How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.

This paper explores an initially attractive principle connecting beliefs in general with beliefs about what beliefs are rational. The principle turns out to be violated by intuitively rational beliefs in some situations. The paper lays out some options for reacting to this fact.

Formally inclined epistemologists often theorize about ideally rational agents—agents who exemplify rational ideals, such as probabilistic coherence, that human beings could never fully realize. This approach can be defended against the well-known worry that abstracting from human cognitive imperfections deprives the approach of interest. But a different worry arises when we ask what an ideal agent should believe about her own cognitive perfection (even an agent who is in fact cognitively perfect might, it would seem, be uncertain of this fact). (...) Consideration of this question reveals an interesting feature of the structure of our epistemic ideals: for agents with limited information, our epistemic ideals turn out to conflict with one another. This suggests that we must revise the way we see ideal agents in epistemic theorizing. (shrink)

Taking into account recent pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches to irony, the present study investigates irony as a discursive resource Greek parliamentarians employ to fulfill their institutional roles and to negotiate verbal rules of conduct in highly institutionalized and confrontational debates. It is suggested that, besides criticism, parliamentary irony is used to sharpen attacks against the Opposition, to elicit vivid reactions from the audience and disaffiliate from, or align with, participants, to restore parliamentary order, and to establish cohesive ties between successive (...) parliamentary speeches. Moreover, the recorded reactions to irony reveal that irony is considered a common and ‘legitimate’ discursive practice in the Greek parliament and is not negatively evaluated by Greek MPs. Such findings highlight the significance of contextual parameters for the sociolinguistic analysis of pragmatic phenomena and lead to a critical evaluation of those previous results which are based on the study of decontextualized and/or fictional ironical utterances and exchanges. (shrink)

It is commonly acknowledged that, in order to test a theoretical hypothesis, one must, in Duhem' s phrase, rely on a "theoretical scaffolding" to connect the hypothesis with something measurable. Hypothesis-confirmation, on this view, becomes a three-place relation: evidence E will confirm hypothesis H only relative to some such scaffolding B. Thus the two leading logical approaches to qualitative confirmation--the hypothetico-deductive (H-D) account and Clark Glymour' s bootstrap account--analyze confirmation in relative terms. But this raises questions about the philosophical interpretation (...) of the technical conditions these accounts describe. What does it mean to say that E confirms H "relative to B"? How should we interpret the relation we are trying to analyze? (shrink)

This inclusive cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering education and context. In so doing the book offers a reflection on contextual boundaries with an overall boundary crossing ambition and juxtaposes important cases of critical participation within engineering education with sophisticated scholarly reflection on both opportunities and discontents. Whether, and in what way engineering education is or ought to be contextualized or de-contextualized is an object of heated debate among engineering educators. The uniqueness of this study is that this debate (...) is given comprehensive coverage - presenting both instrumentally inclined as well as radical positions on transforming engineering education. In contextualizing engineering education, this book offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary, meta- and interdisciplinary perspectives on how cultural, professional, institutional, and educational systems contexts shape histories, structural dynamics, ideologies and challenges as well as new pathways in engineering education. Topics addressed include examining engineering education in countries ranging from India to America, to racial and gender equity in engineering education and incorporating social awareness into the area. Using context as "bridge" this book confronts engineering education head on. Contending engineering ideologies and corresponding views on context are juxtaposed with contending discourses of reform. The uniqueness of the book is that it brings together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and engineering from Europe - both East and West - with the United States, China, Brazil, India and Australia. (shrink)

This paper examines the reactions to the British labour unrest of 1910?1914 among the writers associated with two Edwardian periodicals, the Catholic Distributivist New Witness, and the advanced socialist New Age. Both papers were thrown into sympathy with the strikes whether through libertarianism, hatred of capitalism or the glorification of violence and struggle. This prompted theoretical discussions on the future organisation of labour in which liberty and consensus were precariously balanced, and mediated through elitism. By examining the contested and ambiguous (...) origins of guild socialism, the paper draws tentative conclusions about its troubled legacy. (shrink)

Sterelny’s Thought in a Hostile World ([ 2003 ]) presents a complex, systematically structured theory of the evolution of cognition centered on a concept of decoupled representation. Taking Godfrey-Smith’s ([ 1996 ]) analysis of the evolution of behavioral flexibility as a framework, the theory describes increasingly complex grades of representation beginning with simple detection and culminating with decoupled representation, said to be belief-like, and it characterizes selection forces that drive evolutionary transformations in these forms of representation. Sterelny’s ultimate explanatory target (...) is the evolution of human agency. This paper develops a detailed analysis of the main cognitive aspects. It is argued that some of the major claims are not correct: decoupled representation as defined doesn’t capture belief-like representation, and, properly understood, decoupled representation turns out to be ubiquitous among multicellular animals. However, some of the key ideas are right, or along the right lines, and suggestions are made for modifying and expanding the conceptual framework. (shrink)

Oregon is the only state in the United States where a physician may legally prescribe a lethal dose of barbiturate for a patient intending suicide. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act was passed by voters in 1994 and came into effect after much legal wrangling in October of 1997. At the same time, a cabinetmaker named Pat Matheny was struggling with progressive weakness from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. I met with Pat and his family for a lengthy interview in (...) October 1998 in Coos Bay, Oregon, for a television news report on his decision to get a lethal prescription. Below is an extract from that interview. On the day this introduction was written, 10 March 1999, Pat took the prescribed lethal overdose of barbiturates and died at home. His illness was taking his voice, he could not move his hands or legs, and breathing was becoming very difficult. His mother told me he knew that was for him. (shrink)

A letter protesting the publication of a homophobic rant in the Proceedings of the APA.

In recent decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has become a powerful forum for trade liberalization and regulatory harmonization. OECD members have worked to reconcile divergent national regulatory approaches, applying a single framework across sovereign states, in effect determining whose knowledge-making practices would guide regulatory action throughout the industrialized world. Focusing on US regulators, industry associations, and environmental groups, this article explores the participatory politics of OECD chemical regulation harmonization in the late 1970s to early 1980s. These efforts (...) were conditioned by differential institutional access and resources among stakeholders who sought to shape regulatory knowledge rules. Facing competing European and US approaches to chemical data—a minimum “base set” of test data versus case-by-case determinations—OECD members chose the European approach in 1980. However, US regulatory politics shifted with the election of President Reagan, prompting industry associations to lobby the US government to block the agreement. Examining the micropolitics of these standards in the making, I demonstrate that while long-term structures advantaged industrial actors, ideological alignment with the US government precipitated their decisive influence. The case illustrates the importance of attending to the distinctive politics of international harmonization and the effects on transnational knowledge-making and regulatory intervention. (shrink)

In the following study we shall investigate the ancient Greek ‘(all-)day runners’ (ήμεροδρόμοι) 2 from a historical as well as from a modern physiological perspective. Hemerodromoi were of some importance in Greek interstate communication, in particular in military long-distance communication, and are, accordingly, a subject of some interest for the study of interaction in the ancient Greek city-state culture. The investigation begins by considering the ancient evidence on these ‘(all-)day runners’ and moves on to a physiological consideration of this evidence, (...) with particular reference to the feat of the Athenian hemerodromos Pheidippides 3 who ran from Athens to Sparta in 490 BC, shortly before the famous battle of Marathon. (shrink)

As the structure of healthcare delivery undergoes a breathtaking transformation, many ethics committees are wondering how and if they will be affected. Although the impact has not yet been widely felt, hospital-based ethics committees cannot avoid the pressures and upheaval caused by the reorganization of healthcare. This article will briefly review some of the factors contributing to the transformation of medicine, and suggest a number of ways in which ethics committees can respond proactively.

‘There is no place in the phenomenology of fully absorbed coping’, writes Hubert Dreyfus, ‘for mindfulness. In flow, as Sartre sees, there are only attractive and repulsive forces drawing appropriate activity out of an active body’1. Among the many ways in which history animates dynamical systems at a range of distinctive timescales, the phenomena of embodied human habit, skilful movement, and absorbed coping are among the most pervasive and mundane, and the most philosophically puzzling. In this essay we examine both (...) habitual and skilled movement, sketching the outlines of a multidimensional framework within which the many differences across distinctive cases and domains might be fruitfully understood. Both the range of movement phenomena which can plausibly be seen as instances of habit or skill, and the space of possible theories of such phenomena are richer and more disparate than philosophy easily encompasses. We seek to bring phenomenology into contact with relevant movements in psychological theories of skilful action, in the belief that phenomenological philosophy and cognitive science can be allies rather than antagonists. (shrink)

How do concert pianists commit to memory the structure of a piece of music like Bach’s Italian Concerto, learning it well enough to remember it in the highly charged setting of a crowded performance venue, yet remaining open to the freshness of expression of the moment? Playing to this audience, in this state, now, requires openness to specificity, to interpretation, a working dynamicism that mere rote learning will not provide. Chaffin, Imreh and Crawford’s innovative and detailed research suggests that the (...) key to this skill is a declarative mental roadmap aiding musical performance. This hypothesis is neatly and unintentionally summarized by professional pianist Imreh, who states when learning a new piece of music “My fingers were playing the notes just fine. The practice I needed was in my head. I had to learn to keep track of where I was. It was a matter of learning exactly what I needed to be thinking of as I played, and at exactly what point. . .” (Chaffin & Imreh 1997, p.326). (shrink)

According to Socrates, as he is described in Plato?s Phaedo, the definition of a true philosopher is a wise man who is continuously practicing dying and being dead. Already in this life, the philosopher tries to free his soul from the body in order to acquire true knowledge as the soul is progressively becoming detached from the body. Centuries after it was written, Plato?s Phaedo continued to play a role for some early Christian authors, and this article focuses on three (...) instances where Christian women mirror Socrates and/or his definition of philosophy. We find these instances in hagiographical literature from the fourth and fifth centuries at different locations in the Roman Empire - in the Lives of Macrina, Marcella and Syncletica. These texts are all to varying degrees impacted by Platonic philosophy and by the ideal of the male philosopher Socrates. As women mastering philosophy, they widened common cultural expectations for women, revealing how Christian authors in certain contexts ascribed authority to female figures. (shrink)