According to the Assurance Theory of testimony, in telling an audience something, a speaker offers their assurance that what is told is true, which is something like their guarantee, or promise, of truth. However, speakers also tell lies and say things they do not have the authority to back up. So why does understanding tellings to be a form of assurance explain how tellings can provide a reason for belief? This paper argues that reasons come once it is recognised (...) that tellings are trusted. And the logic by means of which trust gives reason to believe is quite general; it applies equally to belief that is based on evidence rather than assurance. Outlining this logic requires the introduction of the idea of epistemic presumptions, whose truth plays the role of ensuring a connection between believer, justification and truth. (shrink)

According to a common definition, the argument of truthful ones is an argument in which the existence of Necessary Being is proved with no presumption of the existence of the possible being. Avicenna proposed different versions of this style of argument and the version in the book of Nejat is one of them. This paper is intended to examine the possibility of proving the logical validity of this version in first-order predicate logic and explain the principles which the argument (...) is based on. In this way, it becomes clear to what extent Avicenna's version is in accordance with the criteria he himself introduces for the argument of truthful ones. In this respect, while providing a clear exposition of the version in the book of Nejat, bugs on some of the statements and proposals to obviate them in terms of replacement arises. Then explaining the concepts and premises which the argument in the book of Nejat is besed on, it is formulated in first-order predicate logic with its full proof. Finally, the proposed model's accordance with the presented criteria for the argument of truthful ones will be shown. (shrink)

Questions about the morality of lying tend to be decided in a distinctive way early in discussions of Kant’s view on the basis of readings of the false promising example in his Groundwork of The metaphysics of morals. The standard deception-as-interference model that emerges typically yields a very general and strong presumption against deception associated with a narrow and rigorous model subject to a range of problems. In this paper, I suggest an alternative account based on Kant’s discussion of (...) self-deception in the Metaphysics of Morals. I argue that we make the concern with respect for our capacity for inner freedom seen in the case of self-deception the model for deception in general. Focusing on the case of paternalistic lying, I claim that this approach yields a subtle and integrated account that promises the kind of resources we need if we are to be able to make headway with hard cases where deception may seem permissible. (shrink)

Kuhn argued against both the correspondence theory of truth and convergent realism. Although he likely misunderstood the nature of the correspondence theory, which it seems he wrongly believed to be an epistemic theory, Kuhn had an important epistemic point to make. He maintained that any assessment of correspondence between beliefs and reality is not possible, and therefore, the acceptance of beliefs and the presumption of their truthfulness has to be decided on the basis of other criteria. I will (...) show that via Kuhn’s suggested epistemic values, specifically via problem-solving, his philosophy can be incorporated into a coherentist epistemology. Further, coherentism is, in principle, compatible with convergent realism. However, an argument for increasing likeness to truth requires appropriate historical continuity. Kuhn maintained that the history of science is full of discontinuity, and therefore, the historical condition of convergent realism is not satisfied.Keywords: Thomas Kuhn; The correspondence theory of truth; The coherence theory of justification; Convergent realism; Rationalism. (shrink)

This article examines Aristotle's model of deliberation as inquiry (zêtêsis), arguing that Aristotle does not treat the presumption of open alternatives as a precondition for rational deliberation. Deliberation aims to uncover acts that are up to us and conducive to our ends; it essentially consists in causal mapping. Unlike the comparative model presupposed in the literature on deliberation, Aristotle's model can account for the virtuous agent's deliberation, as well as deliberation with a view to “satisficing” desires and deliberation that (...) fails to uncover any expedient course of action. Aristotle's account of the constraints governing rational deliberation is furthermore not incompatibilist—for all Aristotle says, we may deliberate rationally despite being committed to the truth of determinism. (shrink)

This work attempts to develop a workable formal theory of coherence that avoids the objections traditionally advanced against the earliest versions of the theory. Basically it construes the coherence theory as a criterial rather than definitional approach to truth, i.e., as furnishing a criterion rather than a definition of truth. The problem of criterion is seen as a problem not of guaranteeing but of authorizing criterion. Coherence is a criterion applying to a set of propositions that satisfies the (...) conditions of consistency and connectiveness of the systemic sort. A detailed logical machinery is developed. The pivotal concept is the notion of data as a truth-candidate, "a proposition to be taken not as true, but as potentially or presumptively true.". (shrink)

Although in some contexts the notions of an ordinary argument’s presumption, assumption, and presupposition appear to merge into the one concept of an implicit premise, there are important differences between these three notions. It is argued that assumption and presupposition, but not presumption, are basic logical notions. A presupposition of an argument is best understood as pertaining to a propositional element (a premise or the conclusion) e of the argument, such that the presupposition is a necessary condition for (...) the truth of e or for a term in e to have a referent. In contrast, an assumption of an argument pertains to the argument as a whole in that it is integral to the reasoning or inferential structure of the argument. A logical assumption of an argument is essentially a proposition that must be true in order for the argument aside from that proposition to be fully cogent. Nothing that is both comparable and distinguishing can be said about presumptions of arguments. Rather, presumptions of arguments are distinctively conventional; they are introduced through conventional rules (e.g., those that concern how to treat promises). So not all assumptions and not all presuppositions of arguments are presumptions of those arguments, although all presumptions of arguments are either assumptions or presuppositions of those arguments. This account avoids making the (monological) notion of presumption vacuous and dissolving the distinction between assumption and presumption, which is a vulnerability of alternative views such as Hansen’s and Bermejo-Luque’s, as is shown. (shrink)

As we have seen in the transition form Part I to Part II of this book, the inductive riskiness of doxastic methods applied in testimonial uptake or prescribed as exemplary of religious faith, helpfully operationalizes the broader social scientific, philosophical, moral, and theological interest that people may have with problems of religious luck. Accordingly, we will now speak less about luck, but more about the manner in which highly risky cognitive strategies are correlated with psychological studies of bias studies and (...) human cognitive ecology. Chapter Four is concerned with connections between psychological study of biases and heuristics, and the comparative study of fundamentalism. The first section looks at work by psychologists and philosophers on our bias blind spot. Later sections ask, ‘In what ways might biases and heuristics play a special role in aiding our understanding of, and response to, fundamentalist orientation?’. The judgments we make in ignorance of our own biases Montaigne calls our importunate presumptions, and he suggests a host of practical factors that make them appealing. Montaigne, as I discuss in the first section, associates many of our errors with one or another kind of presumption, often about our similarity or differences from others, or from God. Our obvious psychographic diversity, and the polemical ground dynamics involved in our ‘culture wars’ are compounded on the agential side by the invisibility of our biases to ourselves. A number of person and social biases are described that plausibly affect all of our beliefs in domains of controversial views, religious views included. The second section continues to study of how etiological symmetry (similar patterns of belief-uptake) gives rise to religious contrariety (diverse narratives and theologies) in testimonial faith traditions, and what the implications of this are for philosophy of religion, generally, and for an improved comparative study of fundamentalism, in particular. Utilizing the work of philosophers such as Rachel Fraser and psychologists such as Emily Pronin and her co-authors, I offer a four-step genealogical account for how etiological symmetry so easily gives rise to religious contrariety. This account begins with the narrative nature of testimony in the Abrahamic family of religions, and how narrative content confounds our “source monitoring.” My genealogy also introduces what I term biased-closure inferences (BCI) as one of the key enablers of religious exclusivism and absolutism. These are the seemingly ‘logical’ but actually very self-serving inferences people often make, inferences from their own belief being true, to any belief contrary to it being false. Those who claim unique truth, epistemic access, and/or virtue and religious value for the home religion are no exception to the broad pertinence of bias studies across domains of controversial view. The proximate causes of belief are all that we can study, and in these there may be significant etiological symmetries. Yet those groups themselves, especially to the extent that they are exclusivist, are tunnel-visioned on claims of doctrinal uniqueness: on content differences of a theological sort. Comparative philosophy is met with the puzzlement that symmetric or essentially similar doxastic strategies should give rise not just to cognitive diversity, but to what we can call polarized or polemical contrariety, contrariety of a kind where each view adamantly rejects all others. Arguably, the more that theologies offer explanations of a counter-inductive sort, or profess counter-inductive thinking as exemplary of faith, the better evidential ground there for inferring that bias involved in the acquisition or maintenance of beliefs. This provides more substance to the question of when censure, and etiological challenges to faith-based beliefs are philosophically well-motivated. (shrink)

Truth, Christopher Norris reminds us, is very much out of fashion at the moment whether at the hands of politicians, media pundits, or purveyors of postmodern wisdom in cultural and literary studies. Across a range of disciplines the idea has taken hold that truth-talk is either redundant or the product of epistemic might. Questions of truth and falsehood are always internal to some specific language-game; history is just another kind of fiction; philosophy is only a kind of (...) writing; law is a wholly rhetorical practice. In _Reclaiming Truth_, Norris critiques these fashionable trends of thought and mounts a specific challenge to cultural relativist doctrines in epistemology, philosophy of science, ethics, and political theory. Norris presents his case in a series of closely argued chapters that take issue with the relativist position. He attempts to rehabilitate the value of truth in philosophy of science by restoring a lost distinction between concept and metaphor and argues that theoretical discourse, so far from being an inconsequential activity, has very real consequences, particularly in ethics and politics. This debate has become skewed, he suggests, through the widespread and typically postmodern idea that truth-claims must always go along with a presumptive or authoritarian bid to silence opposing views. On the contrary, there is nothing as dogmatic—or as silencing—as a relativism that acknowledges no shared truth conditions for valid or responsible discourse. Norris also offers a timely reassessment of several thinkers—Althusser and Derrida among them—whose reception history has been distorted by the vagaries of short-term intellectual fashion. _Reclaiming Truth _will be welcomed by readers concerned with the uses and abuses of theory at a time when such questions are in urgent need of sustained and serious debate. (shrink)

Science is often said to aim at truth. And much of science is heavily dependent on the construction and use of theoretical models. But the notion of model has an uneasy relationship with that of truth. -/- Not so long ago, many philosophers held the view that theoretical models are different from theories in that they are not accompanied by any ontological commitments or presumptions of truth, whereas theories are (e.g. Achinstein 1964). More recently, some have thought (...) that models are not truth-valued at all, but truth-valued claims can be made about similarity relations between models and real systems (e.g. Giere 1988). Others suggest that models are instruments that can be used for attaining truths, for example that models are false means for true theories (e.g. Wimsatt 2007). At the same time, philosophers and others keep talking about models being ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’, ‘accurate’ and ‘inaccurate’ or getting facts ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Among practicing scientists, one can find both the notion of a ‘true model’ and the idea that ‘it is in the nature of models that they are false’. There seems to be enough variety of views and confusion around them to invite a little bit of further investigation (see also Mäki 1992, 1994, 2004, 2009a,b,c). (shrink)

This article is a critical examination of the approach to truth in Foucault’s late writing on the topic of ‘parrhesia’. I argue that his 1983 Berkeley seminar on ‘Discourse and Truth’ approaches the topic of truth as a positive value and that this approach presents, at least prima facie, a problem of continuity with his earlier critique of the presumption of an exclusionary relation between truth and power in works such as Discipline and Punish and (...) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Does the ethical notion of ‘parrhesia’ imply a different relation between truth and power than the one developed in the earlier works? And if so, what are we to make of the difference? In particular, 1) what does it mean to say that speaking the truth is dangerous? And 2) Are the two positions on truth compatible? What does it take to reconcile the two perspectives? (shrink)

Many philosophers accept an ‘Authority Thesis’ according to which self-ascriptions of one’s current mental states ordinarily are or ought to be met with a distinctive presumption of truth. Recently, however, Wolfgang Barz (2018) has argued that there is no adequately specified Authority Thesis. This, he argues, is because available specifications are either (1) philosophically puzzling but implausible, or (2) plausible but philosophically unpuzzling. I argue that there are several plausible and philosophically puzzling specifications of the Authority Thesis.

Abstract Religious pluralism in healthcare means that conflicts regarding appropriate treatment can occur because of convictions of patients and healthcare workers alike. This contribution argues for a presumption in favour of respect for religious belief on the basis that such convictions are judgements of conscience, and respect for conscience is core to what it means to respect human dignity. The human person is a subject in relation to all that is. Human dignity refers to the worth of human persons (...) as members of the species with capacities of reason and free choice that enable the realisation of dignity as self-worth through morally good behaviour. Conscience is both a feature of inherent dignity and necessary for acquiring dignity as self-worth. Conscience enables a person to identify objective values and disvalues for human flourishing, the rational capacity to reason about the relative importance of these values and the right way to achieve them and the judgement of the good end and the right means. Human persons are bound to follow their conscience because this is their subjective relationship to objective truth. Religious convictions are decisions of conscience because they are subjective judgements about objective truth. The presumption of respect for religious belief is limited by the normative dimension of human dignity such that a person's beliefs may be overridden if they objectively violate inherent dignity or morally legitimate acquired dignity. (shrink)

Religious pluralism in healthcare means that conflicts regarding appropriate treatment can occur because of convictions of patients and healthcare workers alike. This contribution argues for a presumption in favour of respect for religious belief on the basis that such convictions are judgements of conscience, and respect for conscience is core to what it means to respect human dignity. The human person is a subject in relation to all that is. Human dignity refers to the worth of human persons as (...) members of the species with capacities of reason and free choice that enable the realisation of dignity as self-worth through morally good behaviour. Conscience is both a feature of inherent dignity and necessary for acquiring dignity as self-worth. Conscience enables a person to identify objective values and disvalues for human flourishing, the rational capacity to reason about the relative importance of these values and the right way to achieve them and the judgement of the good end and the right means. Human persons are bound to follow their conscience because this is their subjective relationship to objective truth. Religious convictions are decisions of conscience because they are subjective judgements about objective truth. The presumption of respect for religious belief is limited by the normative dimension of human dignity such that a person's beliefs may be overridden if they objectively violate inherent dignity or morally legitimate acquired dignity. (shrink)

Beginning with the premise that the principal function of a criminal trial is to find out the truth about a crime, Larry Laudan examines the rules of evidence and procedure that would be appropriate if the discovery of the truth were, as higher courts routinely claim, the overriding aim of the criminal justice system. Laudan mounts a systematic critique of existing rules and procedures that are obstacles to that quest. He also examines issues of error distribution by offering (...) the first integrated analysis of the various mechanisms - the standard of proof, the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof - for implementing society's view about the relative importance of the errors that can occur in a trial. (shrink)

Whistleblowing is the public disclosure of information with the purpose of revealing wrongdoings and abuses of power that harm the public interest. This book presents a comprehensive theory of whistleblowing: it defines the concept, reconstructs its origins, discusses it within the current ethical debate, and elaborates a justification of unauthorized disclosures. Its normative proposal is based on three criteria of permissibility: the communicative constraints, the intent, and the public interest conditions. The book distinguishes between two forms of whistleblowing, civic and (...) political, showing how they apply in the contexts of corruption and government secrecy. The book articulates a conception of public interest as a claim concerning the presumptive interest of the public. It argues that public interest is defined in opposition to corporate powers and its core content identified by the rights that are all-purposive for the distribution of social benefits. A crucial part of the proposal is dedicated to the impact of security policies and government secrecy on civil liberties. It argues that unrestrained secrecy limits the epistemic entitlement of citizens to know under which conditions their rights are limited by security policies and corporate interests. When citizens are denied the right to assess when these policies are prejudicial to their freedoms, whistleblowing represents a legitimate form of political agency that safeguards the fundamental rights of citizens against the threat of unrestrained secrecy by government power. Finally, the book contributes to shifting the attention of democratic theory from the procedures of consent formation to the mechanisms that guarantee the expression of dissent. It argues that whistleblowing is a distinctive form of civil dissent that contributes to the demands of institutional transparency in constitutional democracies and explores the idea that the way institutions are responsive to dissent determines the robustness of democracy, and ultimately, its legitimacy. What place dissenters have within a society, whether they enjoy personal safety, legal protection, and safe channels for their disclosure, are hallmarks of a good democracy, and of its sense of justice. (shrink)

Many topics have not been covered, in most cases because I don't know quite what to say about them. Would it be possible to add a decidability predicate to the language? What about stronger connectives, like exclusion negation or Lukasiewicz implication? Would an expanded language do better at expressing its own semantics? Would it contain new and more terrible paradoxes? Can the account be supplemented with a workable notion of inherent truth (see note 36)? In what sense does stage (...) semantics lie “between” fixed point and stability semantics? In what sense, exactly, are our semantical rules inconsistent? In what sense, if any, does their inconsistency resolve the problem of the paradoxes?The ideals of strength, grounding, and closure together define an intuitively appealing conception of truth. Nothing would be gained by insisting that it was the intuitive conception of truth, and in fact recent developments make me wonder whether such a thing exists. However that may be, until the alternatives are better understood it would be foolish to attempt to decide between them. Truth gives up her secrets slowly and grudgingly, and loves to confound our presumptions. (shrink)

In this chapter I discuss Roger Trigg’s contribution to this volume on Wittgenstein, concepts, and human nature. Trigg shares many of the basic assumptions that form the methodological framework of cognitive science of religion (CSR) arguing that Wittgenstein’s later work shares common ground with presumptions, commitments, and accounts in cultural studies that are usually rejected by proponents of CSR. In particular, he challenges Wittgenstein’s notion of truth, that he sees under the threat of radical relativism. Against his view I (...) argue that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy never comes at the cost of losing the notion of objective truth. It rather demands a change in the conceptual framework that underlies the use of this notion of truth. In the first section I argue for the claim in terms of Wittgenstein’s development. In the second section I explore the social nature of meaning in the Later Wittgenstein, arguing, in the third section, that it does not commit us to radical relativism. Finally, I draw some conclusions from my argument for the studies of CSR. (shrink)

It seems that the Truth-teller is either true or false, but there is no accepted principle determining which it is. From this point of view, the Truth-teller is a hypodox. A hypodox is a conundrum like a paradox, but consistent. Sometimes, accepting an additional principle will convert a hypodox into a paradox. Conversely, in some cases, retracting or restricting a principle will convert a paradox to a hypodox. This last point suggests a new method of avoiding inconsistency. This (...) article provides a significant example. The Liar paradox can be defused to a hypodox by relatively minimally restricting three principles: the T-schema, substitution of identicals and universal instantiation. These restrictions are not arbitrary. For each, I identify the source of a contradiction given some presumptions. Then I propose each restriction as a reasonable way to deal with that source of contradiction. (shrink)

This paper responds to Kauffeld’s 2009 OSSA paper, considering the adequacy of his “commitment-based” approach to “ordinary presumptive practices” to sup-ply an account of presumption fit for general application in normative theories of argument. The central issue here is whether socially-grounded presumptions are defeasible in the right sorts of ways so as to pro-duce “truth-tropic” presumptive inferences.

Contrary to widespread assumptions, post-truth politicians formally adopt a rhetoric of ‘truth’ but turn it against established experts. To explain one central factor behind this destructive strategy and its success with voters, I consider Walter Lippmann and Friedrich Hayek, who from 1922 onwards helped develop and popularize a political rhetoric of ‘truth’ in terms of scientific expertise. In Hayek’s influential version, market economics became the crucial expert field. Consequently, the 2008 financial crisis impacted attitudes towards experts more (...) generally. But even sweeping rejection of experts continues to use the rhetoric, by now dominant, of expert truth. Paradoxically, this bipartisan language fuels division as opponents accuse each other of disregarding ‘truth itself’. Against the underlying metaphysics of context-free ‘facts’, John Dewey and Alfred Schutz recommend understanding truth as ‘presumptive’ knowledge produced within human practices, which can be robust but requires a readiness to engage in pluralistic and open-ended processes of (re-)contextualization. (shrink)

Grice's cryptic notion of “conventional implicature” has been developed in a number of different ways. This paper deploys the simplest version, Lycan's (1984) notion of “lexical presumption,” and argues that slurs and other pejorative expressions have normal truth-conditional content plus the most obvious extra implicatures. The paper then addresses and rebuts objections to “conventional implicature” accounts that have been made in the literature, particularly those which focus on non-offensive uses of slurs.

Exploring Augustine's Confessions as far more than autobiography, more than an elaboration and admission of guilt, more so than a chronicle and more precisely as the very act of coming into the truth in his heart, in front of God, in his confession, and in his public writings. His Confessions charts his becoming a witness to his self-witnessing, as his matter of testimony. Confession becomes an onto-existential practice. But, what is the mode or nature of the type of confession (...) at work when confession becomes ontological? Using Heidegger, the paper hinges on two poetic instances, one in Confessions, one in Being and Time, to develop an idea of ontology as testimony when being is a diligent witness to Being. It is confession as an admission of guilt insofar as being seeks absolution of its presumptions of being as a genus, as indefinable, and as the most self-evident concept, and being then acknowledges the question of Being. This acknowledgement of the obligation of the question is, then, a confession as a public declaration of faith, of the openness to question. The ontological project, for Heidegger, is then confession and testimony perhaps more fundamentally than Augustine’s Confessions, whose autobiographical detail and positing of the self as a relation to God must carefully elaborate itself so as not to be guilty of the offense of metaphysics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: What explains first-person authority? What explains the presumption that an utterance is true when it is a sincere intelligible determinate first-person singular simple present-tense ascription of intentional state? According to Rockney Jacobsen, self-ascriptions each enjoy a presumption of truth because they are systematically reliable. They are systematically reliable because they are typically both truth-assessable and expressive. Such self-ascriptions, if sincere, are certain to be true. This article presents a defence and a critique of Jacobsen's theory. (...) It is argued that the purported prevalence of expressive self-ascriptions is at best contingent. This contingency cannot explain why self-ascriptions are necessarily authoritative.RÉSUMÉ: Comment expliquer l'autorité de la première personne? Comment expliquer la présomption qu'un énoncé est vrai lorsque c'est une attribution d'un état intentionnel, sincère et intelligible, à la première personne du singulier de l'indicatif présent. Selon Rockney Jacobsen, les auto-attributions jouissent d'une présomption de vérité parce qu'elles sont systématiquement fiables. Elles sont systématiquement fiables parce qu'elles ont pour caractéristique d'être à la fois expressives et évaluables en termes de vérité. Si de telles auto-attributions sont sincères, elles sont certainement vraies. Cet article présente une défense et une critique de la théorie deJacobsen. L'auteur soutient que la prétendue prévalence des auto-attributions expressives est au mieux contingente. Cette contingence ne peut pas expliquer pourquoi il est nécessaire que les auto-attributions fassent autorité. (shrink)

Minimalists about truth think they've hit on something like a job description for a truth predicate: A truth predicate facilitates the expression of certain generalizations, such as "Whatever N. said is true" that would otherwise require a substitutional quantifier, or an infinite conjunction or disjunction. In the first chapter I argue that even if truth predicates have that function, it would be a mistake to suppose that this is their only role. There is an internal relation (...) between truth and assertion that a minimalist fails to capture. In order to demonstrate this, I show how on a minimalist view commands would end up being among the sorts of things which are apt for truth. In the second chapter, I consider Lewis' well-known "argument from paraphrase" for the existence of possible worlds. I claim that the argument is only compelling on a certain reading of the presumption in favor of a face value semantics, but that on this reading the conclusion of the argument is incompatible with any standard possible worlds analysis of modal discourse. I go on to consider both whether the presumption in favor of a face value analysis of "way" talk might be defeated, and if not, how an ontic analysis of modal discourse might be recast in a form consistent with this result. ;In the third chapter, I consider a paradox involving our first-order modal judgements: It seems consistent to suppose that some things which are not possible still could have been possible if only the world had been different. But this is a view that's hard to square with a plausible semantics for modality. I argue that the problem here is a genuine puzzle about modality and that it requires the introduction of a perspectival semantics for attributions of de re modal properties. (shrink)

Lies and deception are often used in the care for demented elderly and often with the best intentions. However, there is a strong moral presumption against all forms of lying and deceiving. The goal of this article is to examine and evaluate concrete examples of deception and lies in dementia care, while addressing some fundamental issues in the process.It is argued that because dementia slowly diminishes the capacities one needs to distinguish between truths and falsehoods, the ability to be (...) lied to also disappears. When the moral reasons to reject lying are explored, it becomes clear that most of them also hold where demented patients are concerned, though this also depends on the capacities of the patient. Lying, though prima facie wrong, can sometimes be justified with an appeal to well-being. The relationship between well-being and the truth is further explored. Two examples of deceiving demented patients for reasons of beneficence are discussed, from which it can be concluded that although in some cases beneficent lies or deception will not enhance patients’ well-being, there are circumstances in which they do. In general, methods that enhance the well-being of the patient without deception or lies should be favored above options that use deceit, and methods of getting the truth across without hurting the patient should be favored above blunt honesty. Finally, it is important to note that not only the patient but also the nursing and medical staff can be affected by the use of lies and deception. (shrink)

Principles -- Questions -- Ideas -- Principles of truth and acceptance -- Presumption as a pathway to plausibility -- Conjecture and the move from mere plausibility and presumption to acceptability -- Plausibility conflicts and paradox -- From conjecture to belief and from belief to knowledge -- The epistemic gap and grades of acceptance -- Cognitive thresholds -- Intuitive knowledge -- Experience and induction -- Distributive vs. collective explanation -- Cognitive importance -- Problems of prediction -- Error and (...) cognitive risk -- Problems of skepticism -- Trust -- Common sense -- How science works -- Scientific realism and its problems -- The anthomorphic contextuality of science -- Ignorance and limits of knowledge -- On systemic "best fit" reasoning -- Inference from the best systematization -- The cyclic unity of reason -- Fact, fiction and functional surrogacy -- A pragmatic coda. (shrink)

This paper defends reductionism about testimonial justification of beliefs against two influential arguments. One is the empirical argument to the effect that the reductionist justification of our trust in testimony is either circular since it relies on testimonial evidence or else there is scarce evidence in support of our trust in testimony. The other is the transcendental argument to the effect that trust in testimony is a prerequisite for the very existence of testimonial evidence since without the presumption of (...) people’s truthfulness we cannot interpret their utterances as testimony with propositional contents. This paper contends that the epistemic subject can interpret utterances as testimony with propositional contents without presupposing the credibility of testimony, and that evidence available to the normal epistemic subject can justify her trust in testimony. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of sentences of the form "In fiction x, p" based on this picture of context. We argue that the derived contexts for sentences in the scope of "In fiction X" are determined by three factors: what the beliefs of the author are taken to be, the conventions established for the fiction, and a defeasible presumption of reliability of the narrator. We develop a formal implementation based on the notion of a system (...) of spheres centered on a set of worlds. (edited). (shrink)

Ever since the seminal work of Paul Grice, tautologies such as Business is business have been discussed from a number of angles. While most approaches assume that tautological utterances have to do with the operation of conversational maxims, an integrated analysis is still lacking. This paper makes an attempt at analysing tautologies within the framework of Levinson, who proposes a distinction between three pragmatic levels, namely Indexical Pragmatics, Gricean Pragmatics 1, and Gricean Pragmatics 2. It is shown that observations of (...) Ward and Hirschberg on the exclusion of alternatives, the claim of Autenrieth that the second NP in nominal equatives is predicative, and the recent insights of Bulhof and Gimbel on `deep' tautology, may be fruitfully integrated within Levinson's framework. The gist of this paper is to show that tautologies are not as tautological as once thought, because implicatures influence their truth conditions. Data are drawn from the author's corpus of authentic German examples. (shrink)

The practice of ascribing dispositions of communicative truthfulness to others is necessary if language-use is to be effective. In this article, through a phenomenological analysis of everyday judgments about the sincerity and honesty of others, the author shows that, in learning to employ these two distinct concepts correctly, users of language are learning that communicative truthfulness is morally significant insofar as it manifests fairness (in the case of honesty) and the goods of affective human connectedness (in the case of sincerity). (...) In so doing, the author identifies important evaluative differences between sincerity and honesty and provides a substantive explanation for how our lived presumption about the communicative truthfulness of others is possible. (shrink)

According to R. Stalnaker, context plays a role in determining the proposition expressed by a sentence by providing the domain of possible worlds that propositions distinguish between: a sentence expresses a proposition by selecting a subset of the set of possible situations given by the context. This is also true for embedded sentences, but these sentences express propositions by selecting subsets out of contexts derived from the basic one. In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of sentences of the (...) form “In fiction x, p” based on this picture of context. We argue that the derived contexts for sentences in the scope of “In fiction x” are determined by three factors: what the beliefs of the author are taken to be, the conventions established for the fiction, and a defeasible presumption of reliability of the narrator. We develop a formal implementation based on the notion of a system of spheres centered on a set of worlds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 223-240 [Access article in PDF] The "Survival of the Fittest" and the Origins of Social Darwinism Gregory Claeys * In late September 1838 a young man, aged 29, a former medical student and amateur naturalist, who had spent several years in the South Pacific studying plant and animal life, but who remained puzzled as to why "favourable variants" of each species (...) survived while "unfavourable variants" were destroyed, sat perusing a book, as he later recalled, "for amusement." 1 The work which provoked Charles Darwin was T. R. Malthus's Essay on Population (1798), which he later claimed first suggested to him the idea that "on the whole the best fitted live." This idea Darwin would popularize through the notion of the "struggle for existence," a phrase which he famously claimed to use as a "metaphor" but which meant simply "the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms." 2 That application resulted in the publication [End Page 223] of the Origin of Species in 1859, an occasion hailed as "the greatest event of Queen Victoria's reign," 3 even "by far the most important... in the history of the modern West." 4 It is well known, too, that Darwin's appreciation of Malthus was not unique even among naturalists. The year before the Origin of Species appeared another young man, Alfred Russel Wallace, aged 25, encountered the very same book. "There suddenly," he later recalled, flashed upon him "the idea of the survival of the fittest." 5 We know Wallace today, thus, as the codiscoverer of theory of natural selection, who presented a paper jointly with Darwin at the Linnean Society on that momentous evening of 1 July 1858 to mark their brilliant achievement. 6This curious coincidence has often been noted, but its ramifications require further assessment. This article examines some crucial nineteenth-century sources of the idea of the "survival of the fittest," which came to underpin many of the social and political doctrines later associated with the theory of natural selection, and also what were regarded as some of the limits of this idea. 7 It contends that there was in fact far more than mere coincidence in the obviously provocative role played by Malthus's Essay for both Darwin and Wallace. 8 It argues, [End Page 224] therefore, against the presumption of tacit causality--logically implicit in the concept of "Social Darwinism" 9 --that much of the social and political theory which nominally invoked Darwin was fundamentally derived from, as opposed to being reinforced by, the principles of natural selection. It challenges the view that the logic of discovery in the natural sciences, in other words, induced parallel or derivative concepts in the social sciences and that the "survival of the fittest" emerged first as a natural, and then mutated into a social concept. Instead it suggests that what was specific about much of Social Darwinism resulted from several shifts in thought in mid-Victorian Britain to which Darwin himself also responded and which therefore also vitally influenced his own development.No doubt, of course, this assertion of causation contains some truth. Darwin was extraordinarily widely read and extraordinarily influential. We are all aware of the great theological debates associated with his name in late Victorian Britain, of the counter-attack against Darwin begun by Bishop Wilberforce in June 1860, and of the tenacious war of attrition conducted by "Darwin's bulldog," T. H. Huxley, who coined the term "agnostic" in 1869 to define the lack of scientific evidence for the existence of God. 10 Much has been written of the moral panic and growing loss of religious faith, paralleling the course of Darwin's own "reluctant agnosticism," which followed the conclusion that human beings had been levelled to the status of animals and deprived of a special Providential creation as well as any divine purpose in the perpetuation of their species. In history a tremendous impetus was given to the search for certain laws of social development. In social... (shrink)

In this exhaustively researched and thoughtful study of Leibniz’s neglected theological writings, Maria Rosa Antognazza presents a strong case that Leibniz held original and highly developed views on the relation between faith and reason, the theology of the Trinity, and the nature of Christ. Furthermore, she argues convincingly that Leibniz’s views were consistently maintained throughout his life and “coexist comfortably” with his distinctive metaphysics; “perhaps,” she suggests in the introduction, Leibniz’s metaphysics and theology are even “reinforcing one another” . In (...) fact, her book proves this suggestion correct, revealing the importance of Leibniz’s theology to the understanding of his metaphysics.The book is structured into four parts: “Early Writings 1663–1671”; “Fragments of a System 1672–1692”; “English Trinitarian Polemics 1693–1705”; and “The Last Years 1706–1716.” Leibniz argues for three major theological positions. On the relation of faith and reason, he contends that the authority of scripture and theological tradition give the Christian mysteries a presumption of truth. The proper role of reason in theological matters is to distinguish authentic revelations from false. (shrink)

This study contrasts the evidence exclusion principles within the adversarial legal system of the United States, particularly the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine, with the inquisitorial system of Vietnam. The U.S. model, emphasizing the exclusion of unlawfully obtained evidence to protect the presumption of innocence and ensure fair trials, relies on the Fourth Amendment to prevent police misconduct. Conversely, Vietnam, with its focus on uncovering the truth, has started to adopt adversarial elements, including evidence exclusion, to align (...) with international standards and enhance human rights protections within its criminal justice system. The research examines the application of the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine in the U.S. and its implications for Vietnamese legal reforms, especially the proposed amendments to Article 87 of Vietnam's Criminal Procedure Code. These reforms aim to exclude unlawfully obtained evidence while allowing for the use of evidence collected independently from illegal actions. Highlighting the need for a balanced approach that respects procedural rights and promotes justice, the study advocates for comprehensive legal reforms in Vietnam. It suggests amendments to refine evidence exclusion principles, ensuring they reflect both the Vietnamese context and the progressive features of U.S. criminal justice practices, thereby enhancing the fairness and integrity of criminal proceedings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.1 (2001) 21-37 [Access article in PDF] Conscience and the Concealments of Metaphor in Hobbes's Leviathan Karen S. Feldman Introduction Conscience is not a topic of terribly heated debate in Hobbes research. 1 Nevertheless, my claim in this article is that conscience in the Leviathan, which Hobbes poses as an example of the dangers of metaphor, is not merely an example of the dangers of metaphor, (...) but rather is the most dangerous metaphor, the metaphor that corrupts knowledge and thereby makes error and deception possible. Hobbes's brief account of conscience, which appears in the chapter of Leviathan on the ends of discourse, tells the story of the insinuation of metaphor into proper nomenclature; however, his example of the metaphorical use of the word conscience turns the story into one in which public knowledge itself is made private and thereby corrupted. Moreover, according to the story, private conscience is itself invented by means of a metaphor; it is in effect metaphorized into being. 2 With the emergence of private conscience, the potential of privatization expands from the privatization of the meaning of words to an entire private sphere of opinion. The metaphorical corruption of conscience invents a new understanding of knowledge as isolated from other witnesses, and the resultant privatization of truth lends itself to the corruption of that truth. Thus, whereas Hobbes characterizes the wrong use of names (of which metaphor is an instance) as a threat to accurate judgment and reason (L 22-23, 34, 161-62), as I will argue in the sections following, Hobbes's demand for the preservation of proper meaning in Leviathan corresponds to an anxiety regarding privacy and its peculiar potential for corrupting truth and knowledge. Hobbes's worries as to the dangers that metaphor poses to the stability of the commonwealth thereby converge with his worries about the dangers of conscience to the principle of public authority (cf. Strong 1993). [End Page 21] Hobbes's condemnations of conscience In Leviathan, conscience is condemned as a source of principles of human decision and action in a commonwealth. The problem with conscience as a principle of action is that it renders each individual inventor of his own rules and judge of his own actions. In brief, individual conscience is incommensurable with the public authority that defines a commonwealth: Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience, and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though he that is subject to no civil law, sinneth in all he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth; because the law is the public conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided. Otherwise in such diversity, as there is of private consciences, which are but private opinions, the commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no man dare to obey the sovereign power, further than it shall seem good in his own eyes. (L 311) In this account, conscience is not just inferior to civil law as a principle guiding action, but at odds with civil society and the good of the commonwealth. The fact that conscience is private renders it problematic for the commonwealth for several reasons: First, as privately invented, it may be erroneous. Likewise, because it is private, conscience does not possess any binding power outside the individual, private sphere. Each person may be bound by his own conscience, but insofar as consciences differ, standards of action differ, and this leads to the undermining and distraction of the commonwealth. Likewise, private consciences may be divergent from one another, and the conflicts in private judgment produce conflicting actions that disturb the peace of the commonwealth. This rule of privacy is, moreover, associated with primitive life and with the state of nature... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.1 (2001) 21-37 [Access article in PDF] Conscience and the Concealments of Metaphor in Hobbes's Leviathan Karen S. Feldman Introduction Conscience is not a topic of terribly heated debate in Hobbes research. 1 Nevertheless, my claim in this article is that conscience in the Leviathan, which Hobbes poses as an example of the dangers of metaphor, is not merely an example of the dangers of metaphor, (...) but rather is the most dangerous metaphor, the metaphor that corrupts knowledge and thereby makes error and deception possible. Hobbes's brief account of conscience, which appears in the chapter of Leviathan on the ends of discourse, tells the story of the insinuation of metaphor into proper nomenclature; however, his example of the metaphorical use of the word conscience turns the story into one in which public knowledge itself is made private and thereby corrupted. Moreover, according to the story, private conscience is itself invented by means of a metaphor; it is in effect metaphorized into being. 2 With the emergence of private conscience, the potential of privatization expands from the privatization of the meaning of words to an entire private sphere of opinion. The metaphorical corruption of conscience invents a new understanding of knowledge as isolated from other witnesses, and the resultant privatization of truth lends itself to the corruption of that truth. Thus, whereas Hobbes characterizes the wrong use of names (of which metaphor is an instance) as a threat to accurate judgment and reason (L 22-23, 34, 161-62), as I will argue in the sections following, Hobbes's demand for the preservation of proper meaning in Leviathan corresponds to an anxiety regarding privacy and its peculiar potential for corrupting truth and knowledge. Hobbes's worries as to the dangers that metaphor poses to the stability of the commonwealth thereby converge with his worries about the dangers of conscience to the principle of public authority (cf. Strong 1993). [End Page 21] Hobbes's condemnations of conscience In Leviathan, conscience is condemned as a source of principles of human decision and action in a commonwealth. The problem with conscience as a principle of action is that it renders each individual inventor of his own rules and judge of his own actions. In brief, individual conscience is incommensurable with the public authority that defines a commonwealth: Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience, and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though he that is subject to no civil law, sinneth in all he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth; because the law is the public conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided. Otherwise in such diversity, as there is of private consciences, which are but private opinions, the commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no man dare to obey the sovereign power, further than it shall seem good in his own eyes. (L 311) In this account, conscience is not just inferior to civil law as a principle guiding action, but at odds with civil society and the good of the commonwealth. The fact that conscience is private renders it problematic for the commonwealth for several reasons: First, as privately invented, it may be erroneous. Likewise, because it is private, conscience does not possess any binding power outside the individual, private sphere. Each person may be bound by his own conscience, but insofar as consciences differ, standards of action differ, and this leads to the undermining and distraction of the commonwealth. Likewise, private consciences may be divergent from one another, and the conflicts in private judgment produce conflicting actions that disturb the peace of the commonwealth. This rule of privacy is, moreover, associated with primitive life and with the state of nature... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.1 (2001) 21-37 [Access article in PDF] Conscience and the Concealments of Metaphor in Hobbes's Leviathan Karen S. Feldman Introduction Conscience is not a topic of terribly heated debate in Hobbes research. 1 Nevertheless, my claim in this article is that conscience in the Leviathan, which Hobbes poses as an example of the dangers of metaphor, is not merely an example of the dangers of metaphor, (...) but rather is the most dangerous metaphor, the metaphor that corrupts knowledge and thereby makes error and deception possible. Hobbes's brief account of conscience, which appears in the chapter of Leviathan on the ends of discourse, tells the story of the insinuation of metaphor into proper nomenclature; however, his example of the metaphorical use of the word conscience turns the story into one in which public knowledge itself is made private and thereby corrupted. Moreover, according to the story, private conscience is itself invented by means of a metaphor; it is in effect metaphorized into being. 2 With the emergence of private conscience, the potential of privatization expands from the privatization of the meaning of words to an entire private sphere of opinion. The metaphorical corruption of conscience invents a new understanding of knowledge as isolated from other witnesses, and the resultant privatization of truth lends itself to the corruption of that truth. Thus, whereas Hobbes characterizes the wrong use of names (of which metaphor is an instance) as a threat to accurate judgment and reason (L 22-23, 34, 161-62), as I will argue in the sections following, Hobbes's demand for the preservation of proper meaning in Leviathan corresponds to an anxiety regarding privacy and its peculiar potential for corrupting truth and knowledge. Hobbes's worries as to the dangers that metaphor poses to the stability of the commonwealth thereby converge with his worries about the dangers of conscience to the principle of public authority (cf. Strong 1993). [End Page 21] Hobbes's condemnations of conscience In Leviathan, conscience is condemned as a source of principles of human decision and action in a commonwealth. The problem with conscience as a principle of action is that it renders each individual inventor of his own rules and judge of his own actions. In brief, individual conscience is incommensurable with the public authority that defines a commonwealth: Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience, and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though he that is subject to no civil law, sinneth in all he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth; because the law is the public conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided. Otherwise in such diversity, as there is of private consciences, which are but private opinions, the commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no man dare to obey the sovereign power, further than it shall seem good in his own eyes. (L 311) In this account, conscience is not just inferior to civil law as a principle guiding action, but at odds with civil society and the good of the commonwealth. The fact that conscience is private renders it problematic for the commonwealth for several reasons: First, as privately invented, it may be erroneous. Likewise, because it is private, conscience does not possess any binding power outside the individual, private sphere. Each person may be bound by his own conscience, but insofar as consciences differ, standards of action differ, and this leads to the undermining and distraction of the commonwealth. Likewise, private consciences may be divergent from one another, and the conflicts in private judgment produce conflicting actions that disturb the peace of the commonwealth. This rule of privacy is, moreover, associated with primitive life and with the state of nature... (shrink)

Attention is drawn to the movements of the body and to the ethical imperative that emerges in compelling, flowing moments of teaching. Such moments of teaching are not primarily intellectual, discursive events, but physical, sensual experiences in which the body surrenders to its own movements. Teaching is recognized momentarily as a carnal intensity embedded in and emerging from the flesh. The ethical imperative to this teaching is felt proprioceptively and kinaesthetically when one holds in self-motion the well-being of another as (...) being of the same flesh. The teaching caress offers a primary example. This gesture of intimacy discloses an embodied ethic that contrasts with the transcendental ethics of curricular prescriptions, professional codes of conduct, and the presumptions of self-monitoring behavior. It is a gesture of care for another person, without fastidious carefulness. It is a gesture of pure duration, without sanctimonious purity, in its contact with the beauty, truth and value of the teachable moment. From earliest engagements with children to the dynamics of the university classroom, what makes for good teaching is essentially attentiveness to intimate gestures, such as the caress, that guide teachers kinethically in the moment. (shrink)

For philosophers interested in the concept of person, Mervyn Sprung's, After Truth, can be very intriguing. Sprung grew up in a Methodist community in Winnipeg during the twenties and early thirties. His was the context in which love of God as person and love of neighbours as persons was of utmost significance. But he seems to have become offended by the dogmas and dangers of Christianity. He studied Plato and decided to become a philosopher. He went to Berlin and (...) from 1936 to 1939 did phenomenology with Nicolai Hartmann. Already, he began his lifelong affair with Nietzsche. From 1939 to 1963 he rose through the ranks of the Canadian Army to Colonel and while in hospital read a book on the Buddha. He went to India, learned Sanskrit, studied with T. R. V. Murti and as a founding member of the Brock Philosophy Department became a Buddhist scholar. In his book, The Magic of Unknowing, he remained primarily a Nietzschean Buddhist, that is, he held to theories and practices that for the sake of loving all of existence were anti-personal. The Buddhist Anatman presumption emphasizes the emptiness of anything personal. Nietzsche's conception of life as will to power would equate the personal with the realm of the little reason, and stress that what is of most importance is in the realm of the great reason which is not personal. (shrink)

Neo-expressivism is the view that avowals—first-personal, present tense self-ascriptions of mental states—ordinarily express the very mental states that they semantically represent, such that they carry a strong presumption of truth and are immune to requests for epistemic support. Peter Langland-Hassan (2015. “Self-Knowledge and Imagination.” Philosophical Explorations 18 (2): 226–245) has argued that Neo-expressivism cannot accommodate avowals of one’s imaginings. In this short paper I argue that Neo-expressivism can, in fact, accommodate them.

Mandelstam’s criticism of the Rayleigh theory of the blue color of the sky (1907) and his polemic with M. Planck (1907–1908) did not become notable events in the history of physics. However, the method of their coverage in the Soviet and in the post-Soviet physics literature is remarkable. Most of Soviet physicists and historians of physics supported Mandelstam's point of view in his criticism of both Raleigh and Planck. The situation changed only at the beginning of the 21st century: in (...) the Russian literature the publications appeared emphasizing that in the Raleigh–Mandelstam and Planck–Mandelstam controversies Mandelstam was not right, Raleigh and Planck were closer to the truth. Which presumptions of this trend can be noted? This was patriotism of the scientific school peculiar to Mandelstam’s graduate students and the former graduate students, the patriotism connected with solidarity which helped Mandelstam’s community to survive in the Soviet totalitarian regime and in the totalitarian organization of science. This was also progressionism which was popular among academics and among men in the street. The phenomenon of common knowledge, mutual knowledge among the members of a scientific community should be taken under consideration. Common knowledge is connected with the non-thematized anonymous inclusion of the ideological terminology into scientific discourse. (shrink)

Modernism, in the book under review, is characterized as the belief that "there can be no philosophical language; that the kind of truth sub specie aeterni that was sought by philosophers is either meaningless or more appropriately expressed by the arts -- especially by literature and poetry" (p. xiii). The author wishes to show that this thesis rests upon unquestioned dogmas, presuppositions or presumptions "regarding the distinction between representation and presentation," which should be rejected (p. 9). She proposes to (...) criticize the distinction, along with the other unwarranted distinctions thereby embedded in the central tenet of modernism, and to overcome the "modernist overcoming of metaphysics" by drawing on the works of Jacques Derrida and Michael Dummett. (shrink)

How is the burden of proof to be distributed among individuals who are involved in resolving a particular issue? Under what conditions should the burden of proof be distributed unevenly? We distinguish attitudinal from dialectical burdens and argue that these questions should be answered differently, depending on which is in play. One has an attitudinal burden with respect to some proposition when one is required to possess sufficient evidence for it. One has a dialectical burden with respect to some proposition (...) when one is required to provide supporting arguments for it as part of a deliberative process. We show that the attitudinal burden with respect to certain propositions is unevenly distributed in some deliberative contexts, but in all of these contexts, establishing the degree of support for the proposition is merely a means to some other deliberative end, such as action guidance, or persuasion. By contrast, uneven distributions of the dialectical burden regularly further the aims of deliberation, even in contexts where the quest for truth is the sole deliberative aim, rather than merely a means to some different deliberative end. We argue that our distinction between these two burdens resolves puzzles about unevenness that have been raised in the literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christopher Gill PLATO'S ATLANTIS STORY AND THE BIRTH OF FICTION There is a sense in which Plato's Atlantis story is the earliest example of narrative fiction in Greek literature; which is also to say it is the earliest example in Western literature. This may seem a surprising claim. Plato's story is introduced in the Timaeus as the record of a factual event and as one which is "absolutely true." (...) If the story is conceded, nonetheless, to be an invention, one might suppose that earlier works of literature, such as Homer's epics, have an equal claim to be considered fictional. On the other hand, it might be objected that the genre of narrative fiction (what we call the romance or novel) did not emerge in Greece until considerably later, in or around the first century B.C. A better understanding both of fiction and of the Atlantis story will, however, show my claim to be justified. If we describe a narrative as a fiction, we usually mean that it is an account of events which did not actually take place as they are described but which have been invented by the author. This, however, does not distinguish between falsehood and fiction. And, indeed, fiction is distinguishable from falsehood only by the presumptions of author and audience: the author of fiction does not intend to deceive (nor is the audience generally deceived) about the status of the narrative. It is also true (though in a different sense) that it is the presumptions of author and audience that distinguish fictional from factual accounts. For a fictional narrative in the past tense is not formally distinguishable from a narrative of past factual events; and it is only certain conventional and extrinsic signals (like the title of a book) which denote the class of the narrative. Moreover, an audience follows a fictional narrative with much the same kind of mental attention and emotional involvement as it does a factual narrative: fictional events may seem, in a sense, as real as, or more real than, factual events. Yet, at some level, the audience is aware that the fictional events are not real in the ordinary sense of the word but invented by the author; this awareness underlies 64 Christopher Gill65 and characterizes the kind of attention, and involvement, elicited by fictional narrative. Fiction, one may say, is a kind of game, in which both participants share in a willed pretense, treating what is unreal as real, and what is invented as actual. The rules of the game of fiction are not intuitively obvious, but presuppose a degree of cultural sophistication in a society or individual: in particular, the capacity to draw a clear distinction between fact and fiction. This capacity cannot be reasonably attributed to the composers of Homeric epic, nor can the poems (which are a chemical fusion of legends about the past and creative invention) accurately be classified by either term. The genre of deliberately fictional narrative (that is, the romance) did not emerge until historiography, factual recording of the past, was an established technique. Indeed, the romance seems to have grown up as an imitation of history, in which the author played the game of recounting a sequence of past events. Xenophon's Education of Cyrus (c. 360 b.c.), the first self-consciously semi-fictional history, served as a suggestive prototype for later, more completely fictional narratives. It is perhaps not accidental that Thucydides' attempt in the fifth century to lay down criteria for wholly factual historiography (with none of the romantic elaborations of the Homeric epics, 1.3, 1.10, 1.22) was succeeded in the fourth century by the first philosophical accounts ofthe truth-status of literature; Aristotle, in fact, defines literary truth through a contrast with historical truth (Poetics, 9). The clearer delineation of fact promoted the desire to define fiction (or, at least, literary invention), as well as creating the preconditions for the self-conscious production of fiction. Plato may seem to be an enemy rather than an analyst of literature; and his discussions undeniably have a polemical tone. But, closely examined, his treatment of literature in the Republic, and of the kinds of... (shrink)

In 1895 sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel published a paper: ‘On a connection of selection theory to epistemology’. It was focussed on the question of how behavioural success and the evolution of the cognitive capacities that underlie it are to be related to knowing and truth. Subsequently, Simmel’s ideas were largely lost, but recently an English translation was published by Coleman in this journal. While Coleman’s contextual remarks are solely concerned with a preceding evolutionary epistemology, it will be argued (...) here that Simmel pursues a more unorthodox, more radically biologically based and pragmatist, approach to epistemology in which the presumption of a wholly interests-independent truth is abandoned, concepts are accepted as species-specific and truth tied intimately to practical success. Moreover, Simmel’s position, shorn of one too-radical commitment, shares its key commitments with the recently developed interactivist–constructivist framework for understanding biological cognition and naturalistic epistemology. There Simmel’s position can be given a natural, integrated, three-fold elaboration in interactivist re-analysis, unified evolutionary epistemology and learnable normativity. (shrink)

By exposing itself as fiction, Dante’s poetry becomes true. Especially the Malebolge stages a relentless self-critique by Dante of his prophetic voice and the presumption of a human poet who imitates divine prophecy through merely human counterfeits. This self-deconstruction opens the poem to being informed from above and beyond itself by an authority not its own: divine grace can work the revelation of truth directly within interpretive acts of readers focused on the “doctrine hiding beneath the veil of (...) the strange verses.” The apex (or nadir) of infernal irony is that Dante’s Inferno becomes prophetic revelation of truth by undermining its own merely human claim to be capable of delivering just such revelation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Dialogic Interpretation of Hume's Dialogues William Lad Sessions For all ofits prominence in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of religion, Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion continues to provoke divergent readings, especially as regards its author's intentions and beliefs. Most writers today, following Norman Kemp Smith's masterful analysis, accept some version ofwhat I will call "the standard interpretation": Hume aimed to discredit religion—natural and revealed religion alike, but especially the "experimental (...) theism" represented by Cleanthes' so-called "design argument." Hence, the sceptic "Philo represents Hume's views onreligiousbelief,"even though Cleanthes (occasionally) and Demea(rarely) also speakfor Hume.1 But a significant minority have given divergentinterpretations: some have held that Pamphilus, the narrator of the Dialogues, is Hume;2 some have given credence to Hume's remark in a letter that "I make Cleanthes the Hero of the Dialogue";3 others think that none of the characters represent Hume, at least not consistently, either because the characters represent types, not individuals,4 or because none are "wholly consistent, completely clear-headed, and unmuddled throughout,"5 or because "it is the whole of the dialogue which represents Hume."6 One interpreter has even gone so far as to declare that "I shall take it that Hume in the Dialogues is any speaker who appears tobe makingagood philosophical point,"7 whichis tantamount to identifying Hume with any self-assured philosophical reader of the Dialogues] My chief purpose in this essay is not to take issue with these interpretations, nor to propose a novel interpretation of the text—though I will do both—but rather to promote a different kind of interpretation altogether: what I will call a "dialogic" interpretation, since it views the literary form as contributory and indeed essential to the philosophical message.8 Still, the particular dialogic interpretation I propose may be of interest. On it, the Dialogues are not chiefly a diatribe against theism, much less a polemic against all (theistic or Christian) religion. Rather, the book at its most searching level is a careful rational examination of"true" vs. "false" religion, with the virtues ofthe former commended even as the vices ofthe latter are condemned. In short, Hume gives us an eighteenth century discussion ofreligiousfaith in relation to human Volume XVII Number 1 15 WILLIAM LAD SESSIONS reason, a discussion wherein reason is not automatically the enemy of faith (in all its guises). More specifically, Philo's and Cleanthes' apparent disagreements on the results and utility ofnatural theology mask a more fundamental and considerably more important harmony in their views concerning "the proper office ofreligion."9 Contrary to the standardinterpretation, they fundamentally agree on the nature and value of natural piety, which is the other component of natural religion besides natural theology.10 In the end, then, Pamphilus is not wrong to judge that Cleanthes' principles "approach still nearer to the truth" than Philo's, and not merely for reasons of filial piety (he is, after all, Cleanthes' house-guest, his loyal student, and his "adopted son"). No doubt Philo does tend to "win" his skirmishes in natural theology with Cleanthes (not to mention those with Demea!), but though Philo triumphs tactically, Cleanthes is the victor in the wider war for Pamphilus' heart and mind: critical scepticism may be a useful safeguard for careful thinkers against the "superstition" endemic to "false" and harmful piety, butitsutilityislimited; Philo's prophylaxisis muchless effective than Cleanthes' empirical theism at the vitally important task of inculcating and nurturing "true" natural piety in a young person such as Pamphilus. However, before supporting this controversial view of the Dialogues, I need to make clearer the nature, limits and value of a dialogic interpretation, by way of contrast with the more common approaches. I. Standard Hermenéutica Most philosophical interpretations of the Dialogues share several assumptions—or perhaps one should say "presumptions." First, they all focus on the propositions, beliefs, and arguments expressed by characters in the Dialogues—their claims, assertions, speculations, suggestions, rejections, replies, reasons, rebuttals, and the like—and they seek to extract from the discussion those expressed or implied beliefs and arguments which current interpreters believe most worthy of continuing philosophical adherence, development, demolition, or at least discussion. Literary... (shrink)