Graham Oddie

Likeness to truth

One: Truth and Closeness to Truth.- 1.1 The problem of truthlikeness.- 1.2 Explications and intuitions.- 1.3 Some adequacy conditions.- Notes.- Two: Popper on Truthlikeness.- 2.1 Truthlikeness in Poppers methodology.- 2.2 Truthlikeness by truth content and falsity content.- 2.3 Measuring truth content and falsity content.- Notes.- Three: Distance in Logical Space.- 3.1 Conceptual frameworks and possible worlds.- 3.2 Distance between propositions.- 3.3 Measuring the symmetric difference.- 3.4 Truthlikeness for a propositional framework.- 3.5 Truthlikeness by similarity spheres.- Notes.- Four: Truthlikeness by Distributive Normal Forms.- 4.1 Languages and pictures.- 4.2 Worlds and interpretations.- 4.3 Constituents in a first-order language.- 4.4 The symmetric difference on constituents.- 4.5 The propositional measure extended.- Notes.- Five: Beyond First-Order Truthlikeness.- 5.1 Questions, answers, and propositional distance again.- 5.2 Infinitely deep theories and ultimate questions.- 5.3 Higher-order frameworks.- 5.4 Verisimilitude and legisimilitude.- Notes.- Six: Truthlikeness and Translation.- 6.1 Invariance under translation.- 6.2 The identity of states of affairs.- 6.3 Coactualisation and structure.- 6.4 Two criticisms of the structure argument.- 6.5 Numerical accuracy, confirmation and disconfirmation.- 6.6 Privileged properties.- Notes.- Seven: Truthlikeness, Content, and Utility.- 7.1 The content condition.- 7.2 The attractions of brute strength.- 7.3 Epistemic utilities.- 7.4 Accuracy and action: a conjecture.- Notes.- 8.1 First-order languages and their interpretations.- 8.2 Higher-order languages.- 8.3 Examples J and K formalized.- 8.4 First-order normal forms.- 8.5 Permutative normal forms.- 8.6 The distance between constituents.- Notes.- References.

Conditionalization, Cogency, and Cognitive Value

There is a well-known solution to this problem, due originally to F. P. Ramsey and revived by, amongst others, I. J. Good.1 Bayesianism as a theory of rational belief is usually yoked to a theory of rational action. Indeed, standard justifications for the two theoretical tenets often already embody the presumption that it is rational to maximize expected value. So lets add to the above core the following tenet of decision theory:

An Objectivist's Guide to Subjective Value

Oedipus killed his father and made love to his mother. Accepting Greek, and conventional, views on the morality of patricide and incest, Oedipus acted wrongly on both counts. But that is not the whole of the story. For it was precisely in the attempt to avoid these very wrongs that Oedipus so acted, believing in the light of the best evidence available to him that he was successfully avoiding them. Cases like this lead us naturally to a familiar distinction: between the objective and subjective notions of moral rightness. But which, if either, of these two notions is the primary one for moral theory, and what exactly are the relations between them? We address this question from within a broadly consequentialist framework, arguing for a version of objectivism which explains and justifies subjectivism where it is right and corrects it where it is wrong. According to the consequentialist, the moral rightness of an option is related in some way to the value of its consequences. A major problem for the consequentialist is to explain the nature of this relation. In particular, is the morally right action the one with the best consequences, or is the morally right action the one which is best in the light of the agents beliefs? The subjectivist claims that the primary notion for moral theory is given by what is best by the agents lights (or, as we will say, what has greatest subjective value) regardless of what is actually the best. 1 The objectivist claims that the primary notion for moral theory is given by what is best (or, as we will say, what has greatest objective value) regardless of how things seem to the agent.2

The Poverty of the Popperian Program for Truthlikeness

The importance for realism of the concept of truthlikeness was first stressed by Popper. Popper himself not only mapped out a program for defining truthlikeness (in terms of falsity content and truth content) but produced the first definitions within this program. These were shown to be inadequate. But the program lingered on, and the most recent attempt to revive it is that of Newton-Smith. His attempt is a failure, not because of some minor defect or technical flaw in his particular account but rather because the program incorporates a fundamental flaw. However, realists need not despair. There already exists an entirely different program not subject to these criticisms.

The content, consequence and likeness approaches to verisimilitude: compatibility, trivialization, and underdetermination

Theories of verisimilitude have routinely been classified into two rival camps—the content approach and the likeness approach—and these appear to be motivated by very different sets of data and principles. The question thus naturally arises as to whether these approaches can be fruitfully combined. Recently Zwart and Franssen (Synthese 158(1):75–92, 2007) have offered precise analyses of the content and likeness approaches, and shown that given these analyses any attempt to meld content and likeness orderings violates some basic desiderata. Unfortunately their characterizations of the approaches do not embrace the paradigm examples of those approaches. I offer somewhat different characterizations of these two approaches, as well as of the consequence approach (Schurz and Weingartner (Synthese 172(3):415–436, 2010) which happily embrace their respective paradigms. Finally I prove that the three approaches are indeed compatible, but only just, and that the cost of combining them is too high. Any account which combines the strictures of what I call the strong likeness approach with the demands of either the content or the consequence approach suffers from precisely the same defect as Popper’s—namely, it entails the trivialization of truthlikeness. The downside of eschewing the strong likeness constraints and embracing the content constraints alone is the underdetermination of the concept of truthlikeness.

The logic of ability, freedom and responsibility

The aim of this paper is to offer a rigorous explication of statements ascribing ability to agents and to develop the logic of such statements. A world is said to be feasible iff it is compatible with the actual past-and-present. W is a P-world iff W is feasible and P is true in W (where P is a proposition). P is a sufficient condition for Q iff every P world is a Q world. P is a necessary condition for Q iff Q is a sufficient condition forP. Each individual property S is shown to generate a rule for an agent X. X heeds S iff X makes all his future choices in accordance with S. (Note that X may heed S and yet fail to have it). S is a P-strategy for X iff Xs heeding S together with P is a necessary and sufficient condition for X to have S. (P-strategies are thus rules which X is able to implement on the proviso P).Provisional opportunity: X has the opportunity to A provided P iff there is an S such that S is a P-strategy for X and Xs implementing S is a sufficient condition for Xs doing A. P is etiologically complete iff for every event E which P reports P also reports an etiological ancestry of E, and P is true. Categorical opportunity: X has the opportunity to A iff there is a P such that P is etiologically complete and X has the opportunity to A provided P. For X to have the ability to A there must not only be an appropriate strategy, but X must have a command of that strategy. X steadfastly intends A iff X intends A at every future moment at which his doing A is not yet inevitable. X has a command of S w.r.t. A and P iff Xs steadfastly intending A together with P is a sufficient condition for X to implement S. Provisional ability: X can A provided P iff there is an S such that S is a P-strategy for X, Xs implementing S is a sufficient condition for Xs doing A, and X has a command of S w.r.t. A and P. Categorical ability: X can A iff there is a P such that P is etiologically complete and X can A provided P. X is free w.r.t. to A iff X can A and X can non- A. X is free iff there is an A such that X is free w.r.t. A.

On a Dogma Concerning Realism and Incommensurability

It is widely held that realists must accept a strong version of the commensurability of theories, and anti-realists a strong version of the incommensurability of theories. It is the purpose of this paper to throw doubt on this dogma, a dogma which seems to be shared by realists and anti-realists alike. In the first part of the paper I will show that one extremely influential line of reasoning for the connection between anti-realism and incommensurability (perhaps the only line of reasoning) is mistaken. It will emerge that anti-realists need not eschew commensurability in a large class of cases often thought to be prime candidates. In the second part of the paper I will show that realists are committed to theses which drive them rather far down the slope of incommensurability.

Verisimilitude by Power Relations

A number of different theories of truthlikeness have been proposed, but most can be classified into one of two different main programmes: the probability-content programme and the likeness programme.1 In Brink and Heidema [1987] we are offered a further proposal, with the attraction of some novelty. I argue that while the heuristic path taken by the authors is rather remote from what they call ‘the well-worn paths’,2 in fact their point of arrival is rather closer to existing proposals within the likeness approach than might at first appear. It is the purpose of this note to outline the logical connections and to assess the reasons which have been offered in favour of the new proposal.

The Fictionalist's Attitude Problem

According to John Mackie, moral talk is representational (the realists go that bit right) but its metaphysical presuppositions are wildly implausible (the non-cognitivists got that bit right). This is the basis of Mackie’s now famous error theory: that moral judgments are cognitively meaningful but systematically false. Of course, Mackie went on to recommend various substantive moral judgments, and, in the light of his error theory, that has seemed odd to a lot of folk. Richard Joyce has argued that Mackie’s approach can be vindicated by a fictionalist account of moral discourse. And Mark Kalderon has argued that moral fictionalism is attractive quite independently of Mackie’s error-theory. Kalderon argues that the Frege–Geach problem shows that we need moral propositions, but that a fictionalist can and should embrace propositional content together with a non-cognitivist account of acceptance of a moral proposition. Indeed, it is clear that any fictionalist is going to have to postulate more than one kind of acceptance attitude. We argue that this double-approach to acceptance generates a new problem – a descendent of Frege–Geach – which we call the acceptance–transfer problem. Although we develop the problem in the context of Kalderon’s version of non-cognitivist fictionalism, we show that it is not the non-cognitivist aspect of Kalderon’s account that generates the problem. A closely related problem surfaces for the more typical variants of fictionalism according to which accepting a moral proposition is believing some closely related non-moral proposition. Fictionalists of both stripes thus have an attitude problem.

Moral Realism, Moral Relativism and Moral Rules (A Compatibility Argument)

Relativism and realism are often held to be in conflict. It is not obvious what the exact nature of the conflict is supposed to be, because it is not obvious what the two doctrines amount to. But that there is some kind of conflict between moral realism and moral relativism is evidenced by the fact that some take moral relativism to be the straightforward denial of moral realism. David Brink, for example, baldly states that ‘Moral relativism is usually understood as a denial of realism or objectivity about ethics’ (Brink 1989, 43). This definitional thesis is wrong. Even so, in the case of morality at least the tension between the two seems clear enough. Why? The moral realist holds inter alia that there are objective truths in the moral domain, and further that these objective truths are not mere human artefacts, but are backed up by special kinds of facts. The moral relativist, on the other hand, claims that judgements of right and wrong, permissibility and obligation, and so on, are in an important sense socially constructed; that they are human artefacts, perhaps of a very sophisticated sort; that they depend on the existence of human institutions, agreements and conventions, tacit or explicit, and vary from one set of such institutions and agreements to another. For example, Richard Boyd writes that ‘Moral realism . . . contrasts with views according to which moral principles are largely a reflection of social constructs or conventions’ (Boyd 1988, 182). Mark Platts (characterizing relativism): ‘Moral judgments are partly the result of conventions which could have been and in some places are, otherwise’ (Platts 1988, 286). And finally, Gilbert Harman: ‘Moral relativism denies that there are universal basic moral demands and says that different people are subject to different basic moral demands depending on the social customs, practices, conventions, values and principles that they accept’ (Harman 1989, 363). I will show that these apparently incompatible theses could both be true: that is, that realism and relativism are logically compatible in the moral domain. The compatibility argument I offer does not exploit the incommensurability of rival conceptual frameworks. Nor does it turn on our limited epistemic access to, and hence disagreement over, the alleged