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354The buried quantifier: An account of vagueness and the soritesAnalysis 65 (2). 2005.Contrary to the great bulk of philosophical work on vagueness, the core of vagueness is not to be found in vague monadic predicates such as ‘bald’, ‘tall’, or ‘old’. The true source of vagueness – at least vagueness of the type that typically appears in the sorites – lies beneath these, in a mechanism using a buried quantifier operative over the comparatives ‘balder’, ‘taller’ and ‘older’.
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354What Kind of Science is Simulation?Journal for Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 19 19-28. 2007.Is simulation some new kind of science? We argue that instead simulation fits smoothly into existing scientific practice, but does so in several importantly different ways. Simulations in general, and computer simulations in particular, ought to be understood as techniques which, like many scientific techniques, can be employed in the service of various and diverse epistemic goals. We focus our attentions on the way in which simulations can function as (i) explanatory and (ii) predictive tools. …Read more
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352Learning to Communicate: The Emergence of Signaling in Spatialized Arrays of Neural NetsAdaptive Behavior 10 45-70. 2003.We work with a large spatialized array of individuals in an environment of drifting food sources and predators. The behavior of each individual is generated by its simple neural net; individuals are capable of making one of two sounds and are capable of responding to sounds from their immediate neighbors by opening their mouths or hiding. An individual whose mouth is open in the presence of food is “fed” and gains points; an individual who fails to hide when a predator is present is “hurt” by lo…Read more
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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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333Operators in the paradox of the knowerSynthese 94 (3). 1993.Predicates are term-to-sentence devices, and operators are sentence-to-sentence devices. What Kaplan and Montague's Paradox of the Knower demonstrates is that necessity and other modalities cannot be treated as predicates, consistent with arithmetic; they must be treated as operators instead. Such is the current wisdom.A number of previous pieces have challenged such a view by showing that a predicative treatment of modalities neednot raise the Paradox of the Knower. This paper attempts to chall…Read more
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328Some Neglected Problems of OmniscienceAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 20 (3): 265-277. 1983.One set of neglected problems consists of paradoxes of omniscience clearly recognizable as forms of the Liar, and these I have never seen raised at all. Other neglected problems are difficulties for omniscience posed by recent work on belief de se and essential indexicals. These have not yet been given the attention they deserve.
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321Philosophy of Science, Network Theory, and Conceptual Change: Paradigm Shifts as Information CascadesIn Euel Elliot & L. Douglas Kiel (eds.), Complex Systems in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Theory, Method, and Application, University of Michigan Press. forthcoming.Philosophers have long tried to understand scientific change in terms of a dynamics of revision within ‘theoretical frameworks,’ ‘disciplinary matrices,’ ‘scientific paradigms’ or ‘conceptual schemes.’ No-one, however, has made clear precisely how one might model such a conceptual scheme, nor what form change dynamics within such a structure could be expected to take. In this paper we take some first steps in applying network theory to the issue, modeling conceptual schemes as simple networ…Read more
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319Evolution of communication in perfect and imperfect worldsWorld Futures 56 (2): 179-197. 2000.We extend previous work on cooperation to some related questions regarding the evolution of simple forms of communication. The evolution of cooperation within the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma has been shown to follow different patterns, with significantly different outcomes, depending on whether the features of the model are classically perfect or stochastically imperfect (Axelrod 1980a, 1980b, 1984, 1985; Axelrod and Hamilton, 1981; Nowak and Sigmund, 1990, 1992; Sigmund 1993). Our results here …Read more
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316What Won't Escape Sorites ArgumentsAnalysis 42 (1): 38-43. 1982.Problems for 'precise replacements' as a way out of sorites paradoxes.
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286Epistemic 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 of 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 t…Read more
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283The being that knew too muchInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 47 (3): 141-154. 2000.John Abbruzzese has recently attempted a defense of omniscience against a series of my attacks. This affords me a welcome occasion to clarify some of the arguments, to pursue some neglected subtleties, and to re-think some important complications. In the end, however, I must insist that at least three of four crucial arguments really do show an omniscient being to be impossible. Abbruzzese sometimes misunderstands the forms of the argument themselves, and quite generally misunderstands th…Read more
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283Computational Modeling as a Philosophical MethodologyIn Luciano Floridi (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information, Blackwell. 2004.Since the sixties, computational modeling has become increasingly important in both the physical and the social sciences, particularly in physics, theoretical biology, sociology, and economics. Sine the eighties, philosophers too have begun to apply computational modeling to questions in logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of biology, ethics, and social and political philosophy. This chapter analyzes a selection of interesting exam…Read more
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269Making Meaning HappenJournal for Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 16 209-244. 2004.What is it for a sound or gesture to have a meaning, and how does it come to have one? In this paper, a range of simulations are used to extend the tradition of theories of meaning as use. The authors work throughout with large spatialized arrays of sessile individuals in an environment of wandering food sources and predators. Individuals gain points by feeding and lose points when they are hit by a predator and are not hiding. They can also make sounds heard by immediate neighbours in the array…Read more
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269Undecidability in the Spatialized Prisoner's DilemmaTheory and Decision 42 (1): 53-80. 1997.n the spatialized Prisoner’s Dilemma, players compete against their immediate neighbors and adopt a neighbor’s strategy should it prove locally superior. Fields of strategies evolve in the manner of cellular automata (Nowak and May, 1993; Mar and St. Denis, 1993a,b; Grim 1995, 1996). Often a question arises as to what the eventual outcome of an initial spatial configuration of strategies will be: Will a single strategy prove triumphant in the sense of progressively conquering more and more terri…Read more
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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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265In behalf of 'in behalf of the fool'International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (1). 1982.Gaunilo updated.
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248Germs, Genes, and Memes: Functional and Fitness Dynamics on Information NetworksPhilosophy of Science 82 (2): 219-243. 2015.It is widely accepted that the way information transfers across networks depends importantly on the structure of the network. Here, we show that the mechanism of information transfer is crucial: in many respects the effect of the specific transfer mechanism swamps network effects. Results are demonstrated in terms of three different types of transfer mechanism: germs, genes, and memes. With an emphasis on the specific case of transfer between sub-networks, we explore both the dynamics of each …Read more
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239In a series of formal studies and less formal applications, Hong and Page offer a ‘diversity trumps ability’ result on the basis of a computational experiment accompanied by a mathematical theorem as explanatory background (Hong & Page 2004, 2009; Page 2007, 2011). “[W]e find that a random collection of agents drawn from a large set of limited-ability agents typically outperforms a collection of the very best agents from that same set” (2004, p. 16386). The result has been extremely influential…Read more
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235Modeling Interaction Effects in Polarization: Individual Media Influence and the Impact of Town MeetingsJournal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 10 (2). 2016.We are increasingly exposed to polarized media sources, with clear evidence that individuals choose those sources closest to their existing views. We also have a tradition of open face-to-face group discussion in town meetings, for example. There are a range of current proposals to revive the role of group meetings in democratic decision-making. Here, we build a simulation that instantiates aspects of reinforcement theory in a model of competing social influences. What can we expect in the inter…Read more
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234Modeling prejudice reduction: Spatialized game theory and the contact hypothesisPublic Affairs Quarterly 19 (2): 95-125. 2005.We apply spatialized game theory and multi-agent computational modeling as philosophical tools: (1) for assessing the primary social psychological hypothesis regarding prejudice reduction, and (2) for pursuing a deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms of prejudice reduction.
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228How Stable is Democracy?Journal on Policy and Complex Systems 4 87-108. 2018.The structure of communication networks can be more or less “democratic”: networks are less democratic if (a) communication is more limited in terms of characteristic degree and (b) is more tightly channeled to a few specifc nodes. Together those measures give us a two-dimensional landscape of more and less democratic networks. We track opinion volatility across that landscape: the extent to which random changes in a small percentage of binary opinions at network nodes result in wide changes ac…Read more
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227Simulating Grice: Emergent Pragmatics in Spatialized Game TheoryIn Anton Benz, Christian Ebert & Robert van Rooij (eds.), Language, Games, and Evolution, Springer-verlag. 2011.How do conventions of communication emerge? How do sounds or gestures take on a semantic meaning, and how do pragmatic conventions emerge regarding the passing of adequate, reliable, and relevant information? My colleagues and I have attempted in earlier work to extend spatialized game theory to questions of semantics. Agent-based simulations indicate that simple signaling systems emerge fairly naturally on the basis of individual information maximization in environments of wandering food sour…Read more
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218Plenum theoryNoûs 42 (3): 422-439. 2008.Plena are large-scale macro-totalities appropriate to the realms of all facts, all truths, and all things. Our attempt here is to take some first technical steps toward an adequate conception of plena.
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216Epistemology of Modeling and Simulation: Variations on a Theme (review)Philosophy and Technology 26 (1): 73-74. 2012.An introduction to three papers in a special issue
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213How Modeling Can Go Wrong: Some Cautions and Caveats on the Use of ModelsPhilosophy and Technology 26 (1): 75-80. 2013.Modeling and simulation clearly have an upside. My discussion here will deal with the inevitable downside of modeling — the sort of things that can go wrong. It will set out a taxonomy for the pathology of models — a catalogue of the various ways in which model contrivance can go awry. In the course of that discussion, I also call on some of my past experience with models and their vulnerabilities
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210Reducing Prejudice: A Spatialized Game-Theoretic Model for the Contact HypothesisIn Jordan Pollack, Mark Bedau, Phil Husbands, Takashi Ikegami & Richard A. Watson (eds.), Artificial Life IX: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Artificial Life, Mit Press. pp. 244-250. 2004.There are many social psychological theories regarding the nature of prejudice, but only one major theory of prejudice reduction: under the right circumstances, prejudice between groups will be reduced with increased contact. On the one hand, the contact hypothesis has a range of empirical support and has been a major force in social change. On the other hand, there are practical and ethical obstacles to any large-scale controlled test of the hypothesis in which relevant variables can be manipul…Read more
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209Problems for OmniscienceIn J. P. Moreland, Chad Meister & Khaldoun A. Sweis (eds.), Debating Christian Theism, Oxford Univ. Press. pp. 169-180. 2013.A survey of logical problems for the concept of omniscience.
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202Meaning, morality, and the moral sciencesPhilosophical Studies 43 (3). 1983.n the John Locke Lectures, included in Meaning and the Moral Sciences, Hilary Putnam argues that "the 'softness' of social facts may affect the 'hard' notions of truth and reference" Without fully endorsing Putnam's argument, I hope to show that a similar argument could be constructed for a slightly different conclusion: that the 'softness' of ethics may affect the 'hard' notions of truth and reference.
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189Environmental Variability and the Emergence of Meaning: Simulational Studies across Imitation, Genetic Algorithms, and Neural NetsIn Angelo Loula & Ricardo Gudwin (eds.), Artificial Cognition Systems, Idea Group. pp. 284-326. 2006.A crucial question for artificial cognition systems is what meaning is and how it arises. In pursuit of that question, this paper extends earlier work in which we show that emergence of simple signaling in biologically inspired models using arrays of locally interactive agents. Communities of "communicators" develop in an environment of wandering food sources and predators using any of a variety of mechanisms: imitation of successful neighbors, localized genetic algorithms and partial neural n…Read more
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187Game-Theoretic Robustness in Cooperation and Prejudice Reduction: A Graphic MeasureIn Luis M. Rocha, Larry S. Yaeger, Mark A. Bedau, Dario Floreano & Robert L. Goldstine (eds.), Artificial Life X: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Mit Press. pp. 445-451. 2006.Talk of ‘robustness’ remains vague, despite the fact that it is clearly an important parameter in evaluating models in general and game-theoretic results in particular. Here we want to make it a bit less vague by offering a graphic measure for a particular kind of robustness— ‘matrix robustness’— using a three dimensional display of the universe of 2 x 2 game theory. In a display of this form, familiar games such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, Chicken and Deadlock appear as volumes, makin…Read more
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