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  1. Hans Van Eyghen, The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs (London: Routledge, 2023). Pp. 168. £96.00 (Hbk). ISBN 9781032249988. [REVIEW]José Eduardo Porcher - forthcoming - Religious Studies:1-4.
    In The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs, Hans Van Eyghen challenges Western philosophy's ethnocentrism by examining the justification of beliefs in spirits, exploring neglected religious phenomena like mediumship, possession, and animistic experiences, drawing from various traditions worldwide, including a significant emphasis on Afro-Atlantic religions. The book employs phenomenal conservatism, arguing for prima facie justification of spirit beliefs based on experiences. It addresses metaphysical arguments, examining the connection between God's existence and spirits, as well as attributing unusual events to spirit activity. The (...)
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  2. Paradox of Stubbornness: The Epistemology of Stereotypes Regarding Women.Sagy Watemberg Izraeli - 2023 - In Synne Myreböe, Valgerður Pálmadóttir & Johanna Sjöstedt (eds.), Feminist Philosophy: Time, History and the Transformation of Thought. Södertörn: Södertörn University. pp. 211-229.
    The discrepancy between individual women and the stereotypes attributed to the group as a ‎whole has become progressively greater and more explicit over the course of history. The stereotypes remain the same age-old ‎allegations whilst the ‎developments in the occupations of women and the traits they have opportunity to express have increased the distance between women and those ascribed traits. Stereotypes’ abstention from revision in light of contrary evidence constitutes an epistemic paradox for it entails conflict between the stereotypical knowledge (...)
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  3. From One Conservative to Another: A Critique of Epistemic Conservatism.Blake McAllister - 2021 - Southwest Philosophy Review 37 (2):167-186.
    Epistemic conservatism maintains that some beliefs are immediately justified simply because they are believed. The intuitive implausibility of this claim sets the burden of proof against it. Some epistemic conservatives have sought to lessen this burden by limiting its scope, but I show that they cannot remove it entirely. The only hope for epistemic conservativism is to appeal to its theoretical fruit. However, such a defense is undercut by the introduction of phenomenal conservatism, which accomplishes the same work from a (...)
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  4. We Should Not Shield Ourselves From Abhorrent Beliefs.Danny Frederick - 2020 - In Against the Philosophical Tide. Yeovil: Critias Publishing. pp. 179-181.
    John Schwenkler asks whether we should shield ourselves from others' abhorrent beliefs. I expound and criticise his discussion and I explain why a rational person who wants to improve his knowledge should not shield himself from abhorrent beliefs.
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  5. Animals Deserve Moral Consideration.Scott Hill - 2020 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 33 (2):177-185.
    Timothy Hsiao asks a good question: Why believe animals deserve moral consideration? His answer is that we should not. He considers various other answers and finds them wanting. In this paper I consider an answer Hsiao has not yet discussed: We should accept a conservative view about how to form beliefs. And such a view will instruct us to believe that animals deserve moral consideration. I think conservatives like Hsiao do best to answer his question in a way that upholds (...)
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  6. The Cartesian Doxastic Argument For Free Will.Andrew Kissel - 2020 - Journal of Philosophical Research 45:217-229.
    This paper raises objections to what I call the Cartesian Doxastic Argument for free will: the argument that it is probably true that we are free on the grounds that there is already widespread intuitive belief in that claim. Richard Swinburne provides the best extant defense of the argument, using his principle of credulity, which holds that beliefs are probably true merely on the believer’s evidence that they believe it. I argue that the PoC is either too liberal, justifying intuitively (...)
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  7. Objectivity in contexts: withholding epistemic judgement as a strategy for mitigating collective bias.Inkeri Koskinen - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):211-225.
    In this paper I discuss and develop the risk account of scientific objectivity, which I have recently introduced, contrasting it to some alternatives. I then use the account in order to analyse a practice that is relatively common in anthropology, in the history of science, and in the sociology of scientific knowledge: withholding epistemic judgement. I argue that withholding epistemic judgement on the beliefs one is studying can be a relatively efficient strategy against collective bias in these fields. However, taking (...)
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  8. Let’s not agree to disagree: the role of strategic disagreement in science.Carlos Santana - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 25):6159-6177.
    Supposedly, stubbornness on the part of scientists—an unwillingness to change one’s position on a scientific issue even in the face of countervailing evidence—helps efficiently divide scientific labor. Maintaining disagreement is important because it keeps scientists pursuing a diversity of leads rather than all working on the most promising, and stubbornness helps preserve this disagreement. Planck’s observation that “Science progresses one funeral at a time” might therefore be an insight into epistemically beneficial stubbornness on the part of researchers. In conversation with (...)
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  9. Explanations in Design Thinking: New Directions for an Obfuscated Field.Ameer Sarwar & Patrick Fraser - 2019 - She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation 5 (4):343-355.
    Design plays an integral role in the functions of modern society. Yet the abstract process by which designers carry out their work is not obvious. The study of design thinking has grown in recent years into a major area of academic research, yet it presently lacks a clear theoretical basis; and as a discipline, its methodologies are disparate. Here, we outline and clarify the framework of the scholarly study of design thinking, introducing the major ideas and concepts upon which the (...)
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  10. Explanationist aid for phenomenal conservatism.Kevin McCain - 2018 - Synthese 195 (7):3035-3050.
    Phenomenal conservatism is a popular theory of epistemic justification. Despite its popularity and the fact that some think that phenomenal conservatism can provide a complete account of justification, it faces several challenges. Among these challenges are the need to provide accounts of defeaters and inferential justification. Fortunately, there is hope for phenomenal conservatism. Explanationism, the view on which justification is a matter of explanatory considerations, can help phenomenal conservatism with both of these challenges. The resulting view is one that respects (...)
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  11. Conservatism and the Scientific State of Nature.Erich Kummerfeld & Kevin J. S. Zollman - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (4):1057-1076.
    Those who comment on modern scientific institutions are often quick to praise institutional structures that leave scientists to their own devices. These comments reveal an underlying presumption that scientists do best when left alone—when they operate in what we call the ‘scientific state of nature’. Through computer simulation, we challenge this presumption by illustrating an inefficiency that arises in the scientific state of nature. This inefficiency suggests that one cannot simply presume that science is most efficient when institutional control is (...)
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  12. Dynamic Conservatism.Abelard Podgorski - 2016 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3 (13):349-376.
    According to a family of views under the label of epistemic conservatism, the fact that one already believes something can make it rational to continue to believe it. A number of philosophers have found conservatism attractive, but traditional views are vulnerable to several powerful criticisms. In this paper, I develop an alternative to standard views by identifying a widespread assumption shared by conservatives and their critics - that rational norms govern states of mind like belief, and showing how rejecting this (...)
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  13. On Doxastic Justification and Properly Basing One’s Beliefs.Paul Silva - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (5):945-955.
    According to an orthodox account of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification, basing one’s belief in P on one’s source of propositional justification to believe P suffices for having a doxastically justified belief. But in an increasingly recognized work Turri argues that this thesis fails and proposes a new view according to which having propositional justification depends on having the ability to acquire doxastic justification. Turri’s novel position has surprisingly far-reaching epistemological consequences, ruling out some common epistemological positions that (...)
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  14. How To Be Conservative: A Partial Defense of Epistemic Conservatism.Paul Silva - 2013 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3):501-514.
    Conservatism about perceptual justification tells us that we cannot have perceptual justification to believe p unless we also have justification to believe that perceptual experiences are reliable. There are many ways to maintain this thesis, ways that have not been sufficiently appreciated. Most of these ways lead to at least one of two problems. The first is an over-intellectualization problem, whereas the second problem concerns the satisfaction of the epistemic basing requirement on justified belief. I argue that there is at (...)
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  15. Against Hanna on Phenomenal Conservatism.Kevin McCain - 2012 - Acta Analytica 27 (1):45-54.
    Against Hanna on Phenomenal Conservatism Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-10 DOI 10.1007/s12136-012-0148-2 Authors Kevin McCain, Department of Philosophy, University of Rochester, Box 270078, Rochester, NY 14627-0078, USA Journal Acta Analytica Online ISSN 1874-6349 Print ISSN 0353-5150.
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  16. Values in science.Ernan McMullin - 2012 - Zygon 47 (4):686-709.
    In this essay, which was his presidential address to the Philosophy of Science Association, Ernan McMullin argued that the watershed between “classic” philosophy of science and the “new” philosophy of science can best be understood by analyzing the change in our perception of the role played by values in science. He begins with some general remarks about the nature of value, goes on to explore some of the historical sources for the claim that judgement in science is value‐laden, and concludes (...)
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  17. Is There an ‘I’ in Epistemology?Ted Poston - 2012 - Dialectica 66 (4):517-541.
    Epistemic conservatism is the thesis that the mere holding of a belief confers some positive epistemic status on its content. Conservatism is widely criticized on the grounds that it conflicts with the main goal in epistemology to believe truths and disbelieve falsehoods. In this paper I argue for conservatism and defend it from objections. First, I argue that the objection to conservatism from the truth goal in epistemology fails. Second, I develop and defend an argument for conservatism from the perspectival (...)
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  18. Some Reflections on Whewell's Scientific Methodology.Azam Golam - 2009 - Journal of Sociology 1 (2):71-89.
  19. Platitudes and metaphysics.Daniel Nolan - 2009 - In David Braddon-Mitchell & Robert Nola (eds.), Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism. MIT Press.
    One increasingly popular technique in philosophy might be called the "platitudes analysis": a set of widely accepted claims about a given subject matter are collected, adjustments are made to the body of claims, and this is taken to specify a “role” for the phenomenon in question. (Perhaps the best-known example is analytic functionalism about mental states, where platitudes about belief, desire, intention etc. are together taken to give us a "role" for states to fill if they are to count as (...)
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  20. The virtues of epistemic conservatism.Kevin McCain - 2008 - Synthese 164 (2):185-200.
    Although several important methodologies implicitly assume the truth of epistemic conservatism, the view that holding a belief confers some measure of justification on the belief, recent criticisms have led some to conclude that epistemic conservatism is an implausible view. That conclusion is mistaken. In this article, I propose a new formulation of epistemic conservatism that is not susceptible to the criticisms leveled at earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism. In addition to withstanding these criticisms, this formulation of epistemic conservatism has several (...)
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  21. Prediction versus accommodation and the risk of overfitting.Christopher Hitchcock & Elliott Sober - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1):1-34.
    an observation to formulate a theory, it is no surprise that the resulting theory accurately captures that observation. However, when the theory makes a novel prediction—when it predicts an observation that was not used in its formulation—this seems to provide more substantial confirmation of the theory. This paper presents a new approach to the vexed problem of understanding the epistemic difference between prediction and accommodation. In fact, there are several problems that need to be disentangled; in all of them, the (...)
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  22. Coherence and Conservatism in the Dynamics of Belief. Part II: Iterated Belief Change Without Dispositional Coherence.Hans Rott - 2003 - Journal of Logic and Computation 13 (1):111-145.
    This paper studies the idea of conservatism with respect to belief change strategies in the setting of unary, iterated belief revision functions (based on the conclusions of Rott, ‘Coherence and Conservatism in the Dynamics of Belief, Part I: Finding the Right Framework’, Erkenntnis 50, 1999, 387–412). Special attention is paid to the case of ‘basic belief change’ where neither the (weak) AGM postulates concerning conservatism with respect to beliefs nor the (stong) supplementary AGM postulates concerning dispositional coherence need to be (...)
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  23. Belief's Own Ethics.Jonathan Eric Adler - 2002 - MIT Press.
    In this book Jonathan Adler offers a strengthened version of evidentialism, arguing that the ethics of belief should be rooted in the concept of belief--that...
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  24. Michael Polanyi's Concept of Tacit Knowledge and its Implications for Christianity.S. Alan Corlew - 2002 - Christianity and Society 12 (3):16-23.
    This article explores the implications of Michael Polanyi's concept of Tacit Knowledge for religious belief in general, and Christianity in particular, by investigating the relationship of tacit knowledge to commitment in scientific investigation, and extrapolating that relationship to commitments in the area of religious belief.
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  25. A discussion with Thomas S. Kuhn. In idem.T. S. Kuhn - 2000 - In Thomas Kuhn (ed.), The Road Since Structure. University of Chicago Press. pp. 253--324.
  26. Coherence and Conservatism in the Dynamics of Belief Part I: Finding the right framework.Hans Rott - 1999 - Erkenntnis 50 (2-3):387-412.
    In this paper I discuss the foundations of a formal theory of coherent and conservative belief change that is (a) suitable to be used as a method for constructing iterated changes of belief, (b) sensitive to the history of earlier belief changes, and (c) independent of any form of dispositional coherence. I review various ways to conceive the relationship between the beliefs actually held by an agent and her belief change strategies (that also deal with potential belief sets), show the (...)
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  27. Risk and diversification in theory choice.Alexander Rueger - 1996 - Synthese 109 (2):263 - 280.
    How can it be rational to work on a new theory that does not yet meet the standards for good or acceptable theories? If diversity of approaches is a condition for scientific progress, how can a scientific community achieve such progress when each member does what it is rational to do, namely work on the best theory? These two methodological problems, the problem of pursuit and the problem of diversity, can be solved by taking into account the cognitive risk that (...)
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  28. Preferential belief change using generalized epistemic entrenchment.Hans Rott - 1992 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 1 (1):45-78.
    A sentence A is epistemically less entrenched in a belief state K than a sentence B if and only if a person in belief state K who is forced to give up either A or B will give up A and hold on to B. This is the fundamental idea of epistemic entrenchment as introduced by Gärdenfors (1988) and elaborated by Gärdenfors and Makinson (1988). Another distinguishing feature of relations of epistemic entrenchment is that they permit particularly simple and elegant (...)
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  29. On conservative and adventurous styles of scientific research.John Wettersten - 1985 - Minerva 23 (4):443-463.
  30. Noble Gas Compounds: A Case Study in Scientific Conservatism and Opportunism.Hannah Gay - 1977 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 8 (1):61.
  31. Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1977 - In The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. University of Chicago Press. pp. 320--39.
  32. Rational belief change, Popper functions and counterfactuals.William L. Harper - 1975 - Synthese 30 (1-2):221 - 262.
    This paper uses Popper's treatment of probability and an epistemic constraint on probability assignments to conditionals to extend the Bayesian representation of rational belief so that revision of previously accepted evidence is allowed for. Results of this extension include an epistemic semantics for Lewis' theory of counterfactual conditionals and a representation for one kind of conceptual change.
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  33. Response bias explanation of conservative human inference.Wesley M. DuCharme - 1970 - Journal of Experimental Psychology 85 (1):66.
  34. Sampling distributions and probability revisions.Cameron R. Peterson, Wesley M. Ducharme & Ward Edwards - 1968 - Journal of Experimental Psychology 76 (2p1):236.