Harman and Lewis credit Kripke with having formulated a puzzle that seems to show that knowledge entails dogmatism. The puzzle is widely regarded as having been solved. In this paper we argue that this standard solution, in its various versions, addresses only a limited aspect of the puzzle and holds no promise of fully resolving it. Analyzing this failure and the proper rendering of the puzzle, it is suggested that it poses a significant challenge for the defense of epistemic closure.

A vibrant new translation of Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life,” a pointed reminder to make the most of our time Who doesn’t worry sometimes that smart phones, the Internet, and TV are robbing us of time and preventing us from having a life? How can we make the most of our time on earth? In the first century AD, the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger offered one of the most famous answers to that question in his essay “On the (...) Shortness of Life”—a work that has more to teach us today than ever before. In How to Have a Life, James Romm presents a vibrant new translation of Seneca’s brilliant essay, plus two Senecan letters on the same theme, complete with the original Latin on facing pages and an inviting introduction. With devastating satiric wit, skillfully captured in this translation, Seneca lampoons the ways we squander our time and fail to realize how precious it is. We don’t allow people to steal our money, yet we allow them to plunder our time, or else we give it away ourselves in useless, idle pursuits. Seneca also describes how we can make better use of our brief days and years. In the process, he argues, we can make our lives longer, or even everlasting, because to live a real life is to attain a kind of immortality. A counterweight to the time-sucking distractions of the modern world, How to Have a Life offers priceless wisdom about making our time—and our lives—count. (shrink)

According to an influential philosophical view I call “the relational properties view”, “perspectival” properties, such as the elliptical appearance of a tilted coin, are relational properties of external objects. Philosophers have assessed this view on the basis of phenomenological, epistemological or other purely philosophical considerations. My aim in this paper is to examine whether it is possible to evaluate RPV empirically. In the first, negative part of the paper I consider and reject a certain tempting way of doing so. In (...) the second, positive part of the paper I suggest a novel way of evaluating RPV empirically, relying on the influential object files framework. (shrink)

The paper argues that knowledge is not closed under logical inference. The argument proceeds from the openness of evidential support and the dependence of empirical knowledge on evidence, to the conclusion that knowledge is open. Without attempting to provide a full-fledged theory of evidence, we show that on the modest assumption that evidence cannot support both a proposition and its negation, or, alternatively, that information that reduces the probability of a proposition cannot constitute evidence for its truth, the relation of (...) evidential support is not closed under known entailment. Therefore the evidence-for relation is deductively open regardless of whether evidence is probabilistic or not. Given even a weak dependence of empirical knowledge on evidence, we argue that empirical knowledge is also open. On this basis, we also respond to the strongest argument in support of knowledge closure. Finally, we present a number of significant benefits of our position, namely, offering a unified explanation for a range of epistemological puzzles. (shrink)

It is relatively consistent with the existence of two supercompact cardinals that a special Aronszajn tree of height ${\aleph_{\omega_1+1}}$ is introduced by a cofinality-preserving forcing of size ${\aleph_3}$.

According to the thesis of transparency, subjects can attend only to the representational content of perceptual experience, never to the intrinsic properties of experience that carry this representational content, i.e., to “mental paint.” So far, arguments for and against transparency were conducted from the armchair, relying mainly on introspective observations. In this paper, we argue in favor of transparency, relying on the cognitive neuroscience of attention. We present a trilemma to those who hold that attention can be directed to mental (...) paint. Such attention is either first-order sensory, higher-order cognitive, or higher-order sensory attention. We argue that the notion of first-order sensory attention to mental paint is incompatible with the neuroscience of sensory attention; that higher-order cognitive attention to mental paint is irrelevant to transparency; and that the notion of higher-order sensory attention to mental paint has an apparently incoherent prediction. Via elimination, these considerations support the thesis of transparency. (shrink)

What kind of inquiry is management science? This paper compares two accounts — realist-oriented and constructivist-oriented — and proposes a third position. The realist view that scientific inquiry seeks knowledge of realities independent and outside of the knowing process is set against the constructivist view that scientific theorising creates accounts which develop our discourses without claiming knowledge of ‘deeper’ realities. It argues that ultimately we have no way of resolving this long-standing dispute. To move beyond the impasse it proposes a (...) trusting constructivist position, arguing that responsible theorising requires that inquirers develop discursive accountability and that the process of inquiry matters as much as its content. Finally it explores what such a view of accountability would mean for the relationship between scientists or ‘professionals’ and users of their research findings in organisations. (shrink)

The apparent inconsistency between Locke’s commitment to legalism and his explicit endorsement of the extra-legal power of prerogative has confounded many readers. Among those who don’t ignore or dismiss it, the common approach is to qualify the role or scope of prerogative. The article advocates the opposite approach. It argues that Locke’s legalism should be understood within the context of his oft neglected conception of political liberty in terms of self-government. This not only allows for the reconciliation of Locke’s legalism (...) with his endorsement of extra-legal powers, but also provides a fuller, more accurate account of the role of law and of political liberty in Locke’s theory. (shrink)

König, Larson and Yoshinobu initiated the study of principles for guessing generalized clubs, and introduced a construction of a higher Souslin tree from the strong guessing principle.Complementary to the author’s work on the validity of diamond and non-saturation at the successor of singulars, we deal here with a successor of regulars. It is established that even the non-strong guessing principle entails non-saturation, and that, assuming the necessary cardinal arithmetic configuration, entails a diamond-type principle which suffices for the construction of a (...) higher Souslin tree.We also establish the consistency of GCH with the failure of the weakest form of generalized club guessing. This, in particular, settles a question from the original paper. (shrink)

The idea that knowledge can be extended by inference from what is known seems highly plausible. Yet, as shown by familiar preface paradox and lottery-type cases, the possibility of aggregating uncertainty casts doubt on its tenability. We show that these considerations go much further than previously recognized and significantly restrict the kinds of closure ordinary theories of knowledge can endorse. Meeting the challenge of uncertainty aggregation requires either the restriction of knowledge-extending inferences to single premises, or eliminating epistemic uncertainty in (...) known premises. The first strategy, while effective, retains little of the original idea—conclusions even of modus ponens inferences from known premises are not always known. We then look at the second strategy, inspecting the most elaborate and promising attempt to secure the epistemic role of basic inferences, namely Timothy Williamson’s safety theory of knowledge. We argue that while it indeed has the merit of allowing basic inferences such as modus ponens to extend knowledge, Williamson’s theory faces formidable difficulties. These difficulties, moreover, arise from the very feature responsible for its virtue- the infallibilism of knowledge. (shrink)

There are few indulgences academics can crave more than to have their work considered and addressed by leading researchers in their field. We have been fortunate to have two outstanding philosophers from whose work we have learned a great deal give ours their thoughtful attention. Grappling with Stephen Yablo’s, and Juan Comesaña’s comments and criticisms has helped us gain a better understanding of our ideas as well as their shortcomings. We are extremely grateful to them for the attentiveness and seriousness (...) with which they have considered our arguments and to philosophical studies for giving us this opportunity. Given the substantive difference between the two response papers, there is not much beyond sincere gratitude that we can covey to them jointly. We will therefore address them in turn. (shrink)

This article examines whether a functionalist approach to emotion classification is a research program that can feasibly be implemented in an experimental environment. I suggest that this is a promise perhaps impossible to keep. The crux of the argument is that if functional taxonomy is to go the full distance and shape experimental conditions to the new boundaries, then stimuli/experimental manipulations must be selected based on functional principles. But this seems implausible or even impossible. I conclude that emotion taxonomy, and (...) thus the metastructure of emotion theory, is both constrained and determined by human emotional feelings, and suggest that feelings have a special epistemological status in emotion research. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

May the same graph admit two different chromatic numbers in two different universes? How about infinitely many different values? and can this be achieved without changing the cardinals structure? In this paper, it is proved that in Gödel’s constructible universe, for every uncountable cardinal $$\mu$$ below the first fixed-point of the $$\aleph$$ -function, there exists a graph $$\mathcal G_\mu$$ satisfying the following.

The history of productivity of the κ-chain condition in partial orders, topological spaces, or Boolean algebras is surveyed, and its connection to the set-theoretic notion of a weakly compact cardinal is highlighted. Then, it is proved that for every regular cardinal κ > א1, the principle □ is equivalent to the existence of a certain strong coloring c : [κ]2 → κ for which the family of fibers T is a nonspecial κ-Aronszajn tree. The theorem follows from an analysis of (...) a new characteristic function for walks on ordinals, and implies in particular that if the κ-chain condition is productive for a given regular cardinal κ > א1, then κ is weakly compact in some inner model of ZFC. This provides a partial converse to the fact that if κ is a weakly compact cardinal, then the κ-chain condition is productive. (shrink)

Perception can’t have disjunctive content. Whereas you can think that a box is blue or red, you can’t see a box as being blue or red. Based on this fact, I develop a new problem for the ambitious predictive processing theory, on which the brain is a machine for minimizing prediction error, which approximately implements Bayesian inference. I describe a simple case of updating a disjunctive belief given perceptual experience of one of the disjuncts, in which Bayesian inference and predictive (...) coding pull in opposite directions, with the former implying that one’s confidence in the belief should increase, and the latter implying that it should decrease. Thus, predictive coding fails to approximately implement Bayesian inference across the interface between belief and perception. (shrink)

In their paper from 1981, Milner and Sauer conjectured that for any poset $\langle P,\le\rangle$ , if $cf(P,\le)=\lambda>cf(\lambda)=\kappa$ , then P must contain an antichain of size κ. We prove that for λ > cf(λ) = κ, if there exists a cardinal μ < λ such that cov(λ, μ, κ, 2) = λ, then any poset of cofinality λ contains λ κ antichains of size κ. The hypothesis of our theorem is very weak and is a consequence of many well-known (...) axioms such as GCH, SSH and PFA. The consistency of the negation of this hypothesis is unknown. (shrink)

Under what conditions do women create places for women on the Internet? And what kinds of difficulties do they meet if they try to do so? These questions are studied by comparing two groups of women involved in the design of Amsterdam's digital city DDS. The female designers, who were involved as DDS was set up, did not want to pay attention to women's issues. This can be explained by looking at their position in feminist debates in Dutch society, their (...) position in the organization of which they were a part and their personal identity. The second group of women, who were part of a women's organization, differed in all these respects. Thus, they had no problems in wanting to pay specific attention to women in DDS by building a `Women's Square'. The problems of this second group of women were caused by the late stage at which they entered the design process. The ideas on gender and technology of the initial group of women had by then solidified in the script of DDS, making it hard for the second group to design the Women's Square in the way they wanted it. In this article it is argued that designers, women's organizations and subsidizing organizations should stimulate women's groups to get involved in the design of new technology at an early stage. From this case study, one can conclude that leaving women's issues to individual female designers is not an effective strategy. (shrink)

This paper proposes and develops the feelings of goals hypothesis (FGH). It has two aims: first, to describe the evolutionary function of emotional feelings (EFs), and second, to describe the content and the format of EFs. According to FGH, the evolutionary function of EFs is to enable motoric flexibility. Specifically, EFs are a component of a psychological mechanism that permits differential motoric reactions to the same stimulus. Further, according to FGH, EF is a special type of mental representation with the (...) content of an action goal, and with a non-motoric, non-conceptual format. This paper thoroughly clarifies the assumptions underlying FGH and discusses its theoretical implications and empirical predictions. (shrink)

Let λ denote a singular cardinal. Zeman, improving a previous result of Shelah, proved that $\square _{\lambda}^{\ast}$ together with 2 λ = λ⁺ implies $\lozenge _{S}$ for every S ⊆ λ⁺ that reflects stationarily often. In this paper, for a set S ⊆ λ⁺, a normal subideal of the weak approachability ideal is introduced, and denoted by I[S; λ]. We say that the ideal is fat if it contains a stationary set. It is proved: 1. if I[S; λ] is fat, (...) then $\text{NS}_{\lambda ^{+}}$ ↾ S is non-saturated; 2. if I[S; λ] is fat and 2 λ = λ⁺, then $\lozenge _{S}$ holds; 3. $\square _{\lambda}^{\ast}$ implies that I[S; λ] is fat for every S ⊆ λ⁺ that reflects stationarily often; 4. it is relatively consistent with the existence of a supercompact cardinal that $\square _{\lambda}^{\ast}$ fails, while I[S; λ] is fat for every stationary S ⊆ λ⁺ that reflects stationarily often. The stronger principle $\lozenge _{\lambda ^{+}}^{\ast}$ is studied as well. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:...

Timothy Williamson has famously argued that the principle should be rejected. We analyze Williamson's argument and show that its key premise is ambiguous, and that when it is properly stated this premise no longer supports the argument against. After canvassing possible objections to our argument, we reflect upon some conclusions that suggest significant epistemological ramifications pertaining to the acquisition of knowledge from prior knowledge by deduction.

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 230-252, April 2022. The apparent inconsistency between Locke’s commitment to legalism and his explicit endorsement of the extra-legal power of prerogative has confounded many readers. Among those who don’t ignore or dismiss it, the common approach is to qualify the role or scope of prerogative. The article advocates the opposite approach. It argues that Locke’s legalism should be understood within the context of his oft neglected conception of political liberty in (...) terms of self-government. This not only allows for the reconciliation of Locke’s legalism with his endorsement of extra-legal powers, but also provides a fuller, more accurate account of the role of law and of political liberty in Locke’s theory. (shrink)

(1996). Inquiry‐and‐intervention in systems planning: Probing methodological rationalities. World Futures: Vol. 47, Unity and Diversity in Contemporary Systems Tinking: Systematic Pictures at an Exhibition, pp. 25-36.

According to the influential thesis of attentional transparency, in having or reflecting on an ordinary visual experience, we can attend only outwards, to qualities the experience represents, never to intrinsic qualities of the experience itself, i.e., to “mental paint.” According to the competing view, attentional semitransparency, although we usually attend outwards, to qualities the experience represents, we can also attend inwards, to mental paint. So far, philosophers have debated this topic in strictly armchair means, especially phenomenological reflection. My aim in (...) this paper is to show how to design an experiment, using the change detection paradigm for studying visual working memory that, if yielding positive results, would support AS. The structure of the argument is as follows. In standard change detection tasks, which involve attention to qualities the experience represents, there exists a known object integration effect (Luck and Vogel in Nature 390(6657):279–281, 1997). I formulate a hypothesis I call “the turn-off hypothesis,” according to which this effect does not exist in change detection tasks where subjects are instructed to attend to mental paint. I argue that, given AS, we have some reason to expect the turn-off hypothesis to be true, but given AT, we do not. Consequently, the truth of the turn-off hypothesis would support AS. I further argue that one can straightforwardly test the turn-off hypothesis, taking the standard change detection paradigm and instructing participants to attend inwards. (shrink)