"Philosophical anthropology on the grandest scale....Gellner has produced a sharp challenge to his colleagues and a thrilling book for the non-specialist. Deductive history on this scale cannot be proved right or wrong, but this is Gellner writing, incisive, iconoclastic, witty and expert. His scenario compels our attention."—Adam Kuper, _New Statesman_ "A thoughtful and lively meditation upon probably the greatest transformation in human history, upon the difficult problems it poses and the scant resources it has left us to solve them."—Charles (...) Larmore, _New Republic_. (shrink)

Whereas epistemology is the philosophical theory of knowledge, its nature and scope, metaepistemology takes a step back from particular substantive debates in epistemology in order to inquire into the assumptions and commitments made by those who engage in these debates. This entry will focus on a selection of these assumptions and commitments, including whether there are objective epistemic facts; and how to characterize the subject matter and the methodology of epistemology.

No semantic theory is complete without an account of context sensitivity. But there is little agreement over its scope and limits even though everyone invokes intuition about an expression's behavior in context to determine its context sensitivity. Minimalists like Cappelen and Lepore identify a range of tests which isolate clear cases of context sensitive expressions, such as ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’, to the exclusion of all others. Contextualists try to discredit the tests and supplant them with ones friendlier to their (...) positions. In this paper we will explore and evaluate Cappelen and Hawthorne's recent attempts to discredit Cappelen and Lepore's tests and replace them with others. We will argue they have failed to provide sufficient reason to abandon minimalism. If we are right, minimalism about context sensitivity is still viable. (shrink)

THE INDICATIVE CONDITIONAL. A PROBABILISTIC CRITERION OF SOUNDNESS FOR DEDUCTIVE INFERENCES Our objective in this section is to establish a prima facie case ...

This book is meant to be a primer, that is, an introduction, to probability logic, a subject that appears to be in its infancy. Probability logic is a subject envisioned by Hans Reichenbach and largely created by Adams. It treats conditionals as bearers of conditional probabilities and discusses an appropriate sense of validity for arguments such conditionals, as well as ordinary statements as premisses. This is a clear well-written text on the subject of probability logic, suitable for advanced undergraduates or (...) graduates, but also of interest to professional philosophers. There are well-thought-out exercises, and a number of advanced topics treated in appendices, while some are brought up in exercises and some are alluded to only in footnotes. By this means, it is hoped that the reader will at least be made aware of most of the important ramifications of the subject and its tie-ins with current research, and will have some indications concerning recent and relevant literature. (shrink)

The standard use of the propositional calculus ('P.C.?) in analyzing the validity of inferences involving conditionals leads to fallacies, and the problem is to determine where P.C. may be ?safely? used. An alternative analysis of criteria of reasonableness of inferences in terms of conditions of justification rather than truth of statements is proposed. It is argued, under certain restrictions, that P. C. may be safely used, except in inferences whose conclusions are conditionals whose antecedents are incompatible with the premises in (...) the sense that if the antecedent became known, some of the previously asserted premises would have to be withdrawn. (shrink)

The purpose of this note is to dispute Michael Ayers' claim that "there is no special problem of subjunctive conditionals".

In light of the ongoing development and implementation of core competencies in bioethics, it is important to proceed with a clear sense of how bioethics knowledge is utilized in the functioning of hospital ethics committees (HECs). Without such an understanding, we risk building a costly edifice on a foundation that is ambiguous at best. This article examines the empirical relationship between traditional paradigms of bioethics theory and actual decision making by HEC members using survey data from HEC members. The assumption (...) underlying the standardization of qualifications and corresponding call for increased education of HEC members is that they will base imminent case decisions on inculcated knowledge. Our data suggest, however, that HEC members first decide intuitively and then look for justification, thereby highlighting the need to re-examine the pedagogical processes of ethics education in the process of standardizing and improving competencies. (shrink)

Different inferences in probabilistic logics of conditionals 'preserve' the probabilities of their premisses to different degrees. Some preserve certainty, some high probability, some positive probability, and some minimum probability. In the first case conclusions must have probability I when premisses have probability 1, though they might have probability 0 when their premisses have any lower probability. In the second case, roughly speaking, if premisses are highly probable though not certain then conclusions must also be highly probable. In the third case (...) conclusions must have positive probability when premisses do, and in the last case conclusions must be at least as probable as their least probable premisses. Precise definitions and well known examples are given for each of these properties, characteristic principles are shown to be valid and complete for deriving conclusions of each of these kinds, and simple trivalent truthtable 'tests' are described for determining which properties are possessed by any given inference. Brief comments are made on the application of these results to certain modal inferences such as "Jones may own a car, and if he does he will have a driver's license. Therefore, he may have a driver's license.". (shrink)

This book is less about disjunction than about the English word ‘or’, and it is less for than against formal logicians—more exactly, against those who maintain that formal logic can be applied in certain ways to the evaluation of reasoning formulated in ordinary English. Nevertheless, there are many things to interest such of those persons who are willing to overlook the frequent animadversions directed against their kind in the book, and this review will concentrate on them.

Modifications of current theories of ordinal, interval and extensive measurement are presented, which aim to accomodate the empirical fact that perfectly exact measurement is not possible (which is inconsistent with current theories). The modification consists in dropping the assumption that equality (in measure) is observable, but continuing to assume that inequality (greater or lesser) can be observed. The modifications are formulated mathematically, and the central problems of formal measurement theory--the existence and uniqueness of numerical measures consistent with data--are re-examined. Some (...) results also are given on a problem which does not arise in current theories: namely that of determining limits of accuracy attainable on the basis of observations. (shrink)

The Belmont Report’s distinction between research and the practice of accepted therapy has led various authors to suggest that these purportedly distinct activities should be governed by different ethical principles. We consider some of the ethical consequences of attempts to separate the two and conclude that separation fails along ontological, ethical, and epistemological dimensions. Clinical practice and clinical research, as with yin and yang, can be thought of as complementary forces interacting to form a dynamic system in which the whole (...) exceeds the sum of its parts. Just as effective clinical practice cannot exist without clinical research, meaningful clinical research requires the context of clinical practice. We defend this thesis by triangulation, that is, by outlining how multiple investigators have reached this conclusion on the basis of varied theoretical and applied approaches. More confidence can be placed in a result if different methods/viewpoints have led to that result. (shrink)

How do concepts of topology such as that of a boundary apply to the empirical world? Take the example of a chess board, represented here with black squares in black and red squares in white. We see by looking at the board that the squares of any one color have common boundaries only with squares of the opposite color, but each square has corners in common with other squares of the same color, which are points at which their common boundaries (...) intersect. For example, the white square labelled ‘A’ has common boundaries with the black squares that surround it, and common corners with the white squares like square B that are diagonally adjacent to it. (shrink)