Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I discussed Quantum Bayesian theory here about three weeks ago. But now that I know what to look for, it has become easier to find more about it, so I come back to it. Early this year, the William & Mary blog ran an interview with Hans Christian von Baeyer, who believes that QB-ism (which he pronounces "cubism" as in Picasso) is nothing less than the "future of physics." He regrets that advocates of QBism have yet to get it into physics textbooks. But there are "hundreds of articles and conference proceedings" that deal with it, so he is hoping admission into the canon, with the dozen or so older interpretations of quantum mechanics, will come soon. Von Baeyer also makes reference to "an excellent article" that was added to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in December 2016. So, after finishing up the interview, I went there. The actual title of that article is evidence that this is an appropriate thing to be discussing in a blo...

Can we agree that there are shifts in artistic taste, that is, shifts in what is considered beautiful, over time? I'll try to describe them in broad brush terms here. This will be part of the broader project of uniting my Moore-ish breakthrough in ethics (really in axiology) on the one hand, and the still-powerful historicist/Jamesian memes at large in my skull on the other. We should be able to talk about beauty in historical terms.  If we try, we notice at once that there is an underlying battle between connoisseurship and novelty. Suppose that we are living in a time when the impressionistic style is dominant in the world of painting. The smart people are the ones who know something about impressionism, who have developed and shared with one another standards that determine which painters are doing it best, etc. A recognition of beauty arises and is understood within this universe of discourse. BUT ... there is also an innate human drive for n...