Title: David Chalmers - Constructing the World
Tags: constructing-the-world 3.1 e10 introduction 8.7 e14 2.2 3.4 1.1 2.1 7.9 8.4 e11 e3 1.2 2.3 2.4 7.11 7.2 7.7 8.3 e17 e6 e8 1.5 2.5 7.4 7.5 7.6 8.5

Q: What are Laplacean truths?
A: Truths about the fundamental laws of physics and truths about the location of all fundamental entities at a time.

Q: What is a Laplacean intellect?
A: An idealized "vast enough intellect".

Q: What is a Laplacean demon?
A: A Laplacean intellect who knows all the Laplacean truths.

Q: What is Laplace's key claim?
A: Laplace's key claim is that a Laplacean demon would be uncertain of nothing.  For any proposition that the demon can entertain, the demon will not be uncertain about that proposition.  Or in a small variation: for any proposition the demon can entertain, the demon will be in a position to know whether it is true.

Q: Laplacean Scrutability thesis
A: The thesis that, for all true propositions P, a Laplacean intellect who knew all the Laplacean truths would be in a position to know that P.

Q: What motivates the move from Laplacean Scrutability to Inferential Scrutability?
A: The base in the Laplacean Scrutability thesis seems too limited: it is threatened by quantum-mechanical indeterminism, consciousness, time, self-identity, morality and mathematics. Inferential Scrutability allows the base to be expanded to deal with these problems.

Q: What motivates the move from Inferential Scrutability to Conditional Scrutability?
A: The Inferential Scrutability thesis faces a number of paradoxes.
1. Paradoxes of complexity: to kwno the whole universe, the demon's mind needs to be as complex as the universe itself, despite being only a proper part of it.
2. Paradoxes of prediction: the demon will be able to predict its own actions and then try to act contrary to the prediciton.
3. Paradoxes of knowability: if there is any truth q that the demon never comes to know, perhaps because it never entertains q, then it seems that the demon could never know the true proposition that q is a truth that it does not know.

Q: a priori
A: S is a priori (for s) iff S can be known a priori (by s) (or: if there ia n a prior warrant (for s) to believe S). A subject s knows S a priori iff s knows S with justification independent of experience; s knows S is a posteriori iff s knows S with justification dependent on experience.

Q: a priori scrutability
A: S is a priori scrutable from C (for s) if a material conditional 'if C', then S'' is a priori (for s), where C'conjoins sentences in C.

Q: acquaintance expression
A: A super-rigid expression or a primitive indexical expression.

Q: Acquaintance Scrutability
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from truths involving only acquaintance expressions.

Q: analytic
A: A sentnece S is analytic when it is true in virtue of the meanings of the expressions involved. Alternatively, S is analytic when there is a conceptual warrant for accepting S, one that drives from the concepts expressed by S.

Q: Apriority/Necessity thesis
A: The thesis that if a sentence S contains only super-rigid expressions, S is a priori iff S is necessary.

Q: certainty
A: Absolute confidence that P, or degree of belief 1 in P. Epistemological certainty (or knowledge with certainty, or conclusive knowledge) that P is justified absolute confidence in P, or ratioinal degree of belief 1 in P.

Q: Compact
A: A class of sentences is compact iff it involves expressions from only a small number of families and does not involve any trivializing mechanisms.

Q: Conclusive knowledge
A: Knowledge with certainty. Conclusive a priori knowledge is a priori knowledge with certainty. Conclusive scrutability theses replace 'know' with 'know with certainty'.

Q: Conditional credence
A: cf(P|Q) is a subject's credence in P's  being the case conditional on Q's being the case.

Q: Conditional scrutability
A: A sentence S is conditionally scrutable from C for s iff s is in a position to know that if C', then S (or: if s's insulated rational credence cr*(S|C')=1), where C' conjoins the sentences in C.

Q: conditionalization
A: If a subject's rational credence cr'(S|E) = Φ at t_1, and the subject acquires total evidence E between t_1 and t_2, then subject's rational credence cr'(S) = Φ.

Q: context-dependence
A: A context-dependent expression is one whose content depends on the context in which it is uttered. An extensionally context-dependent expression is one whose extension depends on context. An epistemically context-dependent expression is one whose a priori inferential role (or whose associated primary intension or mode of presentation) depends on context.

Q: Core Evidence thesis
A: The thesis that all knowledge is grounded in core evidence: introspective evidence about phenomenal states (and perhaps intentional states) and perceptual evidence about the distribution of primary and secondary qualities in the environment.

Q: Core Knowability thesis
A: The thesis that all knowable (non-Fichtian) ordinary truths are knowable with grounds in core evidence.

Q: Cosmoscope
A: A virtual-reality device for conveying the physical, phenomenal, and indexical information in PQI.

Q: credence
A: A subjective proability (or degree of belief, between 0 and 1 inclusive) that a proposition or a sentence is true. A subject's credence in a sentence S is reporesented by 'cr(S), while her rational credence (credence she should ideally have) and her insulated rational credence (credence she should ideally have on an insulated idealization) in S are represented by ''(S)' and 'cr*(S)'' respectively.

Q: deferential use of an expression
A: A use of an expression such that the reference of the expression as used depends on how others in the linguistic community use the expression.

Q: definability
A: The thesis that there is a compact class of primitive expressions such that all expressions are definable in terms of that class.

Q: descriptivism
A: The view that ordinary proper names (and perhaps other expressions) are equivalent to definite descriptions: expressions of the form 'The F' for some predicate F.

Q: Edenic properties
A: Edenic redness is primitive redness of a sort that is arguably presented to us in perceptual experience. Such Edenic properties might be instantiated in some possible worlds (akin to the Garden of Eden), but are arguably not instantiated in our world.

Q: What is it for a definition statement to be adequate?
A: To be adequate, a definition statement must at the very least meet an extensional criterion of adequacy: definitions must be true, so that the extensions of the relevant expressions on the left and right sides of a biconditional statement are the same.  But it is generally considered that definition statements must also meet an intensional criterion of adequacy. For example, it is often required that a definition statement be analytic (true in virtue of meaning), a priori (knowable without justification from experience), and/or necessary (true in all possible worlds).

Q: epistemically complete
A: S is epistemically complete iff S is epistemically possible and there is no T such that S&T and S&~T are both epistemically possible.

Q: epistemically invariant
A: An epistemically invariant expression is an expression that is not epistemically context-dependent: that is, its associated a priori inferential role does not depend on context.

Q: epistemically possible
A: S is epistemically possible if ~S is not a priori. C is epistemically possible if a conjunction of all sentences in C is epistemically possible.

Q: Epistemically rigid expression
A: One whose reference can be known a piori. Alternaitvely, one that picks out the same reference in every epistemically possible scenario.

Q: Extension
A: The extension of a sentence is its truth-value (the extension of 'Sydney is in Australia' is true).  The extension of a singular term, such as a name, is its referent (the extension of 'Camberra' is Camberra).  The extension of a predicate is either a class or a property (the extension of 'hot' is either the class of hot things or the property of being hot). Extensions for other expressions are analogous entities on which the truth-value of a sentence depends.

Q: Content externalism
A: The thesis that the contents of thought depend on features extrinsic to the thinker (or on another understanding, on features that are not accessible to the thinker).

Q: Fichtian truth (or altethically fragile truth)
A: A truth S such that properly investigating the truth-value of S will change the truth-value of S.

Q: Fregean proposition
A: A proposition made up of Fregean senses.

Q: Fregean sense
A: A meaning or content associated with an expression that captures its cognitive significance. In a nontrivial true identity statement such as 'Hesperus is Phosphorus', the two names have the same referent but different senses.

Q: Fundamental Scrutability
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from metaphysically fundamental truths plus indexical truths.

Q: Fundamentality Scrutability (also fundamentality structuralism)
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from truths about fundamentality plus indexical truths.

Q: Generalized Scrutability
A: The thesis that Scrutability holds not just in the actual world but in all epistemically possible scenarios. More precisely: there is a compact class C of sentences such that for all sentences S, if S is epistemically possible, then there is an epistemically possible subclass C' of C such that S is scrutable from C'.  There are also generalized versions of numerous other scrutability theses: e.g., Generalized Narrow Scrutability requires that C contain only narrow expressions rather than being compact.

Q: Grounding
A: Given truths A and B, A is metaphysically grounded in B when A is true in virtue of B being true. A is epistemically grounded in B (for a subject) when a justification for B is part of a justification for A (for that subject). A is conceptually grounded in B, when (roughly) the concepts in B are prior to those in A and B analytically entails A.

Q: Haecceity
A: An object's haecceity is the property of being that object. Varieties of haecceitism hold that haecceities are not reducible (in various ways) to non-object-involving properties.

Q: Humean Scrutability
A: The thesis that all nomic truths are conclusively scrutable from non-nomic truths.

Q: Indexical truths
A: Truths of the form 'X is ...', where X is a primitive indexical ('I', 'now',  or a phenomenal demonstrative).

Q: Inferential scrutability
A: S is inferentially scrutable from C for s iff, were s to come to know C, s would be in a position to know S.

Q: Inferential Scrutability
A: The thesis that there is a compact class C of sentences such that for all subjects, all truths are inferentially scrutable from truths in C.

Q: Inferentialism
A: The view that concepts are individuated by their inferential roles, or that they get their content in virtue of their inferential roles.

Q: Definitional Scrutability
A: The thesis that there is a compact class of sentences C such that (for all subjects) all true sentences S are definitionally scrutable from truths in C.

Q: Conditional Scrutability
A: The thesis that there is a compact class C of sentences such that for all subjects, all truths are conditionally scrutable from truths in C.

Q: A Priori Scrutability
A: The thesis that there is a compact class C of sentences such that for all subjects, all truths are a priori scrutable from truths in C.

Q: Definitional scrutability
A: S is definitionally scrutable from C (for s) if S is logically entailed by members of C and adequate definition sentences (for s).

Q: Insulated idealization
A: An idealization of rationality that sets aside level-crossing principles whereby first-order reasoning is insulated from higher-order beliefs about one's cognitive capacity; so mathematical reasoning will be insulated from doubts about ones mathematical competence, for example.

Q: Intentional truths
A: Truths about intentional mental states, mental states (including but not limited to beliefs and desires) that are about other entities.

Q: Content internalism
A: The thesis that the contents of thought depend only on a thinker's intrinsic properties (or on another understanding, on features that are accessible to the thinker).

Q: Knowability thesis
A: The  thesis that all true propositions (or true sentences) are knowable.

Q: Logical empiricism (also logical positivism)
A: A philosophical movement active in Vienna and elsewhere in the 1920s and 1930s, with leading figures including Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick, and others.

Q: Macrophsyical truths
A: Truths about any entities, including macroscopic entitiers, in the language of classical physics.

Q: Microphysical truths
A: Fundamental physical truths in the language of a completed physics.

Q: Modal truths
A: Truths about what is possible or necessary.

Q: Narrow expression
A: One whose content does not depend on a speaker's environment. Narrow expressions include non-Twin-Earthable expressions (where twins are understood as intrinsic duplicates) and primitive indexicals. Narrow content is a sort of mental content that does not depend on a thinker's environment.

Q: Narrow Scrutability
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from truths involving only narrow expressions.

Q: Newman's problem
A: A problem for constructions of the world using purely logical vocabulary. Any specification of the world in such a vocabulary is near-vacuous in that if it is satisfied by a world, it is satisfied by any world containing the same number of entities.

Q: Nomic Scrutability (also nomic structuralism)
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from nomic truths, plus indexical and that's-all truths.

Q: Nomic truths
A: Truths about laws of nature, and associated truths such as those about causation, dispositions, chance, and the like.

Q: Normative truths
A: Truths about what one ought to do and what one ought to believe. On a broad usage, also includes evaluative truths: truths about value, such as about what is good or bad.

Q: Ontological truths
A: Truths about the existence of entities.

Q: Ordinary truths (or ordinary macroscopic truths)
A: Truths about the macroscopic natural world, such as 'Water is H_2O' and 'Life on our planet is based on DNA'.  This class excludes hard cases such as mathematical, mental, metaphysical, modal, moral, and social truths, truths involving proper names, and borderline case of vague sentences.  Also excludes deferential utternaces and may be restricted to positive truths.

Q: PQI
A: A version of PQTI without the 'that's-all' sentence.

Q: PQTI
A: A set containing all microphysical, macrophysical truths, and phenomenal truths (including any true laws and counterfactuals involving these), some designated indexical truths, and a 'that's-all' sentence.

Q: PQTI-
A: A stripped-down version of PQTI without macrophysical truths or counterfactuals: just microphysical and phenomenal truths (including laws involving these), indexical truths, and a 'that's-all' sentence.

Q: Panpsychism
A: The view that everything has a mind, or at least that fundamental microphysical entities are conscious.

Q: Phenomenal realism
A: The thesis that phenomenal truths are not scrutable from physical truths (perhaps along with indexical and that's-all truths).

Q: Phenomenal Scrutability
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from phenomenal truths, plus indexical and that's-all truths.

Q: Phenomenal truths
A: Truths about conscious experience, and in particular about what it is like to be a conscious subject.

Q: Phenomenalism
A: The thesis that all expressions can be defined in terms of phenomenal expressions (expressions for conscious experience).

Q: Positive sentence
A: A sentence s such that if s holds in a world (or scenario) w, it holds in all worlds (or scenarios) that outstrip w. One world (scenario) outstrips another when the first contains an intrinsic duplicate of the second as a proper part.

Q: Primary intension
A: The primary intension (or epistemic profile) of a sentence S (in a context) is a function from scenarios to truth-values, true at a scenario w if S is scrutable (in that context) from a canonical specification of w. The primary intension of a subsentential expression is a function from scenarios to extensions.

Q: Primary qualities
A: Spatiotemporal properties and mass properties.

Q: Primitive concept
A: A concept such that no concept is conceptually prior to it.

Q: Primitive externalism
A: Externalism about primitive concepts. More precisely, the thesis that some non-indexical primitive concepts are not epistemically rigid.

Q: Primitive indexicals
A: 'I', 'now', and phenomenal demonstratives ('this').

Q: Primitive Scrutability
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from truths involving only primitive concepts.

Q: Quiddistic Scrutability
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from truths about quiddities, plus indexical and that's-all truths.

Q: Quiddity
A: The categorical basis for microphysical dispositions; for example, the (arguably unknown) intrinsic nature of mass or charge. Varieties of quidditism hold that quiddities can come aprt (in various ways) from the associated dispositions. Quiddistic concepts and expressions are concepts and expressions that pick out quidditires super-rigidly.

Q: Ramsification
A: The process of replacing sentences containing certain theoretical expressions (e.g. sentences aobut charge) to sentences without them (e.g. sentences about the property that plays a certain role within physical theory). The result is a Ramsey sentence that captures the content of the original sentence.

Q: Russellian proposition
A: A proposition made up of objects, properties, and other world entities.

Q: Scenario
A: An epistemically possible world.  Can be modeled as an equivalence class of epistemically complete sentences in a generalized scrutability base. The sentences in this class serve as canonical specifications of the scenario.

Q: Scrutability
A: Used alone, either a generic term for various scrutability relations, or (when capitalized) for A Priori Scrutability

Q: Scrutability base
A: A class of sentences from which all truths are scrutable

Q: Secondary intension
A: The secondary intension of a sentence S (in a context) is a function from metaphysically possible worlds to truth-values-, true at w iff S is true at w (i.e., if S is necessitated by a canonical specification of w) in that context. The secondary intension of a subsentential expression is a function from scenarios to extensions. The secondary intension of an expression can be seen as its modal or counterfactual profile.

Q: Secondary qualities
A: Color properties and their analogs in other sensory modalities.

Q: Semantically fragile sentence
A: A sentence S such that investigating whether S is true changes the proposition S expresses.

Q: Spatiotemporal functionalism
A: The thesis that our ordinary spatiotemporal concepts pick out spatiotemporal properties as the properties that play a certain role (typically either a role within physics or a role with respect to experience, or both).

Q: Spatiotemporal primitivism
A: The thesis that we have primitive spatiotemporal concepts (and perhaps that these are expressed by our ordinary spatiotemporal expressions and are instantiated in our world).

Q: Spatiotemporal Scrutability (also spatiotemporal structuralism)
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from spatiotemporal truths plus indexical and that's-all truths.

Q: Structural expressions
A: Expressions characterizing structure. On different understandings structural expressions may include only logical expressions, or these plus nomic-causal and fundamentality expressions, perhaps along with further relational expressions.

Q: Structural realism
A: Roughly, the thesis that scientific theories concern structural aspects of reality. Ontological structural realism says that scientific reality is wholly structural. Epistemological structural realism says that we can know (through science) only structural aspects of reality.

Q: Structural Scrutability
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from truths containing only structural expressions.

Q: Structuralism
A: All truths (or all truths in a certain domain) are reducible (in some sense) to structural truths: truths involving only structural expressions. Pure structuralism says that all expressions are definable in terms of logical expressions alone.

Q: Super-rigid expression
A: An expression that is epistemically rigid and metaphysically rigid de jure.

Q: Super-Rigid Necessitation
A: The thesis that all truths are necessitated by super-rigid truths.

Q: Super-Rigid Scrutability
A: The thesis that all truths are scrutable from super-rigid truths and indexical truths

Q: Supervenience
A: B-properties supervene on A-properties when any two possible worlds with the same distribution of A-properties have the same distribution of B-properties.

Q: Synthetic a priori
A: S is synthetic when it is not analytic. S is synthetic a priori when it is a priori but not analytic.

Q: That's-all sentence
A: A sentence saying that ones actual scenario is a minimal scenario satisfying some other sentence or sets of sentences (such as PQI). For example, it may say that all positive truths are scrutable from PQI.

Q: Thought
A: A state or act of entertaining a proposition, where entertaining is the maximally general propositional attitude with a mind-to-world direction of fit

Q: Totality expression
A: An expression needed especially to state a that's-all sentence.

Q: Twin-Earthable expression
A: An expression E such that there is a nondeferential utterance of E that has a possible twin utterance (a corresponding utterance made by a functional and phenomanl duplicate of the speaker of E) with a different extension. Named after Hilary Putnam's Twin Earth, where our duplicates use 'water' to refer to the indistinguishable liquid XYZ.

Q: Type-A materialism
A: A materialist view on which phenomenal truths are a priori scrutable from physical truths.

Q: Tyep-B materialism
A: A materialist view on which phenomenal truths are necessitated by but not a priori scrutable from physical truths.

Q: Verificationism
A: The thesis that all meaningful sentences are verifiable

Q: Warrant
A: A conclusive justification for believing a proposition or a sentence (whether or not one already believes it), or a justification suitable for knowledge. Understood as a support strucutre.

Q: Warrant-analytic
A: A sentence S is warrant-analytic when there is a conceptual warrant for believing it: that is, a warrant deriving from the concepts expressed by expressions in S.

Q: Wide expression
A: One whose content depends on a speaker's environemnt. Wide content is a sort of mental content that depends on a thinkers environemnt.

Q: What are the two main differences between Carnap's Aufbau and Chalmers's Constructing the world?
A: The very limited bases (logical and/or phenomenal) of the Aufbau are replaced by somewhat less limited bases in Constructing the world, and the role of definitional entailment in the Aufbau is played by a priori entailment in Constructing the world.

Q: What is Quine's Inscrutability of Reference thesis?
A: The says says, very roughly, that there is no fact of the matter about what a given expression refers to, because there are too many equally good candidates.

Q: What is the general form of the unrestricted scrutability thesis?
A: The general form of an unrestricted scrutability thesis is: all truths are scrutable from base truths.

Q: What is the possible-worlds view of propositions?
A: On a possible-worlds view of propositions, the proposition expressed by a sentence is the set of possible worlds where the sentence is true.

Q: What is the eliminative view of propositions?
A: On an eliminative view of propositions, there are no propositions at all.  There are only sentences and utterances, and perhaps acts of thinking and states of believing.  But sentences do not express propositions, and thinking and believing do not involve relationships to propositions.