Sometimes, there are reasons for which we believe, intend, resent, decide, and so on: these reasons are the “bases” of the latter, and the explanatory relation between these bases and the latter is what I will call “the basing relation.” What kind of explanatory relation is this? Dispositionalists claim that the basing relation consists in the agent’s manifesting a disposition to respond to those bases by having the belief, intention, resentment, and so on, in question. Representationalists claim that the basing (...) relation consists in the agent’s representing the bases as justifying the belief, intention, resentment, and so on, in question. This article shows that an adequate account of the basing relation requires a particular refinement and combination of these two views. On the hybrid account defended here, the basing relation involves a disposition exercise that is individuated by the agent’s object-involving de se representation of that very exercise as justifying. (shrink)

Contributed articles on Advaita, Hindu philosophy, Vedic and Sanskrit literature.

In his recent Knowledge and its Limits, Timothy Williamson argues that no non-trivial mental state is such that being in that state suffices for one to be in a position to know that one is in it. In short, there are no “luminous” mental states. His argument depends on a “safety” requirement on knowledge, that one’s confident belief could not easily have been wrong if it is to count as knowledge. We argue that the safety requirement is ambiguous; on one (...) interpretation it is obviously true but useless to his argument, and on the other interpretation it is false. (shrink)

(NEG) is widely accepted both by internalist and by externalists. In fact, there have been very few opponents of (NEG). Timothy Williamson (e.g., 2000) rejects (NEG), for reasons that have by now received a great deal of scrutiny.2 John McDowell also rejects (NEG), but his reasons have not received the scrutiny they deserve. This is in large part because those reasons have not been well understood. We believe that McDowell’s challenge to (NEG) is important, worthy of fair assessment, and maybe (...) even correct. In this paper, we explain McDowell’s challenge to (NEG), and also explain how McDowell can address a seemingly fatal objection to his view. (shrink)

Subliminal perception (SP) is today considered a well-supported theory stating that perception can occur without conscious awareness and have a significant impact on later behaviour and thought. In this article, we first present and discuss different approaches to the study of SP. In doing this, we claim that most approaches are based on a dichotomic measure of awareness. Drawing upon recent advances and discussions in the study of introspection and phenomenological psychology, we argue for both the possibility and necessity of (...) using an elaborated measure of subjective states. In the second part of the article, we present findings where these considerations are implemented in an empirical study. The results and implications are discussed in detail, both with reference to SP, and in relation to the more general problem of using elaborate introspective reports as data in relation to studies of cognition. (shrink)

According to a doctrine that I call “Cartesianism”, knowledge – at least the sort of knowledge that inquirers possess – requires having a reason for belief that is reflectively accessible as such. I show that Cartesianism, in conjunction with some plausible and widely accepted principles, entails the negation of a popular version of Fallibilism. I then defend the resulting Cartesian Infallibilist position against popular objections. My conclusion is that if Cartesianism is true, then Descartes was right about this much: for (...) S to know that p, S must have reasons for believing that p which are such that S can know, by reflection alone, that she has those reasons, and that she could not possibly have those reasons if p is not true. Where Descartes went wrong was in thinking that our ordinary, fallible, non-theologically grounded sources of belief (e.g., perception, memory, testimony), cannot provide us with such reasons. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s On Certainty is sometimes read as providing a response to the skeptical puzzle from closure, according to which our commitment to the trustworthiness of our evidence is not itself evidentially grounded. In this paper, I argue both that this standard reading of Wittgenstein is incorrect, and that a more accurate reading of Wittgenstein provides us with a more plausible solution to the Closure Puzzle.

Your evidence constrains your rational degrees of confidence both locally and globally. On the one hand, particular bits of evidence can boost or diminish your rational degree of confidence in various hypotheses, relative to your background information. On the other hand, epistemic rationality requires that, for any hypothesis h, your confidence in h is proportional to the support that h receives from your total evidence. Why is it that your evidence has these two epistemic powers? I argue that various proposed (...) accounts of what it is for something to be an element of your evidence set cannot answer this question. I then propose an alternative account of what it is for something to be an element of your evidence set. 1 Introduction 2 The elements of one's evidence set are propositions 3 Which kinds of propositions are in one's evidence set? 3.1 Doxastic accounts of evidence 3.2 Non-doxastic accounts of evidence 4 Elaborating and defending the LIE CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad offers illuminating new perspectives on contemporary phenomenological theories of body and subjectivity, based on studies of diverse classical Indian texts. He argues for a 'phenomenological ecology' of bodily subjectivity in health, gender, contemplation, and lovemaking.

Goldman’s epistemology has been influential in two ways. First, it has influenced some philosophers to think that, contrary to erstwhile orthodoxy, relations of evidential support, or confirmation, are not discoverable a priori. Second, it has offered some philosophers a powerful argument in favor of methodological reliance on intuitions about thought experiments in doing philosophy. This paper argues that these two legacies of Goldman’s epistemology conflict with each other.

A just social arrangement must guarantee a right to health care for all. This right should be understood as a positive right to basic human functional capabilities. The present article aims to delineate the right to health care as part of an account of distributive justice in health care in terms of the sufficiency of basic human functional capabilities. According to the proposed account, every individual currently living beneath the sufficiency threshold or in jeopardy of falling beneath the threshold has (...) a legitimate claim to justice. People's entitlements to health care should not be determined on the basis of brute luck and their efforts to maintain healthy lifestyles. The prioritization of competing claim-rights of individuals is guided by two allocation principles: number and benefit-size weighted sufficiency (among people beneath the threshold) and need-weighted utilitarianism (among people above the threshold). (shrink)

: In prior work, we reported the followings: There are about forty meanings attributed to the term consciousness. They were identified and categorized according to whether they were principally about function or about experience. The frameworks for consciousness that are based on materialism, idealism, and dualism have serious problems. Therefore, an extended dual-aspect monism framework was proposed for consciousness, where the problematic materialism/panpsychism based integrated information theory was interpreted and the inseparability between physical and non-physical aspect holds because none of (...) the empirical fMRI/EEG data shows separability between aspects. This has the least number of problems compared to all other frameworks. It required a novel feature that the potentiality of primary irreducible subjective experiences co-exists with its physical aspect in nature. This missing information in science is provided by the eDAM, which addresses the hard problem of consciousness successfully, which is elaborated in detail in this article. Resumo: Em trabalho anterior, relatamos o seguinte: existem cerca de quarenta significados atribuídos ao termo consciência; eles foram identificados e categorizados conforme se referiam à função ou à experiência; as abordagens da consciência baseadas no materialismo, idealismo e dualismo têm sérios problemas. Por conseguinte, a abordagem do monismo de duplo aspecto estendido foi proposta para a consciência, em que: a problemática teoria da informação integrada, baseada no materialismo/pampsiquismo, foi interpretada; e se afirma a inseparabilidade entre aspectos físicos e não físicos, pois os dados empíricos das imagens por ressonância magnética funcional e eletroencefalografia não mostram dissociação entre os aspectos. O eDAM tem o menor número de problemas, em comparação com todas as outras abordagens, implicando que a potencialidade das experiências subjetivas, irredutíveis e primárias, coexiste com o seu aspecto físico na natureza. Esta informação, ausente na ciência, é fornecida pelo eDAM, que aborda com êxito o problema difícil da consciência, o que é elaborado em detalhe neste artigo. (shrink)

What is the epistemological value of perceptual experience? In his recently influential paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”1, James Pryor develops a seemingly plausible answer to this question. Pryor’s answer comprises the following three theses: (F) “Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible – there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs.” (517) (PK) “This justification that you get merely by having an experience as of p can sometimes (...) suffice to give you knowledge that p is the case.” (520) (D) “When it perceptually seems to you as if p is the case, you have a kind of justification for believing p that does not presuppose or rest on your justification for anything else, which could be cited in argument (even an ampliative argument) for p. To have this justification for believing p, you need only have an experience that represents p as being the case. No further awareness or reflection or background beliefs are required.” (519) Let’s use the phrase “fallibilist dogmatism” to refer to the conjunction of (F), (PK), and (D).2 Pryor does not argue for either (F) or (PK) in his paper; he simply shares the widespread and plausible assumption that (F) and (PK) are both true. But the conjunction of (F) and (PK) implies that we can have knowledge on the basis of defeasible justification. And this view leads to paradox. Consider the following individually plausible but jointly incompatible statements. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently defended “contrastivist” theories of knowledge, according to which knowledge is a relation between at least the following three relata: a knower, a proposition, and a contrast set. I examine six arguments that Jonathan Schaffer has given for this thesis, and show that those arguments do not favour contrastivism over a rival view that I call “evidentiary relativism”. I then argue that evidentiary relativism accounts for more data than does contrastivism.

Historically, prominent proponents of the guidance deontological conception of epistemic justification have thought that the guidance deontological conception entails access internalism. Alvin Goldman has argued that this is not so, and that there is no good argument from the guidance deontological conception of justification to access internalism. This paper refutes Goldman's argument. If the guidance deontological conception of epistemic justification is correct, then so is access internalism.

Seven decades ago, a new global order emerged. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic rages across the planet, those older ways of being are under unprecedented stress. Already, a new world order is taking shape--one that will put long-standing agenda items like trade, commerce and defence on the backburner. In a post-pandemic world, they will be edged out by issues like climate change, holistic healthcare, education for innovation and creativity, as well as the management of frontier technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, (...) blockchain and big data. Human dignity and human rights will be critical issues in this modern reality. To represent the changed actuality of the twenty-first century, global governance needs fresh ideas and novel institutions. More than five decades ago, Deen Dayal Upadhyay articulated a coherent economic philosophy, at the core of which was human-centric development. In the Hindutva Paradigm, author and thinker Ram Madhav provides clarifying insights into the reasoning of a philosopher who has remained an enigma through the decades. At the crossroads where we stand, this refreshing and stimulating philosophy could be the answer to managing the new world order."--Amazon.com. (shrink)

Aphoristic work on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika school of Hindu philosophy; Sanskrit auto commentary with Hindi interpretation and translation.

Contemporary consciousness studies, where it is not explicitly religious, is mostly physicalist. Theories of self and consciousness in classical Hindu thought can easily be seen to contribute to religious issues in consciousness studies. But it is also the case that there is much in that that can be useful within broadly physicalist parameters of study as well. The Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools, while having (nonphysicalist) soteriological goals for the metaphysical self, nonetheless provide theories of its relationship with consciousness that allow (...) for interpretative strategies that can make their theories relevant to a broadly physicalist study of consciousness. Advaita Vedānta cannot be so interpreted, but its inquiry into the nature of consciousness can provide material for a fundamental critique of the project of objectifying consciousness. (shrink)

Susanna Schellenberg develops a unified account—“capacitism”—of perceptual content, phenomenology, and epistemic force. In this paper, I raise questions about her arguments for a capacitist account of evidential force, and then challenge her claim that such an account, even if correct, demands that our evidence be less than fully transparent to us.

Rieber 1998 proposes an account of "S knows that p" that generates a contextualist solution to Closure. In this paper, I’ll argue that Rieber’s account of "S knows that p" is subject to fatal objections, but we can modify it to achieve an adequate account of "S knows that p" that generates a unified contextualist solution to all four puzzles. This is a feat that should matter to those philosophers who have proposed contextualist solutions to Closure: all of them have (...) motivated their contextualism by appeal to the fact that they can explain the plausibility of each of the statements in Closure taken individually, and they can do this without having to deny that each of those statements is true, at least in the context in which it is plausible. But notice that this consideration would equally well motivate a contextualist approach to the other puzzles. Nonetheless, no contextualist has yet suggested how a contextualist solution to the other puzzles might go. (shrink)

Susanna Schellenberg defends what she calls a "capacity view" concerning perceptual evidence. In this paper, I raise six challenges to Schellenberg's argument.

A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about the external (...) world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context-sensitive in their semantics. It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits, and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world. (shrink)

Since the publication of W.V. Quine’s “Epistemology Naturalized”1, a growing number of self-described “naturalist” epistemologists have come to hold a particular view of what epistemology can and ought to be. In order to articulate this naturalist view, let me begin by describing the epistemological work that the naturalist tends to criticize – a motley that I will refer to collectively as “non-naturalist epistemology”. I will describe this motley in terms that are designed to capture the naturalist’s discontentment with it, as (...) follows: Non-naturalist epistemology has devoted itself, by and large, to addressing a small set of now familiar questions. What is it for someone to know that something is the case? What is it for someone to be justified in believing that something is the case? How does evidence confirm theory? To what degree ought one to be confident in a theory, given such-and-such evidence? What sorts of semantic properties do our various epistemic appraisals have? In order to answer these familiar questions, the non-naturalist epistemologist typically does not adduce any scientific findings concerning human cognition. Rather, she consults her intuitions about which properties are exemplified by various imagined cases. Unfortunately, if any of these familiar questions have been correctly answered, the correctness of these answers is not generally appreciated as such, even among professional non-naturalist epistemologists. Furthermore, virtually none of the work that’s been done in the course of trying to answer these familiar questions has any clear prospect of helping to guide or improve human intellectual conduct. As it’s been generally practiced then, non-naturalist epistemology offers us no useful advice, and.. (shrink)