Implicit Commitment Research Articles

Reflecting on believability: on the epistemic approach to justifying implicit commitments

Reflecting on believability: on the epistemic approach to justifying implicit commitments

Implicit commitments of instrumental acceptance: A case study

Implicit commitments of instrumental acceptance: A case study

Components of arithmetic theory acceptance

This paper ties together three threads of discussion about the following question: in accepting a system of axioms S, what else are we thereby warranted in accepting, on the basis of accepting S? First, certain foundational positions in the philosophy of mathematics are said to be epistemically stable, in that there exists a coherent rationale for accepting a corresponding system of axioms of arithmetic, which does not entail or otherwise rationally oblige the foundationalist to accept statements beyond the logical consequences of those axioms. Second, epistemic stability is said to be incompatible with the implicit commitment thesis, according to which accepting a system of axioms implicitly commits the foundationalist to accept additional statements not immediately available in that theory. Third, epistemic stability stands in tension with the idea that in accepting a system of axioms S, one thereby also accepts soundness principles for S. We offer a framework for analysis of sets of implicit commitment which reconciles epistemic stability with the latter two notions, and argue that all three ideas are in fact compatible.

On the survival of a flawed theory of capital: mainstream economics and the Cambridge capital controversies

Abstract The Cambridge controversies on capital theory opposed heterodox economists, mainly from the University of Cambridge, UK, to mainstream economists, mostly based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. The controversies started in the 1950s and occupied the pages of some of the most influential journals. Their primary outcome was the broad acknowledgement of flaws, which we retrieve, in the concept of aggregate capital. Despite that acknowledgement, aggregate, homogeneous capital remains a staple of contemporary macroeconomics, as if the Cambridge controversies had never existed. To account for this apparent paradox is the aim of this article. We examine the arguments seeking to justify the enduring commitment to the aggregate capital approach and argue that they indicate an implicit commitment to instrumentalism. The indifference to the results of the Cambridge controversies is a consequence of methodological conformism and has shaky foundations.

The dialectic of articulation: a Hegelian response to Adams

ABSTRACT This article responds to Nicholas Adams by exploring the affinities between his account and Hegel, with a particular focus on the dialectic of articulation. They seem to agree on the undermining effect of articulation and reflection on implicit commitments. However, Adams diverges from Hegel by questioning the consequence and supposed inevitability of this dialectical process. Whereas Hegel argues for the desirability of conscious articulation in the progress towards modernity, Adams contends that it is actually a destructive and oppressive process, challenging Hegel’s Enlightenment optimism and Eurocentrism. Still, I suggest that Hegel’s concern for rational dialogue as an indispensable condition for modern life and community should be taken seriously. Scriptural reasoning, as discussed by Adams, provides a model how we can have a form of rational dialogue that escapes from the dilemma posed by the Hegelian dialectic, and that it may be possible to combine strong ethical commitments with an openness to pluralistic dialogue.

In Defense of the Implicit Commitment Thesis

The implicit commitment thesis is the claim that believing in a mathematical theory S carries an implicit commitment to further sentences not deductively entailed by the theory, such as the consistency sentence Con(S). I provide a new argument for this thesis based on the notion of mathematical certainty. I also reply to a recent argument by Walter Dean against the implicit commitment thesis, showing that my formulation of the thesis avoids the difficulties he raises.

Implicit commitment in a general setting

Abstract Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems suggest that no single formal system can capture the entirety of one’s mathematical beliefs, while pointing at a hierarchy of systems of increasing logical strength that make progressively more explicit those implicit assumptions. This notion of implicit commitment motivates directly or indirectly several research programmes in logic and the foundations of mathematics; yet there hasn’t been a direct logical analysis of the notion of implicit commitment itself. In a recent paper, we carried out an initial assessment of this project by studying necessary conditions for implicit commitments; from seemingly weak assumptions on implicit commitments of an arithmetical system $S$, it can be derived that a uniform reflection principle for $S$—stating that all numerical instances of theorems of $S$ are true—must be contained in $S$’s implicit commitments. This study gave rise to unexplored research avenues and open questions. This paper addresses the main ones. We generalize this basic framework for implicit commitments along two dimensions: in terms of iterations of the basic implicit commitment operator, and via a study of implicit commitments of theories in arbitrary first-order languages, not only couched in an arithmetical language.

Creativity

This paper explores how adaptive creativity is continuously generated and sustained in living systems. The philosophical frame and motivations for this investigation will be introduced by juxtaposing an actual creative process with current cybernetic efforts to automate creativity. Past and present process philosophers that have critiqued the implicit commitments of these contemporary techniques will set the stage for further investigations. The litmus test of progress in this investigation will be measured against the extension of two concepts: virtuality, as introduced by Gilbert Simondon (On the Mode of the Existence of Technical Objects), and relevant noise, as introduced by Bacigalupi (“Semiogenesis: A Dynamic System Approach to Agency and Structure”). To refine the concepts of virtuality and relevant noise for our purposes, a rigorous theoretical model will be proposed whose intent is to explain veritable unbounded creativity. This model will then serve as a heuristic lens to explore additional extant models, such as the Kuramoto model (Strogatz), that are used to explain empirical observations of adaptive and creative behaviors in a diversity of biological phenomena. Based on these models of biological creativity and the critique of the contemporary cybernetic project, this paper will conclude by outlining the ethical implications of our culture’s current commitments to a cybernetic world view and how we might evolve beyond it.

Review: Le Complotisme Protestant Contemporain: A propos d’une thèse sur la tribu de Dan (Contemporary Protestant Conspiracy Theories: Concerning a Thesis on the Tribe of Dan), by Christophe Colera

This book performs a rhetorical analysis of the website “Mystery, Babylon The Great: Catholic or Jewish?” (https://watch.pairsite.com/mystery-babylon.html) as part of a sociological investigation of the nature of conspiracy arguments. Christophe Colera positions his argument as a sociological one both by noting the political implications of such arguments—he credits them with a role in the election of President Donald Trump—and by situating it as an element of a social “field” in the sense that the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu proposed it. The introduction provides rationales for a sociologist following the lead of Max Weber to study an obscure website with spurious factual claims and undetermined authorship. There is no evidence apart from the website itself of either “Barbara Aho” or her husband, credited as its authors. They may simply be another fictive element among the imaginings that drive the website’s narrative.Colera is particularly interested in how a born-again Christian applies esoteric literature, such as the writings of Helena Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley, at face value to construct their conspiracy theory. As such, Colera sees the website not only as an opportunity to examine the “doxa” that underlies various YouTube videos that present current events as revealing the Devil’s handiwork, but also, and more tentatively, as a way of understanding the claims of esoteric literature by seeing what they look like when inverted from their original function as writings opposed to Christianity to tools for a born-again Christian to construct secular history as diabolical history.The bulk of the book is a detailed exegesis of the website, which presents an apocalyptic historical narrative that stretches from biblical Israel to the present, using the purported apostasy of the biblical tribe of Dan as an esoteric key to an unholy chronology that leads up to the current era as one that will usher in the Antichrist. Beginning with the apostasy of the Tribe of Dan, going through their absorption of Egyptian esotericism, to their later manifestations in Roman Catholicism, the Merovingians, the Knights Templar, and the Illuminati, Aho’s website presents a linear vision of history as a demonic corruption of God’s plan. Colera’s analysis of this particular Christian narrative often treats “Christianity” as a discernable whole, which he backs up with selective quoting of scripture. His purpose here is to draw the website’s argumentation into closer proximity to Christianity as a whole than most Christian practitioners would care to admit, but this strategy ignores the extent to which contemporary scholarship has dissolved “Christianity” into “Christianities.” At various points, Colera reflects the upside-down logic of the narrative back onto contemporary academic protocols, for example, by treating structuralism and Braudel’s idea of “long history,” as similar exercises in attempting to create meaning beyond the empirically immediate. However, he also maintains an implicit commitment to a secular perspective as, for example, his comparison of the patent ignorance of the website’s author(s) with that of the founders of Islam, Mormonism, and New Age spirituality.This book will be useful to scholars of esoteric religions, Evangelical Christianity, and the place of the Internet in contemporary society. Given that members of the Republican Party focused on questions concerning pedophilia during Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination hearings—which the journalist Amanda Marcotte has taken as sign that the anonymous website QAnon is driving the political agenda of one of the two major American political parties—it remains timely in a political sense. Colera sees his contribution as primarily a disinterested study, although he acknowledges its political implications.My primary criticism of the book is that Colera’s purported objectivity leads him to insist that we must give the authors of the website credit for restricting their antisemitic logic to merely a portion of the Jewish people. He might well have investigated how such a “narrow” antisemitism depends on and legitimates the general antisemitic logic that has fueled violence for centuries. This serious objection aside, the book remains a useful entry into a mode of thinking that is far more pertinent than academic pursuers of reasoned discourse might wish to admit.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston Personalism

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston Personalism

Para-constitutional engineering and federalism: Informal constitutional change through intergovernmental agreements

Abstract This article explores the phenomenon of informal constitutional change with a particular focus on the role played by intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) concluded between members of a federation. It has two objectives. The first is to add IGAs to the catalogue of methods through which constitutions are altered without recourse to formal amendment procedures. Using Canada as a case study, we highlight a paradox: by rendering unconstitutional certain legislative initiatives meant to circumvent formal rules of constitutional amendment, courts are actually inviting political actors, notably the executive branches, to resort to even more fluid and informal methods of altering the Constitution. Second, we bring the concept of “para-constitutionality” into the broader literature on informal constitutional change. Para-constitutionality captures two distinct dimensions of informal constitutional change which are often conflated. “Para” in the Greek sense signifies “circumvention.” The focus here is on effectivity, on the impact of mechanisms (such as IGAs) on the overall constitutional order. By contrast, “para” in the Latin sense means “against.” It is concerned with constitutional (in)validity. We seek to underscore that even when strategies are not found to be unconstitutional, they may nevertheless have a transformative impact on the overall federal architecture. In conclusion, we suggest that an implicit commitment to intergovernmental transactions and compromise, both inherent to federalism, may explain judicial benevolence in the face of negotiated para-constitutional engineering mechanisms, in contrast to unilateral legislative attempts at informal constitutional change.

A theory of implicit commitment

The notion of implicit commitment has played a prominent role in recent works in logic and philosophy of mathematics. Although implicit commitment is often associated with highly technical studies, it remains an elusive notion. In particular, it is often claimed that the acceptance of a mathematical theory implicitly commits one to the acceptance of a Uniform Reflection Principle for it. However, philosophers agree that a satisfactory analysis of the transition from a theory to its reflection principle is still lacking. We provide an axiomatization of the minimal commitments implicit in the acceptance of a mathematical theory. The theory entails that the Uniform Reflection Principle is part of one’s implicit commitments, and sheds light on why this is so. We argue that the theory has significant epistemological consequences in that it explains how justified belief in the axioms of a theory can be preserved to the corresponding reflection principle. The theory also improves on recent analyses of implicit commitment based on truth or epistemic notions.

Present-biased government and sovereign debt dynamics

This paper studies the sovereign debt dynamics when the government exhibits present-biased preferences and can freely adjust sovereign debt. First, present bias plays a dual role. If the country is moderately indebted, the desire for instantaneous gratification drives the government to issue debt. However, with excessive indebtedness, the top concern is to procrastinate costly default, and present bias serves as an implicit commitment device that induces the government to repurchase existing debt. Second, the severe present-biased government suffers from debt intolerance: it has small debt capacity and pays high sovereign credit spreads, despite potentially maintaining a low target debt level. Finally, we find that long-term debt and budgetary restriction can mitigate the negative impact of present bias by disciplining the government’s over-borrowing incentives.

Decolonization and Reconciliation Work in Public Libraries: An Analysis of Strategic Plans

The 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report provides valuable guidance and critical foundation on decolonization and reconciliation in Canada. Public institutions including universities and libraries have affirmed their commitment towards reconciliation and decolonization by undertaking initiatives and establishing both short- and long-term goals. This research examines strategic plans posted on the organizational websites of nine Canadian public library systems operating in cities with significant Indigenous population. The findings suggest that different library systems made varying levels of explicit and/or implicit commitment towards reconciliation and decolonization.

Exploring vegan ideology through graffiti slogans

This article is a study of a sample of eighteen animal rights graffiti slogans that were chalked on the walls of a tunnel known as Potterow Port near the main University of Edinburgh campus, in Scotland, in February 2020. The purpose of the article is to interrogate the implicit ideological commitments underpinning the graffiti slogans, the rhetorical aims of their authors and the linguistic devices and structures they used to achieve their goals. These three dimensions of the slogans are analysed using an inter-disciplinary framework inspired by work on discourse and ideology, recent studies of graffiti slogans in protest contexts and important contributions to the animal rights canon. Regarding the ideological underpinnings of the slogans, the study reveals four core concepts that it argues are central to contemporary vegan thought: the speciesist relationship between human and non-human animals; species egalitarianism; the vegan imperative; and a commitment to non-violent direct action. In addition to these core beliefs, it detects the presence in the slogans of adherence to adjacent values and ideals such as love, compassion and respect for life, attempts to thicken vegan ideology by reaching out to environmentalism and the peace movement and tension around the moral basis for adopting vegan practices. The interconnected conceptual map that lies at the heart of contemporary veganism has emerged, it argues, in response to ‘dislocations’ in human/animal relations and within the animal advocacy movement, between advocates of a welfarist response to animal exploitation and those such as the authors of the graffiti slogans committed to a more radical, vegan inspired solution to animal oppression.

Extending the extended consciousness debate: perception, imagination, and the common kind assumption

For some, the states and processes involved in the realisation of phenomenal consciousness are not confined to within the organismic boundaries of the experiencing subject. Instead, the sub-personal basis of perceptual experience can, and does, extend beyond the brain and body to implicate environmental elements through one’s interaction with the world. These claims are met by proponents of predictive processing, who propose that perception and imagination should be understood as a product of the same internal mechanisms. On this view, as visually imagining is not considered to be world-involving, it is assumed that world-involvement must not be essential for perception, and thus internalism about the sub-personal basis is true. However, the argument for internalism from the unity of perception and imagination relies for its strength on a questionable conception of the relationship between the two experiential states. I argue that proponents of the predictive approach are guilty of harbouring an implicit commitment to the common kind assumption which does not follow trivially from their framework. That is, the assumption that perception and imagination are of the same fundamental kind of mental event. I will argue that there are plausible alternative ways of conceiving of this relationship without drawing internalist metaphysical conclusions from their psychological theory. Thus, the internalist owes the debate clarification of this relationship and further argumentation to secure their position.

Law, Faith, and Canada’s Unwritten Constitution

This article argues that the Canadian judicial attachment to the unwritten Constitution is faith-like. The faith-like aspects of this jurisprudence include the following explicit and implicit commitments: 1. The Constitution is incompletely and imperfectly stated by the constitutional text; 2. The Constitution is revealed through the act of interpretation in glimpses over time to authoritative interpreters; 3. The unwritten Constitution has provided and will provide reliable and morally good guidance for action, sometimes overtaking the written text of the Constitution; and 4. The precise nature and location of the Constitution eludes description, leading to reliance on metaphors and references to tradition. This matters because the Canadian Constitution is often called upon, through the courts, to settle disputes surrounding religious practices. In resolving such disputes, the law must claim some form of authority over religion. I claim that the Court normatively justifies this assertion of authority by implicitly contrasting its own rationality with religion’s faith-based way of encountering the world. This claim is unstable because of the faith-like aspects of the law. This, however, is not a reason to overhaul the case law. It is instead a reason for judicial humility.

Motive-Driven Interpersonal Identity Development: Moderating Effects of Perceived Parenting Quality and Sense of Self-Determination

Living and acting in line with one's implicit motives fosters peoples’ well-being across a wide array of cultural contexts. Yet, not all individuals commit to goals that reflect their implicit motives. Research points to resources that relate to congruence of implicit and explicit motives. We hypothesized that such resources also relate to motive-congruent identity development. In detail, we assumed that perceived parenting quality (Study 1) and sense of self-determination (Study 2) moderate the relationship between the implicit need for affiliation and dimensions of identity development in the interpersonal domain of friendship. Evidence supporting our assumptions was found in both studies: Among adolescents who reported low levels of parenting quality higher levels of the implicit affiliation motive were associated with lower levels of commitment and higher levels of reconsideration of commitment (Study 1). Moreover, a positive association between the implicit affiliation motive and commitment was verified for adolescents who were high in self-determination (Study 2). Less straightforward findings on in-depth exploration point to the Janus-faced nature of exploration processes. To conclude, the implicit need for affiliation seems to play a crucial role in interpersonal identity development if particular social and personal resources are available. Implications for future research are discussed.

The metaphysics of psychology and a dialectical perspective

This article aims to examine the relation between psychology and metaphysics. Despite psychology’s claim of being an exact science, like physics, it contains an implicit commitment to metaphysical assumptions, such as ahistorical universalism, ontological dualism, abstract individualism, and the fragmentation of the human mind. This paper proposes a dialectical perspective as a way to overcome the unidimensional examination of psychological phenomena as the sum of independent, fixed, and static elements. By revealing the shortcomings of reductionism and elementarism, dialectics highlight the complex and dynamic nature of psychological processes and provide an original way of conceptualizing crucial theoretical and methodological issues of psychology as a discipline.

Against the mind package view of minds: Comments on Carrie Figdor's Pieces of mind

Carrie Figdor's Pieces of mind lays the groundwork for critiquing the mind package view of minds. According to the mind package view, psychological properties travel in groups, such that an entity either has the whole mind package or lacks mentality altogether. Implicit commitment to the mind package view makes it seem absurd to attribute some psychological properties (e.g., preferences) to entities that lack other psychological properties (e.g., feelings). Contra the mind package view, we are psychologically continuous with plants, worms, and bacteria: Our patterns of mindedness resemble theirs, even if such entities do not have the whole mind package.