A person making normative judgments can do so from the perspective of a Judge or a Coach. If you're a Judge, you seek to assign responsibility. If you're a Coach, you seek to improve an agent's performance. While there is a place for being sometimes a Judge and sometimes a Coach, no one should always be a Judge. It is a small and mean person who only wags a finger and never lends a hand. The same is true for a (...) normative discipline like epistemology. A good coach gives useful advice. Advice is useful when it suggests that you modify something you can directly control. And because we are typically unable to directly control our beliefs, a good epistemological coach will have no use for a theory that tells us what an epistemologically good belief is, such as a theory of knowledge or justification. But we are capable of changing many of the ways we reason about the world. Otherwise, what's an education good for? And so a good epistemological coach needs a theory of what makes reasoning epistemically good. What sort of theory of good reasoning would a good epistemological coach employ in order to provide useful guidance for real people? We argue for a middle path between a pure reliablist theory of good reasoning and a pure pragmatic theory of good reasoning. The best theory for an epistemological coach, the theory that will yield the most effective advice, is a mongrel theory that identifies good reasoning with reasoning that achieves an adroit combination of reliabilist accuracy and pragmatic efficiency. (shrink)

XLRI, in association with a few Tata Group companies, established the XLRI-JRD Tata Foundation in Business Ethics in 1991 to mark their long-standing commitment and contribution to business ethics in India. The foundation seeks to address this by publicly affirming the urgent need for ethics in business and the need to bring about a conducive culture in which it can thrive.

Il est une question fondamentale dont il semble pourtant qu’elle n’ait pas été posée: celle de savoir ce qui fait que le cogito soit effectivement un principe métaphysique, c’est-à-dire une vérité première. Il semble aussi que ce qui d’ordinaire tient lieu de réponse à cette question dans l’esprit des lecteurs de Descartes, c’est le sentiment vague qu’il s’agit là de la première vérité qui surgisse après la dévastation laissée par le doute universel de la Première Méditation, ou peut-être qui surgisse (...) au cœur de ce doute, puisque le doute ne s’autodétruit que pour faire place à ego sumOr s’en tenir à cela pour justifier le statut de principe métaphysique du cogito, c’est confondre priorité chronologique et primauté métaphysique ou épistémique: en effet, qu’y aurait-il dans le seul fait de se présenter ainsi qui assure que le cogito doive fonder d’autres connaissances, d’éventuelles sciences? Qu’est-ce qui empêcherait aussi qu’il ne soit lui-même assujetti à d’autres connaissances, plus fondamentales, et dont le méditant ne se serait peut-être pas encore aperçu? Il est vrai que cette confusion est compréhensible, puisque la primauté métaphysique du cogito coïncide effectivement avec sa priorité dans l’ordre des connaissancesMais dans le doute ambiant, celle-ci n’est en réalité qu’un effet de celle-là, et le simple fait de constater l’une ne revient pas à être assuré de l’autre. Il ne peut s’agir donc que d’une coïncidence, et la question se pose dès lors de savoir comment se traduit sa primauté, c’est-à-dire comment doivent se concevoir ses rapports avec le reste de nos éventuelles connaissances. (shrink)

Georges J. D. Moyal - Deux notes sur l' «imparfaite science» du geometre athee - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 277-300 Deux notes sur l'« imparfaite science » du géomètre athée Georges J. D. Moyal Deux questions. La Ve Méditation de Descartes vise à démontrer que l'existence d'un Dieu vérace est la condition nécessaire de toute science. En effet, Descartes y écrit ceci : « . . . je remarque que la (...) certitude de toutes les autres choses en dépend si absolument [sc. de l'existence de Dieu], que sans cette connaissance il est impossible de pouvoir jamais rien savoir parfaitement. » Ce qui le mène, bien entendu, d'abord à reconnaître que « . . . si j'ignorais qu'il y eût un Dieu [ . . . ] je n'aurais jamais une vraie et certaine science d'aucune chose que ce soit, mais seulement de vagues et inconstantes opinions » et par là même, à refuser ensuite cette parfaite science au géomètre athée : « Or, qu'un athée puisse connaître clairement que les trois angles d'un triangle sont égaux à deux droits, je ne le nie pas ; mais je maintiens seulement qu'il ne le connaît pas par une vraie et certaine science, parce que toute connaissance qui peut être rendue douteuse ne doit pas être appelée science . . . » Il faut reconnaître qu'il y a à nos yeux, aujourd'hui, quelque chose de surprenant à ce que le géomètre athée se voie ainsi refuser cette parfaite science.. (shrink)

There is now a considerable literature on Michel Foucault but this is the first monograph which explicitly addresses his influence and impact upon education. Personal autonomy has been seen as a major aim, if not the aim of liberal education. But if Foucault is correct that personal autonomy and the notion of the autonomous person are myths, then the pursuit of such an aim by educationalists is misguided. The author develops this critique of personal autonomy and liberal education from the (...) writings of Foucault, and also considers Foucault's own educational practices. The author, James Marshall, who lives in New Zealand, has already written several articles for academic journals on Foucault. (shrink)

(2002). Philosophy of Science 72 (January), 198-208.

This chapter compares the authors' naturalistic approach to epistemology to that of SAE. It is argued that the theories of SAE are structurally analogous to the naturalistic approach — they have at their core a descriptive theory, and from that descriptive theory, proponents of SAE draw normative, epistemological prescriptions. The prospects for the theories of SAE overcoming the is-ought gap are not good. The chapter also argues for the superiority of Strategic Reliabilism over any extant theory of Standard Analytic Epistemology.

Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...) the prevalence of counterfeit understanding in the history of science, I argue that many forms of cognitive achievement do not involve a sense of understanding, and that only the truth or accuracy of an explanation make the sense of understanding a valid cue to genuine understanding. (shrink)

Scientific realism has been advanced as an interpretation of the natural sciences but never the behavioral sciences. This book introduces a novel version of scientific realism, Measured Realism, that characterizes the kind of theoretical progress in the social and psychological sciences that is uneven but indisputable. It proposes a theory of measurement, Population-Guided Estimation, that connects natural, psychological, and social scientific inquiry. Presenting quantitative methods in the behavioral sciences as at once successful and regulated by the world, the book will (...) engage philosophers of science, historians of science, sociologists of science, and scientists interested in the foundations of their own disciplines. Part I introduces measured realism beginning with a novel realist theory of measurement (Population-Guided Estimation, or PGE). It examines two other versions of scientific realism — minimal (Hacking) and robust (Boyd, Putnam, and Newton-Smith) — and advances measured realism as best supported by the evidence in the behavioral sciences. It also critically evaluates the anti-realist arguments of van Fraassen, Laudan, and Fine. Part II formulates and develops a version of epistemological naturalism most appropriate to measured realism. Drawing upon the realist theory of measurement developed earlier, it favorably appraises a variety of statistical methods in the behavioral sciences against selected criticisms. It concludes that traditional, narrative methods in the behavioral and social sciences are unreliable by the measures of epistemological naturalism. (shrink)

At some distance from a high-rate source in an elastic half-space, the dominant wave motion at the free surface is a Rayleigh surface wave. The calculation of surface waves generated by a concentrated force in a half-space is a basic problem in elastodynamics. By straightforward manipulations, the result can be used to obtain surface waves for other kinds of wave-generating body-force arrangements. For example, appropriate combinations of double-forces (or dipoles) can be used to represent the surface loading due to laser (...) irradiation, or due to acoustic emission from the opening of a sub-surface crack or from sliding over a fault surface. The surface wave motion is usually obtained by the application of integral transform techniques and the subsequent extraction of the surface waves as the contributions from poles in the integral for the inverse transform. In this paper, we use a much simpler approach based on the elastodynamic reciprocity theorem. We consider a transversely isotropic solid whose axis of symmetry is normal to the surface of the half-space. Surface wave pulses generated by a single force, by irradiation from a laser source, and by opening of a crack, have been determined. (shrink)

This paper advances a novel argument that speech perception is a complex system best understood nonindividualistically and therefore that individualism fails as a general philosophical program for understanding cognition. The argument proceeds in four steps. First, I describe a "replaceability strategy", commonly deployed by individualists, in which one imagines replacing an object with an appropriate surrogate. This strategy conveys the appearance that relata can be substituted without changing the laws that hold within the domain. Second, I advance a "counterfactual test" (...) as an alternative to the replaceability strategy. Third, I show how the typical objects of cross-modal processes (in this case, auditory-visual speech perception), more clearly irreplaceable than the objects of the unimodal process examined by Burge [(1986) Individualism and psychology, The Philosophical Review, XCV, 3-45], supply a firm basis for a nonindividualist interpretation of such cases. Finally, I demonstrate that the routine violation of the individualist's Replaceability Condition occurs even in unimodal cases - so the violation of the replaceability constraint does not derive simply from the diversity of modal sources but rather from the causal complexity of psychological processes generally. The conclusion is that philosophical progress on this issue must await progress in psychology, or, at least, philosophical progress in accounting for psychological complexity--precisely the vicissitude predicted by a thoroughgoing naturalism. (shrink)

I understand Pluralism to be the doctrine that, either generally or with reference to some particular area of judgement, there is more than one basic principle. It endorses the possibility that some particular case may arise which will be adjudicated in one way if one principle is applied while another principle points otherwise and to an answer which, at least in practice, is incompatible. Thus in morality, according to pluralism there may be more than one correct answer to the question (...) of which of the decisions available in some particular situation is the best. (shrink)

In “Forced to be Free”, Neil Levy surveys the raft of documented decision-making biases that humans are heir to, and advances several bold proposals designed to enhance the patient's judgment. Gratefully, Levy is moved by the psychological research on judgment and decision-making that documents people's inaccuracy when identifying courses of action will best promote their subjective well-being. But Levy is quick to favour the patient's present preferences, to ensure they get “final say” about their treatment. I urge the opposite inclination, (...) raising doubts about whether the patient's “present preferences” are the best expression of their “final say”. When there is adequate evidence that people, by their own lights, overemphasize their present preferences about the future, we should carefully depreciate those preferences, in effect biasing them to make the right decision by their own lights. (shrink)

The confirmation of scientific hypotheses has a quantitative and qualitative aspect. No empirical hypothesis can be confirmed conclusively, so philosophers of science have used the theory of probability to elucidate the quantitative component, which determines a degree of confirmation ‐ that is, the extent to which the hypothesis is supported by the evidence (see probability and evidence and confirmation). By contrast, the qualitative feature of confirmation concerns the prior question of the nature of the relation between the hypothesis and the (...) evidence if the hypothesis is to be confirmed by its instances. If a hypothesis is to be supported by a body of evidence, it must be related to the evidence in an appropriate way. The paradoxes of confirmation arise in the attempt to characterize in first‐order logic the qualitative relation between hypothesis and evidence. (shrink)

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts. It identifies three challenges that remain in the construction of a naturalistic epistemology. First, an effective epistemology needs to continue to discover handy new heuristics that help us reason reliably about significant matters. Second, we need to identify with more effectiveness what is involved in human well-being. A third project essential to the development of a prescriptive, reason-guiding epistemology is social epistemology.