Certain puzzling cases have been discussed in the literature recently which appear to support the thought that knowledge can be obtained by way of deduction from a falsehood; moreover, these cases put pressure, prima facie, on the thesis of counter closure for knowledge. We argue that the cases do not involve knowledge from falsehood; despite appearances, the false beliefs in the cases in question are causally, and therefore epistemologically, incidental, and knowledge is achieved despite falsehood. We also show (...) that the principle of counter closure, and the concomitant denial of knowledge from falsehood, is well motivated by considerations in epistemological theory--in particular, by the view that knowledge is first in the epistemological order of things. (shrink)

The chapter begins with some general remarks about closure and counter-closure, and is followed with a discussion of the following: I (a) review some (alleged) counterexamples to counter-closure, I then continue by (b) discussing a popular strategy for responding to such counterexamples to counter-closure, and finally I (c) pose a dilemma for this popular strategy. Once I have discussed these three points I conclude the chapter by proposing that we reject counter-closure, (...) but at the same time that we accept an epistemological package that includes closure and another intuitively plausible principle with regards to the psychology and epistemology of deductive inference. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the prima facie plausible view, expressed by the principle of Counter-Closure, that knowledge-yielding competent deductive inference must issue from known premises. I construct a case that arguably falsifies this principle and consider five available lines of response that might help retain Counter-Closure. I argue that three are problematic. Of the two remaining lines of response, the first relies on non-universal intuitions and forces one to view the case I construct as (...) exhibiting a justified, true belief to which none of the usual diagnoses of knowledge failure in Gettier cases apply. The second line involves claiming that Fake Barns and its ilk are misdiagnosed by epistemological orthodoxy as Gettier cases. We are thus confronted by a trilemma: either the case I discuss undermines the first-blush plausible principle of Counter-Closure; or the case I discuss instantiates a novel kind of Gettier case; or a popular conception of a key range of alleged Gettier cases must be rejected. No matter which horn we choose, the case points to a philosophically curious conclusion. (shrink)

Crispin Wright has articulated and defended the view that by incorporating non-evidential entitlements into our theory of knowledge, we can achieve a satisfactory reply to key skeptical challenges. Crucial to this view is the thesis that regions of thought are underpinned by ‘cornerstone’ propositions— propositions for which warrant is antecedently required in order for ordinary beliefs in that region to be supported by experiential evidence. Critics have noted that because cornerstone propositions are entailed by ordinary propositions, Closure delivers two (...) unwelcome results: (i) one can acquire evidential justification for cornerstones via deduction (alchemy); and (ii) the epistemic risk involved in accepting cornerstone propositions impugns the evidential justification we are supposed to have for ordinary propositions (leaching). It is argued here that leaching has been misdiagnosed by Wright and his critics as relying essentially on a Closure principle. Instead, it relies on a Counter-Closure-style principle. Once this point is recognized , Wright’s own solution to the leaching problem becomes unsatisfactory. However, a guiding maxim from the extant literature for demarcating true from false Counter-Closure-style principles can be usefully applied to identify a successful resolution to the leaching worry on Wright’s behalf. (shrink)

I argue that DeRose's attributor contextualism cannot straightforwardly preserve the widespread view that, when a subject believes q solely on the basis of competent deduction from p, knowledge of q requires knowledge of p. I present a novel challenge to the compatibility of this widespread view with DeRose's contextualism, then argue that the tension can be resolved in only one of two ways: if DeRose rejects the widespread view or if DeRose accepts the existence of a range of contextualism-specific Gettier-style (...) cases. (shrink)

Sharon Ryan (2000) argues against one epistemic closure principle but defends another one. I argue that the phenomenon of blameless propositional recognition failure provides a counter-example to this closure principle. I suggest a revision to the closure principle to make it immune to this sort of counter-example.

Tracking accounts of knowledge were originally motivated by putative counter-examples to epistemic closure. But, as is now well known, these early accounts have many highly counterintuitive consequences. In this note, I motivate a tracking-based account which respects closure but which resolves many of the familiar problems for earlier tracking account along the way.

We argue that multiple levels of trauma were present in Egypt before, during and after the 2011 revolution. Individual, social and political trauma constitute a triangle of traumatisation which was strategically employed by the Egyptian counter-revolutionary forces – primarily the army and the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood – to maintain their political and economic power over and above the social, economic and political interests of others. Through the destruction of physical bodies, the fragmentation and polarisation of social relations (...) and the violent closure of the newly emerged political public sphere, these actors actively repressed the potential for creative and revolutionary transformation. To better understand this multi-layered notion of trauma, we turn to Habermas’ ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’ thesis which offers a critical lens through which to examine the wider political and economic structures and context in which trauma occurred as well as its effects on the personal, social and po... (shrink)

The leading idea of this article is that one cannot acquire knowledge of any non-epistemic fact by virtue of knowing that one that knows something. The lines of reasoning involved in the surprise exam paradox and in Williamson’s _reductio_ of the KK-principle, which demand that one can, are thereby undermined, and new type of counter-example to epistemic closure emerges.

When we speak of the aesthetic, various things may come to mind. Oftentimes, we think of aesthetic philosophy; we think of taste, the work of art, and the concept of genius. We might also consider the predominant categories of aesthetic judgment: the beautiful and the sublime, in addition to any number of other categories that have been brought into the discussion over time.1 We might think of artistic effects, or, with a more historical focus, of the various periods and schools (...) of art. But, with the proliferation of concepts, categories, styles, and critical perspectives, all often concerned with aesthetic objects, art works, and their effects on the spectator, we remain firmly within the framework of aesthetic... (shrink)

According to the received view in epistemology, inferential knowledge from non-knowledge is impossible – that is, in order for a subject to know the conclusion of their inference, they must know the essential premises from which that conclusion is drawn. In this book, Federico Luzzi critically examines this view, arguing that it is less plausible than intuition suggests and that it can be abandoned without substantial cost. In a discussion that ranges across inference, testimony and memory he analyses the full (...) range of challenges to the view, connecting them to epistemological cases that support those challenges. He then proposes a defeater-based framework which allows the phenomenon of knowledge from non-knowledge across these three epistemic areas to be better understood. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in epistemology. (shrink)

What can we learn from cases of knowledge from falsehood? Critics of knowledge-first epistemology have argued that these cases provide us with good reason for rejecting the knowledge accounts of evidence, justification, and the norm of belief. I shall offer a limited defense of the knowledge-first approach to these matters. Knowledge from falsehood cases should undermine our confidence in like-from-like reasoning in epistemology. Just as we should be open to the idea that knowledge can come from non-knowledge, we should be (...) open to the idea that justified beliefs can come from unjustified beliefs. (shrink)

I propose and defend the conjecture that what explains why Gettiered subjects fail to know is the fact that their justified true belief depends essentially on unknown propositions. The conjecture follows from the plausible principle about inference in general according to which one knows the conclusion of one’s inference only if one knows all the premises it involves essentially.

The principle of Counter-Closure embodies the widespread view that when a proposition is believed solely as the conclusion of single-premise deduction, it can be known only if the premise is also known. I raise a problem for the compatibility of Jason Stanley's Interest-Relative Invariantism (IRI) with Counter-Closure. I explore the landscape of options that might help Stanley resolve this tension and argue that a trilemma confronts Stanley: he must either (i) renounce a key intuition that lies (...) at the foundation of his view; or (ii) admit into his epistemology an IRI-specific novel brand of Gettier case; or (iii) abandon Counter-Closure. (shrink)

According to the principle of Knowledge Counter-Closure , knowledge-yielding single-premise deduction requires a known premise: if S believes q solely on the basis of deduction from p, and S knows q, then S must know p. Although prima facie plausible, widely accepted, and supported by seemingly compelling motivations, KCC has recently been challenged by cases where S arguably knows q solely on the basis of deduction from p, yet p is false or p is true but not known (...) . I explore a view that resolves this tension by abandoning KCC in the light of these challenges, and which acknowledges their force but also their limits. Adopting this view helps identify the epistemic constraints that operate on the premises of knowledge-yielding deduction, clarifies the epistemic role of deduction, and allows us to distil the kernel of truth in the motivations that are standardly taken to support KCC. (shrink)

The Naive View (TNV) of Inferential Knowledge (slogan): (TNV) Inferential knowledge requires known relevant premises. One key aspect of (TNV) is “counter-closure” [9, 10].

The safety conception of knowledge holds that a belief constitutes knowledge iff relevantly similar beliefs—its epistemic counterparts—are true. It promises an instructive account of why certain general principles of knowledge hold. We focus on two such principles that anyone should endorse: the closure principle that knowledge is downward closed under competent conjunction elimination, and the counter-closure principle that knowledge is upward closed under competent conjunction introduction. We argue that anyone endorsing the former must also endorse the latter (...) on pains of an unacceptable form of bootstrapping. We devise new formal models to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for these principles to hold on conceptions that construe knowledge in terms of true counterparts. These conditions state that counterparts of premise and conclusion beliefs are coordinated in certain ways whenever these beliefs stand in the relevant inferential relations. We show that the safety conception faces insuperable problems vindicating these coordination principles, because its epistemic counterpart relation is symmetric. We conclude that it thus proves unable to account for minimal closure properties of knowledge. More generally, our formal results establish parameters within which any conception must operate that construes knowledge in terms of true counterparts. (shrink)

Epistemologists have generally accepted that competently deduced, known conclusions must issue from known premises, as the principle of Counter-Closure demands; however, some have recently challenged the notion, arguing that knowledge may be inferred from non-knowledge. In this paper, I focus on the yet unexamined topic of inferential knowledge from Gettiered belief with regard to Greco's virtue-epistemic framework, which he refers to as ‘agent reliabilism’. I argue that agent reliabilism allows for instances of Counter-Closure violation. In presenting (...) my argument, I construct and provide an analysis of a case that challenges Counter-Closure, and defend the case against various possible objections, including some that feature in mainstream Counter-Closure literature. I contend that, if my analysis is accepted, Greco is left with two options: either he rejects Counter-Closure, or he must substantially revise his view in such a way as to preserve Counter-Closure in light of cases of inferential knowledge from Gettiered belief. (shrink)

The safety conception of knowledge holds that a belief constitutes knowledge iff relevantly similar beliefs—its epistemic counterparts—are true. It promises an instructive account of why certain general principles of knowledge hold. We focus on two such principles that anyone should endorse: the closure principle that knowledge is downward closed under competent conjunction elimination, and the counter-closure principle that knowledge is upward closed under competent conjunction introduction. We argue that anyone endorsing the former must also endorse the latter (...) on pains of an unacceptable form of bootstrapping. We devise new formal models to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for these principles to hold on conceptions that construe knowledge in terms of true counterparts. These conditions state that counterparts of premise and conclusion beliefs are coordinated in certain ways whenever these beliefs stand in the relevant inferential relations. We show that the safety conception faces insuperable problems vindicating these coordination principles, because its epistemic counterpart relation is symmetric. We conclude that it thus proves unable to account for minimal closure properties of knowledge. More generally, our formal results establish parameters within which any conception must operate that construes knowledge in terms of true counterparts. (shrink)

Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge is interesting but peculiar and can seem implausible. He denies that we can know by introspection that we have thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But he allows that we can know by introspection what we think, feel, and experience. We consider two puzzles. The first puzzle, PUZZLE 1, is interpretive. Is there a way of understanding Dretske’s theory on which the knowledge affirmed by its positive side is different than the knowledge denied by its negative side? The (...) second puzzle, PUZZLE 2, is substantive. Each of the following theses has some prima facie plausibility: there is introspective knowledge of thoughts, knowledge requires evidence, and there are no experiences of thoughts. It is unclear, though, that these claims form a consistent set. These puzzles are not unrelated. Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge is a potential solution to PUZZLE 2 in that Dretske’s theory is meant to show how,, and can all be true. We provide a solution to PUZZLE 1 by appeal to Dretske’s early work in the philosophy of language on contrastive focus. We then distinguish between “Closure” and “Transmissibility”, and raise and answer a worry to the effect that Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge runs counter to Transmissibility. These results help to secure Dretske’s theory as a viable solution to PUZZLE 2. (shrink)

Take the following principle (or schema) as the focus of the ensuing discussion (“P” and “Q” are placeholders for propositions): 1 (Closure) If one knows P and competently deduces Q from P, thereby coming to believe Q, while retaining one's knowledge that P, one comes to know that Q. My strategy in outline: first, I want to set out Fred Dretske's classic challenge to (Closure) – a challenge which began in 1970–1971. Then I want to consider a specific, (...) recent counter‐challenge to Dretske's challenge to (Closure) mounted by John Hawthorne, and to defend Dretske's challenge from Hawthorne's counter‐challenge. Doing this is not to invalidate (Closure). In this regard my conclusions are modest: Dretske's challenge to (Closure) is – or, better: can be made – sophisticated and, so far, unmet. (shrink)

This paper argues that three plausible principles are mutually inconsistent: One ought to assert only what one knows; If it is proper to assert some proposition q, then it is, barring special and not very common circumstances, proper to assert any proposition p from which q has been competently inferred; and Some propositions are both properly assertible and known by competent inference from propositions which one does not know. Each pair of two principles constitutes an argument against the remaining principle, (...) but which principle should one drop? (shrink)

According to Duncan Pritchard, there are two kinds of radical sceptical problem; the closure-based problem, and the underdetermination-based problem. He argues that distinguishing these two problems leads to a set of desiderata for an anti-sceptical response, and that the way to meet all of these desiderata is by supplementing a form of Wittgensteinian contextualism with disjunctivist views about factivity. I agree that an adequate response should meet most of the initial desiderata Pritchard puts forward, and that some version of (...) Wittgensteinian contextualism shows the most promise as a starting point for this, but I argue, contra Pritchard, that the addition of disjunctivism is unnecessary and potentially counter-productive. If we draw on lessons from Michael Williams's inferential contextualism then it is both possible, and preferable, to meet the most important of Pritchard's desiderata, undercutting both closure-based and underdetermination-based sceptical problems in a unified way, without the need to resort to disjunctivism. (shrink)

This paper asks how perception becomes racializing and seeks the means for its critical interruption. My aim is not only to understand the recalcitrant and limitative temporal structure of racializing habits of seeing, but also to uncover the possibilities within perception for a critical awareness and destabilization of this structure. Reading Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in dialogue with Frantz Fanon, Iris Marion Young and race-critical feminism, I locate in hesitation the phenomenological moment where habits of seeing can be internally (...) fractured. Hesitation, I claim, makes visible the exclusionary logic of racializing and objectifying perception, countering its affective closure and opening it to critical transformation. (shrink)

In recent decades, several theories have claimed to explain the teleological causality of organisms as a function of self-organising and self-producing processes. The most widely cited theories of this sort are variations of autopoiesis, originally introduced by Maturana and Varela. More recent modifications of autopoietic theory have focused on system organisation, closure of constraints and autonomy to account for organism teleology. This article argues that the treatment of teleology in autopoiesis and other organisation theories is inconclusive for three reasons: (...) First, non-living self-organising processes like autocatalysis meet the defining features of autopoiesis without being teleological; second, organisational approaches, whether defined in terms of the closure of constraints, self-determination or autonomy, are unable to specify teleological normativity, that is, the individuation of an ultimate beneficiary; third, all self-organised systems produce local order by maximising the throughput of energy and/or material (obeying the maximum entropy production (MEP) principle) and thereby are specifically organised to undermine their own critical boundary conditions. Despite these inadequacies, an alternative approach called teleodynamics accounts for teleology. This theory shows how multiple self-organising processes can be collectively linked so that they counter each other’s MEP principle tendencies to become codependent. Teleodynamics embraces – not ignoring – the difficulties of self-organisation, but reinstates teleology as a radical phase transition distinguishing systems embodying an orientation towards their own beneficial ends from those that lack normative character. (shrink)

Dave Ripley has recently argued against the plausibility of multiset consequence relations and of contraction-free approaches to paradox. For Ripley, who endorses a nontransitive theory, the best arguments that buttress transitivity also push for contraction—whence it is wiser for the substructural logician to go nontransitive from the start. One of Ripley’s allegations is especially insidious, since it assumes the form of a trivialisation result: it is shown that if a multiset consequence relation can be associated to a closure operator (...) in the expected way, then it necessarily contracts. We counter Ripley’s objection by presenting an approach to multiset consequence that escapes this trap. This approach is multiple-conclusioned in a heterodox way, for multiple succedents are given a conjunctive, rather than a disjunctive reading. Finally, we address a further objection by French and Ripley to the effect that the informational interpretation of sequents in linear logic does not motivate cut. (shrink)

We argue the need for academics to resist and challenge the hegemonic discourse of sustainable development within the corporate context. Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory provides a useful framework for recognizing the complex nature of sustainable development and a way of conceptualizing counter-hegemonies. Published empirical research that analyzes sustainable development discourse within corporate reports is examined to consider how the hegemonic discourse is constructed. Embedded assumptions within the hegemonic construction are identified including sustainable development as primarily about economic development, (...) progress, growth, profitability, and “responsibly” managed levels of resource depletion. We call for multiple voices in the discursive field to debate and to resist closure and highlight the possibilities for academic researchers to actively resist the hegemonic construction. Specifically, we advocate vigilance and awareness, critical and reflective analyses, challenge and resistance based on other frames of reference, and strategies for communicating both within and outside the academy. (shrink)

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality and hyperintensionality and their applications to the philosophy of mathematics. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality and hyperintensionality relate to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality and hyperintensionality; the types of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, (...) and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal and hyperintensional profiles of the logic of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a hyperintensional mental state. Chapter \textbf{2} argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal and hyperintensional cognitivism and modal and hyperintensional expressivism. I also develop a novel topic-sensitive truthmaker semantics for dynamic epistemic logic, and develop a novel dynamic two-dimensional semantics grounded in two-dimensional hyperintensional Turing machines. Chapter \textbf{3} provides an abstraction principle for epistemic (hyper-)intensions. Chapter \textbf{4} advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter \textbf{5} applies the fixed points of the modal $\mu$-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). The fixed point operators in the modal $\mu$-calculus are rendered hyperintensional, which yields the first hyperintensional construal of the modal $\mu$-calculus in the literature and the first application of the calculus to the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent instead of the common knowledge of a group of agents. Chapter \textbf{6} advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's `criterial' identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter \textbf{7} provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapters \textbf{2} and \textbf{4} are availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. -/- Chapters \textbf{8-12} provide cases demonstrating how the two-dimensional hyperintensions of hyperintensional, i.e. topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker, semantics, solve the access problem in the epistemology of mathematics. Chapter \textbf{8} examines the interaction between my hyperintensional semantics and the axioms of epistemic set theory, large cardinal axioms, the Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis, the modal axioms governing the modal profile of $\Omega$-logic, Orey sentences such as the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis, and absolute decidability. These results yield inter alia the first hyperintensional Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis and hyperintensional epistemic set theories in the literature. Chapter \textbf{9} examines the modal and hyperintensional commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic hyperintensionality, epistemic utility theory, and the epistemology of abstraction. I countenance a hyperintensional semantics for novel epistemic abstractionist modalities. I suggest, too, that observational type theory can be applied to first-order abstraction principles in order to make first-order abstraction principles recursively enumerable, i.e. Turing machine computable, and that the truth of the first-order abstraction principle for hyperintensions is grounded in its being possibly recursively enumerable and the machine being physically implementable. Chapter \textbf{10} examines the philosophical significance of hyperintensional $\Omega$-logic in set theory and discusses the hyperintensionality of metamathematics. Chapter \textbf{11} provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides a hyperintensional semantics. Chapter \textbf{12} avails of modal coalgebras to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of hyperintensional epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction between interpretational and objective modalities and the truthmakers thereof. This yields the first hyperintensional category theory in the literature. I invent a new mathematical trick in which first-order structures are treated as categories, and Vopenka's principle can be satisfied because of the elementary embeddings between the categories and generate Vopenka cardinals while bypassing the category of Set in category theory. Chapter \textbf{13} examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. I provide a counter-example to epistemic closure for reductio proofs. Chapter \textbf{14} examines, finally, the modal and hyperintensional semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory. (shrink)

As we have seen in the transition form Part I to Part II of this book, the inductive riskiness of doxastic methods applied in testimonial uptake or prescribed as exemplary of religious faith, helpfully operationalizes the broader social scientific, philosophical, moral, and theological interest that people may have with problems of religious luck. Accordingly, we will now speak less about luck, but more about the manner in which highly risky cognitive strategies are correlated with psychological studies of bias studies and (...) human cognitive ecology. Chapter Four is concerned with connections between psychological study of biases and heuristics, and the comparative study of fundamentalism. The first section looks at work by psychologists and philosophers on our bias blind spot. Later sections ask, ‘In what ways might biases and heuristics play a special role in aiding our understanding of, and response to, fundamentalist orientation?’. The judgments we make in ignorance of our own biases Montaigne calls our importunate presumptions, and he suggests a host of practical factors that make them appealing. Montaigne, as I discuss in the first section, associates many of our errors with one or another kind of presumption, often about our similarity or differences from others, or from God. Our obvious psychographic diversity, and the polemical ground dynamics involved in our ‘culture wars’ are compounded on the agential side by the invisibility of our biases to ourselves. A number of person and social biases are described that plausibly affect all of our beliefs in domains of controversial views, religious views included. The second section continues to study of how etiological symmetry (similar patterns of belief-uptake) gives rise to religious contrariety (diverse narratives and theologies) in testimonial faith traditions, and what the implications of this are for philosophy of religion, generally, and for an improved comparative study of fundamentalism, in particular. Utilizing the work of philosophers such as Rachel Fraser and psychologists such as Emily Pronin and her co-authors, I offer a four-step genealogical account for how etiological symmetry so easily gives rise to religious contrariety. This account begins with the narrative nature of testimony in the Abrahamic family of religions, and how narrative content confounds our “source monitoring.” My genealogy also introduces what I term biased-closure inferences (BCI) as one of the key enablers of religious exclusivism and absolutism. These are the seemingly ‘logical’ but actually very self-serving inferences people often make, inferences from their own belief being true, to any belief contrary to it being false. Those who claim unique truth, epistemic access, and/or virtue and religious value for the home religion are no exception to the broad pertinence of bias studies across domains of controversial view. The proximate causes of belief are all that we can study, and in these there may be significant etiological symmetries. Yet those groups themselves, especially to the extent that they are exclusivist, are tunnel-visioned on claims of doctrinal uniqueness: on content differences of a theological sort. Comparative philosophy is met with the puzzlement that symmetric or essentially similar doxastic strategies should give rise not just to cognitive diversity, but to what we can call polarized or polemical contrariety, contrariety of a kind where each view adamantly rejects all others. Arguably, the more that theologies offer explanations of a counter-inductive sort, or profess counter-inductive thinking as exemplary of faith, the better evidential ground there for inferring that bias involved in the acquisition or maintenance of beliefs. This provides more substance to the question of when censure, and etiological challenges to faith-based beliefs are philosophically well-motivated. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine how specific aspects of Bakhtin's theoretical perspective might inform our understanding of improvisation. Moreover, it outlines the possible educational implications of such a perspective. Specifically, a sketch of a Bakhtinian conception of improvisation is proposed, a sketch which emphasizes the cultivation of an attitude of consciousness that leads to an understanding of improvised music making as an obligation to explore the unknown, to search for freedom through the responsibility to attend to the uniqueness of irrevocable (...) musical acts. Moreover, emphasis is given to the potential of improvisation to create a music-making context that counters monologic musical discourses, providing a site of resistance to fixity and closure. It is argued that improvisation is dialogic exactly because it creates a very special sense of interaction, which is characterized by unfinalizability and openness. At the same time, improvisation is in need of temporary finalizations which occur through the presence of the audience and the musicians' struggle to raise their minds 'above' their playing, looking at their music from outside and getting 'back in' again. It is hoped that such a perspective might provide the necessary theoretical tools for re-thinking the role of improvisation in music education. A Bakhtinian view on the experience of improvisation would, it is suggested, be educationally valuable exactly because it regards improvisation not as a problem-solving method but a problem-positing approach: as a musical practice that involves children and young people in the experiential pursuit of freedom and the understanding of the "ought" of imagining ways forward, countering monologue by allowing the flourishing of a polyphony of unmerged voices, constituting a distinctive chronotope which provides the possibility of an enactment of everyday living in musical terms. The decision to improvise marks the initiation of a search for a public musical space which is marked by the absence of fear, where exploration of musical freedom is pursued, where everything might happen but not anything goes. (shrink)

Reiterative coordination games in large groups demonstrate that social norms, once attained, create stable equilibria. This shows that thin social capital is stable, and in some cases preferable to thick SC since it lowers transacting costs. This finding, supported indirectly by R. Putnam’s own early research, runs counter to his claim that the loss of thick social capital is detrimental to the modern society and to Coleman’s argument that closure is required for maintaining social capital.

Should research projects involving epidemiological modelling be subject to ethical scrutiny and peer review prior to publication? Mathematical modelling had considerable impacts during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to social distancing and lockdowns. Imperial College conducted research leading to the website publication of a paper, Report 9, on non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and COVID-19 mortality demand dated 16th March 2020, arguing for a Government policy of non-pharmaceutical interventions (e.g. lockdowns, social distancing, mask wearing, working from home, furlough, school closures, reduced family interaction (...) etc.) to counter COVID 19. Enquiries and Freedom of Information requests to the institution indicate that there was no formal ethical committee review of this specific research, nor was there any peer review prior to their online publication of Report 9. This paper considers the duties placed upon researchers, institutions and research funders under the UK ‘Concordat to Support Research Integrity’ (CSRI), across various bioethical domains, and whether ethical committee scrutiny should be required for this research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Genealogies of OppressionA Response to Ladelle McWhorter’s Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A GenealogyChloë TaylorLadelle McWhorter introducesRacism and Sexual Oppression inAnglo-America with an account of her experiences during the days between the attack on and the death of Matthew Shepard. On sabbatical near Pennsylvania State University in October 1998, McWhorter describes following these events as they were covered by the media and discussed on a Penn State University (...) LGBT listserv. A day and a half after Shepard’s death, McWhorter attended a candlelight vigil organized by Penn State students. It was raining, only thirty people were present, their voices could scarcely be heard over the sounds of traffic, and the event risked being more disheartening than consoling. An attempt was made to salvage the vigil through song, and someone suggested singing “We Shall Overcome,” but none of the students knew the words. McWhorter realized that she was the only person present who could lead the group in a song that might bring a sense of hope and closure to the otherwise depressing gathering. However, as she describes, she was wary of calling “upon the memory and power of African American movements for justice and freedom in order to further the rights and interests, or at least comfort the fearful souls of nonheterosexual people” (10). She writes,It was important for Matthew Shepard to remain Matthew Shepard and Emmett Till to remain Emmett Till, two separate individuals whose living and dying are different events in human history. I believed it was important [End Page 207] to remember the differences between black and queer struggles, subcultures, and experiences of oppression.(9)McWhorter thus did not sing, and thegathering disintegrated without closure. Each one of us wandered away, carrying with us, not a sense that despite the violence and injustice all around us life can go on and love and respect do still exist—which is, I suppose, what the candlelight shining in the darkness at such vigils is intended to instil in us—but rather with that sense of futility and hopelessness that drizzle and senseless death inspire.(5)Despite her decision to not sing, McWhorter goes on to discuss not only the danger of Sameness that prompted her decision—the danger of homogenizing or identifying oppressions—but also the “twin danger” of Difference. As McWhorter argues, “If we maintain radical distinctions between political events, we may fail to see important overarching patterns and as a result miss opportunities to form and consolidate alliances that might counter the networks of power that oppress so many of us” (10–11).Although there are risks involved in emphasizing either Sameness or Difference, McWhorter notes that she had always been more worried by the dangers of Sameness. She attributes this intuition to her attraction to Foucault. The genealogical method is concerned with revealing discontinuities between experiences in diverse historical periods, undermining histories that impose homogeneity on the past. Pointing out historical disparities kindles hope for a different future and is thus an emancipatory task. McWhorter notes that Foucault is a “splitter” and not a “lumper” like Hegel or Plato. Despite her Foucauldian aversion to lumping, McWhorter writes that in the wake of that candlelight vigil and the more general political climate of the late 1990s in which allegiances between civil rights movements were being disavowed, she came to worry about that other danger, the danger of too much splitting. She wonders “whether, despite all the differences in experience and effect, it might not be the case that somehow these things are joined together, part of the same matrix of power, employing the same means, serving the same ends, shaping the same lives” (11). She notes, “It is that other danger and that other set of possibilities that have moved me to write this book, despite the risks such an enquiry inevitably runs” (11).The dangers of Difference are practical but also factual since, McWhorter argues, there are real similarities between the deaths of Shepard and Till that risk being overlooked. Most significant of these is that both young men were murdered for their sexual deviance: one for his homosexuality, the other for his insistence that... (shrink)

Free Semantics is based on normalized natural deduction for the weak relevant logic DW and its near neighbours. This is motivated by the fact that in the determination of validity in truth-functional semantics, natural deduction is normally used. Due to normalization, the logic is decidable and hence the semantics can also be used to construct counter-models for invalid formulae. The logic DW is motivated as an entailment logic just weaker than the logic MC of meaning containment. DW is the (...) logic focussed upon, but the results extend to MC. The semantics is called 'free semantics' since it is disjunctively and existentially free in that no disjunctive or existential witnesses are produced, unlike in truth-functional semantics. Such 'witnesses' are only assumed in generality and are not necessarily actual. The paper sets up the free semantics in a truth-functional style and gives a natural deduction interpetation of the meta-logical connectives. We then set out a familiar tableau-style system, but based on natural deduction proof rather than truth-functional semantics. A proof of soundness and completeness is given for a reductio system, which is a transform of the tableau system. The reductio system has positive and negative rules in place of the elimination and introduction rules of Brady's normalized natural deduction system for DW. The elimination-introduction turning points become closures of threads of proof, which are at the points of contradiction for the reductio system. (shrink)

I construe Relevant Alternatives Theory (RAT) as an abstract combination of anti-skepticism and epistemic modesty, then re-evaluate the challenge posed to it by the missed clue counter-examples of Schaffer [2001]. The import of this challenge has been underestimated, as Schaffer’s specific argument invites distracting objections. I offer a novel formalization of RAT, accommodating a suitably wide class of concrete theories of knowledge. Then, I introduce abstract missed clue cases and prove that every RA theory, as formalized, admits such a (...) case. This yields an argument - in Schaffer’s spirit - that resists easy dismissal. (shrink)

If α and α’ are distinct variables and ϕ and ϕ’ are open sentences of some language, where ϕ’ is the result of replacing one or more free occurrences of a in α with free occurrences of α’ in ϕ’, then a universal closure of ⌜)⌝, is an indiscernibility principle of that language. For instance, is an indiscernibility principle.The existence of opaque constructions falsifies the familiar unrestricted principle of substitution which affirms that co-referential expressions are intersubstitutable in all contexts (...) without change of truth-value. But indiscernibility principles are another matter. Not every counter-example to the unrestricted principle of substitution is a counter-example to some indiscernibility principle. Indeed, it is likely to be thought that there is no counter-example to any indiscernibility principle, and that the semantics of variables and objectual quantification ensures that all indiscernibility principles are true. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine how specific aspects of Bakhtin's theoretical perspective might inform our understanding of improvisation. Moreover, it outlines the possible educational implications of such a perspective. Specifically, a sketch of a Bakhtinian conception of improvisation is proposed, a sketch which emphasizes the cultivation of an attitude of consciousness that leads to an understanding of improvised music making as an obligation to explore the unknown, to search for freedom through the responsibility to attend to the uniqueness of irrevocable (...) musical acts. Moreover, emphasis is given to the potential of improvisation to create a music-making context that counters monologic musical discourses, providing a site of resistance to fixity and closure. It is argued that improvisation is dialogic exactly because it creates a very special sense of interaction, which is characterized by unfinalizability and openness. At the same time, improvisation is in need of temporary finalizations which occur through the presence of the audience and the musicians' struggle to raise their minds 'above' their playing, looking at their music from outside and getting 'back in' again. It is hoped that such a perspective might provide the necessary theoretical tools for re-thinking the role of improvisation in music education. A Bakhtinian view on the experience of improvisation would, it is suggested, be educationally valuable exactly because it regards improvisation not as a problem-solving method but a problem-positing approach: as a musical practice that involves children and young people in the experiential pursuit of freedom and the understanding of the "ought" of imagining ways forward, countering monologue by allowing the flourishing of a polyphony of unmerged voices, constituting a distinctive chronotope which provides the possibility of an enactment of everyday living in musical terms. The decision to improvise marks the initiation of a search for a public musical space which is marked by the absence of fear, where exploration of musical freedom is pursued, where everything might happen but not anything goes. (shrink)

The collapse of the Weimar Republic remains central to the history of the 20th century and to contemporary debates on 'classical modernity' and its Europe-wide crisis in the wake of the First World War. The present issue of Thesis Eleven focuses on three dimensions of the Weimar crisis: the experience of fundamental societal crisis and closure and its diagnostic power in relation to the rise of fascist movements; the cognitive and normative resources that sought to work against this crisis-ridden (...) sense of closure; and third, the degree to which these counter tendencies anticipate postmodern interrogations of the premises of classical modernity. (shrink)

There are three sentimental centres of 20th-century philosophical geography: Todtnauberg, Frankfurt and Vienna. Their exceptional status results not only from having given rise to decisive philosophical movements but also from the weight of stories about victimization and exile lacking with regard to Paris, Berkeley and Cambridge. Each of these centres is compromised in its own way: the Schwarzwald cottage from which Heidegger emerged to take over the Rektorat of Freiburg University and to which he returned after this disastrous intermezzo, the (...) "Institut für Sozialforschung" which on its part returned to claim moral authority at a location that increasingly turned into the most important bridgehead of transatlantic logistics, finally the former imperial city where traces of the origins of analytic philosophy were only conserved beneath the enormous sedimentation of a massive counter-reformation. Provincialism, NATO and tourism turned out to be perfectly compatible with remembrance of an heroic epoch at these sites while exiting philosophical work was being done at different locations. How much weight is carried by impressions like these? Not too much as long as well defined philosophical schools promote progress as defined within their own realm. Some doctrin, established all over the world does not depend on the place at which it is further refined. It is, however, in doubt whether philosophy counts among the disciplines so easily internationalized; Heidegger and Adorno being among those who would insist on the inseparability of a theory's fate and its place of origin. Be this as it may, my subject being the precarious relationship between the city and the Circle of Vienna I have to start from the assumption of obvious incomparability between the roots and the extension of the branches of the movement. Only a decade ago this would have presented itself as a fairly easy task. Historians were coming to this city to save the remnants of the beginnings of the movement whereas Anglo-American philosophers were busy refining the orthodoxy and hardly interested in historical matters. Much has changed since. Firstly the analytic enterprise is in certain ways approaching what can be called closure from within.gif Secondly Austrian universities have (with sometimes considerable delay) taken an interest in what is felt to be a lost opportunity.gif Both of these developments coincided with a more general renaissance of fin de siecle and modernist Vienna. Since the imminent conclusion of any movement reactualizes the circumstances of its beginning, renewed attention was drawn to what was happening within and to the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality and hyperintensionality and their applications to the philosophy of mathematics. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality and hyperintensionality relate to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality and hyperintensionality; the types of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, (...) and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal and hyperintensional profiles of the logic of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a hyperintensional mental state. Chapter \textbf{2} argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal and hyperintensional cognitivism and modal and hyperintensional expressivism. I also develop a novel topic-sensitive truthmaker semantics for dynamic epistemic logic, and develop a novel dynamic two-dimensional semantics grounded in two-dimensional hyperintensional Turing machines. Chapter \textbf{3} provides an abstraction principle for epistemic (hyper-)intensions. Chapter \textbf{4} advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter \textbf{5} applies the fixed points of the modal $\mu$-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). The fixed point operators in the modal $\mu$-calculus are rendered hyperintensional, which yields the first hyperintensional construal of the modal $\mu$-calculus in the literature and the first application of the calculus to the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent instead of the common knowledge of a group of agents. Chapter \textbf{6} advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's `criterial' identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter \textbf{7} provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapters \textbf{2} and \textbf{4} are availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. -/- Chapters \textbf{8-12} provide cases demonstrating how the two-dimensional hyperintensions of hyperintensional, i.e. topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker, semantics, solve the access problem in the epistemology of mathematics. Chapter \textbf{8} examines the interaction between my hyperintensional semantics and the axioms of epistemic set theory, large cardinal axioms, the Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis, the modal axioms governing the modal profile of $\Omega$-logic, Orey sentences such as the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis, and absolute decidability. These results yield inter alia the first hyperintensional Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis and hyperintensional epistemic set theories in the literature. Chapter \textbf{9} examines the modal and hyperintensional commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic hyperintensionality, epistemic utility theory, and the epistemology of abstraction. I countenance a hyperintensional semantics for novel epistemic abstractionist modalities. I suggest, too, that observational type theory can be applied to first-order abstraction principles in order to make first-order abstraction principles recursively enumerable, i.e. Turing machine computable, and that the truth of the first-order abstraction principle for hyperintensions is grounded in its being possibly recursively enumerable and the machine being physically implementable. Chapter \textbf{10} examines the philosophical significance of hyperintensional $\Omega$-logic in set theory and discusses the hyperintensionality of metamathematics. Chapter \textbf{11} provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides a hyperintensional semantics. Chapter \textbf{12} avails of modal coalgebras to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of hyperintensional epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction between interpretational and objective modalities and the truthmakers thereof. This yields the first hyperintensional category theory in the literature. I invent a new mathematical trick in which first-order structures are treated as categories, and Vopenka's principle can be satisfied because of the elementary embeddings between the categories and generate Vopenka cardinals while bypassing the category of Set in category theory. Chapter \textbf{13} examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. I provide a counter-example to epistemic closure for reductio proofs. Chapter \textbf{14} examines, finally, the modal and hyperintensional semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory. (shrink)

This chapter looks at the impact of recent societal approaches of knowledge and science from the perspectives of two rather distant educational domains, mathematics and music. Science’s attempt at ‘self-understanding’ has led to a set of control mechanisms, either generating ‘closure’—the scientists’ non-involvement in society—or ‘economisation’, producing patents and other lucrative benefits. While scientometrics became the tool and the rule for measuring the economic impact of science, counter movements, like the slow science movement, citizen science, empowering music-art initiatives (...) and other critical approaches focus on intrinsic and ethical questions of education and knowledge. Thinking about knowledge and research in terms of quantifiable products impacts heavily upon the domains of science and arts, while the complexity of knowledge acquisition forces society to consider also other parameters like equality, personal development and participatory processes. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Poetics defends the value of tragic poetry, presumably to counter Plato’s critique in the Republic. Can this defense resonate with something larger and rather surprising, that Aristotle’s overall philosophy displays a tragic character? I define the tragic as pertaining to indigenous and inescapable limits on life, knowledge, control, achievement, and agency. I explore how such limits figure in Aristotle’s physics, metaphysics, and biological works. Accordingly I want to disturb the common account of Aristotle’s thought as a neat system (...) of ontological order and metaphysical closure—not to exclude such elements but to place them within a world-view that includes certain limits at the edges of being. (shrink)

G. E. Moore identified a peculiar form of epistemic irrationality. Wittgenstein called it “Moore’s Paradox”. Neither of them knew exactly what he was talking about. And yet, the vast literature on the problem leaves no room for doubt: the paradox is deep; its resolution, elusive. But, up until now, we haven’t been in a position to appreciate its importance for contemporary epistemology. This paper puts forward an epistemological solution to the paradox. It also seeks to show that the paradox yields (...) counter-examples to deductive closure claims for both epistemic rationality and knowledge that are immune to contextualist pro-closure maneuvers. (shrink)

Au sujet de la relation esprit-corps, Popper rejette le physicalisme, défini par le principe de clôture causale du domaine physique, et tente de construire une hypothèse interactionniste en accord avec la science contemporaine. Plus précisément, Popper reproche aux formes les plus élaborées du physicalisme d'entrer en contradiction avec la théorie de l'évolution, ainsi qu'avec le rationalisme. À l'opposé, il considère que l'hypothèse interactionniste peut se nourrir d'une comparaison minutieuse entre l'esprit et les forces physiques. Cette comparaison tend à rapprocher Popper (...) du panpsychisme. With respect to the mind-body relation, Popper rejects physicalism, as defined by the principle of the causal closure of the physical world, and attempts to build an interactionist hypothesis that would agree with the findings of contemporary science. More precisely, Popper criticizes the most elaborate forms of physicalism because they run counter to evolutionary theory and rationalism. By contrast, he thinks that the interactionist hypothesis can find support in a minute comparison of mind and physical forces. This comparison tends to draw Popper closer together with panpsychism. (shrink)