This book theorizes aesthetic classroom management through a hermeneutical approach with three fields of literature: history and philosophical foundations of chivalry, chivalry’s promulgation through the Victorian Age, and parallel issues of identity in twenty-first century teacher education. The aim of the book is to examine the relationship between chivalric ethos and education. The presented case study addresses more specifically the following question: how can chivalry be re-imagined or theorized in an educational setting? Few studies address the concept of aesthetics and (...) hermeneutical context in American classroom management and classroom life, and Attwood pinpoints and traces the medieval social concept of chivalry through the centuries and argues it has manifested itself in classroom social construction in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

:High-fidelity simulation is a relatively new teaching modality, which is gaining widespread acceptance in medical education. To date, dozens of studies have proven the usefulness of HFS in improving student, resident, and attending physician performance, with similar results in the allied health fields. Although many studies have analyzed the utility of simulation, few have investigated why it works. A recent study illustrated that permissive failure, leading to simulated mortality, is one HFS method that can improve long-term performance. Critics maintain, however, (...) that the use of simulated death is troubling and excessive. Given the controversy regarding simulated death, we consider the data about the educational value and the emotional harms associated with them, expecting that evidence could be useful in resolving the question. The goal of this narrative review is to explore the argument against simulated mortality and provide educators with an imperative as to why it can be safely utilized. (shrink)

Traditionally, the philosophical study of Folk Psychology has focused on how ordinary people (i.e., those without formal training in academic fields like Psychology, Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, etc.) go about attributing mental states. Those working in this tradition have tended to focus primarily on intentional states, like beliefs and desires . Recently, though a body of work has emerged in the growing field of Experimental Philosophy that focuses on folk attributions of mental states that are not paradigmatically considered intentional. (...) This emerging discussion is concerned with figuring out how (and whether) ordinary people go about attributing mental states of qualitative experience, or what philosophers might call states of phenomenal consciousness . This paper briefly describes some of the primary works in the existing experimental philosophy literature and presents new experimental data that weigh on those hypotheses. Finally, it offers a cognitive model of the processes underlying attributions of mental states, called the Agency Model. (shrink)

Grounded in what Alan Wertheimer terms the nonworseness claim, it is thought by some philosophers that what will be referred to herein as better-than-permissible acts —acts that, if undertaken, would make another or others better off than they would be were an alternative but morally permissible act to be undertaken—are necessarily morally permissible. What, other than a bout of irrationality, it may be thought, would lead one to hold that an act (such as outsourcing production to a sweatshop in a (...) developing country) that produces more benefits for others than an act that is itself morally permissible (such as not doing business in the developing country at all) with respect to those same others, is not morally permissible? In this article, I argue that each of the two groups of philosophers that are most likely to accept the nonworseness claim—consequentialists and non-consequentialists—have reason to reject it, and thereby also have reason to reject the belief that better-than-permissible acts are necessarily morally permissible. (shrink)

In a letter to Wlodek Rabinowicz, David Lewis introduced a decision scenario that he described as “much more problematic for decision theory than the Newcomb Problems”. This scenario, which involves an agent with foreknowledge of the outcome of some chance process, has received little subsequent attention. However, in one of the small number of discussions of such cases, Huw Price's Causation, Chance and the Rational Significance of Supernatural Evidence it has been argued that cases of this sort pose serious problems (...) for causal decision theory. In this paper, I will argue that these problems can be overcome: scenarios of this sort do not pose fatal problems for this theory as there are versions of CDT that reason appropriately in these cases. However, I will also argue that such cases push us toward a particular version of CDT developed by Wlodek Rabinowicz. (shrink)

This paper considers the ways that Information Ethics (IE) treats things. A number of critics have focused on IE’s move away from anthropocentrism to include non-humans on an equal basis in moral thinking. I enlist Actor Network Theory, Dennett’s views on ‹as if’ intentionality and Magnani’s characterization of ‹moral mediators’. Although they demonstrate different philosophical pedigrees, I argue that these three theories can be pressed into service in defence of IE’s treatment of things. Indeed the support they lend to the (...) extension of moral status to non-human objects can be seen as part of a trend towards the accommodation of non-humans into our moral and social networks. A number of parallels are drawn between philosophical arguments over artificial intelligence and information ethics. (shrink)

Causal decision theory is one of our most prominent theories of rational choice and the “why ain’cha rich?” argument is one of the most prominent objections to this theory. According to WAR, CDT is not an adequate theory of rational choice because it leads agents to make decisions that foreseeably leave them less well off than agents that decide in some other manner. Some philosophers take WAR to decisively undermine CDT. On the other hand, others take WAR to fail to (...) resolve the debate over CDT’s adequacy. In this paper, I will defend this second view: WAR does not resolve the debate at hand but instead leads to deadlock. Then, in the second half of this paper, I will show that this deadlock is not broken by a recent variant on WAR due to Caspar Hare and Brian Hedden. Not only does this result have implications for the debate over CDT’s adequacy but this discussion also casts light on the broader success/rationality link. (shrink)

In the paper, classical assumptions of the problem of change are presented and analyzed. The author considers following assumptions which make theses about: (i) identity and persistence through time; (ii) a conceptual change; (iii) intrinsic properties; and (iv) the Leibniz's Law. In the light of the analyses, it is shown that the problem of change does not have substantial nature and therefore cannot be treated as legitimization of the theories of persistence. Finally, the author acknowledges a relationship between the rethought (...) matter of change and the theories of persistence. (shrink)

In their recent paper, Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner offer a model of moral cognition, the “Moral Typecasting” thesis, in which they claim that perceptions of moral agency are inversely related to perceptions of moral patiency. Once we see someone as a moral agent, they claim, we cannot see them as a moral patient (and vice versa). In this paper, I want both to challenge the conception of morality on which the typecasting thesis is fundamentally based and to raise some (...) concerns with the data offered in favor of moral typecasting. I first argue that the dyadic definition of morality is far too narrow to fully capture either all of morality or all of moral psychology. Further, even setting aside the problems with the dyadic notion of morality, I argue that the experimental data Gray and Wegner appeal to fail to demonstrate the sort of mutual exclusivity of and causal interaction between moral perceptions that the moral typecasting thesis proposes. Rather, I suggest, the perceptual differences that do show up in the cited studies arguably arise not from a psychological tendency towards moral typecasting, but from confounding features of the characters in the stimuli. (shrink)

We argue that any strong version of a knowledge condition on intentional action, the practical knowledge principle, on which knowledge of what I am doing (under some description: call it A-ing) is necessary for that A-ing to qualify as an intentional action, is false. Our argument involves a new kind of case, one that centers the agent’s control appropriately and thus improves upon Davidson’s well-known carbon copier case. After discussing this case, offering an initial argument against the knowledge condition, and (...) discussing recent treatments that cover nearby ground, we consider several objections. One we consider at some length maintains that although contemplative knowledge may be disconnected from intentional action, specifically practical knowledge of the sort Anscombe elucidated escapes our argument. We demonstrate that this is not so. Our argument illuminates an important truth, often overlooked in discussions of the knowledge-intentional action relationship: intentional action and knowledge have different levels of permissiveness regarding failure in similar circumstances. (shrink)

Backdating of stock options is an example of an agency problem. It has emerged despite all the measures (i.e., new regulations and additional corporate governance mechanisms) aimed at addressing such problems? Beyond such negative controlling measures, a more positive empowering approach based on ethics may also be necessary. What ethical measures need to be taken to address the agency problem? What values and norms should guide the board of directors in protecting the shareholders' interests? To examine these issues, we first (...) discuss the role values and norms can play with respect to underlying corporate governance and the proper role of directors, such as transparency, accountability, integrity (which is reflected in proper mechanisms of checks and balances), and public responsibility. Second, we discuss various stakeholder approaches (e.g., government, directors, managers, and shareholders) by which conflicts of interest (i.e., the agency problem) can be addressed. Third, we assess the practice of backdating stock options, as an illustration of the agency problem, in terms of whether the practice is legally acceptable or ethically justifiable. Fourth, we proceed to an analysis of good corporate governance practice involving backdating options based on a series of ethical standards including: (1) trustworthiness; (2) utilitarianism; (3) justice; and (4) Kantianism. We conclude that while executive compensation schemes (e. g., stock options) were originally intended to help remedy the agency problem by tying together the interests of the executives and shareholders, these schemes may have actually become "part of the problem," and that the solution ultimately depends upon whether directors and executives accept that all of their actions must be based on a set of core ethical values. (shrink)

Must even Confucian rights skeptics—those who are, on account of their Confucian beliefs, skeptical of the existence of human rights, and believe that asserting or recognizing rights is morally wrong—concede that in the workplace, they are morally obligated to recognize rights? Alan Strudler has recently argued that such is the case. In this article, I argue that because Confucian rights skeptics locate wrongness in inconsistency with the idea of “Confucian community,” Confucian community should be viewed as a moral ideal. I (...) then argue that Confucian rights skeptics ought to act in a manner that is consistent with this ideal, even when the ideal has not yet been realized, just as Kantians ought to act consistently with the Kantian kingdom of ends ideal. Accordingly, contrary to Strudler, I argue that Confucian rights skeptics need not concede that they are morally obligated to recognize rights in the workplace. This conclusion suggests the need for inquiry into the metaphysical foundations of these conflicting views. However, such inquiry is commonly thought to lie beyond the scope of philosophical business ethics proper. I conclude the article by suggesting a number of reasons for business ethicists to consider rejecting the prevalent narrow conception of the scope of the discipline. (shrink)

As ever more advanced digital systems are created, it becomes increasingly likely that some of these systems will be digital minds, i.e. digital subjects of experience. With digital minds comes the risk of digital suffering. The problem of digital suffering is that of mitigating this risk. We argue that the problem of digital suffering is a high stakes moral problem and that formidable epistemic obstacles stand in the way of solving it. We then propose a strategy for solving it: Access (...) Monitor Prevent (AMP). AMP uses a ‘dancing qualia’ argument to link the functional states of certain digital systems to their experiences—this yields epistemic access to digital minds. With that access, we can prevent digital suffering by only creating advanced digital systems that we have such access to, monitoring their functional profiles, and preventing them from entering states with functional markers of suffering. After introducing and motivating AMP, we confront limitations it faces and identify some options for overcoming them. We argue that AMP fits especially well with—and so provides a moral reason to prioritize—one approach to creating such systems: whole brain emulation. We also contend that taking other paths to digital minds would be morally risky. (shrink)

Experiments are actions, performed in order to gain information. Like other acts, there are virtues of performing them well. I discuss one virtue of experimentation, that of knowing how to trade its information-gaining potential against other goods.

The communicative behavior of chimpanzees has been cited in support of the hypothesis that language evolved from gesture. In this commentary, I compare gestural and vocal communication in wild chimpanzees. Because the use of gesture in wild chimpanzees is limited, whereas their vocal behavior is relatively complex, I argue that wild chimpanzee behavior fails to support the gestural origins hypothesis.

It is commonly believed that the moral norms of “everyday” or “traditional” morality apply uniformly in all business contexts. However, Joseph Heath has recently argued that this is not the case. According to Heath, the norms of everyday morality apply with respect to “administered” transactions, but not “market” transactions. Market transactions are, he argues, governed by a distinct, “adversarial” morality. In this essay, I argue that Heath’s attempt to show that competitive contexts are governed by a distinct, adversarial morality does (...) not succeed. I then undertake the task of showing that, contrary to what is commonly thought, competitive actions can be reconciled with the norms of traditional morality. (shrink)

What grounds the moral significance of the intend/foresee distinction? To put the question another way, what reason do we have for believing that moral absolutes apply with respect to intended effects, but not foreseeable but unintended (bad) effects? Joseph Boyle has provided an answer that relies on the idea that persons can find themselves in situations of “moral impossibility”—situations in which every available option foreseeably will give rise to bad effects. However, Robert Anderson has put Boyle’s answer into question by (...) arguing, in essence, as follows: the choice to do nothing gives rise to no effects at all; one can always simply choose to do nothing; therefore, it is not the case that situations of moral impossibility obtain. In response, Boyle has argued that Anderson’s conception of the effects of the choice to do nothing is implausible and, further, that the choice to do nothing gives rise to effects just as do other choices. In this essay, I address and extend this debate. (shrink)

Comparisons betw western philosophies are uncommon and this, among other things, hinders global philosophical discourse. Thus, in this essay I want to compare the philosophies of the Buddha and Epicurus for similarities, particular in regard to what I call "negative happiness." Once I have establish this, I want to give a brief critique of negative happiness, which subsequently amounts to a selective critique of Buddhism and Epicureanism.

Drawing on the epistemology of logic literature on anti-exceptionalism about logic, we set out to investigate the following metaphilosophical questions empirically: Is philosophy special? Are its methods (dis)continuous with science? More specifically, we test the following metaphilosophical hypotheses empirically: philosophical deductivism, philosophical inductivism, and philosophical abductivism. Using indicator words to classify arguments by type (namely, deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments), we searched through a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database (N = 435,703) to find patterns of (...) argumentation. The results of our quantitative, corpus-based study suggest that deductive arguments are significantly more common than abductive arguments and inductive arguments in philosophical texts overall, but they are gradually and steadily giving way to non-deductive (i.e. inductive and abductive) arguments in academic philosophy. (shrink)

This paper reviews the relatively small body of work in computer ethics which looks at the question of whether gender makes any difference to ethical decisions. There are two strands of writing on gender and computer ethics. The first focuses on problems of women's access to computer technology; the second concentrates on whether there are differences between men and women's ethical decision making in relation to information and computing technologies. I criticize the latter area, arguing that such studies survey student (...) audiences, that they emphasize the result of an ethical decision over the process of arriving at the decision, that they are problematic in relation to research methodology and that they are undertheorized. Given that traditional ethical theories largely ignore gender, I offer a gender based ethics in terms of feminist ethics as the best place to look for theoretical substance. The paper concludes by considering how feminist ethics can be combined with empirical studies that emphasize observation and interviewing in order to move gender and computer ethics onward from statistical studies of men's and women's ethical decisions toward more substantially theorized studies of areas in computer ethics which have gender implications, such as privacy and power. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the self-knowledge of emotions. I first argue that several of the leading theories of self-knowledge, including thetransparency method(see, e.g., Byrne 2018) andneo-expressivism(see, e.g., Bar-On 2004), have difficulties explaining how we authoritatively know our own emotions (even though they may plausibly account for sensation, belief, intention, and desire). I next consider Barrett’s (2017a) empirically informedtheory of constructed emotion. While I agree with her that we ‘give meaning to [our] present sensations’ (2017a, p.26), I disagree with her that (...) we construct our emotions, as this has some unwelcome implications. I then draw upon recent data from the science of emotions literature to advance a view I call partial first-person authority. According to this view, first-person authority with respect to our emotions is only partial: we can introspect and authoritatively know our own sensations, and beliefs, in ways others cannot; but we still need to interpret those sensations and beliefs, to know our emotions. Finally, I consider self-interpretational accounts of self-knowledge by Carruthers (2011) and Cassam (2014). I argue that while these accounts are implausible when applied to beliefs, desires, and intentions, they are more plausible when applied to our emotions. (shrink)

Here I reply to criticisms by Jeroen de Ridder and S. Kate Devitt to my "Collective (Telic) Virtue Epistemology".

I discuss how simulating another agent can be useful in some game-theoretical situations, particularly iterated games such as the centipede game.

A common objection to Sosa’s epistemology is that it countenances, in an objectionable way, unsafe knowledge. This objection, under closer inspection, turns out to be in far worse shape than Sosa’s critics have realised. Sosa and his defenders have offered two central response types to the idea that allowing unsafe knowledge is problematic: one response type adverts to the animal/reflective knowledge distinction that is characteristic of bi-level virtue epistemology. The other less-discussed response type appeals to the threat of dream scepticism, (...) and in particular, to the idea that many of our everyday perceptual beliefs are unsafe through the nearness of the dream possibility. The latter dreaming response to the safety objection to Sosa’s virtue epistemology has largely flown under the radar in contemporary discussions of safety and knowledge. We think that, suitably articulated in view of research in the philosophy and science of dreaming, it has much more going for it than has been appreciated. This paper further develops, beyond what Sosa does himself, the dreaming argument in response to those who think safety (as traditionally understood) is a condition on knowledge and who object to Sosa’s account on the grounds that it fails this condition. The payoffs of further developing this argument will be not only a better understanding of the importance of insights about dreaming against safety as a condition on knowledge, but also some reason to think a weaker safety condition, one that is relativised to SSS (i.e., skill/shape/situation) conditions for competence exercise, gets better results all things considered as an anti-luck codicil on knowledge. (shrink)

Full aptness is the most important concept in performance-based virtue epistemology. The structure of full aptness, in epistemology and elsewhere, is bi-levelled. At the first level, we evaluate beliefs, like performances, on the basis of whether they are successful, competent, and apt – viz., successful because competent. But the fact that aptness itself can be fragile – as it is when an apt performance could easily have been inapt – points to a higher zone of quality beyond mere aptness. To (...) break in to this zone, one must not merely perform aptly but also in doing so safeguard in skilled ways against certain risks to inaptness. But how must this be done, exactly? This paper has two central aims. First, I challenge the credentials of mainstream thinking about full-aptness by raising some new and serious problems for the view. I then propose a novel account of full aptness – what I call de minimis normativism – which keeps all the advantages of the canonical view, avoids its problems entirely, and offers some additional payoffs. (shrink)

Abstract: Might knowledge normatively govern conversations and not just their discrete constituent thoughts and (assertoric) actions? I answer yes, at least for a restricted class of conversations I call aimed conversations. On the view defended here, aimed conversations are governed by participatory know-how - viz., knowledge how to do what each interlocutor to the conversation shares a participatory intention to do by means of that conversation. In the specific case of conversations that are in the service of joint inquiry, the (...) view defended is that interlocutors (A, B, ... n) must intentionally inquire together into whether p, by means of an aimed conversation X, only if A,B, ... n know how to use X to find out together whether p. The view is supported by considerations about instrumental rationality, shared intentionality, the epistemology of intentional action, as well as linguistic data. (shrink)

A new way to transpose the virtue epistemologist’s ‘knowledge = apt belief’ template to the collective level, as a thesis about group knowledge, is developed. In particular, it is shown how specifically judgmental belief can be realised at the collective level in a way that is structurally analogous, on a telic theory of epistemic normativity (e.g., Sosa 2020), to how it is realised at the individual level—viz., through a (collective) intentional attempt to get it right aptly (whether p) by alethically (...) affirming that p. An advantage of the proposal developed is that it is shown to be compatible with competing views—viz., joint acceptance accounts and social-distributive accounts—of how group members must interact in order to materially realise a group belief. I conclude by showing how the proposed judgment-focused collective (telic) virtue epistemology has important advantages over a rival version of collective virtue epistemology defended in recent work by Jesper Kallestrup (2016). (shrink)

This paper is a response to Henk ten Have's Genetics and Culture: The Geneticization thesis . In it, I refute Ten Have's suggestion that geneticization is not the sort of process that can be measured and commented on in terms of empirical evidence,even if he is correct in suggesting that it should be seen as part of ‘philosophical discourse’. At the end, I relate this discussion to broader debates within bioethics between the social science and philosophy, and suggest the need (...) for philosophical approaches to take the social sciences seriously. (shrink)

Intellectual autonomy has long been identified as an epistemic virtue, one that has been championed influentially by (among others) Kant, Hume and Emerson. Manifesting intellectual autonomy, at least, in a virtuous way, does not require that we form our beliefs in cognitive isolation. Rather, as Roberts and Wood (Intellectual virtues: an essay in regulative epistemology, OUP Oxford, Oxford, pp. 259–260, 2007) note, intellectually virtuous autonomy involves reliance and outsourcing (e.g., on other individuals, technology, medicine, etc.) to an appropriate extent, while (...) at the same time maintaining intellectual self-direction. In this essay, I want to investigate the ramifications for intellectual autonomy of a particular kind of epistemic dependence: cognitive enhancement. Cognitive enhancements (as opposed to therapeutic cognitive improvements) involve the use of technology and medicine to improve cognitive capacities in healthy individuals, through mechanisms ranging from smart drugs to brain-computer interfaces. With reference to case studies in bioethics, as well as the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, it is shown that epistemic dependence, in this extreme form, poses a prima facie threat to the retention of intellectual autonomy, specifically, by threatening to undermine our intellectual self-direction. My aim will be to show why certain kinds of cognitive enhancements are subject to this objection from self-direction, while others are not. Once this is established, we’ll see that even some extreme kinds of cognitive enhancement might be not merely compatible with, but constitutive of, virtuous intellectual autonomy. (shrink)

AbstractSimion and Kelp offer a prima facie very promising account of trustworthy AI. One benefit of the account is that it elegantly explains trustworthiness in the case of cancer diagnostic AIs, which involve the acquisition by the AI of a representational etiological function. In this brief note, I offer some reasons to think that their account cannot be extended — at least not straightforwardly — beyond such cases (i.e., to cases of AIs with non-representational etiological functions) without incurring the unwanted (...) cost of overpredicting untrustworthiness. (shrink)

The philosophical significance of attitudinal autonomy—viz., the autonomy of attitudes such as beliefs—is widely discussed in the literature on moral responsibility and free will. Within this literature, a key debate centres around the following question: is the kind of attitudinal autonomy that’s relevant to moral responsibility at a given time determined entirely by a subject’s present mental structure at that time? Internalists say ‘yes’, externalists say ’no’. In this essay, I motivate a kind of distinctly epistemic attitudinal autonomy, attitudinal autonomy (...) that is relevant to knowledge. I argue that regardless of whether we are externalists or internalists about the kind of attitudinal autonomy that is relevant for moral responsibility, we should be externalists about the kind of autonomy that a belief must have to qualify as knowledge. (shrink)

Proponents of Evidence-based medicine (EBM) do not provide a clear role for basic science in therapeutic decision making. Of what they do say about basic science, most of it is negative. Basic science resides on the lower tiers of EBM's hierarchy of evidence. Therapeutic decisions, according to proponents of EBM, should be informed by evidence from randomised studies (and systematic reviews of randomised studies) rather than basic science. A framework of models explicates the links between the mechanisms of basic science, (...) experimental inquiry, and observed data. Relying on the framework of models I show that basic science often plays a role not only in specifying experiments, but also analysing and interpreting the data that is provided. Further, and contradicting what is implied in EBM's hierarchy of evidence, appeals to basic science are often required to apply clinical research to therapeutic questions. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. (shrink)

(I) In Beyond Rigidity, Scott Soames argues that the term ‘water’ is ambiguous. On one disambiguation, it is an expansive predicate that is true of any quantity of H2O whatsoever. On a second disambiguation, it is a restricted predicate, true only of liquid quantities of H2O. Analytic philosophers are fond of claiming ambiguities where there are none. This, I shall argue, is the case with the claimed expansive‐restricted ambiguity. The predicate‐kind ambiguity I have no quibble with.

I investigate the implication of the truth-relativist’s alleged ‘ faultless disagreements’ for issues in the epistemology of disagreement. A conclusion I draw is that the type of disagreement the truth-relativist claims to preserve fails in principle to be epistemically significant in the way we should expect disagreements to be in social-epistemic practice. In particular, the fact of faultless disagreement fails to ever play the epistemically significant role of making doxastic revision rationally required for either party in a disagreement. That the (...) truth-relativists’ disagreements over centred content fail to play this epistemically significant role that disagreements characteristically play in social epistemology should leave us sceptical that disagreement is what the truth-relativist has actually preserved. (shrink)

[Ronald de Sousa] Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations such as emotions; belief-like (...) states, by contrast, are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem-objectivity-is not insurmountable. /// [Adam Morton ] It is accuracy rather than truth itself that is valuable. Emotional truth is a dubious though attractive notion, but emotional accuracy is much easier to make sense of. My approach to accuracy goes via an account of what makes a story accurate. Stories can be accurate but not true, and emotions can be accurate whether or not they are true. The capacity for emotional accuracy, for emotions that fit a person's situation, is an aspect of emotional intelligence, which is as important an aspect of rational human agency as the intelligent formation of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

If individual knowledge and justification can be vanquished by epistemic defeaters, then the same should go for group knowledge. Lackey (2014) has recently argued that one especially strong conception of group knowledge defended by Bird (2010) is incapable of preserving how it is that (group) knowledge is ever subject to ordinary mechanisms of epistemic defeat. Lackey takes it that her objections do not also apply to a more moderate articulation of group knowledge--one that is embraced widely in collective epistemology--and which (...) she does not challenge. This paper argues that given certain background premises that are embraced by orthodox thinking in collectivist epistemology, the more moderate account of group knowledge cannot make sense of either psychological or normative epistemic defeaters. I conclude by offering some suggestions for how the more moderate proposal might avoid this result. (shrink)

According to Paul Boghossian (2006, 73) a core tenet of epistemic relativism is what he calls epistemic pluralism, according to which (i) ‘there are many fundamentally different, genuinely alternative epistemic systems’, but (ii) ‘no facts by virtue of which one of these systems is more correct than any of the others’. Embracing the former claim is more or less uncontroversial–viz., a descriptive fact about epistemic diversity. The latter claim by contrast is very controversial. Interestingly, the Wittgenstenian ‘hinge’ epistemologist, in virtue (...) of maintaining that rational evaluation is essentially local, will (arguably, at least) be committed to the more controversial leg of the epistemic pluralist thesis, simply in virtue of countenancing the descriptive leg. This paper does three central things. First, it is shown that this ‘relativistic’ reading of Wittgenstein’s epistemology is plausible only if the locality of rational evaluation (in conjunction with a reasonable appreciation of epistemic diversity) commits the Wittgenstenian to a further epistemic incommensurability thesis. Next, Duncan Pritchard’s (e.g., 2009; 2015) novel attempt to save the hinge epistemologist from a commitment to epistemic incommensurability is canvassed and critiqued. Finally, it is suggested how, regardless of whether Pritchard’s strategy is successful, there might be another very different way—drawing from recent work by John MacFarlane (2014)—for the hinge epistemologist to embrace epistemic pluralism while steering clear of epistemic relativism, understood in a very specific way. (shrink)

According to one prominent view of exercising abilities (e.g., Millar 2009), a subject, S, counts as exercising an ability to ϕ if and only if S successfully ϕs. Such an ‘exercise-success’ thesis looks initially very plausible for abilities, perhaps even obviously or analytically true. In this paper, however, I will be defending the position that one can in fact exercise an ability to do one thing by doing some entirely distinct thing, and in doing so I’ll highlight various reasons (epistemological, (...) metaphysical and linguistic) that favor the alternative approach I develop over views that hold that the exercise of an ability is a success notion in the sense Millar maintains. (shrink)

This article considers the question of embodiment in relation to gender and whether there are models of artificial intelligence (AI) which can enrol a concept of gender in their design. A central concern for feminist epistemology is the role of the body in the making of knowledge. I consider how this may inform a critique of the AI project and the related area of artificial life (A–Life), the latter area being of most interest in this paper. I explore briefly the (...) tensions between the treatment of the body in different branches of feminist theory, especially the tensions between the approaches of feminist sociology and feminist philosophy. I explore the ways in which writing from category theory and anthropological phenomenology offers rich suggestions as to how the body has been left out of objectivist accounts of epistemology, but struggles to offer an account of why. In its analysis of the links between women, knowledge and the body, feminist revisions of epistemology offer a more convincing why. This is explored briefly through a critique of symbolic AI, and more substantially through the problem of embodiment in artificial life. (shrink)

The present article aims to explain Kamala??la’s understanding of the nature of insight, specifically considering it as the ‘discernment of reality’ -- a technical term identified with insight in the author’s well known Bh?van?krama? texts. I approach my analysis of bh?ta-pratyavek?? from three different angles. I begin by providing a rationale for its translation. This is followed by an account of Kamala??la’s reading of key passages in the La?k?vat?ra S?tra describing the process to which the term refers. Here the aim (...) is to illustrate Kamala??la’s understanding of bh?ta-pratyavek?? as it is actually experienced in meditation. The final section examines bh?ta-pratyavek?? in relation to other important technical terminology employed in the course of making arguments against his historical rival in debate, the Ch’an monk Mo ho yen. By providing these three different perspectives on the same process it is my hope that both scholars and practitioners will be able to more fully comprehend and benefit from the instructions provided by the ancient master Kamala??la. (shrink)

The present article aims to explain Kamala??la’s understanding of the nature of insight, specifically considering it as the ‘discernment of reality’ -- a technical term identified with insight in the author’s well known Bh?van?krama? texts. I approach my analysis of bh?ta-pratyavek?? from three different angles. I begin by providing a rationale for its translation. This is followed by an account of Kamala??la’s reading of key passages in the La?k?vat?ra S?tra describing the process to which the term refers. Here the aim (...) is to illustrate Kamala??la’s understanding of bh?ta-pratyavek?? as it is actually experienced in meditation. The final section examines bh?ta-pratyavek?? in relation to other important technical terminology employed in the course of making arguments against his historical rival in debate, the Ch’an monk Mo ho yen. By providing these three different perspectives on the same process it is my hope that both scholars and practitioners will be able to more fully comprehend and benefit from the instructions provided by the ancient master Kamala??la. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to sketch a framework for perceiving the act of consumption as an aesthetic phenomenon. I shall argue that, under some circumstances, it is possible to receive aesthetic satisfaction from the act of eating food, in which the object of one’s appreciation is, for the most part, considered separately from what is actually eaten. I propose to call such a process “aesthetic eating” and argue that due to its aesthetic autonomy it might be a potential (...) factor in enjoying certain kinds of food. This phenomenon is apparent in the case of the types of food that are acquired tastes. It is plausible that distinguishing the aesthetic pleasures of food from the ones associated with the act of eating can not only enrich our aesthetic life but also deepen the aesthetics of our overall gustatory experience. (shrink)

The article seeks to explain what it means to say that an object has the status of being made art-like. I have reconstructed and analysed Ossi Naukkarinen and Yuriko Saito’s definition of artification and flagged up its methodological limitations. My conclusions serve as a starting point for describing the nature of artified objects, the way they are individuated, and how they persist. I consider the question of what can and what cannot be artified. Finally, I propose that artification be redefined (...) in such a way as to render it informative on the grounds of the largest number of existing aesthetic theories of art. (shrink)

A novel solution is offered for how emotional experiences can function as sources of immediate prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs, and in such a way that suffices to halt a justificatory regress. Key to this solution is the recognition of two distinct kinds of emotional skill (what I call generative emotional skill and doxastic emotional skill) and how these must be working in tandem when emotional experience plays such a justificatory role. The paper has two main parts, the first (...) negative and the second positive. The negative part criticises the epistemic credentials of Epistemic Perceptualism (e.g., Tappolet 2012, 2016; Doring 2003, 2007; Elgin 2008; Roberts 2003), the view that emotional experience alone suffices to prima facie justify evaluative beliefs in a way that is analogous to how perceptual experience justifies our beliefs about the external world. The second part of the paper develops an account of emotional skill and uses this account to frame a revisionary form of Epistemic Perceptualism that succeeds where the traditional views could not. I conclude by considering some objections and replies. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard has, in the years following his (2005) defence of a safety-based account of knowledge in Epistemic Luck, abjured his (2005) view that knowledge can be analysed exclusively in terms of a modal safety condition. He has since (Pritchard in Synthese 158:277–297, 2007; J Philosophic Res 34:33–45, 2009a, 2010) opted for an account according to which two distinct conditions function with equal importance and weight within an analysis of knowledge: an anti-luck condition (safety) and an ability condition-the latter being (...) a condition aimed at preserving what Pritchard now takes to be a fundamental insight about knowledge: that it arises from cognitive ability (Greco 2010; Sosa 2007, 2009). Pritchard calls his new view anti-luck virtue epistemology (ALVE). A key premise in Pritchard’s argument for ALVE is what I call the independence thesis; the thesis that satisfying neither the anti-luck condition nor the ability condition entails that the other is satisfied. Pritchard’s argument for the independence thesis relies crucially upon the case he makes for thinking that cognitive achievements are compatible with knowledge-undermining environmental luck—that is, the sort of luck widely thought to undermine knowledge in standard barn facade cases. In the first part of this paper, I outline the key steps in Pritchard’s argument for anti-luck virtue epistemology and highlight how it is that the compatibility of cognitive achievement and knowledge- undermining environmental luck is indispensible to the argument’s success. The second part of this paper aims to show that this compatibility premise crucial to Pritchard’s argument is incorrect. (shrink)