum mechanics mysticism emphasize topics standard to the philosophy of science. Such issues as confirmation and selection for testing, ca…Read more
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