Rok 1929 przyjmuję jako datę ogłoszenia reizmu, doktryny Tadeusza Kotarbińskiego. Jej sformułowanie zawierały Elementy teorii poznania, logiki formalnej i metodologii nauk. Elementy były jednym z trzech podstawowych podręczników filozofii w środowisku warszawskim przez co najmniej dwadzieścia pięć lat. Ale reizm narodził się wcześniej i myśl reistyczna była obecna zarówno w wykładach Profesora, powołanego w 1919 roku na Katedrę Filozofii UW, zwaną „Seminarium Filozoficzne II”, jak i przedtem w niektórych jego publikacjach. A zatem poglądy autora zawarte w tym dziele zaczęły kształtować (...) umysły już przeszło dziesięć lat wcześniej. Wychowanków więc szkoła Elementów miała wielu, bardzo wielu [...]. (shrink)

This Open Access book addresses the age-old problem of infinite regresses in epistemology. How can we ever come to know something if knowing requires having good reasons, and reasons can only be good if they are backed by good reasons in turn? The problem has puzzled philosophers ever since antiquity, giving rise to what is often called Agrippa's Trilemma. The current volume approaches the old problem in a provocative and thoroughly contemporary way. Taking seriously the idea that good reasons are (...) typically probabilistic in character, it develops and defends a new solution that challenges venerable philosophical intuitions and explains why they were mistakenly held. Key to the new solution is the phenomenon of fading foundations, according to which distant reasons are less important than those that are nearby. The phenomenon takes the sting out of Agrippa's Trilemma; moreover, since the theory that describes it is general and abstract, it is readily applicable outside epistemology, notably to debates on infinite regresses in metaphysics. (shrink)

From 1929 onwards, C. I. Lewis defended the foundationalist claim that judgements of the form 'x is probable' only make sense if one assumes there to be a ground y that is certain (where x and y may be beliefs, propositions, or events). Without this assumption, Lewis argues, the probability of x could not be anything other than zero. Hans Reichenbach repeatedly contested Lewis's idea, calling it "a remnant of rationalism". The last move in this debate was a challenge by (...) Lewis, defying Reichenbach to produce a regress of probability values that yields a number other than zero. Reichenbach never took up the challenge, but we will meet it on his behalf, as it were. By presenting a series converging to a limit, we demonstrate that x can have a definite and computable probability, even if its justification consists of an infinite number of steps. Next we show the invalidity of a recent riposte of foundationalists that this limit of the series can be the ground of justification. Finally we discuss the question where justification can come from if not from a ground. (shrink)

This paper offers a survey of some recent work in epistemology, including the following books: _A Priori Justification, by Albert Casullo; _Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues, by Laurence Bonjour and Ernest Sosa; _New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge, edited by Susana Nuccetelli; _Pathways to Knowledge: Private and Public, by Alvin Goldman; _The Skeptics: Contemporary Essays, edited by Steven Luper; and _Thinking About Knowing, by Jay F. Rosenberg.

There is an emerging consensus in the literature on probabilistic coherence that such coherence cannot be truth conducive unless the information sources providing the cohering information are individually credible and collectively independent. Furthermore, coherence can at best be truth conducive in a ceteris paribus sense. Bovens and Hartmann have argued that there cannot be any measure of coherence that is truth conducive even in this very weak sense. In this paper, I give an alternative impossibility proof. I provide a relatively (...) detailed comparison of the two results, which turn out to be logically unrelated, and argue that my result answers a question raised by Bovens and Hartmann’s study. Finally, I discuss the epistemological ramifications of these findings and try to make plausible that a shift to an explanatory framework such as Thagard’s is unlikely to turn the impossibility into a possibility. (shrink)

A measure of coherence is said to be truth conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher likelihood of truth. Recent impossibility results strongly indicate that there are no (non-trivial) probabilistic coherence measures that are truth conducive. Indeed, this holds even if truth conduciveness is understood in a weak ceteris paribus sense (Bovens & Hartmann, 2003, Bayesian epistemology. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Olsson, 2005, Against coherence: Truth probability and justification. Oxford: (...) Oxford University Press). This raises the problem of how coherence could nonetheless be an epistemically important property. Our proposal is that coherence may be linked in a certain way to reliability. We define a measure of coherence to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher probability that the information sources are reliable. Restricting ourselves to the most basic case, we investigate which coherence measures in the literature are reliability conducive. It turns out that, while a number of measures fail to be reliability conducive, except possibly in a trivial and uninteresting sense, Shogenji’s measure and several measures generated by Douven and Meijs’s recipe are notable exceptions to this rule. (shrink)

Since our visual perception of physical things essentially involves our identifying objects by their colours, any theory of visual perception must contain some account of the colours of things. The central problem with colour has to do with relating our normal, everyday colour perceptions to what science, i.e. physics, teaches us about physical objects and their qualities. Although we perceive colours as categorical surface properties of things, colour perceptions are explained by introducing physical properties like reflectance profiles or dispositions to (...) cause certain experiences in normal human perceivers. Hence, it seems as if colours as they are experienced by us have no place in the physical world, because they are fundamentally different from the properties which we ascribe to physical objects in scientific accounts of colour perceptions. This special issue on perspectives on colour perception presents new suggestions to solve to this major problem. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that global scientific promises aka “scientific world-conceptions” have an interesting history that should be taken into account also for contemporary debates. I argue that the prototypes of many contemporary philosophical positions concerning the role of science in society can already be found in the philosophy of science of the 1920s and 1930s. First to be mentioned in this respect is the Scientific World-Conception of the Vienna Circle (The Manifesto) that promised to contribute (...) to the realization of an enlightened, rational and science-oriented society and culture. The Manifesto was not the only „scientific world-conception“ that philosophers and scientists put forward in the 1920s. Also the scientific world-conception of the philosopher and physicist Moritz Schlick, and the Weltanschauung of Sigmund Freud deserve to be mentioned. Still other examples of are Carnap’s Scientific Humanism and the project of The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science which was related to American pragmatism as well, as is shown by Charles W. Morris and others. Forgotten for a long time, since the beginning of the 21rst century, at least some of the Viennese projects are reconsidered in a new wave of „socially engaged philosophy of science”. (shrink)

Coherentism in epistemology has long suffered from lack of formal and quantitative explication of the notion of coherence. One might hope that probabilistic accounts of coherence such as those proposed by Lewis, Shogenji, Olsson, Fitelson, and Bovens and Hartmann will finally help solve this problem. This paper shows, however, that those accounts have a serious common problem: the problem of belief individuation. The coherence degree that each of the accounts assigns to an information set (or the verdict it gives as (...) to whether the set is coherent tout court) depends on how beliefs (or propositions) that represent the set are individuated. Indeed, logically equivalent belief sets that represent the same information set can be given drastically different degrees of coherence. This feature clashes with our natural and reasonable expectation that the coherence degree of a belief set does not change unless the believer adds essentially new information to the set or drops old information from it; or, to put it simply, that the believer cannot raise or lower the degree of coherence by purely logical reasoning. None of the accounts in question can adequately deal with coherence once logical inferences get into the picture. Toward the end of the paper, another notion of coherence that takes into account not only the contents but also the origins (or sources) of the relevant beliefs is considered. It is argued that this notion of coherence is of dubious significance, and that it does not help solve the problem of belief individuation. (shrink)

Value judgments are meaningless. This thesis was one of the notorious tenets of Carnap's mature logical empiricism. Less well known is the fact that in the Aufbau values were considered as philosophically respectable entities that could be constituted from value experiences. About 1930, however, values and value judgments were banished to the realm of meaningless metaphysics, and Carnap came to endorse a strict emotivism. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the question why Carnap abandoned his originally (...) positive attitude concerning values. It is argued that his non-cognitivist attitude was the symptom of a deep-rooted and never properly dissolved tension between conflicting inclinations towards Neokantianism and Lebensphilosophie. In America Carnap's non-cognitivism became a major obstacle for a closer collaboration between logical empiricists and American pragmatists. Carnap's persisting adherence to the dualism of practical life and theoretical science was the ultimate reason why he could not accept Morris's and Kaplan's pragmatist theses that cognitivism might well be compatible with a logical and empiricist scientific philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to critically evaluate the thesis that ethics counselors constitute a new priesthood in the pejorative sense of this term. In defense of the thesis, an account is given of the diverse variety of fundamental ideas about ethics or morality. The underlying argument is simply that there is such a diversity of opinion about so many fundamental issues that most ethical appraisals, especially in committees, are probably very shallow and barely warranted. Following this negative work, (...) an attempt is made to try to find some positive benefits from the work of ethics counselors. Some potential benefits are identified, but there is a need for empirical research in order to construct a more persuasive case for such work. In the penultimate section of the paper I addressed some of my own second thoughts about the discussion and some provocative suggestions that friends gave me about earlier drafts. (shrink)

According to the priority view, or prioritarianism, it matters more to benefit people the worse off they are. But how exactly should the priority view be defined? This article argues for a highly general characterization which essentially involves risk, but makes no use of evaluative measurements or the expected utility axioms. A representation theorem is provided, and when further assumptions are added, common accounts of the priority view are recovered. A defense of the key idea behind the priority view, the (...) priority principle, is provided. But it is argued that the priority view fails on both ethical and conceptual grounds. (shrink)

Parfit advertised the priority view as a new and fundamental theory in the ethics of distribution. He never discusses risk, and many writers follow suit when discussing the priority view. This article formalizes two popular arguments for a commonly accepted risk-free definition of the priority view. One is based on a direct attempt to define the priority view, the other is based on a contrast with utilitarianism and egalitarianism. But neither argument succeeds, and more generally, it is not possible to (...) make sense of the priority view in a risk-free framework. The article pays particular attention to the proper role of evaluative measurements in theorizing about the ethics of distribution. Despite appearances, approaching the priority view in terms of risk from the outset is argued to be quite natural. (shrink)

Between 1940 and 1945, while still a student of theoretical physics and without any contact with the history of science, Thomas S. Kuhn developed a general outline of a theory of the role of belief in science. This theory was well rooted in the philosophical tradition of Emerson Hall, Harvard, and particularly in H. M. Sheffer’s and C. I. Lewis’s logico-philosophical works—Kuhn was, actually, a graduate student of the former in 1945. In this paper I reconstruct the development of that (...) general outline after Kuhn’s first years at Harvard. I examine his works on moral and aesthetic issues—where he displayed an already ‘anti-Whig’ stance concerning historiography—as well as his first ‘Humean’ approach to science and realism, where his earliest concern with belief is evident. Then I scrutinise his graduate work to show how his first account of the role of belief was developed. The main aim of this paper is to show that the history of science illustrated for Kuhn the epistemic role and effects of belief he had already been theorising about since around 1941.Keywords: Intension; Belief; Causality; Thomas Kuhn; Clarence Irving Lewis; Henry Sheffer. (shrink)

Ivan Boh affirms and Robert Pasnau denies that William Heytesbury holds merely true belief to be sufficient for knowledge in the broad sense. I argue that Boh is correct and Pasnau is mistaken, and that there is a long-running orthodox medieval tradition agreeing with Heytesbury about the conditions for knowledge. I offer a hypothesis about the origins, continuance and demise of that medieval tradition, and some remarks about the tradition's significance.

The article ‘A Note on Strict Implication’ was submitted for publication by C.I. Lewis and C.H. Langford but withdrawn in proof. The paper is, according to notes and letters by both Lewis and Langford, largely by Lewis. It constitutes an early attempt by Lewis to give meanings for the modal connectives using abstract objects. To be necessary, for example, is for a statement to have the same intension as a truth-functional tautology. This theory prefigures the view of Lewis's 1946 book, (...) Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. This introduction to the article looks at the historical background of the piece in addition to its argument and examines why it was withdrawn. (shrink)

Epistemic minimalism affirms that mere true belief is sufficient for propositional knowledge. I construct a taxonomy of some specific forms of minimalism and locate within that taxonomy the distinct positions of various advocates of minimalism, including Alvin Goldman, Jaakko Hintikka, Crispin Sartwell, Wolfgang Lenzen, Franz von Kutschera, and others. I weigh generic minimalism against William Lycan’s objection that minimalism is incompatible with plausible principles about relations between knowledge, belief, and confidence. I argue that Lycan’s objection fails for equivocation but that (...) some specific forms of minimalism are better able than others to articulate that defense. (shrink)

This paper sets out a semantics for C.I. Lewis's logic S2 based on the ontology of his 1923 paper ‘Facts, Systems, and the Unity of the World’. In that article, worlds are taken to be maximal consistent systems. A system, moreover, is a collection of facts that is closed under logical entailment and conjunction. In this paper, instead of defining systems in terms of logical entailment, I use certain ideas in Lewis's epistemology and philosophy of logic to define a class (...) of models in which systems are taken to be primitive elements but bear certain relations to one another. I prove soundness and completeness for S2 over this class of models and argue that this semantics makes sense of at least a substantial fragment of Lewis's logical theory. (shrink)

This article generalizes the explanationist account of inference to the best explanation. It draws a clear distinction between IBE and abduction and presents abduction as the first step of IBE. The second step amounts to the evaluation of explanatory power, which consist in the degree of explanatory virtues that a hypothesis exhibits. Moreover, even though coherence is the most often cited explanatory virtue, on pain of circularity, it should not be treated as one of the explanatory virtues. Rather, coherence should (...) be equated with explanatory power and considered to be derivable from the other explanatory virtues: unification, explanatory depth and simplicity. (shrink)

There is the idea that rational belief for a single individual can be constructed via a process of unilateral argument. To preempt antipathy between the AI communities that can claim the idea that rational belief can be so constructed, we trace the idea to the beginning of this century, to Keynes' dispute with Russell over logic and probability. We review how Keynesian ideas were revived in AI's work on non-monotonic reasoning and parallel developments in philosophical logic.

Aesthetic values give agents reasons to perform not only acts of contemplation, but also acts like editing, collecting, and conserving. Moreover, aesthetic agents rarely operate solo: they conduct their business as integral members of networks of other aesthetic agents. The consensus theory of aesthetic value, namely that an item’s aesthetic value is its power to evoke a finally valuable experience in a suitable spectator, can explain neither the range of acts performed by aesthetic agents nor the social contexts in which (...) they operate. This paper proposes a new theory of aesthetic value specifically to explain facts about the sociality of aesthetic agents. (shrink)

Can we show that our senses are reliable sources of information about the world? To show this, we need to establish that most of our perceptual judgments have been true. But we cannot determine these inductive instances without relying upon sense perception. Thus, it seems, we cannot establish the reliability of sense perception by means of an argument without falling into epistemic circularity. In this paper, I argue that this consequence is not an epistemological disaster. For this purpose, I defend (...) a normative claim that it is reasonable to accept the general reliability of our perceptual judgments, instead of a factual claim that our perceptual judgments are generally reliable. More specifically, I offer a normative practical argument which explains why it is reasonable to accept the general reliability of our perceptual judgments, even though we cannot establish the general reliability of our perceptual judgments by means of theoretical reasoning. (shrink)

Plausibly, any adequate theory of perception must (a) solve what Alva Noë calls 'the problem of perceptual presence,' and (b) do justice to the direct realist idea that what is given in perception are garden-variety spatiotemporal particulars. This paper shows that, while Noë's sensorimotor view arguably satisfies the first of these conditions, it does not satisfy the second. Moreover, Noë is wrong to think that a naïve realist approach to perception cannot handle the problem of perceptual presence. Section three of (...) this paper develops a version of naïve realism that meets both of the adequacy conditions above. This paper thus provides strong considerations in favor of naïve realism. (shrink)

Some philosophers have claimed that pleasures and pains are characterized by their particular or . Most contemporary writers reject this view: they hold that hedonic states have nothing in common except being liked or disliked (alternatively: pursued or avoided) for their own sake. In this article, I argue that the hedonic tone view has been dismissed too quickly: there is no clear introspective or scientific evidence that pleasures do not share a phenomenal quality. I also argue that analysing hedonic states (...) in terms of liking or wanting is implausible. If it is correct that pleasures and pains are not united by any particular hedonic tone, we should instead simply conclude that there are several different hedonic tones. This pluralistic understanding of the hedonic tone view has generally been overlooked in the literature, but appears to be fairly plausible as a philosophical account of pleasure and pain. (shrink)

We propose a coherence account of the conjunction fallacy applicable to both of its two paradigms. We compare our account with a recent proposal by Tentori et al. : 235–255, 2013) that attempts to generalize earlier confirmation accounts. Their model works better than its predecessors in some respects, but it exhibits only a shallow form of generality and is unsatisfactory in other ways as well: it is strained, complex, and untestable as it stands. Our coherence account inherits the strength of (...) the confirmation account, but in addition to being applicable to both paradigms, it is natural, simple, and readily testable. It thus constitutes the next natural step for Bayesian theorizing about the conjunction fallacy. (shrink)

Recent results in probability theory have cast doubt on coherentism, purportedly showing (a) that coherence among a set of beliefs cannot raise their probability unless individual beliefs have some independent credibility, and (b) that no possible measure of coherence makes coherence generally probability-enhancing. I argue that coherentists can reject assumptions on which these theorems depend, and I derive a general condition under which the concurrence of two information sources lacking individual credibility can raise the probability of what they report.

On rationalist infallibilism, a wide range of both (i) analytic and (ii) synthetic a priori propositions can be infallibly justified (or absolutely warranted), i.e., justified to a degree that entails their truth and precludes their falsity. Though rationalist infallibilism is indisputably running its course, adherence to at least one of the two species of infallible a priori justification refuses to disappear from mainstream epistemology. Among others, Putnam (1978) still professes the a priori infallibility of some category (i) propositions, while Burge (...) (1986, 1988, 1996) and Lewis (1996) have recently affirmed the a priori infallibility of some category (ii) propositions. In this paper, I take aim at rationalist infallibilism by calling into question the a priori infallibility of both analytic and synthetic propositions. The upshot will be twofold: first, rationalist infallibilism unsurprisingly emerges as a defective epistemological doctrine, and second, more importantly, the case for the a priori infallibility of one or both categories of propositions turns out to lack cogency. (shrink)

One of contemporary epistemology's more important conceptual challenges is that of understanding the nature of fallibility. Part of why this matters is that it would contribute to our understanding the natures of fallible warrant and fallible knowledge. This article evaluates two candidates – and describes a shared form of failing. Each is concealedly infallibilist. This failing is all-too-representative of the difficulty of doing justice to the notion of fallibility within the notions of fallible warrant and fallible knowledge. The article ends (...) with a proposal for an improved form of conception of fallible warrant and fallible knowledge. (shrink)

Coherence is a key concept in many accounts of epistemic justification within ‘traditional’ analytic epistemology. Within formal epistemology, too, there is a substantial body of research on coherence measures. However, there has been surprisingly little interaction between the two bodies of literature. The reason is that the existing formal literature on coherence measure operates with a notion of belief system that is very different from—what we argue is—a natural Bayesian formalisation of the concept of belief system from traditional epistemology. Therefore, (...) formal epistemology has so far only been concerned with one particular—arguably not even very natural—way of formalising coherence of belief systems; it has by no means refuted the viability of coherentism. In contrast to the existing literature, we formalise belief systems as families of assignments of (conditional) degrees of belief (which may be compatible with several subjective probability measures). Within this framework, we propose a Bayesian formalisation of the thrust of BonJour’s coherence concept in The structure of empirical knowledge (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1985), using a combination of Bayesian confirmation theory and basic graph theory. In excursions, we introduce graded notions for both logical and probabilistic consistency of belief systems—the latter being based on certain geometrical structures induced by probabilistic belief systems. For illustration, we reconsider BonJour’s “ravens” challenge (op. cit., p. 95f.). Finally, potential objections to our proposed formal coherence notion are explored. (shrink)

To explain the phenomena in the world of our experience, to answer the question “why?” rather than only the question “what?”, is one of the foremost objectives of all rational inquiry; and especially, scientific research in its various branches strives to go beyond a mere description of its subject matter by providing an explanation of the phenomena it investigates. While there is rather general agreement about this chief objective of science, there exists considerable difference of opinion as to the function (...) and the essential characteristics of scientific explanation. In the present essay, an attempt will be made to shed some light on these issues by means of an elementary survey of the basic pattern of scientific explanation and a subsequent more rigorous analysis of the concept of law and of the logical structure of explanatory arguments. (shrink)

We prove that four theses commonly associated with coherentism are incompatible with the representation of a belief state as a logically closed set of sentences. The result is applied to the conventional coherence interpretation of the AGM theory of belief revision, which appears not to be tenable. Our argument also counts against the coherentistic acceptability of a certain form of propositional holism. We argue that the problems arise as an effect of ignoring the distinction between derived and non-derived beliefs, and (...) we suggest that the kind of coherence relevant to epistemic justification is the coherence of non-derived beliefs. (shrink)

A general theory of coherence is proposed, in which systemic and relational coherence are shown to be interdefinable. When this theory is applied to sets of sentences, it turns out that logical closure obscures the distinctions that are needed for a meaningful analysis of coherence. It is concluded that references to “all beliefs” in coherentist phrases such as “all beliefs support each other” have to be modified so that merely derived beliefs are excluded. Therefore, in order to avoid absurd conclusions, (...) coherentists have to accept a weak version of epistemic priority, that sorts out merely derived beliefs. Furthermore, it is shown that in belief revision theory, coherence cannot be adequately represented by logical closure, but has to be represented separately. (shrink)

Realism is multiply ambiguous. The central concern of Part 1 of this paper is to distinguish several of its many senses — four (Theoretical Realism, Cumulative Realism, Progressive Realism and Optimistic Realism) in which it refers to theses about the status of scientific theories, and five (Minimal Realism, Ambitious Absolutism, Transcendentalism, Nidealism, Scholastic Realism) in which it refers to theses about the nature of truth or truth-bearers. Because Realism has these several, largely independent, senses, the conventional wisdom that Tarski's theory (...) of truth supports realism, and that the Meaning-Variance thesis undermines it, needs re-evaluation. The concern of the rest of the paper is to sort out in which senses the conventional wisdom, with respect to Tarski's theory (Part 2) and the Meaning-Variance thesis (Part 3), is correct. (shrink)

'Realism' is multiply ambiguous. The central concern of Part 1 of this paper is to distinguish several of its many senses -- four in which it refers to theses about the status of scientific theories, and five in which it refers to theses about the nature of truth or truth-bearers. Because 'Realism' has these several, largely independent, senses, the conventional wisdom that Tarski's theory of truth supports realism, and that the Meaning-Variance thesis undermines it, needs re-evaluation. The concern of the (...) rest of the paper is to sort out in which senses the conventional wisdom, with respect to Tarski's theory and the Meaning-Variance thesis , is correct. (shrink)

This paper provides an alternative theoretical conceptualisation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to further our understanding of prosocial organisational behaviour. We argue that consumption provides a perspective that enables theorists to escape the confines of existing CSR literature. In our view the organisation is re-imagined as an arena of consumption where employees are engaged in a quest for value, constructing and confirming their identities as consumers. Using the award-winning tour operator Laskarina Holidays as an illustrative case, it is (...) suggested that CSR can provide combinations of functional, social, emotional, epistemic and conditional value. This new perspective on CSR facilitates the coexistence of a plurality of values that are relativistically constructed and narrativised by organisational stakeholders. Our consumption paradigm provides a thought provoking means of reconciling divergent perspectives and encourages further interdisciplinary research. We argue that future research should begin, not by asking the question of why organisations assume responsibility, but by contemplating the notion of why organisations consume responsibility. (shrink)

In recent years, a disagreement has erupted between two camps of philosophers about the rationality of bias toward the near and bias toward the future. According to the traditional hybrid view, near bias is rationally impermissible, while future bias is either rationally permissible or obligatory. Time neutralists, meanwhile, argue that the hybrid view is untenable. They claim that those who reject near bias should reject both biases and embrace time neutrality. To date, experimental work has focused on future-directed near bias. (...) The primary aim of this paper is to shed light on the debate by investigating past-directed near bias. If people treat the past and future differently with respect to near bias, by being future-directed but not past-directed near biased, then this supports a particular version of the hybrid view: temporal metaphysic hybridism. If people treat the past and future the same with respect to near bias, then this supports a simple version of time neutralism, which explains both future bias and near bias in terms of the functioning of a single mechanism: the anticipatory/retrospectory mechanism. Our results undermine the claim that people are future-directed, but not past-directed, near biased, and hence do not support temporal metaphysic hybridism. They also fail to support simple time-neutralism; instead, they suggest that there are multiple mechanisms that differently shape future- and past-directed preferences. (shrink)

Corroborative evidence has a dual function in argument. Primarily, it functions to provide direct evidence supporting the main conclusion. But it also has a secondary, bolstering function which increases the probative value of some other piece of evidence in the argument. This paper argues that the bolstering effect of corroborative evidence is legitimate, and can be explained as counter–rebuttal achieved through inference to the best explanation. A model (argument diagram) of corroborative evidence, representing its structure and operation as a schematic (...) pattern of defeasible argument is also supplied. In addition to explaining the operation and theoretical foundation of corroborative evidence, the model facilitates the correct analysis and guides the evaluation (assessment and critique) of corroborative evidence as it occurs in argument. (shrink)

This paper considers an application of work on probabilistic measures of coherence to inference to the best explanation. Rather than considering information reported from different sources, as is usually the case when discussing coherence measures, the approach adopted here is to use a coherence measure to rank competing explanations in terms of their coherence with a piece of evidence. By adopting such an approach IBE can be made more precise and so a major objection to this mode of reasoning can (...) be addressed. Advantages of the coherence - based approach are pointed out by comparing it with several other ways to characterize ‘ best explanation ’ and showing that it takes into account their insights while overcoming some of their problems. The consequences of adopting this approach for IBE are discussed in the context of recent discussions about the relationship between IBE and Bayesianism. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers have supposed that perceptual representations have propositional content. A prominent rationale for this supposition is the assumption that perceptions may justify beliefs, but this rationale can be doubted. This rationale may be doubted on the grounds that there do not seem to be any viable characterizations of the belief-justifying propositional contents of perceptions. An alternative is to model perceptual representations as marks in a perceptual similarity space. A mapping can be defined between points in perceptual (...) similarity space and points in an objective quality space. The correctness of perceptual representation can then be defined as a kind of accuracy of mapping rather than as the truth of a proposition. The phenomenon of seeing-as can be accounted for as a matter of the location of marks in perceptual similarity space relative to other marks in perceptual similarity space. Perceptual representations, on this account, will not justify beliefs, but they may nonetheless guide judgment. (shrink)

In this paper I examine contemporary accounts of noninferential justification in light of what I take to be the Cartesian project of building epistemology on foundations made secure by the impossibility of error. I argue that familiar abstract arguments for foundationalism, by themselves, don’t seem to motivate Cartesianism. But I further argue that there is one version of foundationalism that is more closely linked to the way in which Descartes sought ideal knowledge.

We can distinguish two kinds of moral universalization tests for practical principles. One requires that the universal practice of the principle, i.e., universal conformity to it by all agents in a given world, satisfies some condition. The other requires that conformity to the principle by any possible agent, in any situation and at any time, satisfies some condition. We can call these universal practice and universal applicability tests respectively. The logical distinction between these tests is rarely appreciated, and many philosophers (...) systematically confuse them with each other. In practice, UP tests are more frequently used to defend deontological norms, while UA tests are used to defend consequentialist norms. Both conceptual argument and practical examples of their applications will show that UA tests are decisively superior to UP tests for grounding moral norms, casting greater doubt upon deontological theories which rely upon the latter unless they can reformulate their arguments using some version of a UA test. (shrink)