This paper defends the epistemological importance of ‘diachronic’ or cross-temporal evaluation of epistemic agents against an interesting dilemma posed for this view in Trent Dougherty’s recent paper “Reducing Responsibility.” This is primarily a debate between evidentialists and character epistemologists, and key issues of contention that the paper treats include the divergent functions of synchronic and diachronic (longitudinal) evaluations of agents and their beliefs, the nature and sources of epistemic normativity, and the advantages versus the costs of the evidentialists’ reductionism about (...) sources of epistemic normativity. (shrink)

This book seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the relationships between the objective and subjective aspects of time. It discusses the existence of fluent time, a controversial concept in many areas, from philosophy to physics. Fluent time is understood as directional time with a past, a present and a future. We experience fluent time in our lives and we adopt a temporal perspective in our ways of knowing and acting. Nevertheless, the existence of fluent time has been debated (...) for both philosophical and scientific reasons, thus creating a rift between the subjective and objective aspects of time. Starting from the basic notion of points of view, or perspectives, this book explores the relationships between objective or external time, as it has been conceptualized by science, and subjective or internal time, which is involved in our lived experiences. It establishes a general framework encompassing the nature, structure and mode of existence of points of view, in which the objective and subjective aspects of time can be integrated. The book mainly addresses researchers and postgraduates in philosophy and logic. Additionally, it offers inspiration for physicists and computer scientists involved in the modeling and simulation of complex behaviors for which the representation of internal time should be considered together with the notion of objective, external time. (shrink)

Many philosophers have argued that an event is lucky for an agent only if it was suitably improbable, but there is considerable disagreement about how to understand this improbability condition. This paper argues for a hitherto overlooked construal of the improbability condition in terms of the lucky agent’s epistemic situation. According to the proposed account, an event is lucky for an agent only if the agent was not in a position to know that the event would occur. It is also (...) explored whether this new account threatens the anti- luck program in epistemology. It is argued that although not detrimental to the anti- luck program, the epistemic account of luck sets certain important limits to its scope and feasibility. (shrink)

This essay offers a rearticulation and defence of the modal account of luck that the author developed in earlier work . In particular, the proposal is situated within a certain methodology, a component of which is paying due attention to the cognitive science literature on luck ascriptions. It is shown that with the modal account of luck properly articulated it can adequately deal with some of the problems that have recently been offered against it, and that the view has a (...) number of attractions over competing proposals, such as the lack of control account. (shrink)

In this article it is argued that the standard theoretical account of risk in the contemporary literature, which is cast along probabilistic lines, is flawed, in that it is unable to account for a particular kind of risk. In its place a modal account of risk is offered. Two applications of the modal account of risk are then explored. First, to epistemology, via the defence of an anti-risk condition on knowledge in place of the normal anti-luck condition. Second, to legal (...) theory, where it is shown that this account of risk can cast light on the debate regarding the extent to which a criminal justice system can countenance the possibility of wrongful convictions. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to mark the transition from an anti-luck epistemology to an anti-risk epistemology, and to explain in the process how the latter has advantages over the former. We begin with an account of anti-luck epistemology and the modal account of luck that underpins it. Then we consider the close inter-relationships between luck and risk, and in the process set out the modal account of risk that is a natural extension of the modal account of luck. (...) Finally, we apply the modal account of risk to epistemology in order to develop an anti-risk epistemology, and then explore the merits of this proposal. In particular, it is shown that this account can avoid a theoretical lacuna in anti-luck epistemology, and there is a stronger theoretical motivation for anti-risk epistemology compared with anti-luck epistemology, especially when it comes to explaining why environmental epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge. (shrink)

This book seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the relationships between the objective and subjective aspects of time. It discusses the existence of fluent time, a controversial concept in many areas, from philosophy to physics. Fluent time is understood as directional time with a past, a present, and a future. We experience fluent time in our lives and we adopt a temporal perspective in our ways of knowing and acting. Nevertheless, the existence of fluent time has been debated (...) for both philosophical and scientific reasons, thus creating a rift between the subjective and objective aspects of time. Starting from the basic notion of points of view, or perspectives, this book explores the relationships between objective or external time, as it has been conceptualized by science, and subjective or internal time, which is involved in our lived experiences. It establishes a general framework encompassing the nature, structure and mode of existence of points of view, in which the objective and subjective aspects of time can be integrated. The book mainly addresses researchers and postgraduates in philosophy and logic. Additionally, it offers inspiration for physicists and computer scientists involved in the modeling and simulation of complex behaviors for which the representation of internal time should be considered together with the notion of objective, external time. (shrink)

This book seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the relationships between the objective and subjective aspects of time. It discusses the existence of fluent time, a controversial concept in many areas, from philosophy to physics. Fluent time is understood as directional time with a past, a present and a future. We experience fluent time in our lives and we adopt a temporal perspective in our ways of knowing and acting. Nevertheless, the existence of fluent time has been debated (...) for both philosophical and scientific reasons, thus creating a rift between the subjective and objective aspects of time. Starting from the basic notion of points of view, or perspectives, this book explores the relationships between objective or external time, as it has been conceptualized by science, and subjective or internal time, which is involved in our lived experiences. It establishes a general framework encompassing the nature, structure and mode of existence of points of view, in which the objective and subjective aspects of time can be integrated. The book mainly addresses researchers and postgraduates in philosophy and logic. Additionally, it offers inspiration for physicists and computer scientists involved in the modeling and simulation of complex behaviors for which the representation of internal time should be considered together with the notion of objective, external time. (shrink)

A “conceptual spaces” approach is used to formalize Aristotle’s main intuitions about time and change, and other ideas about temporal points of view. That approach has been used in earlier studies about points of view. Properties of entities are represented by locations in multidimensional conceptual spaces; and concepts of entities are identified with subsets or regions of conceptual spaces. The dimensions of the spaces, called “determinables”, are qualities in a very general sense. A temporal element is introduced by adding a (...) time variable to state functions that map entities into conceptual spaces. That way, states may have some permanency or stability around time instances. Following Aristotle’s intuitions, changes and events will not be necessarily instant phenomena, instead they could be processual and interval dependent. Change is defined relatively to the interval during which the change is taking place. Time intervals themselves are taken to represent points of view. To have a point of view is to look at the world as it is in the selected interval. Many important concepts are relativized to intervals, for instance change, events, identity, ontology, potentiality, etc. The definition of points of view as intervals allows to compare points of view in relation to all these concepts. The conceptual space approach has an immediate semantic and structural character, but it is tempting to develop also logics to describe them. A formal language is introduced to show how this could be done. (shrink)

This book seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the relationships between the objective and subjective aspects of time. It discusses the existence of fluent time, a controversial concept in many areas, from philosophy to physics. Fluent time is understood as directional time with a past, a present and a future. We experience fluent time in our lives and we adopt a temporal perspective in our ways of knowing and acting. Nevertheless, the existence of fluent time has been debated (...) for both philosophical and scientific reasons, thus creating a rift between the subjective and objective aspects of time. Starting from the basic notion of points of view, or perspectives, this book explores the relationships between objective or external time, as it has been conceptualized by science, and subjective or internal time, which is involved in our lived experiences. It establishes a general framework encompassing the nature, structure and mode of existence of points of view, in which the objective and subjective aspects of time can be integrated. The book mainly addresses researchers and postgraduates in philosophy and logic. Additionally, it offers inspiration for physicists and computer scientists involved in the modeling and simulation of complex behaviors for which the representation of internal time should be considered together with the notion of objective, external time. (shrink)

This book seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the relationships between the objective and subjective aspects of time. It discusses the existence of fluent time, a controversial concept in many areas, from philosophy to physics. Fluent time is understood as directional time with a past, a present and a future. We experience fluent time in our lives and we adopt a temporal perspective in our ways of knowing and acting. Nevertheless, the existence of fluent time has been debated (...) for both philosophical and scientific reasons, thus creating a rift between the subjective and objective aspects of time. Starting from the basic notion of points of view, or perspectives, this book explores the relationships between objective or external time, as it has been conceptualized by science, and subjective or internal time, which is involved in our lived experiences. It establishes a general framework encompassing the nature, structure and mode of existence of points of view, in which the objective and subjective aspects of time can be integrated. The book mainly addresses researchers and postgraduates in philosophy and logic. Additionally, it offers inspiration for physicists and computer scientists involved in the modeling and simulation of complex behaviors for which the representation of internal time should be considered together with the notion of objective, external time. (shrink)

This essay explains the notion of luck in terms of risk. It starts by distinguishing two senses of risk, the risk that an event has of occurring and the risk at which an agent is with respect to an event. It cashes out the former in modal terms and the latter in terms of lack of control. It then argues that the presence or absence of event-relative risk marks a distinction between two types of luck or fortune commonly overlooked in (...) ordinary usage of the terms “luck” and “fortune.” After offering a detailed account of the notion of control, the essay advances a new version of the so-called lack of control account of luck: lucky events are events with respect to which one is at risk and hence events over which one lacks control in the specified way. Finally, it argues that its account steers clear of counterexamples to the lack of control account of luck. (shrink)

Winning a lottery, being hit by a stray bullet, or surviving a plane crash, all are instances of a mundane phenomenon: luck. Mundane as it is, the concept of luck nonetheless plays a pivotal role in central areas of philosophy, either because it is the key element of widespread philosophical theses or because it … Continue reading Luck →.