Defenses of pragmatic encroachment commonly rely on two thoughts: first, that the gap between one’s strength of epistemic position on p and perfect strength sometimes makes a difference to what one is justified in doing, and second, that the higher the stakes, the harder it is to know. It is often assumed that these ideas complement each other. This chapter shows that these ideas are far from complementary. Along the way, a variety of strategies for regimenting the somewhat inchoate notion (...) of stakes are indicated, and some troubling cases for pragmatic encroachment raised. (shrink)

Building on a functionalist framework for decision-making in legal translation, a holistic approach to quality is presented in order to respond to the specificities of this field and overcome the shortcomings of general models of translation quality evaluation. The proposed approach connects legal, contextual, macrotextual and microtextual variables for the definition of the translation adequacy strategy, which guides problem-solving and the rest of the translation process. The same parameters remain traceable between the translation brief and the translation product (...) both in pre-delivery revision and in post-delivery assessment. They are the yardstick for identifying predictable evaluative criteria and competence requirements for translators and quality controllers. The implications of the approach on quality assessment and quality management practices are also discussed. Overall, the model illustrates the potential benefits of enhancing predictability and reducing subjectivity on the basis of specific legal translation methodologies. It supports the need for legal translation expertise in quality evaluation and the relevance of Legal Translation Studies to raising standards in professional practice. (shrink)

In the present paper, I examine how Michael Devitt's proposal as to how to understand the notion of rigidity for general terms fares as regards what I have called the 'criterion of extensional adequacy' for any such notion -namely, the condition according to which any notion of general term rigidity should make the class of rigid terms coincide with that of natural kind terms. I try to show that Devitt's defense of his view from the usual objections raised in (...) the literature fails. In the first place, the proposal seems to overgeneralize, as terms such as 'television set' or 'table', would also be rigid appliers; as I try to show here, the arguments presented by Devitt in order to show that that is not the case are based on some alleged properties of those terms that are also true of some of the expressions he does consider as rigid. In the second place, the proposal also undergeneralizes; even though Devitt himself accepts that this is so, I try to show that his strategy to lessen the disappointment this causes also fails. En este trabajo examino el desempeño de la propuesta acerca de cómo entender la noción de rigidez para términos generales defendida por Michael Devitt respecto de lo que denomino el 'criterio de adecuación extensional' para una noción de rigidez -a saber, la condición según la cual una noción de rigidez para términos generales debería hacer coincidir la clase de términos rígidos con la clase de términos de género natural. Intento mostrar que las estrategias desplegadas por Devitt para defender su postura de las objeciones usuales no son exitosas. En primer lugar, la propuesta parece sobregeneralizar, dado que términos como 'televisor' o 'mesa' también serían aplicadores rígidos; en efecto, según intento defender aquí, los argumentos de Devitt tendientes a mostrar que no lo son se basan en supuestas características de estos términos que son igualmente válidas respecto de las expresiones que él considera rígidas. En segundo lugar, la propuesta también subgeneraliza; si bien Devitt acepta esto, hago notar que su estrategia para quitar dramatismo a este resultado también falla. (shrink)

A continuous objection to virtue ethics has been its alleged inadequacy in providing a distinctive account of right action and determinate action guidance. The virtue ethical criterion “An action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically (i.e., acting in character) do in the circumstances,” has been claimed by some to give wrong results in some cases, and thus doomed to failure. However, I argue that the opponents who raise these objections overlook an important (...) distinction between “action assessment” and “action guidance” in virtue ethics. Once this distinction which is alien to other dominant moral theories is taken into consideration, I show that virtue ethics can supply a distinctive theory of right action and sufficient action guidance. Moreover, I will demonstrate that this distinction allows us to see that virtue ethics has some structural advantages that enable it to provide multiple guidance strategies to different agents with differential cognitive and moral developmental levels. Finally, I will argue that while theories that tell moral agents what to do by providing exact answers might affect moral agency in negative ways by frustrating the development of an integrated moral character, virtue ethics also avoids this effect. (shrink)

AbstractThe Green Revolution still exerts an important influence on agricultural policy as a technology-centred development strategy. A main policy narrative underpinning the Green Revolution was first expounded in Transforming Traditional Agriculture, a book published in 1964 by Nobel Prize-winning economist Ted Schultz. He famously argued that traditional farmers were ‘poor but efficient’. As farmers responded to economic incentives, technology-driven strategies would transform traditional agriculture into an engine of economic growth. Schultz relied on published ethnographic data and his own calculations (...) to construct this policy narrative. My reanalysis of TTA focuses on its main case study, Panajachel, a village in Guatemala. I follow a narrative approach, evaluating whether Schultz’s story relates a plausible account of agricultural development in Panajachel and its region. I show how Schultz deliberately tried to hide that Mayan farmers in Panajachel were not challenged in technological terms and were able to reach relatively high economic returns. His interpretation of the Guatemalan rural economy ignored ethnic tensions dominating market exchange, a main barrier for agricultural development. I evaluate Schultz’s narrative further by tracing the subsequent evolution of Panajachel and its wider region. High-input strategies had to address ethnic barriers and change agents became embroiled in violent conflict along ethnic lines. Assessing the adequacy of Schultz’s contribution, from a narrative approach, shows how he ‘got the story wrong’ and that the Green Revolution policy narrative has an excessively narrow intellectual basis. New narratives should reserve a much more important place for institutional change in agricultural development. (shrink)

This paper examines critically the reconstruction of the ‘Sherlock Holmes sense of deduction’ proposed jointly by M.B. Hintikka and J. Hintikka in the 1980s, and its successor, the interrogative model of inquiry developed by J. Hintikka and his collaborators in the 1990s. The Hintikkas’ model explicitly used game theory in order to formalize a naturalistic approach to inquiry, but the imi abandoned both the game-theoretic formalism, and the naturalistic approach. It is argued that the latter better supports the claim that (...) the imi provides a ‘logic of discovery’, and safeguards its empirical adequacy. Technical changes necessary to this interpretation are presented, and examples are discussed, both formal and informal, that are better analyzed when these changes are in place. The informal examples are borrowed from Conan Doyle’s The Case of Silver Blaze, a favorite of M.B. and J. Hintikka. (shrink)

The disagreement between defenders and opponents of extended cognition is often framed in terms of constitution. The underlying principle of this discussion is what I will call the co-location principle: cognition is located where its constituents are located. The crucial question is under which conditions something is to be counted as a constituent of cognition. I will formulate three criteria of adequacy that an account of constitution must satisfy to be applicable to the dispute on extended cognition. I will (...) evaluate different accounts of constitution as to whether they satisfy the criteria of adequacy. Three different accounts of constitution can be identified in the literature on extended cognition, which I will call property-based constitution, diachronic constitution, and mechanistic constitution. I will show that none of the accounts satisfies all three criteria. Thus, the search for the mark of constitution does not seem to be a promising strategy for defending extended cognition. I will briefly sketch a new strategy of how to deal with this situation. (shrink)

In this journal theme introduction, first, I explain how comparative philosophy as explored in the journal Comparative Philosophy is understood and how it is intrinsically related to the constructive engagement strategy. Second, to characterize more clearly and accurately some related methodological points of the constructive-engagement strategy, and also to explain how constructive engagement is possible, I introduce some needed conceptual and explanatory resources and a meta-methodological framework and endeavor to identify adequacy conditions for methodological guiding principles in (...) comparative studies. Third, as a case analysis, I show how the constructive-engagement reflective practice bears on recent studies of Chinese and comparative Chinese-Western philosophy, especially in the past decade, for two purposes: to illustrate the foregoing theoretic characterization of the constructive engagement strategy, and to identify and explain some constructive morals that might have general significance for comparative studies. (shrink)

This chapter argues for an interpretation of Kant's psychology of moral evil that accommodates the so-called excluded middle cases and allows for variations in the magnitude of evil. The strategy involves distinguishing Kant's transcendental psychology from his empirical psychology and arguing that Kant's character rigorism is restricted to the transcendental level. The chapter also explains how Kant's theory of moral evil accommodates 'the badass'; someone who does evil for evil's sake.

Employees are critical stakeholders for an organization because they directly deal with the end-users and represent the entire firm. To recognize the strategic importance of the employees, organizations create communication programs to keep employees apprised of organizational issues. In this regard, this study examined the role of communication strategies on organizational commitment. The study also investigated the mediating effect of faculty engagement between communication strategies and organizational commitment. Self-administered survey aided in acquiring data from 276 English language teachers in China. (...) The analysis of the data was conducted using SmartPLS through the Structured Equation Modeling technique. The outcome of the study demonstrated that information flow and information feedback significantly impact organizational commitment and faculty engagement. The analysis also revealed that information adequacy significantly impacts organizational commitment but has no relationship with faculty engagement. The mediation analysis demonstrated that faculty engagement mediated the relationship between information flow and organizational commitment and between information feedback and organization commitment. However, faculty engagement did not mediate the relationship between information adequacy and organizational commitment among English language teachers in China. In theoretical terms, the study contributed in terms of incorporating different communication strategies and examining their effect on organizational commitment and faculty engagement. In practical terms, this study would be beneficial for the management of the educational institutes to develop different ways of enhancing communication strategies within the institute. This study also provided directions for the future, for example, conducting the study on other subject teachers, increasing the sample, carrying out the research in a different context, and adding different mediators and moderators in the existing model. (shrink)

Recent law and ethics literature has been inundated with recommendations of the "best interests" criterion as the appropriate guide for neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making. Increasingly, however, its adequacy is being questioned. In Chapter 1, I survey the arguments of "best interests" defenders and critics and suggest one problem is that the "best interests" criterion has yet to be subjected to a systematic conceptual and ethical analysis. In Chapter 2, therefore, I conduct such an analysis to evaluate more systematically its (...) appropriateness as a decision-making guide in neonatal and maternal-fetal medicine, concluding that the "best interests" criterion cannot assist us in seeing and addressing all that is at stake in neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making because it excludes any consideration of the "interdependent" and other interests of family members. Therefore, I suggest that an ethical criterion or set of criteria which can explicitly consider and adequately balance the interests of infants or fetuses and family members would be a more helpful guide for neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making. ;In Chapters 3-7, I attempt to move beyond the "best interests" criterion, drawing on fieldwork I conducted in the United States, Sweden, and India to point out some conceptual and normative gaps to be addressed in the development of a more adequate guide for neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making. In Chapter 3, I describe this fieldwork and explain its purpose as illustrating the clinical ethical strategies employed in these countries to balance the interests of various parties in actual decision-making. In Chapters 4-6, I describe these strategies. Finally, in Chapter 7, I point out some conceptual and normative gaps in these decision-making strategies, noting that these gaps have also been unaddressed by the "best interests" critics reviewed in Chapters 1 and 2. I suggest that we must address these gaps to develop theoretical structures that will enable us to explicitly consider and adequately balance the "interdependent" and other interests of infants or fetuses, their family members, and even society in neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making. (shrink)

Research has shown a direct relationship between infertility-related stress and anxiety in infertile patients. The present study goes into this relationship in depth, testing the moderating role of coping strategies in the associations between specific infertility-related stress dimensions and State-Anxiety among male and female partners of infertile couples. Gender differences were also explored. Both members of 254 infertile couples completed a questionnaire consisting of Socio-demographics, Fertility Problem Inventory–Short Form, Coping Orientation to Problem Experienced–New Italian Version, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y. The (...) results revealed that Social Concern and Couple’s Relationship Concern, in both partners, and Need for Parenthood, in female partners, had positive correlations with State-Anxiety. Seeking Social Support and Avoidant coping were related to increasing levels of State-Anxiety in both partners, whereas Positive Attitude coping strategies were related to lower levels of State-Anxiety in female partners. Problem-Solving and Avoidant coping played moderating roles between specific infertility-related stress dimensions and State-Anxiety in unexpected directions. Problem-Solving exacerbated the negative effects of Social Concern, whereas Avoidant coping buffered the negative effects of several infertility-related stress dimensions in both partners. Interventions to improve stress management and psychological health in infertile couples should consider that the adequacy of coping strategies is inherently situation specific. It therefore follows that patient-centered clinical interventions should consider the potential inadequacy of promoting Problem-Solving strategies, and that even Avoidance can be an efficient strategy for dealing with specific infertility-related stress dimensions. (shrink)

Diogenes Laertius's “Lives of the Eminent Philosophers” is a fictionalised account of the history of philosophy, full of philosophical concepts and scientific terminology. The Ukrainian translation strategy this work proposed by the authors aims to ensure adequacy in meaning while maximizing the uniformity of terms. The main principles of this translation are: 1) to avoid Greekisms, Latinisms and calques from the Russian language; 2) to translate Greek etymologically related concepts with single-root words; 3) to translate single-root antonymic concepts (...) in the same way; 4) where lexical semantics is terminologically or substantively significant, to use synonyms; 6) composites or words with a complicated internal form can be translated periphrastically; 7) to use some neologisms to clarify meanings. (shrink)

The aim of the present study is to propose an approach to legal translation quality so as to address the idiosyncrasies in legal studies and to confront the challenges and flaws of previous paradigms and models of translation quality assessment. The present approach is associated with the micro-macro textual, contextual, and legal components/variables in the pursuit of an adequate strategy through elaborating the decision making process for translation. The elements of the decision making process remain constant between translation relevancy/brief, (...) and the translation product in the source text analysis, reformulation and revision stages. Translation competence, translation product, and the translation decision making process are all the evaluative standards for both quality controllers and translators. Also, this study scrutinizes the impact of translation quality assessment involving professional and training contexts besides managerial quality. In the upshot, this approach has the potential to reduce subjectivity in the quality of legal translation based on particular methodologies. The proposed framework assists the need for the evaluation of the quality of legal translation to boost the quality benchmarks in the professional environment. (shrink)

The present century has seen renewed interest in characterizing cognition, the object of inquiry of the cognitive sciences. In this paper, I describe the problem of cognition—the absence of a positive characterization of cognition despite a felt need for one. It is widely recognized that the problem is motivated by decades of controversy among cognitive scientists over foundational questions, such as whether non-neural parts of the body or environment can realize cognitive processes, or whether plants and microbes have cognitive processes. (...) The dominant strategy for addressing the problem of cognition is to seek a dichotomous criterion that vindicates some set of controversial claims. However, I argue that the problem of cognition is also motivated by ongoing conceptual development in cognitive science, and I describe four benefits that a characterization of cognition could confer. Given these benefits, I recommend an alternative criterion of success, ecumenical extensional adequacy, on which the aim is to describe the variation in expert judgments rather than to correct this variation by taking sides in sectarian disputes. I argue that if we had an ecumenical solution to the problem of cognition, we would have achieved much of what we should want from a “mark of the cognitive”. (shrink)

Scientific pluralism is the view according to which there is a plurality of scientific domains and of scientific theories, and these theories are empirically adequate relative to their own respective domains. Scientific monism is the view according to which there is a single domain to which all scientific theories apply. How are these views impacted by the presence of inconsistent scientific theories? There are consistency-preservation strategies and inconsistency-toleration strategies. Among the former, two prominent strategies can be articulated: Compartmentalization and Information (...) restriction. Among the inconsistency-toleration strategies, we have: Paraconsistent compartmentalization and Dialetheism. In this paper, I critically assess the adequacy of each of these four views. (shrink)

Philosophical and scientific investigations of the proprietary aspects of self—mineness or mental ownership—often presuppose that searching for unique constituents is a productive strategy. But there seem not to be any unique constituents. Here, it is argued that the “self-specificity” paradigm, which emphasizes subjective perspective, fails. Previously, it was argued that mode of access also fails to explain mineness. Fortunately, these failures, when leavened by other findings (those that exhibit varieties and vagaries of mineness), intimate an approach better suited to (...) searching for an explanation. Having an alternative in hand, one that shows promise of achieving explanatory adequacy, provides an additional reason to suspend the search for unique constituents. In short, a negative and a positive thesis are developed: we should cease looking for unique constituents and should seek to explain mineness in accord with the model developed here. This model rejects attempts to explain the phenomenon in terms of either a narrative or a minimal sense of self; it seeks to explain at a “molecular” level, one that appeals to multiple, interacting dimensions. The molecular-level model allows for the possibility that subjective perspective is distinct from a stark perspective (one that does not imply mineness). It proposes that the confounding of tacit expectations plays an important role in explaining mental ownership and its complement, disownership. But the confounding of tacit expectations is not sufficient. Because we are able to be aware of the existence of mental states that do not belong to self, we require a mechanism for determining degree of self-relatedness. One such mechanism is proposed here, and it is shown how this mechanism can be integrated into a general model of mental ownership. In the spirit of suggesting how this model might be able to help resolve outstanding problems, the question as to whether inserted thoughts belong to the patient who reports them is also considered. (shrink)

Metaethical debunking arguments often conclude that no moral belief is epistemically justified. Early versions of such arguments largely relied on metaphors and analogies and left the epistemology of debunking underspecified. Debunkers have since come to take on substantial and broad-ranging epistemological commitments. The plausibility of metaethical debunking has thereby become entangled in thorny epistemological issues. In this thesis, I provide a critical yet sympathetic evaluation of the prospects and challenges facing such arguments in light of this development. In doing so, (...) I address the following central question: how could genealogical information undermine the epistemic justification of moral beliefs? In Part I, I begin answering the central question by extracting explicit and implicit epistemic principles from three popular debunking arguments. These arguments, due to Gilbert Harman, Richard Joyce, and Sharon Street, generate principles concerning ontological parsimony, explanatory dispensability, epistemic insensitivity, lack of epistemic safety, unexplained reliability, epistemic coincidences, and explanatory constraints on rational belief. Having set out the principles tasked with explaining how genealogical information undermines, Part II of the thesis seeks to evaluate whether debunking arguments built on them succeed. To this end, I consider two types of challenges faced by such arguments. First, there are strategies that attempt to block global moral debunking arguments. I argue that one popular such strategy, the so-called ‘third-factor strategy’, has been misunderstood. When understood correctly, it is of no help in answering debunking arguments. I then flesh out an alternative and more promising strategy for blocking such arguments. I then turn to internal challenges facing debunkers, particularly those who rely on ‘explanationist’ principles. I argue that explanationist debunking arguments, as well as most others, fall prey to one or more of four internal challenges: the implausibility of first-order epistemic principles, the threat of overgeneralization, the threat of self-defeat, and the need for costly metaepistemic commitments. I conclude that current debunking arguments fail to establish that no moral belief is justified. By analyzing why existing arguments fail, I develop two conditions of adequacy that debunkers must satisfy in order to navigate the internal challenges successfully. I end by suggesting future directions that debunkers should pursue to rehabilitate the prospects for global moral debunking arguments. (shrink)

In “The Nature of the Atonement”, Eleonore Stump explores the problem of human sin that the atonement is meant to solve, helpfully uncovering important adequacy conditions for theories of atonement. She then uses those conditions to critically evaluate Anselmian and Thomistic theories of atonement, arguing (among many other interesting things) that the Thomist has a leg up on the Anselmian when it comes to the atonement-motivating problem of human sin (pp.11-12 of ms.). I argue for two claims in what (...) follows. First, Stump’s two seemingly independent “further problems” for theorists of atonement (discussed in the penultimate section of her paper) in fact reduce to a single challenge, which suggests a strategy for future theorizing about the atonement. Second, Stump’s case that the Thomist outperforms the Anselmian on the problem of human sin is weaker than it initially appears. As we’ll see, Stump’s own account of shame implies that the Anselmian’s difficulties on this front are less serious than she thinks. (shrink)

The paper seeks to make progress from stating primitive ontology theories of quantum physics – notably Bohmian mechanics, the GRW matter density theory and the GRW flash theory – to assessing these theories. Four criteria are set out: internal coherence; empirical adequacy; relationship to other theories; explanatory value. The paper argues that the stock objections against these theories do not withstand scrutiny. Its focus then is on their explanatory value: they pursue different strategies to ground the textbook formalism of (...) quantum mechanics, and they develop different explanations of quantum non-locality. In conclusion, it is argued that Bohmian mechanics offers a better prospect for making quantum non-locality intelligible than the GRW matter density theory and the GRW flash theory. (shrink)

B. F. Skinner's claim that "operant behavior is essentially the field of purpose" is systematically explored. It is argued that Charles Taylor's illuminating analysis of the explanatory significance of common-sense goal-ascriptions (1) lends some (fairly restricted) support to Skinner's claim, (2) considerably clarifies the conceptual significance of differences between operant and respondent behavior and conditioning, and (3) undercuts influential assertions (e.g., Taylor's) that research programs for behavioristic psychology share a "mechanistic" orientation. A strategy is suggested for assessing the plausibility (...) of Skinner's broader claims about the adequacy of the operant behaviorist program for the analysis of purposive behavior. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has introduced a new criterion of adequacy for analyses of knowledge: such an analysis, to be adequate, must be compatible with the common view that knowledge is better than true belief. One account which is widely thought to fail this test is reliabilism, according to which, roughly, knowledge is true belief formed by reliable process. Reliabilism fails, so the argument goes, because of the "swamping problem". In brief, provided a belief is true, we do not care whether (...) or not it was formed by a reliable process. The value of reliability is "swamped" by the value of truth: truth combined with reliability is no better than truth alone. This paper approaches these issues from the perspective of decision theory. It argues that the "swamping effect" involves a sort of information-sensitivity that is well modelled decision-theoretically. It then employs this modelling to investigate a strategy, proposed by Goldman and Olsson, for saving reliabilism from the swamp, the so-called "conditional probability solution". It concludes that the strategy is only partially successful. (shrink)

We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unification of a scientifically inspired worldview. In showing how to recover an approximation to Russell's (...) conclusion while explaining scientists' continuing appeal to causal ideas (without violating naturalism by philosophically correcting scientists) we illustrate a general naturalist strategy for handling problems around the unification of sciences that assume different levels of naïveté with respect to folk conceptual frameworks. We do this despite rejecting one of the premises of Russell's argument, a version of reductionism that was scientifically plausible in 1913 but is not so now. (shrink)

Legitimate political authority is often said to involve a “right to rule,” which is most plausibly understood as a Hohfeldian moral power on the part of the state to impose obligations on its subjects (or otherwise to change their normative situation). Many writers have taken the state’s moral power (if and when it exists) to be a correlate, in some sense, of an obligation on the part of the state’s subjects to obey its directives. Thus legitimate political authority is said (...) to entail a general obligation to obey the law, and a general obligation to obey the law is said to entail legitimate political authority. With some version of this idea in mind, many writers attempt to establish full (or partial) legitimate political authority by first arguing for the intermediate conclusion that there exists a general (or partial) obligation to obey the law. This article argues that such a strategy is fundamentally mistaken, because while legitimate authority does indeed entail an obligation to obey the law, an obligation to obey the law does not, in and of itself, entail legitimate authority. This can be referred to as “the reverse entailment problem.” To avoid this problem, a theory of political authority must argue directly for the existence of the appropriate kind of moral power on the part of the state. This article argues for the “value-based” conception of a moral power, which states, very roughly, that one person holds a power over another if there is sufficient value in the former possessing the capacity intentionally to impose an obligation on the latter (or otherwise to change her normative situation). This seemingly simple understanding of a moral power gives rise to surprisingly strong adequacy conditions on what can count as an acceptable theory of legitimate political authority, and these conditions decisively rule out most of the standard theories in the literature. (shrink)

Absolutism about mass claims that mass ratios obtain in virtue of absolute masses. Comparativism denies this. Dasgupta, Oxford studies in metaphysics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) argues for comparativism about mass, in the context of Newtonian Gravity. Such an argument requires proving that comparativism is empirically adequate. Dasgupta equates this to showing that absolute masses are undetectable, and attempts to do so. This paper develops an argument by Baker to the contrary: absolute masses are in fact empirically meaningful, that is (...) detectable. Additionally, it is argued that the requirement of empirical adequacy should not be cashed out in terms of undetectability in the first place. The paper closes by sketching the possible strategies that remain for the comparativist. Along the way a framework is developed that is useful for thinking about these issues: Ozma games—how could one explain to an alien civilisation what an absolute mass is? (shrink)

The recent debate surrounding scientific realism has largely focused on the “no miracles” argument (NMA). Indeed, it seems that most contemporary realists and anti-realists have tied the case for realism to the adequacy of this argument. I argue that it is mistake for realists to let the debate be framed in this way. Realists would be well advised to abandon the NMA altogether and pursue an alternative strategy, which I call the “local strategy”.

Recent epistemology has introduced a new criterion of adequacy for analyses of knowledge: such an analysis, to be adequate, must be compatible with the common view that knowledge is better than true belief. One account which is widely thought to fail this test is reliabilism, according to which, roughly, knowledge is true belief formed by reliable process. Reliabilism fails, so the argument goes, because of the "swamping problem". In brief, provided a belief is true, we do not care whether (...) or not it was formed by a reliable process. The value of reliability is "swamped" by the value of truth: truth combined with reliability is no better than truth alone. This paper approaches these issues from the perspective of decision theory. It argues that the "swamping effect" involves a sort of information-sensitivity that is well modelled decision-theoretically. It then employs this modelling to investigate a strategy, proposed by Goldman and Olsson, for saving reliabilism from the swamp, the so-called "conditional probability solution". It concludes that the strategy is only partially successful. (shrink)

This paper provides arguments to philosophers, scientists, administrators and students for why science students should be instructed in a mandatory, custom-designed, interdisciplinary course in the philosophy of science. The argument begins by diagnosing that most science students are taught only conventional methodology: a fixed set of methods whose justification is rarely addressed. It proceeds by identifying seven benefits that scientists incur from going beyond these conventions and from acquiring abilities to analyse and evaluate justifications of scientific methods. It concludes that (...) teaching science students these skills makes them better scientists. Based on this argument, the paper then analyses the standard philosophy of science curriculum, and in particular its adequacy for teaching science students. It is argued that the standard curriculum on the one hand lacks important analytic tools relevant for going beyond conventional methodology—especially with respect to non-epistemic normative aspects of scientific practice—while on the other hand contains many topics and tools that are not relevant for the instruction of science students. Consequently, the optimal way of training science students in the analysis and evaluation of scientific methods requires a revision of the standard curriculum. Finally, the paper addresses five common characteristics of students taking such a course, which often clash with typical teaching approaches in philosophy. Strategies how best to deal with these constraints are offered for each of these characteristics. (shrink)

One of the central explananda in the debate on social cognition is the interpretation of other people in terms of reasons for action. There is a growing dissatisfaction among participants in the debate concerning the descriptive adequacy of the traditional belief-desire model of action interpretation. Applying this model as an explanatory model at the subpersonal level threatens to leave the original explanandum largely unarticulated. Against this background we show how Brandom’s deontic scorekeeping model can be used as a valuable (...) descriptive tool for making folk psychology explicit. Following Brandom’s non-formalist and non-mentalistic account of reason discourse, we suggest that the process of making sense of others is best captured as proceeding from a ‘factive’ baseline. According to this picture the ascription of beliefs and desires is not the default interpretation strategy, but rather the result of prior scaffolding of the agent’s deontic score. We close by discussing Brandom’s model in the light of empirical findings on the ontogeny of reason attribution. (shrink)

Calibration, the use of a surrogate signal to standardize an instrument, is an important strategy for the establishment of the validity of an experimental result. In this paper, I present several examples, typical of physics experiments, that illustrate the adequacy of the surrogate. In addition, I discuss several episodes in which the question of calibration is both difficult to answer and of paramount importance. These episodes include early attempts to detect gravity waves, the question of the existence of (...) a 17–keV neutrino, and the question of the existence of a Fifth Force in gravity. I argue that in these more complex cases, the adequacy of calibration, in an extended sense, was both considered and established. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the different ways in which dream research can contribute to interdisciplinary consciousness research. As a second global state of consciousness aside from wakefulness, dreaming is an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness. However, programmatic suggestions for integrating dreaming into broader theories of consciousness, for instance by regarding dreams as a model system of standard or pathological wake states, have not yielded straightforward results. We review existing proposals for using dreaming as a model system, (...) taking into account concerns about the concept of modeling and the adequacy and practical feasibility of dreaming as a model system. We conclude that existing modeling approaches are premature and rely on controversial background assumptions. Instead, we suggest that contrastive analysis of dreaming and wakefulness presents a more promising strategy for integrating dreaming into a broader research context and solving many of the problems involved in the modeling approach. (shrink)

Fish has always been adept at revising his position to incorporate what he’s learned from his critics while repaying the favor by assigning them a position they never took. The latter practice naturally helps conceal the borrowings, but as Fish’s position evolves it becomes progressively difficult to determine who is the author of his essays. I am, of course, gratified to see how much Fish has learned from me. It is salutary to find that Fish is finally just a humble (...) historian working with others at “recovering a system of thought and feeling” that will enable us to establish the historical context of Milton’s most probable intentions and realizing, as many historians of literature don’t, that we can only do so by bringing concepts provided by literary theory—form, function, artistic purpose, and so forth—to bear on the mass of historical materials at our disposal.3 It is also gratifying to see that Fish has discovered the law of context and now realizes that there are no local matters. Had he discovered that earlier, we’d have been spared Aunt Tilly and the discussion of Mr. Collins—as well as the general notion extrapolated from those examples that anything a sizable group decides to do will fly since nothing else constraints interpretation. We’d also have been spared the concepts of reading and affective criticism presented in Fish’s early work and the unchecked linguistic hijinks used to sustain those readings. I derive my deepest pleasure, however, from finding that Fish has finally discovered the conflict of interpretations proper and its primacy—“the resistance offered by one interpretively produced shape to the production of another” —though I must sadly abridge this progress report by noting that he finds himself powerless to do anything with this recognition. That is as it must be, for the most interesting thing about Fish’s borrowings is where he stops—and why he has to. Having let me write the first 5 ½ pages of his reply, he suddenly stops taking dictation so that he can simply reassert, in all its abstract glory, his tried-and-true resolution of all interpretive controversy by community interest. Had he read further, he would have discovered that a good deal more emerges if one attempts to preserve and deal with the conflict of interpretations rather than to do away with it. He would even have discovered my epistemology and would have learned the main lesson—that his position is not an alternative to mine but an early moment it contains and sublates in a larger context.Have taught Fish so much, I found myself, instead, poorly repaid by the position he foists upon me. Constantly caught up in an effort to reiterate the dichotomy on which his entire theorizing depends, Fish’s fixed need is to rework all disputes into an opposition between the party of independent fact-disinterested reason and the party of interest so that he might triumphantly resolve all difficulties by once again discovering the simple fact of interests. Lest this strategy hide behind a common misconception, our debate is not a case where distinct frameworks are simply misreading one another, as they must, but one where one framework must deliberately and seriously misread others since it has no other way to sustain itself. If the account Fish gives of my argument is the way things must look from his framework, all that this fact signifies is the paucity of his framework and its inability to achieve even minimal descriptive adequacy. 3. But even here things are a good deal more complex than Fish imagines. For a good statement of the logic and problems of historical interpretation, see Robert Marsh, “Historical Interpretation and the History of Criticism,” in Literary Criticism and Historical Understanding, ed. Philip Damon , pp. 1-24. (shrink)

Wright claims that “the epistemology of good abstraction principles should be assimilated to that of basic principles of logical inference”. In this paper I follow Wright’s recommendation, but I consider a different epistemology of logic, namely anti-exceptionalism. Anti-exceptionalism’s main contention is that logic is not a priori, and that the choice between rival logics should be based on abductive criteria such as simplicity, adequacy to the data, strength, fruitfulness, and consistency. This paper’s goal is to lay down the foundations (...) for an application of the anti-exceptionalist methodology to abstraction principles. In Sect. 1 I outline my strategy. I show that anti-exceptionalism has a bearing on the so-called Bad Company problem, and explore some versions of anti-exceptionalism about abstraction. I then consider new criteria for choosing between rival abstraction principles, and, in particular, between consistent revisions of Frege’s Basic Law V. I finally consider how the abstractionist can compare between competing criteria, and argue that anti-exceptionalists should be pluralists about abstraction. (shrink)

What I call the Doxastic Puzzle, is the impression that while each of these claims seems true, at least one of them must be false: (a) Claims of the form ‘S ought to have doxastic attitude D towards p at t’ are sometimes true at t, (b) If Φ-ing at t is not within S’s effective control at t, then it is false, at t, that ‘S ought to Φ at t’, (c) For all S, p, and t, having doxastic (...) attitude D towards p at t is not within S’s effective control at t. All three natural replies to the puzzle have been pursued. Some have claimed that doxastic attitudes like believing that p are, in fact, within our effective control, or sufficiently so. Others have claimed that doxastic ought-claims, strictly speaking, are always false. And some have denied that effective control is required for the adequacy of doxastic ought-claims in general. I here pursue and examine a different strategy. In the first part of this paper, I argue that these claims are not only each true but actually not in tension with each other in the first place. Instead of attempting to dispel the puzzle, this solution proposes to evade it instead: to solve it by properly understanding, and by thereby accepting without contradiction, all of its constitutive claims. In the second part of the paper, I argue that the evasive strategy forces us to re-think our understanding of the place of normative reasons in epistemology. More exactly, it seems to come at the cost of one central way of thinking about our reasons for having doxastic attitudes, one where such reasons are good-standing exemplars of normative reasons in general. The evasive strategy, that is, threatens to lead us very quickly to a deflationary picture of epistemic normativity: it rescues normative talk, but sacrifices normative substance. I conclude by explaining why I think this is more consequential than some have made it out to be, and by suggesting that these consequences are welcome nonetheless. (shrink)

While the predominant focus of the philosophical literature on scientific modeling has been on single-scale models, most systems in nature exhibit complex multiscale behavior, requiring new modeling methods. This challenge of modeling phenomena across a vast range of spatial and temporal scales has been called the tyranny of scales problem. Drawing on research in the geosciences, I synthesize and analyze a number of strategies for taming this tyranny in the context of conceptual, physical, and mathematical modeling. This includes several strategies (...) that can be deployed in physical modeling, even when strict dynamical scaling fails. In all cases, I argue that having an adequate conceptual model—given both the nature of the system and the particular purpose of the model—is essential. I draw a distinction between depiction and representation, and use this research in the geosciences to advance a number of debates in the philosophy of modeling. (shrink)

Norwegian health professionals, elderly people and family members experience ethical problems involving end-of-life decision making for elders in the context of the values of Norwegian society. This study used ethical inquiry and qualitative methodology to conduct and analyze interviews carried out with 25 health professionals, six elderly people and five family members about the ethical problems they encountered in end-of-life decision making in Norway. All three participant groups experienced ethical problems involving the adequacy of health care for elderly Norwegians. (...) Older people were concerned about being a burden to their families at the end of their life. However, health professionals wished to protect families from the burden of difficult decisions regarding health care for elderly parents at the end of life. Strategies are suggested for dialogue about end-of-life decisions and the integration of palliative care approaches into health care services for frail elderly people. (shrink)

It is clear throughout Cognitive Gadgets Heyes believes the development of cognitive capacities results from the interaction of genes and experience. However, she opposes cognitive instincts theorists to her own view that uniquely human capacities are cognitive gadgets. Instinct theorists believe that cognitive capacities are substantially produced by selection, with the environment playing a triggering role. Heyes’s position is that humans have similar general learning capacities to those present across taxa, and that sophisticated human cognition is substantially created by our (...) socioculturally transmitted environment. It is a core strategy of Heyes to provide evidence of learning altering a cognitive capacity to conclude that a capacity is a cognitive gadget and not an instinct. We draw on recent work on the evolution of learning preparedness to examine the adequacy of this strategy. In particular, we analyse experimental evolution work showing how selection affects cognition within the laboratory. First, this work reveals that change due to learning can still be retained under genetic assimilation. This suggests that domain-specific adaptation can coexist with learning, moderate nativism, an option missed by the instinct versus gadget distinction. Second, we describe the conditions that select for increased preparedness in learning: certainty, reliability, and particular costs. We consider how these conditions can be used when conducting evolutionary reasoning about cognition, applying them to the important capacity for imitation. We find that the conditions lend theoretical support to moderate nativism about the capacity to imitate, which is supported by psychological evidence. (shrink)

Quine’s general approach is to treat ontology as a matter of what a theory says there is. This turns ontology into a question of which existential statements are consequences of that theory. This approach is contrasted favourably with the view that takes ontological commitment as a relation to things. However within the broadly Quinean approach we can distinguish different accounts, differing as to the nature of the consequence relation best suited for determining those consequences. It is suggested that Quine’s own (...) narrowly formal account fails. Then a consideration of the necessitation approach championed by Jackson and Lewis shows that it does not do justice to the role of acknowledging consequences in determining rationality. I suggest that an approach which puts a priori consequence as the key relation does a better job. The task of spelling out the nature of a priori consequence is sketched, along with reasons to doubt the adequacy of the double indexing approach to analysing the a priori. The sorts of relations we can stand in to theories which allow us to inherit ontological commitments are touched on with a number of important philosophical strategies for introducing belief-like attitudes which nevertheless avoid ontological commitment. (shrink)

BackgroundThe proper and ethical inclusion of PWLHIV and their young children in research is paramount to ensure valid evidence is generated to optimize treatment and care. Little empirical data exists to inform ethical considerations deemed most critical to these populations. Our study aimed to systematically review the empiric literature regarding ethical considerations for research participation of PWLHIV and their young children.MethodsWe conducted this systematic review in partnership with a medical librarian. A search strategy was designed and performed within the (...) following electronic databases: Ovid MEDLINE, Embase and CINAHL. We screened titles and abstracts using the following inclusion criteria: (1) a study population of PWLHIV or children under 5 years of age; and (2) collection of qualitative or quantitative data regarding ethics of research participation. Excluded were reviews, commentaries, policy statements, clinical care-related ethics concerns, abstracts, case studies, or studies unrelated to HIV research. Studies were appraised for quality, data were extracted, and studies were qualitatively analyzed using a principle-based ethical framework within the Belmont Report.ResultsOf the 7470 titles identified, 538 full-text articles were reviewed for eligibility and only three articles met full criteria for inclusion within this review. While we allowed for inclusion of studies involving young children born to mothers with HIV, only articles focused on PWLHIV were identified. Within the results of these studies, four themes emerged: (1) adequacy of informed consent; (2) consideration of paternal involvement; (3) balancing risks; and (4) access to research and treatment. A strength of this review is that it included perspectives of international research investigators, community leaders, and male partners. However, only two studies collected empiric data from PWLHIV regarding their experiences participating in researchConclusionResearchers and funding agencies should be aware of these considerations and appreciate the value of and critical need for formative research to ensure clinical trials involving PWLHIV promote ethical, well-informed research participation and, ultimately, improve care outcomes. More research is needed to create a comprehensive ethical framework for researchers when conducting studies with PWLHIV. (shrink)

The question of whether the idealized models of theoretical economics are explanatory has been the subject of intense philosophical debate. It is sometimes presupposed that either a model provides the actual explanation or it does not provide an explanation at all. Yet, two sets of issues are relevant to the evaluation of model-based explanation: what conditions should a model satisfy in order to count as explanatory and does the model satisfy those conditions. My aim in this paper is to unpack (...) this distinction and show that separating the first set of issues from the second is crucial to an accurate diagnosis of the distinctive challenges that economic models pose. Along the way I sketch a view of model-based explanation in economics that focuses on the role that non-empirical and empirical strategies play in increasing confidence in the adequacy of a given model-based explanation. (shrink)

The environmental crisis challenges the adequacy of traditional moral theories, particularly in the case of act consequentialism – the view that an act is morally right if and only if it brings about the best available outcome. Although anthropogenic climate change threatens the well-being of billions of humans and trillions of non-human animals, it is difficult for an act consequentialist to condemn actions that contribute to it, as each individual action makes no difference to the probability of whether climate (...) change will occur. Or so one argument goes. This chapter examines the limits and possibilities of a consequentialist approach to climate ethics. It discusses various types of consequentialist theories applicable to the current environmental situation. It outlines outcome-based strategies to address the no-difference problem and to promote individual climate action. Finally, it considers environmental cases of evaluative uncertainty and how a consequentialist could deal with them. (shrink)

It is increasingly argued that polymathy—vocational and avocational pursuits in multiple domains—is deeply associated with creativity and innovation, and that its development enables the creation of important bridges between otherwise fragmented, dispersed sets of knowledge. Nevertheless, the dominant culture in both industry and academia is still that of narrow specialization. In this paper, we argue that in the context of COVID-19 crisis, with its wicked and transdisciplinary nature, the disciplinary approach of specialization is ill-suited to solve our increasingly complex problems, (...) and that polymathic thinking can be a crucial asset in this regard. Drawing on different literature strands, we first examine the interplay between polymathy and other well-developed constructs in personality and temperament research. We then advance theoretical predictions regarding the relationship between trait polymathy and resilience in the COVID-19 crisis. After that, we discuss learnable strategies that can be used in complex, uncertain and adverse situations, which are associated with development of a more polymathic set of knowledge. Later, we discuss how it may be possible to better capitalize on the key features of polymathic thinking at the societal level. Finally, we conclude with a reflection on the adequacy of our current institutions for dealing with complex problems, and we underscore the crucial role of polymathic thinking in an increasingly complex and interrelated world. (shrink)

In this paper we assess the adequacy of the idea of community as an ideal-typical model against which real organisations and their management might be critically evaluated. Alasdair MacIntyre’s work on practices suggests that some forms of work activity require something more than contractual relationships within organisations: if he is right then perhaps we should acknowledge the importance of some notion of community at work. However, among the criticisms of the community approach are that it ignores issues of power (...) and the inevitable existence in organisations of interest groups based on different values and pursuing different objectives. It can also be seen as ineluctably managerialist and hence incapable of producing a coherent and sustainable account of organisational life. Is ‘community’ just a strategy of social, political or organisational control? Does it assume a particular discourse of political subjectivity, to do with the nature of subjects who exist in communities? We assess the extent to which the idea of community at work is fatally damaged by these objections. (shrink)

RATIONAL ALTRUISM. A PRUDENTIAL THEORY OF RATIONALITY AND ALTRUISM - STRUCTURE: "Rational altruism" is the attempt to develop and rationally justify moral principles - with a very strong emphasis on this justification. The concept of justification is developed in a metaethical part (ch. 2); it requires recourse to prudential decisions and to information about our decision-making procedures. The actual normative ethics (Ch. 6 and especially 7) is therefore still based on a prudential desirability theory (Ch. 4 and Sections 5.5-5.6) and (...) this in turn on an empirical action theory (Ch. 3 and Sections 5.1-5.4). - METAETHICS (Ch. 2): In the metaethical part of the book, conditions of adequacy for cogent moral justifications are first developed and justified, which demand, among other things, an information-stable motivation through cogent moral justifications (internalist moral justification). After an examination of various approaches to justification in ethics with regard to this adequacy condition and the negative outcome of this examination, an alternative solution strategy is presented. Among other things, the rationality requirements of profane rational reasoning approaches in ethics are to be systematically reinforced by a prudential desirability theory that aims at information-stable evaluations. - EMPIRICAL THEORY OF ACTION (Chapter 3 and Sections 5.1-5.4): The empirical theory of action developed here therefore provides a detailed analysis of the regularities and leeway of our decisions, especially the influence of information on decision-making paths. - PRUDENTIAL DESIRABILITY THEORY (Chapter 4 and Sections 5.5-5.6): In the prudential desirability theory, the 'individual desirability' of events, especially actions, is then defined in such a way that, of the various evaluation possibilities, the one that is stable in terms of information is always chosen. This procedure far exceeds the rationality requirements of rational decision theory, for example. - NORMATIVE ETHICS (chap. 6 and especially 7): Finally, in the actual normative ethics, a prioritarian standard for the moral evaluation of actions, norms and entire social orders is developed, called "Utilex". Utilex is based on compassion and, like compassion, is partial to the worse off, the poor and unfortunate, but without neglecting the interests of the better off. (shrink)

Functionalist accounts of blame have been rising in popularity. Proponents of the approach claim that, by defining blame in terms of its function or functions, their account has the advantage of being able to accommodate a wide range of attitudes and activities as blame; but their opponents question the extensional and explanatory adequacy of such accounts. This paper contributes to this burgeoning literature by presenting new challenges to the existing functionalist accounts. The fundamental problem, I shall argue, lies in (...) the fact that they all focus on using functions to define blame as a type of practice, but this strategy fails to pick out a unique moral-psychological type and does not offer a complete set of extension-determining criteria for the concept of blame. This amounts to a serious theoretical disadvantage. I consider various responses to the challenges throughout the paper, concluding that the best reply available to the functionalist theorist involves using functions to directly define blame tokens. (shrink)

The central challenge to Brandom¿s theory of propositional content, as he himself acknowledges, is to meet the following two apparently conflicting conditions of adequacy he lays down for such a theory: It must do justice to the objectivity of conceptual norms and it should embody a phenomenalist approach to normativity, according to which normative statuses must be understood as being instituted by practical normative attitudes. The strategy Brandom employs for reconciling these requirements is intricate and somewhat elusive. This (...) paper aims to make it more accessible by reconstructing its main outline. I hope to show thereby that an objection raised by Rödl against Brandom¿s account of objectivity is based on a misconception of that strategy. (shrink)