Abstract: The philosophy of information (PI) is a new area of research with its own field of investigation and methodology. This article, based on the Herbert A. Simon Lecture of Computing and Philosophy I gave at Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, analyses the eighteen principal open problems in PI. Section 1 introduces the analysis by outlining Herbert Simon’s approach to PI. Section 2 discusses some methodological considerations about what counts as a good philosophical problem. The discussion centers on Hilbert’s famous analysis of the central problems in mathematics. The rest of the article is devoted to the eighteen problems. These are organized into five sections: problems in the analysis of the concept of information, in semantics, in the study of intelligence, in the relation between information and nature, and in the investigation of values.

Abstract: I present an account of mental representation based upon the ‘SINBAD’ theory of the cerebral cortex. If the SINBAD theory is correct, then networks of pyramidal cells in the cerebral cortex are appropriately described as representing, or more specifically, as modelling the world. I propose that SINBAD representation reveals the nature of the kind of mental representation found in human and animal minds, since the cortex is heavily implicated in these kinds of minds. Finally, I show how SINBAD neurosemantics can provide accounts of misrepresentation, equivocal representation, twin cases, and Frege cases. 1.

In 1922, Thoraf Skolem published a paper titled "Some remarks on Axiomatized Set Theory". The paper presents a new proof of... This dissertation focuses almost exclusively on the first half of this project -- i.e., the half which tries to expose an initial tension between Cantor's theorem and the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem. I argue that, even on quite naive understandings of set theory and model theory, there is no such tension. Hence, Skolem's Paradox is not a genuine paradox, and there is very little reason to worry about (or even to investigate) the more extreme consequences that are supposed to follow from this paradox. The heart of my...

[t]he analysis of the phrase “how many ” unambiguously leads to a definite meaning for the question [“How many different sets of integers do their exist?”]: the problem is to find out which one of the א’s is the number of points of a straight line … Cantor, after having proved that this number is greater than א0, conjectured that it is א1. An equivalent proposition is this: any infinite subset of the continuum has the power either of the set of integers or of the whole continuum. This is Cantor’s continuum hypothesis. … But, although Cantor’s set theory has now had a development of more than sixty years and the [continuum] problem is evidently of great importance for it, nothing has been proved so far relative to the question of what the power of the continuum is or whether its subsets satisfy the condition just stated, except that … it is true for a certain infinitesimal fraction of these subsets, [namely] the analytic sets. Not even an upper bound, however high, can be assigned for the power of the continuum. It is undecided whether this number is regular or singular, accessible or inaccessible, and (except for König’s negative result) what its character of cofinality is. Gödel 1947, 516-517 [in Gödel 1990, 178]

There is a parallel between the debate between Gottlob Frege and David Hilbert at the turn of the twentieth century and at least some aspects of the current controversy over whether category theory provides the proper framework for structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics. The main issue, I think, concerns the place and interpretation of metamathematics in an algebraic or structuralist approach to mathematics. Can meta-mathematics itself be understood in algebraic or structural terms? Or is it an exception to the slogan that mathematics is the science of structure? The slogan of structuralism is that mathematics is the science of structure. Rather than focusing on the nature of individual mathematical objects, such as natural numbers, the structuralist contends that the subject matter of arithmetic, for example, is the structure of any collection of objects that has a designated, initial object and a successor relation that satisfies the induction principle. In the contemporary scene, Paul Benacerraf’s classic

Does evolutionary theory have implications about the existence of supernatural entities? This question concerns the logical relationships that hold between the theory of evolution and different bits of metaphysics. There is a distinct question that I also want to address; it is epistemological in character. Does the evidence we have for evolutionary theory also provide evidence concerning the existence of supernatural entities? An affirmative answer to the logical question would entail an affirmative answer to the epistemological question if the principle in confirmation theory that Hempel (1965, p. 31) called the special consequence condition were true: The special consequence condition: If an observation report confirms a hypothesis H, then it also confirms every consequence of H. According to this principle, if evolutionary theory has metaphysical implications, then whatever confirms evolutionary theory also must confirm those metaphysical implications. But the special consequence is false. Here‟s a simple example that illustrates why. You are playing poker and would dearly like to know whether the card you are about to be dealt will be the Jack of Hearts. The dealer is a bit careless and so you catch a glimpse of the card on top of the deck before it is dealt to you. You see that it is red. The fact that it is red confirms the hypothesis that the card is the Jack of Hearts, and the hypothesis that it is the Jack of Hearts entails that the card will be a Jack. However, the fact that the card is red does not confirm the hypothesis that the card will be a Jack. 2 Bayesians gloss these facts by understanding confirmation in terms of probability raising: The Bayesian theory of confirmation: O confirms H if and only if Pr(H│O)> Pr(H). The general reason why Bayesianism is incompatible with the special consequence

whither10.tex We describe three successive crises faced by mathematicians during the twentieth century, and their implications for the nature of mathematics. 1

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n advanced against what he argues is the best version of platonism. More specifically, he defends what he calls full-blooded platonism (`FBP'), the view that every mathematical object that could possibly exist does exist. It is important to the conclusions later in the book that FBP is the only viable form of platonism, so in this first section Balaguer also attempts to demonstrate that all other platonist positions are indefensible. In the second part of the book, Balaguer tries to show that no good arguments have been advanced against (a broadly Fieldian kind of) fictionalism. Although it is fictionalism that Balaguer defends, he also makes it clear that other anti-realist positions, such as deductivism and formalism, are more or less equivalent to fictionalism and so he has no serious quarrel with them. He prefers fictionalism, however, because it "provides a standard semantics for the language of mathematics" (p. 104), whereas other anti-realist accounts (such as Chihara [1990], f

Aristotelian, or non-Platonist, realism holds that mathematics is a science of the real world, just as much as biology or sociology are. Where biology studies living things and sociology studies human social relations, mathematics studies the quantitative or structural aspects of things, such as ratios, or patterns, or complexity,