The paper explains how Gettier’s conclusion can be reached on general theoretical grounds within the framework of epistemic logic, without reliance on thought experiments. It extends the argument to permissive conceptions of justification that invalidate principles of multi-premise closure and require neighbourhood semantics rather than semantics of a more standard type. The paper concludes by recommending a robust methodology that aims at convergence in results between thought experimentation and more formal methods. It also warns against conjunctive definitions as sharing several (...) of the drawbacks of disjunctive definitions. (shrink)

Can some contingent truths be known a priori?: when this question is raised in modern philosophy — as, following Kripke, it often has been — it generally introduces a discussion of certain examples which seem to turn on indexical or indexical-like words . Sometimes the indexicality is quite obvious, as in 'I am here now', sometimes it appears only on analysis, as in 'If anyone uniquely invented the zip, Julius did', where by stipulation 'Julius' rigidly designates the inventor of the (...) zip , for the rigidity of 'Julius' can be expressed by means of the 'actually' operator, which is at least formally analogous to an indexical . Moreover, this indexicality has been exploited in a well known argument that what is known a priori can be contingent only in a superficial way pp. 161-89; technical details are omitted, since deep and superficial contingency coincide for sentences, such as those considered below, without 'actually' or similar operators). The purpose of this note is to argue that there are deeply contingent a priori truths which in no way turn on indexicals. I do not deny that there are also contingent a priori truths which do turn on indexicals, but we are unlikely to get clear on the contingent a priori in-general if we take it to be essentially tied up with indexicals when in fact it is not. (shrink)

From the end of the seventeenth century to now well into the 21st, John Locke’s theory of personal identity has been foundational in the field of philosophy and psychology. Here we suggest that there are two fundamental threads intertwined in Lockean identity, the flux of perception-thought-action (i.e. continuity of consciousness) and memory. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, and Bernard Steigler as guides we will see that these threads constitute a phenomenological self (l’ésprit), a lived experience of our identity that is (...) not only perhaps the most essential component of our humanity, but also the most threatened in today’s ongoing, commercial convergence of the real and the virtual in the “Age of Disruption”. (shrink)

When a proposition is established, it can be taken as evidence for other propositions. Can the Bayesian theory of rational belief and action provide an account of establishing? I argue that it can, but only if the Bayesian is willing to endorse objective constraints on both probabilities and utilities, and willing to deny that it is rationally permissible to defer wholesale to expert opinion. I develop a new account of deference that accommodates this latter requirement.

The question 'What is the criterion of identity for directions?' might be construed as asking either 'When do lines have the same direction?' or 'When are directions identical?'. Frege's answer 'When they are parallel' fits the former question, not the latter, for it specifies a relation other than identity between lines, not directions. Jonathan Lowe thinks the latter question more fundamental, and claims that Frege's criterion can be reformulated to answer it: 'When some line with one is parallel to some (...) line with the other'. At p. 147 of Identity and Discrimination I make three points against this view: Lowe's construal does not permit a principled rejection of an intuitively unacceptable answer to the original question, On pain of circularity, Lowe's answer uses conceptual resources beyond those of Frege's, and thus is not a mere reformulation, Lowe's question seems to make the hopeless demand for something more basic than 'x = y Lowe's reply 'One-level versus two-level identity criteria' does not address or . I shall follow him in discussing only. (shrink)

Objective Bayesianism has been criticised for not allowing learning from experience: it is claimed that an agent must give degree of belief ½ to the next raven being black, however many other black ravens have been observed. I argue that this objection can be overcome by appealing to objective Bayesian nets, a formalism for representing objective Bayesian degrees of belief. Under this account, previous observations exert an inductive influence on the next observation. I show how this approach can be used (...) to capture the Johnson-Carnap continuum of inductive methods, as well as the Nix-Paris continuum, and show how inductive influence can be measured. (shrink)

Writers such as Stalnaker and Dummett have argued that specific features of subjunctive conditional statements undermine the principle of bivalence. This, paper is concerned with rebutting such claims. 1. It is shown how subjective conditionals pose a prima facie threat to bivalence, and how this threat can be dissolved by a distinction between the results of negating a subjective conditional and of negating its consequent. To make this distinction is to side with Lewis against Stalnaker in a dispute about possible (...) worlds semantics for such conditionals, and reasons are given for doing so. 2. These arguments are extended to answer Dummett''s claim that behaviourist and phenomenalist analyses in terms of subjunctive conditions violate bivalence. This answer is shown to be compatible with the principle that hypothetical statements are true only in virtue of categorical facts. (shrink)

This chapter addresses two questions: what are causal relationships? how can one discover causal relationships? I provide a survey of the principal answers given to these questions, followed by an introduction to my own view, epistemic causality, and then a comparison of epistemic causality with accounts provided by Judea Pearl and Huw Price.

The paper is a critique of Terry Horgan's transvaluationist theory of vagueness. It argues that Horgan's formulations equivocate between a semantic 'ought' and a semantic 'is'. On one reading, transvaluationism is trivially inconsistent. On another reading, it is consistent, but also consistent with an epistemic account of vagueness. In addition, the paper criticizes Horgan's attempt to recruit supervaluationism as a form of transvaluationism and his argument against vagueness in the world.

Summary. This paper proposes a common framework for various probabilistic logics. It consists of a set of uncertain premises with probabilities attached to them. This raises the question of the strength of a conclusion, but without imposing a particular semantics, no general solution is possible. The paper discusses several possible semantics by looking at it from the perspective of probabilistic argumentation.

I reply to critical discussions by Majda Trobok, Nenad Smokrović, and Nenad Miščević on theses and arguments from my book The Philosophy of Philosophy. I take issue with them on matters such as the following. Should philosophical questions apparently about the world be taken at face value, or are they implicitly metalinguistic or metaconceptual? Are there ‘epistemologically analytic’ sentences that one can understand only if one has a disposition to accept them? Can ‘philosophical intuitions’ be explained as the products of (...) separable domain-specific competencies? (shrink)

Metaphilosophy is defined as philosophical reflection on philosophy itself, and so is part of philosophy. If one lacks the category of philosophy, one can still do philosophy, but one may not be in a position to do metaphilosophy. Cases are discussed of tension between a philosopher’s metaphilosophical theory and their philosophical practice, in epistemology (scepticism), metaphysics (ontological minimalism), and philosophy of language (verificationism and intensionalism). Such tensions often provoke charges of self–defeat. However, the self–defeat turns out to be just one (...) more manifestation of more general inadequacies in the philosophical theory at issue. The epistemology of philosophy is just an application of general epistemology; the philosophy of philosophical language is just an application of general philosophy of language, and so on. These considerations are used to support anti–exceptionalism about philosophy: philosophical thought and talk are much less different from other thought and talk than many philosophers suppose. The second half of the paper describes the author’s own experience of the complex dialectic between metaphilosophy and more general philosophy, in which metaphilosophical disputes about specific aspects of philosophical practice draw attention to more general cognitive phenomena, which require to be understood philosophically, but may also call for revisions of philosophical practice in metaphilosophically significant ways. (shrink)

Summary This research is into the experience of alienation amongst British adolescents. The study had three major aims: firstly to investigate potential differences across various dimensions of alienation on the basis of gender, ethnicity and religion. Secondly, to establish a relationship between alienation, self?esteem and selected undesirable school behaviours. Finally, there is an attempt to evaluate the use of alienation scales as a research tool in education. The study involved 254 participants aged between 13 and 15 years attending large, multi?ethnic (...) comprehensives. The findings show that reported levels of alienation were influenced by religious orientation but only minimally by gender or ethnicity per se. Reported alienation negatively correlated with self?esteem but was positively associated with truancy, exclusion and disruptive behaviour. The authors conclude that, whilst alienation remains a useful concept for educational research, it is unhelpful to see it as an inevitable consequence of deprivation or membership of certain social groups. (shrink)

Table 4 in original article has been corrected.

This is a short critique of sufficiency views.

The chapter bases a theory of evidential probability on the equation of knowledge with evidence. It is a form of objective rather than subjective Bayesianism. Updating on new evidence is structured in a way that allows propositions to lose as well as gain probability. The account is integrated with possible worlds models of epistemic logic. Since one does not always know what one knows, the accessibility relation is not an equivalence relation, which has the effect that prior probability can diverge (...) from expected posterior probability. (shrink)

Incapacitated and surrogateless patients are an ever-growing trend in the world of health care. Although the extent of the issue is unknown, 1 out 20 deaths in the intensive care unit (ICU) occurre...

This chapter contains sections titled: This chapter is a study in the epistemology of identity. It analyses discrimination between things as activation of the knowledge that they are distinct, and indiscriminability as the impossibility of activating such knowledge. The interaction of general features of knowledge with general features of identity needs special attention. Since the indiscriminability of objects is less a route to knowledge that they are identical than a block to knowledge that they are distinct. The first section develops (...) a cognitive model of discrimination. The second section uses the model to explain some formal features of indiscriminability, such as its failure to be transitive. The third section uses the model to expound a sense in which discrimination is intentional. In the fourth section, this intentionality is observed to threaten an attempt to define a transitive notion of indiscriminability in terms of a non‐transitive notion. (shrink)

Among the topics to whose discussion Diego Marconi has contributed outstandingly over the years, two of the most notable are the nature of lexical competence and the status of the law of non-contradiction. The topics are linked by the popular idea that adherence to basic logical laws is a necessary condition of understanding logical words, in particular that adherence to the law of non-contradiction is a necessary condition of understanding words for negation. For example, it may be proposed...

The late nineteenth to early twentieth century saw a small but dedicated rise in experimental rainmaking. The possibility that humanity might one day be able to control the weather – especially to alleviate drought – was very attractive to governments and private investors. The late nineteenth century was an era of scientific optimism and a number of rainmaking experiments across the world had brought the potential for weather control out of the realms of discourse and literature and further into tangible (...) near-future science. There has been a small but thorough historiographical literature on this subject, focusing largely on American, British, and Australian efforts. This article seeks to build on this by exploring the little-known history of rainmaking in Hong Kong before 1930, centering on a case study of a particular experiment intended to alleviate the disastrous drought of 1928–9. As was the case elsewhere, Hong Kong’s rainmaking efforts raised as much skepticism as they did support, with the government, scientists, and the general public in two minds about whether making rain was even possible. As such, this article aims to interrogate the concepts of the sociotechnical imaginary and the history of failure, while also contributing to the wider story of meteorological knowledge-making. (shrink)

Munro adopts the emendations veris for Veneris and Zephyrus for Zephyri , making Zephyrus the ‘winged harbinger of Spring.’ As to the order of the procession, Munro takes one view in his translation and another in his notes: according to the latter it is ‘Zephyrus, Spring, Venus, Flora,’ the flowers springing up where Spring, Venus, and Zephyrus have trodden: according to the translation it is ‘Flora, Zephyrus, Spring, Venus.’ Duff, in his edition, adheres to the MSS. reading as printed above: (...) Veneris praenuntius pennatus is Cupid, and the order of the procession is ‘Zephyrus, Flora , Cupid, Spring and Venus .’ With this reading and interpretation, which are probably right, quibus goes in construction with praespargens: Munro, reading Zephyrus, takes quibus with uestigia propter, ‘in whose tracks’ , so that with his reading his note is right and his translation—‘along the path they tread mother Flora straws all the way before them’—is wrong, or at least not so probable, as quibus propter uestigia would be more naturally said of one following behind. (shrink)