February 2019 Lunchtime Abstracts & Details

Thanking, Apologizing, Bragging, and Blaming: The Currency of Communication
George Loewenstein
CMU
Friday, February 1, 2019
12:05 pm, 1117 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: We propose a theory that draws connections between four forms of communication that have not previously been connected: thanking, apologizing, bragging, and blaming. All four forms of communication relay information about credit or blame for a positive or negative outcome, and thus introduce image-based costs and benefits for both the communicator and the recipient of communication. Specifically, each of the four communications involves a tradeoff on two important dimensions of interpersonal judgment: competence and warmth. We use the model to make sense of why these forms of communication are so important for relationships (e.g., why the failure to thank or apologize can lead to the dissolution of relationships) and to generate novel predictions that we test in a series of experiments. (co-authored with Shereen Chaudhry)

The Problem of Identity (Synchronic and Diachronic) in Quantum Mechanics
Tomasz Bigaj, Visiting Fellow
U. of Warsaw
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
12:05 pm, 1117 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: In my talk I will give an overview of the metaphysical problem of identity and indistinguishability arising in the quantum theory of many particles. According to the Received View (French, Redhead, Butterfield), quantum particles of the same type are never discernible by their properties (intrinsic and extrinsic) due to the inevitable symmetrization postulate. This observation prompted a prolonged debate on the ontological status of elementary particles and the demise of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII). Alternative methods of discernibility have been proposed, including weak discernibility by symmetrical and irreflexive relations (Saunders, Muller). However, it has been pointed out that the Received View is based on some questionable assumptions, such as e.g. factorism, which states that particles constituting a composite system are individuated by the labels of the factors in the tensor product of Hilbert spaces. Yet factorism implies that properties of individual particles should be representable by non-permutation invariant operators, and this conflicts with the symmetrization postulate. An alternative approach, defended by Caulton, Dieks, Lubberdink and myself, is based on the assumption that the components of a collection of particles of the same type are to be identified by the symmetric projection operators representing permutation-invariant statements of the sort “Exactly n out of m particles possess property P”. This interpretation is not only fully permutation-invariant, but also restores the validity of the PII in the majority of cases involving bosonic and fermionic states. At the end of the talk I will compare the orthodox and unorthodox approaches to quantum individuation in regard to how they treat the relations between the synchronic and diachronic identities of quantum particles. I will use textbook cases of particle scatterings in order to argue that the orthodox analysis of the diachronic identities of particles before and after interactions is unsustainable, and that only the unorthodox approach gives a consistent picture of how particles retain (or don't retain) their identities in different experimental settings of mutual scatterings.

Kuhn’s Unfinished Project
Bojana Mladenović
Williams College, Philosophy, Science and Technology Studies
Friday, February 8, 2019
12:05 pm, 1117 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: In the last decade of his life, Kuhn was working on a major book project which was to explain, modify and develop the central ideas of his controversial The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This new project, The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific Development, remained unfinished at the time of Kuhn’s death. I reconstruct his philosophical goals for this book and his mature philosophy of science on the basis of completed or sketched book chapters and related published and unpublished writings. I argue that mature Kuhn aims to ground his well-known historicism on a version of naturalized epistemology.

Leibniz’ Program of Artificial Intelligence and the Mechanization of Thought
Nicholas Rescher
U. of Pittsburgh, Dept. of Philosophy
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
12:05 pm, 1117 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Leibniz was convinced that human thought could be arithmatized and consequently mechanized. The lecture will describe his efforts to substantiate these ideas both theoretically via his CALCULUS RATIOCINATOR and practically via his “thinking machines.”

What You Think Matters: Semantic Embedding, Computational Explanation, and Causal and Metaphysical Difference-Making
Lisa Miracchi
U. of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
12:05 pm, 1117 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: In explaining why we do what we do, we appeal to the contents of our mental lives: to what we believe, desire, intend, perceive, etc. I argue that adequately appreciating these contentful causal explanations requires rejecting the very popular view in both philosophy and cognitive science that mental states and processes are identical to certain kinds of computational states and processes (identity computationalism). While many of the first identity computationalists rejected the causal efficacy of mental content, today's proponents typically think that mental processes are both computational and causally efficacious in virtue of their semantic content. I argue that this position is not coherent. Instead, we should embrace the view that we are semantically embedded: i.e. mental causal profiles are ineliminably content-involving.

After explaining why identity computationalism prima facie excludes the causal efficacy of mental contents, I discuss a recent strong line of defense. Michael Rescorla (2014) argues that mental processes are causally overdetermined in a supposedly unproblematic way. If viable, this view would save both our content-involving explanatory practices and the reductive power of the identity computationalist approach. I show that the initial plausibility of this view depends problematic metaphysical backtracking. I close the paper by sketching a generative computationalist approach, on which computational tools are refocused in the service of explaining the processes that underlie mental phenomena compatibly with semantic embedding.

The Representation of Object Concepts in the Human Brain
Bradford Z. Mahon
CMU, Dept of Psychology
Friday, February 22, 2019
12:05 pm, 1117 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Functional MRI and behavioral findings from healthy and brain lesioned individuals are presented in support of a proposal about how object concepts are organized and represented in the brain. The core idea of this proposal is that connectivity among anatomically remote brain regions is instrumental in driving neural specificity.

How to Not be Misled While Multi-Scale Modeling
Naftali Weinberger, Postodctoral Fellow
Tilburg U.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
12:05 pm, 1117 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: In my talk, I diagnose a common problem arising in several attempts to use causal modeling techniques to make headway in debates regarding causation at multiple levels or multiple scales. I focus specifically on the applications of these techniques to 1) causal exclusion arguments in the literature on mental causation and to 2) accounts of constitutive relevance in the literature on mechanistic explanation. The basic problem with these applications is that they have focused on how the causal modeling framework needs to be altered in order to represent the debates, but they have not provided evidence that these models are the right tools for making headway in these debates. While these applications have thus far been problematic, I argue that causal models can be useful for modeling the behaviors of a system across several time scales. I then draw some general conclusions for when generalizing causal models to multi-leveled or multi-scaled representations will be fruitful.