Mariam Thalos
Biographic Data
| ID | 585464 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mariam Thalos |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mariam |
| FAMILY NAME | Thalos |
| SIGNATURE | THALOS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Utah |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4015-8609 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Measurement and Instrument Development in the Human Sciences
Can measurement provide an independent source of evidence in the human sciences? Recent philosophy of measurement often suggests that it cannot. This essay argues that this conclusion is too strong: even in the human sciences, instruments can sometimes be developed so that the evidence they provide is independent of the substantive theories they in turn put to the test. Psychometric instrument development provides the most challenging case, but t…
Philosophy in the age of science: J. Beale and I. J. Kidd, Eds.: Wittgenstein and scientism. Routledge, 2017, 232pp, $140 HB
A Social Theory of Freedom
In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-d…
Why is there Philosophy of Mathematics at all
Ian Hacking is a gripping writer with an ear for wickedly good turns of phrase. The joyous playfulness of his language can arouse interest in any topic whatsoever. He is also a skilled philosophical conversationalist, who can put long-dead philosophers into dialogue with those still living, because he has his finger deftly positioned on the pulse of our discipline. His most recent book is on a topic that has bedevilled a good many philosophers in…
Social Theory of Freedom
Towards a Theory of Freedom
Human freedom resides primarily in exercise of that capacity that humans employ more abundantly than any other species on earth: the capacity for judgement. And in particular: that special judgement in relation to Self that we call aspiration. Freedom is not the absence of a field of (other) powers; instead, freedom shows up only against the reticulations of power impinging from without. For freedom worthy of the name must be construed as an exer…
Capitalization in the St. Petersburg game: Why statistical distributions matter
In spite of its infinite expectation value, the St. Petersburg game is not only a gamble without supply in the real world, but also one without demand at apparently very reasonable asking prices. We offer a rationalizing explanation of why the St. Petersburg bargain is unattractive on both sides (to both house and player) in the mid-range of prices (finite but upwards of about $4). Our analysis – featuring (1) the already-established fact that th…
Two Conceptions of Fundamentality
This article aims to show that fundamentality is construed differently in the two most prominent strategies of analysis we find in physical science and engineering today: (1) atomistic, reductive analysis and (2) Systems analysis. Correspondingly, atomism is the conception according to which the simplest (smallest) indivisible entity of a certain kind is most fundamental; while systemism, as will be articulated here, is the conception according t…
Two Conceptions of Collectivity
This paper distinguishes two conceptions of collectivity, each of which tracks the targets of classification according to their aetiology. Collectivities falling under the first conception are founded on (more-or-less) explicit negotiations amongst the members who are known to one another personally. Collectivities falling under the second (philosophically neglected) conception are founded – at least initially – purely upon a shared conception of…
What is a Feminist to do with Rational Choice?
This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Rational Choice Moral Philosophy Science of Human Behavior Back to Moral Philosophy Rational Choice, Finally Against Orthodoxy Public and Private
Nonreductive Physics
Part II Criticisms and Reconstructions Searle's Foole: How a Constructionist Account of Society Cannot Substitute for a Causal One
In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle promises a causal account of how social facts are constructed by human acts of intention, but specifically disavows a special theoretical space in that account for human motivation. This paper argues that such a story as Searle tells cannot serve as a causal account of society. A causal account must illuminate motivations, because doing so illuminates the aims and interests lacking which we canno…
The Reduction of Causal Processes
Explanation is a Genus: An Essay on the Varieties of Scientific Explanation
Degrees of Freedom in the Social World: Towards a Systems Analysis of Decision
Units of Decision
I shall introduce the units of decision problem in the theory of decision, which as I shall explain is a sibling to the units of selection problem in evolutionary theory. And I shall present an argument to the effect that, contrary to Bayesian wisdom on the subject, undertaking decision in group settings (in multi-individual units) violates no precepts of rationality
Degrees of Freedom: An Essay on Competitions between Micro and Macro in Mechanics
The Trouble with Superselection Accounts of Measurement
A superselection rule advanced in the course of a quantum-mechanical treatment of some phenomenon is an assertion to the effect that the superposition principle of quantum mechanics is to be restricted in the application at hand. Superselection accounts of measurement all have in common a decision to represent the indicator states of detectors by eigenspaces of superselection operators named in a superselection rule, on the grounds that the state…
A Modest Proposal for Interpreting Structural Explanations
Social sciences face a well-known problem, which is an instance of a general problem faced as well by psychological and biological sciences: the problem of establishing their legitimate existence alongside physics. This, as will become clear, is a problem in metaphysics. I will show how a new account of structural explanations, put forward by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, which is designed to solve this metaphysical problem with social science…
Conflict and Co-ordination in the Aftermath of Oracular Statements
In the famous puzzle of the surprise execution, it is indisputable that the judge's announcement of the sentence does not make fulfilment of that sentence impossible. And so it follows that the sentence is both self-consistent and consistent with the prisoner's knowledge of it.Hence we require an account of what goes wrong with the prisoner's reasoning in support of the conclusion that the sentence cannot be carried out. In fact, the judge's anno…
Against conditionalization
Against conditionalization
Explanation is a Genus: An Essay on the Varieties of Scientific Explanation
Nonreductive Physics
Degrees of Freedom in the Social World: Towards a Systems Analysis of Decision
Degrees of Freedom: An Essay on Competitions between Micro and Macro in Mechanics
Two Conceptions of Fundamentality
This article aims to show that fundamentality is construed differently in the two most prominent strategies of analysis we find in physical science and engineering today: (1) atomistic, reductive analysis and (2) Systems analysis. Correspondingly, atomism is the conception according to which the simplest (smallest) indivisible entity of a certain kind is most fundamental; while systemism, as will be articulated here, is the conception according t…
Two Conceptions of Collectivity
This paper distinguishes two conceptions of collectivity, each of which tracks the targets of classification according to their aetiology. Collectivities falling under the first conception are founded on (more-or-less) explicit negotiations amongst the members who are known to one another personally. Collectivities falling under the second (philosophically neglected) conception are founded – at least initially – purely upon a shared conception of…
Conflict and Co-ordination in the Aftermath of Oracular Statements
In the famous puzzle of the surprise execution, it is indisputable that the judge's announcement of the sentence does not make fulfilment of that sentence impossible. And so it follows that the sentence is both self-consistent and consistent with the prisoner's knowledge of it.Hence we require an account of what goes wrong with the prisoner's reasoning in support of the conclusion that the sentence cannot be carried out. In fact, the judge's anno…
Against conditionalization
Conflict and Co-ordination in the Aftermath of Oracular Statements
In the famous puzzle of the surprise execution, it is indisputable that the judge's announcement of the sentence does not make fulfilment of that sentence impossible. And so it follows that the sentence is both self-consistent and consistent with the prisoner's knowledge of it.Hence we require an account of what goes wrong with the prisoner's reasoning in support of the conclusion that the sentence cannot be carried out. In fact, the judge's anno…
The Trouble with Superselection Accounts of Measurement
A superselection rule advanced in the course of a quantum-mechanical treatment of some phenomenon is an assertion to the effect that the superposition principle of quantum mechanics is to be restricted in the application at hand. Superselection accounts of measurement all have in common a decision to represent the indicator states of detectors by eigenspaces of superselection operators named in a superselection rule, on the grounds that the state…
A Modest Proposal for Interpreting Structural Explanations
Social sciences face a well-known problem, which is an instance of a general problem faced as well by psychological and biological sciences: the problem of establishing their legitimate existence alongside physics. This, as will become clear, is a problem in metaphysics. I will show how a new account of structural explanations, put forward by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, which is designed to solve this metaphysical problem with social science…
Degrees of Freedom in the Social World: Towards a Systems Analysis of Decision
Units of Decision
I shall introduce the units of decision problem in the theory of decision, which as I shall explain is a sibling to the units of selection problem in evolutionary theory. And I shall present an argument to the effect that, contrary to Bayesian wisdom on the subject, undertaking decision in group settings (in multi-individual units) violates no precepts of rationality
Degrees of Freedom: An Essay on Competitions between Micro and Macro in Mechanics
The Reduction of Causal Processes
Explanation is a Genus: An Essay on the Varieties of Scientific Explanation
Part II Criticisms and Reconstructions Searle's Foole: How a Constructionist Account of Society Cannot Substitute for a Causal One
In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle promises a causal account of how social facts are constructed by human acts of intention, but specifically disavows a special theoretical space in that account for human motivation. This paper argues that such a story as Searle tells cannot serve as a causal account of society. A causal account must illuminate motivations, because doing so illuminates the aims and interests lacking which we canno…
Nonreductive Physics
What is a Feminist to do with Rational Choice?
This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Rational Choice Moral Philosophy Science of Human Behavior Back to Moral Philosophy Rational Choice, Finally Against Orthodoxy Public and Private
Two Conceptions of Collectivity
This paper distinguishes two conceptions of collectivity, each of which tracks the targets of classification according to their aetiology. Collectivities falling under the first conception are founded on (more-or-less) explicit negotiations amongst the members who are known to one another personally. Collectivities falling under the second (philosophically neglected) conception are founded – at least initially – purely upon a shared conception of…
Two Conceptions of Fundamentality
This article aims to show that fundamentality is construed differently in the two most prominent strategies of analysis we find in physical science and engineering today: (1) atomistic, reductive analysis and (2) Systems analysis. Correspondingly, atomism is the conception according to which the simplest (smallest) indivisible entity of a certain kind is most fundamental; while systemism, as will be articulated here, is the conception according t…
Towards a Theory of Freedom
Human freedom resides primarily in exercise of that capacity that humans employ more abundantly than any other species on earth: the capacity for judgement. And in particular: that special judgement in relation to Self that we call aspiration. Freedom is not the absence of a field of (other) powers; instead, freedom shows up only against the reticulations of power impinging from without. For freedom worthy of the name must be construed as an exer…
Capitalization in the St. Petersburg game: Why statistical distributions matter
In spite of its infinite expectation value, the St. Petersburg game is not only a gamble without supply in the real world, but also one without demand at apparently very reasonable asking prices. We offer a rationalizing explanation of why the St. Petersburg bargain is unattractive on both sides (to both house and player) in the mid-range of prices (finite but upwards of about $4). Our analysis – featuring (1) the already-established fact that th…
A Social Theory of Freedom
In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-d…
Why is there Philosophy of Mathematics at all
Ian Hacking is a gripping writer with an ear for wickedly good turns of phrase. The joyous playfulness of his language can arouse interest in any topic whatsoever. He is also a skilled philosophical conversationalist, who can put long-dead philosophers into dialogue with those still living, because he has his finger deftly positioned on the pulse of our discipline. His most recent book is on a topic that has bedevilled a good many philosophers in…
Social Theory of Freedom
Philosophy in the age of science: J. Beale and I. J. Kidd, Eds.: Wittgenstein and scientism. Routledge, 2017, 232pp, $140 HB
Measurement and Instrument Development in the Human Sciences
Can measurement provide an independent source of evidence in the human sciences? Recent philosophy of measurement often suggests that it cannot. This essay argues that this conclusion is too strong: even in the human sciences, instruments can sometimes be developed so that the evidence they provide is independent of the substantive theories they in turn put to the test. Psychometric instrument development provides the most challenging case, but t…
Epistemology (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Physics (5 works) · Economics (4 works) · Law and economics (4 works)