O presente volume se trata de uma coletânea de artigos que reúne alguns dos trabalhos propostos para o evento “III International Colloquium of Analytic Epistemology and VII Conference of Social Epistemology”, realizado entre os dias 27 e 30 de Novembro de 2018, na Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. O “III International Colloquium of Analytic Epistemology and VII Conference of Social Epistemology” é um dos principais eventos de Epistemologia analítica da América Latina e reúne especialistas do Brasil e do exterior para (...) promover debates de alto nível sobre temas que fazem parte da agenda contemporânea no que se refere ao debate analítico contemporâneo acerca da Epistemologia. (shrink)

The paper investigates the epistemological and communicative competences the experts need to use and communicate evidence in the reasoning process leading to diagnosis. The diagnosis and diagnosis communication are presented as intertwined processes that should be jointly addressed in medical consultations, to empower patients’ compliance in illness management. The paper presents defeasible reasoning as specific to the diagnostic praxis, showing how this type of reasoning threatens effective diagnosis communication and entails that we should understand diagnostic evidence as defeasible as well. (...) It argues that metaphors might be effective communicative devices to let the patients understand the relevant defeasors in the diagnostic reasoning process, helping to improve effective diagnosis communication, and also encouraging a change in patients’ beliefs and attitudes on their own experience of illness and illness’ management. (shrink)

Fixpoint semantics are provided for ambiguity blocking and propagating variants of Nute's defeasible logic. The semantics are based upon the well-founded semantics for logic programs. It is shown that the logics are sound with respect to their counterpart semantics and complete for locally finite theories. Unlike some other nonmonotonic reasoning formalisms such as Reiter's default logic, the two defeasible logics are directly skeptical and so reject floating conclusions. For defeasible theories with transitive priorities on defeasible rules, the logics are shown (...) to satisfy versions of Cut and Cautious Monotony. For theories with either conflict sets closed under strict rules or strict rules closed under transposition, a form of Consistency Preservation is shown to hold. The differences between the two logics and other variants of defeasible logic—specifically those presented by Billington, Antoniou, Governatori, and Maher—are discussed. (shrink)

Tarski’s conceptual analysis of the notion of logical consequence is one of the pinnacles of the process of defining the metamathematical foundations of mathematics in the tradition of his predecessors Euclid, Frege, Russell and Hilbert, and his contemporaries Carnap, Gödel, Gentzen and Turing. However, he also notes that in defining the concept of consequence “efforts were made to adhere to the common usage of the language of every day life.” This paper addresses the issue of what relationship Tarski’s analysis, and (...) Béziau’s further generalization of it in universal logic, have to reasoning in the everyday lives of ordinary people from the cognitive processes of children through to those of specialists in the empirical and deductive sciences. It surveys a selection of relevant research in a range of disciplines providing theoretical and empirical studies of human reasoning, discusses the value of adopting a universal logic perspective, answers the questions posed in the call for this special issue, and suggests some specific research challenges. (shrink)

The negative zombie argument concludes that physicalism is false from the premises that p ∧¬q is ideally negatively conceivable and that what is ideally negatively conceivable is possible, where p is the conjunction of the fundamental physical truths and laws and q is a phenomenal truth (Chalmers 2002; 2010). A sentence φ is ideally negatively conceivable iff φ is not ruled out a priori on ideal rational reflection. In this paper, I argue that the negative zombie argument is neither a (...) priori nor conclusive. First, I argue that the premises of the argument are true only if there exists an adequate finite ideal reasoner R that believes ◊(p ∧ ¬q) on the basis of not believing p→q on a priori basis. Roughly, a finite reasoner is a reasoner with cognitive limitations (e.g. finite memory). I argue that R is finite only if R reasons nonmonotonically and only approach ideal reflection at the limit of a reasoning sequence. This would render the argument nonconclusive. Finally, I argue that, for some q, R does not believe ◊(p ∧ ¬q) on the basis of not believing p→q on a priori basis (e.g. for q =‘something is conscious’). This would render the choice of an adequate q dependent on empirical information (and the argument a posteriori). I conclude that the negative zombie argument (and, maybe, all zombie arguments) is neither a priori nor conclusive. (shrink)

While the epistemic significance of disagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logical disagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer) disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logical disagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical disagreement’. Chapters 1 and (...) 2 focus on the Ad Hoc Reading according to which logical disagreements occur when two subjects take incompatible doxastic attitudes toward a specific proposition in or about logic. Chapter 2 presents a new counterexample to the widely discussed Uniqueness Thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Theory Choice Reading of ‘logical disagreement’. According to this interpretation, logical disagreements occur at the level of entire logical theories rather than individual entailment-claims. Chapter 4 concerns a key question from the philosophy of logic, viz., how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical consequence. In Chapters 5 and 6 we turn to the Akrasia Reading. On this reading, logical disagreements occur when there is a mismatch between the deductive strength of one’s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (officially). Chapter 6 introduces logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia and presents a novel dilemma. Chapter 7 revisits the epistemology of peer disagreement and argues that the epistemic significance of central principles from the literature are at best deflated in the context of logical disagreement. The chapter also develops a simple formal model of deep disagreement in Default Logic, relating this to our general discussion of logical disagreement. The monograph ends in an epilogue with some reflections on the potential epistemic significance of convergence in logical theorizing. (shrink)

The most widespread models of rational reasoners (the model based on modal epistemic logic and the model based on probability theory) exhibit the problem of logical omniscience. The most common strategy for avoiding this problem is to interpret the models as describing the explicit beliefs of an ideal reasoner, but only the implicit beliefs of a real reasoner. I argue that this strategy faces serious normative issues. In this paper, I present the more fundamental problem of logical omnipotence, which highlights (...) the normative content of the problem of logical omniscience. I introduce two developments of the notion of implicit belief (accessible and stable belief ) and use them in two versions of the most common strategy applied to the problem of logical omnipotence. (shrink)

The notion of an ideal reasoner has several uses in epistemology. Often, ideal reasoners are used as a parameter of (maximum) rationality for finite reasoners (e.g. humans). However, the notion of an ideal reasoner is normally construed in such a high degree of idealization (e.g. infinite/unbounded memory) that this use is unadvised. In this dissertation, I investigate the conditions under which an ideal reasoner may be used as a parameter of rationality for finite reasoners. In addition, I present and justify (...) the research program of computational epistemology, which investigates the parameter of maximum rationality for finite reasoners using computer simulations. (shrink)