Research on the capacity to understand others’ minds has tended to focus on representations of beliefs, which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations of knowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one doesn't even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across (...) cognitive science, we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that non-human primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibit a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind—one that is focused on understanding others’ minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it. (shrink)

Background Several jurisdictions, including Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and most recently Ireland, have a public interest or public good criterion for granting waivers of consent in biomedical research using secondary health data or tissue. However, the concept of the public interest is not well defined in this context, which creates difficulties for institutions, institutional review boards and regulators trying to implement the criterion. Main text This paper clarifies how the public interest criterion can be defensibly deployed. We first explain the (...) ethical basis for requiring waivers to only be granted to studies meeting the public interest criterion, then explore how further criteria may be set to determine the extent to which a given study can legitimately claim to be in the public interest. We propose an approach that does not attempt to measure magnitude of benefit directly, but rather takes into account metrics that are more straightforward to apply. To ensure consistent and justifiable interpretation, research institutions and IRBs should also incorporate procedural features such as transparency and public engagement in determining which studies satisfy the public interest requirement. Conclusion The requirement of public interest for consent waivers in secondary biomedical research should be guided by well-defined criteria for systematic evaluation. Such a criteria and its application need to be periodically subject to intra-committee and intra-institution review, reflection, deliberation and amendment. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to engage with C. Thi Nguyen’s characterization of the echo chamber and to propose two things. First, I argue that a proper reading of his concept of echo chamber should make use of the notion of ignorance in the form of a structural epistemic insensitivity. My main contention is that ignorance as a substantive structural practice accounts for the epistemically deleterious effects of echo chambers. Second, I propose that from the talk of ignorance we (...) should be able to see echo chambers in terms of their more harmful impacts in our daily lives. To do that, I argue that we should think of echo chambers as tools to promote hermeneutical domination. If my representation of Nguyen’s concept is accurate, I believe we can see some important theoretical consequences stemming from the way Nguyen understands it. (shrink)

Phylogeography, a relatively new subdicipline of evolutionary biology that attempts to unify the fields of phylogenetics and population biology in an explicit geographical context, has hosted in recent years a highly polarized debate related to the purported benefits and limitations that qualitative versus quantitative methods might contribute or impose on inferential processes in evolutionary biology. Here we present a friendly, non-technical introduction to the conflicting methods underlying the controversy, and exemplify it with a balanced selection of quotes from the primary (...) biological literature, to invite the philosophy of biology community to pay attention to the elements that have played a primary role in its presumed resolution. We also present the basic features of our own metascientific take on the debate, and point out—as a preliminary step in preparation for upcoming, more detailed treatments—the importance that appeals to authority in fields external to phylogeography per se have played in the current status of this highly visible evolutionary biology dispute. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making frameworks assist in identifying the issues at stake in a particular setting and thinking through, in a methodical manner, the ethical issues that require consideration as well as the values that need to be considered and promoted. Decisions made about the use, sharing, and re-use of big data are complex and laden with values. This paper sets out an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research developed by a working group convened by the Science, Health and (...) Policy-relevant Ethics in Singapore Initiative. It presents the aim and rationale for this framework supported by the underlying ethical concerns that relate to all health and research contexts. It also describes a set of substantive and procedural values that can be weighed up in addressing these concerns, and a step-by-step process for identifying, considering, and resolving the ethical issues arising from big data uses in health and research. This Framework is subsequently applied in the papers published in this Special Issue. These papers each address one of six domains where big data is currently employed: openness in big data and data repositories, precision medicine and big data, real-world data to generate evidence about healthcare interventions, AI-assisted decision-making in healthcare, public-private partnerships in healthcare and research, and cross-sectoral big data. (shrink)

The semantic paradoxes are a family of arguments – including the liar paradox, Curry’s paradox, Grelling’s paradox of heterologicality, Richard’s and Berry’s paradoxes of definability, and others – which have two things in common: first, they make an essential use of such semantic concepts as those of truth, satisfaction, reference, definition, etc.; second, they seem to be very good arguments until we see that their conclusions are contradictory or absurd. These arguments raise serious doubts concerning the coherence of the concepts (...) involved. This article will offer an introduction to some of the main theories that have been proposed to solve the paradoxes and avert those doubts. Included is also a brief history of the semantic paradoxes from Eubulides to Tarski and Curry. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta a teoria supervalorativista da vagueza e discute a objecção, que frequentemente lhe é dirigida, segundo a qual essa teoria não consegue dar conta do fenómeno da vagueza de ordem superior.

Most words in natural language are vague, that is to say, they lack sharp boundaries and, hence, they have (actual or potential) borderline cases, where the word in question neither definitely applies nor definitely fails to apply. Vagueness gives rise to paradoxes, the best known of which is the sorites (concerned with how many grains of sand are needed to make a heap). Besides offering a solution to such paradoxes, a theory of vagueness should systematically describe how the truth conditions (...) of sentences with vague terms are determined; and it should also define the right logical principles for reasoning with such sentences. This article offers an introduction to the main theories of vagueness and to the problems they have to face. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

Review of Graeme Laurie, Genetic Privacy.

In this paper, I argue that the cleavage between the theory of reference and the theory of meaning, which under the influence of Quine has dominated a large part of the philosophy of language of the last fifty years, is based on a misrepresentation of Tarski's achievement and on an overestimation of the scope and value of disquotation. In particular, I show that, if we accept Davidson's critique of disquotation, the same kind of reasons that Quine offered in opposition to (...) the Carnapian theory of meaning also apply, mutatis mutandis, to the Tarskian theory of reference. (shrink)

Recent studies of school-age children and adolescents have used social network analyses to characterize selection and socialization aspects of peer groups. Fewer network studies have been reported for preschool classrooms and many of those have focused on structural descriptions of peer networks, and/or, on selection processes rather than on social functions of subgroup membership. In this study we started by identifying and describing different types of affiliative subgroups (HMP- high mutual proximity, LMP- low mutual proximity, and ungrouped children) in a (...) sample of 240 Portuguese preschool children using nearest neighbor observations. Next, we used additional behavioral observations and sociometric data to show that HMP and LMP subgroups are functionally distinct: HMP subgroups appear to reflect friendship relations, whereas LMP subgroups appear to reflect common social goals, but without strong, within-subgroup dyadic ties. Finally, we examined the longitudinal implications of subgroup membership and show that children classified as HMP in consecutive years had more reciprocated friendships than did children whose subgroup classification changed from LMP or ungrouped to HMP. These results extend previous findings reported for North American peer groups. (shrink)

Successful biomedical data mining and information extraction require a complete picture of biological phenomena such as genes, biological processes, and diseases; as these exist on different levels of granularity. To realize this goal, several freely available heterogeneous databases as well as proprietary structured datasets have to be integrated into a single global customizable scheme. We will present a tool to integrate different biological data sources by mapping them to a proprietary biomedical ontology that has been developed for the purposes of (...) making computers understand medical natural language. (shrink)

Review of Graeme Laurie, Genetic Privacy: A Challenge to Medico-Legal Norms.

In this paper, I argue against the thesis suggested by Cappelen and Lepore, according to which if contextualism were true, communication would require many items, and therefore would be fragile; communication is not fragile, and therefore, communication does not demand a large number of conditions, and contextualism is false. While we should grant the robustness of communication, it is not guaranteed by some unchanging conditions, but by different flexible mechanisms that enhance the chances of mutual understanding at a relatively low (...) cost –– this is true, in particular, of different feedback mechanisms and of alternative ways to make the same information mutually available. Communication is not a series of successive, individual and independent actions; dialogues are a kind of joint activity in which misunderstandings are jointly repaired by participants as part of the very activity they are engaged in. Moreover, as we consider the roles of hearers in a conversation, we see that no construal makes Cappelen and Lepore’’s argument both plausible and relevant. The hearer can either be overhearer or a certified participant. If the hearer is an overhearer, it may be the case that he easily misunderstands what is said, but it has no consequence to the understanding of what takes place in a dialogue, since, ex hypothesi, he is not a party to it. If the hearer is a participant, many of the conditions of mutual understanding will be assured in the dialogical activity itself, and both he and the speaker will make efforts to assure that mutual understanding do take place, as part of their responsibilities as parties to a dialogue –– and their argument is not plausible. (shrink)

Although there is increasing recognition that theory and practice in science are often inseparably intertwined, discussions of scientific controversies often continue to focus on theory, and not practice or methodologies. As a contribution to constructing a framework towards understanding controversies linked to scientific practices, we introduce the notion of borrowed epistemic credibility, to describe the situation in which scientists exploit fallacious similarities between accepted tenets in other fields to garner support for a given position in their own field. Our proposal (...) is based on the analysis of a recent controversy in phylogeography, a biological subdiscipline concerned with the study of the historical causes of variation in genetic diversity within species in concrete biogeographical locations. Through a review of the arguments that support the two conflicting phylogeographic schools, we show that ‘theory’ plays essentially no role as a foundation of the controversy, whereas both sides borrow epistemic credibility from sources such as formal logic, similarity of results to those in other scientific areas, the authority of prominent scientists, or the presumed superiority of quantitative vs. verbal reasoning. Our case study underscores the indivisibility of theory and practice and provide a means to re-examine important philosophical issues such as the meaning of inference, rationality, justification, and objectivity in scientific practice. (shrink)

The aim is to examine the performative acts and gender constitution in the context of the Second British Invasion. Despite the pervasive character of patriarchy and the prevalence of sexual difference as an operative cultural distinction, gender was not passively scripted on the bodies of many British singers. The subversive performances did not exclude suffering and marginalization but simultaneously undermined compulsory coherence.

In recent decades, investigation of brain injuries associated with amnesia allowed progress in the philosophy and science of memory, but it also paved the way for the hubris of assuming that memory is an exclusively neural phenomenon. Nonetheless, there are methodological and conceptual reasons preventing a reduction of the ecological and contextual phenomenon of memory to a neural phenomenon, since memory is the observed action of an individual before being the simple output of a brain (or, at least, so we (...) will argue), and there is no good reason to suppose that it is necessary to postulate a more basic reality to memory lying behind the mere individual actions. (shrink)

Minha proposta, nesta introdução a “Autoconhecimento e os limites da autenticidade”, texto de Sven Bernecker traduzido e publicado neste número de Sképsis, é dar razões para que defensores do anti-individualismo que sejam partidários da estratégia do autoconhecimento básico, no que diz respeito ao debate sobre a compatibilidade entre anti-individualismo e conhecimento de si, mudem de posição, e passem a defender anti-individualismo com teoria da autenticidade.

This paper is about the role of self-knowledge in the cognitive life of a virtuous knower. The main idea is that it is hard to know ourselves because introspection is an unreliable epistemic source, and reason can be a source of insidious forms of self-deception. Nevertheless, our epistemic situation is such that an epistemically responsible agent must be constantly looking for a better understanding of her own character traits and beliefs, under the risk of jeopardizing her own status as a (...) knower, ruining her own intellectual life. (shrink)

Epistemological disjunctivism is a philosophical theory that has received special attention in the recent years. Particularly because it has been seen by many as a way of renewing discussions that range from the nature of justification of our daily beliefs to the possibility of unveiling the structure of the problem of radical skepticism and of responding to it. Duncan Pritchard is one of the authors who have offered a particular view of disjunctivism and ways of conceiving of disjunctivist treatments to (...) such questions. His work has as its main source of inspiration the seminal work of John McDowell. In this paper, I present a way of understanding the problem ofradicalskepticism and the mannerin which epistemological disjunctivism aimsto offer solutionsto it. In orderto do that, I present McDowell’s general proposal and discuss in which way his account differs from Pritchard’s own disjunctivism. At the end, I try to show how Pritchard’s approach tries to respond to radical skepticism not only by appealing to a disjunctivist reading of our epistemic position, but also by offering a revision of our structure of reasons. (shrink)

A linguagem mental explica o caráter significativo das linguagens falada e escrita: seus elementos e estrutura são identificados através de critérios teóricos que servem a este fim. Estes critérios parecem manter uma certa indeterminação em relação aos elementos e estruturas da linguagem mental, se se espera que eles decidam entre diferentes formas de apresentação possíveis. Esta expectativa, contudo, não é razoável dentro da filosofia ockhamiana. A teoria da linguagem mental pode desempenhar os papéis teóricos a ela destinados sem determinar a (...) forma que deveria ter uma linguagem canônica que a apresentasse. Há no entanto uma outra indeterminação na forma da proposição mental, relativa a ocorrências de proposições, que efetivamente ocorre nos textos ockhamianos : proposições mentais podem ser atos mentais simples e ter uma semântica composicional. Esta tese surpreendente nos lembra que embora a análise semântica que identifica estruturas da linguagem mental descreva algo que tem uma realidade psicológica, a descrição psicológica ela mesma deve recorrer a outros elementos da filosofia ockhamiana, e em particular, sua teoria dos atos mentais. (shrink)

One of the main motivations for having a compositional semantics is the account of the productivity of natural languages. Formal languages are often part of the account of productivity, i.e., of how beings with finite capaci- ties are able to produce and understand a potentially infinite number of sen- tences, by offering a model of this process. This account of productivity con- sists in the generation of proofs in a formal system, that is taken to represent the way speakers grasp (...) the meaning of an indefinite number of sentences. The informational basis is restricted to what is represented in the lexicon. This constraint is considered as a requirement for the account of productivity, or at least of an important feature of productivity, namely, that we can grasp auto- matically the meaning of a huge number of complex expressions, far beyond what can be memorized. However, empirical results in psycholinguistics, and especially particular patterns of ERP, show that the brain integrates informa- tion of different sources very fast, without any felt effort on the part of the speaker. This shows that formal procedures do not explain productivity. How- ever, formal models are still useful in the account of how we get at the seman- tic value of a complex expression, once we have the meanings of its parts, even if there is no formal explanation of how we get at those meanings. A practice-oriented view of modeling gives an adequate interpretation of this re- sult: formal compositional semantics may be a useful model for some ex- planatory purposes concerning natural languages, without being a good model for dealing with other explananda. (shrink)

Algumas soluções medievais para o sofisma ´omnis homo de necessitate est animal´ postulam um tipo especial de ser, o ser da essência (esse essentiae), que explica como uma predicação necessária pode ser verdadeira sobre seres cuja existência é contingente. O ser da essência, distinto do ser efetivo (esse actuale), admite apenas propriedades necessárias. Deste traço se seguem duas diferenças em relação a teorias meinonguianas acerca do não ser. Inicialmente, segundo Meinong, o tipo de propriedade de um objeto é independente de (...) ele existir – o chamado ´Princípio da Independência´. Além disto, o ser da essência não é parte da explicação da intencionalidade. Teorias medievais que julgam dever explicar a intencionalidade pela postulação de um tipo especial de ser não o fazem pela postulação do esse essentiae. Objetos meinoinguianos, por seu vez, servem para explicar tanto a intencionalidade quanto a distribuição intuitiva de valores de verdade para sentenças sobre inexistentes. (shrink)

Na semântica ockhamiana, o predicado ‘verdadeiro’ deriva de uma outra relação semântica mais fundamental, a relação de suposição. O autor mostra como esta relação de dependência entre dois predicados semânticos figura na análise das condições de verdade de proposições passadas, um modelo que pode ser estendido a proposições futuras e possíveis. O texto procura indicar como a explicação das condições de verdade de proposições possíveis situa a semântica das modalidades aléticas em continuidade com a semântica de proposições não presentes. Este (...) último ponto ganha em interesse se o colocarmos ao lado de um outro aspecto da teoria modal ockhamiana, a saber, o fato de modalidades serem definidas como todo termo que pode ser predicado de proposições inteiras. Como conclusão, o autor expõe os diferentes níveis de análise de modalidades aléticas, dentro do quadro teórico ockhamiano. (shrink)

A noção de objecto abstracto desempenha um papel central em diferentes debates filosóficos contemporâneos, da metafísica à estética, passando pela filosofia da linguagem. A sua origem está contudo relacionada com a filosofia da matemática e em particular, com o trabalho de Frege nos fundamentos da aritmética. O nosso primeiro objectivo será assim o de explicar o contributo desta noção para o entendimento Fregeano da realidade matemática. Veremos também que, em virtude de certas dificuldades inerentes ao projeto Fregeano, a dada altura (...) a natureza do universo matemático passou a ser entendida nos termos da chamada teoria dos conjuntos. Com este material à nossa disposição, podemos então discutir o papel desempenhado pela noção de objecto abstracto em certos debates filosóficos contemporâneos. Em particular, procuraremos ilustrar o interesse actual da noção, discutindo a distinção abstracto/concreto. (shrink)

Our question, in this paper, is about the plausibility of the expressivist account of one’s self- attribution of mental states. More to the point, we will strictly follow the principle of charity as a mean to show that an expressivist philosopher can have good and reasonable answers to the set of objections put together in so called “Geach’s point”. Using this method, we hope to give enough evidences that an expressivist philosopher has enough resources to build a plausible explanation for (...) one’s attribution of mental states to herself. (shrink)

Nos anos 1970s, Hilary Putnam defendeu a tese que designadores de espécies naturais, como “água”, “tigre” e “ouro”, são termos indexicais que mudam de significado a cada contexto. No entanto, Tyler Burge rejeitou essa tese, e Putnam veio a adotar a posição de Burge. A rejeição de Burge está apoiada na distinção entre crenças de dicto e crenças de re. Nesse artigo veremos os pontos de contato entre as posições de Putnam e Burge, a posição de Putnam nos anos 1970s, (...) os principais argumentos de Burge contra a tese da indexicalidade dos designadores de espécies naturais e a diferença entre crenças de dicto e crenças de re. (shrink)

Bilateralism is a theory of meaning according to which assertion and denial are independent speech acts. Bilateralism also proposes two coordination principles for assertion and denial. I argue that if assertion and denial are independent speech acts, they cannot be coordinated by the bilateralist principles.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo examinar as relações entre conhecimento e verdade (no sentido de descobrimento e abertura), no contexto da Ontologia Fundamental, de Martin Heidegger. Num primeiro momento, busca-se caracterizar o conhecimento como um modo derivado do ser-no-mundo enquanto ocupação, patenteando a estrutura intencional que lhe é própria, bem como explicitando a interpretação fenomenológicoexistencial do “resultado” do comportamento cognoscitivo (conceitos de substância/eidos), que é posta em questão quanto à sua correção, em se considerando os conceitos da Física Moderna. A (...) abordagem do fenômeno do conhecimento, aqui empreendida, culmina com a apresentação das relações “implícitas” entre o modo de ser do conhecimento e o “problema da verdade”, presentes na análise do fenômeno da enunciação predicativa (parágrafo 33, de Ser e Tempo), com base na qual se intenta indicar o lugar da Lógica na Ontologia Fundamental. Em seguida, no contexto da tematização do significado existencial de verdade, foca-se o conceito de Evidenciação (Ausweisung), no qual se entrelaçam plenamente as concepções heideggerianas de conhecimento e de verdade, porquanto se trata da descrição da verdade do conhecimento como um modo de descobrimento enunciativo dos entes tais como são em si mesmos. Busca-se, em primeiro lugar, mostrar a apropriação de Husserl e de Aristóteles, bem como a manutenção da idéia de verdade como adequação, embutidas naquele conceito. Propõe-se a idéia de que a não-verdade (falsidade) dos enunciados predicativos (não explicitamente tematizada por Heidegger, em Ser e Tempo) pode ser pensada a partir do conceito husserliano de “síntese de diferenciação”. Procura-se, ainda, esclarecer o que significa o “em si mesmo” dos entes que se dão na evidenciação e se ocultam na diferenciação, e salientar o aspecto problemático da idéia de uma dadidade dos entes em “si mesmos”, no âmbito da investigação científica. Por fim, apresenta-se a discussão acerca da concepção heideggeriana de verdade, iniciada por Tugendhat, em 1964, e constantemente retomada por vários filósofos, inclusive por Gethmann, cuja interpretação é aqui avaliada. (shrink)

This work has as its main goal to discuss two different epistemic proposals, both under the reliabilist handle. The first one, developed by Alvin Goldman, has as its central goal to offer an adequate characterization of the justificational element present in the standard account of knowledge. Goldman's proposal has the initial challenge of properly explaining Gettier's demand presented some years earlier, but also to correct some more central problems that affect his own causal theory of knowledge. However, the externalist proposal (...) within Goldman's reliabilism faced some serious attacks directed to its notion of justification. Three of these attacks became well known in the recent literature: the generality problem, the meta-incoherence problem and the new evil genius problem. Each one in its own way has established challenges to the his reliabilist account. The second reliabilist theory we will discuss consists in a reformulation of Goldman's account, defended mainly by Ernest Sosa in a series of very important works in contemporary epistemology. In these works, Sosa was able to insert the notion of intellectual virtues in the epistemological debate, bringing to the center of the externalist debate an idea of a responsible belief formation, and at the same time trying to give a proper answer to the more central challenges faced by original reliabilism. In the first part of the paper I present the first of these theories, and after that I offer a treatment of Sosa's reformulation of reliabilism and a defense of this proposal as a more adequate theory to deal with some basic demands of a proper theory of justification. (shrink)

Em seu artigo “Confiança epistêmica e testemunho feminino”, Patrícia Ketzer se propõe a duas tarefas centrais. Em primeiro lugar, ela pretende caracterizar as noções interpessoais de testemunho e de confiança epistêmica defendidas por Benjamin McMyler (2011). A partir disso, então, ela sugere que a proposta de McMyler pode ser útil para a compreensão de casos malsucedidos de testemunho, em particular casos de testemunho de violência sexual. Me interessa, aqui, em grande medida, avaliar se a aproximação sugerida é capaz de esclarecer (...) a natureza epistemológica dos problemas que parecem estar associados às práticas de rejeitar total ou parcialmente testemunho de violência sexual e de gênero. (shrink)

This work aims to present and discuss recent developments in epistemology that seek for satisfactory formulations and responses to the problem of radical skepticism. Its main goal is to understand how the skeptical problem can be properly characterized, how it can be viewed as inserted in the traditional dispute in epistemology between externalism and internalism, and to which extent antiskeptical theories are situated within this dispute. After identifying their place in the dispute, another antiskeptical proposal is discussed, one that suggests (...) a conciliatory take on the internalist/externalist debate. The way Duncan Pritchard presents this conciliatory view, known as epistemological disjunctivism, intends to show that we can know the things that radical skepticism wants to preclude us to know. In order to do that, we just have to consider our structure of reasons as one that allows us to have factive reasons, reasons of externalist and internalist nature, that could put us in a privileged position to know the things we ordinarily believe. After the presentation and discussion of Pritchard's epistemological disjunctivism, and his general rejection of skepticism, it is suggested that its antiskeptical tools are also available to more traditional epistemic theories - but to access them, some epistemological assumptions need to be adjusted. In order to do that, an alternative take on the internalism/externalism dispute is offered, so it can allow for a different way of conceiving the conciliatory antiskeptical strategy, one that has epistemic reliabilism as its framework. The final propposal consists in an attempt to democratize the disjunctivist tool against radical skepticism. (shrink)

[From SEP]: Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research program. These (...) include novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use. It will be helpful to note some terminology before proceeding. First, we use ‘cognitive’, ‘epistemic’ and ‘intellectual’ synonymously. Second, we often use ‘normative’ broadly to include not only norms and rules, but also duties and values. Finally, ‘practitioners’ names contemporary virtue epistemologists. (shrink)

Direct realists about episodic memory claim that a rememberer has direct contact with a past event. But how is it possible to be acquainted with an event that ceased to exist? That’s the so-called cotemporality problem. The standard solution, proposed by Sven Bernecker, is to distinguish between the occurrence of an event and the existence of an event: an event ceases to occur without ceasing to exist. That’s the eternalist solution for the cotemporality problem. Nevertheless, some philosophers of memory claim (...) that the adoption of an eternalist metaphysics of time would be too high a metaphysical price to be paid to hold direct realist intuitions about memory. Although I agree with these critics, I will try to show two things. First, that this kind of “common sense argument” is far from decisive. Second, that Bernecker’s proposal remains the best solution to the cotemporality problem. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper would talk about Emerita Quito’s thoughts and ideas about the state of the Philosophy in the Philippines. It would enumerate the problems that prevents it from totally flourishing here in our country and would try to provide viable solutions that can help develop it further. Moreover, it will also highlight why our language is an essential key factor in understanding philosophy. She would discuss here how we can never Filipino Philosophy can never flourish until we settle the (...) dilemma in our own language. This paper will also talk about the importance of philosophy and thinking not just to an individual but also to the country. It will also pose the dangers of critical thinking and how to handle it. (shrink)

The Transamazon (Br-230) Highway in the state of Pará has had its image frozen for decades: themuddy road, the cars stopped or tractors tearing down a forest, empty of people, opening the amazonianspace to a project of an authoritarian modernization. Reproduced by and reproductive of the teachingsof geography – including for children and teenagers who live on the edge of the road, in settlements andcommunities on the sideroads (vicinais) – in textbooks and discourses that frame regional scale (astotalizing and explanatory) (...) instead of scales emplaced in situ. The result of such dinamics is not restricted to a gap between what one experiences as a phenomenon and what one learns as a concept,it goes towards the reproducibility of an “unexistance of the creative potential” of the people living onthe sideroads, places of the construction of a geography, as well as mapping, that, from there, push usto rethink the unwavering foundations of such frosen images , of the generalistic maps and theirstandardizing projections, scales and simbology. To do so, we have, along with students and teachersof 2 schools on the sideroads of the municipality of Pacajá (PA), in the period of the beggining of 2016to 2019, done several geocartographic exercises: mind maps developped with students about the past,present and the future of the vicinal (sideroad). That is, an attempt to provoque the body into the mapand the map into the body in a context of a limit situation of existance, given the precarious schoolconditions as well as the diferent challenges lived by students and teachers. Such corporal engagementas an attempt to think the sideroads as a location in construction and, from there, a situated opening tothe world, is what gives meaning to geocartography. It is possible to conclude that: a) facing thesedimentary representations paralysing and overview of the Transamazon in the state of Pará , thephenomenological exercise of reactivation of geocartogrphying provoques the emergence of asubjective significance that does not separate the emotional and symbolic perspectives on creatingmaps; b) the corporal engagement and the situated perspective of students and teachers, not only hasthe value of a totalyzing exemple, but that of an opening to what is new as they bring up a simbologythat reveals the need to build a dialogical bridge between what is lived on the sideroads and the worldthat classifies it as “unexisting”. (shrink)

In this paper, I present two ways of conceiving a genealogical explanation of the concept of knowledge. The first one is through the epistemic state of nature hypothesis developed by Edward Craig, according to which knowledge is understood as a concept evolved from the concept of a good informant. After considering Craig’s project, I draw a parallel between this approach and Miranda Fricker’s value-laden account of the same concept. Then, I present and discuss Fricker’s social take on Craig’s genealogy, in (...) which she suggests that the notions of a good informant and of knowledge are necessarily dependent on the establishment of a credibility norm, and that this norm should be viewed as inherently political. Lastly, I defend an illustration, through Kristie Dotson’s work, of how both genealogical approaches could explain and offer solutions to failings in the normativity of our epistemic systems. (shrink)

Tanto desde el punto de vista teórico como desde una perspectiva práctica, el fenómeno de la "estetización" no parece ser portador de buenos augurios. En el ámbito teórico, la estetización ha sido vinculada con la crisis de los discursos orientados en términos de verdad, mientras que en el terreno práctico, ella ha sido asociada a ciertos procesos culturales que conducirían a la debacle de los principios normativos. Dejando de lado la problemática teórica, el presente trabajo se concentra en el debate (...) en torno al fenómeno práctico de la estetización de la política. En primer lugar, nos remontamos a la historia de la condena filosófica de la estetización de la esfera política para ocuparnos luego, en un segundo momento, de algunas posiciones esteticistas y antiesteticistas de finales del siglo XX. Posteriormente, procuramos avanzar en una redescripción de esta problemática que nos permita rescatar un sentido productivo de lo estético para el pensamiento político. Para esto último, nuestro trabajo se apoya en las reflexiones de la actual coeditora de la Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Juliane Rebentisch. Tomando como parámetro algunos de los supuestos de sus investigaciones, aquí intentaremos demostrar hasta qué punto la estetización de la vida política puede contribuir al desarrollo de una concepción renovada de esta última. Both from a theoretical and from a practical perspective, the phenomenon of "aestheticization" does not seem to anticipate anything particularly good. On a theoretical level, it has been linked to the crisis of discourse-oriented in terms of truth, while in the practical, has been associated with certain cultural processes that lead to the the collapse of the normative principles. Leaving aside the theoretical issues, this paper focuses on the debate on the phenomenon of the aestheticization of the political culture. First, it goes back to the history of philosophical condemnation of the aestheticization of the political sphere. In a second time, he deals with some conceptions of the late twentieth century. Subsequently, the paper seeks to advance a redescription of this problem that allows rescue a productive sense of aesthetics for political thought. For the latter, our article is based on the reflections of Juliane Rebentisch and attempts to show how the aestheticization of political life can help to develop a new concept of the same. (shrink)

Debates em epistemologia recente têm se pautado, em grande medida, pelo problema de caracterizar a natureza da justificação. De modo geral, a tarefa tem sido explorar o status epistêmico que faz com que uma crença verdadeira seja uma instância de conhecimento. Este debate traz consigo uma discussão mais ampla acerca do conteúdo da definição de conhecimento, ou seja, uma discussão cujo propósito é identificar o que compõe de forma necessária e suficiente esta noção epistêmica central. No entanto, paralelamente a este (...) trabalho tem surgido um tipo de preocupação que, em alguma medida, parece ser anterior à tarefa de discutir a natureza ou os conteúdos do conceito em questão. Esta preocupação diz respeito ao problema da atribuição de conhecimento. Casos do tipo-Gettier não só colocam em xeque a definição tradicional, expondo uma insuficiência nos conteúdos comumente associados a esta noção, mas o fazem mostrando que atribuições triviais de conhecimento estão sob risco, quando pautadas pelos conteúdos da noção tradicional. Como veremos, a intuição contida na revisão feita por Edmund Gettier se torna ainda mais relevante ao notarmos que o problema persiste mesmo em versões reformuladas da noção tradicional do conhecimento, como presente na proposta confiabilista, com a qual lidaremos neste trabalho.Oproblema, em linhas gerais, é o seguinte: como devemos entender a atribuição de conhecimento para sujeitos que, supostamente, preenchem todas as demandas para tal, mas que não parecem ter conhecimento em sentido estrito? Os casos de Gettier são paradigmáticos neste sentido. Veremos mais adiante que casos como estes nos apresentam sujeitos que estão cumprindo todas as demandas da análise tradicional do conhecimento, mas que de fato não chegam a possuí-lo. Alternativamente, o problema pode ainda ser invertido: como devemos entender a atribuição de conhecimento para sujeitos que não cumprem todas estas demandas, mas para os quais, intuitivamente, atribuímos conhecimento? Este problema, veremos, é central para a proposta confiabilista, posto que coloca em dúvida uma das formulações recentes da teoria, defendida por John Greco, e pretende mostrar que tal formulação não salva a teoria do problema da atribuição. Neste trabalho, discutirei o alcance deste problema para a epistemologia e em que sentido sua versão invertida afeta o confiabilismo do agente1 de John Greco. Na primeira parte do trabalho meu foco estará no problema geral e na possível contribuição que a noção de saliência causal, proposta no confiabilismo do agente, tem a oferecer como solução.Emseguida, apresentarei dois contraexemplos à centralidade da saliência causal advogada por Greco. Então, na terceira e última parte do trabalho discutirei uma reformulação que Greco faz de sua própria proposta para dar conta das demandas apresentadas por estes contraexemplos. Ao final, defenderei, seguindo Greco, que sua reformulação da noção de saliência causal para casos de conhecimento, em termos qualitativos e não quantitativos, pode nos servir mais adequadamente para entender esta relação de atribuição. (shrink)

In this paper, Charles Mills discusses what he calls “white ignorance”, developing one of the main themes of his 1997 book, The Racial Contract. His discussion is concerned with the idea of a cognitive disadvantage based on membership in a social group, which is not strange to the radical philosophical tradition, and that has been explored with more vigor in the recent Social Epistemology, in debates about epistemic injustices, silencing, willful ignorance, cognitive biases, epistemological standpoints, etc. Mills argues for an (...) “Epistemology of the white ignorance”, a racially and socially situated epistemology, which contraposes itself, in a great extent, to the individualistic tendencies of the traditional epistemological work, while conserving the interests in objectivity and truth of this work. (shrink)

‘Injustiça epistêmica’ é o termo usado por Miranda Fricker para descrever um tipo de injustiça que ocorre quando excluímos a contribuição de uma ou mais pessoas à produção, disseminação e manutenção do conhecimento. Em seu livro de mesmo nome (2007), e em uma série de outros trabalhos, Fricker examina de que modo interações interpessoais e sistemas sociais estruturais podem ser responsáveis por influenciar nossa prática cotidiana, consciente ou não, de atribuir status epistêmico a membros de uma comunidade. Seu trabalho se (...) insere em um campo particular da epistemologia contemporânea, conhecido como Epistemologia Social. Um ramo do trabalho filosófico que tem como objetivo uma investigação sobre a dimensão social e sobre a moralidade das nossas práticas epistêmicas, do ponto de vista da sua influência na aquisição de conhecimento e justificação, e da formação racional de crenças. Fricker aporta neste campo com um tratamento do papel que a injustiça de tipo epistêmico desempenha nessas atividades. E ela o faz, particularmente, através do exame de duas formas primárias deste tipo de injustiça: a injustiça testemunhal e a injustiça hermenêutica. Sua proposta consiste, em larga medida, em mostrar que algumas das normas que governam as nossas práticas epistêmicas podem ser limitadas por estruturas de poder que se manifestam socialmente. De acordo com essa proposta, a concepção do sujeito conhecedor é essencialmente social, no sentido em que ela está sujeita a inúmeras considerações sociopolíticas. Uma dessas considerações está na possibilidade de pressões sociais advindas de relações de poder exercerem alguma influência nas normas epistêmicas de credibilidade que utilizamos para avaliar a autoridade racional de interlocutores em uma troca epistêmica cotidiana. Segundo Fricker, é possível que as normas que regulam a concessão de credibilidade a indivíduos ou grupos envolvidos nessas trocas reproduzam estruturas de poder constituídas socialmente. Ou seja, é possível que pessoas ou grupos que detêm algum tipo de vantagem ou poder social tendam a negar credibilidade a agentes epistêmicos que possuem autoridade racional de fato acerca de determinado assunto. Uma recusa em reconhecer tal autoridade por conta de preconceitos identitários é um dos modos de conceber o que Fricker chama de injustiça epistêmica. Neste artigo, pretendo apresentar alguns detalhes da proposta de Fricker, caracterizando mais cuidadosamente os dois tipos de injustiças que ela examina em seu trabalho principal e apresentando algumas das soluções que ela oferece como estratégias para dirimir as consequências supostamente perniciosas de práticas epistêmicas reguladas por preconceitos de identidade e pela exclusão de agentes de aspectos importantes de uma comunidade epistêmica. Em seguida, discutirei duas críticas mais pontuais às soluções que Fricker oferece, que surgem menos como objeções, no sentido mais forte do termo, e mais como contribuições adicionais a essas estratégias de remediação dos danos de uma prática epistêmica injusta. Particularmente, quero defender que as duas contribuições que apresentarei podem ser pensadas como frutos da mesma preocupação com o escopo estreito da proposta de Fricker, e podem ser pensadas também como oferecendo leituras complementares sobre que caminhos devemos seguir para buscar práticas e comunidades epistêmicas marcadas pela justiça e não pela injustiça. (shrink)

Besides the general agreement about the human capability of reflection, there is a large area of disagreement and debate about the nature and value of “reflective scrutiny” and the role of “second-order states” in everyday life. This problem has been discussed in a vast and heterogeneous literature about topics such as epistemic injustice, epistemic norms, agency, understanding, meta-cognition etc. However, there is not yet any extensive and interdisciplinary work, specifically focused on the topic of the epistemic value of reflection. This (...) volume is one of the first attempts aimed at providing an innovative contribution, an exchange between philosophy, epistemology and psychology about the place and value of reflection in everyday life. -/- Our goal in the next sections is not to offer an exhaustive overview of recent work on epistemic reflection, nor to mimic all of the contributions made by the chapters in this volume. We will try to highlight some topics that have motivated a new resumption of this field and, with that, drawing on chapters from this volume where relevant. -/- Two elements defined the scope and content of this volume, on the one hand, the crucial contribution of Ernest Sosa, whose works provide original and thought-provoking contributions to contemporary epistemology in setting a new direction for old dilemmas about the nature and value of knowledge, giving a central place to reflection. On the other hand, the recent developments of cultural psychology, in the version of the “Aalborg approach”, reconsider the object and scope of psychological sciences, stressing that “[h]uman conduct is purposeful”. (shrink)