Our central scrutability theses have been epistemological theses, not metaphysical theses. But it is natural ask whether scrutability theses have any metaphysical upshot. For example, does a minimal scrutability base give us some guidance about the fundamental metaphysical strycture of the workd? We can approach question by comparing the epistemological relation of scrutability to two notions t...

In this paper, I review some standard approaches to the cases of contingent a priori truths that emerge from Kripke’s (1980) discussion of proper names and Kaplan’s (1989) theory of indexicals. In particular, I discuss Evans’ (1979) distinction between superfi cially and deeply contingent truths. I shall raise doubts about Evans’ strategy in general, and also about the roots and meaningfulness ...

Many image segmentation algorithms are known, but often there is an inherent obstacle in the unbiased evaluation of segmentation quality: the absence or lack of a common objective representation for segmentation results. Such a representation, known as the ground truth, is a description of what one should obtain as the result of ideal segmentation, independently of the segmentation algorithm us...

So far, I have argued that all truths are scrutable from a base involving a highly constrained class of expressions. We started with the base PQT I of microphysical, phenomenal, and indexical truths along with a “that’s-all” truth. In chapters 3, 4, and 6 I argued that all truths may well be a priori scrutable from such a base (perhaps with mild expansions, depending on one’s views). In chapter...

This paper argues that the relation between temptations and the level of consumption plays a key role in explaining the observed behaviors of the poor. Temptation goods are defined to be the set of goods that generate positive utility for the self that consumes them, but not for any previous self that anticipates that they will be consumed in the future. We show that the assumption of declining...

This paper argues that the relation between temptations and the level of consumption plays a key role in explaining the observed behaviors of the poor. Temptation goods are defined to be the set of goods that generate positive utility for the self that consumes them, but not for any previous self that anticipates that they will be consumed in the future. We show that the assumption of declining...