The article is devoted to identifying the specifics of Russian philosophy through the analysis of F. M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Shestov’s texts. The stylistic features of the two philosophers have been considered, their ways of philosophizing and denying of the cult of reason have been examined. The analysis is carried out using additional literature of French existentialism. To date, there are many researches in which study features of Russian philosophy. It is noted, that one of them are imagery, inseparable connection (...) between philosophy and faith and criticism of rationalism. The excessive cult of reason leads to such problems in the history as the creation of the hydrogen bomb, the environmental crisis and so on. The revolt against reason and the state of groundlessness are a response to the processes of modern rationalization and technocratization, an attempt to go beyond the limits of the usual paradigm, to get out of the closed subjectivity. Thus, it’s necessary to define the limits of the reason and develop a new way of philosophizing, for this reason it is proposed to consider the concept of groundlessness in the philosophy of L.N. Shestov, which makes the attempt to construct a philosophy, avoiding strict logic and excessive rationality. (shrink)

In contrast to the great majority of mycobacterial species that are harmless saprophytes, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other closely related tubercle bacilli have evolved to be among the most important human and animal pathogens. The need to develop new strategies in the fight against tuberculosis (TB) and related diseases has fuelled research into the evolutionary success of the M. tuberculosis complex members. Amongst the various disciplines, genomics and functional genomics have been instrumental in improving our understanding of these organisms. In this (...) review we will present some of the recent key findings on molecular determinants of mycobacterial pathogenicity and attenuation, the evolution of M. tuberculosis, genome dynamics, antigen mining for improved diagnostic and subunit antigens, and finally the identification of novel drug targets. The genomics revolution has changed the landscape of TB research, and now underpins our renewed efforts to defeat this deadly pathogen. (shrink)

Recent anthologizing of Davidson’s articles from the 1980s and 1990s encourages us to reconsider arguments contained in them. One such argument is Davidson’s omniscient-interpreter argument (“OIA”) in “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,” first published 20 years ago. The OIA allegedly establishes that it is necessary that most beliefs are true. Thus the omniscient interpreter, now 20 years old, was born to answer the skeptic. In §1 of this paper, I consider charges that the OIA establishes only that it (...) is possible that most beliefs are true; if correct, then it is also possibly the case that most beliefs are false—the skeptic’s very position. Next, I consider two responses on Davidson’s behalf, showing that each fails. In §2, I show that the OIA establishes neither that it is necessarily nor possibly but actually the case that most beliefs are true. I then conclude that this is enough to answer the skeptic. (shrink)

Corporate fetal protection policies are designed to protect unborn children from exposure to harmful substances in the workplace. In recent years, a number of corporations have instituted fetal protection policies which excluded all fertile female employees from jobs which exposed them to hazardous substances. Critics argued that these policies discriminated against women, and several lawsuits were filed.The United States Supreme Court recently decided a case involving the fetal protection policy of Johnson Controls, Inc. This article will analyze the impact of (...) the Supreme Court decision from a legal and ethical perspective. Practical guidelines for policies which protect the unborn and comply with the law will also be addressed. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

The publication of Davidson 2001, anthologizing articles from the 1980s and 1990s, encourages reconsidering arguments contained in them. One such argument is Davidson's omniscient-interpreter argument ('€˜OIA'€™) in Davidson 1983. The OIA allegedly establishes that it is necessary that most beliefs are true. Thus the omniscient interpreter, revived in 2001 and now 20 years old, was born to answer the skeptic. In Part I of this paper, I consider charges that the OIA establishes only that it is possible that most beliefs (...) are true; if correct, then it is also possibly the case that most beliefs are false—the skeptic’s very position. Next, I consider two responses on Davidson'€™s behalf, showing that each fails. In Part II, I show that the OIA establishes neither that it is necessarily merely possibly but actually the case that most beliefs are true. I then conclude that this is enough to answer the skeptic. (shrink)

A special section of papers on the evolution, current status, and future development of self psychology highlights _The Evolution of Self Psychology_, volume 7 of the Progress in Self Psychology series. A critical review of recent books by Basch, Goldberg, and Stolorow et al. is part of this endeavor. Theoretical contributions to Volume 7 examine self psychology in relation to object relations theory and reconsider the relationship of psychotherapy to psychoanalysis. Clinical contributions deal with an intersubjective perspective on countertransference, (...) the trauma of incest, and envy in the transference. (shrink)

_The Widening Scope of Self Psychology_ is a watershed in the self-psychological literature, being a contemporary reprise on several major clinical themes through which self psychology, from its inception, has articulated its challenge to traditional psychoanalytic thinking. The volume opens with original papers on interpretation by eminent theorists in the self-psychological tradition, followed by a series of case studies and clinically grounded commentaries bearing on issues of sex and gender as they enter into analysis. Two thoughtful reexaminations of the meaning (...) and treatment challenges of chronic rage are followed by clinical papers that focus, respectively, on mourning, alter ego transferences, resistance to change, and pathological identification. Applied analytic contributions and a review of Goldberg's _The_ _Prisonhouse of Psychoanalysis_ round out a collection that testifies not only to the widening scope of self psychology, but to its deepening insights as well. (shrink)

In international commodity transactions, intermediary certifiers of quantity and quality play a crucial role. Sometimes they err, and when they do, the aggrieved party can pursue remedies against the counterparty or against the intermediary, either in contract or tort. The remedy against the intermediary has depended, at least in part, on whether the plaintiff was in privity. Even absent privity, the aggrieved party could possibly recover in tort. So held Cardozo in the leading New York case Glanzer v. Shepard. Section (...) I of this paper reviews the Glanzer litigation, with special emphasis on how the court suppressed many of the significant facts. Section II then turns to restitution by the principals. Section III explores the courts’ general hostility to intermediaries’ attempts to limit their liability by contract, and Section IV considers the judiciary’s sporadic efforts to place extra-contractual limits on intermediaries’ liability. Section V examines the surveyors’ response. (shrink)

The third volume in the distinguished Progress in Self Psychology series brings together the most exciting issues in a rapidly expanding field. _Frontiers in Self Psychology_ is highlighted by sections dealing with self psychology and infancy and self psychology and the psychoses. Clinical contributions include several case studies along with a reconsideration of dream interpretation. Theoretical contributions span issues of gender identity, boundary formation, and the biological foundation of self psychology.

Volume 16 of Progress in Self Psychology, _How Responsive Should We Be_, illuminates the continuing tension between Kohut's emphasis on the patient's subjective experience and the post-Kohutian intersubjectivists' concern with the therapist's own subjectivity by focusing on issues of therapeutic posture and degree of therapist activity. Teicholz provides an integrative context for examining this tension by discussing affect as the common denominator underlying the analyst's empathy, subjectivity, and authenticity. Responses to the tension encompass the stance of intersubjective contextualism, advocacy of (...) "active responsiveness," and emphasis on the thorough-going bidirectionality of the analytic endeavor. Balancing these perspectives are a reprise on Kohut's concept of prolonged empathic immersion and a recasting of the issue of closeness and distance in the analytic relationship in terms of analysis of "the tie to the negative selfobject." Additional clinical contributions examine severe bulimia and suicidal rage as attempts at self-state regulation and address the self-reparative functions that inhere in the act of dreaming. Like previous volumes in the series, volume 16 demonstrates the applicability of self psychology to nonanalytic treatment modalities and clinical populations. Here, self psychology is brought to bear on psychotherapy with placed children, on work with adults with nonverbal learning disabilities, and on brief therapy. Rector's examination of twinship and religious experience, Hagman's elucidation of the creative process, and Siegel and Topel's experiment with supervision via the internet exemplify the ever-expanding explanatory range of self-psychological insights. (shrink)

Volume 17 of Progress in Self Psychology, _The Narcissistic Patient Revisited_, begins with the next installment of Strozier's "From the Kohut Archives": first publication of a fragment by Kohut on social class and self-formation and of four letters from his final decade. Taken together, Hazel Ipp's richly textured "Case of Gayle" and the commentaries that it elicits amount to a searching reexamination of narcissistic pathology and the therapeutic process. This illuminating reprise on the clinical phenomenology Kohut associated with "narcissistic personality (...) disorder" accounts for the volume title. The ability of modern self psychology to integrate central concepts from other theories gains expression in Teicholz's proposal for a two-tiered theory of intersubjectivity, in Brownlow's examination of the fear of intimacy, and in Garfield's model for the treatment of psychosis. The social relevance of self psychology comes to the fore in an examination of the experience of adopted children and an inquiry into the roots of mystical experience, both of which concern the ubiquity of the human longing for an idealized parent imago. Among contributions that bring self-psychological ideas to bear on the arts, Frank Lachmann's provocative "Words and Music," which links the history of music to the history of psychoanalytic thought in the quest for universal substrata of psychological experience, deserves special mention. Annette Lachmann's consideration of empathic failure among the characters in Shakespeare's _Othello_ and Silverstein's reflections on Schubert's self-states and selfobject needs in relation to the specific poems set to music in his Lieder round out a collection as richly broad based as the field of self psychology itself. (shrink)

A collection of thoughtul presentations on transference and countertransference highlights _The Realities of Transference_, Volume 6 in the Progress in Self Psychology series. The selfobject transferences receive special attention. Elsewhere in this volme, selfobject phenomena are examined in relation to the process of working through, the origins of ambition, the psychology of addiction, the psychodynamic consequences of AIDS, and creativity. An exploration of the selfobjects of the second half of life offers new insight into later development.

_New Therapeutic Visions_ begins with Lachmann and Beebe's developmental perspectives on representational and selfobject transferences, followed by commentaries. In Section II, the self-psychological approach is brought to bear on the clinical treatment of an adolescent girl, incest survivors, addictive personalities, patients exhibiting codependency, and a case of desomatization. Section III, on applied self psychology, contains chapters on the theory of creativity; subjectivism, relativism, and realism in psychoanalysis; and quantum physics and self psychology. The final section offers two critical review essays (...) on major contributions to the self psychology literature by Wolf, by Bacal and Newman, and by Lichtenberg. Stolorow's chronicle of his personal odyssey into self psychology and intersubjectivity theory rounds out volume 8 of the Progress in Self Psychology series. (shrink)

The tenth volume in the Progress in Self Psychology series begins with four timely assessments of the selfobject concept, followed by a section of clinical papers that span the topics of homosexuality, alter ego countertransference, hypnosis, trauma, dream theory, and intersubjective approaches to conjoint therapy. Section III, "A Dialogue of Self Psychology," offers Merton Gill's astute appreciation of "Heinz Kohut's Self Psychology," followed by commentaries by Leider and Stolorow and Gill's reply. The concluding section offers Stolorow and Atwood's "The Myth (...) of the Isolated Mind," followed by discussions by Gehrie and the Shanes. A forum for the kind of spirited, productive exchanges that have long found a home within the self-psychological community, _A Decade of Progress_ builds on the past in responding to the theoretical and clinical challenges of the present. (shrink)

The premier volume in the _Progress in Self Psychology_ Series was completed two years after Heinz Kohut's death in 1981. Hence, this volume has a unique status in the history of self psychology: it bears the imprint of Kohut while charting a course of theoretical and clinical growth in the post-Kohut era. Biographical reminiscences about Kohut and commentaries on Kohut's "The Self-Psychological Approach to Defense and Resistance" [chapter seven of _How Does Analysis Cure?_] are juxtaposed with a section of self-psychological (...) reassessments of interpretations. Clinical papers cover the selfobject transferences, patient compliance, and the "self-pity response", while theoretical contributions present ideas of Stolorow, Bacal, White, and Detrick that are foundational to their subsequent writings. This volume helped to shape the theoretical and clinical agenda of self psychology in the decades following Kohut's death. (shrink)

Volume 12 of the Progress in Self Psychology series begins with reassessments of frustration and responsiveness, optimal and otherwise, by MacIsaac, Bacal and Thomson, the Shanes, and Doctors. The philosophical dimension of self psychology is addressed by Riker, who looks at Kohut's bipolar theory of the self, and Kriegman, who examines the subjectivism-objectivism dialectic in self psychology from the standpoint of evolutionary biology. Clinical studies focus on self- and mutual regulation in relation to therapeutic action, countertransference and the curative process, (...) and the consequences of the negative selfobject in early character formation. A separate section of child studies includes a case study exemplifying a self-psychological approach to child therapy and an examination of pathological adaptation to childhood parent loss. With a concluding section of richly varied studies in applied self psychology, _Basic Ideas Reconsidered_ promises to be basic reading for all students of contemporary self psychology. (shrink)

Volume 13 provides valuable examples of the very type of clinically grounded theorizing that represents progress in self psychology. The opening section of clinical papers encompasses compensatory structures, facilitating responsiveness, repressed memories, mature selfobject experience, shame in the analyst, and the resolution of intersubjective impasses. Two self-psychologically informed approaches to supervision are followed by a section of contemporary explorations of sexuality. Contributions to therapy address transference and countertransference issues in drama therapy, an intersubjective approach to conjoint family therapy, and the (...) subjective worlds of profound abuse survivors. A concluding section of studies in applied self psychology round out this broad and illuminating survey of the field. (shrink)

W. V. Quine famously argues that though all knowledge is empirical, mathematics is entrenched relative to physics and the special sciences. Further, entrenchment accounts for the necessity of mathematics relative to these other disciplines. Michael Friedman challenges Quine’s view by appealing to historicism, the thesis that the nature of science is illuminated by taking into account its historical development. Friedman argues on historicist grounds that mathematical claims serve as principles constitutive of languages within which empirical claims in physics and the (...) special sciences can be formulated and tested, where these mathematical claims are themselves not empirical but conventional. For Friedman, their conventional, constitutive status accounts for the necessity of mathematics relative to these other disciplines. Here I evaluate Friedman’s challenge to Quine and Quine’s likely response. I then show that though we have reason to find Friedman’s challenge successful, his positive project requires further development before we can endorse it. (shrink)

This is a work in Kantian conceptual geography. It explores issues in analytic epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics by appealing to theses drawn from Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

On or about June 5, 1895, in Denver, Colorado, a 23-year-old law clerk named James Smith fell off a ladder and injured his left thigh near the hip. Three days later, on June 8, 1895, Smith consulted a physician named George Gibson. Gibson saw Smith twice.1 After several weeks of continued pain, on June 24, 1895 Grant consulted a different physician named W. W. Grant. Grant was already a well-known railway surgeon in the local medical community, and would go on (...) to even greater prominence. Grant treated Smith, but did not attempt to immobilize Smith’s leg. Rather, Grant “advised exercise of various kinds as though treating a contusion” (Withers 1931, p. 99). On April 14, 1896, Smith filed a lawsuit against .. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I explore the work of Donald Davidson, reveal an inconsistency in it, and resolve that inconsistency in a way that complements a debate in philosophy of science. In Part One, I explicate Davidson's extensional account of meaning; though not defending Davidson from all objections, I nonetheless present his seemingly disparate views as a coherent whole. In Part Two, I explicate Davidson's views on the dualism between conceptual schemes and empirical content, isolating four seemingly different arguments that Davidson (...) makes against the dualism; I demonstrate that, though the arguments fail, each is ultimately meant to rely on his account of meaning. ;In Part Three, I show that Davidson's extensional account of meaning gives rise to the analytic-synthetic distinction, while simultaneously needing to reject it. I then propose a resolution to Davidson's dilemma. Rather than treating interpretation of meaning as continuous with the holistic enterprise of science, as Quine treats translation, one should treat it as conceptually prior to science, as Kant treats epistemology. Nonetheless I recognize four reasons why Davidson himself would reject doing so. I therefore propose a view called 'transcendental semantics', based on Davidson's, that accepts my resolution. Further, transcendental semantics, like Kant's own transcendental idealism, posits a single conceptual scheme; nonetheless Kant's is concerned with Newtonian physics, transcendental semantics' with interpretation. ;Finally, in Part Four, I show how positing such a scheme allows transcendental semantics to complement a promising neo-Carnapian account of theory confirmation in science proposed by Michael Friedman. Scientists are first and foremost interpreters, a fact that allows transcendental semantics to help Friedman establish the possibility of rational continuity through scientific revolutions. In fact, transcendental semantics, by complementing Friedman's project, reunites two of Carnap's own concerns, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. I conclude that philosophy of language without philosophy of science is empty , while philosophy of science without philosophy of language is blind. (shrink)

W. V. Quine was arguably the most influential analytic philosopher of the twentieth century, and Roger Gibson is arguably Quine’s most accomplished commentator. These two volumes contribute to the growing work on Quine’s philosophy and its place in twentieth and now twenty-first century thought. Nonetheless, as this review makes clear, the first volume is more useful than the second.

Volume 25 of _The Annual_ is dedicated to the memory of Michael Franz Basch, who achieved distinction as both a psychoanalytic theorist of the first rank and an authority on the nature and conduct of dynamic psychotherapy. A wide range of original contributions bear witness to his theoretical, clinical, and educational interests. A number of papers remind us of Basch's prominence as a self-psychological theorist: Elson's self-psychological reappraisal of self-pity, dependence, and manipulation as self-states; Ornstein's developmental perspective on power, self-esteem, (...) and destructive aggression; Tolpin's review of sexuality from the standpoint of normal self development; and Wolf's discussion of self psychology and the "aging self." Basch's life-long educational concerns gain expression in Goldberg's discussion of clinical teaching, particularly the challenge of leading of case conferences; and Ornstein's and Kay's thoughtful consideration of "enduring difficulties" in American medical education. Additional highlights of the volume include: Fawcett's consideration of the role of pharmacotherapy in psychodynamic treatment; Jaffe's consideration of the applicability of hierarchical models to assessment and intervention in brief psychotherapy; Galatzer-Levy's review of the "witch" metapsychology; Gedo's analysis of mythic themes in the operas _Don Giovanni_ and _Der Rosenkavalier_; Modell's reflections on metaphor and affects; and Kernberg's discussion of a "new psychoanalytic mainstream," which he compares and contrasts with a parallel convergence of Kohutian and interpersonal analytic approaches. Many of these contributions incorporate reflections on Basch as a teacher and colleague, and the entire volume is framed by Goldberg's moving tribute. Analysts and psychotherapists sharing Basch's commitment to academic and clinical excellence and his keen awareness of the pragmatic requirements of doing effective therapy will find in Volume 25 a cornucopia of riches. (shrink)

According to a theorem due to Kenneth Kunen, under ZFC, there is no ordinal [Formula: see text] and nontrivial elementary embedding [Formula: see text]. His proof relied on the Axiom of Choice (AC), and no proof from ZF alone is has been discovered. [Formula: see text] is the assertion, introduced by Hugh Woodin, that [Formula: see text] is an ordinal and there is an elementary embedding [Formula: see text] with critical point [Formula: see text]. And [Formula: see text] asserts that (...) [Formula: see text] holds for some [Formula: see text]. The axiom [Formula: see text] is one of the strongest large cardinals not known to be inconsistent with AC. It is usually studied assuming ZFC in the full universe [Formula: see text] (in which case [Formula: see text] must be a limit ordinal), but we assume only ZF. We prove, assuming ZF [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] “[Formula: see text] is an even ordinal”, that there is a proper class transitive inner model [Formula: see text] containing [Formula: see text] and satisfying ZF [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] “there is an elementary embedding [Formula: see text]”; in fact we will have [Formula: see text] ⊆[Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] witnesses [Formula: see text] in [Formula: see text]. This result was first proved by the author under the added assumption that [Formula: see text] exists; Gabe Goldberg noticed that this extra assumption was unnecessary. If also [Formula: see text] is a limit ordinal and [Formula: see text]-DC holds in [Formula: see text], then the model [Formula: see text] will also satisfy [Formula: see text]-DC. We show that ZFC [Formula: see text] “[Formula: see text] is even” [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] implies [Formula: see text] exists for every [Formula: see text], but if consistent, this theory does not imply [Formula: see text] exists. (shrink)

Part I Philosophic Traditions Introduction to Part I 3 1 Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience 7 CORNEL WEST 2 African-American Existential Philosophy 33 LEWIS R. GORDON 3 African-American Philosophy: A Caribbean Perspective 48 PAGET HENRY 4 Modernisms in Black 67 FRANK M. KIRKLAND 5 The Crisis of the Black Intellectual 87 HORTENSE J. SPILLERS Part II The Moral and Political Legacy of Slavery Introduction to Part II 107 6 Kant and Knowledge of Disappearing Expression 110 RONALD A. T. JUDY 7 (...) Social Contract Theory, Slavery, and the Antebellum Courts 125 ANITA L. ALLEN AND THADDEUS POPE 8 The Morality of Reparations II 134 BERNARD R. BOXILL Part III Africa and Diaspora Thought Introduction to Part III 151 9 “Afrocentricity‘: Critical Considerations 155 LUCIUS T. OUTLAW, JR. 10 African Retentions 168 TOMMY L. LOTT 11 African Philosophy at the Turn of the Century 190 ALBERT G. MOSLEY Part IV Gender, Race, and Racism Introduction to Part IV 199 12 Some Group Matters: Intersectionality, Situated Standpoints, and Black Feminist Thought 205 PATRICIA HILL COLLINS 13 Radicalizing Feminisms from “The Movement Era‘ 230 JOY A. JAMES 14 Philosophy and Racial Paradigms 239 NAOMI ZACK 15 Racial Classification and Public Policy 255 DAVID THEO GOLDBERG 16 White Supremacy 269 CHARLES W. MILLS Part V Legal and Social Philosophy Introduction to Part V 285 17 Self-Respect, Fairness, and Living Morally 293 LAURENCE M. THOMAS 18 The Legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson 306 MICHELE MOODY-ADAMS 19 Some Reflections on the Brown Decision and Its Aftermath 313 HOWARD McGARY 20 Contesting the Ambivalence and Hostility to Affirmative Action within the Black Community 324 LUKE C. HARRIS 21 Subsistence Welfare Benefits as Property Interests: Legal Theories and Moral Considerations 333 RUDOLPH V. VANTERPOOL 22 Racism and Health Care: A Medical Ethics Issue 349 ANNETTE DULA 23 Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition 360 ANGELA Y. DAVIS Part VI Aesthetic and Cultural Values Introduction to Part VI 373 24 The Harlem Renaissance and Philosophy 381 LEONARD HARRIS 25 Critical Theory, Aesthetics, and Black Modernity 386 LORENZO C. SIMPSON 26 Black Cinema and Aesthetics 399 CLYDE R. TAYLOR 27 Thanatic Pornography, Interracial Rape, and the Ku Klux Klan 407 T. DENEAN SHARPLEY-WHITING 28 Lynching and Burning Rituals in African-American Literature 413 TRUDIER HARRIS-LOPEZ 29 Rap as Art and Philosophy 419 RICHARD SHUSTERMAN 30 Microphone Commandos: Rap Music and Political Ideology 429 BILL E. LAWSON 31 Sports, Political Philosophy, and the African American 436 GERALD EARLY. (shrink)

A new theoretical approach to language has emerged in the past 10–15 years that allows linguistic observations about form–meaning pairings, known as ‘construc- tions’, to be stated directly. Constructionist approaches aim to account for the full range of facts about language, without assuming that a particular subset of the data is part of a privileged ‘core’. Researchers in this field argue that unusual constructions shed light on more general issues, and can illuminate what is required for a complete account of (...) language. (shrink)

Trust is central to the therapeutic relationship, but the epistemic asymmetries between the expert healthcare provider and the patient make the patient, the trustor, vulnerable to the provider, the trustee. The narratives of pain sufferers provide helpful insights into the experience of pain at the juncture of trust, expert knowledge, and the therapeutic relationship. While stories of pain sufferers having their testimonies dismissed are well documented, pain sufferers continue to experience their testimonies as being epistemically downgraded. This kind of epistemic (...) injustice has received limited treatment in bioethics. In this paper, we examine how a climate of distrust in pain management may facilitate what Fricker calls epistemic injustice. We critically interrogate the processes through which pain sufferers are vulnerable to specific kinds of epistemic injustice, such as testimonial injustice. We also examine how healthcare institutions and practices privilege some kinds of evidence and ways of knowing while excluding certain patient testimonies from epistemic consideration. We argue that providers ought to avoid epistemic injustice in pain management by striving toward epistemic humility. Epistemic humility, as a form of epistemic justice, may be the kind disposition required to correct the harmful prejudices that may arise through testimonial exchange in chronic pain management. (shrink)

In this paper I formulate the thesis of the Division of Epistemic Labor as a thesis of epistemic dependence, illustrate several ways in which individual subjects are epistemically dependent on one or more of the members of their community in the process of knowledge acquisition, and draw conclusions about the cognitively distributed nature of some knowledge acquisition.

In this paper, I investigate the phonological similarity of different elements of the phonological pole of multi-word units. I discuss two case studies on slightly different levels of abstractness. The first case study investigates lexically fully-specified V-NPDirObj idioms such as kick the bucket and lose one's cool; the idioms investigated are taken from the Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms (Harper Collins, 2002). The second case study investigates the lexically less specified way-construction, which is exemplified by He fought his way through (...) the crowd (cf. Goldberg, Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure, The University of Chicago Press, 1995: Ch. 9), on the basis of data from the British National Corpus 1.0. I show that both patterns exhibit a strong phonological within-pole relation, namely a strong preference for having their slots filled with phonologically similar elements, where phonological similarity is manifested in alliteration patterns. These preferences are statistically significant when compared to chance-level expectations derived both from the corpora and from the CELEX database (Baayen et al., The CELEX Lexical Database (CD-ROM), University of Pennsylvania, 1995) and are explained on the basis of Langacker's concept of syntactic and phonological constituents as well as current exemplar-/usage-based approaches. (shrink)

Elsewhere I and others have argued that evidence one should have had can bear on the justification of one's belief, in the form of defeating one's justification. In this paper, I am interested in knowing how evidence one should have had (on the one hand) and one's higher-order evidence (on the other) interact in determinations of the justification of belief. In doing so I aim to address two types of scenario that previous discussions have left open. In one type of (...) scenario, there is a clash between a subject's higher-order evidence and the evidence she should have had: S's higher-order evidence is misleading as to the existence or likely epistemic bearing of further evidence she should have. In the other, while there is further evidence S should have had, this evidence would only have offered additional support for S's belief that p. The picture I offer derives from two “epistemic ceiling” principles linking evidence to justification: one's justification for the belief that p can be no higher than it is on one's total evidence, nor can it be higher than what it would have been had one had all of the evidence one should have had. Together, these two principles entail what I call the doctrine of Epistemic Strict Liability: insofar as one fails to have evidence one should have had, one is epistemically answerable to that evidence whatever reasons one happened to have regarding the likely epistemic bearing of that evidence. I suggest that such a position can account for the battery of intuitions elicited in the full range of cases I will be considering. (shrink)

In other work I have defended the claim that, when we rely on other speakers by accepting what they tell us, our reliance on them differs in epistemically relevant ways from our reliance on instruments, when we rely on them by accepting what they “tell” us. However, where I have explored the former sort of reliance at great length, I have not done so with the latter. In this paper my aim is to do so. My key notions will be (...) those of our social practices, the normative expectations that are sanctioned by those practices, and the epistemically engineered environments constituted by some of these practices. With these notions in mind, I will argue that one’s reliance on instruments, while relevantly different from one’s reliance on other speakers, can nevertheless manifest a kind of epistemic dependence which epistemological theory can and should acknowledge. (shrink)

The following three propositions appear to be individually defensible but jointly inconsistent: (1) reliability is a necessary condition on epistemic justification; (2) on contested matters in philosophy, my beliefs are not reliably formed; (3) some of these beliefs are epistemically justified. I explore the nature and scope of the problem, examine and reject some candidate solutions, compare the issue with ones arising in discussions about disagreement, and offer a brief assessment of our predicament.

In this paper I argue that the nature of our epistemic entitlement to rely on certain belief-forming processes—perception, memory, reasoning, and perhaps others—is not restricted to one's own belief-forming processes. I argue as well that we can have access to the outputs of others’ processes, in the form of their assertions. These two points support the conclusion that epistemic entitlements are “interpersonal.” I then proceed to argue that this opens the way for a non-standard version of anti-reductionism in the epistemology (...) of testimony, and a more “extended” epistemology—one that calls into question the epistemic significance that has traditionally been ascribed to the boundaries separating individual subjects. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the epistemic significance of practical reasons to inquire. I have in mind the range of practical reasons one might have to do such things as collect (additional) evidence, consult with various sources, employ certain methods or techniques, double-check one’s answer to a question, etc. After expanding the diet of examples in which subjects have such reasons, I appeal to features of these sorts of reason in order to question the motivation for pragmatic encroachment in epistemology. (...) Once we reject pragmatic encroachment, it can seem that we are forced to treat practical reasons to inquire as having no distinctly epistemic significance. This is not so; I conclude by sketching an alternative account of what the epistemic significance of such reasons might be. (shrink)

The present paper argues that there is ample corpus evidence of statistical preemption for learners to make use of. In the case of argument structure constructions, a verbi is preempted from appearing in a construction A, CxA, if and only if the following probability is high: P(CxB|context that would be suitable for CxA and verbi). For example, the probability of hearing a preemptive construction, given a context that would otherwise be well-suited for the ditransitive is high for verbs like explain (...) that overwhelmingly appear in the dative, and low for verbs like tell that readily appear in the ditransitive. Strength of statistical preemption is determined both by this probability, and by the frequency (ln (F)) of a verb in a preemptive construction when the context is at least as well suited to the preempted construction. The critiques of preemption by Stefanowitsch (Cognitive Linguistics 19: 513–531, 2008, this volume) are countered by arguing that the relevant probabilities were not considered. Moreover, we find evidence that constructions are somewhat less constrained when yoked to non-alternating verbs, as Stefanowitsch (cf. this volume) suggests should be the case. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend a novel characterization of epistemic luck. Helping myself to the notions of epistemic entitlement and adequate explanation, I propose that a true belief suffers from epistemic luck iff an adequate explanation of the fact that the belief acquired is true must appeal to propositions to which the subject herself is not epistemically entitled. The burden of the argument is to show that there is a plausible construal of the notions of epistemic entitlement (...) and adequate explanation on which the resulting characterization of epistemic luck, though admittedly programmatic, has several important virtues. It avoids difficulties which plague modal accounts of epistemic luck; it can explain the conflicting temptations one can feel in certain alleged cases of epistemic luck; it offers a novel account of the value of knowledge, without committing itself to any particular analysis of knowledge; and it illuminates the significance for epistemology of the phenomenon of epistemic luck itself. (shrink)

Among epistemologists, it is common to assume that insofar as coherence bears on the justification of belief, the only relevant coherence relations are those _within_ an individual subject’s web of beliefs. After clarifying this view and exploring some plausible motivations for it, we argue that this individualistic account of the epistemic relevance of coherence fails to account for central facets of scientific practice. In its place we propose a social account of coherence. According to the view we propose, a scientist (...) _S_’s belief that _p_ is _prima facie_ unjustified if this belief negatively coheres with justified scientific claims in her scientific community. This account of coherence yields an epistemology for scientific belief which, we argue, has all of the benefits and none of the liabilities of its more individualistic predecessor. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the tendency to defer in matters semantic is rationalized by our reliance on the say-so of others for much of what we know about the world. The result, I contend, is a new and distinctly epistemic source of support for the doctrine of attitude anti-individualism.

The process of education, and in particular that involving very young children, often involves students' taking their teachers' word on a good many things. At the same time, good education at every level ought to inculcate, develop, and support students' ability to think for themselves. While these two features of education need not be regarded as contradictory, it is not clear how they relate to one another, nor is it clear how (when taken together) these features ought to bear on (...) educational practice itself. This article, which is largely programmatic, aims to provide tentative answers to these questions. (shrink)