People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered Internet ‎sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing ‎subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users’ reliance on ‎Internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about ‎the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns ‎within standard theories of knowledge and justification. (...) To shed light on the problem, we introduce a ‎novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, ‎action, and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to ‎certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject’s particular decision-taking circumstances, ‎and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far as one can, whether the information upon which ‎the judgment will rest is biased or incomplete. What this responsibility comprises is partly determined by ‎the inquiry-enabling technologies available to the subject. We argue that a subject’s beliefs that are ‎formed based on Internet-filtered information are less justified than they would be if she either knew how ‎filtering worked or relied on additional sources, and that the subject may have the epistemic ‎responsibility to take measures to enhance the justificatory status of such beliefs.‎. (shrink)

Mainstream analytic epistemology regards knowledge as the property of individuals, rather ‎than groups. Drawing on insights from the reality of knowledge production and dissemination ‎in the sciences, I argue, from within the analytic framework, that this view is wrong. I defend ‎the thesis of ‘knowledge-level justification communalism’, which states that at least some ‎knowledge, typically knowledge obtained from expert testimony, is the property of a ‎community and possibly none of its individual members, in that only the community or some ‎members (...) of it collectively possesses knowledge-level justification for its individual members’ ‎beliefs. I address several objections that individuals, qua individuals, have or are able to ‎acquire knowledge-level justification for all the beliefs they obtain from expert testimony. I ‎argue that the problem I identify with individualism is invariant under any specific account of ‎justification, internalist or externalist. ‎. (shrink)

Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search ‎engines, which actively shape their epistemic surroundings. Yet, a satisfying account ‎of the epistemic responsibilities associated with them does not exist. We analyze ‎automatically generated search suggestions from the perspective of social ‎epistemology to illustrate how epistemic responsibilities associated with a ‎technology can be derived and assigned. Drawing on our previously developed ‎theoretical framework that connects responsible epistemic behavior to ‎practicability, we address two questions: first, given the different technological ‎possibilities available (...) to searchers, the search technology, and search providers, ‎who should bear which responsibilities? Second, given the technology’s ‎epistemically relevant features and potential harms, how should search terms be ‎autocompleted? Our analysis reveals that epistemic responsibility lies mostly with ‎search providers, which should eliminate three categories of autosuggestions: those ‎that result from organized attacks, those that perpetuate damaging stereotypes, and ‎those that associate negative characteristics with specific individuals.‎. (shrink)

Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the existence of knowledge. However, it is far from clear that such deference to consensus is always justified. The existence of agreement in a community of researchers is a contingent fact, and researchers may reach a consensus for all kinds of reasons, such as fighting a common foe or sharing a common bias. Scientific consensus, by itself, does not necessarily indicate the existence of shared knowledge among (...) the members of the consensus community. I address the question of under what conditions it is likely that a consensus is in fact knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is likely to be knowledge based when knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus, and I identify three conditions—social calibration, apparent consilience of evidence, and social diversity, for knowledge being the best explanation of a consensus. (shrink)

According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis, technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech (...) or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term implications that surpass their designers and builders. I further argue that taking sides in this debate has real-world implications in the form of moral constraints on the development of technology. (shrink)

Many things can be other than they are. Many other things cannot. But what are statements like these about? One answer to this question is that we are speaking of possible worlds: if something can be other than it is, then it actually is that way in some possible world. If something cannot be otherwise, it is not otherwise in any world. This answer is presently dominant in analytical philosophy of language and logic. What are these worlds? David Lewis famously (...) claimed that every world exists, just like ours does: there is no difference between the other worlds and ours. In contrast, the medieval thinker John Buridan understands modal logic in terms of objects and causal powers in this world: if something can be other than it is, then there is a causal power that can make it that way. If it cannot, then no causal power—not even God—can alter it, at least without destroying its nature. As we’ll see, the Lewisian plurality is not possible on Buridan’s account; accordingly, a basic tenet of classical theism is untenable on Lewis’s metaphysics. In short, either the Lewisian plurality is incoherent, or a core monotheistic tenet is impossible. (shrink)

A consensus in a scientific community is often used as a resource for making informed public-policy decisions and deciding between rival expert testimonies in legal trials. This paper contains a social-epistemic analysis of the high-profile Bendectin drug controversy, which was decided in the courtroom inter alia by deference to a scientific consensus about the safety of Bendectin. Drawing on my previously developed account of knowledge-based consensus, I argue that the consensus in this case was not knowledge based, hence courts’ deference (...) to it was not epistemically justified. I draw sceptical lessons from this analysis regarding the value of scientific consensus as a desirable and reliable means of resolving scientific controversies in public life. (shrink)

It may come as a surprise to readers familiar with the life and work of the Arts Master that he discusses the Eucharist at all. As he likes to remind us, theological topics are generally out of his wheelhouse. Even so, in his Questions on the “Metaphysics” of Aristotle (QM) 4.6, Buridan takes the sacrament of the Eucharist as a key data point in his discussion of Aristotle’s Categories. In the Eucharist, the accidents of the bread and wine—their color, texture, (...) and so on—remain intact, but the underlying substance is transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. Accordingly, God can preserve accidents independent of their underlying substance. Therefore, for our part we can use accidental terms, like whiteness, without connoting any substances, like communion bread. Moreover, it follows that, contrary to Aristotle, substance and the accidental categories are not the most general genera. Instead, being (ens) is, as Buridan concludes. Here, I trace Buridan’s thought on the metaphysical and semantic matters of substance in light of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is for him not only a theological truth, but a metaphysical and semantic datum as well. I conclude by asking why Buridan did not take any and all questions about the Eucharist to be out of his ken. What does this tell us about his attitude toward theology? This paper also includes, as an appendix, the first ever English translation of the question under discussion (QM 4.6): “Does the term being (ens) signify substances and accidents by one single concept or notion?”. (shrink)

Scholastic philosophers can be quite funny. What’s more, they have good reason to be: Aristotle himself lists ready wit (eutrapelia) among the virtues, as a mean between excessive humor and its defect. Here, I assess Scholastic discussions of humor in theory, before turning to examples of it in practice. The last and finest of these is a joke, hitherto unacknowledged, which Aquinas makes in his famous Five Ways. Along the way, we’ll see (i) that the history of philosophy is not (...) so hostile to humor as is commonly supposed; and (ii) that the competing theories of humor like the Incongruity Theory and the Release Theory are not altogether incompatible. We’ll also see at least one example of an apparent attempt by modern translators to excise humor from a medieval text. Our considerations will open a window into what oral discussion and debate at medieval universities was actually like, and how we should understand the relationship between the texts we have now and the exchanges that actually occurred then. (shrink)

Margaret Atwood and David Suzuki are two of the most prominent Canadian public ‎intellectuals ‎involved in the global warming debate. They both argue that anthropogenic global ‎warming is ‎occurring, warn against its grave consequences, and urge governments and the ‎public to take ‎immediate, decisive, extensive, and profound measures to prevent it. They differ, ‎however, in the ‎reasons and evidence they provide in support of their position. While Suzuki ‎stresses the scientific ‎evidence in favour of the global warming theory and the (...) scientific ‎consensus around it, Atwood is ‎suspicious of the objectivity of science, and draws on an ‎idiosyncratic neo-Malthusian theory of ‎human development. Their implicit views ‎about the cognitive authority of science may be ‎identified with Critical Contextual Empiricism ‎and Feminist Standpoint Epistemology, respectively, ‎both of which face difficulties with ‎providing solid grounds for the position they advocate.‎ ‎. (shrink)

This paper reviews current debates in social epistemology about the relations ‎between ‎knowledge ‎and consensus. These relations are philosophically interesting on their ‎own, but ‎also have ‎practical consequences, as consensus takes an increasingly significant ‎role in ‎informing public ‎decision making. The paper addresses the following questions. ‎When is a ‎consensus attributable to an epistemic community? Under what conditions may ‎we ‎legitimately infer that a consensual view is knowledge-based or otherwise ‎epistemically ‎justified? Should consensus be the aim of scientific inquiry, and (...) if so, what ‎kind of ‎consensus? How should dissent be handled? It is argued that a legitimate inference ‎that a ‎theory is correct from the fact that there is a scientific consensus on it requires taking ‎into ‎consideration both cognitive properties of the theory as well as social properties of ‎the ‎consensus. The last section of the paper reviews computational models of ‎consensus ‎formation.‎. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued, against a prevailing orthodoxy, that standards of knowledge partly depend on a subject’s interests; the more is at stake for the subject, the less she is in a position to know. This view, which is dubbed “Pragmatic Encroachment” has historical and conceptual connections to arguments in philosophy of science against the received model of science as value free. I bring the two debates together. I argue that Pragmatic Encroachment and the model of value-laden science reinforce each (...) other. Drawing on Douglas’ argument about the indispensability of value judgments in science, and psychological evidence about people’s inability to objectively reason about what they care about, I introduce a novel argument for Pragmatic Encroachment. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that values “fill the logical gap” of underdetermination of theory by evidence, namely, values affect our choice between two or more theories that fit the same evidence. The underdetermination model, however, does not exhaust the roles values play in evidential reasoning. I introduce WAVE – a novel account of the logical relations between values and evidence. WAVE states that values influence evidential reasoning by adjusting evidential weights. I argue that the weight-adjusting role of values is distinct (...) from their underdetermination gap-filling role. Values adjust weights in three ways. First, values affect our trust in the testimony of others. Second, values influence the evidential thresholds required for justified epistemic judgments. Third, values influence the relative weight of a certain type of evidence within a body of multimodal discordant evidence. WAVE explains, from an epistemic perspective, rather than psychological, how smokers, for example, can find the same evidence about the dangers of smoking less persuasive than non-smokers. WAVE allows for a wider effect of values on our accepted scientific theories and beliefs than the effect for which the underdetermination model allows alone; therefore, science studies scholars must consider WAVE in their research and analysis of evidential case studies. (shrink)

This chapter explores properties that bind individuals, knowledge, and communities, together. Section ‎‎1 introduces Hardwig’s argument from trust in others’ testimonies as entailing that trust is the glue ‎that binds individuals into communities. Section 2 asks “what grounds trust?” by exploring assessment ‎of collaborators’ explanatory responsiveness, formal indicators such as affiliation and credibility, ‎appreciation of peers’ tacit knowledge, game-theoretical considerations, and the role moral character ‎of peers, social biases, and social values play in grounding trust. Section 3 deals with establishing (...) ‎reliability standards for formation and breaching of trust. Different epistemic considerations and their ‎underpinning of inductive risks are examined through various communication routes within a ‎discipline, between disciplines, and to the public. Section 4 examines whether a collective entity can ‎be trusted over and above trust that is given to its individual members. Section 5 deals with the roles ‎technological artifacts play in distributed research and collective knowledge. It presents the common ‎view in which genuine trust cannot, in principle, be accorded to artifacts, so as an opposite view. We ‎show that what counts as a genuine object of trust is relevant to debates about the boundaries of ‎collective agency and as a criterion for extended cognitive systems.‎. (shrink)

Social inequality may obstruct the generation of knowledge, as the rich and powerful may bring about social acceptance of skewed views that suit their interests. Epistemic equality in the context of justification is a means of preventing such obstruction. Drawing on social epistemology and theories of equality and distributive justice, we provide an account of epistemic equality. We regard participation in, and influence over a knowledge-generating discourse in an epistemic community as a limited good that needs to be justly distributed (...) among putative members of the community. We argue that rather than trying to operationally formulate an exact criterion for distributing this good, epistemic equality may be realized by insisting on active participation of members of three groups in addition to credited experts: relevant disempowered groups, relevant uncredited experts, and relevant stakeholders. Meeting these conditions fulfills the political, moral, and epistemic aims of epistemic equality. (shrink)

According to Ian Hacking’s Entity Realism, unobservable entities that scientists carefully manipulate to study other phenomena are real. Although Hacking presents his case in an intuitive, attractive, and persuasive way, his argument remains elusive. I present five possible readings of Hacking’s argument: a no-miracle argument, an indispensability argument, a transcendental argument, a Vichian argument, and a non-argument. I elucidate Hacking’s argument according to each reading, and review their strengths, their weaknesses, and their compatibility with each other.

In August 2002, three Indian computer scientists published a paper, ‘PRIMES is in P’, online. It presents a ‘deterministic algorithm’ which determines in ‘polynomial time’ if a given number is a prime number. The story was quickly picked up by the general press, and by this means spread through the scientific community of complexity theorists, where it was hailed as a major theoretical breakthrough. This is although scientists regarded the media reports as vulgar popularizations. When the paper was published in (...) a peer-reviewed journal only two years later, the three scientists had already received wide recognition for their accomplishment. Current sociological theory challenges the ability to clearly distinguish on independent epistemic grounds between distorted and non-distorted scientific knowledge. It views the demarcation lines between such forms of presentation as contextual and unstable. In my paper, I challenge this view. By systematically surveying the popular press coverage of the ‘PRIMES is in P’ affair, I argue--against the prevailing new orthodoxy--that distorted simplifications of scientific knowledge are distinguishable from non-distorted simplifications on independent epistemic grounds. I argue that in the ‘PRIMES is in P’ affair, the three scientists could ride on the wave of the general press-distorted coverage of their algorithm, while counting on their colleagues’ ability to distinguish genuine accounts from distorted ones. Thus, their scientific reputation was unharmed. This suggests that the possibility of the existence of independent epistemic standards must be incorporated into the new SSK model of popularization. (shrink)

According to Popper's rationality principle, agents act in the most adequate way according to the objective situation. I propose a new interpretation of the rationality principle as consisting of an idealization and two abstractions. Based on this new interpretation, I critically discuss the privileged status that Popper ascribes to it as an integral part of all social scientific models. I argue that as an idealization, the rationality principle may play an important role in the social sciences, but it also has (...) inherent limitations that inhibit it from having the privileged status that Popper ascribes to it in all cases. (shrink)

If an argument is valid, it is impossible for its premises to be true, and its conclusion false. But how should we understand these notions of truth and impossibility? Here, I present the answers given by John Buridan (ca. 1300-60), showing (i) how he understands truth in his anti-realist metaphysics, and (ii) how he understands modality in connection with causal powers. In short: if an argument exists and is valid, there does not exist a power capable of making the premises (...) true and, at the same time, making the conclusion false. (shrink)

Multiple generality has long been known to cause confusion. For example, “Everyone has a donkey that is running” has two readings: either (i) there is a donkey, owned by everyone, and it is running; or (ii) everyone owns some donkey or other, and all such donkeys run. Medieval logicians were acutely aware of such ambiguities, and the logical problems they pose, and sought to sort them out. One of the most ambitious undertakings in this regard is a pair of massive (...) diagrams (magnae figurae) which map out the logical interrelations of two sets of doubly-general forms. These appear in a fourteenth-century MS of John Buridan’s Summulae de Propositionibus. In this paper, I present these diagrams, and determine the truth conditions of their different forms. To that end, I have developed a bespoke system of diagrams to display their truth conditions. As we will see, such forms present significant difficulties for an all-encompassing account of the role form plays in logic. Accordingly, they can tell us important things about the role logical form plays in Buridan’s account of logical foundations. (shrink)

There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machines can assert ‎or testify. A standard view in epistemology is that only humans can testify. However, the notion of quasi-‎testimony acknowledges that technological devices can assert or testify under some conditions, without ‎denying that humans and machines are not the same. Indeed, there are four relevant differences between ‎humans and instruments. First, unlike humans, machine assertion is not imaginative or playful. Second, ‎machine assertion is prescripted and (...) context restricted. As such, computers currently cannot easily switch ‎contexts or make meaningful relevant assertions in contexts for which they were not programmed. Third, ‎while both humans and computers make errors, they do so in different ways. Computers are very sensitive to ‎small errors in input, which may cause them to make big errors in output. Moreover, automatic error control ‎is based on finding irregularities in data without trying to establish whether they make sense. Fourth, ‎testimony is produced by a human with moral worth, while quasi-testimony is not. Ultimately, the notion of ‎quasi-testimony can serve as a bridge between different philosophical fields that deal with instruments and ‎testimony as sources of knowledge, allowing them to converse and agree on a shared description of reality, ‎while maintaining their distinct conceptions and ontological commitments about knowledge, humans, and ‎nonhumans.‎. (shrink)

In the major French and German etymological dictionaries of Latin, there is some puzzlement over the semantics of exāmen: how can one word refer to a measurement or examination, but also to a swarm of bees? Walde and Hofmann suggest these two dis-parate meanings stem from the diverse meanings of the verb exigō (<*ex-agō, ‘to drive out’), from which exāmen derives. They claim these two senses of exāmen become two words in the Latin Sprachgefühl. Ernout and Meillet agree: there is (...) more than one exāmen in the Latins’ sentiment linguistique. I, too, agree. But this approach does not tell us why these terms derive from exigō, nor does it give any hint of an underlying concept which measurements and swarms of bees share, which makes a derivation from exigō appropriate to both. The present paper addresses this puzzle by reducing the two meanings of exāmen to one meaning of the parent term *ex-agō: ‘to drive out.’ In sum: a swarm of bees is a ‘driving out’ or outpouring, and a measurement or examination is a ‘driving out’ or setting out for scrutiny. This interpretation is moreover supported by semantically parallel uses of cognate terms in other Indo-European languages, notably Greek and Old Irish, and by semantic parallels in English and in the Slavic language family. Along the way, I touch upon a philosophical puzzle: at what point do evolving linguistic items with a common source become distinct from one another? (shrink)

What does success in online teaching look like? There are two ways to answer this question. The first defines success in terms of replacement of educational means: for example, how closely does an online lecture approximate its offline counterpart? The second defines success in terms of educational goals: for example, how well does an online lecture facilitate learning, compared with its offline counterpart? The first is a trap: it commits us to an endless online game of catch-up with offline models (...) of teaching. Instead, we should adopt a goal-oriented approach, mindful of obstacles to online teaching. As a case study, I present practices developed using this approach to teach philosophy online in 2020. An important upshot is that this approach leaves us open to ways in which online teaching is actually better than its offline counterpart. I conclude with some examples of these, and discuss their future implementation. (shrink)

David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended mind thesis by meeting the criteria ‎that he and Andy Clark established in their well-known 1998 paper. Andy Clark agrees. We take ‎this proposal seriously, evaluating the case of the GPS-enabled smartphone as a potential mind ‎extender. We argue that the “trust and glue” criteria enumerated by Clark and Chalmers are ‎incompatible with both the epistemic responsibilities that accompany everyday activities and the ‎practices of trust that enable users to discharge them. Prospects (...) for revision of the original ‎criteria are dim. We therefore call for a rejection of the trust criterion and a reevaluation of the ‎extended mind thesis.‎. (shrink)

What makes a valid argument valid? Generally speaking, in a valid argument, if the premisses are true, then the conclusion must necessarily also be true. But on its own, this doesn’t tell us all that much. What is truth? And what is necessity? In what follows, I consider answers to these questions proposed by the fourteenth century logician John Buridan († ca. 1358). My central claim is that Buridan’s logic is downstream from his metaphysics. Accordingly, I treat his metaphysical discussions (...) as the key to his logic. As has been often noted, Buridan’s metaphysics are radically anti-realist about universals, though I think the depth and scope of his anti-realism has at times been papered over. Buridan constructs his logic on an amazingly spartan ontology, and this accomplishment is overdue for reconsideration. To the foregoing questions: truth is a feature of propositions, and of propositions only—not of proposition-like states of affairs, or anything like that. It is a function of the reference or supposition (suppositio) of their terms, which depends on predication in a propositional context. And necessary truth is grounded in causation: a predication is necessary if it cannot be falsified by any power, natural or supernatural, without ii annihilating what its terms stand for. “Socrates is a human”, for instance, can only be falsified by annihilating Socrates, and so it is a necessary truth. -/- These considerations provide an ample theoretical basis for a thorough examination of Buridan’s modal logic. This is what the thesis culminates with. In the final chapter, I set forth some novel and surprising findings, chief of which is this: Buridan’s modal syntax and semantics are nothing like Kripke’s—and indeed are incompatible with them. This has significant implications not only for modal logic and metaphysics, but for how we think about medieval logic and philosophy more generally. -/- Throughout the thesis, I advocate a methodology of emphasising the differences, rather than the similarities, between past and present thought. Buridan is wildly unlike what we’re used to, and we should let him speak for himself. (shrink)

We present a novel model of individual people, online posts, and media platforms to explain the online spread of epistemically toxic content such as fake news and suggest possible responses. We argue that a combination of technical features, such as the algorithmically curated feed structure, and social features, such as the absence of stable social-epistemic norms of posting and sharing in social media, is largely responsible for the unchecked spread of epistemically toxic content online. Sharing constitutes a distinctive communicative act, (...) governed by a dedicated norm and motivated to a large extent by social identity maintenance. But confusion about this norm and its lack of inherent epistemic checks lead readers to misunderstand posts, attribute excess or insufficient credibility to posts, and allow posters to evade epistemic accountability—all contributing to the spread of epistemically toxic content online. This spread can be effectively addressed if people and platforms add significantly more context to shared posts and platforms nudge people to develop and follow recognized epistemic norms of posting and sharing. (shrink)

Leading prescriptions for addressing the spread of fake news, misinformation, and other forms of epistemically toxic content online target either the platform or platform users as a single site for intervention. Neither approach attends to the intense feedback between people, posts, and platforms. Leading prescriptions boil down to the suggestion that we make social media more like traditional media, whether by making platforms take active roles as gatekeepers, or by exhorting individuals to behave more like media professionals. Both approaches are (...) impracticable and wrong. (shrink)

Journalism and media studies lack robust theoretical concepts for studying journalistic knowledge ‎generation. More specifically, conceptual challenges attend the emergence of big data and ‎algorithmic sources of journalistic knowledge. A family of frameworks apt to this challenge is ‎provided by “social epistemology”: a young philosophical field which regards society’s participation ‎in knowledge generation as inevitable. Social epistemology offers the best of both worlds for ‎journalists and media scholars: a thorough familiarity with biases and failures of obtaining ‎knowledge, and a strong (...) orientation toward best practices in the realm of knowledge-acquisition ‎and truth-seeking. This paper articulates the lessons of social epistemology for two central nodes of ‎knowledge-acquisition in contemporary journalism: human-mediated knowledge and technology-‎mediated knowledge. ‎. (shrink)

I propose a reading of The Book of Ruth that takes seriously the pastoral concern for refugees, migrants, and their families that was embodied in the life and teaching of Pope John Paul II.The Book of Ruth models virtues and practices that can help build up a society in solidarity, kindness, and peace. Ruth’s decision to stand beside Naomi demonstrates the value of solidarity in creating a hopeful future for families and communities. Naomi’s role in bringing Ruth and Boaz (...) together shows prudence and a sense of responsibility for shaping the common good. As for Boaz, he is an exemplary model of generosity and kindness. With respect to peacemaking, The Book of Ruth shows how enmity and distrust between nations might be overcome, with God’s help. (shrink)

Normatively inappropriate scientific dissent prevents warranted closure of scientific controversies and confuses the public about the state of policy-relevant science, such as anthropogenic climate change. Against recent criticism by de Melo-Martín and Intemann of the viability of any conception of normatively inappropriate dissent, I identify three conditions for normatively inappropriate dissent: its generation process is politically illegitimate, it imposes an unjust distribution of inductive risks, and it adopts evidential thresholds outside an accepted range. I supplement these conditions with an inference-to-the-best-explanation (...) account of knowledge-based consensus and dissent to allow policy makers to reliably identify unreliable scientific dissent. (shrink)

Where does the mind begin and end? Most philosophers and cognitive scientists take the view that the mind is bounded by the skull or skin of the individual. Robert Wilson, in this provocative and challenging 2004 book, provides the foundations for the view that the mind extends beyond the boundary of the individual. The approach adopted offers a unique blend of traditional philosophical analysis, cognitive science, and the history of psychology and the human sciences. The companion volume, Genes and the (...) Agents of Life, explores the theme in the biological sciences. Written with verve and clarity, this ambitious book will appeal to a broad swathe of professionals and students in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and the history of the behavioural and human sciences. You can download the table of contents here. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has focused almost exclusively on propositional knowledge. This paper considers an underexplored area of epistemology, namely knowledge of persons: if propositional knowledge is a state of mind, consisting in a subject's attitude to a (true) proposition, the account developed here thinks of interpersonal knowledge as a state of minds, involving a subject's attitude to another (existing) subject. This kind of knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, but it exhibits a gradability characteristic of context-sensitivity, and admits of shifty thresholds. (...) It is supported by a wide range of unexplored linguistic data and intuitive cases; and it promises to illuminate debates within epistemology, philosophy of religion, and ethics. (shrink)

I discuss two types of evidential problems with the most widely touted experiments in evolutionary psychology, those performed by Leda Cosmides and interpreted by Cosmides and John Tooby. First, and despite Cosmides and Tooby's claims to the contrary, these experiments don't fulfil the standards of evidence of evolutionary biology. Second Cosmides and Tooby claim to have performed a crucial experiment, and to have eliminated rival approaches. Though they claim that their results are consistent with their theory but contradictory to the (...) leading non-evolutionary alternative, Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas theory, I argue that this claim is unsupported. In addition, some of Cosmides and Tooby's interpretations arise from misguided and simplistic understandings of evolutionary biology. While I endorse the incorporation of evolutionary approaches into psychology, I reject the claims of Cosmides and Tooby that a modular approach is the only one supported by evolutionary biology. Lewontin's critical examinations of the applications of adaptationist thinking provide a background of evidentiary standards against which to view the currently fashionable claims of evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

We consider how an epistemic network might self-assemble from the ritualization of the individual decisions of simple heterogeneous agents. In such evolved social networks, inquirers may be significantly more successful than they could be investigating nature on their own. The evolved network may also dramatically lower the epistemic risk faced by even the most talented inquirers. We consider networks that self-assemble in the context of both perfect and imperfect communication and compare the behaviour of inquirers in each. This provides a (...) step in bringing together two new and developing research programs, the theory of self-assembling games and the theory of network epistemology. (shrink)

I argue that there can be no such thing as a borderline case of the predicate ‘phenomenally conscious’: for any given creature at any given time, it cannot be vague whether that creature is phenomenally conscious at that time. I first defend the Positive Characterization Thesis, which says that for any borderline case of any predicate there is a positive characterization of that case that can show any sufficiently competent speaker what makes it a borderline case. I then appeal to (...) the familiar claim that zombies are conceivable, and I argue that this claim entails that there can be no positive characterizations of borderline cases of ‘phenomenally conscious’. By the Positive Characterization Thesis, it follows that ‘phenomenally conscious’ can not have any borderline cases. (shrink)

Forty years’ experience as a bacterial geneticist has taught me that bacteria possess many cognitive, computational and evolutionary capabilities unimaginable in the first six decades of the twentieth century. Analysis of cellular processes such as metabolism, regulation of protein synthesis, and DNA repair established that bacteria continually monitor their external and internal environments and compute functional outputs based on information provided by their sensory apparatus. Studies of genetic recombination, lysogeny, antibiotic resistance and my own work on transposable elements revealed multiple (...) widespread bacterial systems for mobilizing and engineering DNA molecules. Examination of colony development and organization led me to appreciate how extensive multicellular collaboration is among the majority of bacterial species. Contemporary research in many laboratories on cell–cell signaling, symbiosis and pathogenesis show that bacteria utilise sophisticated mechanisms for intercellular communication and even have the ability to commandeer the basic cell biology of ‘higher’ plants and animals to meet their own needs. This remarkable series of observations requires us to revise basic ideas about biological information processing and recognise that even the smallest cells are sentient beings. Previous article in issue. (shrink)

I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of lacking (...) prospective access to your future self as a problem with your capacity to imaginatively empathize with your future selves. (shrink)

Traditional definitions of lying require that a speaker believe that what she asserts is false. Sam Fox Krauss seeks to jettison the traditional belief requirement in favour of a necessary condition given in a credence-accuracy framework, on which the liar expects to impose the risk of increased inaccuracy on the hearer. He argues that this necessary condition importantly captures nearby cases as lies which the traditional view neglects. I argue, however, that Krauss's own account suffers from an identical drawback of (...) being unable to explain nearby cases; and even worse, that account fails to distinguish cases of telling lies from cases of telling the truth. (shrink)

Recently, due to the rapid progress of computer technology, researchers develop an effective computer program to enhance the achievement of the student in learning process, which is Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Science is important because it influences most aspects of everyday life, including food, energy, medicine, leisure activities and more. So learning science subject at school is very useful, but the students face some problem in learning it. So we designed an ITS system to help them understand this subject easily (...) and smoothly by analyzing it and explaining it in a systematic way. In this paper, we describe the design of an Intelligent Tutoring System for teaching science for grade seven to help students know the 7 characteristics for living things smoothly. The system provides all topics of living things and generates some questions for each topic and the students should answer these questions correctly to move to the next level. In the result of an evaluation of the ITS, students like the system and they said that it is very useful for them and for their studies. (shrink)

The article offers a reconstruction of John Rawls views on political legitimacy, from A Theory of Justice to his late writings on political liberalism. It argues that Rawls had three conceptions of legitimacy, not two as one might expect based on the distinction between his two major works. Its argument is that the most radical change in Rawls’ thinking about legitimacy occurs in ‘Introduction to the Paperback Edition’ and ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’. Here Rawls assumes that there can (...) be a reasonable pluralism not only of comprehensive doctrines, but also of political liberal conceptions of justice. As a consequence, the standard of political legitimacy is no longer specified as sufficient justice relative to justice as fairness, but instead as sufficient justice relative to a family of political conceptions of justice – a family which in turn is animated by an ideal of public reasoning about constitutional matters and matters of basic justice. The article also shows how Rawls’ late ideal of public reason is grounded in the need for legitimate constitutional government. (shrink)

This paper responds to Kevin Krein’s claim in that the particular value of nature sports over traditional ones is that they offer intensity of sport experience in dynamic interaction between an athlete and natural features. He denies that this intensity is derived from competitive conflict of individuals and denies that nature sport derives its value from internal conflict within the athlete who carries out the activity. This paper responds directly to Krein by analysing ‘intensity’ in sport in terms of the (...) relationship between attention and reflection and the interaction between self and environment. I reply directly to Krein’s rejection of self-competition as based on a mischaracterisation of internal struggle and argue that the weighing of incompatible desires does not involve a fragmented self. I argue that the unique intensity to which Krein refers is strongly comparable to the Kantian conception of the sublime and explore how sublime experience fits Krein’s account and outline some serious problems that such an ideal of experience poses for nature sport. (shrink)

Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutili- tarian modes of moral decision-making. This research has generated important insights into people’s attitudes toward instrumental harm—that is, the sacrifice of an individual to save a greater number. But this approach also has serious limitations. Most notably, it ignores the positive, altruistic core of utilitarianism, which is characterized by impartial concern for the well-being of everyone, whether near or far. Here, we develop, refine, and validate a (...) new scale—the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale—to dissociate individual differences in the ‘negative’ (permissive attitude toward instrumental harm) and ‘positive’ (impartial concern for the greater good) dimensions of utilitarian thinking as manifested in the general population. We show that these are two independent dimensions of proto-utilitarian tendencies in the lay population, each exhibiting a distinct psychological profile. Empathic concern, identification with the whole of humanity, and concern for future generations were positively associated with impartial beneficence but negatively associated with instrumental harm; and although instrumental harm was associated with subclinical psychopathy, impartial beneficence was associated with higher religiosity. Importantly, although these two dimensions were independent in the lay population, they were closely associated in a sample of moral philosophers. Acknowledging this dissociation between the instrumental harm and impartial beneficence components of utilitarian thinking in ordinary people can clarify existing debates about the nature of moral psychology and its relation to moral philosophy as well as generate fruitful avenues for further research. (shrink)

Attempts to ‘naturalize’ phenomenology challenge both traditional phenomenology and traditional approaches to cognitive science. They challenge Edmund Husserl’s rejection of naturalism and his attempt to establish phenomenology as a foundational transcendental discipline, and they challenge efforts to explain cognition through mainstream science. While appearing to be a retreat from the bold claims made for phenomenology, it is really its triumph. Naturalized phenomenology is spearheading a successful challenge to the heritage of Cartesian dualism. This converges with the reaction against Cartesian thought (...) within science itself. Descartes divided the universe between res cogitans, thinking substances, and res extensa, the mechanical world. The latter won with Newton and we have, in most of objective science since, literally lost our mind, hence our humanity. Despite Darwin, biologists remain children of Newton, and dream of a grand theory that is epistemologically complete and would allow lawful entailment of the evolution of the biosphere. This dream is no longer tenable. We now have to recognize that science and scientists are within and part of the world we are striving to comprehend, as proponents of endophysics have argued, and that physics, biology and mathematics have to be reconceived accordingly. Interpreting quantum mechanics from this perspective is shown to both illuminate conscious experience and reveal new paths for its further development. In biology we must now justify the use of the word “function”. As we shall see, we cannot prestate the ever new biological functions that arise and constitute the very phase space of evolution. Hence, we cannot mathematize the detailed becoming of the biosphere, nor write differential equations for functional variables we do not know ahead of time, nor integrate those equations, so no laws “entail” evolution. The dream of a grand theory fails. In place of entailing laws, a post-entailing law explanatory framework is proposed in which Actuals arise in evolution that constitute new boundary conditions that are enabling constraints that create new, typically unprestatable, Adjacent Possible opportunities for further evolution, in which new Actuals arise, in a persistent becoming. Evolution flows into a typically unprestatable succession of Adjacent Possibles. Given the concept of function, the concept of functional closure of an organism making a living in its world, becomes central. Implications for patterns in evolution include historical reconstruction, and statistical laws such as the distribution of extinction events, or species per genus, and the use of formal cause, not efficient cause, laws. (shrink)

The self can be understood in objective metaphysical terms as a bundle of properties, as a substance, or as some other kind of entity on our metaphysical list of what there is. Such an approach explores the metaphysical nature of the self when regarded from a suitably impersonal, ontological perspective. It explores the nature and structure of the self in objective reality, that is, the nature and structure of the self from without. This is the objective self. I am taking (...) a different approach. In addition to objective reality, which is usually understood and explored from an impersonal, quasi-observational and metaphysically realist perspective, we can also explore the nature and structure of subjective reality. The nature and structure of subjective reality is defined by the nature and structure of first-personal, conscious experience. Subjective reality is as real as objective reality, and a metaphysical realist such as myself can endorse the existence of both kinds of ontology. The mental states that, as experienced from the first-personal or subjective perspective, capture the nature and structure of subjective reality, are included in objective reality. The questions to explore in a subjective ontology of the self concern the nature and structure of the self from the first-personal or subjective perspective, that is, the nature and structure of the self from within. This is the subjective self. (shrink)

Drawing on the material culture of the Ancient Near East as interpreted through Material Engagement Theory, the journey of how material number becomes a conceptual number is traced to address questions of how a particular material form might generate a concept and how concepts might ultimately encompass multiple material forms so that they include but are irreducible to all of them together. Material forms incorporated into the cognitive system affect the content and structure of concepts through their agency and affordances, (...) the capabilities and constraints they provide as the material component of the extended, enactive mind. Material forms give concepts the tangibility that enables them to be literally grasped and manipulated. As they are distributed over multiple material forms, concepts effectively become independent of any of them, yielding the abstract irreducibility that makes a concept like number what it is. Finally, social aspects of material use—collaboration, ordinariness, and time—have important effects on the generation and distribution of concepts. (shrink)

Abstract: Potatoes are edible tubers, available worldwide and all year long. They are relatively cheap to grow, rich in nutrients, and they can make a delicious treat. The humble potato has fallen in popularity in recent years, due to the interest in low-carb foods. However, the fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals it provides can help ward off disease and benefit human health. They are an important staple food in many countries around the world. There are an estimated 200 varieties of (...) potatoes, which can be classified into a number of categories based on the cooked texture and ingredient functionality. Using a public dataset of 2400 images of potatoes, we trained a deep convolutional neural network to identify 4 types (Red, Red Washed, Sweet, and White).The trained model achieved an accuracy of 99.5% of test set, demonstrating the feasibility of this approach. (shrink)

Whether intentional suppression of an unpleasant or unwanted memory reduces the ability to recall that memory subsequently is a contested issue in contemporary memory research. Building on findings that similar processes are recruited when individuals remember the past and imagine the future, we measured the effects of thought suppression on memory for imagined future scenarios. Thought suppression reduced the ability to recall emotionally negative scenarios, but not those that were emotionally positive. This finding suggests that intentionally avoiding thoughts about emotionally (...) negative episodes may inhibit representations of those memories, progressively reducing their availability to recall. (shrink)

In a recent very interesting and important challenge to tracking theories of knowledge, Williams & Sinhababu claim to have devised a counter-example to tracking theories of knowledge of a sort that escapes the defense of those theories by Adams & Clarke. In this paper we will explain why this is not true. Tracking theories are not undermined by the example of the backward clock, as interesting as the case is.