COnstantien Sandis speaks to Nassim Taleb about inductive knowledge,black swans, Hume, Popper, and Wittgenstein.

Modern societies are characterized by a division of epistemic labor between laypeople and epistemic authorities. Authorities are often far more competent than laypeople and can thus, ideally, inform their beliefs. But how should laypeople rationally respond to an authority’s beliefs if they already have beliefs and reasons of their own concerning some subject matter? According to the standard view, the beliefs of epistemic authorities are just further, albeit weighty, pieces of evidence. In contrast, the Preemption View claims that, when one (...) discovers what an authority believes, it is not permissible to rely on any of one’s own reasons concerning the subject matter. The original version of this view, as proposed by Linda Zagzebski, has recently been severely criticized for recommending blind trust and for abandoning even minimal standards for critical thinking. In our paper, we defend a new version of the Preemption View—Defeatist Preemptionism—in a way that differs radically from Zagzebski’s. We argue that our view can be derived from certain widely accepted general epistemic principles. In particular, we claim that preemption can be identified as a special case of source sensitive defeat. Moreover, we argue that Defeatist Preemptionism does not lead to the undesirable consequences that critics ascribe to the Preemption View. The paper thus articulates the foundations and refinements of the Preemption View, such that it adequately captures the phenomenon of epistemic authority and the rational requirements related to it. (shrink)

The Energy-Time Uncertainty (ETU) has always been a problem-ridden relation, its problems stemming uniquely from the perplexing question of how to understand this mysterious Δ t . On the face of it (and, indeed, far deeper than that), we always know what time it is. Few theorists were ignorant of the fact that time in quantum mechanics is exogenously defined, in no ways intrinsically related to the system. Time in quantum theory is an independent parameter, which simply means independently known (...) . In the early 1960s Aharonov (1961-64) and Bohm (1961-64) mounted a spirited attack against the ETU, which sealed its fate to the present date. By emphasising that time is always “well-defined” in quantum theory, they were led to the conclusion that no ETU should exist, a view shared by many in the 1990s, if Busch (1990) is to be believed. In a similar vein, I emphasize that (a) physical systems occupy a particular energy state at a particular instant of time, if at all; (b) even in absence of all time-measuring instruments, it is still trivially warranted that one can measure a system's energy as accurately as one pleases, and simply announce “The system's energy is exactly E NOW!”, a possibility which no quantum mechanics of any sort, or any physical theory whatsoever, can afford to tamper with or change, except circularly. One never loses one's own perception of time, when one measures the energy, a fact which no measurement conceivable can interfere with or affect. Both (a) and (b) uniquely entail that energy and time are compatible, if not indeed intimately interconnected, contrary to what the relevant uncertainty seems to affirm. In response to Aharonov's and Bohm's initial problem, I reinterpret ΔEΔt ≥ h , as directly derived from authentic quantum principles, without however having to assume a direct incompatibility between its related concepts, attributing their complementarity to conditions other than ordinarily assumed. (shrink)

The Things We Do and Why We Do Them argues against the common assumption that there is a kind of thing called "action" which all reason-giving explanation of action are geared towards. Sandis explains why all theories concerned with the form which any such explanation must take fail from the outset, and shows how various debates on the nature of so-called motivating reasons only arise because the participants all share a number of mistaken views which follow from the basic assumption (...) under attack. In so doing, he urges philosophers and psychologists alike to stop asking whether the explanation of action is causal, and to focus instead on its multifarious objects. This book will appeal to anyone interested in motivational psychology, the reasons for which we act, and the philosophy of explanation in general. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a solution to the problem that the need to accommodate the phenomenon of epistemic defeat poses for reliabilism. Defeaters are supposed to remove justification for previously justified beliefs. According to standard process reliabilism, the justification of a belief depends on the reliability of a process that is already completed when a defeater for that belief is obtained. It is hard to see, then, how a defeater can affect reliabilist justification, if that justification, from the perspective (...) of the defeater, lies wholly in the past. What is more, undercutting defeaters plausibly defeat by generating incompatibilities with higher-order propositions :105–118, 2014; Melis in Philos Stud 170:433–442, 2014). This is hard to integrate with reliabilism which explicitly denies higher-order conditions for justification. I argue that both of these phenomena can be accommodated by it via what I call the “Replacement Principle”: when a defeater is obtained, it generates either a logical incompatibility or a doxastic incompatibility. The resulting tension is registered and initiates a reasoning process that compares the epistemic support for the defeater with that for the defeated belief. This process may replace the original reliable formation process as a doxastic base for the defeated belief. If the defeater is not given its due weight in the reasoning process, that process was unreliable and if the defeated belief is retained as a result, it will be unjustified. This is intuitively the right result. Since reasoning is reliable, only if it is rational, the account manages to capture the intuition that disregarding a defeater would be irrational without having to make rationality a condition for justification. Replacement is not only plausible on causal pictures of doxastic basing, but also required in order to allow for the possibility of belief reevaluation in general and is therefore not an ad hoc addition to reliabilism, but rather part of its inherent explanatory resources. (shrink)

A number of well-developed theories shed light on the question, under what circumstances our beliefs enjoy epistemic justification. Yet, comparatively little is known about epistemic defeat--when new information causes the loss of epistemic justification. This book proposes and defends a detailed account of epistemic defeaters. The main kinds of defeaters are analyzed in detail and integrated into a general framework that aims to explain how beliefs lose justification. It is argued that defeaters introduce incompatibilities into a noetic system and thereby (...) prompt a structured re-evaluation process that makes a justified reinstatement of the defeated belief impossible. The account is then applied to the topic of disagreement, where it is used in an argument for conciliationism, as well as a new explanation for higher-order defeat. Throughout the book, the notion of defeat is the center of attention, while a number of new issues are discussed at the intersections of defeat and justification. Specifically, new problems are raised for broadly internalist accounts of defeat, a fully descriptive reliabilist account of defeat is provided, and the case for normative defeat is revisited. (shrink)

Wittgenstein teaches us that, contrary to current philosophical and scientific trends, the understanding of others is not to be achieved through some kind of emotional tool providing an access-pass to otherwise hidden ‘mental contents’. This insight goes against the popular grain of empathy as a form of informational ‘mindreading’, founded upon John Locke’s assumption that understanding another is a matter of obtaining and decoding the stored in their mind. We would do best to replace this radically distorted account of what (...) it takes to understand others with a stance that places priority on shared aspects of our lives. Only then can we even begin to try and tackle our moral, cultural, religious, and socio-political differences. (shrink)

Is knowledge-how, or “practical” knowledge, a species of knowledge-that, or “theoretical” knowledge? There is no comfortable position to take in the debate around this question. On the one hand, there are counterexamples against the anti-intellectualist thesis that practical knowledge is best analysed as an ability. They show that having an ability to ϕ is not necessary for knowing how to ϕ. On the other hand, the intellectualist analysis of practical knowledge as a subspecies of theoretical knowledge is threatened by its (...) own set of counterexamples, which convincingly establish that practical knowledge lacks many of the typical characteristics of theoretical knowledge. Most strikingly it does not even appear to require a belief. In this paper, I develop an account of practical knowledge that avoids these counterexamples. It also manages to preserve both the status of such knowledge as a cognitive achievement and its apparently close conceptual relation to abilities. I start with the counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge and show that they fail because they underestimate the cognitive demands of attempts. I then make use of the logic of dispositions to bridge the gap that counterexamples against the necessity of abilities for practical knowledge open. It is argued that, instead of the ability to ϕ, it is a specific disposition to have the ability to ϕ that constitutes practical knowledge about ϕ. The resulting theory is an anti-intellectualist position that preserves essential intellectualist motivations and thus should be satisfactory for proponents of both views. (shrink)

Încercare asupra filosofiei tradiționale -- Tratat de ontologie.

This paper seeks to develop a phenomenological account of the disorientation of grief, specifically the relationship between disorientation and the breakdown in practical self-understanding at the heart of grief. I argue that this breakdown cannot be sufficiently understood as a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space that leaves the bereaved individual at a loss as to how to go on. Examining the experience of losing a loved person and a loved person-to-be, I instead propose (...) that this breakdown should be understood primarily in relation to a distinctive kind of futurity operative in disorientation,irrespectiveof the extent to which there is a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space. Drawing on the resources afforded by Heidegger’s phenomenology, I argue that it is acore characteristicof the experience of disorientation in grief that the grieving person can no longer meaningfully press ahead into aspecific futural self. This view comes with certain advantages over existing accounts of the temporality of grief for making sense of the disorientated relationship to futurity, which the appeal to Heideggerian resources makes possible. (shrink)

The limits of ignorance Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9571-z Authors Constantine Sandis, Westminster Institute of Education, Oxford Brookes University, Harcourt Hill Campus, Oxford, OX2 9AT UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

One of the most considerable changes in the contemporary European educational mentality is a person's disconnection from spiritual life. Christian formation has been replaced with religious pluralism, in terms of syncretism influenced by global economic ideologies. Some consequences are low resilience and low spiritual resistance to contemporary challenges, associated with mental traumas or social behaviour deficits. Is it possible to restore the modern person's spiritual education? There is no evolution in the modern individual's social life without a horizon of spiritual (...) expectation and fulfilment, different from the strictly material one. Moreover, conscious education cannot deprive people of cultivating the spiritual part of their consciousness from which the real values of existence are born. A series of arguments for renewing the relation between school and the mature, Scripture-based Christian thinking in the spirit of the European pedagogy are revealed by the factual historical analyses. Both Eastern and Western European experiences have met after 13 years of evolving into two antagonist geopolitical spheres. Their lessons in the education field could be an appropriate model, academically applied at the cultural mentality and the European pedagogy level. CONTRIBUTION: With this study, I want to highlight the historical and conceptual frameworks of the Christian religious education meaning in the context of the rediscovery of Orthodox Christianity by the international theological culture in post-communism. Orthodox Christianity, forgotten in dictionaries and syntheses by the Western theological elite, brings in a spiritualisation of education according to the Lord Jesus Christ's Gospel and not of the ideological cultural interests. (shrink)

Review the Istvan Kiraly V.'s book: Death and History.

Our technological lifeworld has become an info-computational media populated by data and algorithms, an artificial environment for life and shared experiences. In this chapter, I tried to sketch three new assumptions for bioethics – it is hardly possible to substantiate ethical guidelines or an idea of normativity in an aprioristic manner; moral status is a function of data entities, not something solely human; agency is plural and thus is shared or sometimes delegated – in order to chart a proposal for (...) a posthuman bioethics. Posthuman is perhaps not the best expression available, but it covers the idea of a shift from a world centered on self-contained and exclusively human agency to a more comprehensive and relational way of thinking. The “posthuman” label should be understood as a rebuttal of biocentrism and anthropocentrism by moving closer to conceptions we encounter in population ethics or in discourse about biosocial and technical systems. Posthuman bioethics is “environmentalist” without losing the humanistic stance. The question regarding how suitable an infocentric bioethics is in practice remains to be settled. The moral principles in bioethics could be reconceived as relying on these new assumptions, in a postindividualistic manner that accepts formal primacy of causal digital artifacts in affording actions in a world of ambient algorithmic intelligence. (shrink)

At last available in paperback, this book anticipates and explains the post-structuralist turn to empiricism. Presenting a challenging reading of David Hume's philosophy, the work is invaluable for understanding the progress of Deleuze's thought.

In a unique collection of essays and poems written in English, French, German and Russian (with a seasoning of Greek and Japanese), Constantine Shapiro explores fascinating universal questions and connections. Why, he asks, do so many people feel unhappy? Why do so many go to the doctor? Why is there so much criminality? Why is there international unrest? What is a healthy soul? In his investigation of these and other "Big Questions," the author examines such disparate areas as Japanese (...) kanji ideograms and personal character, spiritual ontology and science, Zeus and Christianity, objectivity and subjectivity in time and space, the nature of experience, and the flow of consciousness. The modern reader will find much to ponder in this second, expanded edition of Selected Writings. Also included are facsimiles of the typescript of Two Mathematical Problems and the Japanese translation of Transzendentale Musiklehre. (shrink)

The anthology contains twenty-two essays and is divided into two parts. The essays are, in the main, critical responses to aspects of what has come to be known in action theory as the ‘Standard View’ – the view that traces back to Donald Davidson's contribution to twentieth-century philosophy of action. The view under criticism treats actions as bodily movements caused in a non-deviant way by belief–desire pairs, construes these belief–desire pairs as the primary reasons for the actions that they cause, (...) and embraces event-causality.The issue of how we should conceive of action is taken up in several essays. For example: in Essay 1, Fred Dretske challenges the view that actions are external events that are the effect of the reasons for which the action is done. In Essay 16, Helen Steward, proposes that, instead of treating the availability of a reason-giving explanation as essential to action, we should construe action as ‘an exercise of the power of bodily control by an animal’. In Essay 21, Jonathan Dancy argues for a deflationary approach to actions, which forgoes treating actions ‘as individuals, with identity conditions’.Other authors – for example, Stephen Everson, Rowland Stout and Maria Alvarez – focus on the issue of what reasons for action are. Are they psychological states, or propositions, or states of affairs? Also under review is how to distinguish different kinds of reason: normative and explanatory reasons, and even explanatory and motivating reasons. (shrink)

Most claims for the falsification of the Law of the Excluded Middle rest on confusion or can be circumvented. A few of them, however, cannot. I concentrate on two of those, cases involvin...

This essay is motivated by the thought that the things we do are to be distinguished from our acts of doing them. I defend a particular way of drawing this distinction before proceeding to demonstrate its relevance for normative ethics. Central to my argument is the conviction that certain ongoing debates in ethical theory begin to dissolve once we disambiguate the two concepts of action in question. If this is right, then the study of action should be accorded a far (...) more prominent place within moral philosophy than previously supposed. I end by considering an extension of the above to aesthetic evaluation and,mutatis mutandis, that of our lives in general. (shrink)

In his first paper, ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’, Stanley Cavell defended the methods of ordinary language philosophy against various charges made by his senior colleague, Benson Mates, under the influence of the empirical semantics of Arne Naess.1Cavell’s argument hinges on the claim that native speakers are asourceof evidence for 'what is said' in language and, accordingly, need not base their claims about ordinary language upon evidence. In what follows, I maintain that this defence against empirical semantics applies equally (...) well to experimental philosophy's attack on doing philosophy from the armchair. In so doing, I attempt to clarify – and adjust – Cavell's claim that statements about ordinary language are rule‐descriptions that are neither analytic nor synthetic. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of empathy and detachment in historical explanation by comparing Collingwood and Hume's philosophies of history to Brecht and Stanislavki's theories of theatre. I argue that Collingwood's notion of re-enactment shares much more with Hume and Brecht than it does with Stanislavski. This enables a just medium between rationalistic and empathetic accounts of historical understanding, as recently put forth by Mark Bevir and Karsten Stueber respectively.

Dieses Buch fiihrt den Titel: Der entlarvte Mensch.. Dieser Umstand diirfte keinen mit meinem sonstigen Werk Vertrauten wunder nehmen: so konnten Meine samtlichen friiheren V er~ offentlichungen gleichfalls heiBen. - Es galt, den in sich selbst so schwer sich irrenden und irren wollenden, den sich ver~ steckenden und verstellenden und so erbittert gegen die Auf~ deckung der eigentlich ihm einwohnenden Natur sich wehren~ den Menschen zu ertappen und zu entlarven. Der Mensch hat eine theologische Auffassung von sich als von einem (...) Gott, ahnlich wie von seinem Gott: er pratendiert, der Gute und der wissend Verstehende zu sein" und iiberallhin, auch zu seinesgleichen, geht sein Wille auf gebieterisches V er~ haltnis. Die grundstiirzende Lehre von den Geistigen und vom Yolk stoBt um und Macht unschadlich das traditionelle Bild aberglaubischer und unbandiger Einbildung und setzt an die Stelle dieses eitel~hochmiitigen, wahnhaften und triigerischen Selbstportrats das urheitlich getreue Bild von wirklich psycho~ logischem Wert. J a, es galt den Menschen zu entlarven und ihn zeigbar zu Machen so, wie er wirklich in sich aussieht: dazu war ich immer am Werk und glaube sagen zu diirfen: jetzt ist die Entlarvung vollendet, wie es der Titel des Werkes anzeigt. DER GOTT UND DER ABERGLAUBE YOM VERSTEHEN Wie der Mensch. sa ist sein Gatt; drum aus seinem Gatt der Mensch zu erraten. da ja der Mensch den Gatt nach seinem Ebenbilde macht. Alsa gleichst du deinem Gatt; Mann van Erde. du hast dir aus Erde den Gatt mit Ohren gemacht. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDavis argues that the familiar periodization dividing European history into medieval and modern phases disguises a claim to power as a historical fact. It justifies slavery and subjugation by projecting them onto the “feudal” Middle Ages and non‐European present, while hiding forms of slavery and subjugation practiced by “secular” modernity. Periodization thus furnishes one of the most durable conceptual foundations for the usurpation of liberty and the abuse of power.In part I, devoted to “feudalism,” Davis traces the legal, political, and (...) colonial struggles behind the development of the concept of “feudal law” in early modern France and England and unravels just how that concept hides colonial oppression while justifying European sovereignty. In part II, devoted to “secularization,” she demonstrates the failure of twentieth‐century critics of “secularization” like Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, and Reinhart Koselleck to break out of the limits imposed by the medieval/modern periodization. Part II concludes with a look at conceptual alternatives in the writings of Amitav Ghosh and the Venerable Bede.Three limitations of this book are worth mentioning. It traces the political history hidden by the concept of “feudalism,” but does not trace the political history hidden by the concept of “religion.” It offers no answer to the question of how to break the link between scholarship and politics without ending up in a logical impasse or reinforcing the link. It does not address the possibility that answering this question may require breaking with the terms of professional historical inquiry. Perhaps the question could be answered in terms like those that led Wittgenstein to characterize his Philosophical Investigations as remarks on the natural history of human beings. (shrink)

The deliberative conception of politics seems to be necessary for the legitimation of state power through democratic will‐formation and decision‐making. However, the author maintains that a complex theory of democracy cannot merely consist in procedural prerequisites for organizing the concomitant institutional settings. In particular, such a theory must comprise some substantive presuppositions, such as social and economic rights, in order to diminish existing material inequalities, especially those connected with social exploitation and domination. The author argues that a contemporary theory of (...) democracy should reflect on the autonomization of mechanisms of egoistic action challenging not only the democratic political order, but also the very reproduction preconditions of societies all over the world. In this perspective, the model of associative democracy, which is suggested nowadays as a sort of substantive correlative to the institutional proceduralism, could not significantly rejuvenate the traditional representative democracy. Instead, democracy could only be given a fresh impulse if democratic deliberation penetrates the currently forbidden field of capitalist production and social exploitation, the locus where social inequality and effective unfreedom are endlessly reproduced. (shrink)