This study takes inquiry as the starting point for epistemological theorising. It uses this idea to develop new and systematic answers to some of the most fundamental questions in epistemology, including about the nature of core epistemic phenomena as well as their value and the extent to which we possess them.

The paper provides a systematic overview of recent debates in epistemology and philosophy of science on the nature of understanding. We explain why philosophers have turned their attention to understanding and discuss conditions for “explanatory” understanding of why something is the case and for “objectual” understanding of a whole subject matter. The most debated conditions for these types of understanding roughly resemble the three traditional conditions for knowledge: truth, justification and belief. We discuss prominent views about how to construe these (...) conditions for understanding, whether understanding indeed requires conditions of all three types and whether additional conditions are needed. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel, bifocal account of trustworthiness according to which both trustworthinesssimpliciter(as in ‘Ann is trustworthy’) and trustworthiness tophi(as in ‘Ann is trustworthy when it comes to keeping your secrets’) are analysed in terms of dispositions to fulfil one's obligations. We also offer a systematic account of the relation between the two types of trustworthiness, an account of degrees of trustworthiness and comparative trustworthiness, as well as a view of permissible trustworthiness attribution.

In science and philosophy, a relatively demanding notion of understanding is of central interest: an epistemic subject understands a subject matter by means of a theory. This notion can be explicated in a way which resembles JTB analyses of knowledge. The explication requires that the theory answers to the facts, that the subject grasps the theory, that she is committed to the theory and that the theory is justified for her. In this paper, we focus on the justification condition and (...) argue that it can be analyzed with reference to the idea of a reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

According to virtue epistemology, knowledge involves cognitive success that is due to cognitive competence. This paper explores the prospects of a virtue theory of knowledge that, so far, has no takers in the literature. It combines features from a couple of different virtue theories: like Pritchard's [forthcoming; et al. 2010] view, it qualifies as what I call an ‘impure’ version of virtue epistemology, according to which the competence condition is supplemented by an additional condition; like Sosa's 2007, 2010 view, it (...) construes the ‘because’ relation at issue in the competence condition in terms of competence manifestation. I argue that this virtue epistemology can steer clear of a number of old and new problems that arise for its rivals on both sides. (shrink)

Forms and Concepts is the first comprehensive study of the central role of concepts and concept acquisition in the Platonic tradition. It sets up a stimulating dialogue between Plato s innatist approach and Aristotle s much more empirical response. The primary aim is to analyze and assess the strategies with which Platonists responded to Aristotle s (and Alexander of Aphrodisias ) rival theory. The monograph culminates in a careful reconstruction of the elaborate attempt undertaken by the Neoplatonist Proclus (6th century (...) AD) to devise a systematic Platonic theory of concept acquisition.". (shrink)

The article outlines a general epistemological theory of argument: a theory that regards providingjustified belief as the principal aim of argumentation, and defends it instrumentalistically. After introducing some central terms of such a theory (2), answers to its central questions are proposed: the primary object and structure of the theory (3), the function of arguments, which is to lead to justified belief (4), the way such arguments function, which is to guide the addressee's cognizing (5), objective versus subjective aspects of (...) argumentation (6), designing different types of argument (7). Then the notion of '(argumentatively) valid argument' is defined and criteria for the adequate use of such arguments are introduced (8). Finally, this conception is justified as, among others, leading to more true beliefs than competing conceptions (9). (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to develop a novel virtue reliabilist account of justified belief, which incorporates insights from both process reliabilism and extant versions of virtue reliabilism. Like extant virtue reliabilist accounts of justi- fied belief, the proposed view takes it that justified belief is a kind of competent performance and that competent performances require reliable agent abilities. However, unlike extant versions of virtue reliabilism, the view takes abilities to essentially involve reliable processes. In this way, the proposed takes (...) a leaf from process reliabilism. Finally, I will provide reason to believe that the view compares favourably with both extant versions of virtue reliabilism and process reliabilism. In particular, I will show that in taking abilities to essentially involve reliable processes, the view has an edge over extant versions of virtue reliabilism. Moreover, I will argue that the proposed view can either solve or defuse a number of classical problems of process reliabilism, including the new evil demon problem, the problem of clairvoyant cases and the generality problem. (shrink)

Arguments for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity are weakened by the lack of an unambiguous definition of complexity. Such definitions abound for both dynamical systems and biological organisms, but have drawbacks of either a conceptual or a practical nature. Physical complexity, a measure based on automata theory and information theory, is a simple and intuitive measure of the amount of information that an organism stores, in its genome, about the environment in which it evolves. It is (...) argued that physical complexity must increase in molecular evolution of asexual organisms in a single niche if the environment does not change, due to natural selection. It is possible that complexity decreases in co‐evolving systems as well as at high mutation rates, in sexual populations, and in time‐dependent landscapes. However, it is reasoned that these factors usually help, rather than hinder, the evolution of complexity, and that a theory of physical complexity for co‐evolving species will reveal an overall trend towards higher complexity in biological evolution. BioEssays 24:1085–1094, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Many traditional conceptions of ethics use categories and arguments that have been developed under conditions of pre-modern societies and are not useful in the age of globalisation anymore. I argue that we need an economic ethics which employs economics as a key theoretical resource and which focuses on institutions for implementing moral norms. This conception is then elaborated further in the area of business ethics. It is illustrated in the case for banning child labour.

At the centre of Arthur Prior’s ‘Thank goodness’ argument for the A-theory of time is a particular form of relief. Time must objectively pass, Prior argues, or else the relief felt when a painful experience has ended is not intelligible. In this paper, I offer a detailed analysis of the type of relief at issue in this argument, which I call temporal relief, and distinguish it from another form of relief, which I refer to as counterfactual relief. I also argue (...) that existing discussions of the ‘Thank goodness’ argument—including Prior’s own—fail to give a satisfactory account of temporal relief, and that it needs to be seen as an emotion linked to the ability to engage in fairly sophisticated forms of planning. I also suggest that this has an impact on Prior’s claim that the idea of points in time plays no fundamental role in the semantic analysis of tenses. (shrink)

This paper considers challenges resulting from the use of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). We argue that these challenges should be considered through the lens of value alignment. Instead of discussing why specific goals and values, such as fairness and nondiscrimination, ought to be implemented, we consider the question of how AAJI can be aligned with goals and values more generally, in order to be reliably integrated into legal and judicial systems. This value alignment framing draws on AI safety and (...) alignment literature to introduce two otherwise neglected considerations for AAJI safety: specification and assurance. We outline diverse research directions and suggest the adoption of assurance and specification mechanisms as the use of AI in the judiciary progresses. While we focus on specification and assurance to illustrate the value of the AI safety and alignment literature, we encourage researchers in law and philosophy to consider what other lessons may be drawn. (shrink)

Logik ist ein unveranderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1873. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernahrung, Medizin und weiteren Genres.Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur.Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitaten erhaltlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bucher neu und tragt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch fur die Zukunft bei.".

This article outlines an epistemological perspective to understand the organism as a temporally changing whole. To analyze the mental faculties involved, the organism’s development and persisting existence is differentiated into four interdependent aspects: descent, future existence, persistent species, and environmentally adapted physical appearance. It is outlined that these aspects are recognized by comparative memory, concept-guided anticipation, conceptual thinking, and sensory perception, respectively. Furthermore, it is pointed out that these aspects correspond to the famous four Aristotelian “causes” or principles of explanation. (...) The descent of an organism corresponds to Aristotle’s efficient principle (“where does it come from?”), its future existence to the final principle (“what is if for?”), its physical structure to the material principle (“out of what is it?”) and its persistent species to the formal principle (“what is it?”). Aristotle regarded the unity of the efficient, formal and final principle as the ontological cause of the organism and called it the “soul” (psyche), while the material principle can be understood to represent its “body” (soma). I suggest that Aristotle’s “soul” corresponds to three of the four mental faculties required for cognition of a self-maintaining organism. I argue that in a Kantian perspective, the Aristotelian “soul” represents the condition for recognizing an organism at all. Therefore, the Aristotelian principle of life becomes intelligible and even empirically observable through the inner sense. In summary, I suggest that the four aspects of the organism described here can be viewed as the general, epistemological and ontological principle of the organism, the Bio-Logos. (shrink)

The paper develops a classificatory system of basic argument types on the basis of the epis-temological approach to argumentation. This approach has provided strict rules for several kinds of argu-ments. These kinds may be brought into a system of basic irreducible types, which rely on different parts of epistemology: deductive logic, probability theory, utility theory. The system reduces a huge mass of differ-ent argument schemes to basic types and gives them an epistemological foundation.

In the literature on episodic memory, one claim that has been made by a number of psychologists, and that is also at least implicit in some of the accounts given by philosophers, is that being able to recollect particular past events in the distinctive way afforded by episodic memory requires the possession of aspects of a theory of mind, such as a grasp of the relationship between one’s present recollective experience and one’s own past perceptual experience of the remembered event. (...) In this paper, I re-examine what connection, if any, there is between episodic memory and theory of mind. I first criticize the dominant way in which this connection has been construed theoretically, which – perhaps influenced by other aspects of theory of mind research – has sought to link the possession of episodic memory primarily with a grasp of the idea of representation, or the idea of informational access. I then argue for a novel, alternative, way of connecting episodic memory and theory of mind, which focuses on the category of an experience, and on the role a grasp of that category might be seen to play in episodic recollection. In doing so, I also draw attention to a dimension of our understanding of the mental which remains as yet underexplored in the literature on theory of mind. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Untersuchung verfolgt zwei Ziele: erstens die systematische Rekonstruktion der Grundstruktur von Hegels Erkenntnistheorie und Philosophy of Mind auf der Grundlage der Schriften des 'reifen' Systems, insbesondere der Wissenschaft der Logik und der Enzyklopadie. Zweitens die Eroffnung eines wechselseitig fruchtbaren Dialogs zwischen Hegel und der gegenwartigen analytischen Philosophie in den Debatten um Realismus / Antirealismus, Wahrheitstheorie, Externalismus / Internalismus und um die Struktur kognitiver Systeme. Inhaltlich wird der Nachweis gefuhrt, dass im Zentrum von Hegels Philosophy of Mind eine holistische, (...) anti-modulare Theorie des Geistes, im Zentrum seiner Erkenntnistheorie ein anti-skeptischer, anti-reprasentationalistischer, direkter Realismus steht. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the temporal content of perceptual experience. It argues that we must recognize the existence of temporal perceptions, i.e., perceptions the content of which cannot be spelled out simply by looking at what is the case at an isolated instant. Acts of apprehension can cover a succession of events. However, a subject who has such perceptions can fall short of having a concept of time. Similar arguments have been put forward to show that a subject who (...) has spatial perceptions can fall short of having a concept of space. In both cases, it is the fact that perception is from a point of view which stands in the way of it constituting an exercise of a concept of how things are objectively. However, the paper also shows that the way in which perception is perspectival takes a different form in each of the two cases. (shrink)

I distinguish between empiricist and rationalist approaches to the idea of the flow of time. The former trace back the idea of the flow of time to the deliverances of our sensory or introspective capacities. According to the latter, the idea of the flow of time is integral to what it is to have a conscious point of view in the first place. I discuss some aspects of what I take to be Ismael’s version of a rationalist approach, which focuses (...) on the point of view of an agent. In particular, I raise some questions as to whether Ismael’s account does succeed in reconstructing the common-sense idea of the flow of time in the sense of Becoming, and where her account leaves us with respect to the ‘two times’ problem regarding the relationship between everyday thought about time and the scientific view of time. (shrink)

Young children learn to make sense of the world through mimetic processes. These processes are focused to begin with on their parents, brothers and sisters and people they know well. Young children want to become like these persons. They are driven by the desire to become like them, which will mean that they belong and are part of them and their world. Young children, and indeed humans in general are social beings. They, more than all non-human primates, are social beings (...) who cannot survive without the Other. In mimetic processes the outside world becomes the inner world and the inner world becomes the outside world. The imaginary is developed and the imaginary develops ways of relating to the outside world. In a mimetic loop, this in turn affects the inner world of the imaginary. These processes are sensory and governed by desire. All the senses are involved which means that the imaginary has multiple layers. Since there is an intermingling of images, emotions and language, these processes are rooted in the body and at the same time transcend the body as they become part of the imaginary. Human beings create images of themselves in all cultures and historical periods. They need these images to understand themselves and their relationship to other human beings and to develop social relations and communities. Images of the human being are designs and projections of the human being and his or her relationship to other people and to the world. They are formed to visualize representations of individuals or aspects of them. They arise when we communicate about ourselves. They support us to live with diversities and to develop similarities and feelings of belonging with other people. They are the result of complex anthropological processes, in which social and cultural power structures play an important role. (shrink)

: This article analyzes German debates on the microbiology of infectious diseases from 1865 to 1875 and asks how and when organic pollution in tissues became noteworthy for aetiology and pathogenesis. It was with Ernst Hallier's pleomorphistic microbiology that the organic character of alien material in tissues came to be regarded as important for pathology. The process that followed saw both vigorous biological critique and a number of medical applications of Hallier's work. Around 1874 contemporaries reached the conclusion that pleomorphous (...) vegetation was most likely of little importance if not accidental in relation to the aetiology of infectious diseases whereas the idea of monomorphous micro-organisms facilitated a causal explanation. It was only then that notions such a pure cultures, bacterial specificity, etc. favored by Ferdinand Julius Cohn and his school became popular in medical circles. (shrink)

Igor Douven has recently developed a challenge for accounts of justification according to which beliefs about lottery losers are never justified. This article argues that champions of such accounts can rise to Douven's challenge and, what's more, that they can turn Douven's argument around in the sense that they can legitimately take it to provide a vindication of their preferred view.

Pascal‘s wager is expounded as a paradigm case of a practical,decision-theoretical argument for acting as if a proposition is true when wehave no theoretical reasons to accept or reject it (1.1.–1.2.). Thoughthe paradigm is fallacious in various respects there are valid and adequatearguments for acting as if certain propositions are true: that theoreticalentities exist, that there are material perceptual objects, that the worldis uniform across time (1.3). After this analysis of examples the author‘sgeneral approach for developing criteria for the validity (...) and adequacy oftypes of argument (2.1.) is applied: Having discussed some problems(2.2.–2.3.), a general epistemic principle for such ’pascal arguments‘is developed, which characterizes their premisses and, if introduced as anadditional premiss, can make them deductively valid (2.4). (shrink)

Upon entering clinical medicine in the 1940s, antibiotic therapy seemed to complete a transformation of hospitals that originated in the late nineteenth century. Former death sinks had become harbingers of therapeutic progress. Yet this triumph was short-lived. The arrival of pathologies caused by resistant bacteria, and of nosocomial infections whose spread was helped by antibiotic therapies, seemed to be intimately related to modern anti-infective therapy. The place where such problems culminated were hospitals, which increasingly appeared as dangerous environments where attempts (...) to combat infectious diseases had instead created hothouses of disease evolution. This paper will focus on one aspect of that history. It caused clinical medicine and hospital hygiene in particular to pay attention to a dimension of infectious disease it had previously paid little attention to thus far: The evolution of infectious disease—previously a matter of mostly theoretical interest—came to be useful in explaining many phenomena observed. This did not turn hospital hygienists into geneticists, though it did give them an awareness that the evolution of infectious disease in a broad sense was something that did matter to them. The paper advances its argument by looking at three phases: The growing awareness of the hospital as a dangerous environment in the 1950s, comprehensive attempts at improving antibiotic therapy and hospital hygiene that followed from the 1960s and lastly the framing of such challenges as risk factors from the 1970s. In conclusion, I will argue that hospital hygiene, being inspired in particular by epidemiology and risk factor analysis, discussed its own specific version of disease emergence and therefore contributed to the 1980s debates around such topics. Being loosely connected to more specialized studies, it consisted of a re-interpretation of infectious disease centred around the temporality of such phenomena as they were encountered in day-to-day dealings of clinical wards. (shrink)

Fiction and truth : ancient stories about Pythagoras -- In search of the historical Pythagoras -- The Pythagorean secret society -- Thinkers influenced by Pythagoras and his pupils.

Is speaker knowledge necessary or sufficient for enabling hearers to know from testimony? Here, we offer a novel argument for the answer no, based on the systematic effects of partial belief and the hearer’s view prior to hearing testimony. Modelling partial belief by credence, we show that a requirement entailed by the principles of necessity and sufficiency apparent in the literature is inconsistent with Bayesian updating. Consequently, even when the other grounds of knowledge are in place, the audience correctly updating (...) their partial belief can block the transmission of speaker knowledge, so it need not be sufficient. Nor need speaker knowledge be necessary, because the hearer correctly updating their partial belief can put them in the position to know even though no one in the speaker’s chain knows. We articulate the correct principles of testimonial knowledge transmission. The first supports a shared-credit view of transmission. The second gives a novel and systematic argument for testimony sometimes being a generative (not transmissive) source of knowledge, an argument that makes Lackey’s statement account of testimony otiose. Finally, on at least one account of causation, the two amended principles together show how speaker knowledge can be a cause whose effect is hearer’s knowledge. (shrink)

Epistemic democracy aims to show, often by appeal to the Condorcet Jury Theorem, that democracy has a high chance of reaching correct decisions. It has been argued that epistemic democracy is compatible with various metaethical accounts, such as moral realism, conventionalism and majoritarianism. This paper casts doubt on that thesis and reveals the following metaethical dilemma: if we adopt moral realism, it is doubtful that voters are, on average, more than 0.5 likely to track moral facts and identify the correct (...) alternative. By contrast, if we adopt conventionalism or majoritarianism, we cannot expect that voters are both competent and sincere. Either way, the conditions for the application of Condorcet’s theorem are not met. (shrink)

Robots have been introduced into our society, but their social role is still unclear. A critical issue is whether the robot’s exhibition of intelligent behaviour leads to the users’ perception of the robot as being a social actor, similar to the way in which people treat computers and media as social actors. The first experiment mimicked Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment, but on a robot. The participants were asked to administer electric shocks to a robot, and the results show that people (...) have fewer concerns about abusing robots than about abusing other people. We refined the methodology for the second experiment by intensifying the social dilemma of the users. The participants were asked to kill the robot. In this experiment, the intelligence of the robot and the gender of the participants were the independent variables, and the users’ destructive behaviour towards the robot the dependent variable. Several practical and methodological problems compromised the acquired data, but we can conclude that the robot’s intelligence had a significant influence on the users’ destructive behaviour. We discuss the encountered problems and suggest improvements. We also speculate on whether the users’ perception of the robot as being “sort of alive” may have influenced the participants’ abusive behaviour. (shrink)

This systematic literature review contributes to the increasing interest regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in family firms—a research field that has developed considerably in the last few years. It now provides the opportunity to take a holistic view on the relationship dynamics—i.e., drivers, activities, outcomes, and contextual influences—of family firms with CSR, thus enabling a more coherent organization of current research and a sounder understanding of the phenomenon. To conceptualize the research field, we analyzed 122 peer-reviewed articles published in highly (...) ranked journals identifying the main issues examined. The results clearly show a lack of research regarding CSR outcomes in family firms. Although considered increasingly crucial in family firm research, a study investigating family outcomes (e.g., family community status, family emotional well-being), as opposed to firm outcomes, is missing. This literature review outlines the current state of research and contributes to the actual debate on CSR in family firms by discussing how family firms can use CSR activities as strategic management tools. Moreover, our analysis shows a black box indicating how CSR links different antecedents and outcomes. The black box is significant since firms generally need to know where to allocate their scarce resources to generate the best outcomes. We identify nine research questions based on these findings, which we hope will inspire future research. (shrink)

Humans’ attitudes towards an event often vary depending on whether the event has already happened or has yet to take place. The dread felt at the thought of a forthcoming examination turns into relief once it is over. People also value past events less than future ones – offering less pay for work already carried out than for the same work to be carried out in the future, as recent research in psychology shows. This volume brings together philosophers and psychologists (...) with a shared interest in such psychological past/future asymmetries. It asks questions such as: What different kinds of psychological past/future asymmetries are there, and how are they related? Under what conditions do humans exhibit them? To what extent do they reflect features of time itself, or particular beliefs people have about time? Are they rational, or at least rationally permissible, or should we aspire to being temporally neutral? What exactly does temporal neutrality consist in? (shrink)

A semantic embedding of quantified conditional logic in classical higher-order logic is utilized for reducing cut-elimination in the former logic to existing results for the latter logic. The presented embedding approach is adaptable to a wide range of other logics, for many of which cut-elimination is still open. However, special attention has to be payed to cut-simulation, which may render cut-elimination as a pointless criterion.

Practical arguments for actions are arguments which, besides their epistemic function, shall motivate an addressee to execute the justified action. First, a strategy is developed how this motivational and other requirements can be met. Part of this strategy is to identify a thesis for which holds that believing it motivates in the required manner. Second, relying on empirical decision theory, such a thesis is identified. Finally, precise validity criteria for the respective arguments are developed.

In this paper, I introduce a puzzle about moral assertion and defend a solution that centrally features the claim that the normativity of moral assertion centrally features moral understanding.

As Next Generation Sequencing technologies are increasingly implemented in biomedical research and care, the number of study participants and patients who ask for release of their genomic raw data is set to increase. This raises the question whether research participants and patients have a legal and moral right to receive their genomic raw data and, if so, how this right should be implemented into practice. In a first step we clarify some central concepts such as “raw data”; in a second (...) step we sketch the international legal framework. The third step provides an extensive ethical analysis which comprehends two parts: an evaluation of whether there is a prima facie moral right to receive one’s raw data, and a contextualization and discussion of the right in light of potentially conflicting interests and rights of the data subject herself and third parties; in a last fourth step we emphasize the main practical consequences of the ethical analyses and propose recommendations for the release of raw data. In several legislations like the new European General Data Protection Regulation, patients do in principle have the right to receive their raw data. However, the procedural implementation of this right and whether it involves genetic counselling is at the discretion of the Member States. Even more questions remain with respect to the research context. The ethical analysis suggests that patients and research subjects have a moral right to receive their genomic raw data and addresses aspects which are also of relevance for the legal discussion such as the costs of release of raw data and its impact on academic freedom. Taking into account the specific nature and implications of genomic raw data and the contexts of research and health care, several concerns and potentially conflicting interests of the data subjects themselves and involved researchers, physicians, biomedical institutions and relatives arise. Instead of using them to argue in favor of restrictions of the data subjects’ legal and moral right to genomic raw data, the concerns should be addressed through provision of information and other measures. To this end, we propose relevant recommendations. (shrink)