Description

In his Rutgers Lectures, Timothy Williamson explains how contemporary philosophy suffers from a widespread pathology known as overfitting to natural and social scientists, but little understood by most philosophers. Overfitting involves an insufficiently critical attitude towards data, which leads to over-complicated theories designed to fit what are in fact errors in the data. In philosophy, the data typically comprise verdicts on hypothetical or actual cases. Errors in such data can result from our reliance on heuristics, efficient cognitive shortcuts, simple to use but not fully reliable. Just as heuristics embedded in our visual system produce visual illusions, so heuristics embedded in our general cognitive systems produce philosophical paradoxes. Williamson explains the heuristics responsible for paradoxes of vagueness and identity over time, paradoxes of conditionals, paradoxes in ascribing beliefs and other mental states to others, paradoxes of truth and falsity, and paradoxes

Overfitting and Heuristics in Philosophy

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Hardback by Timothy Williamson

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In his Rutgers Lectures, Timothy Williamson explains how contemporary philosophy suffers from a widespread pathology known as overfitting to natural... Read more

    Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
    Publication Date: 12/18/2024
    ISBN13: 9780197779217, 978-0197779217
    ISBN10: 0197779212

    Non Fiction , Politics, Philosophy & Society , Non Fiction

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    Description

    In his Rutgers Lectures, Timothy Williamson explains how contemporary philosophy suffers from a widespread pathology known as overfitting to natural and social scientists, but little understood by most philosophers. Overfitting involves an insufficiently critical attitude towards data, which leads to over-complicated theories designed to fit what are in fact errors in the data. In philosophy, the data typically comprise verdicts on hypothetical or actual cases. Errors in such data can result from our reliance on heuristics, efficient cognitive shortcuts, simple to use but not fully reliable. Just as heuristics embedded in our visual system produce visual illusions, so heuristics embedded in our general cognitive systems produce philosophical paradoxes. Williamson explains the heuristics responsible for paradoxes of vagueness and identity over time, paradoxes of conditionals, paradoxes in ascribing beliefs and other mental states to others, paradoxes of truth and falsity, and paradoxes

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