It is argued that medical science requires a classificatory system that (a) puts functions in the taxonomic center and (b) does justice ontologically to the difference between the processes which are the realizations of functions and the objects which are their bearers. We propose formulae for constructing such a system and describe some of its benefits. The arguments are general enough to be of interest to all the life sciences.

Scientific researchers welcome disagreement as a way of furthering epistemic aims. Religious communities, by contrast, tend to regard it as a potential threat to their beliefs. But I argue that religious disagreement can help achieve religious epistemic aims. I do not argue this by comparing science and religion, however. For scientific hypotheses are ideally held with a scholarly neutrality, and my aim is to persuade those who arecommittedto religious beliefs that religious disagreement can be epistemically beneficial for them too.

Where there is trust, there is also vulnerability, and vulnerability can be exploited. Epistemic trust is no exception. This chapter maps the phenomenon of the exploitation of epistemic trust. I start with a discussion of how trust in general can be exploited; a key observation is that trust incurs vulnerabilities not just for the party doing the trusting, but also for the trustee (after all, trust can be burdensome), so either party can exploit the other. I apply these considerations to (...) epistemic trust, specifically in testimonial relationships. There, we standardly think of a hearer trusting a speaker. But we miss an important aspect of this relationship unless we consider too that the speaker standardly trusts the hearer. Given this mutual trust, and given that both trustees and trusters can exploit each other, we have four possibilities for exploitation in epistemic-trust relationships: a speaker exploiting a hearer (a) by accepting his trust or (b) by imposing her trust on him, and a hearer exploiting a speaker (c) by accepting her trust or (d) by imposing his trust on her. One result is that you do not need to betray someone to exploit him – you can exploit him just as easily by doing what he trusts you for. (shrink)

Resolving religious disagreements is difficult, for beliefs about religion tend to come with strong biases against other views and the people who hold them. Evidence can help, but there is no agreed-upon policy for weighting it, and moreover bias affects the content of our evidence itself. Another complicating factor is that some biases are reliable and others unreliable. What we need is an evidence-weighting policy geared toward negotiating the effects of bias. I consider three evidence-weighting policies in the philosophy of (...) religion and advocate one of them as the best for promoting the resolution of religious disagreements. (shrink)

I give an overview of the trust literature and then of six central issues concerning epistemic trust. The survey of trust zeroes in on the kinds of expectations that trust involves, trust’s characteristic psychology, and what makes trust rational. The discussion of epistemic trust focuses on its role in testimony, the epistemic goods that we trust for, the significance of epistemic trust in contrast to reliance, what makes epistemic trust rational, and epistemic self-trust.

In a fallen world fraught with evidence against religious beliefs, it is tempting to think that, on the assumption that those beliefs are true, the best way to protect them is to hold them dogmatically. Dogmatic belief, which is highly confident and resistant to counterevidence, may fail to exhibit epistemic virtues such as humility and may instead manifest epistemic vices such as arrogance or servility, but if this is the price of secure belief in religious truths, so be it. I (...) argue, however, that even in a world full of misleading evidence against true religious beliefs, cultivating epistemic humility is the better way to achieve believers’ epistemic aims. The reason is that dogmatic belief courts certain epistemic dangers, including to the true religious beliefs themselves, whereas epistemic humility empowers believers to counter them. (shrink)

If you love someone, is it good to believe better of her than epistemic norms allow? The partiality view says that it is: love, on this view, issues norms of belief that clash with epistemic norms. The partiality view is supposedly supported by an analogy between beliefs and actions, by the phenomenology of love, and by the idea that love commits us to the loved one’s good character. I argue that the partiality view is false, and defend what I call (...) the epistemic view. On the epistemic view, love also issues norms of belief. But these say simply that you should adhere to epistemic norms in forming and maintaining beliefs about loved ones. I offer two arguments for the epistemic view. The first appeals to the emotional responses of love, which, when sensitive to what the loved one is really like, can make love great and be morally transformative. The second is a new argument for why caring for a loved one requires true beliefs about him. We see that there may be some boundaries, such as stuffy traditions, that love is right to defy, but that epistemic boundaries are not among them. (shrink)

Faith is often regarded as having a fraught relationship with evidence. Lara Buchak even argues that it entails foregoing evidence, at least when this evidence would influence your decision to act on the proposition in which you have faith. I present a counterexample inspired by the book of Job, in which seeking evidence for the sake of deciding whether to worship God is not only compatible with faith, but is in fact an expression of great faith. One might still think (...) that foregoing evidence may make faith more praiseworthy than otherwise. But I argue against this claim too, once more drawing on Job. A faith that expresses itself by a search for evidence can be more praiseworthy than a faith that sits passively in the face of epistemic adversity. (shrink)

What is epistemic self-trust? There is a tension in the way in which prominent accounts answer this question. Many construe epistemic trust in oneself as no more than reliance on our sub-personal cognitive faculties. Yet many accounts – often the same ones – construe epistemic trust in others as a normatively laden attitude directed at persons whom we expect to care about our epistemic needs. Is epistemic self-trust really so different from epistemic trust in others? I argue that it is (...) not. We certainly do rely on our cognitive faculties to achieve epistemic ends; but I argue that we also have the normatively rich sort of epistemic trust in ourselves. Moreover, there is a theoretical need for this normatively rich notion of epistemic self-trust: positing it yields the best account of how we secure important epistemic goods, including knowledge and recognition as knowers. I argue this by giving an account of epistemic trust in others and showing that it can be generalized to epistemic trust in oneself. (shrink)

Ontology is the philosophical discipline which aims to understand how things in the world are divided into categories and how these categories are related together. This is exactly what information scientists aim for in creating structured, automated representations, called 'ontologies,' for managing information in fields such as science, government, industry, and healthcare. Currently, these systems are designed in a variety of different ways, so they cannot share data with one another. They are often idiosyncratically structured, accessible only to those who (...) created them, and unable to serve as inputs for automated reasoning. This volume shows, in a nontechnical way and using examples from medicine and biology, how the rigorous application of theories and insights from philosophical ontology can improve the ontologies upon which information management depends. (shrink)

Personal narratives can let us in on aspects of reality which we have not experienced for ourselves, and are thus important sources for philosophical reflection. Yet a venerable tradition in mainstream philosophy has little room for arguments which rely on personal narrative, on the grounds that narratives are particular and testimonial, whereas philosophical arguments should be systematic and transparent. I argue that narrative arguments are an important form of philosophical argument. Their testimonial aspects witness to novel facets of reality, but (...) their argumentative aspects help us to understand those facets for ourselves. My argument takes the form of a case study of the exemplary narrative argument penned by Rachel Moran, a former prostitute who uses her experiences to argue that prostitution amounts to sexual abuse. We’ll see that narrative arguments can enjoy expository Advantages over analytic ones. (shrink)

Some religious communities argue that public policy is best decided by their own members, on the grounds that collaborating with those reasoning from secular or “worldly” perspectives will only foment error about how society should be run. But I argue that epistemology instead recommends fostering disagreement among a plurality of religious and secular worldviews. Inter-worldview disagreement over public policy can challenge our unquestioned assumptions, deliver evidence we would likely have missed, and expose us to new epistemic alternatives; when done respectfully, (...) it can also combat epistemically problematic biases and groupthink. I address two objections that members of a politically active religious community might raise: one that inter-worldview disagreement about public policy is not needed because one’s own beliefs are already true, and another that it is not needed because one’s own beliefforming processes are divinely guided. (shrink)

Background: Ontologies and taxonomies are among the most important computational resources for molecular biology and bioinformatics. A series of recent papers has shown that the Gene Ontology (GO), the most prominent taxonomic resource in these fields, is marked by flaws of certain characteristic types, which flow from a failure to address basic ontological principles. As yet, no methods have been proposed which would allow ontology curators to pinpoint flawed terms or definitions in ontologies in a systematic way. Results: We present (...) computational methods that automatically identify terms and definitions which are defined in a circular or unintelligible way. We further demonstrate the potential of these methods by applying them to isolate a subset of 6001 problematic GO terms. By automatically aligning GO with other ontologies and taxonomies we were able to propose alternative synonyms and definitions for some of these problematic terms. This allows us to demonstrate that these other resources do not contain definitions superior to those supplied by GO. Conclusion: Our methods provide reliable indications of the quality of terms and definitions in ontologies and taxonomies. Further, they are well suited to assist ontology curators in drawing their attention to those terms that are ill-defined. We have further shown the limitations of ontology mapping and alignment in assisting ontology curators in rectifying problems, thus pointing to the need for manual curation. (shrink)

Should religious believers proportion their religious beliefs to their evidence? They should: Religious faith is better, ceteris paribus, when the beliefs accompanying it are evidence-proportioned. I offer two philosophical arguments and a biblical argument. The philosophical arguments conclude that love and trust, two attitudes belonging to faith, are better, ceteris paribus, when accompanied by evidence-proportioned belief, and that so too is the faith in question. The biblical argument concludes that beliefs associated with faith, portrayed in the Hebrew Bible and the (...) New Testament, are typically, and normatively, exhorted on the basis of evidence. I hope to convince religious believers and nonbelievers alike that religious beliefs should be evidence-proportioned. (shrink)

Wegen der Globalisierung und der Säkularisierung ist heute nicht mehr selbstverständlich davon auszugehen, dass die eigenen religiösen Überzeugungen richtig sind. Wie können Gläubige darauf reagieren? Eine nachvollziehbare Reaktion wäre zu versuchen, das eigene religiöse Glaubenssystem vor aller scheinbaren Konkurrenz zu schützen, indem man religiösen Dissens innerhalb oder außerhalb der Glaubensgemeinschaft unterbindet oder unterdrückt. Die Autorin argumentiert jedoch dafür, dass die Förderung von solchem Dissens die religiöse Erkenntnis eigentlich begünstigt und zwar selbst für diejenigen, die ihr eigenes religiöses Glaubenssystem möglichst bewahren (...) wollen. (shrink)

It is argued that medical science requires a classificatory system that (a) puts functions in the taxonomic center and (b) does justice ontologically to the difference between the processes which are the realizations of functions and the objects which are their bearers. We propose formulae for constructing such a system and describe some of its benefits. The arguments are general enough to be of interest to all the life sciences.

Medical science conceives the human body as a system comprised of many subsystems at a variety of levels. At the highest level are bodily systems proper, such as the endocrine system, which are central to our understanding of human anatomy, and play a key role in diagnosis and in dynamic modeling as well as in medical pedagogy and computer visualization. But there is no explicit definition of what a bodily system is; such informality is acceptable in documentation created for human (...) beings, but falls short of what is needed for computer representations. Our analysis is intended as a first step towards filling this gap. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Katherine Dormandy argues that there is no partiality in virtuous faith. Partiality biases and leads to noetic entrenchment. In response, I contend there is an important sense in which virtuous faith is partial towards its object. Namely, it disposes one to perceive the object as more trustworthy and to rely on this partialist evidence in forming beliefs, even when the impartialist evidence points in the other direction. There are, after all, situations in which impartialist evidence is apt (...) to mislead or to fail to bring one to the truth. In such cases, faith attunes one to the subject’s true motivations and intentions. Here the partiality of faith constitutes a kind of social acuity or expertise, not a bias. Indeed, to lack faith in such situations—and to give impartialist evidence equal weight with the partial—might constitute a kind of bias against the subject, casting his or her actions in an overly negative light. (shrink)

Katherine Dormandy aims both to classify possible modes of relating faith to epistemic norms in terms of three broad viewpoints: evidentialism, epistemological partialism, and anti-epistemological partialism. I advance two related claims: first, her categorization flattens the epistemological terrain by treating epistemic norms that operate at different levels as if they operated on the same level and thereby distorts the views she categorizes under Anti-Epistemological Partiality; and second, when rightly described, the noetic conflict involved in this view can be (...) understood as waged between epistemic norms of different types and function. To advance this claim, I examine Pascal’s conception of faith. For Pascal, we require first principles to establish an interpretive framework for understanding the universe and interpreting evidence, but outside of statements whose negations are self-contradictory, we cannot distinguish between “natural” principles and fantasies; faith is then understood as a relation to the Divine that allows the believer to receive, through grace, more accurate first principles. Faith therefore has a special cognitive status: (a) it has the right to influence how we interpret the world, including our epistemic norms and how to accommodate apparently disconfirming evidence, and (b) it is resilient to being reinterpreted in ways that would hinder it from fulfilling this function of stabilizing our epistemic situation—in the manner, for example, that such functioning would be hindered by negative beliefs concerning whether God exists, is good, and is faithful. The Pascalian believer is therefore involved in a much more subtle type of struggle than one between evidence and belief. Her conflict is waged between evidence and the interpretive framework through which she understands the world, including that evidence. I use the example of Job as a paradigm of how such a believer responds to apparently disconfirming evidence, treating doubt as grounds for frankly asking, or even demanding, God to answer one’s doubts, for the sake of his justice and love. (shrink)

In this comment on Katherine Dormandy's paper «True Faith», I point out that the clash she describes between epistemic norms and faith-based norms of belief needs to be supplemented with a clear understanding of the pertinent norms of belief. I argue that conceiving of them as evaluative fails to explain the clash, and that understanding them as prescriptive is no better. I suggest an understanding of these norms along the lines of Ross’s (1930) prima facie duties, and show (...) how this picture can make sense of the clash. (shrink)

In her paper, “True Faith: Against Doxastic Partiality about Faith (in God and Religious Communities) and in Defense of Evidentialism,” Katherine Dormandy argues against the view that there is a partiality norm on faith. Dormandy establishes this by showing that partiality views can’t give the right responses to encounters with stubborn counter evidence. Either they (anti-epistemic-partiality views) recommend flouting the evidence altogether in order hold on to positive beliefs about the object of faith or they (epistemic-partiality views) (...) lower the epistemic standards in objectionable ways to alleviate the epistemic pressure imposed by the counterevidence. However, one cannot have praiseworthy faith when one refuses to really grapple with the evidence against the goodness of the faith’s object. So, partiality norms, far from constituting what makes for great faith, importantly stand in its way. Thus, we should reject any partiality norms on faith. We argue that cases of praiseworthy faith involve dispositions to confront the object of faith when presented with stubborn counter evidence against their goodness. Recognizing this enables us to endorse a partiality norm while avoiding Dormandy’s worries. We argue that dispositions to confront the object of faith presuppose positive beliefs about it, thus vindicating partiality. We further argue that the confrontation makes an epistemic demand of the object of faith: produce high confidence in whether it is still worth having faith in, thus carving out a central role for evidentialist norms. (shrink)

This topical collection of Synthese is in honor of Catherine Z. Elgin. The idea for it arose in the context of an international book symposium dedicated to Elgin's latest book, organized by Katherine Dormandy, Christoph Jäger, and myself, which took place at the University of Innsbruck in March 2018. The topical collection comprises fourteen papers addressing a broad array of issues related to True Enough and to Elgin’s work more generally, plus a contribution by Elgin with detailed comments (...) and replies. True Enough is an extraordinarily rich, wide-ranging book; it reflects both the breadth and sharpness of Elgin’s philosophical gaze and exemplifies the impressive variety of her philosophical interests. In this introduction, I give an overview of the topical collection’s content, zooming in on the aspects of Elgin’s work which captured the contributors’ attention. My discussion will not remotely do justice to the complexity of Elgin’s system, but I hope that it will help the reader navigate the topical collection and appreciate how the fourteen papers relate to Elgin’s overall project. (shrink)

Some language encourages essentialist thinking. While philosophers have largely focused on generics and essentialism, I argue that nouns as a category are poised to refer to kinds and to promote representational essentializing. Our psychological propensity to essentialize when nouns are used reveals a limitation for anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Even ameliorated nouns can continue to underpin essentialist thinking. I conclude by arguing that representational essentialism does not doom anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Rather it reveals that would-be ameliorators ought to attend to the (...) propensities for our representational devices to essentialize and to the complex relationship between essentialism and prejudice. (shrink)

CATEGORY: Philosophy play; historical fiction; comedy; social criticism. STORYLINE: Katherine, a slightly neurotic American lawyer, has tried very hard to find personal happiness in the form of friends and lovers. But she has not succeeded, and is therefore very unhappy. So she travels to London, hoping that Christianus — a well-known satisfactionist — may be able to help her. TOPICS: In the course of the play, Katherine and Christianus converse about many philosophical issues: the modern American military presence (...) in Iraq; the meaning of life; the ethics of abortion; assessing WHO death statistics; the potential personhood of foetuses; ancient Egyptian moustaches and beards; defining criteria for progress in human society; objectivity and subjectivity; Chicago futures trading developments; the virtues of cryonics technology; a U.S. Supreme Court case; important and unimportant knowledge; and spiritualist dualism vs. scientific materialism . NOTES: This work features elaborate footnotes and comments by the author, to enhance the reader's experience of the play and its philosophizing characters. (shrink)

In our interactions with science, we are often vulnerable; we do not have complete control of the situation and there is a risk that we, or those we love, might be harmed. This is not an emotionall...

Findings from the cognitive sciences suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for some memory errors are adaptive, bringing benefits to the organism. In this paper we argue that the same cognitive mechanisms also bring a suite of significant epistemic benefits, increasing the chance of an agent obtaining epistemic goods like true belief and knowledge. This result provides a significant challenge to the folk conception of memory beliefs that are false, according to which they are a sign of cognitive frailty, indicating (...) that a person is less reliable than others or their former self. Evidence of memory errors can undermine a person’s view of themselves as a competent epistemic agent, but we show that false memory beliefs can be the result of the ordinary operation of cognitive mechanisms found across the species, which bring substantial epistemic benefits. This challenge to the folk conception is not adequately captured by existing epistemological theories. However, it can be captured by the notion of epistemic innocence, which has previously been deployed to highlight how beliefs which have epistemic costs can also bring significant epistemic benefits. We therefore argue that the notion of epistemic innocence should be expanded so that it applies not just to beliefs but also to cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

Appeals to intersectionality serve to remind us that social categories like race and gender cannot be adequately understood independently from each other. But what, exactly, is the intersectional thesis a thesis about? Answers to this question are remarkably diverse. Intersectionality is variously understood as a claim about the nature of social kinds, oppression, or experience ; about the limits of antidiscrimination law or identity politics ; or about the importance of fuzzy sets, multifactor analysis, or causal modeling in social science.

Traditionally, social entities (i.e., social properties, facts, kinds, groups, institutions, and structures) have not fallen within the purview of mainstream metaphysics. In this chapter, we consider whether the exclusion of social entities from mainstream metaphysics is philosophically warranted or if it instead rests on historical accident or bias. We examine three ways one might attempt to justify excluding social metaphysics from the domain of metaphysical inquiry and argue that each fails. Thus, we conclude that social entities are not justifiably excluded (...) from metaphysical inquiry. Finally, we ask how focusing on social entities could change the character of metaphysical inquiry. We suggest that starting from examples of social entities might lead metaphysicians to rethink the assumption that describing reality in terms of intrinsic, independent, and individualistic features is preferable to describing it in terms of relational, dependent, and non-individualistic features. (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine Lewis's ideas about ontological innocence, ontological commitment and double-counting, in his discussion of composition as identity in Parts of Classes. I attempt to understand these primarily as epistemic or methodological claims: how far can we get down this route without adopting radical metaphysical theses about composition as identity?

Identity politics has been critiqued in various ways. One central problem—the Reinforcement Problem—claims that identity politics reinforces groups rooted in oppression thereby undermining its own liberatory aims. Here I consider two versions of the problem—one psychological and one metaphysical. I defang the first by drawing on work in social psychology. I then argue that careful consideration of the metaphysics of social groups and of the practice of identity politics provides resources to dissolve the second version. Identity politics involves the creation (...) or transformation of groups in ways that do not succumb to the metaphysical Reinforcement Problem. (shrink)

Cooperation has been analyzed primarily in the context of theories of collective intentionality. These discussions have primarily focused on interactions between pairs or small groups of agents who know one another personally. Cooperative game theory has also been used to argue for a form of cooperation in large unorganized groups. Here I consider a form of minimal cooperation that can arise among members of potentially large organized groups (e.g., corporate teams, committees, governmental bodies). I argue that members of organized groups (...) can be minimally cooperative in virtue of playing roles in an organizational structure and having a common goal. The minimal form of cooperation I argue for is not grounded in collective intentions involving symmetric mental states, special collective intentional modes, or joint commitments. More generally, I show how considering minimal cooperation in the context of organized groups provides an opportunity to reevaluate the extent to which the social world and social phenomena depend on internalist mental factors (e.g., intentions, beliefs) and externalist non-mental factors (e.g., documents, laws, job descriptions). The view of minimal cooperation among members of organized groups I offer provides support for an externalist rather than internalist theory of at least one social phenomenon. (shrink)

The Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR) served as a global platform for debate on ethical issues in international health research between 1999 and 2008, bringing together research ethics experts, researchers, policy makers and community members from developing and developed countries. In total, nine GFBR meetings were held on six continents. Work is currently underway to revive the GFBR. This paper describes the purpose and history of the GFBR and presents key elements for its reinstatement, future functioning and sustainability. (...) Potential participants and sponsors are encouraged to contribute actively to the future of this unique international research ethics event. (shrink)

This is a short response to Aaron Cotnoir's 'Composition as General Identity', in which I suggest some further applications of his ideas, and try to press the question of why we should think of his 'general identity relation' as a genuine identity relation.

Historizing is the way Dasein takes up possibilities and roles to project itself into the future. It is why we experience continuity throughout our lives, and it is the basis for historicality – our sense of a more general continuity of “history.” In Being and Time,Heidegger identifies both inauthentic and authentic modes of historizing that give rise, respectively, to inauthentic and authentic modes of histori-cality. He focuses on historizing at the individual level but gestures at a communal form of historizing. (...) In this paper, I develop the concept of co-historizing in both its authentic and inauthentic modes. I argue that Heidegger’s unarticulated concept of inauthentic co-historizing is what necessitated the planned (but unfinished) second half of Being and Time – the “phenomenological destruction of the history of ontol-ogy.” I consider what it means to take responsibility for our destiny as a people and specifically as a community of philosophers. (shrink)

This essay offers an interpretation of Aristotle’s account of the birth of tragedy (Poetics 1448b18–1449a15) as a mimesis of poetic praxis. The workings of this passage emerge when read in connection with ring composition in Homeric speeches, and further unfold through a comparison with the Shield of Achilles and with an ode from Euripides’ Heracles. Aristotle appears to draw upon a traditional pattern enacting cyclical rebirth or revitalization. It is suggested that his puzzling insistence on “one complete action” in plot (...) is bound up with moment-to-moment performance. The poetics of Aristotle’s account suggest a pedagogy of mimesis. (shrink)

Addressing biases in natural-language processing (NLP) systems presents an underappreciated ethical dilemma, which we think underlies recent debates about bias in NLP models. In brief, even if we could eliminate bias from language models or their outputs, we would thereby often withhold descriptively or ethically useful information, despite avoiding perpetuating or amplifying bias. Yet if we do not debias, we can perpetuate or amplify bias, even if we retain relevant descriptively or ethically useful information. Understanding this dilemma provides for a (...) useful way of rethinking the ethics of algorithmic bias in NLP. (shrink)

Slurs have become a big topic of discussion both in philosophy and in linguistics. Slurs are usually characterised as pejorative terms, co-extensional with other, neutral, terms referring to ethnic or social groups. However, slurs are not the only ethnic/social words with pejorative senses. Our aim in this paper is to introduce a different kind of pejoratives, which we will call “ethnic/social terms used as insults”, as exemplified in Spanish, though present in many other languages and mostly absent in English. These (...) are ethnic terms like gitano, ‘Romani’, which can have an extensional and neutral use, but also a pejorative meaning building on a negative stereotypical representation of the Romani community. (shrink)

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the ethical considerations relevant to the use of nudges in organ donation policy. We do not defend a position on the permissibility of nudging in this context, but instead aim to clearly outline the strongest arguments on the different sides of this issue that have been presented in the English-language scholarly bioethics literature. We also highlight the questions that are in need of further investigation. In part 1, we briefly discuss nudging before (...) considering proposals to use nudges to increase the number of registered organ donors, including opt-out donor registration systems and the use of “nudge statements.” In part 2, we discuss the use of nudges to influence the decision-making of family members in circumstances where they have a veto over the donation of their loved one’s organs. (shrink)

Arguments from divine hiddenness attempt to show that God, as understood by traditional Christianity, does not exist.Eleonore Stump has argued that, contrary to a key premise in such arguments, it is possible for God to have a personal relationship with human beings who do not believe that he exists. I describe Stump’s account of the will and describe its connection to her explanation of divine hiddenness. Specifically, I show that her account of the knowledge of persons cannot solve the problem (...) of divine hiddenness. I also argue that Stump’s account of the will commits her to the claim that lacking belief in God’s existence entails resistance to God’s grace. (shrink)

Each chapter covers one topic and largely consists of brief summaries of arguments for and against various themes. The topic of the first chapter is whether and on what basis a film can be considered art. Photography is used as an analogy. The arguments range from considering the mechanical form of cinema as an obstacle to arthood to arguments considering cinema’s mechanical nature as essential to its arthood; the former by those who ground art in human agency, the latter by (...) those who ground art in some conception of verisimilitude. Those worried by the former argument, emphasize editing and montage effects as the essential aspects of cinema, the idea being that the less representational veracity a film presented, the more it could be classified as art. On the other hand, for those who equate the art of film with verisimilitude, it is argued that the realism of film is superior to the realism of the other representational arts due to film’s retrieval of images as opposed to merely representing them. (shrink)

This paper presents the first bibliometric mapping analysis of the field of computer and information ethics (C&IE). It provides a map of the relations between 400 key terms in the field. This term map can be used to get an overview of concepts and topics in the field and to identify relations between information and communication technology concepts on the one hand and ethical concepts on the other hand. To produce the term map, a data set of over thousand articles (...) published in leading journals and conference proceedings in the C&IE field was constructed. With the help of various computer algorithms, key terms were identified in the titles and abstracts of the articles and co-occurrence frequencies of these key terms were calculated. Based on the co-occurrence frequencies, the term map was constructed. This was done using a computer program called VOSviewer. The term map provides a visual representation of the C&IE field and, more specifically, of the organization of the field around three main concepts, namely privacy, ethics, and the Internet. (shrink)

Tyler Burge is an American philosopher whose body of work spans several areas of theoretical philosophy in the analytic tradition. While Burge has made important contributions to the philosophy of language and logic, he is most renowned for his work in philosophy of mind and epistemology. In particular, he is known for articulating and developing a view he labels ‘anti-individualism.’ In his later work, Burge connects his views with state-of-the-art scientific theory. Despite this emphasis on empirical considerations, Burge stands in (...) an important relationship to the rationalist tradition in philosophy. This entry surveys Burge’s work and seeks to situate it in the larger philosophical landscape. (shrink)

This book argues that the Enlightenment was a golden age for the philosophy of body, and for efforts to integrate coherently a philosophical concept of body with a mathematized theory of mechanics. Thereby, it articulates a new framing for the history of 18th-century philosophy and science. It explains why, more than a century after Newton, physics broke away from philosophy to become an autonomous domain. And, it casts fresh light on the structure and foundations of classical mechanics. Among the figures (...) studied are Malebranche, Leibniz, Du Châtelet, Boscovich, and Kant, alongside d’Alembert, Euler, Lagrange, Laplace and Cauchy. (shrink)

According to robust virtue epistemology , knowledge is type-identical with a particular species of cognitive achievement. The identification itself is subject to some criticism on the grounds that it fails to account for the anti-luck features of knowledge. Although critics have largely focused on environmental luck, the fundamental philosophical problem facing RVE is that it is not clear why it should be a distinctive feature of cognitive abilities that they ordinarily produce beliefs in a way that is safe. We propose (...) a novel way to resolve this problem. Key to our proposal will be an appreciation of different representational states beholden to truth. We suggest these different representational states are distinguished by how, in the proper governance of these states, the twin goods of attaining truth and avoiding error are weighted. Moreover, we explain how varieties of representational states line up with varieties of cognitive achievement such that knowledge, cum cognitive achievement, must be safe because of the kind of attempt at success that belief is—namely, an attempt that places the premium it does on avoiding error. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: We argue that the so-called ‘Primary’ and ‘Secondary’ Value Problems for knowledge are more easily solved than is widely appreciated. Pritchard, for instance, has suggested that only virtue-theoretic accounts have any hopes of adequately addressing these problems. By contrast, we argue that accounts of knowledge that are sensitive to the Gettier problem are able to overcome these challenges. To first approximation, the Primary Value Problem is a problem of understanding how the property of being knowledge confers more epistemic value (...) on a belief than the property of being true. The Secondary Value is a problem of understanding how, for instance, property of being knowledge confers more epistemic value on a belief than the property of being jointly true and justified. We argue that attending to the fact that beliefs are ongoing states reveals that there is no difficulty in appreciating how knowledge might ordinarily have more epistemic value than mere true belief or mere justified true belief. We also explore in what ways ordinary cases of knowledge might be of distinctive epistemic value. In the end, our proposal resembles the original Platonic suggestion in the Meno that knowledge is valuable because knowledge is somehow tied to the good of truth. (shrink)