Mousa Mohammadian

In Avicenna’s Flying Man Thought Experiment (FMTE), we are invited to imagine someone who suddenly comes into existence, flying in the air, in a state of complete sensory deprivation, and without any memory. The Flying Man (FM) is claimed to be aware of something while he is unaware of his body. What exactly FM is aware of has been a topic of some debates. To answer this question, we study FMTE through two lenses: the essence-existence distinction and the distinction between the inside observer and the outside observer in thought experiments, highlighted by Einstein in his elevator thought experiment. Relying on these distinctions, we argue against the claim that FM is aware of the essence of his self by showing that it is inconsistent with major aspects of Avicenna’s philosophical psychology, metaphysics, and epistemology. We defend the view that FM is only aware of the existence of his self. It is commonly suggested that if this view is correct, Avicenna commits a fallacy in using FMTE to argue that FM’s self is not FM’s body. We argue against this position and show that within the Avicennian framework, FMTE is a sound argument.

In Avicenna’s Flying Man Thought Experiment (FMTE), we are invited to imagine someone who suddenly comes into existence, flying in the air, in a state of complete sensory deprivation, and without any memory. The Flying Man (FM) is claimed to be aware of something while he is unaware of his body. What exactly FM is aware of has been a topic of some debates. To answer this question, we study FMTE through two lenses: the essence-existence distinction and the distinction between the inside observer and the outside observer in thought experiments, highlighted by Einstein in his elevator thought experiment. Relying on these distinctions, we argue against the claim that FM is aware of the essence of his self by showing that it is inconsistent with major aspects of Avicenna’s philosophical psychology, metaphysics, and epistemology. We defend the view that FM is only aware of the existence of his self. It is commonly suggested that if this view is correct, Avicenna commits a fallacy in using FMTE to argue that FM’s self is not FM’s body. We argue against this position and show that within the Avicennian framework, FMTE is a sound argument.

I argue that the epistemic aim of scientific theorizing (EAST) is producing theories with the highest possible number and degree of theoretical virtues (call this “TV-EAST”). I trace TV-EAST’s logical empiricist origins and discuss its close connections to Kuhn’s and Laudan’s problem-solving accounts of the aim of science. Despite TV-EAST’s antirealist roots, I argue that if one adopts the realist view that EAST is finding true theories, one should also endorse TV-EAST. I then defend TV-EAST by showing that it addresses the challenges raised against using the “aim of science” metaphor and offers significant advantages over the realist account.

Bird reveals an important problem at the heart of Armstrong’s theory of laws of nature: to explain how a law necessitates its corresponding regularity, Armstrong is committed to a vicious regress. In his very brief response, Armstrong gestures towards an argument that, as he admits, is more of a “speculation.” Later, Barker and Smart argue that a very similar problem threatens Bird’s dispositional monist theory of laws of nature and he is committed to a similar vicious regress. In this paper, first, I construct Armstrong’s would-be argument in response to Bird. Second, I argue that his response makes his account of laws and natural properties incompatible with science. Finally, I argue that Armstrong’s strategy to address Bird’s criticism can be used, quite ironically, to defuse Barker and Smart’s argument against Bird.

I argue that if simplicity is a theoretical virtue and some theoretical virtues are the constituents of the aims of theorizing in physics—i.e., theory choice and theory development in physics—and scientific rationality is instrumental rationality, then simplicity cannot be a mere means to achieve the aims. I do this by showing that considering simplicity as a mere means brings about counterintuitive ramifications concerning scientific rationality. These counterintuitive ramifications can be avoided if we consider simplicity a constituent of the aims of theorizing in physics.

Many non-physicalists, including Chalmers, hold that the zombie argument succeeds in rejecting the physicalist view of consciousness. Some non-physicalists, including, again, Chalmers, hold that quantum collapse interactionism, i.e., the idea that non-physical consciousness causes collapse of the wave function in phenomena such as quantum measurement, is a viable interactionist solution for the problem of the relationship between the physical world and the non-physical consciousness. In this paper, I argue that if QCI is true, the zombie argument fails. In particular, I show that if QCI is true, a zombie world physically identical to our world is impossible because there is at least one law of nature, a fundamental law of physics in particular, that exist only in the zombie world but not in our world. This shows that philosophers like Chalmers are committing an error in endorsing the zombie argument and QCI at the same time.

The relationship between Peircean abduction and the modern notion of Inference to the Best Explanation is a matter of dispute. Some philosophers, such as Harman :88–95, 1965) and Lipton, claim that abduction and IBE are virtually the same. Others, however, hold that they are quite different :503, 1998; Minnameier in Erkenntnis 60:75–105, 2004) and there is no link between them :419–442, 2009). In this paper, I argue that neither of these views is correct. I show that abduction and IBE have important similarities as well as differences. Moreover, by bringing a historical perspective to the study of the relationship between abduction and IBE—a perspective that is lacking in the literature—I show that their differences can be well understood in terms of two historic developments in the history of philosophy of science: first, Reichenbach’s distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification—and the consequent jettisoning of the context of discovery from philosophy of science—and second, underdetermination of theory by data.

I examine and resolve an exegetical dichotomy between two main interpretations of Peirce’s theory of abduction, namely, the Generative Interpretation and the Pursuitworthiness Interpretation. According to the former, abduction is the instinctive process of generating explanatory hypotheses through a mental faculty called insight. According to the latter, abduction is a rule-governed procedure for determining the relative pursuitworthiness of available hypotheses and adopting the worthiest one for further investigation—such as empirical tests—based on economic considerations. It is shown that the Generative Interpretation is inconsistent with a fundamental fact of logic for Peirce—i.e., abduction is a kind of inference—and the Pursuitworthiness Interpretation is flawed and inconsistent with Peirce’s naturalistic explanation for the possibility of science and his view about the limitations of classical scientific method. Changing the exegetical locus classicus from the logical form of abduction to insight and economy of research, I argue for the Unified Interpretation according to which abduction includes both instinctive hypotheses-generation and rule-governed hypotheses-ranking. I show that the Unified Interpretation is immune to the objections raised successfully against the Generative and the Pursuitworthiness interpretations.