Dreyfus presents Todes's (2001) republished Body and World as an anticipatory response to McDowell (1994) which shows how preconceptual perception can ground conceptual thought. I argue that Dreyfus is mistaken on this point: Todes's claim that perceptual experience is preconceptual presupposes an untenable account of conceptual thought. I then show that Todes nevertheless makes two important contributions to McDowell's project. First, he develops an account of perception as bodily second nature, and as a practical-perceptual openness to the world, which constructively (...) develops McDowell's view. Second, and more important, this account highlights the practical and perceptual dimension of linguistic competence. The result is that perception is conceptual "all the way down" only because discursive conceptualization is perceptual and practical "all the way up". This conjunction of McDowell and Todes on the bodily dimensions of discursive practice also vindicates Davidson's and Brandom's criticisms of McDowell's version of empiricism. (shrink)

Two of the most fundamental distinctions in metaphysics are (1) that between reality (or things in themselves) and appearance, the R/A distinction, and (2) that between entities that are fundamental (or real, etcetera) and entities that are ontologically or existentially dependent, the F/D distinction. While these appear to be two very different distinctions, in Buddhist metaphysics they are combined, raising questions about how they are related. In this paper I argue that plausible versions of the R/A distinction are essentially a (...) special kind of F/D distinction, and conversely, that many F/D distinctions imply an R/A distinction. Nevertheless, while this does suggest that the F/D distinction is more basic than the R/A distinction, it does not favor a particular understanding of the F/D distinction. There are many kinds of existential or ontological dependence that cannot be meaningfully combined into a single notion, and reality does not force us to accept any specific kind of dependence as more fundamental. Consequently, what we consider to be ‘real’, ‘fundamental’, or ‘really existing’ is not entirely given by reality, but partially up to us. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin’s interpretivism contains significant elements which might be both regarded as advantages and disadvantages of this legal theory. Among them, the main one is the concept of “theoretical ascent”. He deliberately targets many pragmatist theories, especially in moral and legal philosophy, with the aid of this concept. On the other hand, this concept, overloaded with metaphysical presuppositions, is highly susceptible to well-known pragmatistic criticisms. So, in this essay, I shall follow two main objectives: 1) I would try to remove (...) superfluous, metaphysical assumptions from his legal theory and adjust it finely to everyday practices of judges and lawyers, thereby increasing its practicality; 2) I would try to show that his interpretivism, grounded on the concept of “theoretical ascent”, could better explain the significant contribution of “theorization” to legal practices, compared to pragmatistic explanations, provided it reduces its notorious metaphysical connotations. In other words, I shall argue that an adjustment on both sides in this conflict say, at the parts of legal interpretivism and legal pragmatism, would lead us to a more inclusive legal theory which does better justice to both “theoretical and practical aspects” of legal practices in everyday life. (shrink)

The notion of conceptual normativity is grounded on the idea that our conceptual contents are established by the norms of the discursive social practices we engage in. This idea involves two major problems. First, where do the norms of discursive practices come from and how can the contents that they establish be objective? Second, what is the role of the vocabulary that we use to express such norms as explicit rules? This article draws the outline of an account that could (...) possibly answer both questions. First, it explores the viability of a naturalism about conceptual normativity. Second, it defines the characters of a rational expressivist analysis of the language of the rules. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline and defend a novel approach to alethic pluralism, the thesis that truth has more than one metaphysical nature: where truth is, in part, explained by reference, it is relational in character and can be regarded as consisting in correspondence; but where instead truth does not depend upon reference it is not relational and involves only coherence. In the process, I articulate a clear sense in which truth may or may not depend upon reference: this involves (...) distinguishing semantic denotation from pragmatic speaker reference and claiming that there may or may not exist a metasemantic connection between these two notions. Finally, I argue that reference is not in general inscrutable—that this metasemantic connection does exist in the case of our ordinary discourse about present macroscopic concrete objects—but that it is in pure mathematics, where reference cannot be secured, and which therefore plays no role in accounting for truth. In this manner, alethic pluralism is upheld. (shrink)

The notion of perceptual content is commonly introduced in the analysis of perception. It stems from an analogy between perception and propositional attitudes. Both kinds of mental states, it is thought, have conditions of satisfaction. I try to show that on the most plausible account of perceptual content, it does not determine the conditions under which perceptual experience is veridical. Moreover, perceptual content must be bipolar (capable of being correct and capable of being incorrect), whereas perception as a mental state (...) is not (if it is veridical, it is essentially so). This has profound consequences for the epistemological view that perception is a source of knowledge. I sktech a two-level epistemology which is consistent with this view. I conclude that the analogy between perception and propositional attitudes, from which the notion of perceptual content is born, may be more misleading than it is usually thought. (shrink)

Coherence is a measure of how much our beliefs hang together. Understanding is achieved when we see that something is not just a brute, isolated fact. This suggests that it might be possible to use the extant probabilistic measures of coherence to formulate a measure of understanding. We attempt to do so, but it turns out that a coherence theory runs into trouble with the asymmetry of understanding. We identify four difficulties and show how they have been solved by a (...) unification approach to explanation. We also identify four advantages of the coherence approach, and assess the possibilities of reconciling the strengths of the two approaches.La coherencia es una medida sobre cuanta interdependencia hay entre nuestras creencias. La comprension se obtiene cuando vemos que algo no es un hecho bruto, aislado. Esto sugiere la posibilidad de usar las medidas probabilisticas de coherencia al uso para elaborar una medida de la comprension. Explorare esta posibilidad, a pesar de que una teoria de la coherencia tropieza con problemas aqui dado el caracter asimetrico de la comprension. Identifico cuatro dificultades al respecto y muestro como han sido resueltas mediante un enfoque de la explicacion basado en la nocion de unificacion. Tambien identifico cuatro ventajas en la aproximacion desde la coherencia y examino que perspectivas hay de reconciliar los puntos fuertes de ambos planteamientos. (shrink)

According to Rorty, Davidson and Brandom, to have an experience is to be caused by our senses to hold a perceptual belief. This article argues that the phenomenon of seeing-as cannot be explained by such a conception of perceptual experience. First, the notion of experience defended by the aforementioned authors is reconstructed. Second, the main features of what Wittgenstein called “seeing aspects” are briefly presented. Finally, several arguments are developed in order to support the main thesis of the article: seeing-as (...) cannot be explained by the conception of experience defended by Rorty, Davidson and Brandom. (shrink)

Among epistemologists, it is common to assume that insofar as coherence bears on the justification of belief, the only relevant coherence relations are those _within_ an individual subject’s web of beliefs. After clarifying this view and exploring some plausible motivations for it, we argue that this individualistic account of the epistemic relevance of coherence fails to account for central facets of scientific practice. In its place we propose a social account of coherence. According to the view we propose, a scientist (...) _S_’s belief that _p_ is _prima facie_ unjustified if this belief negatively coheres with justified scientific claims in her scientific community. This account of coherence yields an epistemology for scientific belief which, we argue, has all of the benefits and none of the liabilities of its more individualistic predecessor. (shrink)

Hasok Chang is developing a new form of pragmatic scientific realism that aims to reorient the debate away from truth and towards practice. Central to his project is replacing truth as correspondence with his new notion of ‘operational coherence’, which is introduced as: 1) A success term with probative value to judge and guide epistemic activities. 2) A more useful alternative than truth as correspondence in guiding scientific practice. I argue that, given its current construal as neither necessary nor sufficient (...) for success, operational coherence is too weak and fails to satisfy both 1) and 2). I offer a stronger construal of operational coherence which aims to improve on Chang’s account by tying it to systematic success. This makes operational coherence necessary and sufficient for success. This new account, if successful, rescues 1) but not 2). I then take a step back and try to locate Chang’s pragmatic realism within the broader pragmatist tradition by comparing his views to the founding fathers Peirce, James and Dewey. I also assess to what extent we should consider Chang’s position ‘realist’, arguing that despite the many relativists threads running through it, Chang’s pragmatic realism is deserving of the realist label because its aims to maximize our learning from reality, even if it falls short of what many traditional realist are happy to accept as realism. I finish with comments on the epistemology of science pointing out that there is nothing intrinsic about a practice-based philosophy of science that precludes having both operational coherence and correspondence and highlighting that given a proper understanding these two notions could, in fact, be understood as complementary. I suggest one way this could be done. (shrink)

Tarski's theory of truth brings out the question of whether he intended his theory to be a correspondence theory of truth and whether, whatever his intentions, his theory is in fact a correspondence theory. The aim of this paper is to answer both questions. The answer to the first question depends on Tarski's relevant assertions on semantics and his conception of truth. In order to answer the second question Popper's and Davidson's interpretations of Tarski's truth theory are examined; to this (...) end both Tarski's definition of truth in terms of satisfaction and the T-sentences are taken into account. (shrink)

What is the relation between our beliefs, or thoughts in general, and the perceptual experience of the world that gives rise to those beliefs? Donald Davidson is usually taken to have a well-known answer to this question that runs as follows: while our beliefs are, at least in part, caused by our experience, such experience does not thereby count as providing a rational ground for those beliefs; our beliefs are thus evidentially grounded in other beliefs, but not in the experience (...) that gives rise to them. John McDowell, among others, has challenged this Davidsonian picture on the grounds that it actually severs the connection between beliefs and their proper evidential grounds. Against such a view, this paper argues the Davidsonian position grounds belief in the specificity of our own locatedness in the world, and in the more general and prior embeddedness of belief in the world that is a part of the very concept of belief. (shrink)

This essay introduces ‘The Puzzle of Faith,’ which highlights an apparent tension between faith and belief. To resolve this tension, I will present a solution to The Puzzle of Faith by identifying the sort of cognitive attitude that is sufficient for faith. I will argue two theses. That the cognitive attitude in religious faith need not be belief in the philosopher’s regimented sense, but it can be an attitude which I call creedal acceptance. If there are cases in which faith (...) entails belief, then these ‘beliefs’ are different from the evidentially vulnerable beliefs talked about in philosophical literature. My second thesis is a linguistic thesis, which seeks to argue that the way the word belief is used in everyday speech does not typically refer to belief in the philosopher’s sense, but refers to something closer to what I am calling creedal acceptance. (shrink)

Epistemic warrant for Husserl is closely tied to his phenomenological method and his main philosophical theme: intentionality. By investigating the lived experience of intentional givenness he elaborates what being a justificatory reason amounts to and thereby develops his specific conception of epistemic justification: intuitive fulfillment of a signitive intention which achieves evidence as the experienced, subjectively accessible presence of the “thing itself.” Terminologically, Husserl calls this Ausweisung. The intuitively fulfilled givenness of the intended, its self-givenness, is the ultimate reason for (...) its epistemic justification. For Husserl a “space of reasons” is thus is tied to and made possible only by means of the fundamental accomplishment of intentionality: the conscious presence of the world itself which surpasses the classical epistemological division between inner and outer realm, mind and world. By following Husserl’s development from the Logical Investigations up to his phenomenological version of transcendental idealism, the role of epistemic justification qua demonstration of intuitive fulfillment will be spelled out according to the theses above. In the last part of the paper I will examine Husserl’s position with respect to discussions on justification in the Philosophy of Mind and analytic epistemology. (shrink)

Whether Husserl is a conceptualist has been heatedly debated among contemporary Husserl scholars. The present article intends to join the debate by asking the question of how, in the Husserlian context, intuitive acts fulfill signitive ones. On the one hand, those who take Husserl to be a conceptualist hold the content-identity theory, arguing that intuitive act and signitive act have the same content, so that the former can fulfill the latter. On the other hand, the non-conceptualists defend the object-identity theory (...) and claim that it is the identity of object of intuitive and signitive act that makes fulfillment possible. On the basis of a careful reading of the sixth investigation of Husserl’s Logical Investigations, the article proposes a dynamic content-identity theory, in which the identity of content does not mean that intuitive act and signitive act have the identical content accidentally, but rather, in the dynamic fulfillment process, the intuitive act obtains the content that overflows into it from the signitive act, so that the two acts have the identical content. And this article shows how the dynamic content-identity theory places Husserl in the conceptualist camp while avoiding certain difficulties of either plain content-identity theory or object-identity theory. (shrink)

Mark Alfano claims that the heuristics and biases literature supports inferential cognitive situationism, i.e., the view that most of our inferential beliefs are arrived at and retained by means of unreliable heuristics rather than intellectual virtues. If true, this would present virtue reliabilists with an unpleasant choice: they can either accept inferential skepticism, or modify or abandon reliabilism. Alfano thinks that the latter course of action is most plausible, and several reliabilists seem to agree. I argue that this is not (...) the case. If situationism is true, then inferential non-skepticism is no more plausible than reliabilism. But inferential cognitive situationism is false. The heuristic-based inferences that facilitate successful perception and communication have proven remarkably accurate, and even the psychological research on inductive reasoning does not support Alfano’s situationism. More generally, negative assessments of human reasoning tend to ignore the fact that the research on cognitive biases focuses primarily on the performance of individuals in isolation. Several studies suggest that we reason much more effectively when in critical dialogue with others, which highlights the fact that our epistemic performance depends not only on the inner workings of our cognitive processes, but on the environments in which they operate. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to discuss the nature of nonconceptual, as opposed to conceptual, states and their content, by exploring the suggestion that the distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual be mapped onto the distinction between the linguistic and the nonlinguistic. This approach gives special relevance to our intuitions about the cognitive relationship between small children and adults, especially regarding the acquisition of concepts, in the course of normal cognitive development. Assuming that there is a developmental challenge (...) to be met, the paper considers both the conceptualist and nonconceptualist strategies used to meet it; and concludes that conceptualism is a more satisfying option. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers are committed – either implicitly or explicitly – to Propositionalism about thought-experimental intuitions. According to this view, thought-experimental intuitions are phenomenally conscious, spontaneous, and non-theoretical; most importantly, Propositionalists claim that intuitions bear consciously accessible propositional content. The negative project of this essay is a critique of, the rejection of which is tantamount to rejecting Propositionalism. In addition, I propose an alternative position – namely, Interpretationalism. According to Interpretationalism, intuitions possess the features ascribed in -; however, they do (...) not bear consciously accessible propositional content. Instead, intuitions acquire cognitive significance by virtue of being interpreted in light of a subject’s background beliefs. (shrink)

In order to illustrate the nature of the indeterminacy of meaning, Donald Davidson sometimes compares it to the fact that we can measure length or temperature on different scales. In the following paper I try to explain first why we are supposed to expect such an analogy, given the semantics of the word meaning and of the word length or temperature. In the second part I examine how close the analogy is by distinguishing different forms of indeterminacy of meaning (viz., (...) the indeterminacy of reference and the indeterminacy of truth) and ask whether both forms have an equivalent in a theory of measurement. I shall conclude that this is indeed the case. (shrink)

ResumenEn este trabajo presento brevemente algunos de los argumentos que han puesto en duda aquella tesis según la cual el hecho de percibir las cosas como siendo de determinada manera depende del repertorio de conceptos que uno posee. Los autores de esos argumentos consideran que la percepción es más bien un modo no conceptual de representar el mundo. Mi propósito será mostrar que el debate entre ambas posturas ha puesto de manifiesto una serie de dificultades para las cuales no parece (...) que los defensores de la tesis conceptualista sean capaces de ofrecer una solución satisfactoria.Palabras clavePercepción, creencia, contenido no conceptual, justificaciónAbstract In this paper I briefly present some of the arguments which raised doubt about the thesis according to which perceiving things as being in a given way depends on the background concepts one possess. The authors of these arguments consider that perception is a nonconceptual way of representing the world. My purpose will be to show that the discussion between both views has put forward several difficulties for which defenders of the conceptualist thesis seem to be unable to offer a satisfactory solution.KeywordsPerception, belief, nonconceptual content, justification. (shrink)

Essays in Moral Scepticism, by JoyceRichard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 288.

A Moderate Anti-realist approach to truth and meaning, built around the concept of knowability, will be introduced and argued for in this essay. Our starting point will be the two fundamental anti-realists principles that claim that neither truth nor meaning can outstrip knowability and our focus will be on the challenge of adequately formalizing these principles and incorporating them into a formal theory. Accordingly, the author will introduce a MAR truth operator that is built on a distinction between being true (...) and being factual. He will show then that this approach partitions propositions into eight classes, on the basis of their knowability. We will then ask the following question: Given the anti-realist principles, what kind of theory of propositional meaning can properly explain the meaninglessness of fully unknowable propositions? This question will lead us to the claim that the meaning/content of propositions should be identified not with the set of possible worlds in which the propositions are true/factual, but rather in which they are known. This modified approach will then be used to analyze both the Liar Paradox and the Strengthened Liar. To anticipate the conclusion of this essay, it will be shown that a MAR framework can render definite truth and factuality values to the Liar sentence and it will also confirm our intuition that such paradoxical sentences are devoid of proper meaning. (shrink)

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. In this short comment I discuss some aspects of William Duica's interpretation of Davidson's epistemology in a recent book. After a brief review of the book, I focus on three central issues of Duica's interpretation. First, I argue that his reading of Davidson's criticism of the scheme/content dualism is too restrictive and leaves open the possibility of an empiricist direct realism. Second, I argue in his reading Duica inadvertently commits himself to an empiricism of this sort and, as a result, his interpretation is in tension with Davidson's own coherentism. Finally, I discuss some aspects of Duica's interpretation of Davidsonian triangulation. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists generally hold that, in light of the empirical data, a subject lacks infallible access to her own mental states. However, while subjects certainly are fallible in some ways, I show that the data fails to discredit that a subject has infallible access to her own occurrent thoughts and judgments. This is argued, first, by revisiting the empirical studies, and carefully scrutinizing what is shown exactly. Second, I argue that if the data were interpreted to rule out all (...) such infallibility, the relevant psychological studies would be self-effacing. For they adopt a methodology where a subject is simply presumed to know her own second-order thoughts and judgments--as if she were infallible about them. After all, what she expresses as her second-order judgment is trusted as accurate without independent evidence — even though such judgments often misrepresent the subject’s first-order states. The upshot is that such studies do not discredit all infallibility hypotheses regarding self-attributions of occurrent states. (shrink)

According to the truth-conduciveness problem of coherentism, the coherence theory of justification can hardly show that coherentist justification is truth-conducive. This problem is generally conceived as the most recalcitrant problem with the coherence theory. The purpose of this paper is to show that it does not pose a serious problem for a certain version of coherentism, namely a Sellarsian explanatory coherence theory of justification combined with the deflationary theory of truth. On this version of coherentism, our epistemic goal is to (...) gradually improve our conceptual framework so as to maximize its explanatory coherence, and there is no substantial norm of truth independent of the norms of justification, so that we cannot evaluate the truth-conduciveness of a belief independently of the norms of justification. I argue that this version of coherentism can cope with the truth-conduciveness problem. (shrink)

One widely-endorsed argument in the experimental philosophy literature maintains that intuitive judgments are unreliable because they are influenced by the order in which thought experiments prompting those judgments are presented. Here, we explicitly state this argument from ordering effects and show that any plausible understanding of the argument leads to an untenable conclusion. First, we show that the normative principle is ambiguous. On one reading of the principle, the empirical observation is well-supported, but the normative principle is false. On the (...) other reading, the empirical observation has only weak support, and the normative principle, if correct, would impugn the reliability of deliberative reasoning, testimony, memory, and perception, since judgments in all these areas are sensitive to ordering in the relevant sense. We then reflect on what goes wrong with the argument. (shrink)

According to intentionalism, perceptual experience is a mental state with representational content. When it comes to the epistemology of perception, it is only natural for the intentionalist to hold that the justificatory role of experience is at least in part a function of its content. In this paper, I argue that standard versions of intentionalism trying to hold on to this natural principle face what I call the “defeasibility problem”. This problem arises from the combination of standard intentionalism with further (...) plausible principles governing the epistemology of perception: that experience provides defeasible justification for empirical belief, and that such justification is best construed as probabilification. After exploring some ways in which the standard intentionalist could deal with the defeasibility problem, I argue that the best option is to replace standard intentionalism by what I call “phenomenal intentionalism”. Where standard intentionalism construes experiences as of p as having the content p, phenomenal intentionalism construes experiences as of p as having “phenomenal” or “looks contents”: contents of the form Lp. (shrink)

I defend both conceptualists and nonconceptualists against an attack which has been leveled at them by critics such as Byrne (Perception and conceptual content In: Steup M, Sosa E (eds) Contemporary debates in epistemology. Blackwell, Malden, pp 231-250, 2005), Speaks (Philos Rev 114:359–398, 2005), and Crowther (Erkenntnis 65:5–276, 2006). They distinguish a ‘state’ reading and a ‘content’ reading of ‘(non)conceptual’ and argue that many arguments on either side support only the respective state views, not the respective content views. To prepare (...) the ground for my defense, I argue for an understanding of the state view in terms of concept exercise rather than concept possession and provide an overview of versions of conceptualism and nonconceptualism of different strengths. I then argue that conceptualists and nonconceptualists tacitly accept a so-called ‘state-to-content’ principle, show that existing defenses of this principle fail, and provide a new defense of it. It draws on the sources of the nonconceptualism debate, viz. the need to do justice both to the phenomenology of experience and to its epistemological role and to account for the existence of perceptual content and thought content. I argue that epistemological considerations together with considerations from the subject’s perspective support the claim that conceptual thought has conceptual and propositional content, whereas nonconceptual experience has nonconceptual and non-propositional content. (shrink)

How do we become aware of the properties or states that are expressed by gestures, utterances, and facial expressions? This paper argues that expression raises peculiar problems, distinct from those of property perception in general. It argues against some current accounts of awareness of expressed states, before proposing an account which appeals to the notion of empathy. Finally, it situates the proposed account within current discussions of expression in the philosophy of music.

The over-arching claim that I intend to defend in this paper is that while widespread ‘local’ error is conceivable, we cannot, in the end, make sense of the radical sceptical idea that all our perceptual beliefs might be false – that no one has, as it were, ever been in touch with an ‘external world’ at all. To this end, I will show that an asymmetry exists between ‘local’ and ‘global’ sceptical scenarios, such that the possibility of ‘local’ error does (...) not imply that ‘global’ error must also be possible. Instead, we will see that what gives rise to the radical sceptical problem is an unquestioned acceptance of the ‘New Evil Genius Thesis’ (NET) – the notion that I and my ‘envatted’ counterpart share the same perceptual experiences, even though my benighted twin has never had any contact with an ‘external’ reality. Although most contemporary epistemologists take NET for granted, I will show that it cannot, ultimately, be rendered intelligible, and, consequently, that neither can the ‘global’ sceptical scenario that depends on it. (shrink)

resumo Um empirismo conseqüente depende da atribuição de um significado racional à nossa experiência perceptiva. Sem isto, a experiência perceptiva fica segregada do universo das crenças. Por outro lado, a experiência perceptiva não pode ser tratada como se fosse uma criação nossa. Ela deve ser vista como uma contribuição vinda de fora, que chega até nós através de nossos órgãos sensíveis. Estas duas exigências podem ser cumpridas desde que concebamos a experiência como a realização de capacidades conceituais na própria consciência (...) sensível. palavras-chave experiência, percepção, capacidades conceituais, crenças, racionalidade. (shrink)

Some of the contemporary advocates of Islamic Philosophy believe that the view of the modern Islamic philosophers regarding knowledge by presence can solve some of the issues present in the theory of knowledge. The origins of this belief are probably two popular theories: Allama Tabatabai’s view that acquired knowledge comes back to knowledge by presence and Ayatollah Misbah Yazdi’s view regarding the reference of basic axioms to knowledge by presence. According to the first view, all acquired knowledge is rooted in (...) knowledge by presence. The main issue is regarding sensory beliefs and the circumstances of the justified relationship between sensory experience on one hand and sensory beliefs on the other; however, in this theory, no explanation has been provided regarding how knowledge by presence can be converted to acquire knowledge which has been derived from it. Therefore, this view does not help in solving that important issue. Similarly, according to Ayatollah Misbah’s view, the guarantee of the validity of basic axioms is because they are based on knowledge by presence. However, various reasons show knowledge by presence cannot provide the validity guarantee for basic axioms. (shrink)

Realists typically suppose that nonepistemic truth is an independent condition on propositional knowledge. Few philosophers, however, have seriously questioned the meta-epistemic consequences of combining alethic and epistemic variants of realism. In this paper I aim to show that the truth condition in the customary definition of knowledge presents an important problem for the realist at higher epistemic levels. According to my argument, traditional epistemic-logical analyses of metaknowledge fail because of their extensionalism and certain presuppositions they have about the satisfaction of (...) the truth condition. I further suggest that we need a different approach to metaknowledge if (1) we want to retain alethic realism, and (2) we want our epistemological accounts to adequately explicate the meta-epistemic states of actual, evidence-bound cognitive agents. (shrink)

Suppose for a moment, that J.R.R. Tolkien, the famous author of the cult fantasy saga Lord of the Rings, did not publish anything of his writings during his lifetime; suppose that after his death the manuscripts of all his writings are lying on his table. Where, then, is the Middlearth, the glorious land of hobbits, dwarfs, elfs and human heroes, situated? We might be tempted to say that it is within our world, namely inside the pile of the papers on (...) the writer’s table - for it exists solely through the letters written on these papers. However, to say this would be wrong - surely we do not expect that should the heroes of the book walk in a straight line long enough, they would cross the boundaries of the book and appear in Mr. Tolkien’s room. Middlearth is, of course, not within our world - despite existing solely due to certain things which are within it. Now the situation is not substantially different actually, when Middlearth does not exist solely through a single pile of papers, but rather through millions of printed copies of Tolkien’s books and through the minds of millions of their readers. Again, the land exists exclusively through the existence of entities which are parts of our world, but this does not mean that the land itself is a part of our world. The point of this anecdotal excursion is now that this relationship between our world and Middlearth is, in a sense, similar to the relationship between our physical space of things and „the space of reasons“ ; or between „the causal story“ and „the justificatory story“. Like Middlearth, the space of reasons exists exclusively due to us, humans, and our minds, and in this sense we might be tempted to situate it in our world, to see it as a certain, perhaps scattered, compartment of the world of things within which we live; but just as in the case of Middlearth, this might be dangerously misguiding. (shrink)

The issue of the nature of cognitive experience has been a subject of lively debate in recent works on epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. During this debate, the relevance of Kant to contemporary theories of cognition has been re-discovered. However, participants in this debate disagree whether Kant was a conceptualist or a non-conceptualist, with regard to the character of intuitions. The central point of controversy concerns whether or not Kant’s sensible intuitions involve understanding and have a conceptual content. In (...) this paper, I show that, despite their disagreements, both sides share a number of common presuppositions, which have determined a biased framework for the reading of Kant. My principal aim in this article is to reconcile the case for conceptualism with those interpretations which argue that intentionality and conceptuality can be separated. To achieve it, I present my own reconstruction of Kant’s theory of cognition, relying essentially on Kantian considerations found in the B-version of the Transcendental Deduction, and offer a new interpretation of Kantian conceptualism. (shrink)

The paper considers the two main challenges to scientific realism, stemming from confirmation holism and the underdetermination thesis as well as from semantic holism and the incommensurability thesis. Against the first challenge, it is argued that there are other criteria besides agreement with experience that enable a rational evaluation of competing theories. Against the second challenge, it is argued that at most a thesis of local incommensurability can be defended that is compatible with a minimal version of scientific realism, namely (...) conjectural realism. However, in order to establish a fully-fledged scientific realism, one has to refute the local incommensurability thesis as well, showing how a comparison is possible on the level of the proper concepts of the theories in question. The paper examines the prospects for such a comparison, distinguishing three cases. (shrink)

The author argues that coherence views of justification, in spite of their crucial insight into the interpenetration of our beliefs, neglect a key constraint on justification: they are unable to accommodate the epistemic significance of experience. Epistemic justification is not just a function of our beliefs and their interrelations. Both, beliefs and experiences, are relevant to the justification of an empirical belief. Experience is not itself a form of belief or disposition to believe; it cannot be analyzed in doxastic terms. (...) And, yet, nondoxastic experiences play a justificatory role, not merely a causal role. The positive epistemic status of a perceptual belief depends upon being appeared to in appropriate ways. It is important that, for an ordinary perceptual belief to be justified, one does not have to believe that one is appeared to in these ways. It is the experiences themselves, the ways of being appeared to, not our beliefs about them, that are required for justification. (shrink)

It is claimed that the radical sceptical problem that is the focus of much of contemporary epistemological discussion in fact divides into two logically distinct subproblems --a formulation that turns on the closure principle, and a second formulation which turns on the underdetermination principle. The Wittgensteinian account of the structure of rational evaluation is set out, and it is shown how this proposal --at least when properly formulated--can deal with closure-based radical scepticism. It is also claimed, however, that this account (...) fails to gain any purchase on underdetermination-based radical scepticism. The antidote to this latter form of radical scepticism lies elsewhere--with, it is suggested, epistemological disjunctivism. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).