Plausible Principle Research Articles

Asymmetries in Benefiting, Harming and Creating

It is often said that while we have a strong reason not to create someone who will be badly off, we have no strong reason for creating someone who will be well off. In this paper I argue that this asymmetry is incompatible with a plausible principle of independence of irrelevant alternatives, and that a more general asymmetry between harming and benefiting is difficult to defend. I then argue that, contrary to what many have claimed, it is possible to harm or benefit someone by bringing her into existence.

Giving Up the Goods: Rethinking Human Rights to 'Subsistence', Institutional Justice, and Imperfect Duties

In this paper I challenge the idea that there can be rights the rationale and content of which is securing subsistence goods for people. I do not question whether sometimes one can be entitled to minimum provisions on a different basis. For example, social justice standards entitle us to a fair share of the social product; in certain circumstances this might imply the minimum necessary to enjoy one’s equal rights as a citizen. Yet the same standards can entitle us to more than this in other circumstances. By contrast human rights aim to articulate minimal entitlements that do not vary with social circumstances. I argue that the minimum they aim to articulate is not best understood as an entitlement to an amount of some goods, even a subsistence amount, but rather as a minimum treatment. I then show how this notion of minimum treatment does not challenge the idea that we have social and economic rights — it just makes their basis and content more nuanced.I pose the following dilemma. Either a person’s claim to subsistence goods is against social institutions equipped to distribute social benefits and burdens fairly and equitably or it is made regardless of such a social scheme. If the former, then one’s claim is best understood as based on principles the content of which is not a minimum goods entitlement, but rather an equitable social distribution — a fair share. However, if the claim is not against a social scheme, there will be no plausible principle defining what counts as a reasonable burden for any of the available agents to secure subsistence. That means there is no justified principle implying perfect duties any agent could clearly follow or clearly breach that secure subsistence conditions for others. At best we can justify perfect, but singular, rescue duties under very specific conditions, or general but imperfect duties (allowing a degree of personal discretion concerning what any of us must do). Neither of these obviously correlates with human rights standards, for reasons I shall give. For more than singular duties such as rescue duties and imperfect duties to apply an institutional social agent with special redistributive powers is needed. But this reintroduces the first horn of the dilemma above: for that kind of agent the relevant standard is a fair share, not a minimal right. Attempts in the literature to overcome the second horn of the dilemma through claims that basic rights can correlate with imperfect duties or that basic rights can generate duties to work towards institutions that ‘perfect’ our imperfect duties, are shown to be faulty.My conclusion is that our entitlement to specific goods distributions is a different kind of question from entitlements based in rescue or imperfect duties of assistance. They are more appropriately addressed in an institutional context and in those contexts it is the standards of social justice/fairness that apply. Human rights standards engage with distributive questions in a different way: they define impermissible reasons on which to base distributive policies, ones implying negligent disregard. They are better understood as standards of minimum treatment rather than entitlement to minimum goods provision.

Ability-based objections to no-best-world arguments

In the space of possible worlds, there might be a best possible world (a uniquely best world or a world tied for best with some other worlds). Or, instead, for every possible world, there might be a better possible world. Suppose that the latter is true, i.e., that there is no best world. Many have thought that there is then an argument against the existence of God, i.e., the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being; we will call such arguments no-best-world arguments. In this paper, we discuss ability-based objections to such arguments; an ability-based objection to a no-best world argument claims that the argument fails because one or more of its premises conflict with a plausible principle connecting the applicability of some type of moral evaluation to the agent’s possession of a relevant ability. In particular, we formulate and evaluate an important new ability-based objection to the most promising no-best world argument.

On the Very Idea of a Robust Alternative

According to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), an agent is morally responsible for an action of hers only if she could have done otherwise. The notion of a robust alternative plays a prominent role in recent attacks on PAP based on so-called Frankfurt cases. In this paper I defend the truth of PAP for blameworthy actions against Frankfurt cases recently proposed by Derk Pereboom and David Widerker. My defence rests on some intuitively plausible principles that yield a new understanding of the concept of a robust alternative. I will leave aside whether PAP also holds for praiseworthy actions.

Causation, coincidence, and commensuration

What does it take to solve the exclusion problem? An ingenious strategy is Stephen Yablo’s idea that causes must be commensurate with their effects. Commensuration is a relation between events. Roughly, events are commensurate with one another when one contains all that is required for the occurrence of the other, and as little as possible that is not required. According to Yablo, one event is a cause of another only if they are commensurate. I raise three reasons to doubt that this account solves the exclusion problem successfully. First, it leaves a mystery about what determines a particular’s causal capacities. Second, because there are two ways of construing coincidence between particulars, a dilemma arises: either the solution to the exclusion problem is threatened, or the account of coincidence loses an attractive feature concerning ontological economy. Third, even if we assume the commensuration constraint, a plausible principle about overdetermination seems to regenerate the exclusion problem.

The Philosophical Personality Argument

Perhaps personality traits substantially influence one’s philosophically relevant intuitions. This suggestion is not only possible, it is consistent with a growing body of empirical research: Personality traits have been shown to be systematically related to diverse intuitions concerning some fundamental philosophical debates. We argue that this fact, in conjunction with the plausible principle that almost all adequate philosophical views should take into account all available and relevant evidence, calls into question some prominent approaches to traditional philosophical projects. To this end, we present the Philosophical Personality Argument (PPA). We explain how it supports the growing body of evidence challenging some of the uses of intuitions in philosophy, and we defend it from some criticisms of empirically based worries about intuitions in philosophy. We conclude that the current evidence indicates that the PPA is sound, and thus many traditional philosophical projects that use intuitions must become substantially more empirically oriented.

Self-Respect Regained

In a recent article, David Christensen casts aspersions on a restricted version of van Fraassen's Reflection principle, which he dubs ‘Self-Respect’(sr). Rejecting two possible arguments for sr, he concludes that the principle does not constitute a requirement of rationality. In this paper we argue that not only has Christensen failed to make a case against the aforementioned arguments, but that considerations pertaining to Moore's paradox indicate that sr, or at the very least a mild weakening thereof, is indeed a plausible normative principle.

Backtracking Influence

Backtracking influence is influence that zigzags in time. For example, backtracking influence exists when an event E 1 makes an event E 2 more likely by way of a nomic connection that goes from E 1 back in time to an event C and then forward in time to E 2. I contend that backtracking influence is redundant in the sense that any existing backtracking influence exerted by E 1 on E 2 is equivalent to E 1’s temporally direct influence on E 2. I prove the redundancy of backtracking influence using several plausible physical principles without assuming any fundamental temporal or causal asymmetry. This explanation can play a prominent role in an account of why causation appears to be objectively asymmetric regardless of whether the fundamental laws are temporally symmetric.

Evidence, Miracles, and the Existence of Jesus

The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testamentdocuments alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed—a principle I call the contamination principle—entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of good independent evidence for an historical Jesus, remain sceptical about his existence

Biologically Inspired Anomaly Detection and Security Control Frameworks for Complex Heterogeneous Networks

The demand for anytime, anywhere, anyhow communications in future generation networks necessitates a paradigm shift from independent network services into a more harmonized system. This vision can be accomplished by integrating the existing and emerging access networks via a common Internet Protocol (IP) based platform. Nevertheless, owing to the inter-worked infrastructure, a malicious security threat in such a heterogeneous network is no more confined to its originating network domain, but can easily be propagated to other access networks. To address these security concerns, this paper proposes a biologically inspired security framework that governs the cooperation among network entities to identify security attacks, to perform security updates, and to inhibit attacks propagation in the heterogeneous network. The proposed framework incorporates two principal security components, in the form of anomaly detection framework and security control framework. Several plausible principles from two fields of biology, in particular the human immune system (HIS) and epidemiology have been adopted into the proposed security framework. Performance evaluation demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed biologically inspired security framework in detecting malicious anomalies such as denial-of-service (DoS), distributed DoS (DDoS), and worms, as well as restricting their propagations in the heterogeneous network.

Counter-Closure

The focus of this paper is the prima facie plausible view, expressed by the principle of Counter-Closure, that knowledge-yielding competent deductive inference must issue from known premises. I construct a case that arguably falsifies this principle and consider five available lines of response that might help retain Counter-Closure. I argue that three are problematic. Of the two remaining lines of response, the first relies on non-universal intuitions and forces one to view the case I construct as exhibiting a justified, true belief to which none of the usual diagnoses of knowledge failure in Gettier cases apply. The second line involves claiming that Fake Barns and its ilk are misdiagnosed by epistemological orthodoxy as Gettier cases. We are thus confronted by a trilemma: either the case I discuss undermines the first-blush plausible principle of Counter-Closure; or the case I discuss instantiates a novel kind of Gettier case; or a popular conception of a key range of alleged Gettier cases must be rejected. No matter which horn we choose, the case points to a philosophically curious conclusion.

Theories of Truth without Standard Models and Yablo’s Sequences

The aim of this paper is to show that it's not a good idea to have a theory of truth that is consistent but ω-inconsistent. In order to bring out this point, it is useful to consider a particular case: Yablo's Paradox. In theories of truth without standard models, the introduction of the truth-predicate to a first order theory does not maintain the standard ontology. Firstly, I exhibit some conceptual problems that follow from so introducing it. Secondly, I show that in second order theories with standard semantics the same procedure yields a theory that doesn't have models. So, while having an ω- inconsistent theory is a bad thing, having an unsatisfiable theory of truth is actually worse. This casts doubts on whether the predicate in question is, after all, a truthpredicate for that language. Finally, I present some alternatives to prove an inconsistency adding plausible principles to certain theories of truth.

US Patent Eligibility in the Wake of Bilski v Kappos: “Business as Usual” in an Age of New Technologies?

THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES the recent US Supreme Court decision in Bilski v Kappos. Although specifically applicable to the patentability of business methods, this seminal decision has consequences for determining patentable subject matter in various technologies. Focusing ultimately on Bilski's implications for the patentability of biopharmaceutical inventions, this paper first provides a broad chronological overview of the complex history of the judicial debate over patent eligibility under US law. It is followed by a brief discussion of the outcome and impact of the more restrictive Federal Circuit decision in In re Bilski, now abrogated by the Supreme Court. Here, a majority of the Federal Circuit judges misinterpreted Supreme Court precedent to hold that the machine-or-transformation (MOT) test was the universal and exclusive means for deciding patent eligibility for all process claims, implicitly including claims on biotechnological processes. Next, we carefully describe and analyze the Supreme Court decision rejecting this rigid application of the MOT test and allowing more flexibility in the eligibility assessment. The analysis includes general considerations, as well as a detailed discussion of the decision's potential implications for biotechnology inventions. In that context, we also refer to the most recent post-Bilski developments at the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and in the US courts. Acknowledging the criticism concerning overly broad patent claims and referring briefly to parallel developments in Europe, this paper finally highlights the effects of heightened thresholds for other patentability requirements. Considering those developments and realizing that it appears impossible to achieve static legal certainty in high-technology patenting without risking technological progress, the authors generally welcome the Supreme Court decision. Yet it is also recognized that crucial questions remain unresolved and that lower courts are now tasked with articulating a reasonably coherent eligibility doctrine with identifiable and plausible principles.

MORAL OBLIGATION, BLAME, AND SELF-GOVERNANCE

AbstractThis paper shows how moral concepts are definable in terms of reasons for the blame sentiment. It then shows how, given that definition, the categoricity of moral obligation follows from some plausible principles about reasons for blame. The nature of moral agency is further considered in this light. In particular, in what sense is it self-governing agency? Self-governing actors must be at least self-determining: that is, they must be able to think about what reasons they have, in order in order to assess what they have sufficient reason to believe, feel, or do. Thus any moral assessment implies that the person assessed is capable of self-governance in that sense. Furthermore, this notion of self-governance implies that an agent's moral obligations are relative to the agent's warranted beliefs. However it does not entail that moral agents must be autonomous, in the strong sense intended by Kant. Some consequences for modern conceptions of morality are considered.

Fitting a stochastic spiking model to neuronal current injection data

Spiking neuron models have advanced to the stage of accurately predicting the spike times of individual biological neurons for given fluctuating current. Most of the successful models are based on deterministic mechanistic modeling. In order to describe the stochastic aspect of neuronal firing, I propose setting a deterministic model in a stochastic framework, namely, incorporating the multi-timescale adaptive threshold (MAT) model of neuronal spiking into the stochastic framework of the linear-nonlinear Poisson (LNP) model in the form of a generalized linear model (GLM). In this setting, the probability of spike occurrence is updated each time a spike is derived from the past probability. Accordingly, the model may account for nontrivial firing patterns of various neurons that cannot be realized with the inhomogeneous Poisson process. The stochastic MAT model is not only capable of characterizing firing mechanisms specific to individual neurons, but may render the statistical inference feasible for the underlying mechanisms from the data. I also examine here two plausible principles for adjusting the model parameters: maximizing the spike time coincidence between the model and data, and maximizing the likelihood. It is found that these principles bring about greatly different characteristics for an identical set of data.

Is Evidence Knowledge?

In chapter 9 of Knowledge and its Limits (Williamson 2000), Timothy Williamson argues for the thesis that the evidence that a subject has is constituted by propositions known by the subject (a thesis that he summarizes in the equation E=K). Moreover, Williamson also argues that whatever justifies a subject in believing a proposition is part of that subject’s evidence, and thus that only propositions that a subject knows can justify further propositions. We will argue that such a position has two implausible consequences. First, it is incompatible with the existence of Gettier cases. Second, it entails that a plausible principle of the closure of justification fails. But there are Gettier cases, and the closure principle is true. Therefore, evidence isn’t knowledge.

Knowledge and modality

Kripke claims that there are necessary a posteriori truths and contingent a priori truths. These claims challenge the traditional Kantian view that (K) All knowledge of necessary truths is a priori and all a priori knowledge is of necessary truths. Kripke’s claims continue to be resisted, which indicates that the Kantian view remains attractive. My goal is to identify the most plausible principles linking the epistemic and the modal. My strategy for identifying the principles is to investigate two related questions. Are there compelling general supporting arguments for (K)? Are there decisive counterexamples to (K)? My investigation uncovers two intuitively plausible principles that are not open to decisive counterexamples but which enjoy no compelling independent support.

Knowledge by Indifference

Is it harder to acquire knowledge about things that really matter to us than it is to acquire knowledge about things we don't much care about? Jason Stanley 2005 argues that whether or not the relational predicate ‘knows that’ holds between an agent and a proposition can depend on the practical interests of the agent: the more it matters to a person whether p is the case, the more justification is required before she counts as knowing that p. The evidence for Stanley's thesis includes a number of intuitive judgments about examples. In this paper we provide parallel examples for which Stanley's thesis requires unwelcome knowledge-attributions, and argue that this is possible because his thesis conflicts with familiar and plausible principles about knowledge.

Defending the independence constraint: a reply to Snider

AbstractIn an earlier paper I argued that Alvin Plantinga's defence of pure experiential theism (a theism epistemically based on religious experience) against the evidential problem of evil is inappropriately circular. Eric Snider rejects my argument claiming first that I do not get Plantinga's thought right. Second, he rejects a key principle my argument relies on, viz. the ‘independence constraint on neutralizers’. Finally, he offers an alternative to the independence constraint which allows the pure experiential theist to deal successfully with the evidential problem of evil. In this paper I argue that: (a) I have correctly characterized Plantinga's argument; and (b) that Snider's proposed counter-example to the independence constraint fails. Finally, I argue (c) that Snider's proposed alternative to the independence constraint is not a plausible epistemic principle.

SUBJECT SENSITIVE INVARIANTISM: IN MEMORIAM

Subject sensitive invariantism is the view that whether a subject knows depends on what is at stake for that subject: the truth-value of a knowledge-attribution is sensitive to the subject's practical interests. I argue that subject sensitive invariantism cannot accept a very plausible principle for memory to transmit knowledge. I argue, furthermore, that semantic contextualism and contrastivism can accept this plausible principle for memory to transmit knowledge. I conclude that semantic contextualism and contrastivism are in a dialectical position better than subject sensitive invariantism is. © 2007 The Author.