Strong knowledge, weak belief?

According to the knowledge norm of belief (Williamson in Knowledge and its limits, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 47, 2000), one should believe p only if one knows p. However, it can easily seem that the ordinary notion of belief is much weaker than the knowledge norm would have it. It is possible to rationally believe things one knows to be unknown (Hawthorne et al. in Philos Stud 173:1393–1404, 2016; McGlynn in Noûs 47:385–407, 2013, Whiting in Chan (ed) The aim of belief, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). One response to this observation is to develop a technical notion of ‘outright’ belief. A challenge for this line of response is to find a way of getting a grip on the targeted notion of belief. In order to meet this challenge, I characterize ‘outright’ belief in this paper as the strongest belief state implied by knowledge. I show that outright belief so construed allows this notion to play important theoretical roles in connection with knowledge, assertion and action.

Symmetries and strings of adjoint QCD2

We revisit the symmetries of massless two-dimensional adjoint QCD with gauge group SU(N). The dynamics is not sufficiently constrained by the ordinary symmetries and anomalies. Here we show that the theory in fact admits ∼ 22N non-invertible symmetries which severely constrain the possible infrared phases and massive excitations. We prove that for all N these new symmetries enforce deconfinement of the fundamental quark. When the adjoint quark has a small mass, m ≪ gYM, the theory confines and the non-invertible symmetries are softly broken. We use them to compute analytically the k-string tension for N ≤ 5. Our results suggest that the k-string tension, Tk, is Tk ∼ |m| sin(πk/N) for all N. We also consider the dynamics of adjoint QCD deformed by symmetric quartic fermion interactions. These operators are not generated by the RG flow due to the non-invertible symmetries, thus violating the ordinary notion of naturalness. We conjecture partial confinement for the deformed theory by these four-fermion interactions, and prove it for SU(N ≤ 5) gauge theory. Comparing the topological phases at zero and large mass, we find that a massless particle ought to appear on the string for some intermediate nonzero mass, consistent with an emergent supersymmetry at nonzero mass. We also study the possible infrared phases of adjoint QCD allowed by the non-invertible symmetries, which we are able to do exhaustively for small values of N. The paper contains detailed reviews of ideas from fusion category theory that are essential for the results we prove.

Race Science

This chapter explains why science cannot underwrite ideas about race. It argues that old, prescientific beliefs about the fabric of reality often evolve into newer, scientific ones. The chapter first suggests a “reconstructionist” view on race, in which one could argue that although naïve ideas about race are coarsely hewn, crude, and deeply flawed, they could be refined into a scientifically acceptable conception. It also considers if race could be thought similar to the four elements of antiquity, destined to be abandoned and replaced with something closer to the truth. This latter view is called “eliminativist.” As this chapter shows, reconstructionism is a nonstarter. The ordinary notion of race cannot be patched up so that it fits into a scientific picture of human diversity. Consequently, eliminativism is the better argument.

What in the world is weakness of will?

At least since the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers have tended to identify weakness of will with akrasia—i.e. acting, or having a disposition to act, contrary to one’s judgments about what is best for one to do. However, there has been some recent debate about whether this captures the ordinary notion of weakness of will. Richard Holton claims that it doesn’t, while Alfred Mele argues that, to a certain extent, it does. As Mele recognizes, the question about an ordinary concept here is one apt for empirical investigation. We evaluate Mele’s studies and report some experiments of our own in order to investigate what in the world the ordinary concept of weakness of will is. We conclude that neither Mele nor Holton (previously) was quite right and offer a tentative proposal of our own: the ordinary notion is more like a prototype or cluster concept whose application is affected by a variety of factors.

Assertion, Lying, and Untruthfully Implicating

This chapter explores the prospects for justifying the somewhat widespread, somewhat firmly held sense that there is some moral advantage to untruthfully implicating over lying. The author calls this the “Difference Intuition.” The author defines lying in terms of asserting but remains open about what precise definition best captures our ordinary notion. The author defines implicating as one way of meaning something without asserting it. The author narrows down the kind of untruthful implicating that should be compared with lying for purposes of evaluating whether there is a moral difference between them. Just as lying requires a robust form of assertion, so the kind of untruthful implicating to be compared with lying requires a robust form of implicating. Next, the author sets out various ways of sharpening the Difference Intuition and surveys a range of approaches to justifying one class of sharpenings. The author finishes by sketching an approach to justifying an alternative sharpening of the Difference Intuition, which is inspired by John Stuart Mill’s discussion of lying.

Discovering Desirability

In the ordinary world, we identify the desirable as something that is grounded in other properties, may diverge from what we desire, and, other things being equal, has a claim to govern what we desire. While desirability comes in many modes, moral desirability is grounded in relatively unrestricted considerations and enjoys a certain authority in resolving conflicts. Being creatures who avow and co-avow our desires, we are likely to find those desires diverging occasionally from our actual desires, and commanding our allegiance in the case of a conflict. Thus, we will begin to think of that which attracts avowal, being supported robustly by relevant desiderata, as having the governing role of the desirable. But as there are different modes of avowal, each supported by different sorts of desiderata, some neutral, some agent- or group-relative, there will be different and conflicting modes of desirability—this, by contrast with credibility. And the need to unify our own judgments of desirability into a single judgment of overall desirability, together with the need to universalize desirability so that it is standardized across individuals, will lead us to generate a notion of multi-lateral desirability that corresponds well with the ordinary notion of moral desirability.

Narrow content and ur-content

In Chapter 3 we explore how the question of whether the ordinary notion of content—what we call ‘ur-content’—is narrow, trying as best as we can, on behalf of the internalist, to fend off well-known objections that emerge from the work of Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge. Those objections turn out not to be completely decisive. However, the project of arguing that ur-content is narrow is portrayed as deeply unpromising.

“Person … is a forensic term”

This chapter argues that John Locke is using the word “person” as a “forensic” term. Udo Thiel notes the sense in which “person” is a property term, a term for a moral quality, in Locke's text. J. L. Mackie suggests that Locke's theory “is...hardly a theory of personal identity at all, but might be better described as a theory of action appropriation.” This is exactly what Locke says himself. In effect, the thing-and-property-blending use of “person” compresses our ordinary notion of a person into the much more specific notion of a person's moral identity, while at the same time insisting on maintaining the idea that the resulting thing is indeed a thing, a person. The chapter explains why “person” “is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit.”

Ergativity and Transitivity

Ergative case is said to mark transitive subjects, and it is widely assumed that this is true under the ordinary definition of transitive; however, Bittner and Hale (1996) propose that ergative languages fall into two types, neither of which is based on the ordinary notion of transitivity. In one, a direct object is not necessary for ergative case: any verb with an external argument counts as transitive, following Hale and Keyser 1993 (e.g., Warlpiri). In the other, a direct object is necessary, but not sufficient: the subject gets ergative case only if the object moves out of the VP (e.g., Inuit). This article argues that Niuean, Dyirbal, and Nez Perce are also of this object shift type. A search yielded no language where ergative case is clearly governed only by ordinary transitivity; languages that do fit the stereotype have only ergative agreement. A formal account of the correlation between object shift and ergative case is proposed, under which ergative case can be used as a ‘‘last resort,’’ as one of three ways to avoid the locality violation that object shift creates.