An apparent issue for the Revision Theory of definitions has long been that its most plausible versions engender $\omega $-inconsistencies. In this paper I develop a new $\omega $-consistent revision theory and use it to argue that revision theorists can and should embrace $\omega $-consistency. I show how my theory, called $\mathbf{S}^{\#N}$, withstands the theoretical pressures towards $\omega$-inconsistency and moreover compares favorably to the best $\omega $-inconsistent theories vis-\`a-vis several important desiderata. I tentatively conclude that $\mathbf{S}^{\#N}$ is (...) the best known revision theory. (shrink)

I outline a novel counterexample to the principle of belief revision, Anticipation: if both learning and learning not‐ would render belief in unjustified, you cannot now be justified in believing. If I am right, not only is the leading theory of belief revision false, so are various recently proposed weakenings. I develop and defend a new theory that correctly predicts the failures of Anticipation I argue for, predicated on the simple idea that one is justified in ruling out (...) possibility just in case that possibility is sufficiently improbable. (shrink)

According to the cognitive model of psychopathology, maladaptive beliefs about oneself, others, and the world are the main factors contributing to the development and persistence of various forms of mental suffering. Therefore, the key therapeutic process of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—a therapeutic approach rooted in the cognitive model—is cognitive restructuring, i.e., a process of revision of such maladaptive beliefs. In this paper, I examine the philosophical assumptions underlying CBT and offer theoretical reasons to think that the effectiveness of belief (...) revision in psychotherapy is very limited. This is the case, I argue, because the cognitive model wrongly assumes that our body of beliefs is unified, while it is in fact fragmented. (shrink)

The Bayesian maxim for rational learning could be described as conservative change from one probabilistic belief or credence function to another in response to newinformation. Roughly: ‘Hold fixed any credences that are not directly affected by the learning experience.’ This is precisely articulated for the case when we learn that some proposition that we had previously entertained is indeed true (the rule of conditionalisation). But can this conservative-change maxim be extended to revising one’s credences in response to entertaining propositions or (...) concepts of which one was previously unaware? The economists Karni and Vierø (2013, 2015) make a proposal in this spirit. Philosophers have adopted effectively the same rule: revision in response to growing awareness should not affect the relative probabilities of propositions in one’s ‘old’ epistemic state. The rule is compelling, but only under the assumptions that its advocates introduce. It is not a general requirement of rationality, or so we argue. We provide informal counterexamples. And we show that, when awareness grows, the boundary between one’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ epistemic commitments is blurred. Accordingly, there is no general notion of conservative change in this setting. (shrink)

Belief revision theory studies how an ideal doxastic agent should revise her beliefs when she receives new information. In part I, I have first presented the AGM theory of belief revision. Then I have focused on the problem of iterated belief revisions. In part II, I will first present ranking theory (Spohn 1988). Then I will show how it solves the problem of iterated belief revisions. I will conclude by sketching two areas of future research.

We present a general framework for representing belief-revision rules and use it to characterize Bayes's rule as a classical example and Jeffrey's rule as a non-classical one. In Jeffrey's rule, the input to a belief revision is not simply the information that some event has occurred, as in Bayes's rule, but a new assignment of probabilities to some events. Despite their differences, Bayes's and Jeffrey's rules can be characterized in terms of the same axioms: responsiveness, which requires that (...) revised beliefs incorporate what has been learnt, and conservativeness, which requires that beliefs on which the learnt input is ‘silent’ do not change. To illustrate the use of non-Bayesian belief revision in economic theory, we sketch a simple decision-theoretic application. (shrink)

The paper thus shows that scientific rationality under finite conditions consists not only in stabilization, critique, and exploration, but equally in the controlled capacity to transform existing model orders. It begins from the observation that scientific rationality cannot be adequately described if one considers only stabilization, falsification, search, or complete model replacement. Between the provisional retention of a model and its complete replacement lies a field of regulated transformations, which the present contribution conceptualizes and systematizes as revision. Revision (...) denotes the rule-governed transformation of a model or model nexus under conditions of rising friction, declining validity, increasing costs, or intensifying domain conflicts. The paper clarifies the structural position of revision within Epistemics and distinguishes it from adjacent operations such as falsification, search, and mere stabilization. On that basis, it develops a typology of local, structural, domain-related, and global revision. It also identifies typical triggers of revision, formulates criteria of rational revision, and analyzes central pathologies, including omitted, delayed, cosmetic, and disproportional revision, as well as ontologization that blocks revision. The central thesis is that revision constitutes the mediating transformative operation between friction, falsification, and search. Friction signals strain, falsification marks loss of validity, search opens the space of possible alternatives, and revision organizes the actual transformation of the model. The paper thus shows that scientific rationality under finite conditions consists not only in stabilization, critique, and exploration, but equally in the controlled capacity to transition existing model orders. (shrink)

The revised compensation theodicy holds that the primary good of evils, in addition to the compensation of the afterlife, is to justify the existence evil. It holds that this primary good does not necessarily outweigh the evils present in the world, nor is it necessary that the primary good returns to the one who suffered. However, Reichenbach argued that this theodicy is fatally flawed. He asserted that the premises in this theodicy and its treatment of justice are objectionable, leading to (...) an unacceptable conclusion where people are treated only as a means to produce goods. This article elucidates Reichenbach's position and responds to his objections, showing that the revised compensation theodicy has great potential in attempting to resolve the problem of evil. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the practice of revising concepts to improve how people talk and think. Its ability to improve talk and thought ultimately hinges on the successful dissemination of desired conceptual changes. Unfortunately, the field has been slow to develop methods to directly test what barriers stand in the way of propagation and what methods will most effectively propagate desired conceptual change. In order to test such questions, this paper introduces the masked time-lagged method. The masked time-lagged method tests people’s (...) concepts at a later time than the intervention without participant’s knowledge, allowing us to measure conceptual revision in action. Using a masked time-lagged design on a content internalist framework, we attempted to revise planet and dinosaur in online participants to match experts’ concepts. We successfully revised planet but not dinosaur, demonstrating some of the difficulties conceptual engineers face. Nonetheless, this paper provides conceptual engineers, regardless of framework, with the tools to tackle questions related to implementation empirically and head-on. (shrink)

We propose a dynamic hyperintensional logic of belief revision for non-omniscient agents, reducing the logical omniscience phenomena affecting standard doxastic/epistemic logic as well as AGM belief revision theory. Our agents don’t know all a priori truths; their belief states are not closed under classical logical consequence; and their belief update policies are such that logically or necessarily equivalent contents can lead to different revisions. We model both plain and conditional belief, then focus on dynamic belief revision. The (...) key idea we exploit to achieve non-omniscience focuses on topic- or subject matter-sensitivity: a feature of belief states which is gaining growing attention in the recent literature. (shrink)

Belief revision theory studies how an ideal doxastic agent should revise her beliefs when she receives new information. In part I I will first present the AGM theory of belief revision (Alchourrón & Gärdenfors & Makinson 1985). Then I will focus on the problem of iterated belief revisions.

Several currents in contemporary thought converge in the call for a generic and non-reductively naturalistic conception of the human life-form. I propose to meet this demand through a constructively critical revision of Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology in light of the so-called transformative model advocated by contemporary Neo-Aristotelians (John McDowell, Matthew Boyle). Plessner constructs the nature-philosophical hierarchy outlined in Levels of Organic Life and the Human in accordance with a principle that can be understood along transformativist lines. However, by declaring (...) humans’ distinctive bodily constitution irrelevant to their “eccentric positionality,” Plessner deviates from his transformative scheme and reverts to an additive view. In order to account for this deviation, I ask what it is about the human life form that necessitates eccentric positionality and argue that the answer transpiring from Plessner’s arguments turns on the mediating function of second nature. The shared character of second nature draws attention to the difficulty of accommodating the constitutive role of human sociality in Plessner’s nature-philosophical framework. This difficulty comes to a head in Plessner’s reworking of the Hegelian conception of “spirit” and helps account for his relapse into an additive view. The problem identified here drives major theoretical realignments in Plessner’s writings after Levels, a problem-oriented overview of which puts us on a track towards a viable conception of the human life form: one that reframes the insights reached in Plessner’s later writings in categorial, generic terms by embedding them in a corrected, and consistently transformative, version of the nature-philosophical framework developed in Levels. ––– NOTE: It was only after publication of this article that I came across an important piece of biographical evidence in support of my claim about the significance of Schelling's Freiheitsschrift for Plessner's philosophical psychology. In 1923, Max Scheler claimed to be powerfully impressed by two of his recent readings, namely, Adolf von Harnack’s major study on the second-century Christian heretic Marcion and Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift (Peter Wust, “Schelers Lehre vom Menschen,” Das Neue Reich 9 [1928–29], 138, quoted in Guido Cusinato, “Schelling come precursore dell’antropologia filosofica del Novecento,” Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, 9/2 [2010], 64.) Given that Scheler and Plessner were in constant exchange during the relevant period, it seems likely that Plessner’s invocation of Marcion in the concluding sentence of Levels of Organic Life and the Human reflects a familiarity with that author that was mediated by Scheler’s reading of Harnack (the phrase "die selige Fremde" used by Plesner in that context is in fact a verbatim borrowing from Harnack's Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott, Leipzig 1921, p. 225). By the same token, Scheler’s praise for Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift in 1923, along with the textual indications noted in this paper, suggests that the Freiheitsschrift was very much present on Plessner's intellectual horizon when he referred to “the ur-ground character, or better said un-ground character of the psyche” in The Limits of Community, which was published a year later. (Whether it was Scheler who alerted Plessner to the Freiheitsschrift or the other way around is a moot question.). (shrink)

Contemporary ethical theory distinguishes coercion from commitment and capture from consent, but it lacks a general account of when freely chosen irreversibility remains legitimate rather than structurally self-undermining. This paper argues that the Monk–Prisoner Problem supplies such an account. The monk who vows permanent enclosure and the prisoner who cannot leave may be behaviorally identical: each occupies a bounded, non-revisable condition. The ethical difference, I argue, lies neither in later phenomenology nor in a snapshot of consent alone, but in revocation (...) authority: who holds the meta-update rule over the closure condition? The paper develops four criteria for ethically permissible irreversible commitment, recursive standing, bounded reversibility, meta-update authority, and ethical-loop integrity, and tests them against religious vows, long-term contracts, constitutional entrenchment, and AI value-locking. The result is a structural account of legitimacy on which voluntariness is necessary but insufficient. What matters is whether closure was authored under intact deliberative conditions, with bounded and intelligible reversal costs, and within a governance architecture that preserves legitimate authority over revision. (shrink)

I present a possible worlds semantics for a hyperintensional belief revision operator, which reduces the logical idealization of cognitive agents affecting similar operators in doxastic and epistemic logics, as well as in standard AGM belief revision theory. (Revised) belief states are not closed under classical logical consequence; revising by inconsistent information does not perforce lead to trivialization; and revision can be subject to ‘framing effects’: logically or necessarily equivalent contents can lead to different revisions. Such results are (...) obtained without resorting to non-classical logics, or to non-normal or impossible worlds semantics. The framework combines, instead, a standard semantics for propositional S5 with a simple mereology of contents. (shrink)

I propose and articulate a novel theory of desire, called the Revised Reward Theory. As the name suggests, the theory is based—and expands—on Arpaly and Schroeder’s (2014) Reward Theory of Desire. The initial Reward Theory identifies desires with states of the reward learning system such that for an organism to desire some P is for its reward system to treat P as a reward upon receipt. The Revised Reward Theory identifies desires with a different state of the same system, such (...) that for an organism to desire some P is for its reward system to expect or predict that P will be rewarding (roughly) prior to receipt. The difference amounts to equating desires with what we ultimately find rewarding or satisfying versus those that underlie our motivations to obtain that which we take ourselves to desire. I argue that the structure of the reward system is incompatible with the original Reward Theory but compatible with the Revised Reward Theory. I demonstrate that this difference has important philosophical implications. I focus on moral responsibility and demonstrate Arpaly and Schroeder’s argument, that addiction can mitigate moral responsibility, turns on this precise difference. Arpaly, Schroeder, and I all ascribe to a meta-theory called ‘natural kindism’ which identifies mental kinds with neurocognitive kinds. This discussion, in addition to defending a theory of desire, is intended to act as a proof of concept for natural kindism as offering a powerful framework for relating empirical results to philosophical issues. (shrink)

Recursive Ethics holds that every self-governing system is vulnerable to four failure modes — drift, capture, presentism, and integrity inversion. This paper asks whether Recursive Ethics can detect those failures in itself. I argue that it cannot do so reliably from the inside, and that the right response is to rebuild part of its self-correction outside the loop being corrected. In fuller terms: the framework is itself a system that governs the deliberation of those who hold it, and it issues (...) an epistemic limit — the Indistinguishability Thesis — holding that no sufficiently entangled system-self relation can confirm, from within, whether its evaluative capacities are accurate or captured. If the four modes are universal they apply to the framework; if the thesis holds, the framework cannot certify from inside the practitioner-framework loop that it has escaped them. The convergent result is a corollary I call self-audit insufficiency: no self-governing framework can guarantee detection of its own degradation using resources confined to the degraded loop. The response is architectural rather than confessional — three mechanisms (witnessed re-derivation, an equalization constraint on self-interpretation, and trigger-based external re-engagement) that relocate part of the revision function outside the loop it revises, resting on a refusal-capacity floor whose loss is legible only from outside. The aim is not certainty, which the thesis forecloses, but the conversion of a closed loop into an open one in which the framework can still be stopped by a witness with standing to stop it. (shrink)

The model of self-referential truth presented in this paper, named Revision-theoretic supervaluation, aims to incorporate the philosophical insights of Gupta and Belnap’s Revision Theory of Truth into the formal framework of Kripkean fixed-point semantics. In Kripke-style theories the final set of grounded true sentences can be reached from below along a strictly increasing sequence of sets of grounded true sentences: in this sense, each stage of the construction can be viewed as an improvement on the previous ones. I (...) want to do something similar replacing the Kripkean sets of grounded true sentences with revision-theoretic sets of stable true sentences. This can be done by defining a monotone operator through a variant of van Fraassen’s supervaluation scheme which is simply based on ω-length iterations of the Tarskian operator. Clearly, all virtues of Kripke-style theories are preserved, and we can also prove that the resulting set of “grounded” true sentences shares some nice features with the sets of stable true sentences which are provided by the usual ways of formalising revision. What is expected is that a clearer philosophical content could be associated to this way of doing revision; hopefully, a content directly linked with the insights underlying finite revision processes. (shrink)

The integration of standardized biomedical terminologies into a single, unified knowledge representation system has formed a key area of applied informatics research in recent years. The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) is the most advanced and most prominent effort in this direction, bringing together within its Metathesaurus a large number of distinct source-terminologies. The UMLS Semantic Network, which is designed to support the integration of these source-terminologies, has proved to be a highly successful combination of formal coherence and broad scope. (...) We argue here, however, that its organization manifests certain structural problems, and we describe revisions which we believe are needed if the network is to be maximally successful in realizing its goals of supporting terminology integration. (shrink)

To the normal reasons that we think can justify one in preferring something, x (namely, that x has objectively preferable properties, or has properties that one prefers things to have, or that x's obtaining would advance one's preferences), I argue that it can be a justifying reason to prefer x that one's very preferring of x would advance one's preferences. Here, one prefers x not because of the properties of x, but because of the properties of one's having the preference (...) for x. So-revising one's preferences is rational in paradoxical choice situations like Kavka's Deterrence Paradox. I then try to meet the following objections: that this is stoicist, incoherent, bad faith; that it conflates instrumental and intrinsic value, gives wrong solutions to the problems presented by paradoxical choice situations, entails vicious regresses of value justification, falsifies value realism, makes valuing x unresponsive to x's properties, causes value conflict, conflicts with other standards of rationality, violates decision theory, counsels immorality, makes moral paradox, treats value change as voluntary, conflates first- and second-order values, is psychologically unrealistic, and wrongly presumes that paradoxical choice situations can even occur. (shrink)

When a many-paper formal framework must change its mind — a computational defect found in a deposited paper, a conditional whose antecedent a later audit moves, a pricing sharpened by a later result — who edits? This paper, the sixty-fifth in a sequence developing an interpretive framework that redescribes physical reality as a causally consistent history of information updates, and the closing panel of its L-type Audition Program, personifies the implicit answer as the Global Editor: the authority with retroactive write (...) access to the corpus's history, for whom consistency is maintained by silently updating the record until it agrees with itself. Its practice-side shadow is familiar — the updated preprint with no change log, the silently corrected equation, the claim whose history is unrecoverable across versions. The sequence had built against it piecemeal: deposited texts are DOI-immutable, registers are frozen, upgrades are annotation-only, new versions carry itemized notes re-verified at gates. But piecemeal discipline is precedent, not law, and the place precedent predictably breaks is under load: the sibling audition panel left a live adoption-triggered branch whose execution would touch frozen conditionals across a dozen papers at once. Without a cascade calculus the honest options degenerate to "rewrite everything" (the Editor) or "annotate nothing" (unannotated staleness accumulating in the record). This paper replaces the precedent with an explicit, checkable discipline, under the registered controlling phrase: the corpus may revise its standings, but it never rewrites its past. -/- The revision typology fixes four acts, none of which changes content-at-address: annotate (add-only marginal content on a frozen register); re-version (a full version bump with an itemized note and re-run gates, or a status pass — with the deposited-artifact rule that no act replaces a deposited object: a re-version at that status creates a new deposited successor and a forward-supersession relation); retract (a claim's downstream-consumption license withdrawn while its text stands, the notice itself a record); and retain-as-conditional (the falsified-antecedent case: the conditional survives as the theorem it always was, with the antecedent's status recorded — only the consumption right changes). An act-selection function over leaf type, defect type, and deposit status is proven total and decidable, with the load-bearing boundary registered: an error at the time of assertion selects withdrawal; a later change in an antecedent's status, with the original derivation still correct under its stated condition, selects retention-as-conditional. A revision authority layer types who may do what, and its flagship display is a structurally empty column: no role — author, reviewer, or owner — holds rewrite authority over any frozen claim. An annotation-cascade calculus makes propagation mechanical over the declared consumption graph, with mode-typed obligations, guaranteed termination, and a non-retro invariant proven act by act; an undeclared consumption is itself a typed defect whose discovery degrades incompleteness to late notification, never silent inconsistency. -/- The discipline is then checked, not validated: applied to the corpus's own executed revision history — eleven in-place re-versions, five status-insertion passes, add-only annotation formulas, and deviation-note routings — the selection function returns, for every instance, the act that was actually performed; the two acts history never exercised (retraction; retention-as-conditional) are supported instead by independent constraints and displayed negative cases, and the paper says so. The comparison with the belief-revision tradition is made at operator level: AGM contraction's success postulate is unsatisfiable on an immutable public record, its recovery postulate holds trivially where nothing is removed, minimal mutilation is replaced by declared-edge locality, and the Levi identity has no analogue by design; Hansson's belief-base operators come closer but still delete elements inside one agent's pre-freeze state. What none of the compared traditions ships — and what this paper contributes — is an executable per-leaf revision mechanism for a frozen public corpus, with a cascade calculus, an authority matrix whose rewrite column is empty, and a proven non-retro invariant. (shrink)

In this paper two systems of AGM-like Paraconsistent Belief Revision are overviewed, both defined over Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs) due to the possibility of defining a formal consistency operator within these logics. The AGM° system is strongly based on this operator and internalize the notion of formal consistency in the explicit constructions and postulates. Alternatively, the AGMp system uses the AGM-compliance of LFIs and thus assumes a wider notion of paraconsistency - not necessarily related to the notion of (...) formal consistency. (shrink)

I investigate the implication of the truth-relativist’s alleged ‘faultless disagreements’ for issues in the epistemology of disagreement. A conclusion I draw is that the type of disagreement the truth-relativist claims (as a key advantage over the contextualist) to preserve fails in principle to be epistemically significant in the way we should expect disagreements to be in social-epistemic practice. In particular, the fact of faultless disagreement fails to ever play the epistemically significant role of making doxastic revision (at least sometimes) (...) rationally required for either party in a (faultless) disagreement. That the truth-relativists’ disagreements over centred content fail to play this epistemically significant role that disagreements characteristically play in social epistemology should leave us sceptical that disagreement is what the truth-relativist has actually preserved. (shrink)

A powerful argument against the resurrection of the body is based on the premise that all resurrection theories violate natural laws. We counter this argument by developing a fully naturalistic resurrection theory. We refer to it as the revision theory of resurrection (the RTR). Since Hick’s replica theory is already highly naturalistic, we use Hick’s theory as the basis for the RTR. According to Hick, resurrection is the recreation of an earthly body in another universe. The recreation is a (...) resurrection counterpart. We show that the New Testament supports the idea of resurrection counterparts. The RTR asserts that you are a node in a branching tree of increasingly perfect resurrection counterparts. These ever better counterparts live in increasingly perfect resurrection universes. We give both theological arguments and an empirical argument for the RTR. (shrink)

Over the decades, the claim that everything is revisable (defended by Quine and others) has played an important role in Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Some time ago, Katz (1988) argued that this claim is paradoxical. This paper does not discuss this objection but rather argues that the claim of universal revisability allows for two different readings but in each case leads to a contradiction and is false.

We have good reason to believe that Nicomachean Ethics VI. 2 is a Nicomachean revision of an originally Eudemian text. Aristotle seems to have inserted lines 1139a31-b11 by means of a marginal note, which the first editor then mistakenly added in the wrong place, and I propose that we move these lines so that they follow the word κοινωνεῖν at 1139a20. The suggested note appears to be Nicomachean for several reasons but most importantly because it contains a desire-based account (...) of the practical intellect as teleologically oriented to action. The NE articulates consequences of this account regarding practical philosophy’s methodology and teleological orientation to action. The EE does not articulate such consequences, and instead seems to assume an object-based account of the practical intellect. Consequently, it would seem that, between the EE and the NE, Aristotle revised his conception of the practical intellect and consequently his conception of practical philosophy. (shrink)

In the present paper, our objective is to examine the application of belief revision models to scientific rationality. We begin by considering the standard model AGM, and along the way a number of problems surface that make it seem inadequate for this specific application. After considering three different heuristics of informational economy that seem fit for science, we consider some possible adaptations for it and argue informally that, overall, some paraconsistent models seem to better satisfy these principles, following Testa (...) (2015). These models have been worked out in formal detail by Testa, Cogniglio, & Ribeiro (2015, 2017). (shrink)

Sometimes someone does something morally wrong in clear-eyed awareness that what she is doing is wrong. More commonly, a wrongdoer fails to see that her conduct is wrong. Call the latter behavior unwitting wrongful conduct. It is generally agreed that an agent can be blameworthy for such conduct, but there is considerable disagreement about how one’s blameworthiness in such cases is to be explained, or what conditions must be satisfied for the agent to be blameworthy for her conduct. Many theorists (...) hold that an agent’s blameworthiness for unwitting wrongful conduct must stem from—or trace back to—her blameworthiness for something else. And appeals to tracing in these cases lead some writers to a highly revisionist view, on which people are blameworthy for wrongdoing much less often than we ordinarily think (and our mistake, unfortunately, isn’t about how much wrongdoing there is). In this chapter, I set out the main claims of an argument for such a view and respond to it. I offer grounds for retaining a good many of the judgments that the revisionist would have us reject. The defense rests to a significant extent on commonsense views about the psychological capacities and abilities to act that people ordinarily possess, views that, as far as I can tell, revisionists have not shown to be mistaken. (shrink)

Inquiry rarely evolves inside one fixed evidential space. New instruments, altered challenge classes, revised standards of measurement, and changing explanatory demands reshape what counts as publicly observable in the first place. The problem of this paper is therefore temporal rather than merely static: when does revision of an observational architecture remain globally coherent through time, and when does it force branch-dependent reclassification of what is visible and hidden? -/- The core result is a dynamic descent theorem. Rectangular revision (...) is exactly the condition under which evolving observational projections remain compositional through time, so that revising first and quotienting later agrees with quotienting first and then transporting revision downstairs. Its main consequences are a revision--observation commutation theorem, a branch-dependence theorem, and a rectangularity–theoreticity theorem: failure of rectangularity is the temporal analogue of nongluing, and architecture drift changes observability itself. The broader philosophical payoff is a structural reinterpretation of theory change. Rational order through time depends not only on coherent updating within a fixed public space, but on whether the public space itself remains temporally integrable. (shrink)

This paper examines the position in moral philosophy that Harry Frankfurt calls the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP). The paper first describes the principle as articulated by A.J. Ayer. Subsequently, the paper examines Frankfurt’s critique and proposed revision of the principle and argues that Frankfurt’s proposal relies on an excessively simplistic account of practical reasoning, which fails to account for the possibility of moral dilemmas. In response, the paper offers a further revision of PAP, which accounts for Frankfurt’s (...) critique, moral dilemmas, and the challenge of causal determinism. (shrink)

An important question for proponents of non-contractive approaches to paradox is why contraction fails. Zardini offers an answer, namely that paradoxical sentences exhibit a kind of instability. I elaborate this idea using revision theory, and I argue that while instability does motivate failures of contraction, it equally motivates failure of many principles that non-contractive theorists want to maintain.

This book addresses how our revisionary practices account for relations between texts and how they are read. It offers an overarching philosophy of revision concerning works of fiction, fact, and faith, revealing unexpected insights about the philosophy of language, the metaphysics of fact and fiction, and the history and philosophy of science and religion. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of literature, literary theory and (...) criticism, and history and philosophy of science and religion. (shrink)

The anti-exceptionalist debate brought into play the problem of what are the relevant data for logical theories and how such data affects the validities accepted by a logical theory. In the present paper, I depart from Laudan's reticulated model of science to analyze one aspect of this problem, namely of the role of logical data within the process of revision of logical theories. For this, I argue that the ubiquitous nature of logical data is responsible for the proliferation of (...) several distinct methodologies for logical theories. The resulting picture is coherent with the Laudanean view that agreement and disagreement between scientific theories take place at different levels. From this perspective, one is able to articulate other kinds of divergence that considers not only the inferential aspects of a given logical theory, but also the epistemic aims and the methodological choices that drive its development. (shrink)

According to the received view, Marxian (ideology) critique and Foucaultian (genealogical) critique constitute two divergent approaches of critical theory that have remarkably different goals and little in common. In this article, however, we identify a guiding thread that connects the Marxian and Foucaultian traditions and motivates a distinctive approach within critical theory we call the ‘critique of constitution’. The problem of restricted consciousness, we show, is the core problem in common between Michel Foucault's critical history of thought and Georg Lukács's (...) theory of reification which underlies the tradition of Western Marxism and Frankfurt School critical theory. The problem concerns the limits of intelligibility and, by the same token, the apparent inevitability of the given social ontology. Our sense of what is possible depends on what we are able to think. But we know from the history of sciences that the limits of intelligibility change, thereby also altering our sense of what is possible. This becomes a political problem in connection with the intelligibility of social reality, because our restricted consciousness limits the alternatives we can so much as consider and seek to bring about. The critique of constitution, then, aims to expand the scope of possibility by revealing the contingent formation of the given limits of intelligibility. We argue that this is the paramount political task for Foucault and Lukács alike, other important differences notwithstanding. (shrink)

Quine's holistic empiricist account of scientific inquiry can be characterized by three constitutive principles: *noncontradiction*, *universal revisability* and *pragmatic ordering*. We show that these constitutive principles cannot be regarded as statements within a holistic empiricist's scientific theory of the world. This claim is a corollary of our refutation of Katz's [1998, 2002] argument that holistic empiricism suffers from what he calls the Revisability Paradox. According to Katz, Quine's empiricism is incoherent because its constitutive principles cannot themselves be rationally revised. Using (...) Gärdenfors and Makinson's logic of belief revision based on epistemic entrenchment, we argue that Katz wrongly assumes that the constitutive principles are *statements* within a holistic empiricist's theory of the world. Instead, we show that constitutive principles are best seen as *properties* of a holistic empiricist's theory of scientific inquiry and we submit that, without Katz's mistaken assumption, the paradox cannot be formulated. We argue that our perspective on the status of constitutive principles is perfectly in line with Quinean orthodoxy. In conclusion, we compare our findings with van Fraassen's [2002] argument that we should think of empiricism as a stance, rather than as a doctrine. (shrink)

This paper calls into question the view typically attributed to Kant that aesthetic judgements are particularist, resisting all conceptual determination. Instead, it claims that Kant conceives of aesthetic judgements, particularly of art, as playing an important role in therevisionof concepts: one sense in which aesthetic judgements, as Kant defines them, ‘find a universal’ for a given particular. To understand the relation between artistic judgements and concepts requires that we consider what I call Kant’s diachronic account of aesthetic ideas, or how (...) such judgements unfold in the course of communication and reflection. My reading draws Kant much closer to debates in the philosophy of art on the semantic dimension of artworks. Here, illuminating the way in which aesthetic judgements about art can play a role in conceptual revision allows us to make sense of the way in which modern artworks contest concepts rather than merely presenting or expressing them. (shrink)

Typically, existentialist analyses of “America” have been limited to North America (more specifically, the United States). I argue that developing an adequate framework for existentially analyzing America requires a turn to Mexican existentialism. In Emilio Uranga’s and Jorge Portilla’s writings, we discover new conceptual tools for understanding Americanness as such. These thinkers help us imagine an account of American being that does not restrict itself to the United States by using the concepts of existentialism to describe the crises their neighbors (...) to the north as well as they themselves face. American existence has been historically characterized by a convergence (oftentimes clash) of disparate races, ethnicities, languages, cultures, religions, and identities. As history unfolded, this convergence led to various existential crises across the Americas. Whereas the US American way of life is marred by a blustering, naïve, and purposeless misuse of freedom that disregards the other, the existential crisis the Mexican lives is characterized by “accidentality” and “zozobra.” Despite these important differences, all existentialists, and the Mexican existentialists of the Hyperion Group especially, remind us that there is a common way to overcome the various existential crises plaguing the Americas, and that is to exercise freedom in a purposeful, communally conscious manner. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to suggest that most current theories of global justice fail to adequately recognise the importance of global public goods. Broadly speaking, this failing can be attributed at least in part to the complexity of the global context, the individualistic focus of most theories of justice, and the localised nature of the theoretical foundations of most theories of global justice. We argue ? using examples (particularly that of protecting antibiotic efficacy) ? that any truly effective (...) theory of global justice must recognise the importance of global public goods. Global public goods confer significant benefits to individuals yet can only be effectively promoted and preserved through collective action and the restriction of individual choice; something which most theories of justice are structurally unequipped to sufficiently promote. (shrink)

We present a theory of truth in fiction that improves on Lewis's [1978] ‘Analysis 2’ in two ways. First, we expand Lewis's possible worlds apparatus by adding non-normal or impossible worlds. Second, we model truth in fiction as belief revision via ideas from dynamic epistemic logic. We explain the major objections raised against Lewis's original view and show that our theory overcomes them.

A (revised) account of what all and only religions have in common in virtue of which they are religions.

In earlier papers (Lindström & Rabinowicz, 1989. 1990), we proposed a generalization of the AGM approach to belief revision. Our proposal was to view belief revision as a relation rather thanas a function on theories (or belief sets). The idea was to allow for there being several equally reasonable revisions of a theory with a given proposition. In the present paper, we show that the relational approach is the natural result of generalizing in a certain way an approach (...) to belief revision due to Adam Grove. In his (1988) paper, Grove presents two closely related modelings of functional belief revision, one in terms of a family of "spheres" around the agent's theory G and the other in terms of an epistemic entrenchment ordering of propositions. The "sphere"-terminology is natural when one looks upon theories and propositions as being represented by sets of possible worlds. Grove's spheres may be thought of as possible "fallback" theories relative to the agent's original theory: theories that he may reach by deleting propositions that are not "sufficiently" entrenched (according to standards of sufficient entrenchment of varying stringency). To put it differently, fallbacks are theories that are closed upwards under entrenchment The entrenchment ordering can be recovered from the family of fallbacks by the definition: A is at least as entrenched as B iff A belongs to every fallback to which B belongs. To revise a theory T with a proposition A, we go to the smallest sphere that contain A-worlds and intersect it with A. The relational notion of belief revision that we are interested in, results from weakening epistemic entrenchment by not assuming it to be connected. I.e., we want to allow that some propositions may be incomparable with respect to epistemic entrenchment. As a result, the family of fallbacks around a given theory will no longer have to be nested. This change opens up the possibility for several different ways of revising a theory with a given proposition. (shrink)

This paper proposes and systematically demonstrates the Rigid Framework for Ethical Revision, aiming to provide an unshakable rule base for the long-term continuity of civilization. The framework is rooted in two irrefutable objective cornerstones: first, the cosmic physical laws—the underlying objective principles governing order emergence, energy balance and entropy increase constraints demonstrated in the 13.8-billion-year evolution of the universe, whose core essence is "unconscious, amoral, and only sustained by laws"; second, the innate nature of humanity—the precise deconstruction of human (...) desire hierarchy: the survival desire and reproduction desire are the underlying essential desires, while the enjoyment desire, possession desire, power desire and control desire are the superficial derived desires, and the uncontrolled alienation of the latter is the ultimate root cause of all disasters in human civilization. Completely breaking away from the constraints of existing rule frameworks, this paper constructs a three-level closed-loop system of "meta-rule - hierarchical law - enforcement mechanism", taking the universe’s objective laws as the ultimate reference and thousands of years of human history fraught with disasters as a mirror. Through the mechanism of "hierarchical deterrence and dynamic equilibrium", itsolves the eternal paradox of "who will enforce the rules". Finally, this paper argues that this framework is not a utopian concept, but the only rational choice for civilization to pass the cosmic "time filter" and turn the universe’s hundreds of billions of years of future into deterministic resources for breaking through heat death. It is both the coming-of-age ceremony and the core symbol of civilization moving from infancy to maturity. (shrink)

This paper is about whether we can revise the highest rule in a legal system using legal reasoning. HLA Hart and Alf Ross argued that we can’t: either the highest rule is unchangeable, or it can only be changed in a revolution—a merely causal change, not a legal one. I argue, drawing on an idea from Hartry Field about logic and epistemology, that we can. The emergence of the conclusion, within a legal system, that the highest rule should be replaced (...) by something else can provide a legal reason for the change. In making the change, we act for reasons internal to the legal system. This allows us to make sense of the distinction, recognized by legal subjects, between a revolution and a legal change of sovereignty. (shrink)

We are fallible creatures, prone to making all sorts of mistakes. So, we should be open to evidence of error. But what constitutes such evidence? And what is it to rationally accommodate it? I approach these questions by considering an evolutionary debunking argument according to which (a) we have good, scientific, reason to think our moral beliefs are mistaken, and (b) rationally accommodating this requires revising our confidence in, or altogether abandoning the suspect beliefs. I present a dilemma for such (...) debunkers, which shows that either we have no reason to worry about our moral beliefs, or we do but we can self-correct. Either way, moral skepticism doesn’t follow. That the evolutionary debunking argument fails is important; also important, however, is what its failure reveals about rational belief revision. Specifically, it suggests that getting evidence of error is a non-trivial endeavor and that we cannot learn that we are likely to be mistaken about some matter from a neutral stance on that matter. (shrink)

After a number of decades of research into the dynamics of rational belief, the belief revision theory community remains split on the appropriate handling of sequences of changes in view, the issue of so-called iterated revision. It has long been suggested that the matter is at least partly settled by facts pertaining to the results of various single revisions of one’s initial state of belief. Recent work has pushed this thesis further, offering various strong principles that ultimately result (...) in a wholesale reduction of iterated to one-shot revision. The present paper offers grounds to hold that these principles should be significantly weakened and that the reductionist thesis should ultimately be rejected. Furthermore, the considerations provided suggest a close connection between the logic of iterated belief change and the logic of evidential relevance. (shrink)

This paper examines Edmund Husserl's revised account of expression in his 1913–1914 revisions of the Logical Investigations. Rejecting the Investigations’ thesis that linguistic meanings are constituted in a distinctive class of essentially non-intuitive meaning intentions, Husserl develops a new conception of empty intention, a new analysis of the intuitively fulfilled discourse and a phenomenology of the indicative tendency. While these revisions have been acknowledged, their motivation, connection, and significance remain under-explored in the existing literature. By comparing the Investigations and the (...) Revisions, this paper shows how these developments fundamentally alter Husserl’s understanding of the relationship between language, thought, and intuition. The revised account of expression illuminates the dynamic interaction of these elements in the process of meaning-making, offering a balanced account of the interplay of presence and absence in our use of words. (shrink)

Linguistic interventions aim to change our linguistic practices. A commonly discussed type of linguistic intervention is meaning revision, which seeks to associate existing words with new or revised meanings. But why does retaining old words matter so much? Why not instead introduce new words to express the newly defined meanings? Drawing on relevant psycholinguistic research, this paper develops an empirically motivated, general, and practically useful pro tanto reason to retain rather than replace the original word during the process of (...) conceptual improvement. (shrink)

Belief is often treated as an epistemic attitude toward propositions, formed through evidence and revised through argument. Yet much of human belief is neither adopted nor maintained primarily through rational evaluation. This paper proposes a lifecycle framework explaining belief as a developmental and social phenomenon unfolding across three phases: genesis, stabilization, and revision. First, the paper identifies five engines of belief genesis: inheritance within the home, social absorption through belonging, authority and coercion within institutions, media ecosystems including algorithmic amplification, (...) and lived experience interpreted through prior frameworks. Second, it analyzes belief stabilization as a predictable hardening process whereby beliefs become identity structures, emotional regulators, social contracts, interpretive filters, and publicly invested commitments—mechanisms intensified by contemporary digital environments. Third, the paper distinguishes two axes of belief change: horizontal revision driven by social influence and norm shifts, and vertical revision driven by inward agency. The paper argues that deep and deliberate belief revision requires the MVC triad—metacognition, values, and moral courage—which enables individuals to recognize inherited interpretations, prefer truth to comfort, and endure the social costs of dissent. Finally, the paper introduces the "lamp effect": vertically driven belief change can return to the social plane by shaping others through credibility, integrity, and exemplarity. The framework integrates psychology, media ecology, phenomenology, and social epistemology to offer a coherent theory of belief dynamics in modern societies. (shrink)