A Benacerraf–Field challenge is an argument intended to show that common realist theories of a given domain are untenable: such theories make it impossible to explain how we’ve arrived at the truth in that domain, and insofar as a theory makes our reliability in a domain inexplicable, we must either reject that theory or give up the relevant beliefs. But there’s no consensus about what would count here as a satisfactory explanation of our reliability. It’s sometimes suggested that (...) giving such an explanation would involve showing that our beliefs meet some modal condition, but realists have claimed that this sort of modal interpretation of the challenge deprives it of any force: since the facts in question are metaphysically necessary and so obtain in all possible worlds, it’s trivially easy, even given realism, to show that our beliefs have the relevant modal features. Here I show that this claim is mistaken—what motivates a modal interpretation of the challenge in the first place also motivates an understanding of the relevant features in terms of epistemic possibilities rather than metaphysical possibilities, and there are indeed epistemically possible worlds where the facts in question don’t obtain. (shrink)

According to process reliabilism, a belief produced by a reliable belief-forming process is justified. I introduce problems for this theory on any account of reliability. Does the performance of a process in some domain of worlds settle its reliability? The theories that answer “Yes” typically fail to state the temporal parameters of this performance. I argue that any theory paired with any plausible parameters has implausible implications. The theories that answer “No,” I argue, thereby lack essential support and (...) exacerbate familiar problems. There are new reasons to avoid any reliability conditions on justification. (shrink)

The Reliability Challenge to moral non-naturalism has received substantial attention recently in the literature on moral epistemology. While the popularity of this particular challenge is a recent development, the challenge has a long history, as the form of this challenge can be traced back to a skeptical challenge in the philosophy of mathematics raised by Paul Benacerraf. The current Reliability Challenge is widely regarded as the most sophisticated way to develop this skeptical line of thinking, making the (...) class='Hi'>Reliability Challenge the strongest epistemic challenge to normative nonnaturalism. In this paper, I argue that the innovations that have occurred since Benacerraf’s statement of the challenge are misconceived and confused in a number of ways. The Reliability Challenge is not the most potent epistemic challenge to moral non-naturalism. The most potent challenge comes from the fact that there is a causal condition on knowledge – or, more precisely, a becaual condition – that non-natural moral facts cannot satisfy. (shrink)

Kant famously made a distinction between actions from duty and actions in conformity with duty claiming that only the former are morally worthy. Kant’s argument in support of this thesis is taken to rest on the claim that only the motive of duty leads non-accidentally or reliably to moral actions. However, many critics of Kant have claimed that other motives such as sympathy and benevolence can also lead to moral actions reliably, and that Kant’s thesis is false. In addition, many (...) readers of Kant find the claim that we should deny moral worth to a dutiful action performed from friendly inclination highly counterintuitive. Moreover, Kantian commentators disagree about the status of actions in conformity with duty, some claim that these can be taken as equally morally worthy as those performed from duty, while others argue that they are not even permissible. -/- It has also been claimed that Kant’s theory of moral worth should be related to the theory of the Gesinnung developed in the Religion. Thus, some authors claim that, in order for an action to possess moral worth, the agent has to be unconditionally committed to morality, that is, the agent must possess a virtuous character or good fundamental maxim (i.e. a good Gesinnung). However, according to Kant’s radical evil thesis (that is, the thesis that man is evil by nature ), the default position for man is to possess an evil Gesinnung, i.e. a Gesinnung which is only conditionally committed to morality insofar as morality does not demand a great sacrifice of our own happiness. So, an unwelcome consequence of this line of interpretation is that in Kantian ethics morally worthy actions become very rare indeed. -/- The paper is divided in two parts. The first part aims to clarify why Kant thought that only actions from duty are morally worthy, replying to some common objections against Kant’s view. I argue that Kant’s non-accidental condition should not be understood in terms of reliability because such interpretation is incompatible with Kant’s theory of motivation and rational agency. I propose an alternative interpretation which supports Kant’ s claim that only the motive of duty leads nonaccidently to dutiful actions, and thus only actions from duty possess moral worth. I end by showing that although actions in conformity with duty are worthless from the moral point of view, they are not (in many cases) impermissible. The first part concludes that the criterion for the permissibility of actions is different to the criterion for the ascription of moral worth. Thus, rightness, which pertains to actions performed on maxims that can be willed as universal laws, and moral worth, which pertains to actions performed from a sense of duty, should be understood as two different levels of moral assessment. -/- The second part of the paper examines Kant’s conception of virtue with the aim of showing that although only agents with a virtuous character (good Gesinnung) will reliably act from duty, a person with an evil character (evil Gesinnung) could on frequent occasions act from duty. I argue that we should not deny moral worth to actions performed from duty even when the agent has an evil Gesinnung. Goodness of Gesinnung is not a necessary condition of the action of an agent possessing moral worth; reliability of motivation is necessary for the ascription of virtue but not for the ascription of moral worth. It follows that virtue, which refers to the agent’s character or fundamental maxim (i.e. the agent’s Gesinnung), and moral worth are also two different levels of moral assessment. The paper concludes that three levels of moral assessment can be distinguished in Kant’s ethical system: (i) rightness, (ii) moral worth and (iii) moral virtue. Moral virtue is the highest level of moral perfection for a human being. Striving towards virtue requires constant progress and effort and ultimately a ‘revolution of the heart.’ The important point is that even when we are still striving to achieve virtue (i.e. an unconditional commitment to morality), we can ascribe moral worth to actions performed by a genuine sense of duty. It turns out that, contrary to many influential interpretations, Kantian ethics is not merely concerned with the rightness or wrongness of particular actions nor is Kantian ethics primarily an ethic of virtue. Instead, Kant’s ethical system is complex and allows for different levels of moral assessment in which both an action-centred and agent-centred perspective can be integrated. (shrink)

Recently John Turri (2015b) has argued, contra the orthodoxy amongst epistemologists, that reliability is not a necessary condition for knowledge. From this result, Turri (2015a, 2017, 2016a, 2019) defends a new account of knowledge - called abilism - that allows for unreliable knowledge. I argue that Turri's arguments fail to establish that unreliable knowledge is possible and argue that Turri's account of knowledge is false because reliability must be a necessary condition for knowledge.

Perception is riddled with cases of reliable misperception. These are cases in which a perceptual state is tokened inaccurately any time it is tokened under normal conditions. On the face of it, this fact causes trouble for theories that provide an analysis of perceptual content in non-semantic, non-intentional, and non-phenomenal terms, such as those found in Millikan (1984), Fodor (1990), Neander (2017), and Schellenberg (2018). I show how such theories can be extended so that they cover such cases without giving (...) up their core commitments. (shrink)

Psychological studies show that the beliefs of two agents in a hypothesis can diverge even if both agents receive the same evidence. This phenomenon of belief polarisation is often explained by invoking biased assimilation of evidence, where the agents’ prior views about the hypothesis affect the way they process the evidence. We suggest, using a Bayesian model, that even if such influence is excluded, belief polarisation can still arise by another mechanism. This alternative mechanism involves differential weighting of the evidence (...) arising when agents have different initial views about the reliability of their sources of evidence. We provide a systematic exploration of the conditions for belief polarisation in Bayesian models which incorporate opinions about source reliability, and we discuss some implications of our findings for the psychological literature. (shrink)

Many epistemologists have argued that there is some degree of independence between individual and collective reliability (e.g., Kitcher 1990; Mayo-Wilson, Zollman, and Danks 2011; Dunn 2018). The question, then, is: To what extent are the two independent of each other? And in which contexts do they come apart? In this paper, I present a new case confirming the independence between individual and collective reliability optimization. I argue that, in voting groups, optimizing individual reliability can conflict with optimizing (...) collective reliability. This can happen even if various conditions are held constant, such as: the evidence jurors have access to, the voting system, the number of jurors, some independence conditions between voters, and so forth. This observation matters in many active debates on, e.g., epistemic dilemmas, the wisdom of crowds, independence theses, epistemic democracy, and the division of epistemic labour. (shrink)

In “Process Reliabilism and the Value Problem” I argue that Erik Olsson and Alvin Goldman's conditional probability solution to the value problem in epistemology is unsuccessful and that it makes significant internalist concessions. In “Kinds of Learning and the Likelihood of Future True Beliefs” Olsson and Martin Jönsson try to show that my argument does “not in the end reduce the plausibility” of Olsson and Goldman's account. Here I argue that, while Olsson and Jönsson clarify and amend the (...) class='Hi'>conditional probability approach in a number of helpful ways, my case against it remains intact. I conclude with a constructive proposal as to how their account may be steered in a more promising direction. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that causal theories of memory are typically committed to two independent, non-mutually entailing theses. The first thesis pertains to the necessity of appropriate causation in memory, specifying a condition token memories need to satisfy. The second pertains to the explanation of memory reliability in causal terms and it concerns memory as a type of mental state. Post-causal theories of memory can reject only the first (weak post-causalism) or both (strong post-causalism) theses. Upon this backdrop, (...) I examine Werning’s (2020) causalist argument from probabilistic correlation. I argue that it doesn’t establish the necessity of appropriate causation and thus it can only target strong post-causalist theories. I end up by presenting some general considerations, suggesting that memories may not always be causally linked to past experiences. (shrink)

In the Nyāyasūtras (NS), the fundamental text of the Nyāya tradition, testimony is defined as a statement of a reliable speaker (āpta). According to the NS, such a speaker should possess three qualities: competence, honesty and desire to speak. The content of a discourse, including the prescriptions, is also considered reliable due to the status of a given author and the person that communicated it. -/- The Polish philosopher J.M. Bocheński similarly stresses the role of a speaker; he holds that (...) an authoritative source (whose discourse is called testimony) should be competent and truthful. The conditions of trust and superiority also apply. According to Bocheński, being an authority entails a special relation—it has a subject, object and field. Notably, Bocheński develops his own typology of testimony by distinguishing between what he calls epistemic and deontic authority. He asks questions such as: Who can be the subject of an authoritative statement? Which features should the speaker possess? How is authority recognised? Is there a universal or an absolute authority? What is the field of authority? Moreover, which qualities should the listener possess? -/- The Nyāya philosophers, both the ancient ones, like Akṣapāda Gautama, Vātsyāyana, Vācaspati Miśra, and the contemporary scholars of Nyāya, such as B. K. Matilal and J. Ganeri, were also concerned with these issues. -/- The aim of this paper is to discuss the above points in a comparative manner. I will argue that both Bocheński’s and the Nyāya accounts share very similar perspectives and encounter analogous problems. (shrink)

Bodily sensations, such as pain, hunger, itches, or sexual feelings, are commonly characterized in terms of their phenomenal character. In order to account for this phenomenal character, many philosophers adopt strong representationalism. According to this view, bodily sensations are essentially and entirely determined by an intentional content related to particular conditions of the body. For example, pain would be nothing more than the representation of actual or potential tissue damage. In order to motivate and justify their view, strong representationalists often (...) appeal to the reliable causal covariance between bodily sensations and certain kinds of bodily conditions or to the corresponding biological function that these bodily sensations are supposed to fulfill. In this paper, I argue on the basis of recent empirical research that arguments from reliable causal covariance and biological function cannot motivate the introduction of corresponding intentional content. In particular, I argue that bodily sensations are caused by a heterogeneous class of physiological and psychological factors and their biological functions are too diverse to be reduced to the representation of a particular bodily condition. Responses are available to strong representationalists, but they either require substantial alterations to their core assumptions or incur a significant empirical burden. (shrink)

What minimal role—if any—must consciousness of morally significant information play in an account of moral worth? According to one popular view, a right action is morally worthy only if the agent is conscious (in some sense) of the facts that make it right. I argue against this consciousness condition and close cousins of it. As I show, consciousness of such facts requires much more sophistication than writers typically suggest—this condition would bar from moral worth most ordinary, intuitively morally worthy agents. (...) Moreover, I show that the attraction to this flavor of consciousness condition rests on mistaken assumptions about what is required for a right act to be non-accidentally right and attributable to the agent. Drawing some lessons from the discussion, I defend a Value-Secured Reliability Theory of Moral Worth and show how a minimal yet indispensable role for consciousness falls out from it. On this independently plausible theory, an action can be morally worthy even when the agent is unaware of the right-making features of her action. (shrink)

The article aims to determine whether it is possible to build the reliably practiced classical philosophy, understood as a metaphysical research, directed towards the nature of objective reality. The purpose of this kind of philosophizing is knowledge and truth. Moreover, the practice of such philosophizing and its results should meet some of the characteristics of science. The paper establishes a set of conditions that have been imposed on the science of metaphysics by Kazimierz Twardowski. Among the conditions of such philosophizing (...) are anti-dogmatism, criticism, inter-subjectivity of philosophizing and its results, proper epistemic justification of philosophical beliefs, application of the analysis method, rigorous language and reasoning, the use of experience and scientific knowledge. The paper considers these conditions to be correct in most cases and argues that metaphysics can meet them. The existing cases of analytical metaphysics show that metaphysics is possible as a science. Next, the article argues that the late Twardowski failed to substantiate his claim that metaphysical positions which he classified as a world-view philosophy could not be scientifically justified, which could have been possibly done with differentiating ways of understanding what such a scientific justification should be. The article argues that he did not take into account a reductive conception of the metaphysical philosophy, which even though it allows the plurality of metaphysical explanations and does not force anyone to accept one position as the only possible and correct explanation, would have an objective value, if such metaphysics were elaborated indeed. (shrink)

I discuss Alston's theory of religious experience and maintain that his argument to the effect that it is rational to suppose that the 'mystical doxastic practice' is epistemically reliable does not stand up to scrutiny. While Alston's transitions from practical to epistemic rationality don't work here, his arguments may be taken to show that, under certain conditions, it is not epistemically irresponsible to trust one's religious experiences.

Alvin Plantinga’s Warrant and Proper Function gives two major definitions of warrant. One states that reliable cognitive faculties aimed at true belief and functioning properly in the right environment are necessary and sufficient for warrant; the other definition only states that they are necessary. The latter definition is the more important one. There are different kinds of knowledge, and justification is necessary for some beliefs to be warranted. Even a belief warranted by proper function can receive a higher degree of (...) warrant by justification. This implies that natural theology has a useful role within the contours of a Plantingian epistemology. (Please note that the pagination here does not match the pagination in the published edition.). (shrink)

This study investigated the influence of professional status and condition of service on teacher productivity in primary schools in Zuru Emirate of Kebbi State. A correlational survey design was adopted for the study. Stratified, proportionate and simple random sampling techniques were used to select 346 teachers out of 3,687. Questionnaire and Teacher Productivity Evaluation Format were used as instruments for data collection. The five-point scale instruments were validated by experts and pilot tested and had reliability indexes of 0.83 and (...) 0.85 respectively, using Cronbach Alpha co-efficient. Findings of the study showed that the level of teacher productivity was rated low; professional status and conditions of service were both rated poor. This unfavourable situation has negatively influenced teacher productivity. It was recommended that strategies be put in place to improve teachers’ productivity in terms of quality of teaching, record keeping and other activities. The status of teaching should be upgraded and primary school teachers to be provided with better conditions of service to enhance their productivity. (shrink)

This chapter discusses epistemic objections to non-naturalist moral realism. The goal of the chapter is to determine which objections are pressing and which objections can safely be dismissed. The chapter examines five families of objections: (i) one involving necessary conditions on knowledge, (ii) one involving the idea that the causal history of our moral beliefs reflects the significant impact of irrelevant influences, (iii) one relying on the idea that moral truths do not play a role in explaining our moral beliefs, (...) (iv) one involving the claim that if moral realism is true then our moral beliefs are unlikely to be reliable, and (v) one involving the claim that moral realism is incompatible with there being a plausible explanation of our reliability about morality. The overall conclusion of the chapter is that the final objection is by far the most pressing. (shrink)

Memory skepticism denies our memory beliefs could have any notable epistemic good. One route to memory skepticism is to challenge memory’s epistemic trustworthiness, that is, its functioning in a way necessary for it to provide epistemic justification. In this paper we develop and respond to this challenge. It could threaten memory in such a way that we altogether lack doxastic attitudes. If it threatens memory in this way, then the challenge is importantly self-defeating. If it does not threaten memory in (...) this way, then the challenge leaves a foundation for an inference to the best explanation response, one we articulate and support. (shrink)

Does utterance understanding require reliable (i.e. non-lucky) recovery of the speaker’s intended proposition? There are good reasons to answer in the affirmative: the role of understanding in supporting testimonial knowledge seemingly requires such reliability. Moreover, there seem to be communicative analogues of Gettier cases in which luck precludes the audience’s understanding an utterance despite recovering the intended proposition. Yet, there are some major problems with the view that understanding requires such reliability. Firstly, there are a number of cases (...) in which understanding seems to occur in a lucky way. In light of these cases I argue that we need to narrow down the precise sense in which understanding precludes luck – the anti-luck condition attached to linguistic understanding is importantly different to anti-luck conditions typically applied to knowledge. Secondly, Megan Hyska has recently argued that, assuming understanding precludes luck, we get a communicative analogue of the value problem for knowledge. i.e. why is it better to meet the other conditions for understanding in a reliable way than in a lucky way? It is natural to assume that we can simply port over our favoured responses to the epistemic value problem in response to Hyska’s challenge. I argue that, due to the difference between epistemic and communicative luck (discussed in response to the first problem), this cannot be done. The epistemic and communicative value problems will require different solutions. I close by sketching the beginnings of an alternative answer to the value problem for communication. (shrink)

Standard theories of rational decision making and rational preference embrace the idea that there is something special about the present. Standard decision theory, for example, demands that agents privilege the perspective of the present (i.e., the time of decision) in evaluating what to do. When forming preferences, most philosophers believe that a similar focus on the present is justified, at least in the sense that rationality requires or permits future experiences to be given more weight than past ones. In this (...) dissertation, I examine such theories in light of the expected success of the agents who follow them. In Chapters 2 and 3, I show that this bias toward the present is a liability: it tends to make agents less successful than they might otherwise be. I also show how these problems can be avoided: In the case of rational decision making, we must privilege the beginning rather than the present (what I call “inceptive maximization”). In the case of rational preferences, we must be completely temporally neutral. -/- In chapters 4 and 5 I introduce a larger framework in which to interpret these results. My core thesis is that practical rationality is a form of conditional reliability. Practically rational decisions, preferences, intentions, or other relevant factors reliably produce whatever we take to be of value, conditional on an agent’s beliefs. This focus on value-conduciveness is thus the analog of the focus on truth-conduciveness in reliability theories of epistemic norms. Like reliabilism in epistemology, I show that practical reliabilism is supported by a methodologically naturalistic approach to normativity. In this way and others, I argue that epistemic and practical reliabilism interconnect to create an overarching theory of normativity. (shrink)

While philosophers are often concerned with the conditions for moral knowledge or justification, in practice something arguably less demanding is just as, if not more, important – reliably making correct moral judgments. Judges and juries should hand down fair sentences, government officials should decide on just laws, members of ethics committees should make sound recommendations, and so on. We want such agents, more often than not and as often as possible, to make the right decisions. The purpose of this paper (...) is to propose a method of enhancing the moral reliability of such agents. In particular, we advocate for a procedural approach; certain internal processes generally contribute to people’s moral reliability. Building on the early work of Rawls, we identify several particular factors related to moral reasoning that are specific enough to be the target of practical intervention: logical competence, conceptual understanding, empirical competence, openness, empathy and bias. Improving on these processes can in turn make people more morally reliable in a variety of contexts and has implications for recent debates over moral enhancement. (shrink)

Against philosophical orthodoxy, Hilary Kornblith has mounted an empirically grounded critique of the epistemic value of reflection. In this paper, I argue that this recent critique of the epistemic value of reflection fails even if we concede that (a) the empirical facts are as Kornblith says they are and (b) reliability is the only determinant of epistemic value. The critique fails because it seeks to undermine the reliability of reflection in general but targets only one of its variants, (...) namely individual reflection, while neglecting social reflection. This critique comprises two arguments which have a common structure: they both impose a requirement on the reliability of reflection, but deny, on empirical grounds, that the requirement is met. One argument imposes an introspection requirement, which I reject as superfluous. I show how reflection can proceed without introspection. The other argument imposes an efficacy requirement. This requirement concerns whether reflection is causally efficacious i.e., whether it leads us to change our minds for the better. I accept this as a genuine requirement. Even if we concede that individual reflection fails to meet this requirement, I argue that we have not been given sufficient evidence to believe that social reflection is bound to fail this requirement. Furthermore, my analysis of the conditions under which social reflection works best provides us with prima facie grounds for optimism regarding the reliability of social reflection. Ultimately, then, these arguments fail to undermine the epistemic value of reflection in general. (shrink)

While there has been much discussion about what makes some mathematical proofs more explanatory than others, and what are mathematical coincidences, in this article I explore the distinct phenomenon of mathematical facts that call for explanation. The existence of mathematical facts that call for explanation stands in tension with virtually all existing accounts of “calling for explanation”, which imply that necessary facts cannot call for explanation. In this paper I explore what theoretical revisions are needed in order to accommodate this (...) phenomenon. One of the important upshots is that, contrary to the current consensus, low prior probability is not a necessary condition for calling for explanation. In the final section I explain how the results of this inquiry help us make progress in assessing Hartry Field’s style of reliability argument against mathematical Platonism and against robust realism in other domains of necessary facts, such as ethics. (shrink)

Christopher Hill contends that the metaphysical modalities can be reductively explained in terms of the subjunctive conditional and that this reductive explanation yields two tests for determining the metaphysical modality of a proposition. He goes on to argue that his reductive account of the metaphysical modalities in conjunction with his account of modal knowledge underwrites the further conclusion that conceivability does not provide a reliable test for metaphysical possibility. I argue (1) that Hill’s reductive explanation of the metaphysical modalities (...) in terms of the subjunctive conditional does not yield a reductive explanation of knowledge of metaphysical modality in terms of knowledge of subjunctive conditionals, and (2) that his account of modal knowledge is at odds with his contention that conceivability does not provide epistemic access to metaphysical possibility. (shrink)

In "Mathematical Truth", Paul Benacerraf articulated an epistemological problem for mathematical realism. His formulation of the problem relied on a causal theory of knowledge which is now widely rejected. But it is generally agreed that Benacerraf was onto a genuine problem for mathematical realism nevertheless. Hartry Field describes it as the problem of explaining the reliability of our mathematical beliefs, realistically construed. In this paper, I argue that the Benacerraf Problem cannot be made out. There simply is no intelligible (...) problem that satisfies all of the constraints which have been placed on the Benacerraf Problem. The point generalizes to all arguments with the structure of the Benacerraf Problem aimed at realism about a domain meeting certain conditions. Such arguments include so-called "Evolutionary Debunking Arguments" aimed at moral realism. I conclude with some suggestions about the relationship between the Benacerraf Problem and the Gettier Problem. (shrink)

I discuss Clark’s predictive processing/extended mind hybrid, diagnosing a problem: Clark’s hybrid suggests that, when we use them, we pay attention to mind-extending external resources. This clashes with a commonly accepted necessary condition of cognitive extension; namely, that mind-extending resources must be phenomenally transparent when used. I then propose a solution to this problem claiming that the phenomenal transparency condition should be rejected. To do so, I put forth a parity argument to the effect that phenomenal transparency cannot be a (...) necessary condition on cognitive extension: roughly, since internal cognitive resources can fail to be transparent when used, by parity, external resources can fail to be phenomenally transparent too. Further, I argue that phenomenal transparency is not even a reliable indicator of cognitive extension; hence its absence should not be considered a problem for Clark’s extended mind-predictive processing hybrid. Lastly, I consider and allay a number of worries my proposal might raise, and conclude the paper. (shrink)

Epicureans believe that death cannot harm the one who dies because they hold the existence condition, which states that a subject is able to be harmed only while they exist. I show that on one reading of this condition death can, in fact, make the deceased worse off because it is satisfied by the deprivation account of death’s badness. I argue that the most plausible Epicurean view holds the antimodal existence condition, according to which no merely possible state of affairs (...) can be good or bad relative to the subject who dies. I go on to show how this condition, as well as any other condition that denies the deprivation account, results in skepticism about practical reason. Thus, the Epicurean faces a dilemma. Either our practical reasoning is hopelessly mistaken or death can make us worse off. Given that our practical reasoning seems at least mildly reliable, we should conclude that death can make us worse off. (shrink)

The observation that a crisis of confidence regarding Psychiatry exists is a notion shared even among psychiatrists themselves. Psychiatry has a checkered history and its alliance with the pharmaceutical industry, aka Big-Pharma, continues to reinforce a need for healthy skepticism. Why? Mainly, an over-reliance on the questionable expertise and authority afforded psychiatry as the specialists of mental health. I contend that the authority of psychiatry is misplaced and too often harmful. Since the criteria required to justify and satisfy psychiatric expertise (...) is not fully established as can be substantiated by compelling reasons to rethink its authority as a reliable profession in its current form. Psychiatric expertise is not particularly scientific and this is especially dangerous in a sector that prescribes mind-altering drugs. There are a number of identified criteria that would otherwise substantiate psychiatric expertise and whilst partially existent, are nonetheless deficient. These major yet deficient aspects of psychiatric practice concern diagnostic problems – reliability and verification of diagnoses and accurate testable validity of diagnoses - mainly due to an absence of identifiable underlying biomarkers ordinarily related to disease or biological conditions. Psychiatrists often fail to distinguish between reactive-depression (reaction to external event or circumstance) and endogenous-depression (biological) resulting, in part, from incorrectly distinguishing between conditions constitutive of ‘trait’ (endogenous) and of those of ‘state’ (e.g. reactive depression; adverse effects from medication, etc.). (shrink)

What are the conditions under which suspension of belief—or suspension, for short—is justified? Process reliabilists hold that our beliefs are justified if and only if these are produced or sustained by reliable cognitive processes. But they have said relatively little about suspension. Perhaps they think that we may easily extend an account of justified belief to deal with justified suspension. But it's not immediately clear how we may do so; in which case, evidentialism has a distinct advantage over reliabilism. In (...) this paper, I consider some proposals as to how process reliabilists might seek to account for justified suspension. Although several of these proposals do not work, two are promising. The first such proposal appeals to the notion of propositional justification; the second involves weaving evidentialist elements into reliabilism. I'll argue that the second proposal is better than the first. (shrink)

It is often assumed that, except perhaps in a few rare cases, people with addiction can be aptly held responsible for having acquired the condition. In this chapter, I consider the argument that supports this view and draw attention to a number of challenges that can be raised against it. Assuming that early decisions to use drugs were made in possession of normal-range psychological capacities, I consider the key question of whether drug users who later became addicted should have known (...) that addiction was a likely outcome of their decisions to use drugs in a way that makes them blameworthy for their lack of foresight. I focus on three different points of contention surrounding this claim: how likely the outcome to be predicted was, how tolerable risk should be weighed against the expected value of decisions to use, and how reliable the relevant predictive abilities of the average person are. Once we consider in some detail what would have to be true in order for someone to be aptly held responsible for becoming addicted, the prospects for making a convincing case to that effect look, I argue, somewhat more uncertain than they might at first appear. (shrink)

Computational models have shown how polarisation can rise among deliberating agents as they approximate epistemic rationality. This paper provides further support for the thesis that polarisation can rise under condition of epistemic rationality, but it does not depend on limitations that extant models rely on, such as memory restrictions or biased evaluation of other agents’ testimony. Instead, deliberation is modelled through agents’ purposeful introduction of arguments and their rational reactions to introductions of others. This process induces polarisation dynamics on its (...) own. A second result is that the effect size of polarisation dynamics correlates with particular types of argumentative behaviour. Polarisation effects can be soothed when agents take into account the opinions of others as premises, and they are amplified as agents fortify their own beliefs. These results underpin the relevance of argumentation as a factor in social-epistemic processes and indicate that rising issue polarisation is not a reliable indicator of epistemic shortcomings. (shrink)

It is difficult to extract reliable criteria for causal locality from the limited ingredients found in textbook quantum theory. In the end, Bell humbly warned that his eponymous theorem was based on criteria that “should be viewed with the utmost suspicion.” Remarkably, by stepping outside the wave-function paradigm, one can reformulate quantum theory in terms of old-fashioned configuration spaces together with ‘unistochastic’ laws. These unistochastic laws take the form of directed conditional probabilities, which turn out to provide a hospitable (...) foundation for encoding microphysical causal relationships. This unistochastic reformulation provides quantum theory with a simpler and more transparent axiomatic foundation, plausibly resolves the measurement problem, and deflates various exotic claims about superposition, interference, and entanglement. Making use of this reformulation, this paper introduces a new principle of causal locality that is intended to improve on Bell's criteria, and shows directly that systems that remain at spacelike separation cannot exert causal influences on each other, according to that new principle. These results therefore lead to a general hidden-variables interpretation of quantum theory that is arguably compatible with causal locality. (shrink)

Inductive thinking is a universal human habit; we generalise from our experiences the best we can. The induction problem is to identify which observed regularities provide reasonable justification for inductive conclusions. In the natural sciences, we can often use strict laws in making successful inferences about unobserved states of affairs. In the social sciences, by contrast, we have no strict laws, only regularities which most often are conditioned on ceteris paribus clauses. This makes it much more difficult to make reliable (...) inferences in the social sciences. In particular, we want knowledge about general causal relations in order to be able to determine what to do in order to achieve a certain state of affairs. Knowledge about causal relations that are also valid in the future requires experiments or so called ‘natural experiments’. Only knowledge derived from such experiences enable us to draw reasonably reliable inferences about how to act in order to achieve our goals. (shrink)

The article presents the advantages and limitations of adaptive clinical trials for assessing the effectiveness of medical interventions and specifies the conditions that contributed to their development and implementation in clinical practice. I advance two arguments by discussing different cases of adaptive trials. The normative argument is that responsible adaptation should be taken seriously as a new way of doing clinical research insofar as a valid justification, sufficient understanding, and adequate operational conditions are provided. The second argument is historical. The (...) development of adaptive trials can be related to lessons learned from research in cases of urgency and to the decades-long efforts to end the productivity crisis of pharmaceutical research, which led to the emergence of translational, personalized, and, recently, precision medicine movements. (shrink)

Aesthetics is a crucial ecosystem service provided by biodiversity, which is believed to help improve humans’ quality of life and is linked to environmental consciousness and pro-environmental behaviors. However, how aesthetic experience induced by plants/animals influences the belief in the occurrence and significance of biodiversity loss among urban residents remains understudied. Thus, the current study aimed to examine how the diversity of pets and in-house plants affect urban residents’ belief in biodiversity loss in different scenarios of aesthetic experiences (positive and (...) negative aesthetic experiences at home due to plants/animals). Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we found that the people’s aesthetic feeling about their house induced by plants/animals positively affects their belief in the occurrence and significance of biodiversity loss. The diversity of plants and pets also positively influences the level of biodiversity loss belief, but the effect is conditional on the aesthetic experience of the urban residents. Specifically, the positive impact of species diversity on the belief only exists when urban residents feel that their houses’ aesthetics are negatively affected by plants/animals. Moreover, the effect of pet diversity on biodiversity loss belief is less significant and reliable than that of plant diversity. These findings suggest that raising the houses’ aesthetics through in-house planting or pet ownership can potentially enhance biodiversity loss belief and subsequently build an eco-surplus culture among urban residents. (shrink)

Brain-related diseases are among the most difficult diseases due to their sensitivity, the difficulty of performing operations, and their high costs. In contrast, the operation is not necessary to succeed, as the results of the operation may be unsuccessful. One of the most common diseases that affect the brain is Alzheimer’s disease, which affects adults, a disease that leads to memory loss and forgetting information in varying degrees. According to the condition of each patient. For these reasons, it is important (...) to classify memory loss and to know the patient at what level and his assessment of Alzheimer's disease through CT scans of the brain. In this thesis, we review ways and techniques to use deep learning classification to classifying the Alzheimer's Disease The proposed method used to improve patient care, reduce costs, and allow fast and reliable analysis in large studies. The model will be designed using Python language for implementing the system, which is very useful for doctors, classifying the Alzheimer's Disease, was used. The model used 70% from image for training and 30% from image for validation, our trained model achieved an accuracy of 100% on a held-out test set. (shrink)

Application of the reliability of repairable systems on solving problems from constructing production systems takes an important place in the process of finding the optimal solution among the suggested system choices. The basic hypothesis when using the reliability of the repairable systems is that every machine is representing a component, a fact that is debatable when talking about technical sciences. However, considering the second assumption of the stationary process, the function of the availability is introduced. It represents the (...) measure between the reliability and the benefit of maintaining the components and the system as a whole one. An additional and the last reason for analyzing constructing machine as a whole one has an economic reason. From the aspect of the total cost and the capacity of the system, the function of the availability is catching more and more impact in the process of determinating the total cost in bill of quantities as the most important part of tender documents. Until former works, techno-economic optimisation usually ran over when choosing the system of the construction machines. In the work, there are shown the methodologies for gathering and analyzing the indicators of availabilities per unit of a company's machine park. The time of demission and reparation have been investigated among 34 components in the period of 6 years. Based on the obtained result for different conditions of machine exploitation and facilities, it is suggested the methodology of the future behaviour of the corresponding within the model optimization availability of constructing production system with the aim of eliminating extra criterion. The suggested model takes in consideration the total cost of the components when they are functional, and when they are not. This kind of approach enables the one who take choices decision of the height of profits, in the lenght of work in function of the projection of cash flow and managing with real indicators of functioning the system at the project level. Given the fact that the maintanance policy of machines is based on availability, and not on reliability of components, with the aim of maximizing the availability of different budget scenarios, a logical approach to the selection of the objective function in the terms of management of construction production systems is to minimize costs for a given availability of system constructing machinery is based on the use of historical data base with the values of the operational availability of components, conditions in which they function, in the process of forecasting the project availability for projects that follow. Ranking variant solutions is the result of the adopted function of the aim as a consequence due to enlargement methods of availability for serial parallel systems with the associated restrictions. For optimal system availability is taken a value that belongs to minimal total cost. However, it is predicted that after the end of the financial year, the real and projected indicators of system functions get compared to each other. Informational support to the proposed model is informational company system, which was built in the PHP programming language on the Linux software platform, and with data based in My SQL. The suggested model is tested on the system for the production and embedding bitumen bound materials on the specific project. Obtained results confirm the assumptions used in work. (shrink)

Self-disorders in depression and schizophrenia have been the focus of much recent work in phenomenological psychopathology. But little has been said about the role the material environment plays in shaping the affective character of these disorders. In this paper, we argue that enjoying reliable (i.e., trustworthy) access to the things and spaces around us — the constituents of our material environment — is crucial for our ability to stabilize and regulate our affective life on a day-today basis. These things and (...) spaces often play an ineliminable role in shaping what we feel and how we feel it; when we interact with them, they contribute ongoing feedback that " scaffolds " the character and temporal development of our affective experiences. However, in some psychopathological conditions, the ability to access to these things and spaces becomes disturbed. Individuals not only lose certain forms of access to the practical significance of the built environment but also to its ​ regulative​ significance, too — and the stability and organization of their affective life is compromised. In developing this view, we discuss core concepts like " affordance spaces " , " scaffolding " , and " incorporation ". We apply these concepts to two case studies, severe depression and schizophrenia, and we show why these cases support our main claim. We conclude by briefly considering implications of this view for developing intervention and treatment strategies. (shrink)

The complementary properties and functions of cognitive artifacts and other external resources are integrated into the human cognitive system to varying degrees. The goal of this paper is to develop some of the tools to conceptualize this complementary integration between agents and artifacts. It does so by proposing a multidimensional framework, including the dimensions of information flow, reliability, durability, trust, procedural transparency, informational transparency, individualization, and transformation. The proposed dimensions are all matters of degree and jointly they constitute a (...) multidimensional space in which situated cognitive systems can be located and have certain dimensional configurations. These dimensions provide a new perspective on the conditions for cognitive extension. They are, however, not meant to provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but to provide a toolbox for investigating the degree and nature of the integration of agent and artifact into “new systemic wholes”. The higher a situated system scores on the proposed dimensions, the more functional integration occurs, and the more tightly coupled the system is. (shrink)

The complementary properties and functions of cognitive artifacts and other external resources are integrated into the human cognitive system to varying degrees. The goal of this paper is to develop some of the tools to conceptualize this complementary integration between agents and artifacts. It does so by proposing a multidimensional framework, including the dimensions of information flow, reliability, durability, trust, procedural transparency, informational transparency, individualization, and transformation. The proposed dimensions are all matters of degree and jointly they constitute a (...) multidimensional space in which situated cognitive systems can be located and have certain dimensional configurations. These dimensions provide a new perspective on the conditions for cognitive extension. They are, however, not meant to provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but to provide a toolbox for investigating the degree and nature of the integration of agent and artifact into “new systemic wholes”. The higher a situated system scores on the proposed dimensions, the more functional integration occurs, and the more tightly coupled the system is. (shrink)

The philosophy of measurement studies the conceptual, ontological, epistemic, and technological conditions that make measurement possible and reliable. A new wave of philosophical scholarship has emerged in the last decade that emphasizes the material and historical dimensions of measurement and the relationships between measurement and theoretical modeling. This essay surveys these developments and contrasts them with earlier work on the semantics of quantity terms and the representational character of measurement. The conclusions highlight four characteristics of the emerging research program in (...) philosophy of measurement: it is epistemological, coherentist, practice oriented, and model based. (shrink)

Currently, under the conditions of permanent financial risks that hamper the sustainable economic growth in the financial sector, the development of evaluation and risk management methods both regulated by Basel II and III and others seem to be of special importance. The reputation risk is one of significant risks affecting reliability and credibility of commercial banks. The importance of reputation risk management and the quality of their assessment remain relevant as the probability of decrease in or loss of business (...) reputation influences the financial results and the degree of customers’, partners’ and stakeholders’ confidence. By means of imitating modeling based on Bayesian Networks and the fuzzy data analysis, the article characterizes the mechanism of reputation risk assessment and possible losses evaluation in banks by plotting normal and lognormal distribution functions. Monte-Carlo simulation is used to calculate the probability of losses caused by reputation risks. The degree of standardized histogram similarity is determined on the basis of the fuzzy data analysis applying Hamming distance method. The tree-like hierarchy based on the OWA-operator is used to aggregate the data with Fishburne's coefficients as the convolution scales. The mechanism takes into account the impact of criteria, such as return on equity, goodwill value, the risk assets ratio, the share of the productive assets in net assets, the efficiency ratio of interest bearing liabilities, the risk ratio of credit operations, the funding ratio and reliability index on the business reputation of the bank. The suggested methods and recommendations might be applied to develop the decision-making mechanism targeted at the implementation of reputation risk management system in commercial banks as well as to optimize risk management technologies. (shrink)

This articles develops a taxonomy of memory errors in terms of three conditions: the accuracy of the memory representation, the reliability of the memory process, and the internality (with respect to the remembering subject) of that process. Unlike previous taxonomies, which appeal to retention of information rather than reliability or internality, this taxonomy can accommodate not only misremembering (e.g., the DRM effect), falsidical confabulation, and veridical relearning but also veridical confabulation and falsidical relearning. Moreover, because it does not (...) assume that successful remembering presupposes retention of information, the taxonomy is compatible with recent simulation theories of remembering. (shrink)

One attractive feature of process reliabilism is its reductive potential: it promises to explain justification in entirely non-epistemic terms. In this paper, I argue that the phenomenon of epistemic defeat poses a serious challenge for process reliabilism’s reductive ambitions. The standard process reliabilist analysis of defeat is the ‘Alternative Reliable Process Account’ (ARP). According to ARP, whether S’s belief is defeated depends on whether S has certain reliable processes available to her which, if they had been used, would have resulted (...) in S not holding the belief in question. Unfortunately, ARP proves untenable. I show, by way of counterexample, that ARP fails to articulate either necessary or sufficient conditions on defeat. Process reliabilists must either provide an alternative reductive account of defeat or renounce their reductive aspirations. (shrink)

In section 1, I develop epistemic communism, my view of the function of epistemically evaluative terms such as ‘rational’. The function is to support the coordination of our belief-forming rules, which in turn supports the reliable acquisition of beliefs through testimony. This view is motivated by the existence of valid inferences that we hesitate to call rational. I defend the view against the worry that it fails to account for a function of evaluations within first-personal deliberation. In the rest of (...) the paper, I then argue, on the basis of epistemic communism, for a view about rationality itself. I set up the argument in section 2 by saying what a theory of rational deduction is supposed to do. I claim that such a theory would provide a necessary, sufficient, and explanatorily unifying condition for being a rational rule for inferring deductive consequences. I argue in section 3 that, given epistemic communism and the conventionality that it entails, there is no such theory. Nothing explains why certain rules for deductive reasoning are rational. (shrink)

I advance a novel argument for an infallibilist theory of knowledge, according to which we know all and only those propositions that are certain for us. I argue that this theory lets us reconcile major extant theories of knowledge, in the following sense: for any of these theories, if we require that its central condition (evidential support, reliability, safety, etc.) obtains to a maximal degree, we get a theory of knowledge extensionally equivalent to infallibilism. As such, the infallibilist can (...) affirm that, when their conditions are suitably interpreted, most post-Gettier theories of knowledge offer necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge. The infallibilist can thus reconcile major theories of knowledge, and is in a better position to explain the intuitive appeal of these theories than the fallibilist who only accepts one of them, and rejects the rest. (shrink)

This paper argues for the general proper functionalist view that epistemic warrant consists in the normal functioning of the belief-forming process when the process has forming true beliefs reliably as an etiological function. Such a process is reliable in normal conditions when functioning normally. This paper applies this view to so-called testimony-based beliefs. It argues that when a hearer forms a comprehension-based belief that P (a belief based on taking another to have asserted that P) through the exercise of a (...) reliable competence to comprehend and filter assertive speech acts, then the hearer's belief is prima facie warranted. The paper discusses the psychology of comprehension, the function of assertion, and the evolution of filtering mechanisms, especially coherence checking. (shrink)

In the epistemology of testimony it is often assumed that audiences are able to reliably recover asserted contents. In the philosophy of language this claim is contentious. This paper outlines one problem concerning the recovery of asserted contents, and argues that it prevents audiences from gaining testimonial knowledge in a range of cases. The recovery problem, in essence, is simply that due to the collective epistemic limitations of the speaker and audience speakers will, in certain cases, be insensitive to the (...) ways in which they may be misinterpreted. As a result audiences’ beliefs will often fail the safety and sensitivity conditions on knowledge. Once the problem has been outlined and distinguished from several related problems in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of testimony, a series of responses are considered. The first response holds that audiences possess defeaters in recovery problem cases, and thus wouldn’t form beliefs. The second response holds that the beliefs audiences form are very coarse grained, meaning they are not very vulnerable to failures of safety and sensitivity. The final response holds that the objects of speaker meaning are not propositional. All three responses are found to be unsatisfactory. (shrink)

This article offers an argument of genocide denial as an injustice perpetrated not only against direct victims and survivors of genocide, but also against future members of the victim group. In particular, I argue that in cases of persistent and systematic denial, i.e. denialism, it perpetrates an epistemic injustice against them: testimonial oppression. First, I offer an account of testimonial oppression and introduce Kristie Dotson’s notion of testimonial smothering as one form of testimonial oppression, a mechanism of coerced silencing particularly (...) pertinent to genocide denialism. Secondly, I turn to the epistemology of genocide denialism and, using the example of Turkey’s denialism of the Armenian genocide, show how it presents what Linda Martín Alcoff calls a substantive practice of ignorance. Thirdly, I apply these considerations to individual practices of genocide denial and analyse the particular characteristics of testimony on genocide, the speaker vulnerabilities involved and the conditions under which hearers will reliably fail to meet the dependencies of a speaker testifying to genocide. Finally, I explore the harms that testimonial oppression perpetrates on members of the victim group, insofar as it systematically deprives them of epistemic recognition. (shrink)