text:
The Musings & Artful Blunders of Scott D. Southard
Books, Reviews, Editorials, and Other Nonsense
A Jane Austen Daydream
In Jerry's Corner
Man Behind the Curtain
Maximilian Standforth and the Case of the Dangerous Dare
Me Stuff
My Problem With Doors
Permanent Spring Showers
The Dante 3
Poisoning the Genius
Posted on January 19, 2014 by Scott D. Southard
I want to say this at the start and I want it be clear to all who read this that I had no intention of killing my professor.
However, I'm certain if things had turned out worse that fateful night, some of my fellow students would have sold me down the river. I can picture them even today, accusingly pointing their finger across the courtroom at me. "There he is! That is the man who did it! That is the monster!"
The funny thing is there is actually a precedence for poisoning teachers in my family. Back when my grandmother was a principal at monthly meetings one of the heavier set teachers used to eat all of the snacks before the other teachers had a chance. My grandmother, being my grandmother, decided that she was going to send a "subtle" message to that teacher.
At the next full staff meeting, my grandmother brought in "special" brownies. Oh, they were fine. Perfectly fine… except for the biggest piece which was filled to the brim with laxatives.
That teacher called in sick the next day.
"But that is my grandmother!" I would say to the judge. "She is not me! And I had no idea that I was technically poisoning the guy. I throw myself on the mercy of the court."
I had been a creative writing student at the University of Southern California for about a year when I got a call from the head of the department. Not a typical occurrence, of course. "Scott, there is a class I want you to take." he began immediately.
I wanted to point out that I had a full semester, but I reminded myself that he was the head of the department and he had to already know, right?
"Have you heard of Mr. G?" he asked me.
Of course, I had heard of Mr. G!
Mr. G had written a culturally ground-breaking novel in the 1950's, and had some further important books over the 1960s. He led a literary movement! I had read some of his work a few years ago, but I wouldn't have called myself a fan. Still this is someone with an artistic legacy.
"Well, Mr. G is teaching a class this semester and I think it would be good for you to take the class. And, I'd like for him to see some of your writing."
I was flattered, sure, but I still considered interrupting the head to bring up my schedule. Jeepers! I had to write an entire screenplay in one of them! Plus, I was starting to think about my thesis which I planned to be a novel. Sadly, I didn't have a chance, the head of the department was already giving me information on the class, and the uniqueness of it startled me out of my own whiny thoughts. For example, the class only met every other week, and it was at his house. ("He doesn't go out," it was explained to me quickly.)
"Anyway, the class needs nine people in it and right now it only has eight," he said with a sigh.
"Oh, is that a requirement of the school?"
"No," the head of the department replied and I could hear the reluctancy in his tone, "he just likes that number."
I have always been the kind of student who likes to get to class early, settle into my chair, make sure I am ready for the lesson ahead (pencils and papers and soda in their right spots), but when you are having a class at someone's house it is a different story.
"Welcome," Mr. G said to me with a very dramatic flourish at the door. "You are here early."
Mr. G was in his sixties, thick gray hair, and was wearing a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt, very casual. The funny thing that I quickly figured out, looking at the pictures that he had of himself around his house (and there were a lot), is that the "casual" 1950 grease monkey look was a thing for him. Of course, in the earlier pictures he was very muscular, with his arms almost ripping through the t-shirts. Age had been a cruel mistress to him and the shirt was almost baggy on him now.
In front of his door he had a little table where his books were on display. You couldn't miss it, it was almost directly in front of your line of vision upon entering. And then ("Oh, you noticed my books!"), he happily pretended to be flattered as he showed me book after book. It was obviously an old speech and I allowed him to go through it, but I was studying him more than really listening. Then I noticed something that surprised me.
Next to all of his literary classics was a DVD of The Nutty Professor. And this was not the Jerry Lewis version but the Eddie Murphy version, filled with flatulence and fat jokes. "Oh, my partner made that," Mr. G explained noticing my gaze. "He makes the world laugh." (I had to bite my tongue from using sarcasm right there.)
Mr. G then gave me a tour of his entire home. He was particularly proud of these giant images he had around his dinning room table of 1930 starlets. It was their faces blown up to outrageous proportions. While he found it bewitching, I was nervous around them, reminded strangely of a fourth grade teacher I had that had a glare just like one of them.
By then the rest of the class (who were smart enough not to come early) began to arrive and he welcomed each of us in (I heard the speech about his books on the table five or so more times). As we settled around the table I quickly realized why he liked the number nine.
He had only 10 chairs around the table.
Mr. G seemed to enjoy sharing secrets with us and began by explaining why the class was at his home and only every other week. He didn't go out anymore. He hated crowds, they freaked him out. And the idea of being on a campus was just too much for him to consider. He rarely left his house now.
He then went on to explain that it made writing difficult for him since he likes to study people. It was then that he pointed to the window in his front room. "But don't worry about me," he explained. "I still watch people. I have my ways." Those "ways" seemed to rely on the giant binoculars sitting on the couch.
He was on medication for this fear. He was also on medication for depression and anxiety. He further took pills to help fall asleep. Going into his bathroom reminded me of working in a pharmacy as a teenager. There were bottles everywhere. He had to have been spending hundreds of dollars every month on it.
Surprisingly, I only saw him take pills once. It was around the third class and he was definitely down in the dumps. He almost looked like he would cry or fall asleep at the table, or maybe both. Then he went into his kitchen, and when he returned it was as if an on switch was flipped. He was hyper and giggly. I immediately wondered if all of his medications were prescribed by an actual doctor.
The first class though was all about… well… him. He began by giving us all of these secrets and then after his long speech about his career (which included a short reading by him of a selection from his first classic), he said we could have a break.
Usually, when you are in a class and the professor says you can take a 15-minute break, students sprint to the doors. They are on phones, they are getting food and drinks from the machine, they are using the bathroom, etc. But when you are in the professor's house, you rise out of your seat.
You stand awkwardly around… and wait… and wait…
Then you sit down again.
And that is the break.
The professor viewed these breaks as an intermission and when he returned to the room it was like a performer returning to a stage. It was during the "second act" that he passed out a syllabus and discussed the class structure.
Usually, when a professor teaches a class they have a lesson plan with some kind of a goal or overarching theme. In other words, you can see the end target and the path to get there in the document. Not this guy. His class seemed to have been something he came up with based on his whims of the moment. There were movies to review and a lot of short random writing assignments. These writing assignments were juvenile and obviously stolen from a book on how to learn creative writing. ("Write a paragraph without adjectives!")
The movies assigned for our viewing were probably the oddest part of the class.
For one, why would this literary great be assigning movies over books; and, two, why for God's sake these films? One was an Ingmar Bergman film, another was a banned film that contained Nazis having an orgy (I'm not joking), and a western ("That one is for fun," he said with a little giggle). The first film was a romantic-comedy from the 1930s and it was out of print.
You would think going to a school like USC that I would have access to all of these films easily, but they even didn't have that first film. Luckily, one of the more passionate students (who seemed to idolize Mr. G) found it on reel some place and even rented a projector for it. We all sat around her little apartment that next Saturday and watched it (it took her an hour to figure out how to use the projector). After the film was over, we all stayed and talked about our unique professor.
Most of the kids seemed thrilled to be taking this class with Mr. G and sought out the class. I was in the camp that were more tricked into taking it than overly thrilled. We were the suspicious lot and while we wanted to joke about him, the others looked at us as if we were crazy.
Didn't they think it was funny that his bookshelves were only filled with his books?
Didn't they feel a little odd when he showed off his binoculars, bragging about how he spied on all his neighbors and passing cars?
And how about The Nutty Professor?
They even thought the treat assignments were fine!
Our own nutty professor loved chocolates and he actually had a schedule prepared of when we were required to bring chocolates to the class. He even made it clear what kinds he liked. (He liked the expensive kind, of course.)
At the second class, it was obvious who the treats were for and the plate of chocolates were closer to our eccentric teacher than to us. I don't think I had a single piece!
"It was here, your honor," I would have said to the judge, "that I made my error. See, I wanted to impress my teacher, stand out from the crowd of chocolate boxes. I wanted to make him something."
"But," the prosecuting attorney would say in front of the jury, "he told you what he wanted."
"Yes, but who doesn't like cookies? And these were not just cookies, but homemade peanut butter cookies."
I was so proud of myself that day when I arrived with my cookies. Even Mr. G acted happily surprised by the gesture, and snacked on one cookie after another as we began talking. I was so delighted with myself that I even dared to smugly look over at the "fans." (Check me out.)
Finally, after his third cookie, Mr G asked me. "I can't place this flavor, it is really unique. I can't stop eating them, Scott. What is it?"
"Peanut butter."
And that is when everything fell apart!
Mr. G. sprinted from his chair, knocking it to the ground as he went. He first went to the kitchen and flushed his mouth out with water. Than he began to gag over the sink. "I'm highly allergic to peanuts!" he shouted at me from the kitchen.
I looked around at the other students. Most looked at me like I was a bully found out on a playground, a few looked oddly impressed. "I didn't know," I mumbled. "Seriously, I didn't."
"I noted it on the syllabus!" He shouted from the kitchen, as if he could hear me over his own hacking. He sprinted past the table then, heading to the bathroom.
"It's on the syllabus?" I asked my fellow students, trying hard not to focus solely on the sound of forced retching from the bathroom.
"Yes," one of my students said slowly as if she was speaking to an idiot, "he said no chocolate with nuts."
"Oh," was the best response I could come up with. After years of writing and studying the English language, the best response I had to almost killing a man was "Oh."
I skipped the next class.
I did go to the one after that, and Mr. G was fine but a little aloof towards me. He spoke over me a few times and would skip past me when he went around the table. Luckily, there were only a handful of classes left, but it was awkward.
I ended up getting a B in the class, but based on his assignments I have no idea how I even got that grade. He never graded our writing, nor even collected them from us; he was perfectly happy to just have us read our assignments to him. He never took notes.
After the class was done, I never heard from the professor again. However, I would drive past his house from time to time while getting around the city. And each time I did, I couldn't help wondering if he was spying on me at that moment, his binoculars pointed directly at me.
"There he is," he would darkly whisper to himself, pounding his fist on the windowsill like a gavel. "There is the bastard who almost got me. There is that guilty soul."
If you liked reading this post, why not check out one of my books? I've had four novels published in the last few years, A Jane Austen Daydream, Maximilian Standforth and the Case of the Dangerous Dare, My Problem With Doors and Megan. You can find them via my amazon.com author page here, or as an eBook on Google eBooks here. Thanks for reading!
Need an editor? Dream of finishing that book but need some help? Learn about my editing services by visiting this page on my site. Or you can contact Rebecca T. Dickson and request to work with me by clicking the image below.
This entry was posted in Life and tagged Blogging, Books, Comedy, Creative Writing, Eddie Murphy, Humor, Ingmar Bergman, Life Story, Literature, Medications, Professors, Rememberance, Spying, The Nutty Professor, University of Southern California, Writing Teachers by Scott D. Southard. Bookmark the permalink.
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text:
Q: Pulling information from 2 sources and counting I've been asked to create a system at work which logs the number of calls made and received through our VoIP system. I could have potentially done this if I were able to change the structure on datasources, but in this case I'm not allowed to change it, which now relies on me asking someone with a bit more expertise than myself.
Datasource 1 (Using MSSQL) - This logs the users who have logged in to our intranet and what their extension is:
+-------+----------------+--------------+---------------------+
| ID    | USERNAME       | EXTENSION    | LOGGEDIN            |
+-------+----------------+--------------+---------------------+
| 1     | JESS           | 101          | 2014-11-10 12:00:00 |
+-------+----------------+--------------+---------------------+
| 2     | SARAH          | 203          | 2014-11-10 12:21:00 |
+-------+----------------+--------------+---------------------+
| 3     | FERN           | 124          | 2014-11-10 12:21:31 |
+-------+----------------+--------------+---------------------+
| 4     | SARAH          | 101          | 2014-11-10 13:12:00 |
+-------+----------------+--------------+---------------------+

Datasource 2 (Using MySQL) - Datasource 2 contains all calls made and received using the VoIP system
+-------+----------------+---------------+---------------------+
| ID    | SRC            | DST           | TIME                |
+-------+----------------+---------------+---------------------+
| 1     | 101            | 02035654684   | 2014-11-10 12:01:00 |
+-------+----------------+---------------+---------------------+
| 2     | 203            | 02087816328   | 2014-11-10 12:22:00 |
+-------+----------------+---------------+---------------------+
| 3     | 124            | 02078939273   | 2014-11-10 12:23:31 |
+-------+----------------+---------------+---------------------+
| 4     | 101            | 04672738782   | 2014-11-10 13:15:00 |
+-------+----------------+---------------+---------------------+
| 5     | 07863522413    | 101           | 2014-11-10 13:21:00 |
+-------+----------------+---------------+---------------------+
| 6     | 02076352423    | 203           | 2014-11-10 13:25:31 |
+-------+----------------+---------------+---------------------+
| 7     | 07836325726    | 101           | 2014-11-10 13:56:00 |
+-------+----------------+---------------+---------------------+

This is what I would like to be able to print:
+-------+----------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
| ID    | USERNAME       | INCOMING     | OUTGOING     | TOTAL       |
+-------+----------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
| 1     | JESS           | 0            | 1            | 1           |
+-------+----------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
| 2     | SARAH          | 2            | 2            | 4           |
+-------+----------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
| 3     | FERN           | 0            | 1            | 1           |
+-------+----------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+

As you can see from the tables above, Sarah started off on extension 203 and then logged in to 101 after Jess had left. She made 1 call whilst logged in on 203 and 1 call whilst logged in at 101. She also picked up 2 calls whilst logged in at extension 101.
I will be using PHP for this project. Ideally, I would like to sort the table above by total descending, but I'm confident I could figure this out on my own, once I have the building blocks.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide on this.
Note: I have considered creating a temporary table that pulls the information, but I've already been told that this would be a bad idea because of the execution time of the query and how frequently I need to pull the information. The script will run every 10 seconds so whatever query I use needs to be quite lean.

A: SELECT
   u.ID,
   u.USERNAME,
   coalesce(tSRC.INCOMING,0) as INCOMING,
   coalesce(tDST.OUTGOING,0) as OUTGOING,
   (coalesce(tSRC.INCOMING,0)+coalesce(tDST.OUTGOING,0)) as total
FROM
table1 u
LEFT JOIN (
   SELECT a.SRC as ext , count(a.ID) as INCOMING
   FROM table2 a WHERE CHAR_LENGTH(a.SRC)=3 GROUP BY a.SRC
   ) tSRC ON tSRC.ext = u.EXTENSION
LEFT JOIN (
   SELECT b.SRC as ext , count(b.ID) as OUTGOING
   FROM table2 b WHERE CHAR_LENGTH(b.DST)=3 GROUP BY b.DST
   ) tDST ON tDST.ext = u.EXTENSION

edit: Better version:
SELECT
   u.ID,
   u.USERNAME,
   u.EXTENSION,
   COUNT(distinct a.ID) as INCOMING,
   COUNT(distinct b.ID) as OUTGOING,
   (COUNT(distinct a.ID)+COUNT(distinct b.ID)) as TOTAL
FROM
table1 u
LEFT JOIN table2 a ON u.EXTENSION=a.SRC
LEFT JOIN table2 b ON u.EXTENSION=b.DST
GROUP BY u.EXTENSION

A: $q1="SELECT USERNAME, EXTENSION, unix_timestamp(LOGGEDIN) as t FROM table1 WHERE 1 ORDER BY EXTENSION,LOGGEDIN";

$q2="
(SELECT SRC-0 as EXTENSION, 0 as side, unix_timestamp(`TIME`) as t FROM table2 WHERE CHAR_LENGTH(SRC)=3 )
UNION
(SELECT DST-0 as EXTENSION, 1 as side, unix_timestamp(`TIME`) as t FROM table2 WHERE CHAR_LENGTH(DST)=3 )
ORDER BY EXTENSION, t";

$r1 = $db1->query($q1);
$r2 = $db2->query($q2);

$x1 = $r1->fetch_object();
$x2 = $r2->fetch_object();

$users = array();

$future_x1 = $r1->fetch_object();

while($x1 && $x2)
{
    if( $x1->EXTENSION < $x2->EXTENSION )
    {
        $x1=$future_x1 ;
        $future_x1=$r1->fetch_object();
    }
    elseif( $x1->EXTENSION > $x2->EXTENSION )
    {
        $x2 = $r2->fetch_object();
    }
    elseif( $future_x1 && $future_x1->EXTENSION == $x1->EXTENSION && $x2->t >= $future_x1->t )
    {
        $x1=$future_x1 ;
        $future_x1=$r1->fetch_object();
    }
    else
    {
        @$users[$x1->USERNAME][$x2->side]++;
        $x2 = $r2->fetch_object();
    }
}

print_r($users);

This solution assumes you were able to connect to both databases from PHP and that it is affordable to read practically all rows from both tables and hold an array of size equal to number of usernames.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


First things first, this concert was easily the most fun I've ever had shooting a concert yet. The energy that Flogging Molly brings to the stage is incredibly infectious and everyone, including those of us working in the pit, was feeling it that night. Dave King is an absolute nutcase, and I say that with the utmost respect and admiration. We were all having a blast, but I still feel like there was no one in the building enjoying themselves more than him. I can only hope I captured a bit of that playfulness and enthusiasm in some of my shots. Photos below!
This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2012 at 11:33 pm.	It is filed under Concert Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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Tag: Chromebook
August 15, 2017 August 15, 2017 Sapna Arora
Save on Samsung Chromebook Pro The recently unveiled Samsung Chromebook Pro now goes on good discount as well. It is available for just $499, a discount of $50.99. Samsung launched two Chromebooks – Plus and Pro. Both come with stylus support and Google Play Store. You can now grab Chromebook Pro at handsome discount of
0 Comments 1,908
May 15, 2017 May 16, 2017 Allan John
Samsung Chromebook Pro Up for Pre-order in US at Amazon
Pre-order Samsung Chromebook Pro Samsung Chromebook Pro was first announced by the company at CES back in January along with a lower spec Samsung Chromebook Plus. It is a higher spec device of the two and has finally got a listing in US. Amazon users can pre-order it now for $549.99 and it starts shipping
February 13, 2017 February 13, 2017 Sapna Arora
Samsung Chromebook Plus is Now Available for Purchase
Samsung Chromebook Plus: Best Chrome OS Laptop Samsung Chromebook Plus was unveiled at CES 2017 along with Samsung Chromebook Pro. It goes on sale for $449 and it is now available for purchase from places like Amazon, Best Buy, Google, Samsung Website etc. It is the first of a new generation of Chromebooks running Chrome
Here's Acer Chromebook 15: Affordable and Long Battery Life
Acer Chromebook 15 Chromebooks have always been an affordable way of letting a laptop and Acer has announced the new version of its Chromebook 15 at an affordable price of $199. The battery life has been improved and a useful set of new features have been added. Let's have a close look at its features.
October 17, 2016 October 17, 2016 Allan John
Samsung Chromebook Pro Samsung has a new high-end Chromebook that comes with touchscreen and stylus. The upcoming product Chromebook Pro has reported been spotted ahead of the official launch by the company. Now, the product page has been taken down but before that, it gave a hint of the device's specifications. Rotatable Touchscreen Display Samsung
June 28, 2016 June 28, 2016 Blessy Daniel
HP Unveils Chromebook 11 G5 Priced at $189
Meet Chromebook 11 G5 The latest Chrome OS laptop by HP is extremely affordable starting at less than $200. Called Chromebook 11 G5, it is a powerful chromebook and comes with impressive set of features. "The new HP Chromebook 11 G5 is the first of HP's 11.6 diagonal Chromebooks to offer a touchscreen – an
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Duni est un patronyme et toponyme pouvant désigner:

Patronyme
 Egidio Duni (1709-1775), compositeur italien de l'école napolitaine, installé en France
 Elina Duni (née en 1981), chanteuse de jazz helvético-albanaise
 Emanuele Duni (1714-1781), juriste et philosophe italien
  (né en 1950), homme politique tanzanien

Toponymes

Duni, une localité du Népal

Homonymie de patronyme

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Epistemology > Epistemic Normativity
Edited by Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (Aarhus University)
Doxastic Voluntarism (284)
Epistemic Normativity, Misc (465)
Epistemic Norms (696)
Epistemic Permissivism (86)
Epistemic Responsibility (235)
Epistemic Value (462)
Epistemic Virtues (419)
Theoretical Virtues* (1,172 | 22)
Ethics of Belief (589)
Norms of Assertion* (399)
Assistant or Associate Professor
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
PhD fellowship in Theoretical Philosophy
3489 found
Listing datebook pricecategoriesFirst authorImpactPub yearDownloads Order
Material to categorize
The Perils of Rejecting the Parity Argument.YiLi Zhou & Rhys Borchert - forthcoming - Philosophy.details
Many moral error theorists reject moral realism on the grounds that moral realism implies the existence of categorical normativity, yet categorical normativity does not exist. Call this the Metaphysical Argument. In response, some moral realists have emphasized a parity between moral normativity and epistemic normativity. They argue that if one kind of normativity is rejected, then both must be rejected. Therefore, one cannot be a moral error theorist without also being an epistemic error theorist. Call this the Parity Argument. In (...) this paper, we address three possible responses to the Parity Argument from moral error theorists: (1) accept the parity but still reject epistemic error theory, (2) reject the parity, (3) accept the parity and defend epistemic error theory. We argue that there are problems with each of these responses, so the Parity Argument stands as a strong counterargument to the Metaphysical Argument. We conclude by drawing some lessons for any future challenges to the Parity Argument. (shrink)
Epistemic Normativity in Epistemology
Moral Normativity in Meta-Ethics
Good Guesses as Accuracy-Specificity Tradeoffs.Mattias Skipper - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.details
Guessing is a familiar activity, one we engage in when we are uncertain of the answer to a question under discussion. It is also an activity that lends itself to normative evaluation: some guesses are better than others. The question that interests me here is what makes for a good guess. In recent work, Dorst and Mandelkern have argued that good guesses are distinguished from bad ones by how well they optimize a tradeoff between accuracy and specificity. Here, I argue (...) that Dorst and Mandelkern's implementation of this idea fails to satisfy some plausible constraints on good guesses, and I develop an alternative implementation that satisfies the relevant constraints. The result is a new account of good guesses which retains the positive aspects of Dorst and Mandelkern's proposal, but without the drawbacks. (shrink)
Formal Epistemology in Epistemology
Ambiguous Statements about Akrasia.Luis Rosa - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (11):581-601.details
Epistemologists take themselves to disagree about whether there are situations where it is rational for one to believe that p and rational for one to believe that one's evidence does not support p (rational akrasia). The embedded sentence 'one's evidence does not support p' can be interpreted in two ways, however, depending on what the semantic contribution of 'one's evidence' is taken to be. 'One's evidence' might be seen as a sheer indexical or as a descriptive singular term. The first (...) interpretation makes the relevant kind of rational akrasia impossible, whereas the second one makes it possible. But the proposition that is taken to be expressed by 'one's evidence does not support p' by each of these interpretations is not the same. We thus have a rational reconstruction of views that are labeled as being for and against the possibility of rational akrasia according to which they do not really contradict each other. (shrink)
Meaning in Philosophy of Language
Epistemic Akrasia: No Apology Required.David Christensen - 2022 - Noûs 1 (online first):1-22.details
It is natural to think that rationality imposes some relationship between what a person believes, and what she believes about what she's rational to believe. Epistemic akrasia—for example, believing P while believing that P is not rational to believe in your situation—is often seen as intrinsically irrational. This paper argues otherwise. In certain cases, akrasia is intuitively rational. Understanding why akratic beliefs in those case are indeed rational provides a deeper explanation how typical akratic beliefs are irrational—an explanation that does (...) not flow from akrasia per se. This understanding also allows us to diagnose where general anti-akratic arguments go wrong. We can then see why even principles designed to allow only moderate akrasia fail, and also why recognizing the possibility of rational akratic beliefs does not call for finding some other epistemic defect in agents who believe akratically. Believing akratically, in itself, is nothing to apologize for. (shrink)
Epistemological Theories in Epistemology
Epistemology, Miscellaneous in Epistemology
The Motivation Problem of Epistemic Expressivists.Alexandre Duval & Charles Cote-Bouchard - forthcoming - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.details
Many philosophers have adopted epistemic expressivism in recent years. The core commitment of epistemic expressivism is that epistemic claims express conative states. This paper assesses the plausibility of this commitment. First, we raise a new type of problem for epistemic expressivism, the epistemic motivation problem. The problem arises because epistemic expressivists must provide an account of the motivational force of epistemic judgment (the mental state expressed by an epistemic claim), yet various features of our mental economy seem to show that (...) they can't do so. Second, we develop what we take to be the most promising response to that problem for expressivists. We end by noting that this response faces an important challenge pertaining to the psychology of epistemic criticism and praise. (shrink)
Metaepistemology in Epistemology
How Values Shape the Machine Learning Opacity Problem.Emily Sullivan - 2022 - In Insa Lawler, Kareem Khalifa & Elay Shech (eds.), Scientific Understanding and Representation. Routledge. pp. 306-322.details
One of the main worries with machine learning model opacity is that we cannot know enough about how the model works to fully understand the decisions they make. But how much is model opacity really a problem? This chapter argues that the problem of machine learning model opacity is entangled with non-epistemic values. The chapter considers three different stages of the machine learning modeling process that corresponds to understanding phenomena: (i) model acceptance and linking the model to the phenomenon, (ii) (...) explanation, and (iii) attributions of understanding. At each of these stages, non-epistemic values can, in part, determine how much machine learning model opacity poses a problem. (shrink)
Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Misc in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, Miscellaneous in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Scientific Models in General Philosophy of Science
Understanding in Epistemology
Varieties of Explanation in General Philosophy of Science
Evidence and Epistemic Normativity.Daniel Buckley - 2022 - Dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomingtondetails
Evidence is often taken to be "normative" for doxastic agents. For instance, we are told to apportion our beliefs to the evidence, to not believe a claim without seeking out countervailing evidence, and so on. But what accounts for the normativity of evidence? This dissertation is devoted to answering this question. In order to answer it, I develop a novel approach to the theory of epistemic normativity. According to my approach, epistemic norms structure a social practice of epistemic accountability. This (...) approach shares affinities with Strawsonian attempts to elucidate moral responsibility by considering the conditions under which it's appropriate to subject a person to the "reactive attitudes" (e.g. resentment and indignation). However, when it comes to epistemic (as opposed to moral) accountability, I argue that the relevant attitudinal responses need not involve reactive emotions. Moreover, what I seek to elucidate by appealing to these attitudinal responses is not responsible agency, but rather the content and normative significance of epistemic norms. Crucial to my approach is a distinctly epistemic way of holding a person accountable for their doxastic attitudes. To hold a person epistemically accountable, on my approach, is to modify trust in the person in a particular way. For instance, someone might cease to take a person's words at face value when it comes to a certain topic, or someone might be unwilling to rely on another as a testimonial source of information. I argue that our practice of epistemic accountability is a legitimate social practice. I then go on to consider what norms of belief structure its activities. I argue that a number of norms of belief are implicit in our practice of epistemic accountability, including evidential norms and knowledge norms. I ultimately argue that our acceptance of epistemic norms is itself grounded in the fact that we participate in a social practice wherein we hold each other epistemically accountable. (shrink)
Normativity in Value Theory, Miscellaneous
Introduction to the special issue "alethic pluralism and the normativity of truth".Filippo Ferrari & Sebastiano Moruzzi - 2020 - American Philosophical Quarterly 57 (4):309-310.details
In Truth and Objectivity, Crispin Wright argues that because truth is a distinctively normative property, it cannot be as metaphysically insubstantive as deflationists claim.1 This argument has been taken, together with the scope problem,2 as one of the main motivations for alethic pluralism.3 We offer a reconstruction of Wright's Inflationary Argument (henceforth IA) aimed at highlighting what are the steps required to establish its inflationary conclusion. We argue that if a certain metaphysical and epistemological view of a given subject matter (...) is accepted, a local counterexample to IA can be constructed. We focus on the domain of basic taste and we develop two variants of a subjectivist and relativist metaphysics and epistemology that seems palatable in that domain. Although we undertake no commitment to this being the right metaphysical cum epistemological package for basic taste, we contend that if the metaphysics and the epistemology of basic taste are understood along these lines, they call for a truth property whose nature is not distinctively normative—contra what IA predicts. This result shows that the success of IA requires certain substantial metaphysical and epistemological principles and that, consequently, a proper assessment of IA cannot avoid taking a stance on the metaphysics and the epistemology of the domain where it is claimed to be successful. Although we conjecture that IA might succeed in other domains, in this paper we don't take a stand on this issue. We conclude by briefly discussing the significance of this result for the debate on alethic pluralism. (shrink)
Aesthetic Realism and Anti-Realism in Aesthetics
Deflationism about Truth, Misc in Philosophy of Language
Pluralism about Truth in Philosophy of Language
Meta‐Skepticism.Olle Risberg - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.details
The epistemological debate about radical skepticism has focused on whether our beliefs in apparently obvious claims, such as the claim that we have hands, amount to knowledge. Arguably, however, our concept of knowledge is only one of many knowledge-like concepts that there are. If this is correct, it follows that even if our beliefs satisfy our concept of knowledge, there are many other relevantly similar concepts that they fail to satisfy. And this might give us pause. After all, we might (...) wonder: What is so great about the concept of knowledge that we happen to have? Might it be more important, epistemically speaking, to investigate whether our beliefs satisfy some other relevantly similar concept instead? And how should questions such as these even be understood? This paper discusses the epistemological significance of these issues. In particular, a novel skeptical stance called 'meta-skepticism' is introduced, which is a kind of skepticism about the idea that some knowledge-like concepts are epistemically more important than others. It suggested that it is unclear whether this form of skepticism can be avoided. (shrink)
Skepticism in Epistemology
Values and Norms in Normative Ethics
Broome on Enkrasia and Akrasia.Byeong D. Lee - 2021 - Logique Et Analyse 254:175-189.details
John Broome defends what he calls 'Enkrasia', which is roughly this: Rationality requires of you that if you believe that you ought to do A, you intend to do A. He provides two arguments for Enkrasia. First, he argues for what he calls 'enkratic reasoning': 'I ought to do A. So I shall do A'. Second, he also provides the following line of argument: Enkrasia is the requirement not to be akratic; akrasia is irrational; so Enkrasia is a rational requirement. (...) The purpose of this paper is to show that these two arguments are not successful. For this purpose, I argue for two things. The alleged enkratic reasoning is not a genuine rule of reasoning. And it is not appropriate to understand Enkrasia in terms of akrasia, either. (shrink)
Instrumental Reasoning in Philosophy of Action
Meta-Ethics, Misc in Meta-Ethics
Practical and Theoretical Reasoning in Philosophy of Action
Rational Requirements in Epistemology
Reasons and Oughts in Philosophy of Action
Reasons and Rationality in Philosophy of Action
Inquiring Further: Essays on Epistemic Normativity.Elise Woodard - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbordetails
My dissertation defends the importance of epistemic norms on what I call 'inquiring further.' Inquiring further is a familiar practice we engage in when we redeliberate, gather more evidence, or double-check our beliefs. Nonetheless, many philosophers have argued that norms governing further inquiry are at most practical or moral norms. Against this, I argue that norms on inquiring further are central to our understanding of responsible epistemic agency. I do this by appealing to both the roles of epistemic evaluations and (...) our practices of holding agents epistemically accountable. My dissertation thereby expands and deepens our understanding of epistemic evaluations and normativity. Each chapter of my dissertation focuses on a different practice of inquiring further. The first, "A Puzzle About Fickleness," motivates a puzzle about changes of mind resulting from redeliberation. The puzzle is to explain the asymmetry between one-off changes of mind, which often seem permissible, and multiple changes of mind—or fickleness—which often seem problematic. After motivating an epistemic solution to the puzzle, I propose and defend the Ratifiable Reasoning Account. On this solution, as agents redeliberate, they gain two types of evidence. First, they gain inductive evidence that they will not stably settle their belief. Second, this inductive evidence affords higher-order evidence that they are unreliable at assessing the matter at hand. The fact that fickle agents gain this higher-order evidence explains why fickleness can be epistemically—not just practically—irrational. The second chapter turns to our practices of evidence-gathering. In "Epistemic Norms on Evidence-Gathering," I and my co-author, Carolina Flores, argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Though this view is intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has; justified or rational beliefs are those based on appropriate responses to that evidence. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. The third chapter, "Why Double-Check?", explores the relationship between double-checking and knowledge. I argue that agents can simultaneously know that p and rationally double-check that p. Call this view the Synchronic Compatibility Thesis. Although intuitive, this thesis faces two challenges. First, some have argued that agents who double-check ought to suspend judgment while inquiring; they thus lose knowledge while double-checking, if only temporarily. Second, some have argued that if it is rational to double-check that p, then one does not know that p. This claim is motivated by strong conceptions of belief or pragmatic encroachment. I argue that these competing views fail to accommodate the many reasons why agents might double-check, ranging from seeking certainty to making one's beliefs more resilient. Moreover, the alternative views rely on overly strong assumptions about what inquiry, knowledge, or belief requires. By exploring fickleness, evidence-gathering, and double-checking—three phenomena that traditional epistemology has neglected—this dissertation enriches epistemology by making it more relevant to real-world agents. (shrink)
Shifty Speech and Independent Thought: Epistemic Normativity in Context.Mona Simion - 2021 - Oxford University Press.details
This work is a manifesto for epistemic independence: the independence of good thinking from practical considerations. It presents a functionalist account of the normativity of assertion in conjunction with an integrated view of the normativity of constative speech acts.
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The epistemic normativity of conjecture.Mona Simion - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (11):3447-3471.details
This paper has two aims: it develops and defends a fully-fledged account of the epistemic normativity of conjecture it goes sharply against orthodoxy, in arguing that conjecture is epistemically more demanding than assertion. According to the view defended here, one's conjecture that p is permissible only if one knows that one has warrant, but not sufficient warrant to believe that p. I argue for my account on three independent grounds: the Bach and Harnish account of the nature of communicative speech (...) acts, the plausible normative relation between assertion and other constatives, and the normativity of belief in conjunction with constatives' epistemic function. (shrink)
Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge.Paul Silva Jr - 2023 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.details
Expressions of the form 'S is aware of the fact that p' are commonplace. This book provides a systematic exploration of the relation between knowledge and factual awareness, arguing that knowledge is but one species of factual awareness and that we can understand the possession of objective reasons, the normativity of knowledge, and the nature of knowledge in terms of factual awareness. In this way, the state of factual awareness is, structurally and substantively, a more basic type of state than (...) knowledge. If correct, this undermines a number of ways in which knowledge has been regarded as 'first' in recent epistemology. (shrink)
Epistemological Sources in Epistemology
Epistemological States and Properties in Epistemology
Да вярваш рационално. Изследване върху обосноваността в традиционната епистемология.Anna M. Ivanova - 2020details
Книгата е посветена на проблема за обосноваността от класическата интерналистка гледна точка на епистемологията. Тя преразглежда традиционните проблеми в интерналистката рамка в по-широкия контекст на развитието в тази област през последните петдесет години.Централните проблеми в изследването се отнасят до условията на обосноваността като резултат от епистемичната оценка на вярванията с помощта на свидетелства и основания. Сред тях са проблемът за характера на свидетелствата и мястото им в процедурата на епистемична оценка, проблемите за добрите и достатъчни основания и проблемът за регреса (...) на основанията. (shrink)
Coherentism, Misc in Epistemology
Evidence in Epistemology
Evidentialism in Epistemology
Foundationalism in Epistemology
Infinitism in Epistemology
Justification in Epistemology
Epistemic Atonement.Elise Woodard - forthcoming - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 18. Oxford: Oxford University Press.details
When we think about agents who change a long-standing belief, we sometimes have conflicting reactions. On the one hand, such agents often epistemically improve. For example, their new belief may be better supported by the evidence or closer to the truth. On the other hand, such agents are often subject to criticism. Examples include politicians who change their minds on whether climate change is occurring or whether vaccines cause autism. What explains this criticism, and is it ever justified? To answer (...) these questions, I introduce the notion of epistemic atonement. By epistemic atonement, I mean the process of making up for one's previous epistemic failures, including believing badly. Central to my account is the idea that epistemic atonement requires restoring trust and indicating trustworthiness. I flesh out my proposal by drawing on philosophical and empirical literature on apologies, demonstrating that epistemic blame and atonement parallels the moral domain in various under-appreciated respects. (shrink)
Embedded Epistemic Instrumentalism: An Account of Epistemic Normativity.James Bernard Willoughby - 2022 - Philosophers' Imprint 22.details
We are bombarded with epistemic norms. Respect your evidence. Don't believe in contradictions. Don't arbitrarily change beliefs. But how do such norms get their normative force? Why should we respect our evidence, for example? In this paper I offer a familiar type of answer, epistemic instrumentalism. Epistemic instrumentalism holds that epistemic norms get their normative force by being useful. You should respect your evidence because it will help you achieve some valuable ends. This answer, while familiar, is not very popular. (...) There is a widely accepted objection to epistemic instrumentalism, the too few reasons objection. The objection looms so large that standard developments of instrumentalism have become bloated with philosophical machinery to respond to it. This does a disservice to epistemic instrumentalism. Rather than focusing completely on the objection, I focus on describing a simple model for how conforming to the epistemic norms is broadly useful. Once I describe the simple model, the too few reasons objection becomes much easier to answer. This strategy results in a well-motivated philosophical theory based on uncontroversial facts that has many advantages over rival theories. (shrink)
Correction to: The Sources of Political Normativity: the Case for Instrumental and Epistemic Normativity in Political Realism.Carlo Burelli & Chiara Destri - 2022 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (3):415-415.details
Mechanizmy predykcyjne i ich normatywność [Predictive mechanisms and their normativity].Michał Piekarski - 2020 - Warszawa, Polska: Liberi Libri.details
The aim of this study is to justify the belief that there are biological normative mechanisms that fulfill non-trivial causal roles in the explanations (as formulated by researchers) of actions and behaviors present in specific systems. One example of such mechanisms is the predictive mechanisms described and explained by predictive processing (hereinafter PP), which (1) guide actions and (2) shape causal transitions between states that have specific content and fulfillment conditions (e.g. mental states). Therefore, I am guided by a specific (...) theoretical goal associated with the need to indicate those conditions that should be met by the non-trivial theory of normative mechanisms and the specific models proposed by PP supporters. In this work, I use classical philosophical methods, such as conceptual analysis and critical reflection. I also analyze selected studies in the field of cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neurology, information theory and biology in terms of the methodology, argumentation and language used, in accordance with their theoretical importance for the issues discussed in this study. In this sense, the research presented here is interdisciplinary. My research framework is informed by the mechanistic model of explanation, which defines the necessary and sufficient conditions for explaining a given phenomenon. The research methods I chose are therefore related to the problems that I intend to solve. In the introductory chapter, "The concept of predictive processing", I discuss the nature of PP as well as its main assumptions and theses. I also highlight the key concepts and distinctions for this research framework. Many authors argue that PP is a contemporary version of Kantianism and is exposed to objections similar to those made against the approach of Immanuel Kant. I discuss this thesis and show that it is only in a very general sense that the PP framework is neo-Kantian. Here we are not dealing with transcendental deduction nor with the application of transcendental arguments. I argue that PP is based on reverse engineering and abduction inferences. In the second part of this chapter, I respond to the objection formulated by Dan Zahavi, who directly accuses this research framework of anti-realistic consequences. I demonstrate that the position of internalism, present in the so-called conservative PP, does not imply anti-realism, and that, due to the explanatory role played in it by structural representations directed at real patterns, it is justified to claim that PP is realistic. In this way, I show that PP is a non-trivial research framework, having its subject, specific methods and its own epistemic status. Finally, I discuss positions classified as the socalled radical PP. In the chapter "Predictive processing as a Bayesian explanatory model" I justify the thesis according to which PP offers Bayesian modeling. Many researchers claim that the brain is an implemented statistical probabilistic network that is an approximation of the Bayesian 7 rule. In practice, this means that all cognitive processes are to apply Bayes' rule and can be described in terms of probability distributions. Such a solution arouses objections among many researchers and is the subject of wide criticism. The purpose of this chapter is to justify the thesis that Bayesian PP is a non-trivial research framework. For this purpose, I argue that it explains certain phenomena not only at the computational level described by David Marr, but also at the level of algorithms and implementation. Later in this chapter I demonstrate that PP is normative modeling. Proponents of the use of Bayesian models in psychology or decision theory argue that they are normative because they allow the formulation of formal rules of action that show what needs to be done to make a given action optimal. Critics of this approach emphasize that such thinking about the normativity of Bayesian modeling is unjustified and that science should shift from prescriptive to descriptive positions. In a polemic with Shira Elqayam and Jonathan Evans (2011), I show that the division they propose into prescriptivism and Bayesian descriptivism is apparent, because, as I argue, there are two forms of prescriptivism, i.e. the weak and the strong. I argue that the weak version is epistemic and can lead to anti-realism, while the strong version is ontic and allows one to justify realism in relation to Bayesian models. I argue that a weak version of prescriptivism is valid for PP. It allows us to adopt anti-realism in relation to PP. In practice, this means that you can explain phenomena using Bayes' rule. This does not, however, imply that they are Bayesian in nature. However, the full justification of realism in relation to the Bayesian PP presupposes the adoption of strong prescriptivism. This position assumes that phenomena are explained by Bayesian rule because they are Bayesian as such. If they are Bayesian in nature, then they should be explained using Bayesian modeling. This thesis will be substantiated in the chapters "Normative functions and mechanisms in the context of predictive processing" and "Normative mechanisms and actions in predictive processing". In the chapter "The Free Energy Principle in predictive processing", I discuss the Free Energy Principle (hereinafter FEP) formulated by Karl Friston and some of its implications. According to this principle, all biological systems (defined in terms of Markov blankets) minimize the free energy of their internal states in order to maintain homeostasis. Some researchers believe that PP is a special case of applying this principle to cognition, and that predictive mechanisms are homeostatic mechanisms that minimize free energy. The discussion of FEP is important due to the fact that some authors consider it to be important for explanatory purposes and normative. If this is the case, then FEP turns out to be crucial in explaining normative predictive mechanisms and, in general, any normative biological mechanisms. To define the explanatory possibilities of this principle, I refer to the discussion of its supporters on the issue they define as the problem of continuity and discontinuity between life and mind. A critical analysis of this discussion and the additional arguments I have formulated have allowed me to revise the explanatory ambitions of FEP. I also reject the belief that this principle is necessary to explain the nature of predictive mechanisms. I argue that the principle formulated and defended by Friston is an important research heuristic for PP analysis. 8 In the chapter "Normative functions and mechanisms in predictive processing", I start my analyzes by formulating an answer to the question about the normative nature of homeostatic mechanisms. I demonstrate that predictive mechanisms are not homeostatic. I defend the view that a full explanation of normative mechanisms presupposes an explanation of normative functions. I discuss the most important proposals for understanding the normativity of a function, both from a systemic and teleosemantic perspective. I conclude that the non-trivial concept of a function must meet two requirements which I define as explanatory and normative. I show that none of the theories I have invoked satisfactorily meets both of these requirements. Instead, I propose a model of normativity based on Bickhard's account, but supplemented by a mechanistic perspective. I argue that a function is normative when: (1) it allows one to explain the dysfunction of a given mechanism; (2) it contributes to the maintenance of the organism's stability by shaping and limiting possible relations, processes and behaviors of a given system; and when (3) (according to the representational and predictive functions) it enables explaining the attribution of logical values of certain representations / predictions. In such an approach, a mechanism is normative when it performs certain normative functions and when it is constitutive for a specific action or behavior, despite the fact that for some reason it cannot realize it either currently or in the long-term. Such an understanding of the normativity of mechanisms presupposes the acceptance of the epistemic hypothesis. I argue that this hypothesis is not cognitively satisfactory, and therefore the ontic hypothesis should be justified, which is directly related to adopting the position of ontic prescriptivism. For this reason, referring to the mechanistic theory of scientific explanations, I formulate an ontical interpretation of the concept of a normative mechanism. According to this approach, a mechanism or a function is normative when they perform such and such causal roles in explaining certain actions and behaviors. With regard to the normative properties of predictive mechanisms and functions, this means that they are the causes of specific actions an organism carries out in the environment. In this way, I justify the necessity of accepting the ontic hypothesis and rejecting the epistemic hypothesis. The fifth chapter, "Normative mechanisms and actions in predictive processing", is devoted to the dark room problem and the related exploration-exploitation trade-off. A dark room is the state that an agent could be in if it minimized the sum of all potential prediction errors. I demonstrate that, in accordance with the basic assumption of PP about the need for continuous and long-term minimization of prediction errors, such a state should be desirable for the agent. Is it really so? Many authors believe it is not. I argue that the test of the value of PP is the possibility of a non-trivial solution of this problem, which can be reduced to the choice between active and uncertainty-increasing exploration and safe and easily predictable exploitation. I show that the solution proposed by PP supporters present in the literature does not enable a fully satisfactory explanation of this dilemma. Then I defend the position according to which the full explanation of the normative mechanisms, and, subsequently, the solution to the dilemma of exploration and exploitation, involves reference to the existence of constraints present in the environment. The constraints 9 include elements of the environment that make a given mechanism not only causal but also normative. They are therefore key to explaining the predictive mechanisms. They do not only play the role of the context in which the mechanism is implemented, but, above all, are its constitutive component. I argue that the full explanation of the role of constraints in normative predictive mechanisms presupposes the integration of individual models of specific cognitive phenomena, because only the mechanistic integration of PP with other models allows for a non-trivial explanation of the nature of normative predictive mechanisms that would have a strong explanatory value. The explanatory monism present in many approaches to PP makes it impossible to solve the problem of the dark room. Later in this chapter, I argue that the Bayesian PP is normative not because it enables the formulation of such and such rules of action, but because the predictive mechanisms themselves are normative. They are normative because they condition the choice of such and such actions by agents. In this way, I justify the hypothesis that normative mechanisms make it possible to explain the phenomenon of agent motivation, which is crucial for solving the dark room problem. In the last part of the chapter, I formulate the hypothesis of distributed normativity, which assumes that the normative nature of certain mechanisms, functions or objects is determined by the relations into which these mechanisms, functions or objects enter. This means that what is normative (in the primary sense) is the relational structure that constitutes the normativity of specific items included in it. I suggest that this hypothesis opens up many areas of research and makes it possible to rethink many problems. In the "Conclusion", I summarize the results of my research and indicate further research perspectives. (shrink)
Epistemology of Mind in Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Neuroscience in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Practical Reason in Philosophy of Action
Epistemic normativity is not independent of our goals.J. Adam Carter - 2022 - In Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup, John Turri & Blake Roeber (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd Edition. Wiley-Blackwell.details
Basic knowledge and the normativity of knowledge: The awareness‐first solution.Paul Silva - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (3):564-586.details
Many have found it plausible that knowledge is a constitutively normative state, i.e. a state that is grounded in the possession of reasons. Many have also found it plausible that certain cases of proprioceptive knowledge, memorial knowledge, and self-evident knowledge are cases of knowledge that are not grounded in the possession of reasons. I refer to these as cases of basic knowledge. The existence of basic knowledge forms a primary objection to the idea that knowledge is a constitutively normative state. (...) In what follows I offer a way through the apparent dilemma of having to choose between either basic knowledge or the normativity of knowledge. The solution involves homing in on a state of awareness (≈non-accidental true representation) that is distinct from knowledge and which in turn grounds the normativity of knowledge in a way that is fully consistent with the existence of basic knowledge. An upshot of this is that externalist theories of knowledge turn out to be fully compatible with the thesis that knowledgeable beliefs are always beliefs that are justified by the reasons one possesses. (shrink)
Black trust in Covid-19 vaccine efficacy: An application of Kauppinen's epistemic normativity.Maddox Larson - manuscriptdetails
In recent American politics, there has become a larger atmosphere of distrust regarding the pre-existing representative democratic system as well as the criminal justice system. This topic has quickly come more and more into focus following the 2016 Presidential Election and then throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest. However, America is not the only country that is challenging the preexisting systems, there are many countries (e.g., Canada, UK, Australia, etc.) who have recently seen opposition to government action. Throughout (...) all of these instances one questions arises: can we trust the government? In an article on the dysfunction of state institutions, Börzel poses that the systems we have in place may have originally been trusted with good reason but have eroded over time. Meanwhile, other authors (i.e., Levi) ask the question of why it even matters if we can't trust our government, since dismantling and rebuilding them would take too long and might not even be possible. I would like to explore the nature of the systems of governance and the role of trust within them, diving into whether or not we can trust governments and then an application of this information. (shrink)
African-American Philosophy in African/Africana Philosophy
Public Health in Applied Ethics
Trust in Normative Ethics
Epistemic isomorphism.Sayid R. Bnefsi - 2022 - Metaphilosophy 53 (4):543-554.details
This paper presents and defends a novel meta‐epistemological thesis, epistemic isomorphism, according to which our relations to others and to ourselves have the same pattern of relevance to our rationality. This means that correct epistemological theorizing will give formal parity to interpersonal and intrapersonal epistemic norms, such that what holds interpersonally also holds, mutatis mutandis, intrapersonally. In addition to arguing for epistemic isomorphism, the paper presents some epistemological case studies in which it is shown that the methodological and argumentative strategies (...) used by epistemologists in these case studies give expression to the idea of epistemic isomorphism as well as the argument presented here for its truth. Finally, the paper considers a possible counterexample to epistemic isomorphism based on an agent‐centered theory of justification, but it shows how to reconcile this theory with epistemic isomorphism. (shrink)
Disagreement and suspended judgement.Filippo Ferrari - 2022 - Metaphilosophy 53 (4):526-542.details
Can someone who suspends judgement about a certain proposition <p> be in a relational state of disagreement with someone who believes <p> as well as with some- one who disbelieves <p>? This paper argues for an af- firmative answer. It develops an account of the notions of suspended judgement and disagreement that explains how and why the suspender is in a relational state of disagreement with both the believer and the disbeliever about the very same proposition <p>. More specifically, the (...) paper first provides a characterisation of the norma- tive profile associated with the state of suspended judge- ment in terms of the set of normative commitments that it engenders in the context of inquiry. It then provides a characterisation of the notion of disagreement in terms the incompatibility between the sets of normative com- mitments characteristic of the three states in question— belief, disbelief, and suspension. (shrink)
Suspended Judgment in Philosophy of Mind
Controlling our Reasons.Sophie Keeling - 2022 - Noûs.details
Philosophical discussion on control has largely centred around control over our actions and beliefs. Yet this overlooks the question of whether we also have control over the reasons for which we act and believe. To date, the overriding assumption appears to be that we do not, and with seemingly good reason. We cannot choose to act for a reason and acting-for-a-reason is not itself something we do. While some have challenged this in the case of reasons for action, these claims (...) seem especially untenable regarding believing for a reason. And extending the scope of control in this way also faces the threat of regress. In the face of this orthodoxy, the present paper argues that we do in fact have control over both believing and acting for a particular reason. It also starts to develop an account of the way in which this would be possible. Given the broad importance of understanding control and agency, this paper bears on a number of topics in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and ethics. (shrink)
Agency in Philosophy of Action
Moral Responsibility in Meta-Ethics
Why You Ought to Defer: Moral Deference and Marginalized Experience.Savannah Pearlman & Williams Elizabeth - 2022 - Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 8 (2).details
In this paper we argue that moral deference is prima facie obligatory in cases in which the testifier is a member of a marginalized social group that the receiver is not and testifies about their marginalized experience. We distinguish between two types of deference: epistemic deference, which refers to believing p in virtue of trusting the testifier, and actional deference, which involves acting appropriately in response to the testimony given. The prima facie duty we propose applies to both epistemic and (...) actional deference, though defeaters may quash either or both obligations. Even if one fails to epistemically defer to the marginalized testifier, we argue that they may still be ethically obligated to act in accordance with their testimony. (shrink)
Applied Ethics, Miscellaneous in Applied Ethics
Epistemic Injustice in Epistemology
Feminist Epistemology in Epistemology
Fichte and Kant on Reason's Final Ends and Highest Ideas.Steven Hoeltzel - 2018 - Revista de Estudios Sobre Fichte 16.details
I argue that Fichte's account of pure reason and its supreme self-wrought Idea is, in its transcendental essentials, very much modeled on Kant's. The key difference between their positions, I suggest, is simply that Fichte operates with a more abstract understanding of the transcendentally basic elements of finite rationality; consequently, he arrives at a conceptually more concentrated understanding of pure reason's preeminent Idea. In section one, I supply some context for that comparison. In section two, I recount Fichte's depiction of (...) "the I as an Idea" and note some importantly related concepts and claims. In section three, I examine a pair of interestingly different approaches taken by Kant to understanding and identifying the Ideas engendered by reason's basic aims and operations. Finally, in section four, I suggest that the Jena Wissenschaftslehre reflects Fichte's tacit appropriation of the transcendentally more fundamental of those two Kantian approaches. (shrink)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte in 19th Century Philosophy
Kant: Theoretical and Practical Reason in 17th/18th Century Philosophy
The Three Basic Principles (drei Grundsätze).Steven Hoeltzel - 2020 - In Marina F. Bykova (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Fichte. pp. 327-35.details
Part One of Fichte's 1794/95 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre sets forth three basic principles (Grundsätze) as the founding claims of a 'theory of science' that should continue and consolidate Kant's work by vindicating and integrating the theoretical and practical essentials of the Critical philosophy. These principles (my translations) are: (1) "The I originally absolutely posits its own being." (2) "A not-I is absolutely opposed to the I"; ergo, "opposition in general is absolutely posited by the I." (3) "In the (...) I, the I opposes a divisible not-I to the divisible I." This essay explores the ways in which these principles both (i) structure Fichte's own post-Kantian position and (ii) seek to neutralize some important criticisms of the broader Kantian project. In particular, I argue that Fichte's principles draw upon a distinctively Kantian conception of pure-rational activity, as the autonomous origination and instatement of pure order-inducing forms: non-sensory notions that inform all truth-apt cognition, and affect-independent norms that orient all autonomous volition. Accordingly, the principle, "the I originally absolutely posits its own being" describes the transcendentally most basic instance of such activity: that pure-rational act upon which all other such acts – ergo, all articulate cognition and all principled agency – ultimately depend. For Fichte, this is an act in which the I conceptually positions rational activity as such, in its strict purity and unmitigated autonomy, as both essentially constitutive of and unconditionally normative for its own existence. Thus the first principle of Fichte's system figures the most basic pure-rational act as both theoretically determinative and practically legislative – with the consequence that even our most basic cognitive accomplishments depend upon a broadly ethical vocation intrinsic to rationality itself. After making the case for that interpretation, I also, more briefly, discuss the ways in which Fichte's principles underwrite his responses to some trenchant criticisms of the broader Kantian project: the 'Humean skepticism' of G. E. Schulze and the 'Kantian skepticism' of Salomon Maimon. (shrink)
Transcendental Arguments in Metaphilosophy
Fichte's Account of Reason and Rational Normativity.Steven Hoeltzel - 2019 - In The Palgrave Fichte Handbook. pp. 189-212.details
This essay argues for a unifying and clarifying analysis of Fichte's diverse and unusual characterizations of the nature of reason and rational normativity. Fichte equates or closely associates reason with "I-hood," "positing" (especially self-positing), "acting" (as opposed to being), "self-reverting activity," and "subject-objectivity." He also claims that reason, qua reason, harbors "an absolute tendency toward the absolute" – and even that, in the final analysis, "only reason is." I argue that we can readily grasp the meaning, interconnection, and putative justification (...) of such claims, if we suppose that, for Fichte, reason is the self-initiated instatement of self-wrought ordering forms, the first and foremost of which is the idea of precisely this type of activity in a pure and uncompromised (independent, "self-sufficient") form. (shrink)
German Idealism in European Philosophy
The Nature of Reasoning in Epistemology
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Totuuden arvon ja normatiivisuuden puolesta.Teemu Tauriainen - 2022 - In Hemmo Laiho (ed.), Valistuksen perinnöt: Suomen Filosofisen Yhdistyksen kollokvion esitelmiä. Turku, Finland: pp. 163-179.details
Totuus on nykyisellään laaja-alaisen kritiikin kohteena niin akateemisessa, poliittisessa kuin vähemmän formaalissakin kontekstissa. Puolustan filosofisesti kestävää ja selitysvoimaista totuuskäsitettä tältä laaja-alaiselta kritiikiltä argumentoimalla sen arvon ja normatiivisuuden puolesta. Totuus on välineellisesti arvokas käsite, joka mahdollistaa todellisuuden erottamisen kuvitelmasta ja toiveajattelusta. Tämän lisäksi todet uskomukset ovat välineellisesti arvokkaita moninaisten hyötyjen, kuten onnistuneiden ennustusten ja navigoinnin saavuttamisessa. Toisaalta olemme joskus kiinnostuneita totuudesta pelkästään sen itsensä takia. Totuuden normatiivisuudesta kertoo taipumuksemme pitää sitä yleisenä tiedollisten pyrkimysten päämääränä ja yhtenä uskomuksen sekä väitettävyyden oikeellisuuden standardina, (...) johon suhteessa olemme eri mieltä ja jonka puhumista edellytämme luokka- ja oikeussaleissamme sekä parlamenteissamme. Edellisen nojalla totuus ei osoittaudu pelkästään mielenkiintoiseksi teoreettisen tarkastelun kohteeksi, vaan käsitteeksi, jolla on laaja-alaista tieteellistä ja yhteiskunnallista merkittävyyttä. (shrink)
Theories of Truth in Philosophy of Language
Reasons as Reasons for Preferences.R. A. Rowland - 2022 - American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (3):297-311.details
I argue that all reasons for actions and attitudes consist in reasons for preferences; call this view RP. According to RP, reasons for A to believe that p just consist in reasons for A to prefer their believing that p to their not believing that p, and reasons for A to have a pro-attitude or perform an action just consist in reasons for A to prefer that she has that attitude/performs that action. I argue that we have strong reason to (...) accept RP because we can explain a correlation between reasons for prefer- ences and other reasons only if we accept RP. I argue that no objections undermine RP and that RP has interesting implications for the reasons for attitudes there are and for reasons fundamentalism. (shrink)
Internalism and Externalism about Reasons in Philosophy of Action
Moral Reasons in Meta-Ethics
Kant's Account of Epistemic Normativity.Reza Hadisi - forthcoming - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie.details
According to a common interpretation, most explicitly defended by Onora O'Neill and Patricia Kitcher, Kant held that epistemic obligations normatively depend on moral obligations. That is, were a rational agent not bound by any moral obligation, then she would not be bound by any epistemic obligation either. By contrast, in this paper, I argue that, according to Kant, some epistemic obligations are normatively independent from moral obligations, and are indeed normatively absolute. This view, which I call epistemicism, has two parts. (...) First, it claims that in the absence of other kinds of obligations, rational agents would still be bound by these epistemic obligations, i.e., that the latter are normatively independent. Second, it claims that, no matter what other obligations are at stake, rational agents are bound by these epistemic obligations, i.e., the normativity of these epistemic obligations is absolute in that it cannot be undercut by any moral or other sort of obligation. The argument turns on an exploratory reading of Kant's remarks in "What Is Orientation in Thinking?" (1786) about the maxim of "thinking for oneself" as the "supreme touchstone of truth." In contrast to O'Neill and Kitcher, I argue that if we interpret this maxim as stating the unifying principle of theoretical and practical reason, then we must interpret it as stating an epistemic, and not merely practical imperative. This result, I argue, vindicates epistemicism and illuminates interesting lessons about Kant's conception of the category of "epistemic" norms. Further, it helps us make headway with Kant's enigmatic remarks about the unity of practical and theoretical reason in the Groundwork, first and the second Critiques, and the Lectures on Logic. On my proposal, principles of the practical and theoretical uses of rea-son are unified through a formal epistemic principle. (shrink)
Kant: Epistemology in 17th/18th Century Philosophy
Kant: Philosophy of Logic in 17th/18th Century Philosophy
Awareness, Epistemics, and Paradigm Repair: An epistemic lexicon of terms, with definitive explanations.Michael Lucas Monterey & Michael Lucas-Monterey - manuscriptdetails
Abstract: This is necessarily an evolutionary work in progress. Its purpose and goal is enabling real progress of science, mathematics, society, and civilization. Thus, to accomplish the mission, upgrading the current sociocultural paradigm is essential. That makes holistic ontology and optimal epistemics essential to ongoing work and to further development of new theory and metatheory. Hence, the current listings of key terms, definitions, and explanations presented here provide some core concepts and supporting theorems, metatheorems, equations, and examples. That enables remedial (...) revision of relevant domains of thought and discourse. The project is also intended to inspire collaborative extension and ongoing refinement of the work. The appendices provide additional perspective. ~ A preprint draft, v.2e, for review and comment only. (shrink)
From Explanation to Recommendation: Ethical Standards for Algorithmic Recourse.Emily Sullivan & Philippe Verreault-Julien - forthcoming - Proceedings of the 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES'22).details
People are increasingly subject to algorithmic decisions, and it is generally agreed that end-users should be provided an explanation or rationale for these decisions. There are different purposes that explanations can have, such as increasing user trust in the system or allowing users to contest the decision. One specific purpose that is gaining more traction is algorithmic recourse. We first pro- pose that recourse should be viewed as a recommendation problem, not an explanation problem. Then, we argue that the capability (...) approach provides plausible and fruitful ethical standards for re- course. We illustrate by considering the case of diversity constraints on algorithmic recourse. Finally, we discuss the significance and implications of adopting the capability approach for algorithmic recourse research. (shrink)
Algorithmic Fairness in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Computer Ethics in Applied Ethics
Philosophy of Computation, Miscellaneous in Philosophy of Computing and Information
Diachronic and Interpersonal Coherence.Kenny Easwaran & Reuben Stern - forthcoming - In A. K. Flowerree & Baron Reed (eds.), Towards an Expansive Epistemology: Norms, Action, and the Social Sphere. Routledge.details
Bayesians standardly claim that there is rational pressure for agents' credences to cohere across time because they face bad (epistemic or practical) consequences if they fail to diachronically cohere. But as David Christensen has pointed out, groups of individual agents also face bad consequences if they fail to interpersonally cohere, and there is no general rational pressure for one agent's credences to cohere with another's. So it seems that standard Bayesian arguments may prove too much. Here, we agree with Christensen (...) that there is no general rational pressure to diachronically cohere, but we argue that there are particular cases in which there is rational pressure to diachronically cohere, as well as particular cases in which interpersonal probabilistic coherence is rationally required. More generally, we suggest that Bayesian arguments for coherence apply whenever a collection (of agents or time slices) has a shared dimension of value and an ability to coordinate their actions in a range of cases relevant to that value. Typically, this shared value and ability to coordinate is very strong across the time slices of one human being, and very weak across different human beings, but there are special cases where these can switch—i.e., some groups of humans will have as much reason for their beliefs to cohere across a particular range of cases as the time slices of one human usually do, but some time slices of a human will have as much freedom to differ in their beliefs from the others as the members of a group usually do. (shrink)
Bayesian Reasoning in Philosophy of Probability
Probabilistic Frameworks in Philosophy of Probability
new problems for the argument view of thought experiments.Tiegue Vieira Rodrigues & Roberto Schimitz Nitsche - 2021 - Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil: EDIPUCRS.details
Abstract: It is assumed that thought experiments are devices of imagination that can yield us beliefs constituting knowledge. Nevertheless, how thought experiments work to provide positive epistemic status is a controversial matter. One of the main approaches available in the literature to account for thought experiments is the so-called Argument View. Advocates of this view argue that thought experiments have no epistemic significance. They claim that there is not anything distinctive about thought experiments because they work just like arguments. In (...) this paper, we challenge the argument view by presenting several objections that expose its implausibility. Explicitly, we examine fundamental aspects of the view – which involve the notions of "argument" and "inference" – to demonstrate that a thinker who comes to know something through the execution of a thought experiment will hardly be considered as effectively having executed an argument or a process of inferential reasoning. -/- . (shrink)
Feeling as Consciousness of Value.Ingrid Vendrell Ferran - 2022 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (1):71-88.details
A vast range of our everyday experiences seem to involve an immediate consciousness of value. We hear the rudeness of someone making offensive comments. In seeing someone risking her life to save another, we recognize her bravery. When we witness a person shouting at an innocent child, we feel the unfairness of this action. If, in learning of a close friend's success, envy arises in us, we experience our own emotional response as wrong. How are these values apprehended? The three (...) most common answers provided by contemporary philosophy explain the consciousness of value in terms of judgment, emotion, or perception. An alternative view endorsed mainly by authors inspired by the phenomenological tradition argues that values are apprehended by an intentional feeling. In this model, it is by virtue of a feeling that objects are presented as being in different degrees and nuances fair or unfair, boring or funny, good or bad. This paper offers an account of this model of feeling and its basic features, and defends it over alternative models. To this end, the paper discusses different versions of the model circulating in current research which until now have developed in parallel rather than in mutual exchange. The paper also applies the proposed account to the moral domain and examines how a feeling of values is presupposed by several moral experiences. (shrink)
Aspects of Emotion in Philosophy of Mind
History of Meta-Ethics in Meta-Ethics
Introspection and Introspectionism in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Moral Emotion in Normative Ethics
Moral Epistemology in Meta-Ethics
Moral Intuition in Normative Ethics
Moral Judgment in Meta-Ethics
Moral Perception in Normative Ethics
Moral Phenomenology in Normative Ethics
Moral Realism and Irrealism in Meta-Ethics
Moral Value in Normative Ethics
Phenomenology and Consciousness in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
A limitation on agency in judgment.Matthew McGrath - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-21.details
To many, judgment has seemed a locus of cognitive agency, a kind of cognitive mental act. In one minimal sense, judgment is something one does. I consider whether judgment is more robustly agential: is it a kind of action done with an aim? The most attractive version of this sort of position takes judging that p to affirming that p with an alethic aim, an aim such as affirming truly. I argue that such views have unacceptable consequences. Acts done with (...) aims, in general, can be based only indirectly on evidence that one would attain the aim in so acting. It follows that if alethic aims theories of judgment were correct, a judgment that p could be based only indirectly on evidence for p. This itself would be problematic. But the problems extend further. Given the connection between judgment and belief-formation, it would follow, further, that the beliefs we form through judgment could at best be only indirectly based on evidence for p. On these theories, the direct bases for a judgment that p would have to be either a belief that p or a belief that it's likely that p. The former cannot support belief-formation and the latter supports at best epistemically inappropriate belief-formation. I conclude that there is a hard limit on how robustly agential judgment can be. (shrink)
Verdad y violencia epistémica. Desafíos al conocimiento humanista sobre lo universal (a modo de prólogo).José Ramón Fabelo Corzo - 2020 - In Camilo Valqui Cachi, José Gilberto Garza Grimaldo, Ángel Ascencio Romero, Medardo Reyes Salinas, Jaime Salazar Adame & Daniel Mora Magallón (eds.), Epistemología crítica de la violencia del capital. Verdad y violencia epistémica. Chilpancingo de los Bravo, Gro., México: pp. 13-40.details
Incluido a modo de prólogo en el libro Epistemología crítica de la violencia del capital. Verdad y violencia epistémica, el trabajo "Verdad y violencia epistémica. Desafíos al conocimiento humanista sobre lo universal" busca analizar críticamente esa forma particular de violencia que, utilizando herramientas epistemológicas, se basa en el control monopólico de la verdad y en el secuestro de la universalidad humana por parte de aquellos que encarnan los intereses asociados a la lógica del capital y que, precisamente gracias a ese (...) control y a ese secuestro, hacen pasar por verdadera y universal su propia visión del mundo. Al mismo tiempo, se devela la complicidad que con tal posición posee en los hechos, sea o no consciente de ello, aquella postura teórica que, para supuestamente enfrentar tal usurpación de la verdad y la universalidad, asume como salida la negación en abstracto de la existencia misma de la una y la otra. En contraste crítico con esta postura, el trabajo se propone mostrar las condiciones de posibilidad real y concreta del conocimiento verdadero sobre lo universal. (shrink)
Philosophy of Action, Misc in Philosophy of Action
Practical reasons for belief without stakes☆.N. G. Laskowski & Shawn Hernandez - 2021 - Analytic Philosophy 63 (1):16-27.details
Analytic Philosophy, Volume 63, Issue 1, Page 16-27, March 2022.
Pragmatic and Moral Encroachment in Epistemology
Alston, Aristotle, and Epistemic Normativity.Benjamin W. McCraw - 2022 - Logos and Episteme 13 (1):75-92.details
Alston argues that there is no such thing as a single concept of epistemic justification. Instead, there is an irreducible plurality of epistemically valuable features of beliefs: 'epistemic desiderata.' I argue that this approach is problematic for meta-epistemological reasons. How, for instance, do we characterize epistemic evaluation and do we do we go about it if there's no theoretical unity to epistemology? Alston's response is to ground all epistemic desiderata, thereby unifying epistemology, in truth and truth-conduciveness. I argue that this (...) move over-unifies epistemology, in effect, giving us a single criterion for epistemology on par with the epistemology-by-justification approach he rejects. Perhaps surprisingly, we find a similar theoretical worry in Aristotle's argument about the science of metaphysics. Aristotle's resolution in this problem by the 'analogy of being' provides a parallel framework to resolve the worries with Alston's approach. In particular, I argue that we can focus epistemic evaluation on the person of epistemic virtue: this category will be focal, unifying the disparate desiderata, without reducing to one thing all epistemic values or relations that desiderate must bear to the central value. A virtue-centric account of epistemic normativity follows: one that can remain genuinely pluralistic and yet unified as well. (shrink)
Virtue Epistemology in Epistemology
Debunking Doxastic Transparency.Ema Sullivan-Bissett - 2022 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 18 (1):(A3)5-24.details
In this paper I consider the project of offering an evolutionary debunking explanation for transparency in doxastic deliberation. I examine Nicole Dular and Nikki Fortier's (2021) attempt at such a project. I suggest that their account faces a dilemma. On the one horn, their explanation of transparency involves casting our mechanisms for belief formation as solely concerned with truth. I argue that this is explanatorily inadequate when we take a wider view of our belief formation practices. I show that Dular (...) and Fortier overstate the extent to which adaptive non-evidentially supported beliefs are rare, and the implausibility of disjunctive evolutionary systems. They should allow a role for the non-truth directed behaviour of our mechanisms of belief formation. On the other hand, we might restrict the explanation offered by Dular and Fortier to the deliberative context, that is, we might understand them as allowing for non-evidential belief formation outside of the deliberative context, but as identifying the key to explaining transparency in the truth-directed evolutionary mechanisms as they operate in the deliberative context. However, this would land them on the second horn of the dilemma: we would then have no different an explanation to one I have offered elsewhere (2018), an explanation which Dular and Fortier explicitly put aside as engaged in a project different from their own. I finish by briefly considering some broader implications relating to explaining transparency, the nature of belief, and the prospects for pragmatism. I conclude that Dular and Fortier's debunking explanation of transparency bestows an implausible role for truth in fixing our beliefs, or, if it doesn't, then we simply have the restatement of a view explicitly disavowed by the authors. We are left, then, with an explanation we ought not want, or an explanation we already had. (shrink)
Deliberation in Philosophy of Action
Delusions in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Desire and Motivation in Philosophy of Mind
Genealogical Debunking, Misc in Metaphilosophy
Pluralism and Normativity in Truth and Logic.Gila Sher - 2020 - American Philosophical Quarterly 57 (4):337-350.details
In this paper I investigate how differences in approach to truth and logic (in particular, a deflationist vs. a substantivist approach to these fields) affect philosophers' views concerning pluralism and normativity in these fields. My perspective on truth and logic is largely epistemic, focusing on the role of truth in knowledge (rather than on the use of the words "true" and "truth" in natural language), and my reference group includes Carnap (1934), Harman (1986), Horwich (1990), Wright (1992), Beall and Restall (...) (2006), Field (2009), Lynch (2009), and Sher (2016a).1 Whenever possible, I focus on positive rather than negative views on the issues involved, although in some cases this is not possible. (shrink)
Logical Semantics and Logical Truth in Logic and Philosophy of Logic
The 'Ethic of Knowledge' and Responsible Science: Responses to Genetically Motivated Racism.Natan Elgabsi - 2022 - Social Studies of Science 52 (2):303-323.details
This study takes off from the ethical problem that racism grounded in population genetics raises. It is an analysis of four standard scientific responses to the problem of genetically motivated racism, seen in connection with the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP): (1) Discriminatory uses of scientific facts and arguments are in principle 'misuses' of scientific data that the researcher cannot be further responsible for. (2) In a strict scientific sense, genomic facts 'disclaim racism', which means that an epistemically correct grasp (...) of genomics should be ethically justified. (3) Ethical difficulties are issues to be 'resolved' by an ethics institution or committee, which will guarantee the ethical quality of the research scrutinized. (4) Although population genetics occasionally may lead to racism, its overall 'value' for humankind justifies its cause as a desirable pursuit. I argue that these typical responses to genetically motivated racism supervene on a principle called the 'ethic of knowledge', which implies that an epistemically correct account has intrinsic ethical value. This principle, and its logically related ideas concerning the ethic of science, effectively avoids a deeper ethical question of responsibility in science from being raised. (shrink)
Genetic Ethics in Applied Ethics
Genetics and Molecular Biology in Philosophy of Biology
Racism in Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality
Sociology of Science in General Philosophy of Science
Logical Form and the Limits of Thought.Manish Oza - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Torontodetails
What is the relation of logic to thinking? My dissertation offers a new argument for the claim that logic is constitutive of thinking in the following sense: representational activity counts as thinking only if it manifests sensitivity to logical rules. In short, thinking has to be minimally logical. An account of thinking has to allow for our freedom to question or revise our commitments – even seemingly obvious conceptual connections – without loss of understanding. This freedom, I argue, requires that (...) thinkers have general abilities to respond to support and tension among their thoughts. And these abilities are constituted by following logical rules. So thinkers have to follow logical rules. But there isn't just one correct logic for thinking. I show that my view is consistent with logical pluralism: there are a range of correct logics, any one of which a thinker might follow. A logic for thinking does, however, have to contain certain minimal principles: Modus Ponens and Non-Contradiction, and perhaps others. We follow logical rules by exercising logical capacities, which display a distinctive first-person/third-person asymmetry: a subject can find the instances of a rule compelling without seeing them as instances of a rule. As a result, there are two limits on illogical thinking. First, thinkers have to tend to find instances of logical rules compelling. Second, thinkers can't think in obviously illogical ways. So thinking has to be logical – but not perfectly so. When we try to think, but fail, we produce nonsense. But our failures to think are often subjectively indistinguishable from thinking. To explain how this occurs, I offer an account of nonsense. To be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. Our use of nonsense within the pretence relies on the role of logical form in understanding. Finally, while the normativity of logic doesn't fall directly out of logical constitutivism, it's possible to build an attractive account of logical normativity which has logical constitutivism as an integral part. I argue that thinking is necessary for human flourishing, and that this is the source of logical normativity. (shrink)
Epistemology of Logic in Logic and Philosophy of Logic
Inferential Theories of Concepts in Philosophy of Mind
Knowledge of Syntax in Philosophy of Language
Logic and Philosophy of Logic, Misc in Logic and Philosophy of Logic
Logical Pluralism in Logic and Philosophy of Logic
Normativity of Meaning and Content in Philosophy of Language
Coherence and Knowability.Luis Rosa - 2022 - The Philosophical Quarterly 72 (4):960-978.details
Why should we avoid incoherence? An influential view tells us that incoherent combinations of attitudes are such that it is impossible for all of those attitudes to be simultaneously vindicated by the evidence. But it is not clear whether this view successfully explains what is wrong with certain akratic doxastic states. In this paper I flesh out an alternative response to that question, one according to which the problem with incoherent combinations of attitudes is that it is impossible for all (...) of those attitudes to be simultaneously knowledgeable. This alternative response explains what is wrong with akratic combinations of attitudes using commonly accepted epistemological theses. The paper still shows how this proposal is able to explain the badness of incoherent combinations involving the absence of attitudes, suspended judgment and credence. These explanations deploy the notions of knowledge and being in a position to know, instead of the notion of responding properly to the evidence. Finally, I suggest that this picture can be generalized to the realm of practical rationality as well. (shrink)
Knowability in Epistemology
The KK Principle in Epistemology
The Normativity of Logic in a Psychologistic Framework: Three Approaches.Simone Melis - 2021 - Dissertation, University of Turindetails
Contemporary psychologism has been amended for most of the objections by its opponents over a century ago. However, some authors still raise doubts about its ability to account for some peculiar properties of logic. In particular, it is argued that the psychological universality of patterns of inferential behavior is not sufficient to account for the normativity of logic. In this paper, I deal with the issue and offer three alternative solutions that do not rely on mere empirical universality. I will (...) use the works of Laurence Jonathan Cohen, Diego Marconi and Marcello D'Agostino, adapting them for the purpose of defending logical psychologism. I will therefore argue that, although more refined work on the subject is needed, contemporary psychologism has the key resources to retain its place in the philosophical debate on the foundations of logic. (shrink)