Graduate Student Publications

Francisco Martinez Avina

Title: "Changing the logic without changing the subject: The case of computability"
Journal: Journal of Logic and Computation
Year: 2024
Abstract: "In this paper, I argue against the thesis that the meaning of ‘computability’ is logic-dependent. I do this from a category-theoretic perspective. Applying a method due to Mortensen and Lavers [26], I show that we can dualize the internal logic of the effective topos, in order to obtain a model of paraconsistent computability theory. Since the dualization leaves the structural properties of universal constructions in the topos unchanged, in particular the properties of the natural numbers object, I conclude that, at least in this case, changing the logic does not change our characterization of computability."
Link: https://academic.oup.com/logcom/advance-article/doi/10.1093/logcom/exae015/7638553
 

Lel Jones

Title: Microaggression Accountability: Blameworthiness, Blame, and Why it Matters.
Journal: Hypatia
Year: 2024
Abstract: Despite the broad agreement that microaggressions cause harm, there is disagreement on how to capture microaggressor's accountability. Friedlaender (2018) argues that, in many cases, survivors of microaggressions are not justified in holding the microaggressor blameworthy or blaming them (Friedlaender 2018, 14). I argue, in contrast, that we are generally justified in holding most microaggressors blameworthy and blaming them. By adopting a broadly blame-inclusive account of microaggressor accountability, we are in a position to satisfy the desiderata an ideal account should meet: (1) account for cumulative harm; (2) consistently allow for standing to forgive; and (3) be risk sensitive to the microaggressed. By possessing these virtues, I believe my view of microaggressor accountability better equips us to take seriously the harm caused by microaggressions and center the well-being of microaggressees. I respond to Friedlaender's concerns regarding epistemic ignorance and what they call the disaggregation problem. In contrast to Friedlaender's broadly blame-exclusive responsibility model, I motivate a broadly blame-inclusive model for holding microaggressors accountable, explaining how it fulfills the desiderata. I respond to the objection that my account is too blame-inclusive by providing examples of (1) justified microaggressions; (2) excused microaggressions; and (3) blameworthiless microaggressions where blame is justified all the same.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2024.17

Lel Jones & Hannah Tierney

Title: Forgetting to Un-Forgive
Journal: Revista de Estudios Sociales
Year: 2023
Abstract: Much of the literature on forgiveness is dedicated to understanding the reasons to forgive and what changes in attitude are required to do so. But philosophers have been much less attentive to what happens after agents forgive. This is a serious oversight, since the reasons to forgive do not always retain their force and it is not always possible, or advisable, to maintain the changes in attitudes that forgiveness requires. Fortunately, Monique Wonderly has begun to fill this lacuna in the literature with her recent work on un-forgiveness. According to the author, un-forgiveness involves altering our attitudes, by either reinhabiting an adversarial stance towards an agent for their wrongdoing and/or returning one’s relationship with them to the state it was in prior to forgiveness taking place. While Wonderly’s account of un-forgiveness is both novel and illuminating, it is incomplete. In this paper, we argue that one can also un-forgive by forgetting that the wrong in question occurred and/or that the previously forgiven agent was the perpetrator of the wrong. We contend that not only is it possible to un-forgive by forgetting, but doing so can be both justified and morally important. We defend our view by considering the objection that un-forgiveness by forgetting can negatively impact victims’ relationships with wrongdoers as well as addressing the concern that agents cannot exercise their agency over their memories in order to un-forgive by forgetting.
Link: https://doi.org/10.7440/res86.2023.04

 

Jerome Romagosa

Title: "Centred Chance in the Everett Interpretation"
Journal: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Year: 2024
Abstract: "Everettian quantum mechanics tells us that the fundamental dynamics of the universe are deterministic. So what are the 'probabilities' that the Born rule describes? One popular answer has been to treat these probabilities as rational credences. A recent alternative, Wilhelm's centred Everett interpretation, takes the Born probabilities to be centred chances: the objective chances that some centred propositions are true. Thus, the CEI challenges the 'orthodox assumption'that fundamental physical laws concern only uncentred facts. I provide three arguments against the centred Everett interpretation."
 

Selcuk Kaan Tabakci

Title: Categoricity Problem for LP and K3
Journal: Studia Logica
Year: 2024
Abstract: Even though the strong relationship between proof-theoretic and model-theoretic notions in one’s logical theory can be shown by soundness and completeness proofs, whether we can define the model-theoretic notions by means of the inferences in a proof system is not at all trivial. For instance, provable inferences in a proof system of classical logic in the logical framework SET-FMLA do not determine its intended models as shown by Carnap (Formalization of logic, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1943), i.e., there are non-Boolean models that satisfy its provable inferences. In the literature, this is known as the Categoricity problem or Carnap’s problem. In this paper, we will discuss the Categoricity problem (or Carnap’s problem) for three-valued logics K3 and LP. We will provide three different restrictions on admissible models that will deliver us categoricity results, some of which draw from the solutions provided for the Categoricity problem for classical logic in Belnap and Massey (Stud Log 49(1):67–82, 1990) and Bonnay and Westerståhl (Erkenntis 81(4):721–739, 2016). We will then argue that two of those solutions are philosophically well-motivated: (1) restricting the admissible models where negation is interpreted as a Strong Kleene truth-function, and (2) restricting the admissible models where a complex formula is assigned the third value when its immediate subformulas are assigned the third value.
Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11225-024-10098-1
 

Title: Subminimal Negation on the Australian Plan
Journal: Journal of Philosophical Logic
Year: 2024
Abstract: Frame semantics for negation on the Australian Plan accommodates many different negations, but it falls short on accommodating subminimal negation when the language contains conjunction and disjunction. In this paper, I will present a multi-relational frame semantics –multi-incompatibility frame semantics– that can accommodate subminimal negation. I will first argue that multi-incompatibility frames are in accordance with the philosophical motivations behind negation on the Australian Plan, namely its modal and exclusion-expressing nature. Then, I will prove the soundness and completeness results of a subminimal logic that consists of the multi-incompatibility semantics and a proof system with operational rules that characterize subminimal negation, conjunction and disjunction. Lastly, I will prove some key correspondence theorems that relate frame conditions to certain principles that are associated with stronger negations, which will give rise to a new kite of negations that includes subminimal negation.
Link:  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10992-022-09661-9