Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Methodological conservatism and social epistemology.D. Resnik - 1994 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 8 (3):247 – 264.
    This paper defends two principles of methodological conservatism on the grounds that they help to promote an effective social structure for a knowledge‐seeking community. Conservatism has some prima facie justification because it provides for an effective division of cognitive labor, it promotes the effective use of scientific resources, and it provides for a certain amount of stability. However, the principles I defend in this paper should not be treated as absolute or unconditional criteria of theory‐choice, since they can be overridden (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Representation and knowledge are not the same thing.Leslie Smith - 1999 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (5):784-785.
    Two standard epistemological accounts are conflated in Dienes & Perner's account of knowledge, and this conflation requires the rejection of their four conditions of knowledge. Because their four metarepresentations applied to the explicit-implicit distinction are paired with these conditions, it follows by modus tollens that if the latter are inadequate, then so are the former. Quite simply, their account misses the link between true reasoning and knowledge.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Deciding to Believe Again.Keith Frankish - 2007 - Mind 116 (463):523 - 547.
    This paper defends direct activism-the view that it is possible to form beliefs in a causally direct way. In particular, it addresses the charge that direct activism entails voluntarism-the thesis that we can form beliefs at will. It distinguishes weak and strong varieties of voluntarism and argues that, although direct activism may entail the weak variety, it does not entail the strong one. The paper goes on to argue that strong voluntarism is non-contingently false, sketching a new argument for that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  • (1 other version)Philosophy and machine learning.Paul Thagard - 1990 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (2):261-76.
    This article discusses the philosophical relevance of recent computational work on inductive inference being conducted in the rapidly growing branch of artificial intelligence called machine learning.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • The normativity of the mental.Nick Zangwill - 2005 - Philosophical Explorations 8 (1):1-19.
    I describe and defend the view in a philosophy of mind that I call 'Normative Essentialism', according to which propositional attitudes have normative essences. Those normative essences are 'horizontal' rational requirements, by which I mean the requirement to have certain propositional attitudes given other propositional attitudes. Different propositional attitudes impose different horizontal rational requirements. I distinguish a stronger and a weaker version of this doctrine and argue for the weaker version. I explore the consequences for knowledge of mind, and I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   47 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Intentionality and naturalism.Stephen P. Stich & Stephen Laurence - 1994 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1):159-82.
    ...the deepest motivation for intentional irrealism derives not from such relatively technical worries about individualism and holism as we.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • SINBaD neurosemantics: A theory of mental representation.Dan Ryder - 2004 - Mind and Language 19 (2):211-240.
    I present an account of mental representation based upon the ‘SINBAD’ theory of the cerebral cortex. If the SINBAD theory is correct, then networks of pyramidal cells in the cerebral cortex are appropriately described as representing, or more specifically, as modelling the world. I propose that SINBAD representation reveals the nature of the kind of mental representation found in human and animal minds, since the cortex is heavily implicated in these kinds of minds. Finally, I show how SINBAD neurosemantics can (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   50 citations  
  • Conceptual role semantics, the theory theory, and conceptual change.Ingo Brigandt - 2004 - In Conceptual role semantics, the theory theory, and conceptual change. Murcia: pp. 30-34.
    The purpose of the paper is twofold. I first outline a philosophical theory of concepts based on conceptual role semantics. This approach is explicitly intended as a framework for the study and explanation of conceptual change in science. Then I point to the close similarities between this philosophical framework and the theory theory of concepts, suggesting that a convergence between psychological and philosophical approaches to concepts is possible. An underlying theme is to stress that using a non-atomist account of concepts (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Tacit beliefs and other doxastic attitudes.Pat A. Manfredi - 1993 - Philosophia 22 (1-2):95-117.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • (1 other version)Skepticism, abductivism, and the explanatory gap.Ram Neta - 2004 - Philosophical Issues 14 (1):296-325.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • (1 other version)Skepticism and Elegance.Kevin McCain - 2016 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (1):30-43.
    _ Source: _Page Count 14 Jonathan Vogel has argued in support of an explanationist response to skepticism in several works. Central to this explanationist response is the fact that our non-skeptical view of the world is a better explanation of our experiences than its skeptical rivals. Despite the plausibility of this response to skepticism, it is not without its critics. Recently, Matthew Gifford has argued that Vogel’s response has problems on two fronts. First, Gifford argues that Vogel’s strategy for showing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Representational Kinds.Joulia Smortchkova & Michael Murez - 2020 - In Joulia Smortchkova, Krzysztof Dołęga & Tobias Schlicht (eds.), What Are Mental Representations? New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    Many debates in philosophy focus on whether folk or scientific psychological notions pick out cognitive natural kinds. Examples include memory, emotions and concepts. A potentially interesting type of kind is: kinds of mental representations (as opposed, for example, to kinds of psychological faculties). In this chapter we outline a proposal for a theory of representational kinds in cognitive science. We argue that the explanatory role of representational kinds in scientific theories, in conjunction with a mainstream approach to explanation in cognitive (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Easy Knowledge, Circularity, and the Puzzle of Reliability Knowledge.Matthias Steup - 2019 - Episteme 16 (4):453-473.
    According to externalist reliabilism and dogmatic foundationalism, it's possible to gain knowledge through a perceptual experience without being in a position to know that the experience is reliable. As a result, both of these views face the problem of making knowledge of perceptual reliability too easy, for they permit deducing perceptual reliability from particular perceptual experience without already knowing that these experiences are trustworthy. Ernest Sosa advocates a two-stage solution to the problem. At the first stage, a rich body of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Ambiguous Reference.Shaun Nichols, N. Ángel Pinillos & Ron Mallon - 2016 - Mind 125 (497):145-175.
    One of the central debates in the philosophy of language is that between defenders of the causal-historical and descriptivist theories of reference. Most philosophers involved in the debate support one or the other of the theories. Building on recent experimental work in semantics, we argue that there is a sense in which both theories are correct. In particular, we defend the view that natural kind terms can sometimes take on a causal-historical reading and at other times take on a descriptivist (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Should scientific realists be platonists?Jacob Busch & Joe Morrison - 2016 - Synthese 193 (2):435-449.
    Enhanced indispensability arguments claim that Scientific Realists are committed to the existence of mathematical entities due to their reliance on Inference to the best explanation. Our central question concerns this purported parity of reasoning: do people who defend the EIA make an appropriate use of the resources of Scientific Realism to achieve platonism? We argue that just because a variety of different inferential strategies can be employed by Scientific Realists does not mean that ontological conclusions concerning which things we should (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Another Linguistic Turn?: Review of Language, Thought and Consciousness: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology by Peter Carruthers. [REVIEW]Lawrence Kaye - 1998 - PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 4.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • TRUE Is False and Why It Matters.Robert Fischer - unknown
    Here is a challenge to IBE's epistemic credentials. If a reason is an epistemic reason for a subject to believe a proposition, then that reason increases the likelihood of the proposition's truth. But IBE relies on considerations like simplicity which do not increase the likelihood that hypotheses are truth. So, the reasons given by inference to the best explanation are not epistemic reasons. I contend that this argument fails, but not because, e.g., simplicity is truth-conducive. Rather, I show that the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)Years of moral epistemology: A bibliography.Laura Donohue & Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 1991 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 29 (S1):217-229.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • On generalising from single case studies: Epistemological reflections.Colin W. Evers & W. U. H. - 2006 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 40 (4):511–526.
    The aim of this paper is to explore the conditions under which generalisation from single case studies, in the sense of making inferences concerning a wider class of phenomena beyond a case, is reasonable. Two sets of conditions, in particular, provide the basis for our consideration of this issue. The first is an exploration of the impressive amount of empirical knowledge that is contained within the theories that are used to make observations, to classify phenomena, and to understand and interpret (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • (1 other version)Arguments from reference and the worry about dependence.Ron Mallon - 2007 - In Peter A. French & Howard K. Wettstein (eds.), Philosophy and the Empirical. Blackwell. pp. 160-183.
    This paper raises concern with the use of theories of reference in philosophical discourse and then to consider the possibility of empirically validating this concern by reference to a novel sort of “quantitative” empirical approach suggested recently by Shaun Nichols (forthcoming). The concern is whether the particular theories of reference or reference relations employed in particular philosophical discussions are actually chosen with a view to entailing or accommodating a desired philosophical outcome. I argue that such dependent selections of assumptions about (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • BonJour’s Abductivist Reply to Skepticism.James R. Beebe - 2007 - Philosophia 35 (2):181-196.
    The abductivist reply to skepticism is the view that commonsense explanations of the patterns and regularities that appear in our sensory experiences should be rationally preferred to skeptical explanations of those same patterns and regularities on the basis of explanatory considerations. In this article I critically examine Laurence BonJour’s rationalist version of the abductivist position. After explaining why BonJour’s account is more defensible than other versions of the view, I argue that the notion of probability he relies upon is deeply (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • On folk psychology and mental representation.Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2004 - In Hugh Clapin (ed.), Representation in Mind: New Approaches to Mental Representation. Elsevier. pp. 147--162.
    into the old view of the mind as a kind of “ghost inside the machine.”.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Staving off catastrophe: A critical notice of Jerry Fodor's psychosemantics.Todd Jones - 1991 - Mind and Language 6 (1):58-82.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Defusing eliminative materialism: Reference and revision.Maurice K. D. Schouten & Huib Looren de Jong - 1998 - Philosophical Psychology 11 (4):489-509.
    The doctrine of eliminative materialism holds that belief-desire psychology is massively referentially disconnected. We claim, however, that it is not at all obvious what it means to be referentially (dis)connected. The two major accounts of reference both lead to serious difficulties for eliminativism: it seems that elimination is either impossible or omnipresent. We explore the idea that reference fixation is a much more local, partial, and context-dependent process than was supposed by the classical accounts. This pragmatic view suggests that elimination (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Response to Akagi, Hughes, and Springle. [REVIEW]Edouard Machery - 2019 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (4):608-623.
    I am extremely grateful to Mikio Akagi, Nick Hughes, and Alison Springle for their insightful and challenging comments on Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds (Machery 2017). In this response, I wil...
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Why Reid was no dogmatist.Mark Boespflug - 2019 - Synthese 196 (11):4511-4525.
    According to dogmatism, a perceptual experience with p as its content is always a source of justification for the belief that p. Thomas Reid has been an extant source of inspiration for this view. I argue, however, that, though there is a superficial consonance between Reid’s position and that of the dogmatists, their views are, more fundamentally, at variance with one another. While dogmatists take their position to express a necessary epistemic truth, discernible a priori, Reid holds that if something (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Names, contents, and causes.Fred Adams & Gary Fuller - 1992 - Mind and Language 7 (3):205-21.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • (1 other version)Realism and the Epistemological Significance of Inference to the Best Explanation.Hamid Vahid - 2001 - Dialogue 40 (3):487-508.
    RÉSUMÉMalgré son usage très répandu, l'inférence à la meilleure explication a souvent été considérée avec suspicion par des théoriciens d'allégeances diverses. On lui a reproché à maintes reprises defaire reposer son recours à la simplicité et ses autres vertus explicatives sur des présuppositions métaphysiques douteuses. J'aborde ces questions, dans le présent article, dans le contexte d'une discussion large de l'usage de l'IME pour fonder notre croyance au monde extérieur. Distinguant entre la légitimité et l'efficacité de l'IME, je soutiendrai qu'elle constitue (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Occam’s Razor, Dogmatism, Skepticism, and Skeptical Dogmatism.Mark Walker - 2016 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (1):1-29.
    _ Source: _Page Count 29 Underdetermination arguments for skepticism maintain that our common sense view of the external world is no better, evidentially speaking, than some skeptical competitors. An important and well-known response by dogmatists, those who believe our commonsense view is justified, appeals to abduction or inference to the best explanation. The predominant version of this strategy, going back at least to Locke, invokes Occam’s razor: dogmatists claim the common sense view is simpler than any of its skeptical alternatives (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Social Construction and Achieving Reference.Ron Mallon - 2017 - Noûs 51 (1):113-131.
    One influential view is that at least some putatively natural human kinds are actually social constructions, understood as some real kind of thing that is produced or sustained by our social and conceptual practices. Category constructionists share two commitments: they hold that human category terms like “race” and “sex” and “homosexuality” and “perversion” actually refer to constructed categories, and they hold that these categories are widely but mistakenly taken to be natural kinds. But it is far from clear that these (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Against Arguments from Reference.Ron Mallon, Edouard Machery, Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich - 2009 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (2):332 - 356.
    It is common in various quarters of philosophy to derive philosophically significant conclusions from theories of reference. In this paper, we argue that philosophers should give up on such 'arguments from reference.' Intuitions play a central role in establishing theories of reference, and recent cross-cultural work suggests that intuitions about reference vary across cultures and between individuals within a culture (Machery et al. 2004). We argue that accommodating this variation within a theory of reference undermines arguments from reference.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   122 citations  
  • Purpose and content.J. T. Whyte - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1):45-60.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)Imagination and immortality: thinking of me.Shaun Nichols - 2007 - Synthese 159 (2):215-233.
    Recent work in developmental psychology indicates that children naturally think that psychological states continue after death. One important candidate explanation for why this belief is natural appeals to the idea that we believe in immortality because we can't imagine our own nonexistence. This paper explores this old idea. To begin, I present a qualified statement of the thesis that we can't imagine our own nonexistence. I argue that the most prominent explanation for this obstacle, Freud's, is problematic. I go on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • (1 other version)Philosophy and Machine Learning.Paul Thagard - 1990 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (2):261-276.
    Philosophers since the ancient Greeks have investigated the nature of different kinds of inference. Although deductive inference in the form of Aristotelian syllogisms and Fregean formal logic has predominated, much attention has also been paid to induction, inference where the conclusion does not follow necessarily from the premises.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • (1 other version)A Deductive Argument for the Representational Theory of Thinking.William G. Lycan - 1993 - Mind and Language 8 (3):404-420.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Reasons and Entailment.Bart Streumer - 2007 - Erkenntnis 66 (3):353-374.
    What is the relation between entailment and reasons for belief? In this paper, I discuss several answers to this question, and I argue that these answers all face problems. I then propose the following answer: for all propositions p1,...,pn and q, if the conjunction of p1,..., and pn entails q, then there is a reason against a person's both believing that p1,..., and that pn and believing the negation of q. I argue that this answer avoids the problems that the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • A simple approach towards recapturing consistent theories in paraconsistent settings.Jc Beall - 2013 - Review of Symbolic Logic 6 (4):755-764.
    I believe that, for reasons elaborated elsewhere (Beall, 2009; Priest, 2006a, 2006b), the logic LP (Asenjo, 1966; Asenjo & Tamburino, 1975; Priest, 1979) is roughly right as far as logic goes.1 But logic cannot go everywhere; we need to provide nonlogical axioms to specify our (axiomatic) theories. This is uncontroversial, but it has also been the source of discomfort for LP-based theorists, particularly with respect to true mathematical theories which we take to be consistent. My example, throughout, is arithmetic; but (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  • The normativity of naturalistic epistemology.Markus Lammenranta - 1998 - Philosophia 26 (3-4):337-358.
    Naturalistic epistemology is accused of ruling out the normative element of epistemology. Different naturalistic responses are considered. It is argued that the content of attributions of knowledge is best understood in purely descriptive terms. So their normative force is merely hypothetical. Attributions of justified belief, on the other hand, do have intrinsic normativity. This derives from their role in our first-person deliberation of what to believe. It is suggested that the content of them is best captured in naturalistic terms by (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Review of The Social Psychology of Morality. [REVIEW]Michael Klenk - 2016 - Metapsychology Online 20 (48):1-8.
    If you put chimpanzees from different communities together you can expect mayhem - they are not keen on treating each other nicely. There is closely related species of apes, however, whose members have countless encounters with unrelated specimen on a daily basis and yet almost all get through the day in one piece - that species is us, homo sapiens. But what makes us get along, most of the time? Morality as such is, perhaps surprisingly, not a mainstream research topic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Knowledgeable assertion in the image of knowledgeable belief.Nick Hughes - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (2):168-184.
    ABSTRACTI describe two ways of thinking about what constitutes a knowledgeable assertion – the ‘orthodox view’ and the ‘isomorphic view’. I argue that we should discard the orthodox view and replace it with the isomorphic view. The latter is more natural and has greater theoretical utility than the former.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Replies to Kane, McCormick, and Vargas.Shaun Nichols - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (10):2511-2523.
    This is a reply to discussions by Robert Kane, Kelly McCormick, and Manuel Vargas of Shaun Nichols, Bound: Essays on Free Will and Responsibility.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Commentary on Gentzler 1.Predrag Cicovacki - 1994 - Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 10 (1):296-311.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • On Two Main Themes in Gutting's What Philosophers Know.William G. Lycan - 2013 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 51 (1):112-120.
    This paper addresses each of two of Gutting's three main contentions: that like anyone else, philosophers are entitled to begin with what they find obvious and that philosophy has produced a distinctive body of knowledge. I emphatically agree with the first contention and expand on it, defending a stronger claim. The second contention I dispute, in spirit if not in letter, on each of several grounds.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Holisme, référence et irréductibilité du mental.Martin Montminy - 2005 - Dialogue 44 (3):419-437.
    I examine in detail the argument vaguely suggested by Davidson to the effect that holism entails the irreducibility of the mental. I defend this argument against two objections often made against arguments that attempt to derive metaphysical theses from premises that concern our ordinary criteria for applying terms. I appeal to two-dimensional semantics to explain the links between these criteria and issues about reference and reduction. I show how the irreducibility of the mental follows from the holistic and flexible character (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Knowledge, Naturalism, and Cognitive Ethology: Kornblith’s Knowledge and its Place in Nature.José Luis Bermúdez - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 127 (2):299-316.
    This paper explores Kornblith's proposal in "Knowledge and its Place in Nature" that knowledge is a natural kind that can be elucidated and understood in scientific terms. Central to Kornblith's development of this proposal is the claim that there is a single category of unreflective knowledge that is studied by cognitive ethologists and is the proper province of epistemology. This claim is challenged on the grounds that even unreflective knowledge in language-using humans reflects forms of logical reasoning that are in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Malfunctions.Paul Sheldon Davies - 2000 - Biology and Philosophy 15 (1):19-38.
    A persistent boast of the historical approach to functions is that functional properties are normative. The claim is that a token trait retains its functional status even when it is defective, diseased, or damaged and consequently unable to perform the relevant task. This is because historical functional categories are defined in terms of some sort of historical success -- success in natural selection, typically -- which imposes a norm upon the performance of descendent tokens. Descendents thus are supposed to perform (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations