Most research on people's conceptions regarding creativity has concerned informal beliefs instead of more complex belief systems represented in scholarly theories of creativity. The relevance of general theories of creativity to the creative domain of music may also be unclear because of the mixed responses these theories have received from music researchers. The aim of the present study was to gain a better comparative understanding of theories of creativity as accounts of musical creativity by allowing students (...) to assess them from a musical perspective. In the study, higher-education music students rated 10 well-known theories of creativity as accounts of four musical target activities—composition, improvisation, performance, and ideation—and argued for the “best theoretical perspectives” in written essays. The results showed that students' theory appraisals were significantly affected by the target activities, but also by the participants' prior musical experiences. Students' argumentative strategies also differed between theories, especially regarding justifications by personal experiences and values. Moreover, theories were most typically problematized when discussing improvisation. The students most often chose to defend the Four-Stage Model, Divergent Thinking, and Systems Theory, while theories emphasizing strategic choices or Darwinian selection mechanisms were rarely found appealing. Overall, students tended toward moderate theory eclecticism, and their theory appraisals were seen to be pragmatic and example-based, instead of aiming for such virtues as broad scope or consistency. The theories were often used as definitions for identifying some phenomena of interest rather than for making stronger explanatory claims about such phenomena. Students' theory appraisals point to some challenges for creativity research, especially regarding the problems of accounting for improvisation, and concerning the significance of theories that find no support in these musically well-informed adults' reasoning. (shrink)

Theories of explanation are characterized as being either pragmatic or non-pragmatic, without a clear sense of what this is supposed to mean. The present paper offers a definition of a "pragmatic explanation-sentence", and in terms of this, of a "pragmatic theory of explanation". It is argued that van Fraassen's theory of explanation, despite claims to the contrary, is not genuinely pragmatic. By contrast, the author's own "illocutionary" theory is pragmatic. Attention (...) is devoted particularly to sentences of the form "E is a good explanation of q", which, it is urged, are pragmatic in a strong sense. In defense of this claim, and of the advantages of a pragmatic account generally, appeal is made to Rutherford's 1911 subatomic explanation of the results of his scattering experiments. Implications of a pragmatic theory are drawn for the debate between realists and anti-realists and absolutists and relativists. (shrink)

We can distinguish two concepts of respect for persons: appraisal respect , an attitude based on a positive appraisal of a person's moral character, and recognition respect , the practice of treating persons with consideration based on the belief that they deserve such treatment. After engaging in an extended analysis of these concepts, I examine two "truisms" about them. We justifiably believe of some persons that they have good character and thus deserve our esteem . Frequently it pays to be (...) disrespectful; e.g., insulting those who insult us may put them in their place. By using empirical results from social and personality psychology and techniques from decision theory in addition to conceptual considerations, I argue that, surprisingly, the above two "truisms" are false. Extensive psychological evidence indicates that most persons are indeterminate---overall neither good nor bad nor intermediate---and that our information about specific persons almost never distinguishes those who are indeterminate from those who are not. The strategy of habitually avoiding disrespectful behavior maximizes long-term expected utility. In sum, we have good pragmatic reason to treat persons respectfully, but we have good epistemic reason to avoid esteeming or despising them. (shrink)

Dewey and Russell's debate over the status of logic in the twentieth-century is, by now, well-trodden ground for scholarly inquiry. However, Dewey's novel theory of propositions, first articulated in his 1938 Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, has received comparatively less attention than the debate that touched upon it. The paucity of interest among philosophers of language is probably due to a variety of reasons, such as the theory's unorthodox character and, what at least appears to be, its (...) naive simplicity when compared to other more common (syntactic and pragmatic) theories of propositions. In this paper, I would like to examine the three most extensive treatments, one by the late H.S. Thayer, another by Tom Burke, and the most recent exposition by Larry Hickman, with the intention of reviving scholarly interest in Dewey's theory of propositional form. Another objective of the present project is to situate Dewey's theory relative to more contemporary theories and debates about propositional form in the philosophy of language literature. (shrink)

This paper motivates and develops a novel semantics for several epistemic expressions, including possibility modals and indicative conditionals. The semantics I defend constitutes an alternative to standard truth conditional theories, as it assigns sets of probability spaces as sentential semantic values. I argue that what my theory lacks in conservatism is made up for by its strength. In particular, my semantics accounts for the distinctive behavior of nested epistemic modals, indicative conditionals embedded under probability operators, and (...) instances of constructive dilemma containing epistemic vocabulary. (shrink)

A hallmark of recent critical social science has been the commitment to methodological and theoretical pluralism. Habermas and others have argued that diverse theoretical and empirical approaches are needed to support informed social criticism. However, an unresolved tension remains in the epistemology of critical social science: the tension between the epistemic advantages of a single comprehensive theoretical framework and those of methodological and theoretical pluralism. By shifting the grounds of the debate in a way suggested by Dewey's pragmatism, the (...) author argues that a thoroughgoing pluralism strengthens, rather than weakens, both the social scientific and political aims of critical social science. Not only does pragmatism offer a plausible interpretation of the epistemic pluralism of the social sciences, but it also provides a way of thinking about their fundamentally practical and political character. With a better normative vocabulary with which to discuss the epistemological issues of such a pluralistic mode of inquiry, the democratic role of critical inquiry and its specifically practical form of verification can be clarified. (shrink)

The Skillfulness of Virtue provides a new framework for understanding virtue as a skill, based on psychological research on self-regulation and expertise. Matt Stichter lays the foundations of his argument by bringing together theories of self-regulation and skill acquisition, which he then uses as grounds to discuss virtue development as a process of skill acquisition. This account of virtue as skill has important implications for debates about virtue in both virtue ethics and virtue epistemology. Furthermore, it engages seriously with (...) criticisms of virtue theory that arise in moral psychology, as psychological experiments reveal that there are many obstacles to acting and thinking well, even for those with the best of intentions. Stichter draws on self-regulation strategies and examples of deliberate practice in skill acquisition to show how we can overcome some of these obstacles, and become more skillful in our moral and epistemic virtues. (shrink)

Act-utilitarianism and other theories in normative ethics confront the implementability problem: normal human agents, with normal human epistemic abilities, lack the information needed to use those theories directly for the selection of actions. Two Level Theories have been offered in reply. The theoretical level component states alleged necessary and sufficient conditions for moral rightness. That component is supposed to be true, but is not intended for practical use. It gives an account of objective obligation. The practical (...) level component is offered as an implementable system for the choice of actions by agents lacking some relevant information. It gives an account of subjective obligation. Several different ways of developing Two Levelism are explained and criticized. Five conditions that must be satisfied if the practical level principle is to be a good match for a given theoretical level principle are stated. A better form of Two Levelism is presented. (shrink)

The state of science at any given time is characterized, in part at least, by the theories that are accepted at that time. Presently accepted theories include quantum theory, the general theory of relativity, and the modern synthesis of Darwin and Mendel, as well as lower‐level (but still clearly theoretical) assertions such as that DNA has a double‐helical structure, that the hydrogen atom contains a single electron, and so on. What precisely is involved in accepting a (...) theory? (shrink)

In this comprehensive and critical study of James’s pragmatism, Ellen Kappy Suckiel analyzes his theories and establishes their value as a technical and systematic philosophy. Examining in detail James’s philosophical methodology and psychology, and his theories of meaning, truth, and reality, she demonstrates both the subtleties and limitations of his pragmatic philosophy. With extensive use of both primary and secondary sources throughout, she concludes her study with an analysis of James’s ethical theory and his controversial proposals (...) concerning “the will to believe.”. (shrink)

We show that if among the tested hypotheses the number of true hypotheses is not equal to the number of false hypotheses, then Neyman-Pearson theory of testing hypotheses does not warrant minimal epistemic reliability (the feature of driving to true conclusions more often than to false ones). We also argue that N-P does not protect from the possible negative effects of the pragmatic value-laden unequal setting of error probabilities on N-P’s epistemic reliability. Most importantly, we argue (...) that in the case of a negative impact no methodological adjustment is available to neutralize it, so in such cases the discussed pragmatic-value-ladenness of N-P inevitably compromises the goal of attaining truth. (shrink)

Critical theory with emancipatory aims today to find a source of regeneration in ordinary cultures, and in particular, in TV series. Certain series can play a role in reinventing critical theories, drawing on the tradition of the Frankfurt School but shifting some of that School’s formulations through contact with current forms of interpretive sociology and pragmatic sociology. This requires a cross-border dialogue between the “language game” of TV series and the “knowledge game” of political theory, to (...) use concepts inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this article, I will focus on four series: seasons 1 of American Crime and The Sinner ; Sharp Objects ; and Unorthodox. The resources provided by these cultural works can help us formulate a critical decoding of important aspects of the current ideological context, in particular, the intersecting identitarian and ultra-conservative tendencies we find in France, Europe, the United States, and Brazil. These critical resources bear affinities to a political philosophy of the opening of being inspired by the ethical reflections of Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

The epistemic basing relation is the relation occurring between a belief and a reason when the reason is the reason for which the belief is held. It marks the distinction between a belief's being justifiable for a person, and the person's being justified in holding the belief. As such, it is an essential component of any complete theory of epistemic justification. ;I survey and evaluate all theories of the basing relation that I am aware of published (...) between 1965 and 1995. These include causal theories, , theories involving pseudo-overdetermination relations , theories involving what a person would appeal to in defense of her beliefs , and doxastic theories , involving an appeal to meta-beliefs. My discussion of these theories includes a detailed analysis of variations of Lehrer's case of the gypsy lawyer which, I show, can be reformulated to pose a decisive objection to causal theories, if not causal analyses, of the basing relation. ;Rejecting all published theories, I present a new kind of causal analysis of the basing relation which I call the causal-doxastic theory. This theory states that a belief is based on a reason if the reason bears an appropriate causal relation to the belief, or, it does not bear such a causal relation, but an appropriate meta-belief is present. A causal analysis of which meta-beliefs are appropriate is given, so as to count as inappropriate rationalizations, mistaken meta-beliefs, etc. In developing the causal-doxastic theory, I present a solution to the problem of deviant causal chains, a discussion of the causal sustaining of beliefs, an account of rejecting reasons, and a partial analysis of showing that one is justified. I then discuss implications of my theory regarding foundationalism, inference, basic and non-basic belief, holistic and linear coherentism, process reliabilism, internalism and externalism, and various closure principles. (shrink)

This book explores new findings on the long-neglected topic of theory construction and discovery, and challenges the orthodox, current division of scientific development into discrete stages: the stage of generation of new hypotheses; the stage of collection of relevant data; the stage of justification of possible theories; and the final stage of selection from among equally confirmed theories. The chapters, written by leading researchers, offer an interdisciplinary perspective on various aspects of the processes by which theories (...) rationally should, and descriptively are, built. They address issues such as the role of problem-solving and heuristic reasoning in theory-building; how inferences and models shape the pursuit of scientific knowledge; the relation between problem-solving and scientific discovery; the relative values of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic view of theories in understanding theory construction; and the relation between ampliative inferences, heuristic reasoning, and models as a means for building new theories and knowledge. Through detailed arguments and examinations, the volume collectively challenges the orthodox view’s main tenets by characterizing the ways in which the different “stages” are logically, temporally, and psychologically intertwined. As a group, the chapters provide several attempts to answer long-standing questions about the possibility of a unified conceptual framework for building theories and formulating hypotheses. (shrink)

Abstract The typical explanation of an event or process which attracts the label ‘conspiracy theory’ is an explanation that conflicts with the account advanced by the relevant epistemic authorities. I argue that both for the layperson and for the intellectual, it is almost never rational to accept such a conspiracy theory. Knowledge is not merely shallowly social, in the manner recognized by social epistemology, it is also constitutively social: many kinds of knowledge only become accessible thanks to (...) the agent's embedding in an environment that includes other epistemic agents. Moreover, advances in knowledge typically require ongoing immersion in this social environment. But the intellectual who embraces a conspiracy theory risks cutting herself off from this environment, and therefore epistemically disabling herself. Embracing a conspiracy theory therefore places at risk the ability to engage in genuine enquiry, including the enquiry needed properly to evaluate the conspiracy theory. (shrink)

The messy politics of combating the COVID-19 pandemic, compounded by the confusion caused by the global (dis)infodemic, have propelled conspiracism from the fringes of society into the public mainstream. Despite the growing political impact of digitally enabled conspiracy theories, they are predominantly delegitimized on three fronts – as psychopathology, pseudoscience, and/or parapolitics. In contrast, this article employs three non-pathologizing conceptual counteroffers borrowed from critical theory, deconstructionist historiography, and citizenship studies – namely, cognitive mapping, narrative emplotment, and performative citizenship (...) – to politicize conspiracy theorizing ‘from below’. Using QAnon as a case-in-point, the article introduces two novel concepts that invite a sociological approach to conspiracism: first, the epistemic communities of the unreal, which designates the participatory, interactive, and decentralized nature of collaboratively creating unreal explanations of the real world; and second, grassroots conspiracism, which denotes the ways in which these bottom-up, horizontal, and collective meaning-making practices and knowledge-production processes are expanding spaces of and for politics. (shrink)

The epistemic theory of causality views causality as a tool that helps us to predict, explain and control our world, rather than as a relation that exists independently of our epistemic practices. In this chapter, we first provide an introduction to the epistemic theory of causality. We then outline four considerations that motivate the epistemic theory: the failure of standard theories of causality; parsimony; the epistemology of causality; and neutrality. We illustrate these (...) four considerations in the contexts of the social sciences and the cognitive sciences. We argue that the epistemic theory provides a very natural account of causality across these contexts. (shrink)

Traditional epistemology has, in the main, presupposed that the primary task is to give a complete account of the concept knowledge and to state under what conditions it is possible to have it. In so doing, most accounts have been hierarchical, and all assume an idealized knower. The assumption of an idealized knower is essential for the traditional goal of generating an unassailable account of knowledge acquisition. Yet we, as individuals, fail to reach the ideal. Perhaps more important, we have (...) epistemic goals not addressed in the traditional approach – among them, the ability to reach understanding in areas we deem important for our lives. Understanding is an epistemic concept. But how we obtain it has not traditionally been a focus. Developing an epistemic account that starts from a set of assumptions that differ from the traditional starting points will allow a different sort of epistemic theory, one on which generating understanding is a central goal and the idealized knower is replaced with an inquirer who is not merely fallible but working from a particular context with particular goals. Insight into how an epistemic account can include the particular concerns of an embedded inquirer can be found by examining the parallels between ethics and epistemology and, in particular, by examining the structure and starting points of virtue accounts. Here I develop several interrelated issues that contrast the goals and evaluative concepts that form the structure of both standard, traditional epistemological and ethical theories and virtue–centered theories. In the end, I sketch a virtue–centered epistemology that accords with who we are and how we gain understanding. (shrink)

The standard underdetermination argument relies on the assumption that empirical evidence is the only epistemic constraint on theory-choice. One prominent response to this has been the invocation of theoretical virtues, properties of our scientific theories that scientific realists take to be epistemic in nature and that are such that, if they are had by our theories, make it more likely for those theories to be true. It thus becomes a main goal for scientific realists (...) to establish a link between the theoretical virtues and truth. However, despite the fact that the virtues are frequently invoked in response to underdetermination arguments, how to do so has not been addressed in any detail. In this chapter, I will spell out the most promising approach in making this link: an account according to which the question of whether the virtues are epistemic is answered empirically, through an examination of cases of epistemically successful (and unsuccessful) theories. I will illustrate how this approach works concretely by discussing a case-study from mid-nineteenth century Britain concerning the debate about the transmissibility of puerperal fever. After showing how some specific virtues are put to work in this case, I will explain what is required in order to make a more general argument for the epistemic potential of the theoretical virtues. I then argue that putting the virtue-question on empirical grounds is enough to undermine the anti-realist position on underdetermination – regardless of whether, in fact, the virtues turn out to be epistemically potent or not. (shrink)

I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an epistemic decision theory, in a consequentialist spirit. Previous work has focused on cases in which the truth-values of the propositions in which the agent is selecting credences do not depend, either causally or merely evidentially, on the agent’s choice of credences. Relaxing that restriction leads to a proliferation of puzzle cases and theories to deal with them, including epistemic analogues of evidential (...) and causal decision theory, and of the Newcomb Problem and ‘Psychopath Button’ Problem. A variant of causal epistemic decision theory deals well with most cases. However, there is a recalcitrant class of problem cases for which no epistemic decision theory seems able to match our intuitive judgements of epistemic rationality. This lends both precision and credence to the view that there is a fundamental mismatch between epistemic consequentialism and the intuitive notion of epistemic rationality; the implications for understanding the latter are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Philosophers and metrologists have refuted the view that measurement’s epistemic privilege in scientific practice is explained by its theory-neutrality. Rather, they now explicitly appeal to the role that theories play in measurement. I formulate a challenge for this view: scientists sometimes ascribe epistemic privilege to measurements even if they lack a shared theory about their target quantity, which I illustrate through a case study from early geodesy. Drawing on that case, I argue that the (...) class='Hi'>epistemic privilege of measurement precedes shared background theory and is better explained by its pre-theoretic function in enabling a distinctive kind of inquiry. (shrink)

Van Fraassen explains rejections and asymmetries in science in terms of his contextual theory of explanation in the same way that scientists explain observable phenomena in the world in terms of scientific theories. I object that van Fraassen’s skeptical view regarding inference to the best explanation together with the English view of rationality jointly imply that the contextual theory is not rationally compelling, so van Fraassen and his epistemic colleagues can rationally disbelieve it. Prasetya replies that (...) the truth of the contextual theory coincides with its empirical adequacy, so the contextual theory is compelling. He also replies that the contextual theory is compelling, provided that van Fraassen’s argument for it instantiates a compelling subset of IBE. I argue that Prasetya’s replies either fail or help scientific realism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Background Theory of Delusion and Existential PhenomenologyRichard G. T. Gipps (bio) and John Rhodes (bio)KeywordsPhenomenology, psychological explanation, epistemology, schizophreniaSituating and Clarifying the PaperThe commentaries of Nassir Ghaemi and Giovanni Stanghellini help to sketch out the intellectual landscape of philosophical perspectives in psychiatry, and situate our paper within it. A happy convergence between the analytical philosophy perspective from which we were writing, and the existential–phenomenological paradigm described by (...) both authors, is the result. Stanghellini in particular carefully describes three main theories of existential deformations, tracing delusion formation back to either (i) a disturbance of meaning synthesis conceived as a dysfunction of a Husserlian consciousness, (ii) a disturbance of pre-reflective self-consciousness resulting in a kind of paralyzing hyperreflexivity, and (iii) (Stanghellini’s preferred model) a disturbance of embodiment. This final account views delusion as springing from a failure in the subject’s corporeal and praxical being-in-the-world. As the subject’s practical, pre-reflective grip on the world is loosened, so their minds become unconstrained by that understanding and practical rationality immanent within that grip, and thought, now unconstrained, starts to travel through delusional worlds. Stanghellini accordingly views our model as an example of a disembodiment theory, which allows it to overcome the disadvantages of the first two models, which may both, in their own ways, overvalue the rôle of (disturbances of) reflective consciousness in the formation (and delusional deformation) of everyday understanding.Being situated within a preexisting landscape has both its benefits and its disbenefits, the principle example of the latter being the potential assimilation of anything new to what has already been said. Thus, although we are grateful to our commentators for placing us on the larger historical and conceptual map, it may be helpful to briefly rehearse our motivations for drawing on the philosophical ideas of the Bedrock and Background in our theory of delusion. Our paper was primarily motivated by a concern that current, psychologically mainstream, cognitive models of delusion, although helpfully drawing our attention to common reasoning and perceptual deficits in the person with psychosis, fail to adequately account for what is delusional about delusions. It was, in [End Page 321] particular, to account for the certainty with which the deluded person clings to often quite extraordinary beliefs that we drew on the epistemological notion of the background. And although this epistemological notion fits quite neatly with ontological concerns regarding the embodied and praxical character of human existence, it is the particular epistemic rôle that it played in our theory—to do with the extraratiocinative constraint on judgement provided by the Background—that we wish to stress here.We return to this shortly, but first wish to comment briefly on two specific considerations raised by the commentaries. The first concerns Stanghellini’s claim that, for us, “when studying delusions, the focus should be on providing an adequate framework for understanding, rather than providing empirical hypotheses to be tested” (2008, 311–314). It seems to us, however, that both are equally important. What we wished to stress, however, was that empirical hypothesis testing may be led astray if it is not informed by an adequate framework for understanding. For example, most cognitive psychological experiments on delusions concern themselves with the individual’s ability to make appropriate guesses (e.g., regarding the color of beads in a bag), and their tendency to jump to conclusions; they do not concern themselves with the kinds of extraordinary conviction and certainty met with in delusion. The risk run by empirical researchers of cognitive factors in delusion is that a lack of a prior adequate theorization of delusion makes for accounts that are ultimately only of the formation, not of delusion in particular but rather of false or unusual beliefs more generally. An analytical approach, however, can help to explicate the ways in which the psychiatric concept of delusion fails to be adequately characterized by the quite general ‘external criteria’ of delusion (as Jaspers [1963] called them: falsity, stubbornness, uncommon), and aids in the construction of empirical hypotheses this time constrained by an understanding of the true ‘internal criteria’ of psychotic belief. Such an approach helps to spell out the... (shrink)

Two Experiments demonstrate the existence of a “collapse illusion”, in which reasoners evaluate Truthteller-type propositions (“I am telling the truth”) as if they were simply true, whereas Liar-type propositions (“I am lying”) tend to be evaluated as neither true nor false. The second Experiment also demonstrates an individual differences pattern, in which shallow reasoners are more susceptible to the illusion. The collapse illusion is congruent with philosophical semantic truth theories such as Kripke's (1975), and with hypothetical thinking theory's (...) principle of satisficing, but can only be partially accounted for by the model theory principle of truth. Pragmatic effects related to sentence cohesion further reinforce hypothetical thinking theory interpretation of the data, although the illusion and cohesion data could also be accounted for within a modified mental model theory. (shrink)

I argue that a attractive theory about the metaphysics of belief—the prag- matic, interpretationist theory endorsed by Stalnaker, Lewis, and Dennett, among others—implies that agents have a novel form of voluntary control over their beliefs. According to the pragmatic picture, what it is to have a given belief is in part for that belief to be part of an optimal rationalization of your actions. Since you have voluntary control over your actions, and what actions you perform in (...) part determines what beliefs you count as having, this theory entails that you have some voluntary control over your beliefs. However, the pragmatic picture doesn’t entail that you can believe something as a result of intention to believe it. Nevertheless, I argue that the limited sort of voluntary control implied by the pragmatic picture may be of use in vindicating the deontological conception of epistemic justification. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.1 (2004) 72-91 [Access article in PDF] Passing Theories through Topical Heuristics: Donald Davidson, Aristotle, and the Conditions of Discursive Competence Stephen R. Yarbrough Department of English The University of North Carolina at Greensboro What are the conditions of discursive competence? In "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" Donald Davidson explains how it is possible that in practice we can, with little effort, understand and appropriately (...) respond to linguistic anomalies such as the malapropism—anomalies because, by definition, the "language" cannot account for how we understand them. Such anomalies, Davidson concludes, are the exceptions that do not prove but refute the traditional rule that antecedent linguistic systems govern discursive meaning. If that is so, then meanings are not a property of a linguistic system and are not "governed by learned conventions or regularities" (1986, 436); therefore, learning and sharing such conventions, what we traditionally call "language," is not a necessary condition of successful communication. He shows this by arguing that two conditions must be met for successful interlocution and that meeting these sufficiently allows successful interlocution to take place. A third condition—that the interlocutors share a language, an organized set of learned conventions or regularities "learned in advance of occasions of interpretation" (436) for which phenomena such as malapropisms would be anomalous—is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of discursive competence.What I hope to show in this paper is that the two conditions Davidson argues interlocution must meet in order to succeed both involve the interlocutor's implicit knowledge of what since Aristotle the rhetorical tradition has called topical heuristics. Although Davidson himself seems unaware of it, his philosophy places invention in a new light, one that allows us to understand that the invention process is not merely a supplement to discourse, useful only for professional speakers and writers, but intrinsic to all intercourse, and that the topics are not merely formal but pragmatic relations that develop from the processes of our interactions with others and with objects of our common concern in a world we can come to share. [End Page 72] Inferential method Davidson argues that the first condition necessary for successful interlocution is that "the interpreter can learn the semantic role of each of a finite number of words or phrases and can learn the semantic consequences of a finite number of modes of expression" (1986, 437). "For this to be possible," says Davidson, "there must be systematic relations between the meanings of utterances" (436). Here he is not talking about grammatical systems but about systematic relations between and among the interlocutors' discursive actions and the world with its objects to which their actions refer. As I'll explain more fully shortly, these are topical relations. What makes these relations possible, Davidson argues, is that the interlocutors share, not a set of learned conventions, but a "recursive characterization of the truth conditions of all possible utterances of the speaker" (437).Such a theory of truth can be something like a Tarski truth definition, the explanation of which can be extremely convoluted (see Davidson 1984), but it boils down to saying that an utterance is true if the anticipations raised by a belief in an interpreted utterance are met by the consequences of believing the utterance; or, to put it another way, if the utterance is an answer to the question that solicited it or a solution to the problem to which it responds. Thus, an example of such a truth definition would be "The grass is green (an utterance made by someone, somewhere, somewhen, under certain conditions) is true if and only if the grass is green (to that person, at that place, at that time, under those conditions)." The force of a Tarski truth definition is that to understand what an utterance means is to understand the conditions that make it true (to the speaker). This, in turn, implies that in order for the interpreter to learn the semantic roles of the speaker's words and phrases and the semantic consequences of her modes of expression, the... (shrink)

The central ideas coming out of the so-called pragmatic turn in philosophy have set in motion what may be described as a pragmatic turn in normative political theory. It has become commonplace among political theorists to draw on theories of language and meaning in theorising democracy, pluralism, justice, etc. The aim of this paper is to explore attempts by political theorists to use theories of language and meaning for such normative purposes. Focusing on Wittgenstein's account, (...) it is argued that these attempts are unsuccessful. It is shown that pragmatically influenced political theorists draw faulty epistemological, ontological and semantic conclusions from Wittgenstein's view in their normative theorising, and it is argued that pragmatically influenced theories of language and meaning, however full of insight, cannot be put to substantial normative use in political theory. The general scope of the thesis is motivated by pointing to the general form of the argument and by moving beyond Wittgenstein to other philosophers of mind and language, illustrating how similar overextensions are made with regard to Robert Brandom's theory of language and meaning. (shrink)

Professor Pandit, working among the admirable group of philosophers at the University of Delhi, has written a fundamental criticism and a constructive re-interpretation of all that has been preserved as serious epistemological and methodological reflections on the sciences in modern Western philosoph- from the times of Galileo, Newton, Descartes and Leibniz to those of Russell and Wittgenstein, Carnap and Popper, and, we need hardly add, onward to the troubling relativisms and reconstructions of historical epistemologies in the works of Hanson, Kuhn, (...) Lakatos and Feyerabend. His themes are intrigu ing, set forth as they are with masterly case studies of physics and the life sciences, and within an original conceptual framework for philosophical analysis of the processes, functions, and structures of scientific knowing. Pandit's contributions deserve thoughtful examination. For our part, we wish to point to some among them: (1) an interactive articulation of subjective and objective factors of both problems and theories in the course of scientific development; (2) a striking contrast between the explanatory power of a scientific theory and its 'resolving power', i. e. (shrink)

In his long attempt to solve the vexing and diverse problems of formulating a critical social science of modern societies, Habermas has along the way borrowed from many and quite diverse theoretical and philosophical resources, including Anglo-American analytic philosophy of language, ethics and political philosophy. Initially, Habermas borrowed extensively from American Pragmatism, first Peirce’s philosophy of inquiry and then later from George Herbert Mead, whose thought his own enterprise most closely resembled. With his increasing concern with the rationality of communication (...) and action, Habermas turned to analytic theories of meaning, or more specifically, to speech act theory and its account of illocutionary force. As one part of a large research program in which various empirical disciplines could be appropriated for normative philosophical purposes, speech act theory and theories of meaning became crucial to reconstructing the competence and rationality that knowledgeable social agents manifest in their everyday activities and interactions. Taken together, these theories provided him with the means to formulate the master distinction on which his account of rationality and the theoretical edifice built upon it stands or falls: the deeply substantive and thus not merely analytic distinction between instrumental and communicative action on which a novel and distinctive theory of rationality could be based. (shrink)

Although logical empiricism is now mostly decried, their naturalist claim that the content of a theory can be read off from its structure, without any philosophical considerations needed, still supports traditional strategies to escape cases of underdetermination. The appeal to theoretical equivalence or to theoretical virtues, for instance, both assume that there is a neutral standpoint from which the structure of the theories can be analyzed, the physically relevant from the superfluous separated, and a comparison made between their (...) theoretical content and virtues. In my dissertation, I examine the presuppositions upon which such strategies depend. I argue that the methodological principle underlying them, according to which theories with no superfluous structure should be preferred, is unpractical, for what constitutes relevant structure is determined by epistemic considerations about the aim of scientific theories. In chapter 1, I analyze the claim that theories with ordinary bosons and fermions are theoretically equivalent to theories with exotic `paraparticles'. I argue that this claim does not do justice to the latter, as the proof is formulated in a vocabulary parochial to the former and thus favors one of the theory while giving an impoverished version of the second. In chapter 2, I examine recent arguments to the effects that any interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that can offer a no-go theorem against paraparticles possesses an explanatory advantage over other interpretations and should, as such, be favored over others. Given that most physicists consider paraparticles as surplus structure whose non-observation does not require an explanation, I evaluate arguments of both sides and suggest a third way to approach the question. Finally, in chapter 3, I turn my attention to methods for excluding another kind of unphysical structure, mathematical artifacts, from rival dark matter models. Simulations are our only window into what rival models predict about the universe’s structure. But for them to play a useful role in generating knowledge, we need to distinguish reliably between real predictions and artifacts. I argue that robustness analysis fails to fulfill this task. I propose in its place another methodology, that of crucial simulations. (shrink)

Epistemic expressivists maintain, to a first approximation, that epistemic assertions express non-cognitive mental states, like endorsements, valuations, or pro-attitudes, rather than cognitive mental states such as beliefs. Proponents of epistemic expressivism include Chrisman, Gibbard, Field, Kappel, and Ridge, among others. In this paper, I argue for an alternative view to epistemic expressivism. The view I seek to advocate is inspired by hybrid expressivist theories about moral judgments, Copp Oxford studies in metaethics, 2009), Finlay, Strandberg ). (...) According to these hybrid views, moral judgments express semantically cognitive or representational states and pragmatically convey the speaker’s non-cognitive mental states via implicatures. I will argue that a particular version of this view can reasonably be extended to epistemic judgments and that it has several advantages over its expressivist and cognitivist competitors. In particular, I will try to show that there exist certain phenomena in the epistemic domain that seem to be best accounted for by expressivist theories of epistemic judgments. However, a version of hybrid expressivism that maintains that epistemic judgments convey the attributor’s non-cognitive mental states via generalized conversational implicatures is able to account for these phenomena just as well without running afoul of the main problems that have been identified for different versions of epistemic expressivism. (shrink)

This volume includes original essays that examine the underexplored relationship between recognition theory and key developments in critical social epistemology. Its aims are to explore how far certain kinds of epistemic injustice, epistemic oppression, and types of ignorance can be understood as distorted varieties of recognition, and to determine whether contemporary work on epistemic injustice and critical social epistemology more generally has significant continuities with theories of recognition in the Frankfurt School tradition. Part I of (...) the book focuses on bringing recognition theory and critical social epistemology into direct conversation. Part II is devoted to analysing a range of case studies that are evocative of contemporary social struggles. The essays in this volume propose answers to a number of thought-provoking questions at the intersection of these two robust philosophical subfields, such as: How well can different types of epistemic injustice be understood as types of recognition abuses? How useful is it to approach different forms of social oppression as recognition injustices and/or as involving epistemic injustice? What limitations do we discover in either or both recognition theory and the ever-expanding literature on epistemic injustice when we put them into conversation with each other? How does the conjunction of these two accounts bear on specific domains, such as questions of silencing? Epistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Recognition promises to herald new directions for future research that will appeal to scholars and students working in critical social epistemology, social and political theory, Continental philosophy, and a wide range of critical social theories. (shrink)

This work has two major goals. The first is to reframe the problem of political authority from its Conservative framing to a Reformist framing. This change creates a new benchmark for the success of a theory. Rather than justifying a pre-existing intuition, a theory can be successful if it could establish political authority whenever the state itself or an individual’s relationship to it changes. This change also shifts the focus from the state’s right to rule to moral housekeeping. (...) In other words, the main goal is not to see when the state can use coercion against its citizens but rather to determine what political obligations citizens could have under different scenarios so that citizens can more accurately keep track of their moral reasons for action. The second major goal is to call into question epistemic theories of democratic authority through a critical examination of David Estlund’s theory of normative consent. Normative consent cannot establish political authority. Even granting that it could, normative consent would bind individuals to epistemic procedures rather than democratic procedures given that epistemic procedures better solve the moral problems that generate normative consent. However, this then raises worries from the public reason perspective that epistemic procedures would impose a procedure on some citizens which they could reject from a qualified position. To overcome this worry, it is shown that epistemic procedures based on reducing the power of the ignorant rather than raising the power of the experts are not open to such qualified rejection, and democratic procedures in the real world will do no better than a coin flip at selecting correct policies. In the end, one branch of epistemic conceptions of democratic authority are proven untenable. (shrink)

Beliefs based on pernicious ideology are widespread, and they often have harmful consequences. Attempts to solve the problems these beliefs cause could benefit from epistemological work on them, so it is heartening to see more epistemologists turning to study ideological beliefs. In this paper, I discuss one recent approach, radical epistemology, which has two aims: (1) offering structural explanations of epistemic justification and (2) putting these explanations to work in opposing ideology. While I share radical epistemologists’ opposition to pernicious (...) ideology, I argue that their position is untenable because it gives rise to a vicious circularity. Its core commitment maintains that theorists’ choice between competing epistemological theories should be guided by their moral and political commitments. These commitments themselves, however, are susceptible to reasonable disagreement and thus stand in need of defense. To defend them, radical epistemologists must employ the very theories those commitments are supposed to undergird. I call this _the problem of theory choice_ and conclude that radical epistemologists cannot solve it. But we shouldn’t despair: the time-honored tools of _non_-radical epistemology offer all we need to successfully theorize about and combat bad ideology. (shrink)

It is illegitimate to read any ontology about "race" off of biological theory or data. Indeed, the technical meaning of "genetic variation" is fluid, and there is no single theoretical agreed-upon criterion for defining and distinguishing populations (or groups or clusters) given a particular set of genetic variation data. Thus, by analyzing three formal senses of "genetic variation"—diversity, differentiation, and heterozygosity—we argue that the use of biological theory for making epistemic claims about "race" can only seem plausible (...) when it relies on the user’s own assumptions about race; the move from biological measures to claims about “race” inevitably amounts to a pernicious reification. We also excavate assumptions in the history of the technical discourse over the concept of "race" (e.g., Livingstone's and Dobzhansky's 1962 exchange, Edwards' 2003 response to Lewontin 1972, as well as contemporary discussions of cladistic "race", and "races" as clusters). We show that claims about the existence (or non-existence) of "race" are underdetermined by biological facts, methods, and theories. Biological theory does not force the concept of "race" upon us; our social discourse, social ontology, and social expectations do. We become prisoners of our abstractions at our own hands, and at our own expense. (shrink)

The articles included in this thesis centre on what can be called the normative basis of risk analysis. Since risk analyses are decision procedures, they should adhere to norms of rational decision-making, and this they do. Most risk analysis schemes are built on a notion of the decision theoretic maxim that the goal of every decision is to maximize expected utility. However, for some thirty years now this maxim has been called into question. The idea is not that it is (...) unreasonable in itself, but that the theoretical construct of which it is a consequence is in some way inappropriate. Idealizations of the theories are criticized for being too excessive. They do not properly cover cases where the decision maker has poor or, as it were, imprecise knowledge. These are situations where risks are not only about the consequences of the decision but also there are risks with the knowledge itself, epistemic risks. If it is important for a normative decision theory to be not only ideal as a theoretical construct, but to have, in addition, a prescriptive purpose, that theory should also be applicable to actual decision makers and to somehow deal with epistemic risks. The first two papers are about what kinds of decision theory there are, and how best to construe them. The first describes the differences between normative, descriptive and prescriptive decision theories. The second asks whether there is anything intrinsic to the theory that makes it normative or descriptive. Paper 3 asks on what grounds risk assessment is required to be separated from risk management in the risk analysis process. It is argued that the separation is there to ensure that epistemic values are held apart from non-epistemic values. The paper ends by arguing that, in efforts to improve risk management decision-making, it is more important to be explicit about scientific uncertainty than it is to separate sets of values. Paper 4 argues for a more complete decision-theoretic basis for risk analysis. The contrast here is with the bifurcated process of maximizing expected utility when sufficient knowledge is available and using the precautionary principle in cases where knowledge is more limited. Paper 5 investigates the notion of epistemic risk in detail. (shrink)

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality and hyperintensionality and their applications to the philosophy of mathematics. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality and hyperintensionality relate to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality and hyperintensionality; the types of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality; to the epistemic status of (...) large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal and hyperintensional profiles of the logic of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a hyperintensional mental state. Chapter 2 argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal cognitivism and modal expressivism. I also develop a novel topic-sensitive truthmaker semantics for dynamic epistemic logic, and develop a novel dynamic epistemic two-dimensional hyperintensional semantics. Chapter 3 provides an abstraction principle for epistemic (hyper-)intensions. Chapter 4 advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter 5 applies the fixed points of the modal μ-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). The fixed point operators in the modal μ-calculus are rendered hyperintensional, which yields the first hyperintensional construal of the modal μ-calculus in the literature and the first application of the calculus to the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent instead of the common knowledge of a group of agents. Chapter 6 advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's `criterial' identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter 7 provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapters 2 and 4 are availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. Chapters 8-12 provide cases demonstrating how the two-dimensional hyperintensions of hyperintensional, i.e. topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker, semantics, solve the access problem in the epistemology of mathematics. Chapter 8 examines the interaction between my hyperintensional semantics and the axioms of epistemic set theory, large cardinal axioms, the Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis, the modal axioms governing the modal profile of Ω-logic, Orey sentences such as the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis, and absolute decidability. These results yield inter alia the first hyperintensional Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis and hyperintensional epistemic set theories in the literature. Chapter 9 examines the modal and hyperintensional commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic hyperintensionality, epistemic utility theory, and the epistemology of abstraction. I countenance a hyperintensional semantics for novel epistemic abstractionist modalities. I suggest, too, that observational type theory can be applied to first-order abstraction principles in order to make first-order abstraction principles recursively enumerable, i.e. Turing machine computable, and that the truth of the first-order abstraction principle for hyperintensions is grounded in its being possibly recursively enumerable and the machine being physically implementable. Chapter 10 examines the philosophical significance of hyperintensional Ω-logic in set theory and discusses the hyperintensionality of metamathematics. Chapter 11 provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides a hyperintensional semantics. Chapter 12 avails of modal coalgebras to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of hyperintensional epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction between the interpretational and objective modalities and truthmakers thereof. This yields the first hyperintensional category theory in the literature. I invent a new mathematical trick in which first order structures are treated as categories, and Vopenka's principle can be satisfied because of the elementary embeddings between the categories and generate Vopenka cardinals while bypassing the category of Set in category theory. Chapter 13 examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. Chapter 14 examines, finally, the modal and hyperintensional semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualism is the theory that “knows” is a context sensitive expression. As a linguistic theory, epistemic contextualism is motivated by claims about the linguistic behavior of competent speakers. This chapter reviews evidence in experimental cognitive science for epistemic contextualism in linguistic behavior. This research demonstrates that although some observations that are consistent with epistemic contextualism can be confirmed in linguistic practices, these observations are also equally well explained both by psychological features that do (...) not provide support for contextualism and by rival theories that are inconsistent with contextualism. I conclude that the motivation for epistemic contextualism is underdetermined by existing experimental evidence, yielding little reason to accept it as an account of our actual linguistic practices. (shrink)

Current educational reforms concerning curricula and digitalization challenge educators to meet new demands for learning and schooling. What is common for current educational reforms is that they tend to emphasize competencies that are not related to the traditional subject-matters and reflect a stance which presents learning as a naturally reflective and collaborative act. It is often assumed that teachers are automatically ready to implement ideas of this kind in practice. In this study, we propose that teachers’ theories about knowledge, (...) knowing and learning, particularly their epistemic theories, may be related to how teachers approach these reforms which challenge their previous ways of working and how they perceive their wellbeing at work. To examine these matters, we explored the dynamic interrelations between teachers’ epistemic theories, conformity with the novel curricular and digital reforms, perceptions of the school leadership, work engagement and burnout. Participants were Finnish class teachers and subject-matter teachers. Both data sets were collected before the COVID-19 pandemic. For data analysis, we plotted correlation network figures. Results showed that if teachers’ epistemic theory was in harmony with the curricular or digital reforms, there is a positive association with work engagement and negative association with burnout. In sum, results of this provided a hint of the phenomenon suggesting that teachers’ epistemic theories may be a factor which buffers teachers to meet the current epistemic and developmental challenges of teachers’ profession, and furthermore, serve as grounds for a positive association for teachers to feel adequate and satisfied in their work. (shrink)

I argue that there are slurs that are distinctly derogatory insofar as they only derogate their target’s epistemic faculties or capacities qua group member. I call these slurs epistemic slurs. Given that slur theories should explain the derogatory nature of all slurs, any comprehensive slur theory should be able to explain the derogatory nature of the epistemic slurs. I argue, however, that two particular expressivist theories of slurs cannot explain their distinctive derogatory nature. The (...) epistemic slurs thus constitute a novel explanatory problem for these expressivist slur theories. Yet I argue that a semantic theory of slurs, combinatorial externalism, can explain the distinctive derogatory nature of the epistemic slurs in which case these slurs constitute a novel explanatory advantage for combinatorial externalism. Whether the epistemic slurs constitute a novel explanatory problem or advantage for any other slur theories remains to be seen. (shrink)

The connection between scientific knowledge and our empirical access to realityis not well explained within the structuralist approach to scientific theories. I arguethat this is due to the use of a semantics not rich enough from the philosophical pointof view. My proposal is to employ Sellars–Brandom's inferential semantics to understand how can scientific terms have empirical content, and Hintikka's game-theoretical semantics to analyse how can theories be empirically tested. The main conclusions are that scientific concepts gain their meaning (...) through `basic theories' grounded on `common sense’, and that scientific method usually allows the pragmatic verification and falsification of scientific theories. (shrink)

Patrick Stokes has argued that although many conspiracy theories are true, we should reject the policy of particularism (that is, the policy of investigating conspiracy theories if they are plausible and believing them if that is what the evidence suggests) and should instead adopt a policy of principled skepticism, subjecting conspiracy theories – or at least the kinds of theories that are generally derided as such – to much higher epistemic standards than their non-conspiratorial rivals, (...) and believing them only if they are proven up to the hilt. The reason is that although some conspiracy theories are true (or otherwise epistemically kosher) there is a widespread practice of conspiracy theorizing which leads to the social acceptance of conspiracy theories which (much like Lord Byron) are mad, bad and dangerous to ‘know’, leading to radically false beliefs about the natural and political worlds (for instance to Trump’s claim that Global Warming is a ‘Chinese Hoax’). Thus Stokes is a defender of the epistemic status quo in which the punditocracy routinely dismisses and sneers at ‘conspiracy theories’, simply because they are conspiracy theories, whilst admitting sotto voce that once in a blue moon there are some conspiracy theories that are true. It is just the he would prefer the epistemic policy of the punditocracy to be the policy of the populace at large. Stokes seems to be suggesting that although particularism looks like a sensible epistemic policy (and might indeed be the correct policy in an ideal world), if it were put into practice at the level of public debate it would give a specious air of plausibility to many false and dangerous conspiracy theories with pernicious social effects. I reply that the actual moral costs of conspiracy ‘skepticism’ (as it is currently practiced) exceed the likely costs of particularism, especially if it is informed by some sensible heuristics, ruling out some conspiracy theories as crazy and ruling in others as relatively sane. For the conspiracy ‘skepticism’ as currently practiced is highly selective, pouring scorn and contempt on conspiracy theories which threaten current elites whilst giving the conspiratorial concoctions of those elites something close to a free pass. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Redundancy, Utility, and Disquotation Limited Redundancy: A Dilemma Utility and Quine's Ladder A Variant Ladder and Dis‐That‐ISM Climbing the Ladder? Affirming a Lot of Sentences Needing the Truth Predicate? References.

There are three theories in the epistemology of modality that have received sustained attention over the past 20 years: conceivability-theory, counterfactual-theory, and deduction-theory. In this paper we argue that all three face what we call the problem of modal epistemic friction. One consequence of the problem is that for any of the three accounts to yield modal knowledge, the account must provide an epistemology of essence. We discuss an attempt to fend off the problem within (...) the context of the internalism versus externalism debate about epistemic justification. We then investigate the effects that the PMEF has on reductive and non-reductive theories of the relation between essence and modality. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a new approach to the foundation of mathematics: non-monotonic set theory. I present two completely different methods to develop set theories based on adaptive logics. For both theories there is a finitistic non-triviality proof and both theories contain (a subtle version of) the comprehension axiom schema. The first theory contains only a maximal selection of instances of the comprehension schema that do not lead to inconsistencies. The second allows for all (...) the instances, also the inconsistent ones, but restricts the conclusions one can draw from them in order to avoid triviality. The theories have enough expressive power to form a justification/explication for most of the established results of classical mathematics. They are therefore not limited by Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. This remarkable result is possible because of the non-recursive character of the final proofs of theorems of non-monotonic theories. I shall argue that, precisely because of the computational complexity of these final proofs, we cannot claim that non-monotonic theories are ideal foundations for mathematics. Nevertheless, thanks to their strength, first order language and the recursive dynamic (defeasible) proofs of theorems of the theory, the non-monotonic theories form (what I call) interesting pragmatic foundations. (shrink)

Advocates of the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics have long claimed that other interpretations needlessly invoke "new physics" to solve the measurement problem. Call the argument fashioned that gives voice to this claim the Redundancy Argument, or ’Redundancy’ for short. Originating right in Everett’s doctoral thesis, Redundancy has recently enjoyed much attention, having been advanced and developed by a number of commentators, as well as criticized by a few others.[1] Although versions of this argument can target collapse (...) theories of quantum mechanics, it is usually conceived with no-collapse "hidden variable" interpretations in mind, e.g., modal and Bohmian interpretations. In particular, the argument is an attack against theories committed to both realism about the quantum state and realism about entities – what Bell 1987 calls "beables" – that supplement this state. Particles, fields, value states, and more have been suggested as possible ontology to supplement the quantum state. Redundancy is the argument that this supplementation is methodologically otiose, the superfluous pomp that Newton scorned. (shrink)

In this doctoral thesis, I will argue that in his De motu (1721, ‘On motion’), Bishop George Berkeley (c.1684–1753) develops a pragmatist theory of causation regarding mechanical theories outlined previously with Newtonianism. I place chief emphasis on the importance of logic and mathematics in Berkeley’s scientific approach, on which the other levels of semantics, epistemology, and mechanics build up. On my rendering, Berkeley’s pragmatic method to conceive or mathematically imagine causation makes sense in terms of mechanical causes (...) or ‘mathematical hypotheses’. For the mechanist maintains the usefulness and truthfulness of causation by the following definition. Definition. A pragmatist theory of causation is one which holds that: 1 Causal terms are indispensable in scientific deliberation for their usefulness; they cannot be eliminated [contra reductionism]. 2 What a cause is is defined by one’s temporal deliberative practices, independent of a temporal structure that theories hold [contra structuralism]. 3 Causal laws (theories formulated in causal terms) are genuinely true, not fictitious, when one confirms and deduces them [contra instrumentalism]. By justifying this definition, I will object to three rival readings—reductionism, structuralism, and instrumentalism—to my reading of Berkeley as a pragmatist about causation. In particular, my pragmatist reading criticises the most popular instrumentalist reading because, according to the latter, talk of causal terms like forces can be false or merely fictitious inasmuch as one can hold the utility of theories in mechanical practices. The instrumentalist reading is then compatible with mathematical formalism, according to which it is not truth or meaning that counts as formal manipulation or game of meaningless symbols, thereby eschewing a platonist attitude towards mathematical objects. However, I rebut the formalistic instrumentalism from Berkeley’s logical and realist standpoint, maintaining the irreducibility of occult qualities that mathematical objects have in their formulation from hypotheses to propositions. Light shall be shed on the tenet I propose that law-propositions formulated in hypothetical, causal terms must be true, neither false nor fictitious, when we (1) frame, (2) confirm, and (3) express them to the extent of our discursive thinking (in three steps). [339 words]. (shrink)

Probability theory, epistemically interpreted, provides an excellent, if not the best available account of inductive reasoning. This is so because there are general and definite rules for the change of subjective probabilities through information or experience; induction and belief change are one and same topic, after all. The most basic of these rules is simply to conditionalize with respect to the information received; and there are similar and more general rules. 1 Hence, a fundamental reason for the epistemological success (...) of probability theory is that there at all exists a well-behaved concept of conditional probability. Still, people have, and have reasons for, various concerns over probability theory. One of these is my starting point: Intuitively, we have the notion of plain belief; we believe propositions2 to be true (or to be false or neither). Probability theory, however, offers no formal counterpart to this notion. Believing A is not the same as having probability 1 for A, because probability 1 is incorrigible3; but plain belief is clearly corrigible. And believing A is not the same as giving A a probability larger than some 1 - c, because believing A and believing B is usually taken to be equivalent to believing A & B.4 Thus, it seems that the formal representation of plain belief has to take a non-probabilistic route. Indeed, representing plain belief seems easy enough: simply represent an epistemic state by the set of all propositions believed true in it or, since I make the common assumption that plain belief is deductively closed, by the conjunction of all propositions believed true in it. But this does not yet provide a theory of induction, i.e. an answer to the question how epistemic states so represented are changed tbrough information or experience. There is a convincing partial answer: if the new information is compatible with the old epistemic state, then the new epistemic state is simply represented by the conjunction of the new information and the old beliefs. This answer is partial because it does not cover the quite common case where the new information is incompatible with the old beliefs. It is, however, important to complete the answer and to cover this case, too; otherwise, we would not represent plain belief as conigible. The crucial problem is that there is no good completion. When epistemic states are represented simply by the conjunction of all propositions believed true in it, the answer cannot be completed; and though there is a lot of fruitful work, no other representation of epistemic states has been proposed, as far as I know, which provides a complete solution to this problem. In this paper, I want to suggest such a solution. In [4], I have more fully argued that this is the only solution, if certain plausible desiderata are to be satisfied. Here, in section 2, I will be content with formally defining and intuitively explaining my proposal. I will compare my proposal with probability theory in section 3. It will turn out that the theory I am proposing is structurally homomorphic to probability theory in important respects and that it is thus equally easily implementable, but moreover computationally simpler. Section 4 contains a very brief comparison with various kinds of logics, in particular conditional logic, with Shackle's functions of potential surprise and related theories, and with the Dempster - Shafer theory of belief functions. (shrink)

It is a widely shared view among philosophers of science that the theory-dependence (or theory-ladenness) of observations is worrying, because it can bias empirical tests in favour of the tested theories. These doubts are taken to be dispelled if an observation is influenced by a theory independent of the tested theory and thus circularity is avoided, while (partially) circular tests are taken to require special attention. Contrary to this consensus, it is argued that the (...) class='Hi'>epistemic value of theory-dependent tests has nothing to do with the circularity or non-circularity of the test, but is instead based on the minimal empiricality and reliability of observations. Since theory-dependence does not in general prevent observations fulfilling these requirements, it should not be regarded as a phenomenon that is basically detrimental, but as neutral with respect to successful scientific knowledge gathering. (shrink)