Maximizing want-satisfactionper seis a relatively unattractive aspiration, for it seems to assume that wants are somehow disembodied entities with independent moral claims all of their own. Actually, of course, they are possessed by particular people. What preference-utilitarians should be concerned with is how people's lives go—the fulfilment of their projects and the satisfaction of their desires. In an old-fashioned way of talking, it ishappy peoplerather thanhappiness per sethat utilitarians should be striving to produce.

This book, provides a critical approach to all major logical paradoxes: from ancient to contemporary ones. There are four key aims of the book: 1. Providing systematic and historical survey of different approaches – solutions of the most prominent paradoxes discussed in the logical and philosophical literature. 2. Introducing original solutions of major paradoxes like: Liar paradox, Protagoras paradox, an unexpected examination paradox, stone paradox, crocodile, Newcomb paradox. 3. Explaining the far-reaching significance of paradoxes of vagueness and change for philosophy (...) and ontology. 4. Proposing a novel, well justified and, as it seems, natural classification of paradoxes. (shrink)

The books’ goal is to answer the question: Do the weaknesses of value-free economics imply the need for a paradigm shift? The author synthesizes criticisms from different perspectives (descriptive and methodological). Special attention is paid to choices over time, because in this area value-free economics has the most problems. In that context, the enriched concept of multiple self is proposed and investigated. However, it is not enough to present the criticisms towards value-free economics. For scientists, a bad paradigm is better (...) than no paradigm. Therefore, the author considers whether value-based economics with normative approaches such as economics of happiness, capability approach, libertarian paternalism, and the concept of multiple self can be the alternative paradigm for value-free economics. This book is essential reading to everyone interested in the current state of economics as a discipline. (shrink)

In Bias: A Philosophical Study, Thomas Kelly offers a response to epistemological skepticism grounded in his account of bias. According to Kelly, the classic argument for skepticism is best understood as an attempt to show that our commonsense beliefs are biased against the skeptic. Kelly grants that this is true but argues that biased beliefs can still be knowledge. I offer two objections. First, if we are applying Kelly’s theory of bias to skepticism, it is best to think of the (...) skeptic’s challenge to be that our anti-skeptical beliefs are based on what we know to be biased reasons. Kelly has not shown that this sort of bias is compatible with knowledge. Second, Kelly’s approach to the problem of skepticism is an example of what I have called “unambitious epistemology.” And, for that reason, it is not a satisfactory answer to skepticism. (shrink)

A Série Investigação Filosófica é uma série de livros de traduções de verbetes da Enciclopédia de Filosofia da Stanford (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) e de outras plataformas internacionalmente reconhecidas, que intenciona servir tanto como material didático para os professores das diferentes sub-áreas e níveis da Filosofia quanto como material de estudo para a pesquisa e para concursos da área. Nós, professores, sabemos o quão difícil é encontrar bom material em português para indicarmos. E há uma certa deficiência na graduação brasileira (...) de filosofia, principalmente em localizações menos favorecidas, com relação ao conhecimento de outras línguas, como o inglês e o francês. Tentamos, então, suprir essa deficiência, ao introduzirmos essas traduções ao público de língua portuguesa, sem nenhuma finalidade comercial e meramente pela glória da filosofia. (shrink)

General contrastivism holds that all claims of reasons are relative to contrast classes. This approach applies to explanation (reasons why things happen), moral philosophy (reasons for action), and epistemology (reasons for belief), and it illuminates moral dilemmas, free will, and the grue paradox. In epistemology, contrast classes point toward an account of justified belief that is compatible with reliabilism and other externalisms. Contrast classes also provide a model for Pyrrhonian scepticism based on suspending belief about which contrast class is relevant. (...) This view contrasts with contextualism, invariantism, and Schaffer's contrastivism. (shrink)

This book provides a critical examination of how the choice of what to believe is represented in the standard model of belief change. In particular the use of possible worlds and infinite remainders as objects of choice is critically examined. Descriptors are introduced as a versatile tool for expressing the success conditions of belief change, addressing both local and global descriptor revision. The book presents dynamic descriptors such as Ramsey descriptors that convey how an agent’s beliefs tend to be changed (...) in response to different inputs. It also explores sentential revision and demonstrates how local and global operations of revision by a sentence can be derived as a special case of descriptor revision. Lastly, the book examines revocation, a generalization of contraction in which a specified sentence is removed in a process that may possibly also involve the addition of some new information to the belief set. (shrink)

Inference is a process by which appropriate belief states get connected. Belief states are biological states in the sense that they are reentrant loops ; their intrinsic feature is recognition. In inference or reasoning the transition process between belief states is regulated by the rule of concept usage, involved in the belief state, in natural language. Like belief states experiential states are also biological states whose extrinsic feature is recognition, such that, one can have an, say, X-type experience without recognizing (...) it as an experience of X. One can, however, also have an experience of an X; in the latter case, one not only has an X-type experience but also recognizes an X as an X. In some cases the transition from X-type experience to believing an X to be there instantiates a quasi-inferential pattern. In all such cases the transition process is regulated by the rule of X usage. In such quasi-inferential transition additional belief states are involved. Such states assert that there are no countervailing factors and there are additional factors conducive to the conclusion. Such belief states are expressed non-propositionally in the language of thought. Propositions are a necessary part of such quasi-inference for they give content to thoughts to which one can assign 'falsity' and defeasible reasoning requires us to assign 'falsity' to our thoughts. Propositions implicated in the quasi-inferences from experience types to belief states are the evidential reasons for the conclusion and they can only be accepted as provisionally true and have to be revised in the light of further information. (shrink)

This is a work concerned with justification and freedom and the relationship between these. Its summational aim is to defend a transcendental argument for free will – that we could not be epistemically justified in undermining a strong notion of free will, as a strong notion of free will would be required for any such process of undermining to be itself epistemically justified. The book advances two transcendental arguments – for a deontically internalist conception of epistemic justification and the aforementioned (...) argument for a libertarian conception of free will. In defending each of these arguments, the book both defends and relies upon the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In articulating the latter transcendental argument – for freedom – heavy reliance is made on the earlier, epistemic, work: especially on the deontological conception of rational justification (on epistemic internalism). (shrink)

Our preferences determine how we act and think, but exactly what the mechanics are and how they work is a central cause of concern in many disciplines. This book uses techniques from modern logics of information flow and action to develop a unified new theory of what preference is and how it changes. The theory emphasizes reasons for preference, as well as its entanglement with our beliefs. Moreover, the book provides dynamic logical systems which describe the explicit triggers driving preference (...) change, including new information, suggestions, and commands. In sum, the book creates new bridges between many fields, from philosophy and computer science to economics, linguistics, and psychology. For the experienced scholar access to a large body of recent literature is provided and the novice gets a thorough introduction to the action and techniques of dynamic logic. (shrink)

According to a traditional conception, romantic love is both constant - if someone loves another, they continue to love them - and exclusive - if someone loves another, they love only the other. In this paper, we argue that the essentiality of constancy and exclusivity is incompatible with the possibilities of fission - roughly speaking, of one person becoming two - and fusion - roughly speaking, of two people becoming one. Moreover, if fission or fusion are possible, then constancy and (...) exclusivity are obligatory features of love only if there are moral dilemmas. We conclude by suggesting this casts doubt on the constancy and especially the exclusivity of love. (shrink)

I argue that fallibilism, single-premise epistemic closure, and one formulation of the “knowledge-action principle” are inconsistent. I will consider a possible way to avoid this incompatibility, by advocating a pragmatic constraint on belief in general, rather than just knowledge. But I will conclude that this is not a promising option for defusing the problem. I do not argue here for any one way of resolving the inconsistency.

The safety principle is the view that, roughly, if one knows that p, p could not easily have been false. It is common for safety theorists to relativize safety to belief-formation methods. In this paper, I argue that there is no fixed principle of method-individuation that can stand up to scrutiny. I examine various ways to individuate methods and argue that all of them are subject to serious counterexamples. In the end, I conclude by considering some alternative ways to preserve (...) the insight behind safety without invoking a fixed principle of method-individuation. (shrink)

According to the safety account of knowledge, one knows that p only if one's belief could not easily have been false. An important issue for the account is whether we should only examine the belief in the target proposition when evaluating whether a belief is safe or not. In this paper, it is argued that if we only examine the belief in the target proposition, then the account fails to account for why beliefs in necessary truths could fall short of (...) knowledge. But, if we also examine beliefs in other relevant propositions, then the account fails to preserve epistemic closure. Therefore, the safety account cannot find a safe path between epistemic closure and necessary truths. (shrink)

After providing some historical and systematic background, I introduce the structure of a very natural and influential sceptical underdetermination argument. The argument assumes that it is metaphysically possible for a deceived subject to have the same evidence that a non-deceived subject has, and tries to draw consequences about justification from that assumption of metaphysical possibility. I first variously object to the transition from the assumption to its supposed consequences. In the central part of the paper, I then critically consider some (...) influential ways of bridging the gap between the assumption and its supposed consequences, which generally consist in strengthening the assumption from one of metaphysical possibility into one of either counterfactual implication or entailment. The discussion indicates that epistemic facts are much more independent from metaphysically modal facts than the sceptical underdetermination argument requires. (shrink)

The paper critically discusses two prominent arguments against closure principles for knowledge. The first one is the “argument from aggregation”, claiming that closure under conjunction has the consequence that, if one individually knows i premises, one also knows their i-fold conjunction—yet, every one of the premises might exhibit interesting positive epistemic properties while the i-fold conjunction might fail to do so. The second one is the “argument from concatenation”, claiming that closure under entailment has the consequence that, if one knows (...) a premise, one also knows each of its remote consequences one arrives at—yet, again, the premise might exhibit interesting positive epistemic properties while some of its remote consequences might fail to do so. The paper firstly observes that the ways in which these two arguments try to establish that the relevant closure principle has the relevant problematic consequence are strikingly similar. They both crucially involve showing that, given the features of the case, the relevant closure principle acts in effect as a soritical principle, which is in turn assumed to lead validly to the relevant problematic consequence. There are however nontransitive logics of vagueness where soritical principles do not have any problematic consequence. Assuming that one of these logics is the correct logic of vagueness, the paper secondly observes that both arguments describe situations where knowledge is arguably vague in the relevant respects, so that a tolerant logic should be used in reasoning about it, with the effect that the relevant soritical principle no longer validly leads to the relevant problematic consequence. This shows an interesting respect in which the gap between validity and good inference that arguably arises in a transitive framework can be bridged in a tolerant one, thereby approximating better certain features of our epistemic lives as finite subjects. Moreover, even for those who do not subscribe to tolerant logics, the paper’s two observations jointly indicate that, for all the arguments from aggregation and concatenation show, the status of the relevant closure principles should be no worse than that assigned by one’s favoured theory of vagueness to soritical principles, which only rarely is plain falsity and can indeed get arbitrarily close to full truth. (shrink)

What is the difference between belief and desire? In order to explain the difference, recent philosophers have appealed to the metaphor of.

In this paper epistemic pluralism concerning knowledge is taken to be the claim that very different facts may constitute knowledge. The paper argues for pluralism by arguing that very different facts can constitute the knowledge‐making links between beliefs and facts. If pluralism is right, we need not anxiously seek a unified account of the links between beliefs and facts that partly constitute knowledge in different cases of knowledge. The paper argues that no good reasons have been put forward in favour (...) of believing in a unified maker of knowledge. It then appeals to the role of knowledge in order to argue that we have positive reason to embrace pluralism. (shrink)

The paper argues against Sosa’s claim that sensitivity cannot be differentially supported over safety as the right requirement for knowledge. Its main contention is that, although all sensitive beliefs that should be counted as knowledge are also safe, some insensitive true beliefs that shouldn’t be counted as knowledge are nevertheless safe.

In the recent literature on confirmation there are two leading approaches to the provision of a probabilistic measure of the degree to which a hypothesis is confirmed by evidence. The first is to construe the degree to which evidence E confirms hypothesis H as a function that is directly proportional to p and inversely proportional to p . I shall refer to this as the probability approach. The second approach construes the notion as a function that is directly proportional to (...) the true-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is true, p – and inversely proportional to the false-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is false, p . These reverse conditional probabilities – of the evidence on the truth or falsehood of the hypothesis – are sometimes known as likelihoods. I shall refer to the approach to confirmation that uses them as the likelihood approach.For each of these approaches, there are two obvious options as to how to define the confirmation function. The first is to define it as the difference between the magnitude that is treated as increasing confirmation or p ) and the magnitude that is treated as decreasing confirmation or p ). The second is to define confirmation as the quotient of these two magnitudes.This yields four different measures of confirmation, represented in the following table: Differences RatiosProbabilities PD = p – p1 PR = Graphic2Likelihoods LD = p – p3 LR = Graphic4All these measures agree on whether or not E provides some support for H. Intuitively, we want to say that E provides some support for H just in case learning that E is true would make us assign a higher probability to H, i.e. when p(H …. (shrink)

Psychological Sequentialism holds that no causal constraint is necessary for the preservation of what matters in survival; rather, it is sufficient for preservation if two groups of mental states are similar enough and temporally close enough. Suppose that one’s body is instantaneously dematerialized and subsequently, by an amazing coincidence, a collection of molecules is configured to form a qualitatively identical human body. According to Psychological Sequentialism, these events preserve what matters in survival. In this article, I examine some of the (...) main arguments for the view and argue that they fail to establish that no causal constraint is necessary. I also argue that Psychological Sequentialism yields implausible consequences that render it hard to accept the view. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that punishment has an expressive dimension. Advocates of expressive theories have different views about what makes punishment expressive, what kinds of mental states and what kinds of claims are, or legitimately can be expressed in punishment, and to what kind of audience or recipients, if any, punishment might express whatever it expresses. I shall argue that in order to assess the plausibility of an expressivist approach to justifying punishment we need to pay careful attention to whether the (...) things which punishment is supposed to express are aimed at an audience. For the ability of any version of expressivism to withstand two important challenges, which I call the harsh treatment challenge’ and the ‘publicity challenge’ respectively. will depend on the way it answers them. The first of these challenges has received considerable discussion in the literature on expressive theories of punishment; the second considerably less. This is unfortunate. For careful consideration of the publicity challenge should lead us to favor a version of the expressive theory which has been under-discussed: the view on which punishment has an intended audience, and on which the audience is society at large, rather than—as on the most popular version of that view—the criminal. Furthermore, this view turns out to be better equipped to meet the harsh treatment challenge, and to be so precisely because of the way in which it meets the publicity challenge. (shrink)

Punishment involves deliberating harming individuals. How, then, if at all, is it to be justified? This, the first of three papers on the philosophy of punishment (see also 'Punishment: Nonconsequentialism' and 'Punishment: The Future'), examines attempts to justify the practice or institution according to its consequences. One claim is that punishment reduces crime, and hence the resulting harms. Another is that punishment functions to rehabilitate offenders. A third claim is that punishment (or some forms of punishment) can serve to make (...) restitution to victims, and a fourth is that it can strengthen social values. The paper examines these claims, and finally considers pluralist theories which combine retributive and harm-reductive or utilitarian considerations. (Retributive theories are examined in their own right in 'Punishment: Nonconsequentialism'.). (shrink)

Three distinct but related questions can be asked about the meaningfulness of one's life. The first is 'What is the meaning of life?', which can be called 'the cosmic question about meaningfulness'; the second is 'What is a meaningful life?', which can be called 'the general question about meaningfulness'; and the third is 'What is the meaning of my life?', which can be called 'the personal question about meaningfulness'. I argue that in order to deal with all three questions we (...) should start with the personal question. There is a way of understanding the personal question which allows us to answer it independently of any consideration of the cosmic question, but which nonetheless helps us see why the cosmic question should be dismissed as a bad question. Besides, a recommendable answer to the general question can be derived from my understanding of how the personal question should be answered. Two notions are essential to my account, namely, the notion of identities and the notion of a biographical life. And the account can be epitomized in this enticing way: a person's life is meaningful if it contains material for an autobiography that she thinks is worth writing and others think is worth reading. (shrink)

I first argue that the skeptic needs an internalist conception of justification for her argument for skepticism. I then argue that the skeptic also needs to show that we do not have perceptual access to the world if her skepticism is to be a real threat to human knowledge of the world. This, I conclude, puts the skeptic in a dilemma, for internalist conceptions of justification presuppose that we have perceptual access to the world.

Ecological thought has made a deep and apparently lasting impact on virtually every tradition in political theory (cf. e.g. Dobson, 2007) with the exception of libertarianism. While left- and right...

A prominent contemporary anti-skeptical strategy, most famously articulated by Keith DeRose, aims to cage the skeptic′s doubts by contextualizing subjunctive conditional accounts of knowledge through a conversational rule of sensitivity. This strategy, I argue, courts charges of circularity by selectively invoking heavy counterfactual machinery. The reason: such invocation threatens to utilize a metric for modal comparison that is implicitly informed by judgments of epistemic sameness. This gives us reason to fear that said modal metric is selectively cherry-picked in advance to (...) support the very anti-skeptical conclusion for which the contextualist longs. (shrink)

The issue of whether and how we have the control necessary for freedom and moral responsibility is central to all control accounts of freedom and moral responsibility. The problem of luck for libertarians aims to show that indeterministic agents are ill‐equipped with the control required for freedom and moral responsibility. In view of this, we must either endorse scepticism about the possibility of free and morally responsible agents, or make some form of, possibly revisionary, compatibilism work.In this paper, I shall (...) offer a new solution to the problem of luck for libertarians. After outlining the problem of luck, I shall argue that, given a particular approach to mental causation, indeterminism can be viewed as an essential requirement of free and morally responsible action. After this, I shall distinguish between different types of inability and show how this provides us with a solution to the problem of luck. Finally, I shall consider some advantages and objections to the proposed solution. (shrink)

It is often said, metaphorically, that belief "aims" at the truth. This paper proposes a normative interpretation of this metaphor. First, the notion of "epistemic norms" is clarified, and reasons are given for the view that epistemic norms articulate essential features of the beliefs that are subject to them. Then it is argued that all epistemic norms--including those that specify when beliefs count as rational, and when they count as knowledge--are explained by a fundamental norm of correct belief, which requires (...) that, if one considers a proposition at all, one should believe it if and only if it is true. (shrink)

The presence of a human being/organism—a living human ‘whole’, with the defining tendency to promote its own welfare—has value in itself, as do the functions which compose it. Life is inseparable from health, since without some degree of healthy functionality the living whole would not exist. The value of life differs both within a single life and between lives. As with any other form of human flourishing, the value of life-and-health must be distinguished from the moral importance of human beings: (...) less fulfilled means not less important morally, but more in need of being fulfilled. That said, to say that life and health has value is not to say exactly what—if anything—that value requires by way of active promotion at a given time. Many factors must be taken into account in making health care decisions, even if the worth of all lives, and the dignity of all human beings, must in every case be acknowledged. (shrink)

Theodore Sider’s recent book, “Writing the Book of the World”, employs a primitive notion of metaphysical structure in order to make sense of substantive metaphysics. But Sider and others who employ metaphysical primitives face serious epistemological challenges. In the first section I develop a specific form of this challenge for Sider’s own proposed epistemology for structure; the second section develops a general reliability challenge for Sider’s theory; and the third and final section argues for the rejection of Siderean structure in (...) the course of answering a transcendental argument against such rejection. (shrink)

This paper formulates a general epistemological argument against what I call non-causal realism, generalizing domain specific arguments by Benacerraf, Field, and others. First I lay out the background to the argument, making a number of distinctions that are sometimes missed in discussions of epistemological arguments against realism. Then I define the target of the argument—non-causal realism—and argue that any non-causal realist theory, no matter the subject matter, cannot be given a reasonable epistemology and so should be rejected. Finally I discuss (...) and respond to several possible responses to the argument. In addition to clearing up and avoiding numerous misunderstandings of arguments of this kind that are quite common in the literature, this paper aims to present and endorse a rigorous and fully general epistemological argument against realism. (shrink)

This paper investigates the applicability of reliabilism to scientific knowledge, and especially focuses on two doubts about the applicability: one about its difficulty in accounting for the epistemological role of scientific instruments, and the other about scientific theories. To respond to the two doubts, we extend virtue reliabilism, a reliabilist-based virtue epistemology, with a distinction of two types of epistemic virtues and the extended mind thesis from Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58:7–19, 1998 ). We also present a case study on (...) the quantitative research methodology of social sciences to show that the methodology is actually an extended virtue reliabilism on how social science instruments and theories contribute to the formation of social scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Comparative syllogism is a type of scientific reasoning widely used, explicitly or implicitly, for inferences from observations to conclusions about effectiveness, but its philosophical significance has not been fully elaborated or appreciated. In its simplest form, the comparative syllogism derives a conclusion about the effectiveness of a factor (e.g. a treatment or an exposure) on a certain property via an experiment design using a test (experimental) group and a comparison (control) group. Our objective is to show that the comparative syllogism (...) can be understood as encoding a simulation view of counterfactuals, in that counterfactual situations are conceptual constructs that can be correctly simulated by homogeneous comparison groups. In this simulation view, the empirical data from the comparison groups play an evidential role in the evaluation of counterfactuals and in obtaining counterfactual knowledge. We further indicate how successful experimental designs can help us to obtain correct simulations, and thus to bring us to scientifically-empirically based counterfactual knowledge. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Melchior pursues a novel argumentative strategy against the sensitivity condition. His claim is that sensitivity suffers from a ‘heterogeneity problem:’ although some higher-order beliefs are knowable, other, very similar, higher-order beliefs are insensitive and so not knowable. Similarly, the conclusions of some bootstrapping arguments are insensitive, but others are not. In reply, I show that sensitivity does not treat different higher-order beliefs differently in the way that Melchior states and that while genuine bootstrapping arguments have insensitive (...) conclusions, the cases that Melchior describes as sensitive ‘bootstrapping’ arguments don’t deserve the name, since they are a perfectly good way of getting to know their conclusions. In sum, sensitivity doesn’t have a heterogeneity problem. (shrink)

Vogel, Sosa, and Huemer have all argued that sensitivity is incompatible with knowing that you do not believe falsely, therefore the sensitivity condition must be false. I show that this objection misses its mark because it fails to take account of the basis of belief. Moreover, if the objection is modified to account for the basis of belief then it collapses into the more familiar objection that sensitivity is incompatible with closure.

Evidence for instances of astrophysical 'fine tuning' (or 'coincidences') is thought by some to lend support to the design argument (i.e. the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). We assess some of the relevant empirical and conceptual issues. We argue that astrophysical fine tuning calls for some explanation, but this explanation need not appeal to the design argument. A clear and strict separation of the issue of anthropic fine tuning on one hand and any form of (...) Eddingtonian numerology and teleology on the other, may help clarify arguably the most significant issue in the philosophy of cosmology. (shrink)

A common compatibilist view says that we are free and morally responsible in virtue of the ability to respond aptly to reasons. Many hold a version of this view despite disagreement about whether free will requires the ability to do otherwise. The canonical version of this view is reductive. It reduces the pertinent ability to a set of modal properties that are more obviously compatible with determinism, like dispositions. I argue that this and any reductive view of abilities faces a (...) significant challenge: it cannot adequately explain the freedom-grounding element of this ability. The problem has the form of a dilemma. This leaves reasons-responsive compatibilists with two options: abandon theories of free will grounded in abilities or abandon reductive theories of abilities. (shrink)

Are counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents automatically true? That is, is Conjunction Conditionalization: if (X & Y), then (X > Y) valid? Stalnaker and Lewis think so, but many others disagree. We note here that the extant arguments for Conjunction Conditionalization are unpersuasive, before presenting a family of more compelling arguments. These arguments rely on some standard theorems of the logic of counterfactuals as well as a plausible and popular semantic claim about certain semifactuals. Denying Conjunction Conditionalization, then, requires (...) rejecting other aspects of the standard logic of counterfactuals, or else our intuitive picture of semifactuals. (shrink)

In philosophy, the criteria for personhood (PH) at a specific point in time (synchronic), and the necessary and sufficient conditions of personal identity (PI) over time (diachronic) are traditionally separated. Hence, the transition between both timescales of a person's life remains largely unclear. Personal habits reflect a decision-making (DM) process that binds together synchronic and diachronic timescales. Despite the fact that the actualization of habits takes place synchronically, they presuppose, for the possibility of their generation, time in a diachronic sense. (...) The acquisition of habits therefore rests upon PI over time; that is, the temporal extension of personal decisions is the necessary condition for the possible development of habits. Conceptually, habits can thus be seen as a bridge between synchronic and diachronic timescales of a person's life. In order to investigate the empirical mediation of this temporal linkage, we draw upon the neuronal mechanisms underlying DM; in particular on the distinction between internally and externally guided DM. Externally guided DM relies on external criteria at a specific point in time (synchronic); on a neural level, this has been associated with lateral frontal and parietal brain regions. In contrast, internally guided DM is based on the person's own preferences that involve a more longitudinal and thus diachronic timescale, which has been associated with the brain's intrinsic activity. Habits can be considered to reflect a balance between internally and externally guided DM, which implicates a particular temporal balance between diachronic and synchronic elements, thus linking two different timescales. Based on such evidence, we suggest a habit-based neurophilosophical approach of PH and PI by focusing on the empirically-based linkage between the synchronic and diachronic elements of habits. By doing so, we propose to link together what philosophically has been described and analyzed separately as PH and PI. (shrink)

Among the main reactions to scepticism, fallibilism is certainly the most popular nowadays. However, fallibilism faces a very strong and well-known objection. It has to grant that concessive knowledge attributions—assertions of the form “I know that p but it might be that not p”—can be true. Yet, these assertions plainly sound incoherent. Fallibilists have proposed to explain this incoherence pragmatically. The main proponents of this approach appeal to Gricean implicatures (Rysiew in Noûs 35(4):477514, 2001; Dougherty and Rysiew in Philos Phenomenol (...) Res 78(1):123132, 2009; Dougherty and Rysiew in Synthese 181(3):395403, 2011). Very recently, some philosophers have observed that fallibilists can also explain this apparent incoherence pragmatically if they embrace a (context-sensitive) certainty norm for assertion (Petersen in Synthese 196(11):4691–4710, 2019; Beddor in Philos Impr 20(8), 2020; Vollet in Dialectica 74:3, 2020). In this paper, I argue for the superiority of this latter explanation over its older rivals. (shrink)

Subjunctivitis is the doctrine that what is distinctive about knowledge is essential modal in character, and thus is captured by certain subjunctive conditionals. One principal formulation of subjunctivism invokes a ``sensitivity condition'' (Nozick, De Rose), the other invokes a ``safety condition'' (Sosa). It is shown in detail how defects in the sensitivity condition generate unwanted results, and that the virtues of that condition are merely apparent. The safety condition is untenable also, because it is too easily satisfied. A powerful motivation (...) for adopting subjunctivism would be that it provides a solution to the problem of misleading evidence, but in fact, it does not. (shrink)