Emergent Chance

This chapter offers a theory of objective chance in the Everettian context, often seen as the main challenge facing EQM. By supplementing diverging EQM with quantum modal realist bridge principles connecting the physics of quantum mechanics with the metaphysics of modality, we obtain a package deal: Indexicalism. Indexicalist objective chance is an essentially self-locating phenomenon: chances are chances of self-location within the multiverse. I provide three arguments for Indexicalism: it establishes the right qualitative connections between chance and possibility, it establishes the right quantitative connection between chance and prediction, and it establishes the right epistemological story about how quantum mechanics is confirmed by empirical evidence. The resulting theory of chance is naturalistic and reductive; fundamental reality is deterministic, but chance arises at the non-fundamental level of Everett-worldbound perspectives. The theory provides unique resources for motivating an Everettian version of Lewis’s Principal Principle, helping to clarify at last the persistently mysterious connection between chance and rational credence.

Evidence of Evidence in Epistemic Logic

The slogan ‘Evidence of evidence is evidence’ is obscure. It has been applied to connect evidence in one situation to evidence in another. The link may be diachronic or interpersonal. Is present evidence of past or future evidence for p present evidence for p? Is evidence for me of evidence for you for p evidence for me for p? The chapter discusses intra-perspectival evidential links. Is present evidence for me of present evidence for me for p present evidence for me for p? Unless the connection holds between a perspective and itself, it is unlikely to hold between distinct perspectives. Evidence will be understood probabilistically, using formal models from epistemic logic. Bridge principles between first-level and higher-level epistemic conditions often imply versions of controversial principles, such as positive and negative introspection. Formalizations of intra-perspectival principles that evidence of evidence is evidence have similarly implausible connections.

Decomposing universal projection in questions

Revising a proposal by Guerzoni (2003), we propose to derive universal projectionof presuppositions in wh-questions, where attested, from a family of three felicity conditions onquestion use. Assuming that these felicity conditions can be violated under certain conditions,this proposal predicts a typology of contexts where universal projection can exceptionally beunattested. We propose that this prediction is correct, presenting a family of scenarios wherethe expected absence of universal projection is observed.Keywords: wh-questions, universal presupposition projection, felicity conditions, bridge principles.

How to do Applied Ethics Right

Mark Cherry’s Kidney for Sale by Owner is a book that illustrates how to do applied ethics right. Mark Cherry recognizes the important role of empirical facts in bridging a gap between our moral prescriptions, and our public policy or institutional prescriptions. In Kidney for Sale by Owner this method is on full display. While there is nothing the matter with Ideal Theory, we stand in need of what might be called bridge principles between the ideals of justice and some specific set of institutions that, we intend and hope, will actually realize those ideals. The bridge between Ideal and Actual will consist of empirical facts that require the tools of the social scientists.

Hume on Is and Ought

Hume contends that you can’t get an ought from an is. Searle professed to prove otherwise, deriving a conclusion about obligations from premises about promises. Since can’t derive a substantive ought from an is by logic alone, Searle is best construed as claiming that there are analytic bridge principles linking premises about promises to conclusions about obligations. But we can no more derive a moral obligation to pay up from the fact that a promise has been made than we can derive a duty to fight a duel from the fact that a challenge has been issued—just conclusions about what we ought to do according to the rules of the relevant games. Hume suggests bridge principles that would take us from the rules of the games to conclusions about duties, but these are distinctly dubious. The argument features an obtreperous earl, an anarchist philosopher and a dueling Prime Minister.

“Counting As” a Bridge Principle

John Searle’s argument that social-scientific laws are impossible depends on a special open-ended feature of social kinds. We demonstrate that under a noncontentious understanding of bridging principles the so-called “counts-as” relation, found in the expression “X counts as Y in (context) C,” provides a bridging principle for social kinds. If we are correct, not only are social-scientific laws possible, but the “counts as” relation might provide a more perspicuous formulation for candidate bridge principles.