Expertise, authority, and testimony refer to aspects of one of the most important elements of communication and cognition. Argumentation theory recognises various forms of what we call the argumentum ad alia pattern, in which speakers appeal to what others have said, including Position to Know scheme, Witness Testimony scheme, Expert Opinion scheme and the classical ad verecundiam. In this paper we show that ad alia involves more than merely an inferential step from what others (a person in position to (...) know, a witness, an expert) have said, and that studying this type of argumentation requires going beyond the argument structure of propositional contents to account for different speech activities. We also demonstrate that using the words of others, attacking what has been said, and reasoning from how others reason constitute a rich repertoire of communication strategies which we need to model in order to be able to analyse them manually and to process them computationally. (shrink)

In this essay, Chris Higgins sets out to disentangle the tradition of humane learning from contemporary distinctions and debates. The first section demonstrates how a bloated and incoherent “humanism” now functions primarily as a talisman or a target, that is, as a prompt to choose sides. It closes with the image of Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, suggesting that humanism is more like the uncertain footing of Salcedo's fissure than the footholds on either side. The second section suggests that this “alien (...) humanism” is hiding in plain sight, requiring us only to read an inch beyond the poster-ready copy fueling the polemics. Even a cursory glance at the texts from which these epitomes are drawn — from Terence's “Nothing human is foreign to me,” through Shakespeare's “What a piece of work is a man,” to Arnold's “The best of what has been thought and said” — is enough to reconnect us with a tradition stranger and more dynamic than that portrayed by boosters and knockers alike. The third section explores the tensions between the research university and the tradition of humane letters it has come to house, arguing that it will not do to escape this rancor by hiding behind the functionalist, and ultimately circular, term “humanist,” defined as one who does research in the humanities. The final section shows that if this older tradition pulls away, to some extent, from the modern humanities, it simultaneously embraces scientific and professional fields, as demonstrated by the long tradition of the physician-humanist. (shrink)

The article assesses Chad Hansen's arguments that both early and later Moist texts apply only pragmatic, not semantic, terms of evaluation and treat “appropriate word or language usage,” not semantic truth. I argue that the early Moist “three standards” are indeed criteria of a general notion of correct dao 道 , not specifically of truth. However, as I explain, their application may include questions of truth. I show in detail how later Moist texts employ terms with the same expressive role (...) as “ is true.” Thus, contra Hansen, the Moists can justifiably be said to have a concept of semantic truth. (shrink)

This paper analyzes sluicing as anaphora to an anti-constituent (a continuation), that is, to the semantic remnant of a clause from which a subconstituent has been removed. For instance, in Mary said that [John saw someone yesterday], but she didn’t say who, the antecedent clause is John saw someone yesterday, the subconstituent targeted for removal is someone, and the ellipsis site following who is anaphoric to the scope remnant John saw ___ yesterday. I provide a compositional syntax and semantics (...) on which the relationship between the targeted subconstituent and the rest of the antecedent clause is one of scopability, not movement or binding. This correctly predicts that sluicing should be sensitive to scope islands, but not to syntactic islands. Unlike the currently dominant approaches to sluicing, there is no need to posit syntactic structure internal to the ellipsis site, nor is there any need for a semantic mutual-entailment requirement. Nevertheless, the fragment handles phenomena usually taken to suggest a close syntactic correspondence between the antecedent and the sluice, including case matching, voice matching, and verbal argument structure matching. In addition, the analysis handles phenomena exhibiting antecedent/sluice mismatches, including examples such as John remembers meeting someone, but he doesn’t remember who, , and especially so-called sprouting examples such as John left, but I don’t know when, in which there is no overt subconstituent to target for removal. In Sect. 5, I show how the analysis accounts for Andrews Amalgams such as Sally ate [I don’t know what] today, in which the antecedent surrounds the sluiced clause. Finally, in Sect. 6, I propose a new semantic constraint on sluicing: the Answer Ban, which says that the antecedent clause must not resolve, or even partially resolve, the issue raised by the sluiced interrogative. (shrink)

Catcalls have been said to insult, intimidate, and silence their targets. The harms that catcalls inflict on individuals are reason enough to condemn them. This paper argues that they also inflict a type of structural harm by subordinating their targets. Catcalling initiates an unwanted conversation where none should exist. This brings the rules and norms governing conversations to bear in such a way that the catcall assigns their target a ‘subordinate discourse role’. This not only constrains the behaviour of (...) the target here and now, but also influences the norms governing future conversations. Catcalls are then not only bad because of the effects on their target, but also because of their pernicious contribution to the wider normative landscape. (shrink)

It is a real pleasure to reply to so many thoughtful and probing responses to my book. In what follows, I will focus on six key themes that emerge across the various pieces. Some of them call into question core commitments of my theory, and in those cases I will try to show what might be said in its defence. Quite a number of the critics, however, present what we might call expansionist arguments: though they endorse some of the (...) arguments I make, that is – or pick up some of its key concepts – they seek to push them in new and interesting directions. I will suggest that many of those arguments look likely to be successful, though I will also express caution about one or two of them. I doubt, however, that I will be the final judge of their success. Early on in the book I express the hope that it might provide a set of conceptual tools capable of advancing discussions about resource justice more broadly, even for scholars who reject my own idiosyncratic approach. Having made that gambit, I cannot now claim to have a monopoly on the use of the tools in question. Witnessing the use that others have already made of them has been a refreshing and rewarding experience. (shrink)

The ancient doctrine of negative theology or apophasis--the attempt to describe God by speaking only of what cannot be said about the divine perfection and goodness--has taken on new life in the concern with language and its limits that preoccupies much postmodern philosophy, theology, and related disciplines. How does this mystical tradition intersect with the concern with material bodies that is simultaneously a focus in these areas? This volume pursues the unlikely conjunction of apophasis and the body, not for (...) the cachet of the "cutting edge" but rather out of an ethical passion for the integrity of all creaturely bodies as they are caught up in various ideological mechanisms--religious, theological, political, economic--that threaten their dignity and material well-being. The contributors, a diverse collection of scholars in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies, rethink the relationship between the concrete tradition of negative theology and apophatic discourses widely construed. They further endeavor to link these to the theological theme of incarnation and more general issues of embodiment, sexuality, and cosmology. Along the way, they engage and deploy the resources of contextual and liberation theology, post-structuralism, postcolonialism, process thought, and feminism. The result not only recasts the nature and possibilities of theological discourse but explores the possibilities of academic discussion across and beyond disciplines in concrete engagement with the well-being of bodies, both organic and inorganic. The volume interrogates the complex capacities of religious discourse both to threaten and positively to draw upon the material well-being of creation. (shrink)

... and the baby has a large VSD. Otherwise appears well, gaining weight, smiling. No apnea, never been on ventilator. Local cardiac surgeon refused to operate, saying that surgery would be inappropriate. Have reached out to other centers, and some state that they never perform what they said was “futile” heart surgery on children with Trisomy 18, while other sites say they have and will continue to perform these operations. Can someone explain to me what is going on? In (...) the realm of medical care—given enough patients, clinicians, and time—conflict is inevitable. Someone will want to do something, such as give a drug or start a new form of technologic support, and someone else will think that this is a... (shrink)

Based on a 2013 doctoral thesis, Ophélie Siméon's volume in a series edited by Gregory Claeys represents an attempt to write a different kind of study of Robert Owen—"an intellectual biography through a sense of place" —that connects New Lanark more umbilically to his later endeavors. Her avowed intent is to approach this history "from below," utilizing newly available material from the New Lanark Trust archives as well as New Lanark records held at Glasgow University. That said, much of (...) the material captured in Siméon's book is not new but has already been brought out in scholarship going back fifty or more years. What is valuable here is that it is brought together in a concise... (shrink)

Much has been said about the accuracy of the famous predictions of the Russian chemist Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev, but far less has been written on how he made his predictions. Here we offer an explanation on how Mendeleev used his periodic system to predict both physical and chemical properties of little-known and entirely unknown chemical elements. We argue that there seems to be compelling evidence in favour of Mendeleev genuinely relying on his periodic system in the course of issuing (...) his predictions—a point recently contested by Woody Science after the practice turn in the philosophy, history, and social studies of science, Routledge, Abington, 2014). In particular, by using the known properties of a number of near neighbours of the three entirely unknown elements, we seek to show how the very format of his table enabled it to function as a powerful tool for Mendeleev in arriving at his predicted values. We suggest that Mendeleev’s use of the periodic system in making his prediction gives an illuminative example of what Woody calls “theoretical practices” in science. (shrink)

Notions such as ‘guilt’ and ‘forgiveness’ can be defined in objective terms, but more normally have an emotional dimension that cannot be experienced by the institutions examined in this collection of articles. Nevertheless, analogs to these emotions can be discerned in the behaviour of states — and exploring these reveals important insights into what are more (and less) effective ways of responding to, and making amends for, institutional failure. In the 1990s the Western powers were engaged in dealing with a (...) sequence of crises which appeared to call for some kind of intervention — Bosnia 1991/95, Somalia 1992/3, Haiti, 1993/4, Rwanda 1994, Kosovo 1998/9 — and this essay explores the extent to which it can be said that action/inaction in one case can be related back to moral judgements of behaviour in earlier cases. What emerges is not a single narrative of guilt and rectificatory action, but two narratives focusing on different referent objects: obligations towards one's own citizens and toward the putative common good. The picture is complex, yet some significant lessons can be drawn from this analysis. One is the counter-intuitive point that a ‘guilty conscience’ may actually be more effective when the guilt in question is not attributable to the individual whose behaviour is affected, but rather is seen to be borne by the institution that he or she represents. Assuming that guilt is generated by ignorance rather than ill-will, another, more general, lesson is that better intelligence in the broadest sense of the term — including intelligence of the past moral failures of institutions — may be of more value than a (probably difficult to achieve) theory of institutional guilt. (shrink)

Some ideas seem to possess a disproportionate ability to lead to new insights, new discoveries, new ideas, and even entirely new ways of thinking. Such ideas are said to be fruitful. Looking across the history of science and mathematics, we see creative minds preoccupied with the search for ideas of this kind. More precious than truth, fruitful ideas provide those in pursuit of knowledge with a seemingly bottomless well of innovation from which to draw as they attempt to solve (...) new problems and to refine solutions to old ones. Professional researchers have a nose for these ideas. They often can see in an instant that some way of approaching a problem will eventually result in a solution to it and to a whole host of other problems, all of which suddenly seem related. In this book, Chris Haufe explains how these ideas are detected and developed into large-scale frameworks for research. He argues for a philosophical perspective on scientific knowledge that places the search for fruitfulness at the heart of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

"The Mind is not a Vessel to be Filled but a Fire to be Kindled", and "Education is Not the Filling of Pail But the Lighting of a Fire", and ... Something About a Horse ... You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it smile? Because of the long face and all? (No, that can’t be it). Anyway, borrowing a bit from Plutarch and Yeats (maybe, there is no agreement on whether he said that about (...) pails and fires), and some idiom from 12th Century Old English about horses walking on water, I assume, we can glean the following gem: learning requires active participation by learners. It is almost embarrassing to have to write that, but here we are with education today, mostly unloading facts into unlit receptacles. This doesn’t work, and not just because the metaphor is mixed. Genuine learning requires focus, which requires motivation, which is cultivated by interest, which needs curiosity, which is not something teachable through the typical educational curricula. I can, as Aristotle tells us, teach students the basics of some ethical theory, but I cannot make them virtuous. Ah-ha! I can lead a horse to water, but I can’t make it abide by the categorical imperative (No, that’s not quite right. Although it’s true--most horses are utilitarians). One way that seems to work in piquing student interest in learning philosophy is to use humor as you make the case that a philosophical attitude is very similar to a humorous attitude. Both rely heavily on questioning our collective presuppositions, both cultivate rational skepticism, and both are never content with accepting traditions and values that are mindlessly received. I’ve got it now: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it an iconoclast! (still not it). Friedrich Nietzsche published a book in 1889 titled Twilight of the Idols: Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer. This was during his most frenetic and fecund period, just before the syphilis set in rendering him somewhat less than his lauded Ubermensch. The “Idols” for Nietzsche were “false gods” or the ubiquitous errors that philosophy should expose. He is likely borrowing (without citation!) from sir Francis Bacon, whose “idols” are fetishes which can divert us from the pursuit of truth. Learning is hard, but it doesn’t have to be gloomy, hence, I advocate for a different sort of hammer to act as a “tuning-fork” sounding out the hollow and dangerous idols handed down to us that have passed for sagacity. (shrink)

Nanotechnology—the control of matter at the level of atoms and molecules—has evoked a large body of literature on moral and ethical issues. Almost all of this is expressed in secular voices. Religious commentaries about nanotechnology have been much more rare. And yet survey research indicates that religious belief will be one of the most powerful influences in shaping public views about nanotechnology. This paper argues that it is worth knowing what religious voices have said about nanotechnology, so that we (...) might anticipate additional religious reactions in the future. After that, this paper presents seven cases of religious reactions to nanotechnology from a variety of faiths. This information gives us some insights about how religious individuals and institutions think about this technology, and also insights about how a new technology evokes a variety of hopes and fears. (shrink)

The cry that advanced machines will come to dominate human beings resounds from the time of the Luddites up to the current consternation by the chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy. My theme is a twist on this fear: self-deselection, the possibility that humans will voluntarily combine their own bodies with technological additions to the point where it could reasonably be said that our species has been replaced by another kind of entity, a hybrid of human and radical (...) enhancement, whether that enhancement stems from genetic alteration or the affixing of robotic parts. The paper discusses why this danger exists, focusing mainly on perilous psychological and cultural tendencies (though the amazing rate of technological change and its likely course are discussed). It then proceeds with arguments as to why such deselection is a kind of suicide and why this suicide would be a bad thing in the context of early twenty-first- century society. In the last section, ecofeminist theory is employed to generate a therapeutic ethic of social and political relationship that contrasts with a patriarchal model of dominative control through aggressive science. (shrink)

The early, largely automatic stages of human visual processing involve things like feature detectors (e.g., edge detectors) that do not involve our concepts or beliefs. These stages are called data-driven or bottom up aspects of perceptual information processing. But in the later stages of processing perception often is affected by our concepts, beliefs, and expectations. Such processes are said to be hypothesis-driven or expectation-driven; they are also known as..

The cry that advanced machines will come to dominate human beings resounds from the time of the Luddites up to the current consternation by the chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy. My theme is a twist on this fear: self-deselection, the possibility that humans will voluntarily combine their own bodies with technological additions to the point where it could reasonably be said that our species has been replaced by another kind of entity, a hybrid of human and radical (...) enhancement, whether that enhancement stems from genetic alteration or the affixing of robotic parts. The paper discusses why this danger exists, focusing mainly on perilous psychological and cultural tendencies (though the amazing rate of technological change and its likely course are discussed). It then proceeds with arguments as to why such deselection is a kind of suicide and why this suicide would be a bad thing in the context of early twenty-firstcentury society. In the last section, ecofeminist theory is employed to generate a therapeutic ethic of social and political relationship that contrasts with a patriarchal model of dominative control through aggressive science. (shrink)

We discuss from a philosophical perspective the way in which the normal concept of time might be said to `emerge' in a quantum theory of gravity. After an introduction, we briefly discuss the notion of emergence, without regard to time. We then introduce the search for a quantum theory of gravity ; and review some general interpretative issues about space, time and matter. We then discuss the emergence of time in simple quantum geometrodynamics, and in the Euclidean approach. Section (...) 6 concludes. (shrink)

Introduction: Wellbeing policy analysis is often criticized for requiring a cardinal interpretation of measurement scales, such as ranking happiness on an integer scale from 0-10. The commonly-used scales also implicitly constrain the human capacity for experience, typically that our most intense experiences can only be at most ten times more intense than our mildest experiences. This paper presents the alternative “heavy-tailed valence” (HTV) hypothesis: the notion that the accessible human capacity for emotional experiences of pleasure and pain spans a minimum (...) of two orders of magnitude. Methods: We specify five testable predictions of the HTV hypothesis. A pilot survey of adults aged 21-64 (n = 97) then tested two predictions, asking respondents to comment on the most painful and most pleasurable experiences they can recall, alongside the second most painful and pleasurable experiences. Results: The results find tentative support for the hypothesis. For instance, over half of respondents said their most intense experiences were at least twice as intense as the second most intense, implying a wide capacity overall. Simulations further demonstrate that survey responses are more consistent with underlying heavy-tailed distributions of experience than a “constrained valence” psychology. Discussion: A synthesis of these results with prior findings suggests a “kinked” scale, such that a wide range of felt experience is compressed in reports at the high end of intensity scales, even if reports at lower intensities behave more cardinally. We present a discussion of three stylized facts that support HTV and six against, lessons for a future survey, practical guidelines for existing analyses, and implications for current policy. We argue for a dramatic increase in societal ambition. Even in high average income countries, the HTV hypothesis suggests we remain far further below our wellbeing potential than a surface reading of the data might suggest. (shrink)

Many work on flushing out what our consciousness means in cognitive and phenomenological terms, but no one has yet connected the dots on how consciousness and truth intersect, much less how our phenomenal consciousness can form the ground for most of our models of truth. Here, I connect those dots and argue that the basic structure of our phenomenal consciousness grounds the nature of truth as concordance, to harmonize in agreement, and that most extant theories on truth are well explained (...) in that grounding. Said another way, the unifying and bifurcating intentional structure of phenomenal consciousness is the non-epistemic ground of truth, such that most theories of truth can be explained as particular expressions of concordance based upon the differing aspects of that ground. (shrink)

The current industrial revolution is said to be driven by the digitization that exploits connected information across all aspects of manufacturing. Standards have been recognized as an important enabler. Ontology-based information standard may provide benefits not offered by current information standards. Although there have been ontologies developed in the industrial manufacturing domain, they have been fragmented and inconsistent, and little has received a standard status. With successes in developing coherent ontologies in the biological, biomedical, and financial domains, an effort (...) called Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF) has been formed to pursue the same goal for the industrial manufacturing domain. However, developing a coherent ontology covering the entire industrial manufacturing domain has been known to be a mountainous challenge because of the multidisciplinary nature of manufacturing. To manage the scope and expectations, the IOF community kicked-off its effort with a proof-of-concept (POC) project. This paper describes the developments within the project. It also provides a brief update on the IOF organizational set up. (shrink)

David Liggins and Chris Daly have argued against a recent trend in which some philosophical debate or other is said to be settled by claims from a discipline other than philosophy, because claims from that discipline entail a position on the debate and any claims from that discipline have greater authority than any philosophical claims when the aim is to extend our knowledge. They label this trend deferentialism. This paper presents a dilemma for their argument.

This volume is the first systematic presentation of the work of Albert Einstein, comprising fourteen essays by leading historians and philosophers of science that introduce readers to his work. Following an introduction that places Einstein's work in the context of his life and times, the book opens with essays on the papers of Einstein's 'miracle year', 1905, covering Brownian motion, light quanta, and special relativity, as well as his contributions to early quantum theory and the opposition to his light quantum (...) hypothesis. Further essays relate Einstein's path to the general theory of relativity (1915) and the beginnings of two fields it spawned, relativistic cosmology and gravitational waves. Essays on Einstein's later years examine his unified field theory program and his critique of quantum mechanics. The closing essays explore the relation between Einstein's work and twentieth-century philosophy, as well as his political writings. (shrink)

This essay aims to provide a self-contained introduction to time in relativistic cosmology that clarifies both how questions about the nature of time should be posed in this setting and the extent to which they have been or can be answered empirically. The first section below recounts the loss of Newtonian absolute time with the advent of special and general relativity, and the partial recovery of absolute time in the form of cosmic time in some cosmological models. Section II considers (...) the beginning and end of time in a broader class of models in which there is not an analog of Newtonian absolute time. As we will see, reasonable physical assumptions imply that the universe is finite to the past, and Section III turns to consideration of the “beginning” itself. We critically review conventional wisdom that a “singularity” reveals flaws in general relativity and briefly assess ways of avoiding the singularity. (shrink)

The authors survey some debates about the nature and structure of physical theories and about the connections between our physical theories and naturalized metaphysics. The discussion is organized around an “ideal view” of physical theories and criticisms that can be raised against it. This view includes controversial commitments regarding the best analysis of physical modalities and intertheory relations. The authors consider the case in favor of taking laws as the primary modal notion, discussing objections related to alleged violations of the (...) laws, the apparent need to appeal to causality, and the status of probability. The “ideal view” includes a commitment that fundamental physical theories are explanatorily sufficient. The authors discuss several challenges to recovering the manifest image from fundamental physics, along with a distinct challenge to reductionism based on acknowledging the contributions of less fundamental theories in physical explanations. (shrink)

Unifying physics by describing a variety of interactions – or even all interactions – within a common framework has long been an alluring goal for physicists. One of the most ambitious attempts at unification was made in the 1910s by Gustav Mie. Mie aimed to derive electromagnetism, gravitation, and aspects of the emerging quantum theory from a single variational principle and a well-chosen Lagrangian. Mie’s main innovation was to consider nonlinear field equations to allow for stable particle-like solutions (now called (...) solitons), and he clarified the use of variational principles in the context of special relativity. The following brief introduction to Mie’s work has three main objectives. The first is to explain how Mie’s project fit into the contemporary development of the electromagnetic world view. Part of Mie’s project was to develop a relativistic theory of gravitation as a consequence of his generalized electromagnetic theory, and our second goal is to briefly assess this work, which reflects the conceptual resources available for developing a new account of gravitation by analogy with electromagnetism. Finally, Mie was a vocal critic of other approaches to the problem of gravitation. Mie’s criticisms of Einstein, in particular, bring out the subtlety and novelty of the ideas that Einstein used to guide his development of general relativity. (shrink)

Galileo’s dictum that the book of nature “is written in the language of mathematics” is emblematic of the accepted view that the scientific revolution hinged on the conceptual and methodological integration of mathematics and natural philosophy. Although the mathematization of nature is a distinctive and crucial feature of the emergence of modern science in the seventeenth century, this volume shows that it was a far more complex, contested, and context-dependent phenomenon than the received historiography has indicated, and that philosophical controversies (...) about the implications of mathematization cannot be understood in isolation from broader social developments related to the status and practice of mathematics in various commercial, political, and academic institutions. (shrink)

The second edition of Doing Ethics in Media continues its mission of providing an accessible but comprehensive introduction to media ethics, with a theoretical grounding in moral philosophy, to help students think clearly and systematically about dilemmas in the rapidly changing media environment. Each chapter highlights specific considerations, cases, and practical applications for the fields of journalism, advertising, digital media, entertainment, public relations, and social media. Six fundamental decision-making questions - the "5Ws and H" around which the book is organized (...) - provide a path for students to articulate the issues; understand applicable law and ethics codes; consider the needs of stakeholders; work through conflicting values; integrate philosophic principles; and pose a "test of publicity." Students are challenged to be active ethical thinkers through the authors' reader-friendly style and use of critical early-career examples. While most people will change careers several times during their lives, all of us are life-long media consumers, and Doing Ethics in Media prepares readers for that task. Doing Ethics in Media is aimed at undergraduate and graduate students studying media ethics in mass media, journalism, and media studies. It also serves students in rhetoric, popular culture, communication studies, and interdisciplinary social sciences. The book's companion website-doingethicsin.media, or www.doingmediaethics.com-provides continuously updated real-world media ethics examples and collections of essays from experts and students. The site also hosts ancillary materials for students and for instructors, including a test bank and instructor's manual. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 213 Seiten: 345-363.

Using a vague predicate can make commitments about the appropriate use of that predicate in the remaining part of the discourse. For instance, if I assert that some particular pig is fat, I am committed to judging any fatter pig to be fat as well. We can model this update effect by recognizing that truth depends both on the state of the world and on the state of the discourse: the truth conditions of ‘This pig is fat’ rule out evaluation (...) points for which the pig in question in world w is thinner than the cutoff for fatness in the discourse d. Then disagreements about taste are disagreements about the discourse. Unlike disagreements about the world, disagreements about the discourse can be faultless, given that none of the discourse participants has privileged authority to make pronouncements about conventions for appropriate use of a predicate. Thus on the dynamic view developed here, whether or not a dispute about taste turns out to be faultless depends in part on predictable features of the previous discourse. On this account, faultless disagreement involving predicates of personal taste does not force relativizing truth to a judge or assessor. (shrink)

Patients with delusions of control are abnormally aware of the sensory consequences of their actions and have difficulty with on-line corrections of movement. As a result they do not feel in control of their movements. At the same time they are strongly aware of the action being intentional. This leads them to believe that their actions are being controlled by an external agent. In contrast, the normal mark of the self in action is that we have very little experience of (...) it. Most of the time we are not aware of the sensory consequences of our actions or of the various subtle corrections that we make during the course of goal-directed actions. We know that we are agents and that we are successfully causing the world to change. But as actors we move through the world like shadows glimpsed only occasional from the corner of an eye. (shrink)

Epistemic rationality seems to permit a more steadfast response to disagreements over our fundamental convictions than it does for our ordinary beliefs. Why is this? This essay explores three answers to this question: web-of-belief conservatism, moral encroachment, and hinge theories, and argues that hinge theories do a better job than the alternatives at vindicating the intuition that there is a rationally permissible asymmetry in our responses to disagreements over ordinary beliefs and fundamental convictions. The essay also shows how hinge theorists (...) can explain the existence of moral hinge propositions, which enables them to account for the rational permissibility of being steadfast in response to disagreements over fundamental moral convictions. (shrink)

Exploratory inquiry has difficulty attracting research funding because funding agencies have little sense of how to detect good science in exploratory contexts. After documenting and explaining the focus on hypothesis testing among a variety of institutions responsible for distinguishing between good and bad science, I analyze the NIH grant review process. I argue that a good explanation for the focus on hypothesis testing—at least at the level of science funding agencies—is the fact that hypothesis-driven research is relatively easy to appraise. (...) I then explore one method by which we might gauge the epistemic merits of different styles of inquiry. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Habermasian ideal of deliberation has long been seen as an extension of, and complement to, political action. But Diana Mutz's empirical studies of face-to-face interactions reveal a conflict between political participation and political deliberation: The more likely people are to be exposed to diverse political opinions, the less likely they are to participate, and those who participate most tend to have the least exposure to diverse political opinions. She hypothesizes, however, that the infrastructure of the Internet might allow (...) for the creation of a forum for online political debate that is sufficiently generalizable to result in deliberation. Champions of the Internet's democratic potential similarly praise its diversifying influence on political discussion and the ways in which it lowers barriers to access. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that new technologies have truly transformed political action or produced meaningful deliberation at significant levels. It appears that many of the trends and behaviors Mutz identifies in face-to-face interaction apply to digital interaction as well. (shrink)

This paper explores how fair trade social enterprises manage paradoxes in stakeholder-oriented governance models. We use narrative accounts from board members, at governance events and board documents to report an exploratory study of paradoxes in three FTSEs which are partly farmer-owned. Having synthesized the key social enterprise governance literature and framed it alongside the broader paradox theory, we used narratives to explore how tensions are articulated, how they can be applied within an adapted paradox framework, and how governance actors seek (...) to mitigate paradoxes. The paper contributes to current debates in social enterprise scholarship concerning hybridity :455–476, 2010; in Institutional logics in action, Part B, 2012), hybrid organizing :397–441, 2014) and operational tensions :407–442, 2013) by illustrating empirically how the central social/enterprise paradox manifests in FTSEs governance arrangements. We build on the paradox categories proposed by Lüscher and Lewis :221–240, 2008) and adapted in Smith et al. :407–442, 2013) by developing a recursive model of legitimacy-seeking governance processes, conceptualizing how boards seek to mitigate, but not necessarily resolve, paradoxes. (shrink)

An epistemologist tells you that knowledge is more than justified true belief. You trust them and thus come to believe this on the basis of their testimony. Did you thereby come to know that this view is correct? Intuitively, there is something intellectually wrong with forming philosophical beliefs on the basis of testimony, and yet it's hard to see why philosophy should be significantly epistemically different from other areas of inquiry in a way that would fully prohibit belief by testimony. (...) This, I argue, is the puzzle of philosophical testimony. In this paper, I explore the puzzle of philosophical testimony and its ramifications. In particular, I examine the case for pessimism about philosophical testimony—the thesis that philosophical belief on the basis of testimony is impossible or is in some way illegitimate—and I argue that it lacks adequate support. I then consider whether the source of the apparent intellectual wrongness of testimonial‐based philosophical belief is grounded in non‐epistemic norms and goals of philosophical practice itself and argue that such norms are implausible, don't conflict with testimonial‐based philosophical belief, or else are mere disciplinary norms, lacking substantial normative force that would make it wrong to form testimonial‐based philosophical belief. (shrink)

In this essay, the authors analyze and interpret facsimiles of important original documents—published here for the first time—that are deeply relevant to the education of the young Ayn Rand at the University of Petrograd. This definitive reading of source material provides significant documentation of Rand’s courses, teachers, and textbooks—and what she might have learned from them. Other original source materials are revealed to advance further investigations of this key period in Rand’s life. Recent commentary on Rand’s education in Gary H. (...) Merrill’s book, False Wisdom, is also considered. (shrink)