The basing relation is a relation that obtains between a belief and the evidence or reason for which it is held. It is a highly controversial question in epistemology how such a relation should be characterized. Almost all epistemologists believe that causation must play a role in articulating the notion of the basing relation. The causal account however faces the serious problem of the deviant causal chains. In this paper, I will be particularly looking at the philosophers’ appeal to the (...) notion of disposition as a way of excluding deviant chains. Having argued against such accounts, it will be suggested that, since the obtaining of the basing relation is what distinguishes propositional from doxastic justification, we may have a better grasp of this notion if we could clearly see how those two species of justification are related to one another. Drawing on earlier work, a dispositional account of propositional and doxastic justification is subsequently defended. It will be argued that such a view has the resources to resolve the problem of causal deviance, thus, providing an acceptable account of the notion of the basing relation. (shrink)

To undermine much of what we ordinarily claim to know, sceptics have often appealed to a principle (known as the principle of closure) according to which knowledge (justification) is closed under known entailment. In this paper after expounding the views of Stein, Klein and others, I shall argue that they all fail to take note of different contexts in which the principle of closure is applied. The relevance of the principle of closure for scepticism is then analyzed in the light (...) of, what I call, the infectious' character of epistemic contexts. I shall also highlight the similarities in the behavior of the concepts of justification and confirmation and appeal to certain solutions to the paradoxes of confirmation to provide a comprehensive account of the different instances of the principle of closure. (shrink)

Ensuring the trustworthiness of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence is an important interdisciplinary endeavour. In this position paper, we argue that this endeavour will benefit from technical advancements in capturing various forms of responsibility, and we present a comprehensive research agenda to achieve this. In particular, we argue that ensuring the reliability of autonomous system can take advantage of technical approaches for quantifying degrees of responsibility and for coordinating tasks based on that. Moreover, we deem that, in certifying the legality (...) of an AI system, formal and computationally implementable notions of _responsibility_, _blame_, _accountability_, and _liability_ are applicable for addressing potential responsibility gaps (i.e. situations in which a group is responsible, but individuals’ responsibility may be unclear). This is a call to enable AI systems themselves, as well as those involved in the design, monitoring, and governance of AI systems, to represent and reason about who can be seen as responsible in prospect (e.g. for completing a task in future) and who can be seen as responsible retrospectively (e.g. for a failure that has already occurred). To that end, in this work, we show that across all stages of the design, development, and deployment of trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS), responsibility reasoning should play a key role. This position paper is the first step towards establishing a road map and research agenda on how the notion of responsibility can provide novel solution concepts for ensuring the _reliability_ and _legality_ of TAS and, as a result, enables an effective embedding of AI technologies into society. (shrink)

Despite all fundamental divergences, the similarities formed between some interpretations of the later-Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and the tradition of Islamic Mysticism (Sufism), can yet be philosophically recognized. These basic analogies are as follows: 1) The inextricability of belief and practice and the priority of practice over knowledge 2) The characterization of the core religious beliefs as the primal ground of man’s perception and understanding, in contrast to the view that considers fundamental religious beliefs as theoretical conclusions derived from purely (...) rational courses of reflection 3) A new practice-laden narrative of religious realism. Given that, one can even shed a new Wittgensteinian light on even the most abstract and metaphysical elements of the mystical worldview. If fundamental religious beliefs are interpreted not as metaphysical doctrines but as a set of descriptions arising from a specific form of practical life, then the ability to see a sort of transcendent and sacred unity in the whole universe will be based on a way of purposive engagement and wayfaring in the natural and social world. (shrink)

The new generations of bioenhancement technologies and traditional Virtue Theory both try to make a meaningful connection between the improvement of human states and characteristics on one hand, and attainment to the good life, on the other. Considering the main elements of virtuousness in Farabi’s thought—namely rational inquiry and deliberative insights, alongside volitional discipline within various social contexts, one can conclude that although the trajectories of enhancement technologies—be they in the field of genetic engineering, neurostimulation technologies, or pharmacology—do not in (...) themselves satisfy the constitutive determinants of virtuousness, they function as having both mediative and amplificative/reductive roles in a life which is dedicated to the pursuit of happiness in the light of the cultivation of virtue. (shrink)

Beliefs can be evaluated from a number of perspectives. Epistemic evaluation involves epistemic standards and appropriate epistemic goals. On a truthconducive account of epistemic justification, a justified belief is one that serves the goal of believing truths and avoiding falsehoods. Beliefs are also prompted by nonepistemic reasons. This raises the question of whether, say, the pragmatic benefits of a belief are able to rationalize it. In this paper, after criticizing certain responses to this question, I shall argue that, as far (...) as beliefs are concerned, justification has an essentially epistemic character. This conclusion is then qualified by considering the conditions under which pragmatic consequences of a belief can be epistemically relevant. (shrink)

Theories of epistemic justification are usually described as belonging to either deontological or nondeontological categories of justification with the former construing the concept of justification as involving the fulfillment of epistemic duty. Despite being the dominant view among traditional epistemologists, the deontological conception has been subjected to severe criticisms in the current literature for failing, among others, to do justice to the (alleged) truth-conducive character of epistemic justification. In this paper I set out to show that there is something deeply (...) unsatisfying about the way these different conceptions of justification are usually introduced and contrasted with each other leaving it unclear just what it is that renders a particular conception deontological. In particular I look at Alston's treatment of the issue, and show that his reasons for rejecting the deontological conception involve question-begging assumptions demonstrating, at best, the possibility of its divergence from truth-conductive justification. Far from being able to settle the issue one way or another, the arguments, I shall suggest actually seem to show some sort of tolerant pluralism in justification theory to be a live option. (shrink)

While recent debates over content externalism have been mainly concerned with whether it undermines the traditional thesis of privileged self‐knowledge, little attention has been paid to what bearing content externalism has on such important controversies as the internalism/externalism debate in epistemology. With a few exceptions, the question has either been treated as a side issue in discussions concerning the implications of content externalism, or has been dealt with in a cursory way in debates over the internalism/externalism distinction in justification theory. (...) In this paper, I begin by considering some of the arguments that have sought to address the question, focusing mainly on Boghossian's pioneering attempt in bringing the issue to the fore.1 It will be argued that Boghossian's attempt to exploit the alleged non‐inferentiality of self‐knowledge to show that content externalism and justification internalism are incompatible fails.In the course of this examination, I consider and reject as inadequate some recent responses to Boghossian's argument . I then turn to evaluating Chase's own proposed argument to show how content externalism can be brought to bear on the internalism/externalism debate in epistemology, and find it wanting. Finally, having discussed BonJour's terse remarks in this connection,3 I set out to present, what I take to be, the strongest argument for the incompatibility of content externalism and justification internalism while highlighting the controversial character of one of its main premises. Let us, however, begin by drawing the contours of the debate. (shrink)

This study set out to investigate intellectual domains as well as the use of measurement and validation methods in language assessment research and second language acquisition (SLA) published in English in peer-reviewed journals. Using Scopus, we created two datasets: (i) a dataset of core journals consisting of 1,561 articles published in four language assessment journals, and (ii) a dataset of general journals consisting of 3,175 articles on language assessment published in the top journals of SLA and applied linguistics. We applied (...) document co-citation analysis to detect thematically distinct research clusters. Next, we coded citing papers in each cluster based on an analytical framework for measurement and validation. We found that the focus of the core journals was more exclusively on reading and listening comprehension assessment (primary), facets of speaking and writing performance such as raters and validation (secondary), as well as feedback, corpus linguistics, and washback (tertiary). By contrast, the primary focus of assessment research in the general journals was on vocabulary, oral proficiency, essay writing, grammar, and reading. The secondary focus was on affective schemata, awareness, memory, language proficiency, explicit vs. implicit language knowledge, language or semantic awareness, and semantic complexity. With the exception of language proficiency, this second area of focus was absent in the core journals. It was further found that the majority of citing publications in the two datasets did not carry out inference-based validation on their instruments before using them. More research is needed to determine what motivates authors to select and investigate a topic, how thoroughly they cite past research, and what internal (within a field) and external (between fields) factors lead to the sustainability of a Research Topic in language assessment. (shrink)

Suspended sediment modeling is an important subject for decision-makers at the catchment level. Accurate and reliable modeling of suspended sediment load is important for planning, managing, and designing of water resource structures and river systems. The objective of this study was to develop artificial intelligence- based ensemble methods for modeling SSL in Katar catchment, Ethiopia. In this paper, three single AI-based models, that is, support vector machine, adaptive neurofuzzy inference system, feed-forward neural network, and one conventional multilinear regression modes, were (...) used for SSL modeling. Besides, four different ensemble methods, neural network ensemble, ANFIS ensemble, weighted average ensemble, and simple average ensemble, were developed by combining the outputs of the four single models to improve their predictive performance. The study used two-year discharge and SSL data for training and verification of the applied models. Determination coefficient and root mean square error were used to evaluate the performances of the developed models. Based on the performance measure results, the ANFIS model provides higher efficiency than the other developed single models. Out of all developed ensemble models, the nonlinear ANFIS model combination method was found to be the most accurate method and could increase the efficiency of SVM, MLR, ANFIS, and FFNN models by 19.02%, 37%, 9.73%, and 16.3%, respectively, at the verification stage. Overall, the proposed ensemble models in general and the AI-based ensemble in particular provide excellent performance in SSL estimation. (shrink)

Considering the three intrinsic components of streamflow time series, the overall performance of the streamflow modeling tool is associated with the correct estimation of these components. In this study, a new hybrid method based on the wavelet transform as a multiresolution forecasting tool and exponential smoothing method, with two presented scenarios, was introduced. To this end, the performance of the proposed method was investigated versus four conventional methods of the autoregressive integrated moving average, ES ad-hoc, artificial neural network, and wavelet-ANN (...) for daily and monthly streamflow modeling of West Nishnabotna and Trinity River watersheds with different hydro-geomorphological conditions. In the presented WES technique, firstly, WT is employed for decomposing the observed signal to one approximation and more diverse components of subseries. Then, for the first scenario, only two subseries are introduced to the model as input parameters; however, for the second scenario, decomposed subseries are separately used as the inputs of ES models. The obtained results indicated that combining WT with the ES method and ANN led to more accurate modeling. The proposed methodology that used all decomposed subseries separately improved the efficiency of models up to 30% and 10% for the daily dataset and up to 88% and 57% for the monthly dataset, respectively, for the West Nishnabotna and Trinity Rivers. (shrink)

This volume brings together a wide array of papers which explore, among other things, to what extent languages and cultures are variable with respect to the interactions around the event of death. Motivated by J. L. Mey's idea of the pragmeme, a situated speech act, the volume has both theoretical and practical implications for scholars working in different fields of enquiry. As the papers in this volume reveal, despite the terminological differences between various disciplines, the interactions around the event of (...) death serve to provide solace, not only to the dying, but also to the family and friends of the deceased, thus helping them to "accommodate" to the new state of affairs. (shrink)

Compassion, as an indicator for quality care, is highly valued by patients and healthcare professionals. Compassionate care is considered a moral dimension of nursing practice and an essential component of high quality care. This study aimed to answer these questions: (1) What are the facilitators and barriers of providing compassionate nursing care in the clinical setting? (2) Which strategies do nurses use to provide compassionate care? (3) What is the specific model of compassionate care for the nursing context? A grounded (...) theory approach was used in this study. A total of 21 nurses working in diverse clinical settings participated in the study. Purposive and theoretical sampling was used to select the participants. Data were collected by in-depth face to face interviews and analyzed by the constant comparative method. Ethical approval was gained from the Ethical Review Board of Tabriz University of Medical sciences. The analysis resulted in the development of three main themes: (a) contextual factors affecting compassionate care, (b) the compassionate care actions, and (c) the consequences of compassionate care. The main dimensions of compassionate care are demonstrated in a Compassionate Nursing Care Model. Nurses’ ability on providing compassionate care is influenced by individual and organizational factors that may facilitate or inhibit this type of care. Leadership and nurse managers should remove the barriers which diminish the nurses’ ability to provide compassionate care and support them to engage in compassionate care programs. Identifying and recruiting compassionate nurses, developing their compassionate capacity, and providing role models of compassion could improve the flourishing of person-centered and compassionate care in clinical settings. The Compassionate Nursing Care Model (CNCM) provides a model to guide nursing care and research. (shrink)

This book explores the concept of epistemic justification and our understanding of the problem of skepticism. Providing critical examination of key responses to the skeptical challenge, Hamid Vahid presents a theory which is shown to work alongside the internalism/externalism issue and the thesis of semantic externalism, with a deontological conception of justification at its core.

In this paper, I shall examine William Alston's influential view that the cognitive element in religious faith should be identified with ‘acceptance’ rather than ‘belief’. Although I am sympathetic to Alston's reluctance to regard belief as essential to faith, I shall argue that one can redescribe the cases that Alston invokes in support of his claim in terms of the standard notion of degrees‐of‐belief without loss. It will be further argued that, given Alston's constraints, his notion of acceptance, if not (...) identical to belief, is at least a species of belief. (shrink)

This book is concerned with the conditions under which epistemic reasons provide justification for beliefs. The author draws on metaethical theories of reasons and normativity and then applies his theory to various contemporary debates in epistemology. In the first part of the book, the author outlines what he calls the dispositional architecture of epistemic reasons. The author offers and defends a dispositional account of how propositional and doxastic justification are related to one another. He then argues that the dispositional view (...) has the resources to provide an acceptable account of the notion of the basing relation. In the second part of the book, the author examines how his theory of epistemic reasons bears on the issues involving perceptual reasons. He defends dogmatism about perceptual justification against conservatism and shows how his dispositional framework illuminates certain claims of dogmatism and its adherence to justification internalism. Finally, the author applies his dispositional framework to epistemological topics including the structure of defeat, self-knowledge, reasoning, emotions and motivational internalism. The Dispositional Architecture of Epistemic Reasons demonstrates the value of employing metaethical considerations for the justification of beliefs and propositions. It will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology and metaethics. (shrink)

It has been argued that just as, say, prejudice or wishful thinking can generate ill-founded beliefs, the same is true of experiences. The idea is that the etiology of cognitively penetrated experiences can downgrade their justificatory force. This view, known as the Downgrade Principle, seems to be compatible with both internalist and externalist conceptions of epistemic justification. An assessment of the credentials of the Downgrade Principle is particularly important in view of the fact that not all cases of cognitive penetration (...) are epistemically malignant. There are good and bad cases of cognitive penetration. I argue that a proper assessment of the Downgrade Principle will have to address two fundamental questions. I identify two general ways of responding to these questions and show why they fail. It will be maintained that an explanationist conception of justification has a better chance of accounting for the distinction between good and bad cases of cognitive penetration. The Downgrade Principle is then discussed in the context of the extended cognition thesis. In particular, I look at the sensorimotor theory of perception, as a way of broadening the scope of to include conscious perceptual experience, that sees senses as ways of exploring the environment mediated by different patterns of sensorimotor contingency. I suggest possible ways in which one could distinguish between good and bad cases of cognitive penetration on such a view compatible with the explanationist view of epistemic justification. (shrink)

Truth and the aim of belief -- Belief, interpretation, and Moore's paradox -- Belief, sensitivity, and safety -- Basic beliefs and the problem of non-doxastic justification -- Experience as reason for beliefs -- The problem of the basing relation -- Basic beliefs, easy knowledge, and the problem of warrant transfer -- Belief, justification, and fallibility -- Knowledge of our beliefs and privileged access.

To support the trustworthiness of AI systems, it is essential to have precise methods to determine what or who is to account for the behaviour, or the outcome, of AI systems. The assignment of responsibility to an AI system is closely related to the identification of individuals or elements that have caused the outcome of the AI system. In this work, we present an overview of approaches that aim at modelling responsibility of AI systems, discuss their advantages and shortcomings to (...) deal with various aspects of the notion of responsibility, and present research gaps and ways forward. (shrink)

Some recent discussions of a priori knowledge, taking their departure from Kant's characterization of such knowledge as being absolutely independent of experience, have concluded that while one might delineate a concept of a priori knowledge, it fails to have any application as any purported case of such knowledge can be undermined by suitably recalcitrant experiences. In response, certain defenders of apriority have claimed that a priori justification only requires that a belief be positively dependent on no experience. In this paper, (...) I begin by showing how the exchange of arguments between the disputants comes down, in the end, to no more than a display of conflicting intuitions. I shall then provide a diagnosis explaining how our explication of a priori justification depends on our standards for applying the term 'a priori' with this, in turn, reflecting our prior intentions as to whether we are willing to allow the existence of such warrants. I shall further argue that the claim that such knowledge can be affected by subversive experience is not entirely compatible with the spirit of apriority. Finally I conclude by making some methodological remarks about the prospects of a positive characterization of a priori knowledge by comparing it to the concept of knowledge. (shrink)

Recent discussions of externalism about mental content have been dominated by the question whether it undermines the intuitively plausible idea that we have knowledge of the contents of our thoughts. In this article I focus on one main line of reasoning (the so-called 'slow switching argument') for the thesis that externalism and self-knowledge are incompatible. After criticizing a number of influential responses to the argument, I set out to explain why it fails. It will be claimed that the argument trades (...) on an ambiguity, and that only by incorporating certain controversial assumptions does it stand a chance of establishing its conclusion. Finally, drawing on an analogy with Benacerraf's challenge to Platonism, I shall offer some reasons as to why the slow switching argument fails to reveal the real source of tension between externalism and privileged self-knowledge. (shrink)

According to the thesis of epistemic conservatism it would be unreasonable to change one's beliefs in the absence of any good reasons. Although it is claimed that epistemic conservatism has informed and resolved a number of positions and problems in epistemology, it is difficult to identify a single representative view of the thesis. This has resulted in advancing a series of disparate and largely unconnected arguments to establish conservatism. In this paper, I begin by casting doubt on the claim of (...) widespread and genuine applications of the conservative policy. I then distinguish between three main varieties of epistemic conservatism, namely, differential, perseverance and generation conservatism Having evaluated various arguments that have been offered or may be considered on behalf of the conservative thesis, I close by concluding that those versions of the thesis that survive critical scrutiny fail to live up to the aspirations of the thesis as a substantive canon of rationality, that to the extent that principles of conservatism are epistemically promising, they are not plausible. While to the extent that they are plausible, they are not of much epistemic interest. (shrink)

Belief is generally thought to be the primary cognitive state representing the world as being a certain way, regulating our behavior and guiding us around the world. It is thus regarded as being constitutively linked with the truth of its content. This feature of belief has been famously captured in the thesis that believing is a purposive state aiming at truth. It has however proved to be notoriously difficult to explain what the thesis really involves. In this paper, I begin (...) by critically examining a number of recent attempts to unpack the metaphor. I shall then proceed to highlight an error that seems to cripple most of these attempts. This involves the confusion between, what I call, doxastic and epistemic goals. Finally, having offered my own positive account of the aim-of-belief thesis, I shall underline its deflationary nature by distinguishing between aiming at truth and hitting that target (truth). I end by comparing the account with certain prominent inflationary theories of the nature of belief. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the question of the nature of the epistemic liaison between experience and belief. The problem, often known as the problem of nondoxastic justification, is to see how a causal transition between experience and belief could assume a normative dimension, that is, how perceptual experience serves to justify beliefs about the world. Currently a number of theories have been proposed to resolve this problem. The article considers a particular solution offered by Tyler Burge which, among other (...) things, introduces a new type of positive epistemic status or warrant, namely, entitlement. It contends that Burge's notion of entitlement cannot be of any help in resolving the problem of nondoxastic justification. Burge's account is compared and contrasted with other, similar, approaches to the problem of nondoxastic justification. (shrink)

In a number of articles Donald Davidson has argued that the charitable nature of his method of radical interpretation rules out the possibility of massive error and thus refutes Cartesian skepticism. The diversity of such arguments and the suggestions that are all being made under the name of the principle of charity have prompted a large body of conflicting responses, adding only to the obscurity of the issues that are generally associated with the question of skepticism. In this paper I (...) propose to consider the debate in a new light by reconstruing the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint on belief attribution. This would help explain some of the puzzling features of Davidson's arguments, like the idea of an omniscient interpreter, and the ensuing commentaries. Having provided an analysis of the limitations of Davidson's arguments, I shall then suggest an alternative explanation of the purported necessity of the principle of charity. Finally, having construed the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint, I shall examine what consequences this construal has for the logical status of the principle itself and its alleged epistemic potentials. (shrink)

Despite the important role of faith in a religious way of life, there is no consensus on how this notion is to be understood. It is nevertheless widely believed that faith is a multifaceted concept possessing affective, evaluative, practical, and cognitive aspects. My goal in this paper is to provide an account of the nature of propositional faith (in religious contexts) that is flexible enough to encompass different strengths or grades of faith. To do so, I focus on Howard-Snyder’s account (...) of faith as a complex propositional attitude that seems to incorporate a number of plausible features of faith. It is argued, however, that, despite providing individual rational for each such feature, this account fails to provide a deep enough explanation of why those features are entailed by the nature of faith. To rectify this problem, I appeal to the phenomenology of acquiring faith to suggest an account of propositional faith in terms of the intention to form (theistic) beliefs. It is claimed that such a view can not only provide a unitary account of the different strengths of faith but also that it can explain why faith has the characteristics it is said to have. (shrink)

Crispin Wright has advanced a number of arguments to show that, in addition to evidential warrant, we have a species of non-evidential warrant, namely, “entitlement”, which forms the basis of a particular view of the architecture of perceptual justification known as “epistemic conservatism”. It is widely known, however, that Wright's conservative view is beset by a number of problems. In this article, I shall argue that the kind of warrant that emerges from Wright's account is not the standard truth-conducive justification, (...) but what is known as the deontological conception of justification. It will be argued that the deontological justification has features that make it a better candidate for representing a conservative architecture. These results will be reinforced by showing how the deontological framework can make better sense of a recent theory of justified belief that takes its inspiration from Wright's conservative account. Thus understood, we may see the liberalism–conservatism controversy as actually an extension of the older debate over which conception of justification, truth-conducive or deontological, can best represent the epistemic status of our belief-forming practices. (shrink)

An important question in epistemology concerns how the two species of justification, propositional and doxastic justification, are related to one another. According to the received view, basing one’s belief p on the grounds that provide propositional justification to believe p is sufficient for the belief to be doxastically justified. In a recent paper, however, John Turri has suggested that we should reverse the direction of explanation. In this paper, I propose to see the debate in a new light by suggesting (...) that the best way to understand the relationship between these species of justification is by viewing propositional justification as an dispositional property that a subject can have with doxastic justification as its manifestation. I show how the debate in metaphysics over the question of how disposition statements should be analyzed runs parallel to the epistemological debate, and bring some of the results in the dispositions debate to bear on the epistemological question. I end by offering some tentative remarks regarding the order of priority of these two species of justification. (shrink)

On some versions of evidentialism, only evidential reasons can be normatively relevant to belief. An opposed philosophical view denies this. Unfortunately, the debate between these contrasting views quickly ends in a stalemate because while evidentialists typically point to the difficulty of believing for practical reasons, pragmatists respond by citing cases where people seem to hold beliefs in the absence of evidence. Recently, however, some pragmatists have adopted a new strategy that seeks to combine the evidentialist insight that only evidence can (...) cause belief with the pragmatist claim that practical considerations can be motivating reasons for belief. By assimilating the pragmatist cases that are said to implement the new strategy to those involving deviant causal chains, this paper will argue that the strategy is undermined by the problem of the basing relation. Finally, a positive account of the epistemic significance of practical considerations will be suggested that stops short of seeing them as reasons for belief. (shrink)

Abstract In her recent discussion of the problem of the empirical basis, Susan Haack sets out to show that the solutions offered by the Popperian school are all inadequate. Her objectives, however, go well beyond the mere refutation of such?claims. She also tries to explicate the contribution of experience to the justification of one's belief, thus adjudicating between founda?tionalism and coherentism. She puts forward what she calls a ?foundherentist? account of the structure of justification which, she claims, retains the virtues (...) of both foundationalism and coherentism while avoiding their vices. In this article I shall try to show that, in addition to failing to explicate the justificatory role of experience, her proposal is actually a version of coherentism and that a coherentist need not find her account of the contribution of experience to justification particularly objectionable. (shrink)