PROBEX (PROBabilities from EXemplars), a model of probabilistic inference and probability judgment based on generic knowledge is presented. Its properties are that: (a) it provides an exemplar model satisfying bounded rationality; (b) it is a “lazy” algorithm that presumes no pre‐computed abstractions; (c) it implements a hybrid‐representation, similarity‐graded probability. We investigate the ecological rationality of PROBEX and find that it compares favorably with Take‐The‐Best and multiple regression (Gigerenzer, Todd, & the ABC Research Group, 1999). PROBEX is fitted to (...) the point estimates, decisions, and probability assessments by human participants. The best fit is obtained for a version that weights frequency heavily and retrieves only two exemplars. It is proposed that PROBEX implements speed and frugality in a psychologically plausible way. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of how scientific knowledge, which is always locally generated, becomes accepted in other sites. The analysis suggests that there are a small number of strategies that enable scientists to resituate knowledge and that these strategies are generic: they are not restricted to specific disciplines or modes of doing science but rather are found in a variety of different forms across the sciences.

In this paper, we focus on contexts where the primary activity is to expound knowledge about general classes of phenomena, either by categorizing and characterizing them or by explaining them based on some theory, ranging from a commonsense folk theory to an uncommonsense scientific theory. Texts produced in such contexts include science lectures, research articles, and entries in encyclopedias. We focus on explanations, considering them across strata in terms of context, semantics, and lexicogrammar, and summarizing contributions from different research (...) strands. Against this background, we report on a study of the registers used in secondary school chemistry textbooks in Hong Kong. We begin by summarizing a framework for classifying the contexts in which texts operate – a framework designed to allow us to differentiate different kinds of text according to the contexts they operate in. Then, we focus on one type of context – that of expounding knowledge about general classes of phenomena. Next, we identify different strategies of expounding knowledge, contrasting explanations and categorizations, and then discuss explanations in more detail. Finally, we move to the question of how these contextual types are realized semantically as texts organized as rhetorical complexes, drawing on secondary school textbooks in chemistry in particular. (shrink)

We conducted a scoping review to map and critically examine the knowledge, perceptions and utilization of generics and biosimilars, among physicians, pharmacists, patients, the general population, and other stakeholders from LAC.

Our knowledge about the world is often expressed by generic sentences, yet their meanings are far from clear. This book provides answers to central problems concerning generics: what do they mean? Which factors affect their interpretation? How can one reason with generics? Cohen proposes that the meanings of generics are probability judgments, and shows how this view accounts for many of their puzzling properties, including lawlikeness. Generics are evaluated with respect to alternatives. Cohen argues that alternatives are induced (...) by the kind as well as by the predicated property, and thus provides a uniform account of the varied interpretations of generics. He studies the formal properties of alternatives and provides a compositional account of their derivation by focus and presupposition. Cohen uses his semantics of generics to provide a formal characterization of adequate default reasoning, and proves some desirable results of this formalism. (shrink)

This paper discusses free-choice like effects in generics. Just as Jane may drink coffee or tea can be used to convey Jane may drink coffee and Jane may drink tea (she is free to choose ), some generics with disjunctive predicates can be used to convey conjunctions of simpler generics: elephants live in Africa or Asia can be used to convey elephants live in Africa and elephants live in Asia. Investigating these logically slightly more complex generics and especially the free-choice (...) like effects throws light on both the semantics of generics and the interaction between world knowledge and the interpretive options generics offer. This paper presents a package of semantic and pragmatic hypotheses to account for the data, including why the effect is absent in the superficially logically similar elephants live in Africa or give birth to live young. (shrink)

Preschoolers naturally form mental representations that capture generic knowledge about object kinds. These have been considered to pose a special explanatory and learning challenge. We here argue for a new deductive model of them, where (i) the representations in question have a linguistic format from the start; (ii) they are inherently structurally simpler compared to reference to individuals or quantifications; and (iii) formed in communicative contexts because communication in humans is linked to language. In this model, specific language‐related (...) resources explain the scope and limits of the forms of knowledge obtained, illustrating how language and cognition develop in tandem. (shrink)

Recent literature has suggested that generics can harbor and propagate worrying ideologies in a manner which is often not appreciated by speakers. In this article, I argue that the use of generics to convey information about mental illness is unhelpful, whether the knowledge structure conveyed by the generic is 'accurate' or not. Inaccurate generics contribute to insidious forms of social stereotyping and stigma by encouraging us to simplistically generalize characteristics found in very few category members to other members (...) of that kind.Yet, even where the knowledge structure underlying the generic is accurate, generics remain an unhelpful way of talking about mental illness. This is because... (shrink)

In this paper I propose a novel treatment of generic sentences, which proceeds by means of different levels of analysis. According to this account, all generic sentences (I-generics and D-generics alike) are initially treated in a uniform manner, as involving higher-order predication (following the work of George Boolos, James Higginbotham and Barry Schein on plurals). Their non-uniform character, however, re-emerges at subsequent levels of analysis, when the higher-order predications of the first level are cashed out in terms of (...) quantification over individuals: this last step, I suggest, involves knowledge concerning the lexical meaning of the predicates in question. (shrink)

Problems for Generic Reliabilism lead to a more specific account of knowledge as involving the exercise of intellectual virtues or faculties.

From off-brand products to elevator music, the "generic" is discarded as the copy, the knock-off, and the old. In The Copy Generic, anthropologist Scott MacLochlainn insists that more than the waste from the culture machine, the generic is a universal social tool, allowing us to move through the world with necessary frames of reference. It is the baseline and background, a category that includes and orders different types of specificity yet remains non-specific in itself. Across arenas as (...) diverse as city planning, social media, ethnonationalism, and religion, the generic points to spaces in which knowledge is both over-produced and desperately lacking. Moving through ethnographic and historical settings in the Philippines, Europe, and the United States, MacLochlainn reveals ways the "generic" is crucial to how things repeat, circulate, and are classified in the world. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo discutiré cuáles son los rasgos específicos que distinguen las ciencias frente a otras instituciones históricas. Repasaré varias filosofías que conciben las ciencias a partir de rasgos que son constitutivos, pero son genéricos: así ocurre cuando se entiende la ciencia como explicación, como comprensión, como conocimiento, como descripción, como representación, como construcción, como institución cultural, como experimentación y elaboración de hipótesis, como teoría, y como instrumento de dominio e intervención sobre parcelas de la realidad. Propondré ciertos rasgos (...) específicos de los teoremas y de los campos científicos que permiten distinguir las ciencias de otras formaciones históricas.In this paper, I will discuss what specific traits distinguish sciences from other historical institutions. First I will review several philosophies conceiving sciences having in mind constitutive, but generic, features. This is the case when sciences are understood as explanation, as comprehension, as knowledge, as description, as representation, as construction, as cultural institution, as experimentation and elaboration of hypotheses, as theory, and as instrument of domination and intervention on reality. I put forward certain specific traits of theorems and scientific fields that allow us to distinguish sciences from other historical formations. (shrink)

I argue that moral principles involve the same sort of generalization as ordinary yet elusive generic generalizations in natural language such as ‘Tigers are striped’ or ‘Peppers are spicy’. A notable advantage of the generic view is that it simultaneously allows for pessimism and optimism about the role and status of moral principles in our lives. It provides a new perspective on the nature of moral principles on which principles are not apt for determining the moral status of (...) particular actions while they may be apt, and even fundamental, to our acquisition of moral knowledge. A natural consequence of the view is variation among moral principles, with some regularly warranting exceptions and some appearing arguably exceptionless. I will also argue that this generic conception of moral principles has significant advantages, as a normative model of moral reasoning, over the view of moral principles as defaults advanced in recent years. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the recently much discussed Value Challenge for Theories of Knowledge and formulate Generic Theistic reliabilism as a theory, which can answer this challenge, with respect to Theism and the proposition ”God exists’.

In this essay, I argue that, all else being equal, theism is more probable than naturalism on the assumption that human beings are able to arrive at a body of moral knowledge that is largely accurate and complete. I put forth this thesis on grounds that, if naturalism is true, the explanation of the content of our moral intuitions terminates either in biological-evolutionary processes or in social conventions adopted for pragmatic reasons; that, if this is so, our moral intuitions (...) were selected for their utility, not their truth; and that, if our moral intuitions were so selected, they are probably false. I defend the argument against three objections: first, that the argument amounts to a generic skeptical challenge; second, that ethical naturalism explains how our moral intuitions could have been selected for their truth; and third, that there is a pre-established harmony between the utility of moral beliefs and their truth-values. (shrink)

I review recent empirical findings on knowledge attributions in lottery cases and report a new experiment that advances our understanding of the topic. The main novel finding is that people deny knowledge in lottery cases because of an underlying qualitative difference in how they process probabilistic information. “Outside” information is generic and pertains to a base rate within a population. “Inside” information is specific and pertains to a particular item’s propensity. When an agent receives information that 99% (...) of all lottery tickets lose (outside information), people judge that she does not know that her ticket will lose. By contrast, when an agent receives information that her specific ticket is 99% likely to lose (inside information), people judge that she knows that her ticket will lose. Despite this difference in knowledge judgments, people rate the likelihood of her ticket losing the exact same in both cases (i.e. 99%). The results shed light on other factors affecting knowledge judgments in lottery cases, including formulaic expression and participants’ own estimation of whether it is true that the ticket will lose. The results also undermine previous hypotheses offered for knowledge denial in lottery cases, including the hypotheses that people deny knowledge because they either deny justification or acknowledge a chance for error. (shrink)

The chapter defends an evolutionary explanation of modal knowledge from knowledge of counterfactual conditionals. Knowledge of counterfactuals is evolutionarily useful, as it enables us to learn from mistakes. Given the standard semantics for counterfactuals, there are several equivalences between modal claims and claims involving counterfactuals that can be used to explain modal knowledge. Timothy Williamson has suggested an explanation of modal knowledge that draws on the equivalence of ‘Necessarily p’ with ‘If p were false, a (...) contradiction would be the case’. He postulates a cognitive process that draws on this equivalence and that is supposed to underlie our modal judgements. The existence of this cognitive process would, however, have consequences that conflict with results from empirical psychology. The chapter argues that the equivalence of ‘Necessarily p’ with ‘For all q, if q were true then p would be true’ should instead be used to explain knowledge of necessity. This explanation requires giving an account of how we know truths of the form ‘For all q, if q were true then p would be true’. In order to provide such an account, the chapter draws on a different suggestion by Williamson about knowledge of generalizations. According to this suggestion, we come to know truths of the form ‘All Fs are G’ by imagining a generic F and judging that it is G. Applied to our case, the suggestion would be that we come to know that p is counterfactually implied by all propositions (and hence that p is necessary) by entertaining a generic proposition and judging that it counterfactually implies p. It would even suffice to entertain a generic possible proposition and judge that it counterfactually implies p, for it can be shown that the claim ‘For all possible q, if q were true then p would be true’ is equivalent to the original claim ‘For all q, if q were true then p would be true’ and hence is equivalent to ‘Necessarily p’. It might seem that, from an evolutionary perspective, probabilistic reasoning is just as useful as reasoning involving counterfactuals. The chapter argues, however, that this would not undermine the envisaged explanation of modal knowledge. The chapter concludes by suggesting avenues of empirical research that might shed light on the cognitive processes that actually underlie our evaluations of modal claims and on the relation between these processes and those involved in counterfactual reasoning. The results of such empirical research would be highly relevant epistemologically, since they will ultimately determine which (if any) equivalence between modal claims and claims involving counterfactuals should be used to explain our modal knowledge. (shrink)

Children and adults commonly produce more generic noun phrases (e.g., birds fly) about animals than artifacts. This may reflect differences in participants’ generic knowledge about specific animals/artifacts (e.g., dogs/chairs), or it may reflect a more general distinction. To test this, the current experiments asked adults and preschoolers to generate properties about novel animals and artifacts (Experiment 1: real animals/artifacts; Experiments 2 and 3: matched pairs of maximally similar, novel animals/artifacts). Data demonstrate that even without prior knowledge (...) about these items, the likelihood of producing a generic is significantly greater for animals than artifacts. These results leave open the question of whether this pattern is the product of experience and learned associations or instead a set of early-developing theories about animals and artifacts. (shrink)

The entry is intended as an advanced introduction to the topic of knowledge-how. It starts with a list of overviews, monographs and collections, followed by selected 20th century discussions. The last two sections contain sources pertaining to Ryle's own work on the topic as well as work by other influential thinkers, and themes that are sometimes associated with knowledge-how. The remaining seven sections survey the contemporary literature on knowledge-how from three perspectives: (i) generic desiderata for accounts (...) of knowledge-how, (ii) specific topics that are already well-entrenched in the tradition of particular subdisciplines and (iii) second-order controversy regarding distinct assumptions and tools employed by the debaters. (shrink)

A generic statement is a type of generalization that is made by asserting that a "kind" has a certain property. For example we might hear that marshmallows are sweet. Here, we are talking about the "kind" marshmallow and assert that individual instances of this kind have the property of being sweet. Almost all of our common sense knowledge about the everyday world is put in terms of generic statements. What can make these generic sentences be true (...) even when there are exceptions? A mass term is one that does not "divide its reference;" the word water is a mass term; the word dog is a count term. In a certain vicinity, one can count and identity how many dogs there are, but it doesn't make sense to do that for water--there just is water present. The philosophical literature is rife with examples concerning how a thing can be composed of a mass, such as a statue being composed of clay. Both generic statements and mass terms have led philosophers, linguists, semanticists, and logicians to search for theories to accommodate these phenomena and relationships. The contributors to this interdisciplinary volume study the nature and use of generics and mass terms. Noted researchers in the psychology of language use material from the investigation of human performance and child-language learning to broaden the range of options open for formal semanticists in the construction of their theories, and to give credence to some of their earlier postulations--for instance, concerning different types of predications that are available for true generics and for the role of object recognitions in the development of count vs. mass terms. Relevant data also is described by investigating the ways children learn these sorts of linguistic items: children can learn how to sue generic statements correctly at an early age, and children are adept at individuating objects and distinguishing them from the stuff of which they are made also at an early age. (shrink)

This article discusses how the Generic Model of Psychotherapy can help to organize the psychotherapy research and the knowledge in the field of psychotherapy for sexual and gender minority patients. The structure that this traditional model provides is a good foundation for research in this field, inasmuch as it stresses macrosocial aspects that determine the provision of psychotherapy and contextualize its outcomes. Each one of the main components offered by the Generic Model of Psychotherapy – Determinants, Processes, (...) and Consequences – are specified for psychotherapy with LGBT patients and are illustrated with a selection of already existing research in the field of sexual minorities; they are also stress areas marked by knowledge gaps that require future developments. In addition, a set of questions are proposed to contribute to new studies, including the clinical implications that can be derived from this model. (shrink)

Older approaches to planning lack the capacity to be responsive to complexity. A new philosophy supporting a new mode of practice could improve significantly the capacity of society to cope with complexity in design, planning, and policy making. The new philosophy and practice must be generic; in other words, it must be divorced in its philosophy and approach from any particular kind of planning activity. It must emphasize the capacity to enhance the work of groups in designing new conceptual (...) structures whether they be plans, policies, or tangible products. (shrink)

Here I establish a parallel between modern epistemology and traditional metaphysics: between the way we know an object, on the one hand, and the way an object's causes cause it to exist, on the other. I show that different efficient causes in the Thomistic system correspond to different questions of knowledge, as analyzed by Stanley Cavell, and that in particular the question the Cavellian skeptic asks corresponds to God's causation in creation. As I have explained in detail elsewhere, and (...) discuss briefly here, this parallel represents far more than a formal analogy between a series of issues in epistemology and a series of issues in metaphysics. It helps to explain, in fact, why modern philosophers (e.g., Husserl) were ultimately driven to put the human ego in the place of God, as creating (or “positing”) the objects of its knowledge, thereby denying the very distinction between epistemology and ontology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ignorance, Knowledge, and Omniscience: At and Beyond the Limits of Faith and Reason after Shinran:Reflections on The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and Science, with Special Attention to Dennis HirotaAmos YongAlthough published in the series Religion, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, Paul Numrich's edited volume is really about epistemology in religion and science, in particular about human knowing in Buddhist and Christian traditions shaped by the world of (...) science on the one hand, and how such knowing might also inform scientific knowledge on the other hand.1 The panoply of positions is presented by both Buddhist and Christian thinkers.From the Buddhist side, the following arguments are sketched:• that religion and science are complementary modes of knowing and that "understanding the true nature of the physical world" opens up "the way to enlightenment" (Trinh Xuan Thuan).2• that Buddhism is both continuous with (and hence deserving of serious consideration amidst) the epistemic discourses of modernity in many respects and yet also discontinuous with (and hence capable for critically interrogating) modernity's epistemology in other respects as well (David L. McMahan).3• that a Shin Buddhist approach to human knowledge—which in this chapter is brought into dialogue with Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) notion of truth—opens up to a Kuhnian philosophy of science that emphasizes how paradigmatic shifts occur when new perspectives replace older frameworks (Dennis Hirota).4• that the questions raised by theoretical and quantum physics provide a scientific framework for discussing fundamental epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical questions that Buddhists and Christians might otherwise disagree about (Mark T. Unno).5From the Christian side, the following theses are explored: [End Page 201]• that boundary constraints confront not only working scientists but also Buddhists and Christians, and that these constraints can thus serve as a springboard for a science and religion "trilogue" (Paul O. Ingram).6• that the mystery of creative becoming (God, in traditional Christian terms) is the dynamic backdrop to the ongoing human quest for knowledge (Gordon D. Kaufman).7• that it is at the boundaries of knowledge that genuine creativity occurs (not only scientific creativity but also theological creativity emerges, i.e., the apophatic tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy or the theory of coincidentia oppositorum of Nicholas of Cusa [1401-1464]), and where, as a result of such creative approaches, distinct fields of inquiry open up and different domains of knowledge emerge (Antje Jackelén).8• that theological discourse is paradoxical precisely because such discourse marks the fluid boundaries demarcating sense and nonsense (Tom Christenson).9And, befitting a volume on the encounter between religion (i.e., Buddhism and Christianity) and science, there is a concluding chapter from a physicist on the limits of scientific knowledge that both is encouraged by the gains made by science (presuming a critical realist approach to science's modeling of reality) and yet also is honest about there being much more to learn on small and big questions (John R. Albright).10The foregoing summaries do not do justice to the complexity and sophistication of the chapters in the book. However, they provide a broader context for my interactions with Dennis Hirota's chapter on Shinran's (1173-1263) epistemology and its implications for both religious and scientific knowledge. As an evangelical Christian, I am particularly intrigued by the challenges confronting a Shin Buddhist approach to the sciences, even as I am hopeful that such a consideration will precipitate creative insights both for the Buddhist-Christian encounter and for the religion-science dialogue. I am all the more motivated since I have long been convinced that the religion-science dialogue has been dominated by generically religious approaches and that it is time for more particularistic or even confessional positions to be registered in the discussion.11 I am optimistic that the specificity of the Shin tradition will provide both complementary and contrasting perspectives to the contemporary Buddhist encounter with science that has so far been dominated by the broadly Tibetan approaches of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (1935-) and those in his circle of dialogue partners,12 and that this will in turn open up new trajectories—even initiate new paradigms, as Hirota suggests—for the Buddhist... (shrink)

In this article a dialectical model for practical reasoning within a community, based on the Generic/Actual Argument Model (GAAM) is advanced and its application to deliberative dialogue discussed. The GAAM, offers a dynamic template for structuring knowledge within a domain of discourse that is connected to and regulated by a community. The paper demonstrates how the community accepted generic argument structure acts to normatively influence both admissible reasoning and the progression of dialectical reasoning between participants. It is (...) further demonstrated that these types of deliberation dialogues supported by the GAAM comply with criteria for normative principles for deliberation, specifically, Alexy’s rules for discourse ethics and Hitchcock’s Principles of Rational Mutual Inquiry. The connection of reasoning to the community in a documented and transparent structure assists in providing best justified reasons, principles of deliberation and ethical discourse which are important advantages for reasoning communities. (shrink)

Pre- and postmeasures of course knowledge correlated more strongly and consistently with course performance variables (essay quizzes, course project, multiple-choice exams, and total course credit)than did pre- and postmeasures of generic critical thinking. In addition, the total sample (N =126) improved significantly on course knowledge from the pre- to the postassessment but changed minimally on critical thinking. The extent and pattern of change in critical thinking differed somewhat for students making high and low grades in the course. (...) High-grade students achieved significantly more favorable changes on both critical thinking and course knowledge than did the low-grade students. (shrink)

Pre- and postmeasures of course knowledge correlated more strongly and consistently with course performance variables (essay quizzes, course project, multiple-choice exams, and total course credit)than did pre- and postmeasures of generic critical thinking. In addition, the total sample (N =126) improved significantly on course knowledge from the pre- to the postassessment but changed minimally on critical thinking. The extent and pattern of change in critical thinking differed somewhat for students making high and low grades in the course. (...) High-grade students achieved significantly more favorable changes on both critical thinking and course knowledge than did the low-grade students. (shrink)

The lantern exhibition at the Lantern Festival is an important traditional festival in Taiwan. Visitors play an important role in the promotion and sustainable development of intangible cultural heritage. In recent years, the involvement of digital technology in traditional lantern design and shows has contributed to the protection, inheritance, and promotion of ICH, there remains less research on using augmented reality with ICH tourism. In this study, AR is used for ICH lantern exhibition to discuss the learning experience in lantern (...) tourism and the relationship between technology acceptance and satisfaction from the perspective of visitors, as well as evaluate what AR has on improving visitors’ awareness and learning experience. Then, primary variables of the technology acceptance model are combined with generic learning outcomes to integrate ICH, education, and technology to expand TAM, building a new model to study the ICH learning experience. A questionnaire and observation are used. Respondents are visitors participating in the AR lantern exhibition in Taiwan, which is designed by the author. There is a total of 200 questionnaires collected in the end. The result shows that knowledge and understanding, attitudes and values, activity, behavior, and progression, and enjoyment, inspiration, and creativity from GLOs have a positive effect on technology acceptance and actual use. Therefore, visitors are satisfied with innovative and interesting technology learning experiences, enhancing learning interest and results. Besides, the interaction of the AR system improves visitors’ learning motivation, which shows the combination of AR technology with ICH tourism helps improve cultural awareness. (shrink)

Following Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s epistemological concept we show how a generic element of synthetic biology, the “biological switch”, can be integrated into an experimental system. Here synthetic biology is assumed to be a technoscience. Hence, the biological switch becomes a technoscientific research object. Consequently, the experimental system has to be analyzed in a technoscientific experimental setting, showing differences in comparison with the former. To work out the specific properties of the technoscientific experimental system, biological switching behavior is compared with the (...) scientific research object laser light in its classical setting. For the analyses, both the laser light and bistability, enabling a biological switch, are considered as epistemic things connected by the same theoretical concept of phase transitions. The so-called Schlögl model is used to model both biological switching behavior and induced emission of radiation and becomes an epistemic thing in itself. It becomes clear that the answer, whether one is dealing with the emission of laser light or with bistable switching behavior, is linked to the perspective taken. The technoscientific orientation towards applications and the development of basic scientific theories require different perspectives on one and the same epistemic thing, here also represented by the model. The research objects of synthetic biology as a technoscience thus also enter into the corresponding experimental systems as techno-epistemic objects. Their analysis leads to a more complete understanding of what constitutes synthetic biology. (shrink)

The impacts of the activities of technological societies extends further into the future than their capacity to predict and control these impacts. Some have argued that the repercussions of this deficiency of knowledge cause fatal difficulties for both consequentialist and deontological accounts of future oriented obligations. Increasingly, international politics encompasses issues where this problem looms large: the connection between energy production and consumption and climate change provides an excellent example. As the reach of technologically-mediated social action increases, it is (...) necessary to ask whether a political imaginary that extends itself to match this reach requires new concepts, and how far they should displace traditional political concepts of obligation, based on reciprocity and harm avoidance. This paper draws on recent scholarship on the role of concepts of care in political philosophy, bringing together phenomenological and feminist concepts of care in contributing to a positive concept of non-reciprocal intergenerational obligation that defends a constitutive connection between care and justice. (shrink)

An essential aspect of forming representations of social groups is to recognize socially relevant attributes licensed by the group membership. Because knowledge of cultural practices tends to be transmitted through social contact within social groups, it is one of the fundamental attributes shared among members of a social group. Two experiments explored whether 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds selectively attribute shared cultural knowledge on the basis of group membership of agents. Using novel social groups, children were introduced to one target (...) agent and two other agents, one of which belonged to the same group as the target and one belonged to a different group. Children were then asked who would know or like same things as the target agent. The results showed that children expect group members to know the same songs, whereas they do not necessarily expect them to like the same songs or know the same generic facts. These findings suggest that children are remarkably selective in the attributions they make based on social group membership and from early on, they expect social group membership and cultural knowledge to be closely linked. (shrink)

Current debates about the integration of traditional and academic ecological knowledge struggle with a dilemma of division and assimilation. On the one hand, the emphasis on differences between traditional and academic perspectives has been criticized as creating an artificial divide that brands TEK as “non-scientific” and contributes to its marginalization. On the other hand, there has been increased concern about inadequate assimilation of Indigenous and other traditional perspectives into scientific practices that disregards the holistic nature and values of TEK. (...) The aim of this article is to develop a practice-based account of the epistemic relations between TEK and AEK that avoids both horns of the dilemma. While relations between TEK and AEK are often described in terms of the “holistic” nature of the former and the “mechanistic” character of the latter, we argue that a simple holism–mechanism divide misrepresents the epistemic resources of both TEK and AEK. Based on the literature on mechanistic explanations in philosophy of science, we argue that holders of TEK are perfectly capable of identifying mechanisms that underlie ecological phenomena while AEK often relies on non-mechanistic strategies of dealing with ecological complexity. Instead of generic characterizations of knowledge systems as either mechanistic or holistic, we propose to approach epistemic relations between knowledge systems by analyzing their heuristics in practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 354-368 [Access article in PDF] Davidson, Self-knowledge, and Autobiographical Writing Garry Hagberg AMONG THE NUMEROUS THINGS that make any autobiographical undertaking so interesting is the fact that there exists no one-to-one correlation between a person's belief, intention, preference, desire, hope, fear, expectation, and so forth (through a list including many of the diverse things philosophers now tend to group together as propositional attitudes) (...) and that person's behavior. Were there such a relation, our knowledge of others would be far more transparent than it is, and autobiographical writing would prove straightforwardly simple: for each remembered action there would be a determinate mental event that stood behind it, and a recording of the past action by the autobiographer would entail the parallel reporting of the mental predecessor, or indeed cause 1 articulated in terms of the content of a single propositional attitude, of that action.Of course, this simple dualistic schema has been subjected to various forms of scrutiny: Nietzsche decried what he generically termed the "antecendentia of action," 2 referring to the explanatory dreamland many philosophers and other theorists have happily but confusedly occupied, wherein the explanations of "outward" human actions proceed in what we will then call prior inward mental determinants. Focusing on the alleged temporal separation of antecedent and consequent action, Nietzsche with characteristic rhetorical force ridicules the [End Page 354] misled many who attempt to explain something in some cases so complex, and in other cases so immediate, as human intentional action. Ryle, focusing on the dualistic separation of inner and outer in any such explanatory schema, famously argued against the very conceptual substructure of the "ghost in the machine" 3 ; the ensuing behaviorism argued against the inner world of mental machinations, yielding a picture of selfhood that was in retrospect fairly close to and anticipatory of one variety of reductive monism, or "animalism," now argued in some quarters. 4 On any such behavioristic-reductionistic view, the project of the autobiographer would precisely be just to recount past actions, show their relations to other actions both before and after, and give an overarching narrative that displays the shape of a life over time—all without explanatory recourse to ghostly prior causes standing behind, and invariably dualistically linked to, the actions being recounted.Wittgenstein's conceptually reorienting remarks avoided the Scylla of dualism and the Charybdis of behaviorism, 5 and although any summary statement of his position is instructively impossible, it can be said that he showed that the language-games of intentional action are intricately, and with an irreducible complexity, interrelated with the language-games of human behavior and—to speak too generally—action-description. 6 Equipped with the view, or rather overview (Wittgenstein's übersicht), that we might gain of those myriad interrelations between language-games as a result of a consideration of cases (of precisely the kinds psychologically mimetic literature affords), we might outlive our desire to thematically encapsulate the (mythical) unitary nature of the relation between intention and action, and correspondingly free ourselves of a misbegotten picture of autobiographical writing, i.e., the very picture of one-to-one action-causation, and hence of autobiographical truth, mentioned above. But deliverance out of the grip of any such picture, to reemploy Wittgenstein's resonant phrase, is not easily won; it is most assuredly not a simple matter of deciding not to think that way anymore, or of being permanently relieved of any such dualistic misconception as a result of reading a few memorable remarks. The impulses to posit Nietzsche's antecedentia, to believe in Ryle's despised ghosts, to cling to a partially submerged belief that autobiographical writing will, with whatever local variations, fit the generic dualistic mold Wittgenstein labors to undercut, is no more the kind of thing one simply leaves behind any more than one simply drops, upon recognition that it is such, what a Freudian calls a repetition-compulsion. [End Page 355]Thus Donald Davidson writes—and (leaving aside what "truer" means) truer words are rarely spoken—that "there is a picture of the mind which... (shrink)

Since the beginning of history of philosophy, the specificity of philosophical knowledge, which results from its fundamentality, has manifested itself in the quest for the most general notions which would adequately describe the structure and dynamics of reality. Such notions as oneness and multiplicity, sameness and difference, finitude and infinity, changeability and unchangeability, motion and rest, among others, have become a permanent challenge for philosophizing intellect, and also an irremovable element of the dictionary of European philosophy, to which new (...) terminological entries are being added, and the meanings of the old ones are being specified. (shrink)

Commercial applications of knowledge-based systems are changing from an embryonic to a growth business. Knowledge is classified by levels and types to differentiate various knowledge-based systems. Applications are categorized by size, generic types, and degree of intelligence to establish a framework for discussion of progress and implications. A few significant commercial applications are identified and perspectives and implications of these and other systems are discussed. Perspectives relate to development paths, delivery modes, types of integration, and resource (...) requirements. Discussion includes organizational opportunities and impacts, business perspectives, workplace issues, public effects, and educational needs. Common traps and modes of failures are mentioned.Major conclusions point to the great value of knowledge-based systems when development is pursued correctly, and to the existence of insufficient understanding of resource requirements, needs for integration, different talents, and incorporation into operational strategy to equitably exploit the significant economic and social costs associated with their creation and use. (shrink)

Philosophy as Fiction seeks to account for the peculiar power of philosophical literature by taking as its case study the paradigmatic generic hybrid of the twentieth century, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. At once philosophical--in that it presents claims, and even deploys arguments concerning such traditionally philosophical issues as knowledge, self-deception, selfhood, love, friendship, and art--and literary, in that its situations are imaginary and its stylization inescapably prominent, Proust's novel presents us with a conundrum. How should (...) it be read? Can the two discursive structures co-exist, or must philosophy inevitably undermine literature (by sapping the narrative of its vitality) and literature undermine philosophy (by placing its claims in the mouth of an often unreliable narrator)? In the case of Proust at least, the result is greater than the sum of its parts. Not only can a coherent, distinctive philosophical system be extracted from the Recherche, once the narrator's periodic waywardness is taken into account; not only does a powerfully original style pervade its every nook, overtly reinforcing some theories and covertly exemplifying others; but aspects of the philosophy also serve literary ends, contributing more to character than to conceptual framework. What is more, aspects of the aesthetics serve philosophical ends, enabling a reader to engage in an active manner with an alternative art of living. Unlike the "essay" Proust might have written, his novel grants us the opportunity to use it as a practice ground for cooperation among our faculties, for the careful sifting of memories, for the complex procedures involved in self-fashioning, and for the related art of self-deception. It is only because the narrator's insights do not always add up--a weakness, so long as one treats the novel as a straightforward treatise--that it can produce its training effect, a feature that turns out to be its ultimate strength. (shrink)

Virtue reliabilism appears to have a major advantage over generic reliabilism: only the former has the resources to explain the intuition that knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. I argue that this appearance is illusory. It is sustained only by the misguided assumption that a principled distinction can be drawn between those belief-forming methods that are grounded in the agent’s intellectual virtues, and those that are not. A further problem for virtue reliabilism is that of explaining (...) why knowledge is more valuable than mere justified true belief. I argue that virtue reliabilism lacks the resources to explain this value difference. I conclude by considering what it would take for a theory to explain the extra value of knowledge over mere justified true belief. (shrink)

The Molinist doctrine that God has middle knowledge requires that God knows the truth-values of counterfactuals of freedom, propositions about what free agents would do in hypothetical circumstances. A well-known objection to middle knowledge, the grounding objection, contends that counterfactuals of freedom have no truth-value because there is no fact to the matter as to what an agent with libertarian freedom would do in counterfactual circumstances. Molinists, however, have offered responses to the grounding objection that they believe are (...) adequate for maintaining the coherence of middle knowledge. I argue that these responses to the grounding objection are not adequate, and that what I call the ‘generic grounding objection’ still poses a serious challenge to middle knowledge. (shrink)

Ontologies are the prime way of organizing data in the Semantic Web. Often, it is necessary to combine several, independently developed ontologies to obtain a complete representation of a domain of interest. The complementarity of existing ontologies can be leveraged by merging them. Existing approaches for ontology merging mostly implement a binary merge. However, with the growing number and size of relevant ontologies across domains, scalability becomes a central challenge. A multi-ontology merging technique offers a potential solution to this problem. (...) We present Co Merger, a scalable multiple ontologies merging method. It takes as input a set of source ontologies and existing mappings across them and generates a merged ontology. For efficient processing, rather than successively merging complete ontologies pairwise, we group related concepts across ontologies into partitions and merge first within and then across those partitions. In both steps, user-specified subsets of generic merge requirements (GMRs) are taken into account and used to optimize outputs. The experimental results on well-known datasets confirm the feasibility of our approach and demonstrate its superiority over binary strategies. A prototypical implementation is freely accessible through a live web portal. (shrink)

Developing an intellectualist account of skill, Stanley and Williamson define skill as a kind of disposition to action-guiding knowledge. The present paper challenges their definition of skill. While we don’t dispute that skill may consist of a cognitive, a dispositional, and an action-guiding component, we argue that Stanley and Williamson’s account of each component is problematic. In the first section, we argue, against Stanley and Williamson, that the cognitive component of skill is not a case of propositional knowledge-wh, (...) which is typically indexical. In the second section, we seek to show that Stanley and Williamson face difficulties in arguing for a generic claim about skill as a kind of disposition, and they fail to defend intellectualism about skill based on the dispositional account. In the third section we argue that Stanley and Williamson need a more detailed account of the action-guiding aspect of skill to avoid several difficulties, including a threat of a regress. We close with some lessons for the debate over intellectualism and anti-intellectualism about skill. (shrink)

I IntroductionA fundamental intuition about knowledge is that it is more valuable than mere true belief. This intuition is pervasive. We have an almost universal desire to know and nearly no desire to believe the truth accidentally. However, it turns out to be extremely difficult to explain why knowledge is more valuable. Linda Zagzebski and others have called this the ‘value problem.’ They argue that the value problem is particularly difficult to unravel for generic reliabilism. According to (...) generic reliabilism, knowledge is true belief produced by reliable belief-forming processes or faculties. But, the critics argue, ‘the reliability of the source of a belief cannot explain the [value difference] between knowledge and true belief.’ For reliably formed beliefs allegedly are valuable only insofar as they tend to be true. (shrink)

Developing an intellectualist account of skill, Stanley and Williamson define skill as a kind of disposition to action-guiding knowledge. The present paper challenges their definition of skill. While we don’t dispute that skill may consist of a cognitive, a dispositional, and an action-guiding component, we argue that Stanley and Williamson’s account of each component is problematic. In the first section, we argue, against Stanley and Williamson, that the cognitive component of skill is not a case of propositional knowledge-wh, (...) which is typically indexical. In the second section, we seek to show that Stanley and Williamson face difficulties in arguing for a generic claim about skill as a kind of disposition, and they fail to defend intellectualism about skill based on the dispositional account. In the third section we argue that Stanley and Williamson need a more detailed account of the action-guiding aspect of skill to avoid several difficulties, including a threat of a regress. We close with some lessons for the debate over intellectualism and anti-intellectualism about skill. (shrink)

Despite increasing attention to the sensors, drones, robots, and apps permeating agri-food systems, little attention has been paid to social media, perhaps the most ubiquitous digital technology in rural areas globally. This article draws on analysis of farming groups on Myanmar Facebook to posit social media as appropriated agritech: a generic technology incorporated into existing circuits of economic and social exchange that becomes a site of agrarian innovation. Through analysis of an original archive of popular posts collected from Myanmar-language (...) Facebook pages and groups related to agriculture, I explore the ways that farmers, traders, agronomists and agricultural companies use social media to further agrarian commerce and knowledge. These activities evidence that farmers use Facebook not only to exchange market or planting information, but also to interact in ways structured by existing social, political and economic relations. More broadly, my analysis builds on insights from STS and postcolonial computing to disrupt assumptions about the totalizing power of digital technologies and affirm the relevance of social media to agriculture, while inviting new research into the surprising, ambiguous relationships between small farmers and big tech. (shrink)

The ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is a research topic with both theoretical and practical significance. However, the ethical and moral aspects of conceptual, ontological, semantic, and knowledge modeling, more specifically, and which are sometimes found in AI applications, is not being given sufficient attention. I argue that it should. Whether considering using or developing these meaning-focused models, there are ethical aspects. This paper offers a preliminary outline about this potentially new research field, discussing: some questions and areas of (...) concern, their significance; scenarios of ethical import, and initial ethical guidelines. A focus area, potential case study, and lens through which to see the ethical significance at hand, is ontologies, with emphasis on the most abstract ontologies (so-called generic, foundational, top-level or upper ontologies). This would aim to show the ethical import of highly abstract (often philosophical) ontological choices, assumptions, and their effects on data, developers, users, and society. In particular, I stress the need for critical examination of such models, their content, their intended meanings, assumptions, ideologies, as well as the development process. Both the ethics of, and ethics in, these activities are, therefore, of interest. Topics in the ethics of AI that are relevant include: transparency, bias, data-sharing, privacy, control over data, etc. This paper thereby contributes to the ethics of AI, as well as the ethics of information, of knowledge managment and relevant topics by developing and discussing the ethics of ontology (and similar systems). Future development will refine and add to the ideas expressed in this paper. (shrink)

Butchvarov is chairman of the department of philosophy at the University of Iowa. His book, a contribution to a new series, the Northwestern University Publications in Analytical Philosophy, deals with "the conceptual foundations of epistemology." It is divided into four main parts. The first undertakes an account of the general concept of knowledge. The second treats the objects of a priori knowledge; the third, the nature of primary a posteriori knowledge. The fourth part regards nondemonstrative inference and (...) the nature of derivative knowledge in general. The focus of the book is upon fundamental epistemic concepts rather than such particular issues as knowledge of the future, of bodies, of other minds, etc. Butchvarov urges that such specialized problems be treated only after the general conceptual framework has been investigated, lest one's common-sense opinions on the former unduly influence his philosophical conclusions as to the latter. For the inherent demands of the discipline itself must be respected: "In philosophy, as in any other purely theoretical discipline, it is better to be wrong as the result of inquiry and argument than to be right as the result of mere conviction." One of the author's central conclusions concerns evidential criteria. One unquestionable criterion of evidence is the impossibility of mistake, the "demonstrative" criterion. Is there, in addition, any "nondemonstrative" criterion of evidence, with the consequent possibility of nondemonstrative derivative knowledge or at least nondemonstrative rational belief? While not ruling out the possibility of such a criterion, Butchvarov judges that at least one has not yet been brought forth. Particular criteria proposed as nondemonstrative, such as inductive and behavioral, either presuppose the demonstrative criterion or else lack intelligible content. More generally, the nondemonstrative criterion either would or would not possess something in common with the demonstrative criterion, such that both could be understood as species of the same genus, "criterion of evidence." But no successful attempt has thus far been made in showing just what this shared trait might be; and the thesis that there can be multiple criteria of evidence without any generic commonality equivocates on the very notion of evidence. It follows, therefore, that knowledge and rational belief are much more restricted than one would ordinarily surmise. This book manifests both the scholar's mastery of his field and the teacher's concern for clear, well-structured presentation. It reads well, employs good examples, and includes the all-important index.--J. M. V. (shrink)

In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant claims that “the first command” of all self-regarding duties is to know our “heart.” Kant ostensibly identifies our heart with our moral disposition. Strangely, this appears to be precisely the sort of knowledge that, elsewhere, Kant claims is epistemically inaccessible to us. While the more sophisticated attempts to resolve this difficulty succeed in situating an injunction to know the quality of one’s disposition within a Kantian epistemic framework, no account is wholly successful in (...) explaining why Kant takes self-knowledge to be a necessary condition of virtue. To make sense of the priority Kant assigns to the pursuit of self-knowledge, I argue that it is essential to understand the role of what has been called “generic” self-knowledge in Kant’s moral philosophy. I proceed to defend the place Kant grants moral self-knowledge in his moral philosophy, primarily by developing a Kantian account of such “generic” self-knowledge. (shrink)

. This paper shows from a close textual study that, although Michael Polanyi used the term “reality” in a generically similar way for what provided the external pole in the natural sciences, mathematics, art, and religion, he consistently made, in Personal Knowledge as well as in later published and unpublished works, a distinction between realities existing independently of our articulate systems in the natural sciences and those existing only in the articulate systems of mathematics, art, and religion. This difference (...) is shown to be the basis for a controversy as to whether or not he should be regarded as a Christian. (shrink)