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41. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Paul Humphreys Unknowable Truths
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This paper addresses a solution due to Michael Fara to the Church/Fitch paradox of knowability. Fara’s solution has significant interest but the paradox can beresurrected within his approach by considering a slightly more complex sentence. The issue of what counts as an epistemological capability for enhanced agents is then discussed with some emphasis on the developmental heritage of agents and their ability to transcend conceptual frameworks.
42. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Teodor Dima Complementarity and Antinomy
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In this study we present some contributions of the logician and philosopher Petre Botezatu (27.02.1911-01.12.1981), who turned the idea of complementarity,formulated by Niels Bohr for the interpretation of the wave-particle structure of the quantum world, into an ordering principle of his work. Thus, he understood general logic as a synthesis in which the style of classical logic is complementary to the style of the 20th century logic. He didn’t give up either the mathematical modelling of logical language or the conceptual description through natural language. Thus, natural operational logic was created. Then Petre Botezatu assessed the achievements and failures of deduction in order to build the notion of methodological antinomy, and formulated five antinomies of axiomatization and five antinomies of formalization. The main purpose of this study is to present and interpret them.
43. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Adrian Costache For A Post-Historicist Philosophy Of History. Beyond Hermeneutics
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With the publication of Being and Time and Truth and Method philosophical hermeneutics seems to have become the official philosophy of history, with exclusive rights on the questions arising from the fact-of-having-a-past. From now on the epistemological approach of the German historical school, reaching a peak in Dilthey’s thought, is unanimously recognized as definitively overcome, aufheben, by the ontological interrogation of hermeneutics. But, with the same unanimity, it is also recognized that the reasons behind this overcoming and their validity are not readily apparent. For, as it has been shown in the literature, Heidegger’s critique of Dilthey proves to be partial and lacunar, whereas Gadamer’s is straightforwardly ambiguous. Our paper assumes as its first task a re-evaluation of these critiques and of the hypotheses proposed in the literature with regard to what could be the problem with Dilthey’s epistemology. In this sense the paper argues that the problem resides in that the fundamental concepts on which it is based are bound to miss the peculiarity of history by idealizing it and masking the power relations inhabiting it. As a second task, our paper proposes an investigation of whether philosophical hermeneutics itself manages torise to the expectations through which Dilthey’s thought is evaluated. As it will become manifest, the answer to this question is in the negative. That is why, in the end, we will defend the necessity of a post-historicist and post-hermeneutic philosophy of history.
44. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Rik Peels Tracing Culpable Ignorance
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In this paper, I respond to the following argument which several authors have presented. If we are culpable for some action, we act either from akrasia or fromculpable ignorance. However, akrasia is highly exceptional and it turns out that tracing culpable ignorance leads to a vicious regress. Hence, we are hardly ever culpable for our actions. I argue that the argument fails. Cases of akrasia may not be that rare when it comes to epistemic activities such as evidence-gathering and working on our intellectual virtues and vices. Moreover, particular cases of akrasia may be rare, but they are not exceptional when we consider chains of actions. Finally and most importantly, we can be culpable for our actions even if we do not act from akrasia or from culpable ignorance, namely in virtue of our unactivated dispositional beliefs.
45. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
John Turri Promises to Keep: Speech Acts and the Value of Reflective Knowledge
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This paper offers a new account of reflective knowledge’s value, building on recent work on the epistemic norms of speech acts. Reflective knowledge is valuable because it licenses us to make guarantees and promises.
46. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Stephen Grimm What is Interesting?
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In this paper I consider what it is that makes certain topics or questions epistemically interesting. Getting clear about this issue, I argue, is not only interesting inits own right, but also helps to shed light on increasingly important and perplexing questions in the epistemological literature: e.g., questions concerning how to think about ‘the epistemic point of view,’ as well as questions concerning what is most worthy of our intellectual attention and why.
47. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Trent Dougherty Re-Reducing Responsibility: Reply to Axtell
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In this brief reply to Axtell, I review some general considerations pertaining to the disagreement and then reply point-by-point to Axtell's critique of thedilemma I pose for responsibilists in virtue epistemology. Thus I re-affirm my reductionist identity thesis that every case of epistemic irresponsibility is either a case of ordinary moral irresponsibility or ordinary practical irrationality.
48. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Brian Weatherson Defending Interest-Relative Invariantism
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I defend interest-relative invariantism from a number of recent attacks. One common thread to my response is that interest-relative invariantism is a muchweaker thesis than is often acknowledged, and a number of the attacks only challenge very specific, and I think implausible, versions of it. Another is that a number of the attacks fail to acknowledge how many things we have independent reason to believe knowledge is sensitive to. Whether there is a defeater for someone's knowledge can be sensitive to all manner of features of their environment, as the host of examples from the post-Gettier literature shows. Adding in interest-sensitive defeaters is a much less radical move than most critics claim it is.
49. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Alex Bundy On Epistemic Abstemiousness: A Reply to Aikin, Harbour, Neufeld, and Talisse
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The principle of suspension says that when you disagree with an epistemic peer about p, you should suspend judgment about p. In “Epistemic Abstainers, Epistemic Martyrs, and Epistemic Converts,” Scott F. Aikin, Michael Harbour, Jonathan Neufeld, and Robert B. Talisse argue against the principle of suspension. In “In Defense of Epistemic Abstemiousness” I presented arguments that their arguments do not succeed, and in “On Epistemic Abstemiousness: A Reply to Bundy” they argue that my arguments are not successful. I here clarify and defend my arguments.
50. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Anthony Brueckner, Christopher T. Buford Bailey on Incompatibilism and the “No Past Objection”
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In ”Incompatibilism and the Past,” Andrew Bailey engages in a thorough investigation of what he calls the "No Past Objection" to arguments for incompatibilism.This is an objection that stems from the work of Joseph Keim Campbell and that has generated an Interesting literature. Bailey ends by offering his own answer to the No Past Objection by giving his own argument for incompatibilism, an argument that he claims to be immune to the objection. We have some observations to make regarding what we take to be Bailey's answer to the objection (all of whose details are left to the reader – we attempt to fill this lacuna).
51. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Axel Gelfert Who is an Epistemic Peer?
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Contemporary epistemology of peer disagreement has largely focused on our immediate normative response to prima facie instances of disagreement. Whereas some philosophers demand that we should withhold judgment (or moderate our credences) in such cases, others argue that, unless new evidence becomes available, disagreement at best gives us reason to demote our interlocutor from his peer status. But what makes someone an epistemic peer in the first place? This question has not received the attention it deserves. I begin by surveying different notions of ‘epistemic peer’ that have been peddled in the contemporary literature, arguing that they tend to build normative assumptions about the correct response to disagreement into the notion of peerhood. Instead, I argue, epistemic peerhood needs to be taken seriously in its own right. Importantly, for epistemic agents to count as peers, they should exhibit a comparable degree of reflective awareness of the character and limitations of their own knowledge.
52. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Mark McBride Evidence and Transmission Failure
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Some philosophers (can be taken to) claim that there are no genuine instances of transmission failure provided we operate with the right account of thesources of warrant-or-evidence for future reasoning. My aim in this paper is to (begin to) clear the way for instances of transmission failure regardless of the account of the sources of warrant-or-evidence for future reasoning with which one operates. My aim is not to claim there are in fact genuine instances of transmission failure; merely to render it possible, on all – or most – plausible accounts of the sources of warrant-or-evidence for future reasoning.
53. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 2 > Issue: 4
Steven D. Hales Reply to Licon on Time Travel
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In this paper I offer a rejoinder to the criticisms raised by Jimmy Alfonso Licon in “No Suicide for Presentists: A Response to Hales.” I argue that Licon's concernsare misplaced, and that his hypothetical presentist time machine neither travels in time nor saves the life of the putative traveler. I conclude that sensible time travel is still forbidden to presentists.
54. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 1
Susan Haack Six Signs of Scientism
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As the English word “scientism” is currently used, it is a trivial verbal truth that scientism – an inappropriately deferential attitude to science – should be avoided.But it is a substantial question when, and why, deference to the sciences is inappropriate or exaggerated. This paper tries to answer that question by articulating “six signs of scientism”: the honorific use of “science” and its cognates; using scientific trappings purely decoratively; preoccupation with demarcation; preoccupation with “scientific method”; looking to the sciences for answers beyond their scope; denying the legitimacy or worth of non-scientific (e.g., legal or literary) inquiry, or of writing poetry or making art.
55. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 1
Scott Aikin, Michael Harbour, Jonathan Neufeld, Robert Talisse On Epistemic Abstemiousness and Diachronic Norms: A Reply to Bundy
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In “On Epistemic Abstemiousness,” Alex Bundy has advanced his criticism of our view that the Principle of Suspension yields serious diachronic irrationality. Here, we defend the diachronic perspective on epistemic norms and clarify how we think the diachronic consequences follow.
56. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 1
Nicholaos Jones An Arrovian Impossibility Theorem for the Epistemology of Disagreement
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According to conciliatory views about the epistemology of disagreement, when epistemic peers have conflicting doxastic attitudes toward a proposition and fullydisclose to one another the reasons for their attitudes toward that proposition (and neither has independent reason to believe the other to be mistaken), each peer should always change his attitude toward that proposition to one that is closer to the attitudes of those peers with which there is disagreement. According to pure higher-order evidence views, higher-order evidence for a proposition always suffices to determine the proper rational response to disagreement about that proposition within a group of epistemic peers. Using an analogue of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, I shall argue that no conciliatory and pure higher-order evidence view about the epistemology of disagreement can provide a true and general answer to the question of what disagreeing epistemic peers should do after fully disclosing to each other the (first-order) reasons for their conflicting doxastic attitudes.
57. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 1
David M. Godden Rethinking the Debriefing Paradigm: The Rationality of Belief Perseverance
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By examining particular cases of belief perseverance following the undermining of their original evidentiary grounds, this paper considers two theories ofrational belief revision: foundation and coherence. Gilbert Harman has argued for coherence over foundationalism on the grounds that the foundations theory absurdly deems most of our beliefs to be not rationally held. A consequence of the unacceptability of foundationalism is that belief perseverance is rational. This paper defends the intuitive judgement that belief perseverance is irrational by offering a competing explanation of what goes on in cases like the debriefing paradigm which does not rely upon foundationalist principles but instead shows that such cases are properly viewed as instances of positive undermining of the sort described by the coherence theory.
58. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 1
J. Adam Carter A Note on Assertion, Relativism and Future Contingents
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I argue that John MacFarlane's attempt to reconcile his proposed truthrelativist account of future contingents with a plausible account of assertion is self-defeating. Specifically, a paradoxical result of MacFarlane's view is that assertions of future contingents are impermissible for anyone who already accepts MacFarlane's own truth-relativist account of future contingents.
59. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 1
Peter Baumann Knowledge, Practical Reasoning and Action
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Is knowledge necessary or sufficient or both necessary and sufficient for acceptable practical reasoning and rational action? Several authors (e.g., Williamson,Hawthorne, and Stanley) have recently argued that the answer to these questions is positive. In this paper I present several objections against this view (both in its basic form as well in more developed forms). I also offer a sketch of an alternative view: What matters for the acceptability of practical reasoning in at least many cases (and in all the cases discussed by the defenders of a strong link between knowledge and practical reasoning) is not so much knowledge but expected utility.
60. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 3 > Issue: 1
Franck Lihoreau Are Reasons Evidence of Oughts?
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In a series of recent papers Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star argue that normative reasons to φ simply are evidence that one ought to φ, and suggest that“evidence” in this context is best understood in standard Bayesian terms. I contest this suggestion.