We consider the complex interactions between rape culture and epistemology. A central case study is the consideration of a deferential attitude about the epistemology of sexual assault testimony. According to the deferential attitude, individuals and institutions should decline to act on allegations of sexual assault unless and until they are proven in a formal setting, i.e., a criminal court. We attack this deference from several angles, including the pervasiveness of rape culture in the criminal justice system, the epistemology of testimony (...) and norms connecting knowledge and action, the harms of tacit idealizations away from important contextual factors, and a contextualist semantics for 'knows' ascriptions. (shrink)

The partial aim of this paper is to suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s ontology is prefigured in Schelling’s conception of God as presented in Ages of the World. This will specifically be demonstrated by explicating the parallels between Merleau-Ponty’s paradoxical notion of the flesh and Schelling’s equally complex idea of Ungrund. Understanding the significance of Schelling’s influence on Merleau-Ponty becomes pivotal upon the recognition that the contemporary French political philosopher Claude Lefort’s idea of the political instituting politics is directly linked to Merleau-Ponty’s (...) ontology of the invisible and visible. The implication here involves the suggestion that Lefort’s conception of the political parallels Schelling’s conception of God as mediated by Merleau-Ponty. It is then suggested that the political form of modernity should be understood less as the emergence of a novel form and conceived of more as an originary dimension where the theological and the political become indistinguishable. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide a historical account of Michael Oakeshott’s famous distinction between civil and enterprise association. As such, it demonstrates that Oakeshott’s political skepticism and his concomitant view of civil association can in part be explained by his reliance on Augustinian theology. In a similar vein, Oakeshott’s linkage of enterprise association with the rationalism of Bacon must be considered in terms of Oakeshott’s understanding of Pelagianism and Gnosticism. Unsurprisingly, it will be demonstrated that despite Oakeshott’s disagreements with the (...) political philosopher Eric Voegelin, he was very impressed by Voegelin’s work on the Gnostic origins of modernity. Consequently, a major claim of this essay is that Oakeshott’s speculative understanding of modern political thought constitutes a theological genealogy of political modernity in all but name. (shrink)

This paper will articulate and defend a novel theory of epistemic justification; I characterize my view as the thesis that justification is potential knowledge . My project is an instance of the ‘knowledge-first’ programme, championed especially by Timothy Williamson. So I begin with a brief recapitulation of that programme.

I argue that evaluating the knowledge norm of practical reasoning is less straightforward than is often assumed in the literature. In particular, cases in which knowledge is intuitively present, but action is intuitively epistemically unwarranted, provide no traction against the knowledge norm. The knowledge norm indicates what it is appropriately to hold a particular content as a reason for action; it does not provide a theory of what reasons are sufficient for what actions. Absent a general theory about what sorts (...) of reasons, if genuinely held, would be sufficient to justify actions—a question about which the knowledge norm is silent—many of the kinds of cases prevalent in the literature do not bear on the knowledge norm. (shrink)

According to a traditional picture, perception and belief have starkly different epistemic roles. Beliefs have epistemic statuses as justified or unjustified, depending on how they are formed and maintained. In contrast, perceptions are “unjustified justifiers.” Core cognition is a set of mental systems that stand at the border of perception and belief, and has been extensively studied in developmental psychology. Core cognition's borderline states do not fit neatly into the traditional epistemic picture. What is the epistemic role of these states? (...) Focusing on the core object system, the author argues that core object representations have epistemic statuses like beliefs do, despite their many prototypically perceptual features. First, the author argues that it is a sufficient condition on a mental state's having an epistemic status as justified or unjustified that the state is based on reasons. Then the author argues that core object representations are based on reasons, through an examination of both experimental results and key markers of the basing relation. The scope of mental states that are subject to epistemic evaluation as justified or unjustified is not restricted to beliefs. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences are not immediately responsive to reasons. You see a stick submerged in a glass of water as bent no matter how much you know about light refraction. Due to this isolation from reasons, perception is traditionally considered outside the scope of epistemic evaluability as justified or unjustified. Is perception really as independent from reasons as visual illusions make it out to be? I argue no, drawing on psychological evidence from perceptual learning. The flexibility of perceptual learning is a (...) way of responding to new epistemic reasons. The resulting perceptual experiences are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified. (shrink)

I develop a class of counterexamples to Blome-Tillmann’s ‘Presuppositional Epistemic Contextualism’. There are cases in which subjects are ignorant of key propositions that are inconsistent with the pragmatic presuppositions in conversational contexts in which they are discussed; in such contexts, PEC wrongly predicts the subjects to satisfy certain ‘knows’ attributions.

Across languages, lexical items specific to infant‐directed speech (i.e., ‘baby‐talk words’) are characterized by a preponderance of onomatopoeia (or highly iconic words), diminutives, and reduplication. These lexical characteristics may help infants discover the referential nature of words, identify word referents, and segment fluent speech into words. If so, the amount of lexical input containing these properties should predict infants’ rate of vocabulary growth. To test this prediction, we tracked the vocabulary size in 47 English‐learning infants from 9 to 21 months (...) and examined whether the patterns of growth can be related to measures of iconicity, diminutives, and reduplication in the lexical input at 9 months. Our analyses showed that both diminutives and reduplication in the input were associated with vocabulary growth, although measures of iconicity were not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that phonological properties typical of lexical input in infant‐directed speech play a role in early vocabulary growth. (shrink)

Perception provides us with access to the external world, but that access is shaped by our own experiential histories. Through perceptual learning, we can enhance our capacities for perceptual discrimination, categorization, and attention to salient properties. We can also encode harmful biases and stereotypes. This article reviews interdisciplinary research on perceptual learning, with an emphasis on the implications for our rational and normative theorizing. Perceptual learning raises the possibility that our inquiries into topics such as epistemic justification, aesthetic criticism, and (...) moral knowledge should include not only an examination of cognition but also of perception. (shrink)

What kinds of mental states can be based on epistemic reasons? The standard answer is only beliefs. I argue that perceptual states can also be based on reasons, as the result of crossmodal interactions. A perceptual state from one modality can provide a reason on which an experience in another modality is based. My argument identifies key markers of the basing relation and locates them in the crossmodal Marimba Illusion (Schutz & Kubovy 2009). The subject’s auditory experience of musical tone (...) duration is based on the reason provided by her visual representation of the length of the musician’s gesture and other stored perceptual principles. (shrink)

This paper considers how cognitive architecture impacts and constrains the rational requirement to respond to reasons. Informational encapsulation and its close relative belief fragmentation can render an agent’s own reasons inaccessible to her, thus preventing her from responding to them. For example, someone experiencing imposter phenomenon might be well aware of their own accomplishments in certain contexts but unable to respond to those reasons when forming beliefs about their own self-worth. In such cases, are our beliefs irrational for failing to (...) respond to our own reasons? Or are they excused on grounds of the reasons’ inaccessibility? I argue that in such cases, the rational status of the belief that fails to respond to reasons is modulated by the degree of encapsulation of the system that produces it. Yet because our cognitive systems are rarely perfectly encapsulated, our failures to respond to reasons are almost always irrational to some degree. (shrink)

This book includes sections on brightness and light, eye movements and perception, and perception of orientation and self-motion.

This is an excerpt from a report on the workshop on multisensory integration at the University of Toronto, on May 9th and 10th, 2014, written by Kevin Connolly, Aaron Henry, Zoe Jenkin, and Andrew MacGregor, and available at: http://networksensoryresearch.utoronto.ca/Events_%26_Discussion.html This excerpt explores the question: What is multisensory integration?

This is an excerpt from a report on the workshop on multisensory integration at the University of Toronto, on May 9th and 10th, 2014, written by Kevin Connolly, Aaron Henry, Zoe Jenkin, and Andrew MacGregor, and available at: http://networksensoryresearch.utoronto.ca/Events_%26_Discussion.html This excerpt explores the question: Do multisensory percepts involve emergent features?

This is an excerpt from a report on the workshop on multisensory integration at the University of Toronto, on May 9th and 10th, 2014, written by Kevin Connolly, Aaron Henry, Zoe Jenkin, and Andrew MacGregor, and available at: http://networksensoryresearch.utoronto.ca/Events_%26_Discussion.html This excerpt explores the question: What can multisensory processing tell us about multisensory awareness?

This is an excerpt from a report on the workshop on multisensory integration at the University of Toronto, on May 9th and 10th, 2014, written by Kevin Connolly, Aaron Henry, Zoe Jenkin, and Andrew MacGregor, and available at: http://networksensoryresearch.utoronto.ca/Events_%26_Discussion.html This excerpt explores the question: What is the purpose of multisensory integration?

This is an excerpt from a report on the workshop on multisensory integration at the University of Toronto, on May 9th and 10th, 2014, written by Kevin Connolly, Aaron Henry, Zoe Jenkin, and Andrew MacGregor, and available at: http://networksensoryresearch.utoronto.ca/Events_%26_Discussion.html This excerpt explores the question: Is language processing a special kind of multisensory integration?

Steve Biko died in detention in South Africa in 1977. Critical ethical issues are raised both by the conduct of the doctors responsible for Biko's care and by the subsequent response of the medical profession as a whole. Because those issues are relevant to all healthcare professionals everywhere, the Biko affair provides a useful case study in medical ethics. We discuss the case in this article, describing how we use it in our teaching.

Due to their consolidated nature, corporate sustainability reports often mask the evolution of organizations’ sustainability initiatives. Thus, to more fully understand the environmental performance of an organization, it is essential to examine the experiences of specific projects and how they relate to corporate sustainability. Based on case studies of green projects in four different organizations, we find that it is difficult to determine the environmental impact of a project a priori, even in cases where environmental considerations are included as part (...) of the initial project scope. Instead, the decision to integrate environmentally favorable elements into projects is a dynamically occurring interaction between competing institutional logics and organizational identities, which create windows of opportunity for individual agency. During these windows, individuals may engage in reinforcing microprocesses that support traditional practices, or invoke enabling microprocesses to facilitate green decision-making, consistent with ecosystem logics. The process model developed in this paper provides a new perspective on the temporal and contextual dimensions of environmental championship behaviors, and sheds light on otherwise puzzling results such as why organizations with strong environmental orientations continue to struggle with delivering projects with strong positive environmental impacts. (shrink)

Introduction to Special Issue of Review of Philosophy and Psychology. Overview of the central issues in cognitive architecture, epistemology, and ethics surrounding cognitive penetrability. Special issue includes papers by philosophers and psychologists: Gary Lupyan, Fiona Macpherson, Reginald Adams, Anya Farennikova, Jona Vance, Francisco Marchi, Robert Cowan.

Our perceptual systems are not stagnant but can learn from experience. Why is this so? That is, what is the function of perceptual learning? I consider two answers to this question: The Offloading View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to offload tasks from cognition onto perception, thereby freeing up cognitive resources (Connolly, 2019) and the Perceptual View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to improve the functioning of perception. I argue that the Perceptual (...) View better explains data from infants and animals, and better accounts for learned tasks that only perception could perform. (shrink)

Do epistemic and aesthetic values ever conflict? The answer might appear to be no, given that background knowledge generally enhances aesthetic experience, and aesthetic experience in turn generates new knowledge. As Keats writes, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ (Keats, 1996). Contra this line of thought, I argue that epistemic and aesthetic values can conflict when we over-rely on aesthetically enhancing background beliefs. The true and the beautiful can pull in different directions, forcing us to choose between flavours of normativity.

Some have argued that specifically moral demands or norms are justified by the constraints of rationality. On this view, any agent who comes to doubt, challenge, or reject the authority of moral demands does so on penalty of irrationality. According to this view, the agent who asks the question Why be moral? can be given a rational justification for the demands that morality makes on her, regardless of her individual reasons and motives. ;I consider amoralism as a test case. Could (...) a proposed justification of morality answer to the amoralist? I develop two characterizations of amoralism: the principled objector and the amoralist from indifference. I argue that normal moral agents may adopt or succumb to either type of amoralism without forfeiting their claim to rationality, and further, that such amoralists are not best understood as demanding a justification of morality. ;Some philosophers have objected that the notion of amoralism is conceptually mistaken or incoherent. I address three forms of this argument. First, I argue that the inverted-commas argument attributed to R. M. Hare fails to show that purported amoralists cannot really make or understand value judgments. Second, I argue that Michael Smith's internalist argument against amoralism is unconvincing. Third, I consider Christine Korsgaard's argument in The Sources of Normativity that the very nature of rational action entails moral obligation. ;I conclude by discussing the way in which a justification of moral demands can only be made internal to a particular moral outlook or way of life. To attempt to respond to amoralists who are radically dissatisfied with, or dissociated from, a moral perspective with a wholesale rational justification of morality is to misunderstand the nature of their disaffection as well as to misunderstand the project of moral philosophy. However, acknowledging the limited role of justification in moral theory and argument does not entail that moral philosophy's primary enterprise is merely the explanation of moral phenomena. Moral normativity is a function of our capacity for reflection. Thus, the work of moral philosophy lies in making reflective recommendations for which norms to adopt, how to obligate oneself and others, and how to live. (shrink)

Offers a comprehensive account of Foucault’s relationship to neoliberalism that is driven not by polemics but a careful reading of Foucault’s texts and political positions.

This report highlights and explores five questions that arose from the multisensory integration workshop at the University of Toronto on May 9th and 10th, 2014: 1. What Is Multisensory Integration? 2. Do Multisensory Percepts Involve Emergent Features? 3. What Can Multisensory Processing Tell Us about Multisensory Awareness? 4. Is Language Processing a Special Kind of Multisensory Integration? 5. What Is the Purpose of Multisensory Integration?

This commentary considers Audi’s treatment of four fundamental topics in the epistemology of perception: inference, the basing relation, the metaphysics of reasons and grounds, and the relationship between knowledge and justification.

Christopher Hill's book Perceptual experience argues for a representational theory of mind that is grounded in empirical psychology. I focus here on three aspects of Hill's picture: The objects of visual awareness, the perception/cognition border, and the epistemic role of perceptual experience. I introduce challenges to Hill's account and consider ways these challenges may be overcome.

ABSTRACT This cross-sectional study compared the moral reasoning of first-year and third-year doctoral students in clinical psychology. Nineteen first-year and 20 third-year students were recruited from 17 doctoral training programs in the UK. Most adopted a sophisticated approach to moral judgments, as assessed by the Defining Issues Test, although, surprisingly, more experienced students had significantly less sophisticated schemata. In their moral judgments, less experienced students relied more heavily on their personal, and more experienced students on their professional, constructs, as assessed (...) by repertory grid technique. Integration between personal and professional constructs was higher in more experienced students. (shrink)

Ichikawa and Jarvis offer a new rationalist theory of mental content and defend a traditional epistemology of philosophy. They argue that philosophical inquiry is continuous with non-philosophical inquiry, and can be genuinely a priori, and that intuitions do not play an important role in mental content or the a priori.

Earp et al. offer a very interesting summary of, and ethical commentary on, recent multidisciplinary research suggesting that at least some cases of what we call ‘romantic love’ involve phenomena that physically and/or psychologically resemble cases of what we call ‘addiction.’ They draw a conceptual distinction between what they call ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ concepts of addiction. On the narrow conception, only extreme, harmful, or abnormal cases of love would count as addiction. On the broad conception, even ordinary or normal cases (...) of love could qualify.After distinguishing the two conceptions over the course of the first half of their paper, the authors argue that for labelling and treatment purposes it does... (shrink)

The book develops and synthesises two main ideas: contextualism about knowledge ascriptions and a knowledge-first approach to epistemology. The theme of the book is that these two ideas fit together much better than it's widely thought they do. Not only are they not competitors: they each have something important to offer the other.