Cover of Logos & Episteme
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research articles
1. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Miloud Belkoniene What Are Explanatory Virtues Indicative Of?
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This paper discusses an assumption on which explanationist accounts of the evidential support relation rely with a focus on McCain’s recent account. Explanationist accounts define the relation of evidential support in terms of relations of best explanation that hold between the evidence a subject possesses and the propositions she believes. Such a definition presupposes that the explanatory virtues of what best explains a subject’s body of evidence is indicative of its truth. Yet, recent cases offered in the literature against McCain’s account show that there is no straightforward way of vindicating this assumption.
2. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Fabio Lampert, John Biro What Is Evidence of Evidence Evidence Of?
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Richard Feldman’s well-known principle about disagreement and evidence – usually encapsulated in the slogan, ‘evidence of evidence is evidence,’ (EEE) – invites the question, what should a rational believer do when faced by such evidence, especially when the disagreement is with an epistemic peer? The question has been the subject of much controversy. However, it has been recently suggested both that the principle is subject to counterexamples and that it is trivial. If either is the case, the question of what to do in the face of evidence of evidence becomes less pressing. We contend that even if one or the other of these suggestions is right about (EEE) as a general principle about evidence, they leave it untouched insofar as it plays a role in the debates about the rational way to respond to disagreement and, in particular, to disagreement by an epistemic peer. This is because in such cases the evidence about which one has evidence and which is supposed to provide evidence against one's belief is the mere fact of someone’s disagreeing, rather than something that is related to the content of the proposition about which the parties disagree. We go on to argue that, so understood, the principle is false.
3. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Michael J. Shaffer A Thoroughly Modern Wager
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Pascal’s wager is a familiar heuristic designed to show that believing that God exists is of greater practical value than believing that God does not exist given the outcomes associated with those beliefs as understood in Christian theology. In this way Pascal argues that we that we ought to believe that God exists, independent of epistemic grounds. But, things are not easy, because he understands that belief is not subject to direct voluntary control. So, for purely practical reasons, he advises us to put ourselves in situations that will maximize our chances of acquiring the belief that God exists. In effect, he advises us to attempt to acquire that belief by indirect control. But, then the wager is not a proper decision problem since it does not involve a real choice. Additionally, there are at least two other problems that afflict the traditional wager: one involving the value of eternal damnation and one concerning the coherence of infinite utilities. In this paper the wager will be explored and a corrected version will be presented that yields a rather surprising, but theoretically correct, conclusion.
discussion notes/debate
4. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Andy Mueller Pragmatic or Pascalian Encroachment?: A Problem for Schroeder's Explanation of Pragmatic Encroachment
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I argue against Schroeder's explanation of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge. In section 1, I introduce pragmatic encroachment and point out that an explanation of it should avoid Pascalian considerations. In section 2, summarize the key aspects of Schroeder's explanation of pragmatic encroachment. In section 3, I argue that Schroeder's explanation faces a dilemma: it either allows for an objectionable form of Pascalian encroachment or it fails to be a fully general explanation of pragmatic encroachment.
5. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
John N. Williams Still Stuck on the Backward Clock: A Rejoinder to Adams, Barker and Clarke
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Neil Sinhababu and I presented Backward Clock, an original counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis of propositional knowledge. In their latest defence of the truth-tracking theories, “Methods Matter: Beating the Backward Clock,” Fred Adams, John A. Barker and Murray Clarke try again to defend Nozick’s and Fred Dretske’s early analysis of propositional knowledge against Backward Clock. They allege failure of truth-adherence, mistakes on my part about methods, and appeal to charity, ‘equivocation,’ reliable methods and unfair internalism. I argue that these objections all fail. They are still stuck with the fact that the tracking theories fall to Backward Clock, an even more useful test case for other analyses of knowledge than might have first appeared.
reviews
6. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Ioan Alexandru Tofan Philosophie der Kultur- und Wissensformen. Ernst Cassirer neu lesen
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7. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Notes on the Contributors
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8. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Logos and Episteme. Aims and Scope
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9. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Notes to Contributors
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