The Homeostatic Property Cluster (HPC) account of natural kinds has become popular since it was proposed by Richard Boyd in the late 1980s. Although it is often taken as a defining natural kinds as such, it is easy enough to see that something's being a natural kind is neither necessary nor sufficient for its being an HPC. This paper argues that it is better not to understand HPCs as defining what it is to be a natural kind but instead (...) as providing the ontological realization of (some) natural kinds. (shrink)

There is a history of thinking that photographs provide a special kind of access to the objects depicted in them, beyond the access that would be provided by a painting or drawing. What is included in the photograph does not depend on the photographer’s beliefs about what is in front of the camera. This feature leads Kendall Walton to argue that photographs literally allow us to see the objects which appear in them. Current generative algorithms produce images in response to (...) users’ text prompts. Depending on the parameters, the output can resemble specific people or things which are named in the prompt. This resemblance does not depend on the user’s beliefs, so generated images are in this sense like photographs. Given this parallel, how should we think about AI-generated images? (shrink)

A critical note on Christopher Bartel and Jack M. C. Kwong, ‘Pluralism, Eliminativism, and the Definition of Art’, Estetika 58 (2021): 100–113. Art pluralism is the view that there is no single, correct account of what art is. Instead, art is understood through a plurality of art concepts and with considerations that are different for particular arts. Although avowed pluralists have retained the word ‘art’ in their discussions, it is natural to ask whether the considerations that motivate pluralism should lead (...) us to abandon art talk altogether; that is, should pluralism lead to eliminativism? This paper addresses arguments both for and against this move. We ultimately argue that pluralism allows one to retain the word ‘art’, if one wants it, but only in a loose, conversational sense. The upshot of pluralism is that talk of art in general cannot be asked to do theoretical and philosophical work. (shrink)

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

It is widely acknowledged that individual moral obligations and responsibility entail shared (or joint) moral obligations and responsibility. However, whether individual epistemic obligations and responsibility entail shared epistemic obligations and responsibility is rarely discussed. Instead, most discussions of doxastic responsibility focus on individuals considered in isolation. In contrast to this standard approach, I maintain that focusing exclusively on individuals in isolation leads to a profoundly incomplete picture of what we're epistemically obligated to do and when we deserve epistemic blame. First, (...) I argue that we have epistemic obligations to perform actions of the sort that can be performed in conjunction with other people, and that consequently, we are often jointly blameworthy when we violate shared epistemic obligations. Second, I argue that shared responsibility is especially important to doxastic responsibility thanks to the fact that we don't have the same kind of direct control over our beliefs that we have over our actions. In particular, I argue that there are many cases in which a particular individual who holds some problematic belief only deserves epistemic blame in virtue of belonging to a group all the members of which are jointly blameworthy for violating some shared epistemic obligation. (shrink)

While it is widely acknowledged that knowledge can be acquired via testimony, it has been argued that understanding cannot. While there is no consensus about what the epistemic relationship of understanding consists in, I argue here that regardless of how understanding is conceived there are kinds of understanding that can be acquired through testimony: easy understanding and easy-s understanding. I address a number of aspects of understanding that might stand in the way of being able to acquire understanding through testimony, (...) focusing on understanding ’s paradigmatic form and what it means to say that in order to understand something you need to “grasp” some information or the relationship between bits of information. I argue that in cases of both easy and easy-s understanding, no aspect of understanding stands in the way of it being able to acquire it through testimony. As a result, while not all understanding be acquired through testimony in all instances and for all subjects, this failure of acquisition is only a product of the complexity of the relevant information or one’s unfamiliarity with it, and not a product of the epistemic relationship of understanding. (shrink)

There have been many discussions recently from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists about group polarization, with online and social media environments in particular receiving a lot of attention, both because of people's increasing reliance on such environments for receiving and exchanging information and because such environments often allow individuals to selectively interact with those who are like-minded. My goal here is to argue that the group epistemologist can facilitate understanding the kinds of factors that drive group polarization in a way (...) that has been overlooked by the existing research. Specifically, I argue that polarization can occur in part because of the ways that members of a group treat the group itself (as opposed to an individual member within that group) as a source of information, and in doing so makes their own position, as well as that of the group, more extreme. I refer to this as a structural factor in driving polarization, and argue that such factors can contribute to explanations of polarization that occurs specifically in an important subset of groups, namely online and social media groups in which little is known about other members within the group, what I refer to as anonymous, semi-anonymous and pseudonymous (ASAP) groups. (shrink)

A perennial problem in social epistemology is the problem of expert testimony, specifically expert testimony regarding scientific issues: for example, while it is important for me to know information pertaining to anthropogenic climate change, vaccine safety, Covid-19, etc., I may lack the scientific background required to determine whether the information I come across is, in fact, true. Without being able to evaluate the science itself, then, I need to find trustworthy expert testifiers to listen to. A major project in social (...) epistemology has thus become determining what the markers of trustworthiness are that laypersons can appeal to in order to identify and acquire information from expert testifiers. At the same time, the ways in which we acquire scientific information has changed significantly, with much of it nowadays being acquired in online environments. While much has been said about the potential pitfalls of seeking information online, little has been said about how the nature of seeking information online should make us think about the problem of expert testimony. Indeed, it seems to be an underlying assumption that good markers of trustworthiness apply equally well when seeking information from expert testifiers in online and offline environments alike, and that the new challenges and opportunities presented by online environments merely affects the methods by which we can acquire evidence of said trustworthiness. Here I argue that in making this assumption one risks failing to account for how unique features of the ways in which we acquire information online affect how we evaluate the trustworthiness of experts. Specifically, I argue for two main claims: first, that the nature of information-seeking online is such that the extent to which information is susceptible to manipulation is a dominant marker of trustworthiness; second, as a result, one will be more likely to seek out a particular kind of expert testifier in online environments, what I call a cooperative as opposed to preemptive expert. The result is that criteria for expert trustworthiness may look significantly different when acquiring information online as opposed to offline. (shrink)

In response to an impasse, articulated in the late 1980s, the cognitive capacities of ordinary people assumed central place in contemporary critical social theory. The participants’ perspective gained precedence over scientific standards branded as external. The notion of cognition, however, went unchallenged. This article continues the move away from external standards, and discusses two models of critique, which differ based on their underlying notions of cognition. The representational model builds on cognitive content, misrecognition and normativity; three features which are illustrated (...) with positions adopted by prominent exponents of critical social theory. An alternative understanding relies on action-oriented disclosure and the participants’ basic familiarity with the social world. On this reading, what clashes with unequal structures is skilful coping, rather than representations and normative standards. The action-oriented approach may overcome the dilemma of understanding both the impact and the possible transcendence of unequal structures, although it cannot ultimately replace representational critique. (shrink)

Very often when the vast majority of experts agree on some scientific issue, laypeople nonetheless regularly consume articles, videos, lectures, etc., the principal claims of which are inconsistent with the expert consensus. Moreover, it is standardly assumed that it is entirely appropriate, and perhaps even obligatory, for laypeople to consume such anti-consensus material. I maintain that this standard assumption gets things backwards. Each of us is particularly vulnerable to false claims when we are not experts on some topic – such (...) falsehoods have systematic negative impacts on our doxastic attitudes that we can neither prevent nor correct. So, when there is clear expert consensus on a given scientific issue, while it is permissible for experts to consume anti-consensus material, laypeople have an epistemic obligation to avoid such material. This argument has important consequences for philosophical discussions of our epistemic obligations to perform or omit belief-influencing actions. Such discussions typically abstract away from the important differences between experts and laypeople. Accordingly, we should reject this typical practice as problematic, and insist instead that laypeople and experts have fundamentally different epistemic obligations. (shrink)

The no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much-discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent `wholesale' arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilistically, we can see very clearly why realists (...) and anti-realists have been talking past one another. We then formulate a dilemma for advocates of either argument, answer potential objections to our criticism, discuss what remains (if anything) of these two major arguments, and then speculate about a future philosophy of science freed from these two arguments. In so doing, we connect the point about base rates to the wholesale/retail distinction; we believe it hints at an answer of how to distinguish profitable from unprofitable realism debates. In short, we offer a probabilistic analysis of the feeling of ennui afflicting contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

Thanks to the advent of social media, large numbers of Americans believe outlandish falsehoods that have been widely debunked. Many of us have a tendency to fault the individuals who hold such beliefs. We naturally assume that the individuals who form and maintain such beliefs do so in virtue of having violated some epistemic obligation: perhaps they failed to scrutinize their sources, or failed to seek out the available competing evidence. I maintain that very many ordinary individuals who acquire outlandish (...) false beliefs thanks to their use of popular social media platforms (and other similar internet technologies) deserve little or no blame for believing these falsehoods. Such individuals would be fully blameworthy only if they had formed or maintained the relevant beliefs partly in virtue of violating some epistemic obligation and had no excuse for violating that obligation. However, the nature of these internet technologies provides excuses for violating the relevant epistemic obligations, and so individuals are excused for holding the resulting false beliefs. (shrink)

While social epistemologists have recently begun addressing questions about whether groups can possess beliefs or knowledge, little has yet been said about whether groups can properly be said to possess understanding. Here I want to make some progress on this question by considering two possible accounts of group understanding, modeled on accounts of group belief and knowledge: a deflationary account, according to which a group understands just in case most or all of its members understand, and an inflationary account, according (...) to which a group’s understanding does not depend solely on whether its members understand. I argue that both accounts face problems. The deflationary account has two such problems: aggregation problems that are familiar from discussions of group belief, and the problem of different bases, wherein members possess understanding for different but consistent reasons. The inflationary account faces what I call the problem of distributed grasping: while it is widely accepted that understanding requires a kind of “grasping”, it is hard to make sense of how this requirement could be met at the group level while not necessarily being met by any individual member. Despite its problems, I make a case for the inflationary account. This will require addressing the problem of distributed grasping: to do this, I propose a different way of thinking about the grasping relation at the group level, such that it is constituted by a dependency relationship between members. (shrink)

The fact that each of us has significantly greater confidence in the claims of co-partisans – those belonging to groups with which we identify – explains, in large part, why so many people believe a significant amount of the misinformation they encounter. It's natural to assume that such misinformed partisan beliefs typically involve a rational failure of some kind, and philosophers and psychologists have defended various accounts of the nature of the rational failure purportedly involved. I argue that none of (...) the standard diagnoses of the irrationality of misinformed partisan beliefs is convincing, but I also argue that we ought to reject attempts to characterize these beliefs as rational or consistent with epistemic virtue. Accordingly, I defend an alternative diagnosis of the relevant epistemic error. Specifically, I maintain that such beliefs typically result when an individual evaluating testimony assigns more weight to co-partisanship than he ought to under the circumstances, and consequently believes the testimony of co-partisans when better alternatives are available. (shrink)

It is well-known that naïve realism has difficulty accommodating perceptual error. Recent discussion of the issue has focused on whether the naïve realist can accommodate hallucination by adopting disjunctivism. However, illusions are more difficult for the naïve realist to explain precisely because the disjunctivist solution is not available. I discuss what I take to be the two most plausible accounts of illusion available to the naïve realist. The first claims that illusions are cases in which you are prevented from perceiving (...) properties you would ordinarily perceive and subsequently form a mistaken judgment about the perceived object. The second appeals to an unusual look or appearance that the perceived object instantiates. I argue that neither account is satisfactory and that, consequently, naïve realism ought to be rejected. (shrink)

Kyle Stanford has recently claimed to offer a new challenge to scientific realism. Taking his inspiration from the familiar Pessimistic Induction (PI), Stanford proposes a New Induction (NI). Contra Anjan Chakravartty’s suggestion that the NI is a ‘red herring’, I argue that it reveals something deep and important about science. The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives, which lies at the heart of the NI, yields a richer anti-realism than the PI. It explains why science falls short when it falls short, and (...) so it might figure in the most coherent account of scientific practice. However, this best account will be antirealist in some respects and about some theories. It will not be a sweeping antirealism about all or most of science. (shrink)

C.S. Peirce held what is nowadays called a “commitment view” of assertion. According to this type of view, assertion is a kind of act that is determined by its “normative effects”: by asserting a proposition one undertakes certain commitments, typically to be able to provide reason to believe what one is asserting, or, in Peirce’s words, one “takes responsibility” for the truth of the proposition one asserts. Despite being an early adopter of the view, if Peirce’s commitment view of assertion (...) is mentioned at all in contemporary discussions it is only in passing. His view is, however, far more complex and nuanced than he has been given credit for. My primary goal here, then, is to get a better understanding of Peirce’s version of a commitment view of assertion. I also argue that figuring out the details of Peirce’s theory of assertion can also provide us with a viable way to respond to problems that contemporary commitment views of assertion face. (shrink)

Homeostatic property clusters (HPCs) are offered as a way of understanding natural kinds, especially biological species. I review the HPC approach and then discuss an objection by Ereshefsky and Matthen, to the effect that an HPC qua cluster seems ill-fitted as a description of a polymorphic species. The standard response by champions of the HPC approach is to say that all members of a polymorphic species have things in common, namely dispositions or conditional properties. I argue that this response fails. (...) Instances of an HPC kind need not all be similar in their exhibited properties. Instead, HPCs should instead be understood as unified by the underlying causal mechanism that maintains them. The causal mechanism can both produce and explain some systematic differences between a kind’s members. An HPC kind is best understood not as a single cluster of properties maintained in stasis by causal forces, but as a complex of related property clusters kept in relation by an underlying causal process. This approach requires recognizing that taxonomic systems serve both explanatory and inductive purposes. (shrink)

The Argument from Inductive Risk (AIR) is taken to show that values are inevitably involved in making judgements or forming beliefs. After reviewing this conclusion, I pose cases which are prima facie counterexamples: the unreflective application of conventions, use of black-boxed instruments, reliance on opaque algorithms, and unskilled observation reports. These cases are counterexamples to the AIR posed in ethical terms as a matter of personal values. Nevertheless, it need not be understood in those terms. The values which load a (...) theory choice may be those of institutions or past actors. This means that the challenge of responsibly handling inductive risk is not merely an ethical issue, but is also social, political, and historical. (shrink)

There are two senses of ‘what scientists know’: An individual sense (the separate opinions of individual scientists) and a collective sense (the state of the discipline). The latter is what matters for policy and planning, but it is not something that can be directly observed or reported. A function can be defined to map individual judgments onto an aggregate judgment. I argue that such a function cannot effectively capture community opinion, especially in cases that matter to us.

forall x: Calgary is a full-featured textbook on formal logic. It covers key notions of logic such as consequence and validity of arguments, the syntax of truth-functional propositional logic TFL and truth-table semantics, the syntax of first-order (predicate) logic FOL with identity (first-order interpretations), symbolizing English in TFL and FOL, and Fitch-style natural deduction proof systems for both TFL and FOL. It also deals with some advanced topics such as modal logic, soundness, and functional completeness. Exercises with solutions are available. (...) It is provided in PDF (for screen reading, printing, and a special version for dyslexics), HTML, and in LaTeX source code. (shrink)

When we ask what natural kinds are, there are two different things we might have in mind. The first, which I’ll call the taxonomy question, is what distinguishes a category which is a natural kind from an arbitrary class. The second, which I’ll call the ontology question, is what manner of stuff there is that realizes the category. Many philosophers have systematically conflated the two questions. The confusion is exhibited both by essentialists and by philosophers who pose their accounts in (...) terms of similarity. It also leads to misreading philosophers who do make the distinction. Distinguishing the questions allows for a more subtle understanding of both natural kinds and their underlying metaphysics. (shrink)

Recently, there has been growing concern that increased partisanship in news sources, as well as new ways in which people acquire information, has led to a proliferation of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers: in the former, one tends to acquire information from a limited range of sources, ones that generally support the kinds of beliefs that one already has, while the latter function in the same way, but possess the additional characteristic that certain beliefs are actively reinforced. Here I argue, (...) first, that we should conceive of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers as types of epistemically pernicious groups, and second, that while analyses of such groups have typically focused on relationships between individual members, at least part of what such groups epistemically pernicious pertains to the way that members rely on the groups themselves as sources of information. I argue that member reliance on groups results in groups being attributed a degree of credibility that outruns their warrant, a process I call groupstrapping. I argue that by recognizing the groupstrapping as an illicit method of forming and updating beliefs we can make progress on some of the open questions concerning epistemically pernicious groups. (shrink)

The fact that you see some particular object seems to be due to the causal relation between your visual experience and that object, rather than to your experiences’ phenomenal character. On the one hand, whenever some phenomenal element of your experience stands in the right sort of causal relation to some object, your experience presents that object (your experience’s phenomenology doesn’t need to match that object). On the other hand, you can’t have a perceptual experience that presents some object unless (...) you stand in the right sort of causal relation to that object (no matter how closely your experience’s phenomenology matches some object). According to the continuity thesis, property perception is similar to object perception in these two respects. A standard reason to reject the continuity thesis is the assumption that the environmental properties that a perceptual experience presents are determined by its phenomenal properties (which are not determined by the environmental properties that cause the experience). I maintain that the continuity thesis is false but for a different reason: perceptual experiences present both objects and properties via manners of presentation; but, whereas perceptual manners of presentation for objects are purely relational, perceptual manners of presentation for properties are satisfactional. (shrink)

The accepted narrative treats John Stuart Mill’s Kinds as the historical prototype for our natural kinds, but Mill actually employs two separate notions: Kinds and natural groups. Considering these, along with the accounts of Mill’s nineteenth-century interlocutors, forces us to recognize two distinct questions. First, what marks a natural kind as worthy of inclusion in taxonomy? Second, what exists in the world that makes a category meet that criterion? Mill’s two notions offer separate answers to the two questions: natural groups (...) for taxonomy and Kinds for ontology. This distinction is ignored in many contemporary debates about natural kinds and is obscured by the standard narrative that treats our natural kinds just as a development of Mill’s Kinds. (shrink)

The underdetermination of theory by evidence is supposed to be a reason to rethink science. It is not. Many authors claim that underdetermination has momentous consequences for the status of scientific claims, but such claims are hidden in an umbra of obscurity and a penumbra of equivocation. So many various phenomena pass for `underdetermination' that it's tempting to think that it is no unified phenomenon at all, so I begin by providing a framework within which all these worries can be (...) seen as species of one genus: A claim of underdetermination involves (at least implicitly) a set of rival theories, a standard of responsible judgment, and a scope of circumstances in which responsible choice between the rivals is impossible. Within this framework, I show that one variety of underdetermination motivated modern scepticism and thus is a familiar problem at the heart of epistemology. I survey arguments that infer from underdetermination to some reëvaluation of science: top-down arguments infer a priori from the ubiquity of underdetermination to some conclusion about science; bottom-up arguments infer from specific instances of underdetermination, to the claim that underdetermination is widespread, and then to some conclusion about science. The top-down arguments either fail to deliver underdetermination of any great significance or (as with modern scepticism) deliver some well-worn epistemic concern. The bottom-up arguments must rely on cases. I consider several promising cases and find them to either be so specialized that they cannot underwrite conclusions about science in general or not be underdetermined at all. Neither top-down nor bottom-up arguments can motivate any deep reconsideration of science. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although in recent years Christine Ladd-Franklin has received recognition for her contributions to logic and psychology, her role in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philosophy, as well as her relationship with American pragmatism, has yet to be fully appreciated. My goal here is to attempt to better understand Ladd-Franklin’s place in the pragmatist tradition by drawing attention to her work on the nature and unity of the proposition. The question concerning the unity of the proposition – namely, the problem (...) of how to determine what differentiates a mere collection of terms from a unified and meaningful proposition – received substantial attention in Ladd-Franklin’s time, and would continue to interest analytic philosophers well into the twentieth century. I argue that Ladd-Franklin had a distinct theory of the proposition and solution to the problem of the unity of the proposition that she developed over the course of her writings on logic and philosophy. In spelling out her views, I will also show her work interacted with and influenced that of the pragmatist who was her greatest influence, C.S. Peirce. (shrink)

Some philosophers understand natural kinds to be the categories which are constraints on enquiry. In order to elaborate the metaphysics appropriate to such an account, I consider the complicated history of scurvy, citrus, and vitamin C. It may be tempting to understand these categories in a shallow way (as mere property clusters) or in a deep way (as fundamental properties). Neither approach is adequate, and the case instead calls for middle-range ontology: starting from categories which we identify in the world (...) and elaborating their structure, but not pretending to jump ahead to a complete story about fundamental being. (shrink)

The reports of individuals who have had their vision restored after a long period of blindness suggest that, immediately after regaining their vision, such individuals are not able to recognize shapes by vision alone. It is often assumed that the empirical literature on sight restoration tells us something important about the relationship between visual and tactile representations of shape. However, I maintain that, immediately after having their sight restored, at least some newly sighted individuals undergo visual experiences that instantiate basic (...) shape phenomenology but which do not present (that is, neither represent nor involve acquaintance with) the corresponding shape properties. Consequently, the empirical literature on sight restoration tells us something important about the role that perceptual phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of an object’s properties—it tells us that the properties presented by perceptual experiences are not determined by or “built into” perceptual phenomenology. In addition, I maintain that the evidence concerning sight restoration suggests an alternative theory concerning the role that sensory phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of an object’s properties. Specifically, it suggests that, while not inherently representational, sensory phenomenal properties can serve as vehicles for the representation of an object’s properties. (shrink)

William James’ argument against William Clifford in The Will to Believe is often understood in terms of doxastic efficacy, the power of belief to influence an outcome. Although that is one strand of James’ argument, there is another which is driven by ampliative risk. The second strand of James’ argument, when applied to scientific cases, is tantamount to what is now called the Argument from Inductive Risk. Either strand of James’ argument is sufficient to rebut Clifford's strong evidentialism and show (...) that it is sometimes permissible to believe in the absence of compelling evidence. However, the two considerations have different scope and force. Doxastic efficacy applies in only some cases but allows any values to play a role in determining belief; risk applies in all cases but only allows particular conditional values to play a role. (shrink)

This paper gives a characterization of distributed cognition (d-cog) and explores ways that the framework might be applied in studies of science. I argue that a system can only be given a d-cog description if it is thought of as performing a task. Turning our attention to science, we can try to give a global d-cog account of science or local d-cog accounts of particular scientific projects. Several accounts of science can be seen as global d-cog accounts: Robert Merton's sociology (...) of scientific norms, Philip Kitcher's 20th-century account of cognitive labor, and Kitcher's 21st-century notion of well-ordered science. Problems that arise for them arise just because of the way that they attribute a function to science. The paper concludes by considering local d-cog accounts. Here, too, the task is the crux of the matter. (shrink)

While the topic of assertion has recently received a fresh wave of interest from Peirce scholars, to this point no systematic account of Peirce’s view of assertion has been attempted. We think that this is a lacuna that ought to be filled. Doing so will help make better sense of Peirce’s pragmatism; further, what is hidden amongst various fragments is a robust pragmatist theory of assertion with unique characteristics that may have significant contemporary value. Here we aim to uncover this (...) theory, and to show that assertion for Peirce is not a mere corollary of pragmatic conceptions of truth, judgement, and belief, but is rather a central aspect of his philosophy. (shrink)

The issue of how best to combat the negative impacts of misinformation distributed via social media hangs on the following question: are there methods that most individuals can reasonably be expected to employ that would largely protect them from the negative impact that encountering misinformation on social media would otherwise have on their beliefs? If the answer is “yes,” then presumably individuals bear significant responsibility for those negative impacts; and, further, presumably there are feasible educational remedies for the problem of (...) misinformation. However, I argue that the answer is “no.” Accordingly, I maintain that individuals do not bear significant responsibility for the negative impacts at issue; and, further, I maintain that the only effective remedies for the problem of misinformation involve changing the information environment itself. (shrink)

ABSTRACTConventional wisdom holds that there is no lucky knowledge: if it is a matter of luck, in some relevant sense, that one's belief that p is true, then one does not know that p. Here I will argue that there is similarly no lucky understanding, at least in the case of one type of luck, namely environmental luck. This argument has three parts. First, we need to determine how we evaluate whether one has understanding, which requires determining what I will (...) call understanding's evaluative object. I argue that as the evaluative object of knowledge is a belief in a proposition, the evaluative object of understanding is a mental representation of a relational structure. Next, I show that arguments that environmental luck is incompatible with understanding miss the mark by considering cases in which one has a belief in a proposition is lucky to be true, instead of ones in which one's mental representation of a relational structure is lucky to obtain. I agree, then, with those who argue that one can have understanding when one's beliefs are environmentally lucky to be true, but that this compatibility is not relevant when considering the question of whether one can have environmentally lucky understanding. I then present what I take to be a properly constructed case which shows the incompatibility of environmental luck with understanding. (shrink)

This discussion note addresses Caleb Hazelwood’s ‘Practice-Centered Pluralism and a Disjunctive Theory of Art’. Hazelwood advances a disjunctive definition of art on the basis of an analogy with species concept pluralism in the philosophy of biology. We recognize the analogy between species and art, we applaud attention to practice, and we are bullish on pluralism—but it is a mistake to take these as the basis for a disjunctive definition.

Cover versions form a loose but identifiable category of tracks and performances. We distinguish four kinds of covers and argue that they mark important differences in the modes of evaluation that are possible or appropriate for each: mimic covers, which aim merely to echo the canonical track; rendition covers, which change the sound of the canonical track; transformative covers, which diverge so much as to instantiate a distinct, albeit derivative song; and referential covers, which not only instantiate a distinct song, (...) but for which the new song is in part about the original song. In order to allow for the very possibility of transformative and referential covers, we argue that a cover is characterized by relation to a canonical track rather than merely by being a new instance of a song that had been recorded previously. (shrink)

It is has been argued that there is a problem with moral testimony: testimony is deferential, and basing judgments and actions on deferentially acquired knowledge prevents them from having moral worth. What morality perhaps requires of us, then, is that we understand why a proposition is true, but this is something that cannot be acquired through testimony. I argue here that testimony can be both deferential as well as cooperative, and that one can acquire moral understanding through cooperative testimony. The (...) problem of moral testimony is thus not a problem with testimony generally, but a problem of deferential testimony specifically. (shrink)

One prominent argument for pragmatic encroachment (PE) is that PE is entailed by a combination of a principle that states that knowledge warrants proper practical reasoning, and judgments that it is more difficult to reason well when the stakes go up. I argue here that this argument is unsuccessful. One problem is that empirical tests concerning knowledge judgments in high-stakes situations only sometimes exhibit the result predicted by PE. I argue here that those judgments that appear to support PE are (...) better interpreted not as judgments that the epistemic demands for knowing increase as one’s practical situation becomes more demanding, but instead as judgments reflecting a different kind of normative epistemic evaluation, namely whether one is acting in an epistemically responsible way. The general idea is that when someone treats a proposition as a reason for acting we can evaluate them epistemically both in terms of whether they know that proposition, as well as in terms of whether they are acting on their knowledge in the right kind of way. My charge against the PE proponent, then, is that she is interpreting judgments that are indicative of whether we are adhering to certain normative epistemic requirements generally as being indicative of whether we have knowledge specifically. There are, however, normative epistemic requirements that make demands of us that are indicative of something other than our possession of knowledge. (shrink)

Although some authors hold that natural kinds are necessarily relative to disciplinary domains, many authors presume that natural kinds must be absolute, categorical features of the reality —often assuming that without even mentioning the alternative. Recognizing both possibilities, one may ask whether the difference especially matters. I argue that it does. Looking at recent arguments about natural kind realism, I argue that we can best make sense of the realism question by thinking of natural kindness as a relation that holds (...) between a category and a domain. (shrink)

Cover songs are a familiar feature of contemporary popular music. Musicians describe their own performances as covers, and audiences use the category to organize their listening and appreciation. However, until now philosophers have not had much to say about them. This book explores how to think about covers, appreciating covers, and the metaphysics of covers and songs. Along the way, it explores a range of issues raised by covers, from the question of what precisely constitutes a cover, to the history (...) and taxonomy of the category, the various relationships that hold between songs, performances, and tracks, and the appreciation and evaluation of covers. (shrink)

According to the standard narrative, natural kind is a technical notion that was introduced by John Stuart Mill in the 1840s and the recent craze for natural kinds, launched by Putnam and Kripke, is a continuation of that tradition. I argue that the standard narrative is mistaken. The Millian tradition of kinds was not particularly influential in the 20th-century, and the Putnam-Kripke revolution did not clearly engage with even the remnants that were left of it. The presently active tradition of (...) natural kinds is less than half a century old. Recognizing this might help us better appreciate both Mill and natural kinds. (shrink)

In response to an impasse, articulated in the late 1980s, the cognitive capacities of ordinary people assumed central place in contemporary critical social theory. The participants’ perspective gained precedence over scientific standards branded as external. The notion of cognition, however, went unchallenged. This article continues the move away from external standards, and discusses two models of critique, which differ based on their underlying notions of cognition. The representational model builds on cognitive content, misrecognition and normativity; three features which are illustrated (...) with positions adopted by prominent exponents of critical social theory. An alternative understanding relies on action-oriented disclosure and the participants’ basic familiarity with the social world. On this reading, what clashes with unequal structures is skilful coping, rather than representations and normative standards. The action-oriented approach may overcome the dilemma of understanding both the impact and the possible transcendence of unequal structures, although it cannot ultimately replace representational critique. (shrink)

It is now commonly held that values play a role in scientific judgment, but many arguments for that conclusion are limited. First, many arguments do not show that values are, strictly speaking, indispensable. The role of values could in principle be filled by a random or arbitrary decision. Second, many arguments concern scientific theories and concepts which have obvious practical consequences, thus suggesting or at least leaving open the possibility that abstruse sciences without such a connection could be value-free. Third, (...) many arguments concern the role values play in inferring from evidence, thus taking evidence as given. This paper argues that these limitations do not hold in general. There are values involved in every scientific judgment. They cannot even conceivably be replaced by a coin toss, they arise as much for exotic as for practical sciences, and they are at issue as much for observation as for explicit inference. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that property illusions—cases in which we perceive a property, but that property is not the property it seems to us to be in virtue of our perceptual experience—and veridical illusions—cases in which we veridically perceive an object’s properties, but our experience of some specific property is nonetheless unsuccessful or illusory—can occur. I defend the contrary view. First, I maintain that there are compelling reasons to conclude that property illusions and veridical illusions can’t occur; (...) and second, I maintain that the considerations supporting the possibility of such cases are uncompelling. (shrink)

It is often assumed that there is a perceptual conflict in looking at a picture since one sees both a two-dimensional surface and a three-dimensional scene simultaneously. In this paper, I argue that it is a mistake to think that looking at pictures requires the visual system to perform the special task of reconciling inconsistent impressions of space, or competing information from different depth cues. To the contrary, I suggest that there are good reasons to think that the perception of (...) depth in pictures is achieved in much the same way as is the perception of depth in any ordinary case. (shrink)

According to many philosophers, psychological explanation canlegitimately be given in terms of belief and desire, but not in termsof knowledge. To explain why someone does what they do (so the common wisdom holds) you can appeal to what they think or what they want, but not what they know. Timothy Williamson has recently argued against this view. Knowledge, Williamson insists, plays an essential role in ordinary psychological explanation.Williamson's argument works on two fronts.First, he argues against the claim that, unlike knowledge, (...) belief is``composite'' (representable as a conjunction of a narrow and a broadcondition). Belief's failure to be composite, Williamson thinks, undermines the usual motivations for psychological explanation in terms of belief rather than knowledge.Unfortunately, we claim, the motivations Williamson argues against donot depend on the claim that belief is composite, so what he saysleaves the case for a psychology of belief unscathed.Second, Williamson argues that knowledge can sometimes provide abetter explanation of action than belief can.We argue that, in the cases considered, explanations that cite beliefs(but not knowledge) are no less successful than explanations that citeknowledge. Thus, we conclude that Williamson's arguments fail both coming andgoing: they fail to undermine a psychology of belief, and they fail tomotivate a psychology of knowledge. (shrink)

Given the fact that many people use Wikipedia, we should ask: Can we trust it? The empirical evidence suggests that Wikipedia articles are sometimes quite good but that they vary a great deal. As such, it is wrong to ask for a monolithic verdict on Wikipedia. Interacting with Wikipedia involves assessing where it is likely to be reliable and where not. I identify five strategies that we use to assess claims from other sources and argue that, to a greater of (...) lesser degree, Wikipedia frustrates all of them. Interacting responsibly with something like Wikipedia requires new epistemic methods and strategies. (shrink)

The problem of underdetermination is thought to hold important lessons for philosophy of science. Yet, as Kyle Stanford has recently argued, typical treatments of it offer only restatements of familiar philosophical problems. Following suggestions in Duhem and Sklar, Stanford calls for a New Induction from the history of science. It will provide proof, he thinks, of “the kind of underdetermination that the history of science reveals to be a distinctive and genuine threat to even our best scientific theories” (Stanford 2001, (...) p. S12). This paper examines Stanford’s New Induction and argues that it – like the other forms of underdetermination that he criticizes – merely recapitulates familiar philosophical conundra. (shrink)

Peter Baumann offers the tantalizing suggestion that Thomas Reid is almost, but not quite, a pragmatist. He motivates this claim by posing a dilemma for common sense philosophy: Will it be dogmatism or scepticism? Baumann claims that Reid points to but does not embrace a pragmatist third way between these unsavory options. If we understand `pragmatism' differently than Baumann does, however, we need not be so equivocal in attributing it to Reid. Reid makes what we could call an argument from (...) practical commitment, and this is plausibly an instance of what William James calls the pragmatic method. (shrink)