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121. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 3
Ben Bronner Problems with the Dispositional Tracking Theory of Knowledge
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Rachel Briggs and Daniel Nolan attempt to improve on Nozick’s tracking theory of knowledge by providing a modified, dispositional tracking theory. Thedispositional theory, however, faces more problems than those previously noted by John Turri. First, it is not simply that satisfaction of the theory’s conditions is unnecessary for knowledge – it is insufficient as well. Second, in one important respect, the dispositional theory is a step backwards relative to the original tracking theory: the original but not the dispositional theory can avoid Gettier-style counterexamples. Future attempts to improve the tracking theory would be wise to bear these problems in mind.
122. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Gal Yehezkel Contingency and Time
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In this article I offer an explanation of the need for contingent propositions in language. I argue that contingent propositions are required if and only if there is aneed for propositions which can be both true and false in different circumstances. Indexical expressions enable the same proposition to be expressed in different contexts, thus allowing it to be both true and false. Examination of the different indexical expressions shows that temporal indexical expressions are the ones that do this. Furthermore, describing the change in the temporal A-determinations of past, present, or future, requires using contingent propositions. The conclusion of this article is that change in the temporal A-determinations is the explanation for the need for contingent propositions in language.
123. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Rachel R. McKinnon What I Learned in the Lunch Room about Assertion and Practical Reasoning
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It is increasingly argued that there is a single unified constitutive norm of both assertion and practical reasoning. The most common suggestion is that knowledge is this norm. If this is correct, then we would expect that a diagnosis of problematic assertions should manifest as problematic reasons for acting. Jennifer Lackey has recently argued that assertions epistemically grounded in isolated second-hand knowledge (ISHK) are unwarranted. I argue that decisions epistemically grounded in premises based on ISHK also seem inappropriate. I finish by suggesting that this finding has important implications for the debates regarding the norms of assertion and practical reasoning.
124. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Barry Lam Justified Believing is Tracking your Evidential Commitments
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In this paper, I give an account of the conditions for rationally changing your beliefs that respects three constraints; 1) that rational believing is a matter ofrespecting your evidence, 2) that evidence seems to have both objective and subjective features, and (3) that our set of beliefs seem to rationally commit us to certain propositions, regardless of the evidential support we have for these propositions. On the view I outline, rationally believing or giving up a belief is a matter of your inferences tracking your rational commitments, and that these rational commitments account for the evidence you must respect. These rational commitments are subjective in that they are relative to the totality of your beliefs, but also objective in the sense that what counts as a commitment is true for everyone everywhere.
125. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Notes to Contributors
126. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Logos & Episteme. Aims and Scope
127. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Notes on the Contributors
128. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Arnold Cusmariu Toward a Semantic Approach in Epistemology
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Philosophers have recognized for some time the usefulness of semantic conceptions of truth and belief. That the third member of the knowledge triad,evidence, might also have a useful semantic version seems to have been overlooked. This paper corrects that omission by defining a semantic conception of evidence for science and mathematics and then developing a semantic conception of knowledge for these fields, arguably mankind’s most important knowledge repository. The goal is to demonstrate the advantages of having an answer to the more modest question “What is necessary and sufficient for introducing a knowledge predicate into scientific and mathematical languages?” – as contrasted with the ambitious Platonic question “What is knowledge?” After presenting the theory, the paper responds to a wide range of objections stemming from traditional philosophical concerns.
129. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Luis Rosa Justification and the Uniqueness Thesis
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In this paper, I offer two counterexamples to the so-called ‘Uniqueness Thesis.’ As one of these examples rely on the thesis that it is possible for a justified beliefto be based on an inconsistent body of evidence, I also offer reasons for this further thesis. On the assumption that doxastic justification entails propositional justification, the counterexamples seem to work.
130. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Gabriel Târziu Quantum vs. Classical Logic: The Revisionist Approach
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Quantum logic can be understood in two ways: as a study of the algebraic structures that appear in the context of the Hilbert space formalism of quantummechanics; or as representing a non-classical logic in conflict with classical logic. My aim in this paper is to analyze the possibility to sustain, at least in principle, a revisionist approach to quantum logic, i.e. a position according to which quantum logic is ‘the real logic’ which should be adopted instead of classical logic.
131. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Michael J. Shaffer Moorean Sentences and the Norm of Assertion
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In this paper Timothy Williamson’s argument that the knowledge norm of assertion is the best explanation of the unassertability of Morrean sentences ischallenged and an alternative account of the norm of assertion is defended.
132. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Rachael Briggs, Daniel Nolan Epistemic Dispositions: Reply to Turri and Bronner
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We reply to recent papers by John Turri and Ben Bronner, who criticise the dispositionalised Nozickian tracking account we discuss in “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know.” We argue that the account we suggested can handle the problems raised by Turri and Bronner. In the course of responding to Turri and Bronner’s objections, we draw three general lessons for theories of epistemic dispositions: that epistemic dispositions are to some extent extrinsic, that epistemic dispositions can have manifestation conditions concerning circumstances where their bearers fail to exist, and that contrast is relevant to disposition attributions.
133. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
John Turri Preempting Paradox
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Charlie Pelling has recently argued that two leading accounts of the norm of assertion, the truth account and a version of the knowledge account, invite paradoxand so must be false. Pelling’s arguments assume that an isolated utterance of the sentence “This assertion is improper” counts as making an assertion. I argue that this assumption is questionable.
134. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Christopher Bobier The Conciliatory View and the Charge of Wholesale Skepticism
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If I reasonably think that you and I enjoy the same evidence as well as virtues and vices, then we are epistemic peers. What does rationality require of usshould we disagree? According to the conciliatory view, I should become less confident in my belief upon finding out that you, whom I take to be my peer, disagree with me. Question: Does the conciliatory view lead to wholesale skepticism regarding areas of life where disagreement is rampant? After all, people focusing on the same arguments and possessing the same virtues commonly disagree over religion, politics, ethics, philosophy and other areas. David Christensen and Adam Elga have responded that conciliationism does not lead to wholesale skepticism. I argue that Christensen and Elga cannot avoid the charge of wholesale skepticism. But I also argue that if they could avoid skepticism, then the conciliatory view would become irrelevant since it would not inform us as to what rationality requires of us in every-day disagreement. Thus either way the conciliatory view is saddled with unintuitive consequences.
135. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Mark McBride Saving Sosa’s Safety
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My purpose in this paper is to (begin to) defend safety as a necessary condition on knowledge. First, I introduce Ernest Sosa’s (1999) safety condition. Second,I set up and grapple with Juan Comesaña’s recent putative counterexample to safety as a necessary condition on knowledge; Comesaña’s case forces us to consider Sosa’s updated (2002) safety condition. From such grappling a principled modification to Sosa’s (2002) safety condition emerges. Safety is safe from this, and like, attacks.
136. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Corina Daba-Buzoianu Ian Evans, Nicholas D. Smith, Knowledge
137. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 5 > Issue: 4
Tjerk Gauderis On Theoretical and Practical Doxastic Attitudes
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In the literature on doxastic attitudes, the notion ‘belief’ is used in both a coarse-grained and a fine-grained manner. While the coarse-grained notion of ‘belief,’ as the doxastic attitude that expresses any form of assent to its content, is a useful technical concept, the fine-grained notion, which tries to capture the folk notion of ‘belief’ in contrast with other doxastic concepts such as ‘acceptance’ or ‘degrees of confidence,’ is utterly ambiguous. In order to dispel this ambiguity, I introduce first a new framework for describing doxastic attitudes that does not rely on a specific fine-grained primitive notion of ‘belief.’ This framework distinguishes two different doxastic attitudes, i.e. the theoretical and the practical, and explains how various doxastic concepts such as ‘accepting,’ ‘having a degree of confidence’ and the folk notion of ‘belief’ all describe a particular interpretation of one or both of the distinguished doxastic attitudes. Next, by focusing on ongoing debates over the difference between ‘acceptance’ and ‘belief’ on the one hand and between ‘degrees of confidence’ and ‘(plain) belief’ on the other, I argue that much precision can be gained in philosophical analysis by taking a reductionist stance concerning any specific fine-grained and primitive notion of ‘belief.’
138. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 5 > Issue: 4
Giovanni Mion Grueing Gettier
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The paper aims to stress the structural similarities between Nelson Goodman’s ‘new riddle of induction’ and Edmund Gettier’s counterexamples to thestandard analysis of knowledge.
139. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 5 > Issue: 4
Notes on the Contributors
140. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 5 > Issue: 4
T. Ryan Byerly A Dispositional Internalist Evidentialist Virtue Epistemology
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This paper articulates and defends a novel version of internalist evidentialism which employs dispositions to account for the relation of evidentialsupport. In section one, I explain internalist evidentialist views generally, highlighting the way in which the relation of evidential support stands at the heart of these views. I then discuss two leading ways in which evidential support has been understood by evidentialists, and argue that an account of support which employs what I call epistemic dispositions remedies difficulties arguably faced by these two leading accounts. In sections two and three, I turn to advantages that my dispositionalist account of evidential support offers evidentialists beyond its remedying apparent difficulties with rival accounts of support. In section two, I show that the account is well-suited to help the evidentialist respond to the problem of forgotten evidence. And, in section three, I show that adopting my dispositional account makes possible an attractive and natural synthesis of evidentialism and virtue epistemology which is superior to the leading contemporary synthesis of these views.