Gabriele Contessa's research while affiliated with Carleton University and other places
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Publications (30)
This paper offers a conditional defence of a minimalist theory of appropriation. The conclusion of its main argument is that, if people do enjoy a natural right to appropriate unappropriated resources, then that right is best understood as a derivative right that stems from a more fundamental natural right to self-preservation. If this conclusion i...
This paper explores the socio-epistemic practice of shopping for experts. I argue that expert shopping is particularly likely to occur on what Thi Nguyen calls cognitive islands (i.e., domains of expertise that are both subtle and isolated). To support my argument, I focus on macroeconomics. First, I make a prima-facie case for thinking that macroe...
In this paper, I distinguish three general approaches to public trust in science, which I call the individual approach, the semi-social approach, and the social approach, and critically examine their proposed solutions to what I call the problem of harmful distrust. I argue that, despite their differences, the individual and the semi-social approac...
The last couple of decades have witnessed a renewed interest in the notion of inductive risk among philosophers of science. However, while it is possible to find a number of suggestions about the mitigation of inductive risk (i.e., its assessment and management) in the literature, so far these suggestions have been mostly relegated to vague margina...
This paper has two main goals. The first is to fill a gap in the literature on inductive risk by exploring the relevance of the notion of inductive risk to macroeconomics. The second is to draw some general lessons about inductive risk from the case discussed here. The most important of these lessons is that the notion of inductive risk is no less...
This paper explores the debate between those philosophers who take (fundamental, perfectly natural) properties to be pure powers and those who take them to be powerful qualities. I first consider two challenges for the view that properties are powerful qualities, which I call, respectively, ‘the clarification challenge’ and ‘the explanatory challen...
Fictionalism and deflationism are two moderate meta-ontological positions that occupy a middle ground between the extremes
of heavy-duty realism and hard-line eliminativism. Deflationists believe that the existence of certain entities (e.g. numbers)
can be established by means of ‘easy’ arguments — arguments that, supposedly, rely solely on uncontr...
According to the Simple Conditional Analysis of disposition ascriptions,
disposition ascriptions are to be analyzed in terms of counterfactual conditionals. The Simple Conditional Analysis is notoriously vulnerable to counterexamples. In this paper, I introduce a new sort of counterexample to the Simple Conditional Analysis of disposition ascriptio...
According to power theorists, properties are powers—i.e., they necessarily confer on their bearers certain dispositions. Although
the power theory is increasingly gaining popularity, a vast majority of analytic metaphysicians still favour what I call ‘the
nomic theory’—i.e., the view according to which what dispositions a property confers on its be...
Erratum to: Philos Stud (2013) 165:401-419 DOI 10.1007/s11098-012-9957-9 Throughout the paper, all occurrences of ‘not-(I1 and … and Ik(x) and … and In)’, ‘not-(I1 and … and I(j-1) and I(j+1) and … and In)’, ‘not-(I1 and … and In)’, and ‘not- (K(x) and I1 and … and In)’ should be replaced by, respectively, ‘not-(I1 or … or Ik(x) or … or In)’, ‘not-...
The Simple Counterfactual Analysis (SCA) was once considered the most promising analysis of disposition ascriptions. According to SCA, disposition ascriptions are to be analyzed in terms of counterfactual conditionals. In the last few decades, however, SCA has become the target of a battery of counterexamples. In all counterexamples, something seem...
In 1935 Otto Neurath penned these comments in his paper “Unity of science as a task”.
In this paper, I distinguish two often-conflated theses—the thesis that all dispositions are intrinsic properties and the thesis that the causal bases of all dispositions are intrinsic properties—and argue that the falsity of the former does not entail the falsity of the latter. In particular, I argue that extrinsic dispositions are a counterexampl...
In this paper, I distinguish between two varieties of actualism—hardcore actualism and softcore actualism—and I critically
discuss Ross Cameron’s recent arguments for preferring a softcore actualist account of the truthmakers for modal truths over
hardcore actualist ones. In the process, I offer some arguments for preferring the hardcore actualist...
In this paper, I distinguish scientific models in three kinds on the basis of their ontological status—material models, mathematical
models and fictional models, and develop and defend an account of fictional models as fictional objects—i.e. abstract objects
that stand for possible concrete objects.
This book critically re-examines Otto Neurath conception of the unity of science. Some of the leading scholars of Neurath work, along with many preeminent philosophers of science critically examine his place in the history of philosophy of science and evaluate the relevance of his work for contemporary debates concerning the unity of science
In this note, I argue that a dynamically shifted world—i.e. a world identical to our own except for a fixed constant difference
in the absolute acceleration of each object—is nomically impossible in a Newtonian world populated by finitely many objects.
A dynamic shift however seems to be nomically possible in a world populated by infinitely many ob...
Hanoch Ben-Yami has argued that the theory of the semantics of natural kind terms proposed by Kripke and Putnam is false and
has proposed an allegedly novel account of the semantics of kind terms. In this article, I critically examine Ben-Yami’s arguments.
I will argue that Ben-Yami’s objections do not show that Kripke and Putnam’s theory is false,...
In this paper, I develop Mauricio Suárez’s distinction between denotation, epistemic representation, and faithful epistemic representation. I then outline an interpretational account of epistemic representation, according to which a vehicle represents a target for a certain user if and only if the user adopts an interpretation of the vehicle in ter...
Today most philosophers of science believe that models play a central role in science and that one of the main functions of scientific models is to represent systems in the world. Despite much talk of models and representation, however, it is not yet clear what representation in this context amounts to nor what conditions a certain model needs to m...
In this paper, I argue that, contrary to the constructive empiricist’s position, observability is not an adequate criterion as a guide to ontological commitment in science. My argument has two parts. First, I argue that the constructive empiricist’s choice of observability as a criterion for ontological commitment is based on the assumption that be...
In this paper, I consider how different versions of the similarity account of scientific representation might apply to a simple case of scientific representation, in which a model is used to predict the behaviour of a system. I will argue that the similarity account is potentially susceptible to the problem of accidental similarities between the mo...
The main aim of this paper is to disentangle three senses in which we can say that a model represents a system—denotation epistemic representation, and successful epistemic representation--and to individuate what questions arise from each sense of the notion of representation as used in this context. Also, I argue that a model is an epistemic repre...
Citations
... Moreover, bioethicists may be subject to phenomena that are characterized by other words, e.g., "partial moral blindness" [177], "cognitive islands" [178] or to "expert shopping" effects [179]. Moral sensitivity [180], moral judgments, and moral courage [181] may also be interpreted as biases [182]. ...
Reference: Biases in bioethics: a narrative review
... To insist, as some science communicators do, that science is still trustworthy overall places too great a burden on the public to assess each case for themselves (Contessa 2022). The demand is too great and most of our cognitive tools are too limited to fully disentangle each of our risk profiles vis-à-vis the scientific-industrial complex. ...
Reference: Public trust in science
... 38 For a quick history of inductive risk, see (Douglas, 2017); for recent contributions to the debate, see, e.g., (Elliott & Richards, 2017); (Reiss & Sprenger, 2020), pp. 9-10; (Contessa, 2021); (Henschen, 2021); (John, 2021), pp. 23-34; (Dressel, 2022); (Magnus, 2022). ...
... PQV aims to be an alternative metaphysical account whose central tenet is the rejection of an implicit assumption behind the abovementioned 'pure' views about properties. More precisely, the proponents of PQV explicitly deny that natural properties are purely dispositional or purely categorical and argue that properties are both dispositional and categorical/qualitative (Carruth, 2016;Coates, 2021;Contessa, 2019;Engelhard, 2010;Giannotti, 2021;Heil, 2003Heil, , 2010Jacobs, 2011;Jaworski, 2016;Martin, 1993Martin, , 2008Martin & Heil, 1999;Schroer, 2010;Strawson, 2008;Taylor, 2013Taylor, , 2018Williams 2019). There are several versions of PQV that differ in the interpretation of its core tenet. ...
... This point has also been stressed byContessa (2016) against Thomasson's defence of the neo-Fregean project in (2013). It has been accepted byThomasson in her response (2017). ...
Reference: Hume’s principle: a plea for austerity
... Since the standard counterfactual account says that the glass is fragile just in case it would break when struck, the glass comes out as not fragile. For further counterexamples see Martin (1994), Bird (1998), and Contessa (2016), inter alia. 2 Cf. Lewis (1997a), Choi (2006), Bonevac et al. (2011) and Contessa (2013Contessa ( , 2016. ...
Reference: Disposition Ascriptions
... Contessa (2015) argues that, in contrast to (thick) powers, purely categorical properties are epiphenomenal since they confer no dispositions on their bearers (for a critique, seeLivanios 2018). In my view, if that were true, it would be a reason to think that purely categorical properties do not exist or at least cannot be fundamental.Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. ...
... There is, however, a problem that threatens the structuralist approach to these issues, identified as the problem of lost beings by Muller (2011), the loss of reality objection by Van Fraassen (2008) and the bridging problem by Contessa (2010). Here, I shall refer to the problem as the problem of lost reality, or PLR for short. ...
Reference: Structuralism and the Quest for Lost Reality
... Cotnoir 2010). 9 See Contessa (2012) and Smith (2019) for a recent defence. 10 See also Bohn (2009a) p. 30 for a similar point against this candidate rule. ...
Reference: Cardinal Composition
... It is also worth noting that I leave this task for the closing section for only after presenting my proposal it is possible to explain swiftly the differences between my view and others. In particular, I shall compare my suggestion with those of Sullivan and Khalifa (2019), Frigg and Nguyen (2021), Nawar (2021), Lawler (2021, Le Bihan (2021), Knuuttila and Loettgers (2016), as well as Contessa (2011). Of course, this is not an exhaustive review of extant positions. ...
