Cappelen proposes a radically externalist framework for conceptual engineering. This approach embraces the following two theses. Firstly, the mechanisms that underlie conceptual engineering are inscrutable: they are too complex, unstable and non-systematic for us to grasp. Secondly, the process of conceptual engineering is largely beyond our control. One might think that these two theses are peculiar to the Austerity Framework, or to metasemantic externalism more generally. However, Cappelen argues that there is no reason to think that internalism avoids either commitment. (...) Cappelen argues that to do so she must provide arguments for 3 claims: there are inner states that are scrutable and within our control; concepts supervene on these inner states; and the determination relation from supervenience base to content is itself scrutable and within our control. In this paper, I argue that internalist conceptual role theories of content can meet Cappelen’s challenge. (shrink)

Transcendental arguments offer a particularlypowerful strategy for combating skepticism. Such arguments, after all, attempt to show thata particular skepticism is not simply mistakenbut inconsistent or self-refuting. Whilethus tempting to philosophers struggling withskepticism of various sorts, the boldconclusions of these arguments have longrendered them suspicious in the eyes of many. In fact, in a famous paper from 1968 BarryStroud develops what is often taken to be adecisive case against transcendental argumentsin general.Recent work in the area of practical reason,however, suggests that such (...) arguments stillhave their defenders. Theorists such as JamesDreier and Christine Korsgaard have reliedexplicitly on transcendental arguments tojustify certain principles of practical reason. Can such arguments overcome Stroud's objection? In what follows, I argue that they can. However effective Stroud's general criticismmay be in other areas, it does not apply in therealm of practical reason. Nevertheless, thereare strict limits on how far transcendentalarguments can take us. In particular, despiteKorsgaard's efforts, they cannot succeed inestablishing a rational foundation formorality. (shrink)

Many ameliorative projects aim at moral goods such as social equality. For example, the amelioration of the concept MARRIAGE forms part of efforts to achieve equal rights for the LGBT+ community. What does implementation of such an ameliorated concept consist in? In this paper, I argue that, for some ameliorated concepts, successful implementation requires that individuals eschew semantic deference, at least with respect to relevant dimensions of the concept. My argument appeals to consideration of the aims of conceptual engineers engaged (...) in this type of ameliorative project: they seek conceptual change in order to contribute to the dismantling of oppressive social structures, institutions, and systems of belief. I argue that, for such aims to be achieved, it must be the case that individuals who come to endorse the concept do so for the right reasons---because they have gained an understanding of why the ameliorated concept is morally preferable to its ancestor. Once they have acquired such reasons, however, they are no longer correctly described as semantically deferential; they will treat moral reasons to employ the concept as overriding of semantic considerations. (shrink)

Social externalism must allow that subjects can misunderstand the content of their own thoughts. I argue that we can exploit this commitment to create a dilemma for the view’s account of communication. To arrive at the first horn of the dilemma, I argue that, on social externalism, it is understanding which is the measure of communicative success. This would be a highly revisionary account of communication. The only way that the social externalist can salvage the claim that mental content is (...) central to explaining communicative success is by adopting an account which gives unacceptable diagnoses as to the success of communicative exchanges. This is the second horn of the dilemma. Contrastingly, certain internalist views of content, which deny that subjects share thought content, do not face the dilemma. I argue that, as such, we should prefer accounts of communication which deny that subjects speak the same language. (shrink)

How much linguistic understanding is required for testimonial knowledge acquisition? One answer is that, so long as we grasp the content expressed by the speaker, it does not matter if our understanding of it is poor. Call this the ‘Liberal View’ of testimony. This approach looks especially promising when combined with the thesis that we share a public language that makes it easy to grasp the right content. In this paper, I argue that this picture is epistemically problematic. Poor linguistic (...) understanding undermines our ability to recognise evidence and counterevidence for the testimonial content. Because of this, in many cases in which a hearer’s understanding is poor, her resultant testimonial belief will lack sufficient warrant to qualify as knowledge. Given that we often do not possess a sufficiently good understanding of the testimony we consume, I argue that we acquire far less knowledge through testimony than the Liberal View suggests. (shrink)

Most work in the epistemology of testimony is built upon a simple model of communication according to which, when the speaker asserts that p, the hearer must recover this very content, p. In this paper, I argue that this ‘Content Preservation Model’ of communication cannot bear the weight placed on it by contemporary work on testimony. It is popularly thought that testimonial exchanges are often successful such that we gain a great deal of knowledge through testimony. In addition, the testimonial (...) knowledge so gained is thought to be informative: it closes off epistemic possibilities for the agent. However, in the literature on truth-conditional content, there is no theory of content that can underpin both of these commitments simultaneously if the Content Preservation Model is true. There is a minimal notion of content, which is commonly preserved in communication, but which is typically uninformative; there is a maximal notion of content, which is often informative, but which is not often preserved in communication; and, although there are moderate positions between these two extremes, these views cannot strike the right balance between informativeness and shareability. Thus, an epistemology of testimony that endorses the Content Preservation Model faces a dilemma: on the first horn, testimonial exchanges are rarely successful; on the second horn, testimonial content is rarely informative. I suggest that this dilemma motivates further exploration of alternative communicative foundations for the epistemology of testimony. (shrink)

This study investigates the significant relationship between procrastination and academic burnout among first-year college students. Employing correlational design and standardized tests, the statistical analysis reveals that the r coefficient of 0.33 indicates a low positive correlation between the variables. The p-value of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between procrastination and academic burnout among college students.

Holistic views of content claim that we each speak and think in distinct and idiosyncratic idiolects: although we may often entertain thoughts with similar contents, the content of our thoughts can...

This essay argues that martial arts, especially Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), mediate the divine attributes of beauty, goodness, and truth just as much as the fine arts. Some may question the compatibility of martial arts with Christianity. Yet, according to the just war doctrine, fighting is permissible when defending oneself and others. Furthermore, instead of doing nothing about evil or injustice (pacifism) and escalating to violent killing, jiu-jitsu as a distinctive martial arts presents the creative alternative of nonviolence. The essay considers (...) various ways in which martial arts point to God through the analogy of being and the Tao. Jiu-jitsu resonates with Christian notions of perichoresis, self-awareness, rightness, flow, mystery, theosis, and epektasis. BJJ is beautiful in how it inspires existential wonder at the unique and particular gifts of the other. It searches for truth pragmatically and ethically, in a quest for combat effectiveness and social sustainability. Jiu-jitsu is good as it fosters inclusivity, respect, selflessness, and philanthropy. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 16, Issue 4, Page 519-526, 01Jul2011.

It is widely believed that gendered expectations are communicated to children in the process of socialization. However, there is reason to ask whether and how gender is constructed in Black families. An early perspective that still continues to inform some contemporary research is assimilationism, which assumes that Black people embrace and pass on to their children the gender norms of the dominant white society. The Afrocentric perspective challenges this view, maintaining that the unique historical experiences of Blacks have militated against (...) an emphasis on rigid gender distinctions, and that relative gender neutrality exists in Black families' child-rearing practices. The development of multicultural feminist theory, which argues that the impact of race on gender varies by social class, implies that both assimilationism and Afrocentrism may be overgeneralizations. Yet, little systematic research has been done on whether race makes a difference in how parents view gender. The authors use data from surveys completed by a nonrandom sample of parents in 202 African American and 204 white families in two large metropolitan school districts to examine the impact of gender, race, and class on parents' self-reports of their immediate priorities and long-term goals for their children, their view of the parenting role, and their discipline strategies. The findings are consistent with multicultural feminist theory: Race and social class interact to shape the intergenerational construction of gender in families. (shrink)

Traditional accounts of the conditions on communicative success are invariantist. For example, some authors claim that, for communication to succeed, a hearer must always grasp the very content that the speaker expressed with her utterance; others claim that success is always proportional to the degree to which the hearer understands this content. In this paper, I argue that these invariantist approaches cannot offer a comprehensive account of communicative success. When we attempt to communicate, it is usually with the intention to (...) secure some perlocutionary effect beyond the communicative exchange itself (for example, to get our interlocutor to pass the salt, or to convince her to form a particular belief). I argue that, relative to these intentions, it may not matter whether a hearer perfectly understands the speaker; it may not even matter if the hearer’s understanding is quite poor overall. In place of invariantist conditions (or perhaps, in addition), I propose an approach that is context-dependent in the following sense: holding fixed the content expressed by the speaker, differences in features of the broad context of the speech exchange can determine differences in the standards for communicative success. On this approach, success requires that the hearer understand the content expressed by the speaker in ways that are relevant to the speaker’s perlocutionary intentions. (shrink)

Recent work in social epistemology has drawn attention to various problematic social epistemic phenomena that are common within online networks. Nguyen (2020) argues that it is important to distinguish epistemic bubbles from echo chambers. An epistemic bubble is an information structure that merely lacks information or sources that would be relevant or important to the user. An echo chamber is a structure in which dissenting opinions are, not necessarily absent, but actively undermined, for example by instilling attitudes of distrust towards (...) their adherents. Because of this, echo chambers are thought to be especially difficult to escape. In contrast, according to Nguyen, it is relatively easy to shatter an epistemic bubble: one simply introduces the missing information. In this paper, I argue that it is more difficult to shatter an epistemic bubble than has been recognised in the literature. The reason for this is the relationship between epistemic bubbles and interpretative resources. Despite their epistemic drawbacks, it is comparatively easy to gain knowledge from sources inside one's epistemic bubble because agents within a bubble share common ground. In contrast, it can be very difficult to gain knowledge from sources outside of one's bubble because interlocutors on the outside are less likely to have the shared context needed to facilitate communicative success. I argue that this problem suggests a different way to understand the nature of epistemic bubbles and our prospects for escaping them. (shrink)

Utilitarianism has often been understood as a theory that concerns itself first and foremost with the rightness of actions; but many other things are also properly subject to moral evaluation, and utilitarians have long understood that the theory must be able to provide an account of these as well. In a landmark article from 1976, Robert Adams argues that traditional act utilitarianism faces a particular problem in this regard. He argues that a on a sensible utilitarian account of the rightness (...) of an agent’s motives, right motives will sometimes conflict with right actions, leaving the theory internally incoherent. The puzzle Adams raises has received a good deal of attention but few proposed solutions. Fred Feldman, however, has offered a solution that seems to be gaining adherents. In this paper I argue that Feldman’s approach cannot succeed. At bottom, it relies on a version of the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’—and subsequently an account of an agent’s alternatives—that is far too restrictive to be plausible. Despite the failure of this solution, however, I argue that the conflict Adams develops is not as theoretically troubling as he suggests. While traditional act utilitarianism may fail for other reasons, it will not fail due to the conflict between acts and motives. (shrink)

Theory in sociology is constructed as a canon, a very short list of social theorists who have been endowed with suprahistorical status. Drawing on the feminist analysis of gendered consciousness, the author argues that social theory is organized exactly as it should be if one were thinking like a White male capitalist. The perceptual frameworks it employs—a hierarchy of the social, logical dichotomies, decontextualized abstraction, an individualist approach—resonate well with descriptions of hegemonic masculine consciousness. As a result, social theory has (...) not just distorted social perception, it is becoming functionally irrelevant in contemporary social life. The author argues that reasonable understandings are more likely if we are developing via an epistemology of connection, moving from thinking of theory as a holy text to organizing theory to create bridges between diverse standpoints, across disciplinary boundaries, and between knowing and doing. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that content preservation is required for success in testimonial exchanges. Many content internalists, however, cannot endorse this assumption. They must claim instead that testimonial exchanges can often succeed when the content grasped by the hearer is not the content of the speaker’s testimony, p, but some merely similar content, p*. Goldberg (2007. Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) argues that this internalist approach is epistemically problematic: it cannot maintain certain features thought (...) to be characteristic of testimonial exchanges. I argue that, contrary to appearances, the internalist’s account is just as epistemically respectable as the traditional ‘same content’ approach favoured by externalists. (shrink)

The problematic assumption that biblical purity thematically represents life and death is commonly held within modern biblical studies. Building upon this assumption, many scholars have attempted to explain the treatment of the ṣāraʿat patient in Leviticus 13:1-46 as a symbolic banishment of death. However, the current paper attempts to move beyond this reading towards a method of reconstructing the evolution of biblical rituals and practices. Through the utilisation of René Girard’s four scapegoat stereotypes, the current paper identifies the scapegoat mechanism (...) in Leviticus 13:1-46, and reconstructs a proposed evolution of this ritual. This paper suggests that the ritual presented in Leviticus 13:1-46 may have evolved from an earlier tradition, in which ṣāraʿat patients were executed to halt a mimetic crisis. (shrink)

This paper surveys a sample of current research into the education of pupils with learning difficulties. Examples of the three major established research traditions are discussed, namely the psychomedical, organisational and sociological traditions. It is argued that much of this work seeks to extend the theoretical framework associated with one or another of these traditions, but fails to overcome the common limitation of reductionism. An emerging current of work is identified which adopts an anti-reductionist perspective. The characteristics of the new (...) approach are illustrated, and a specific need for further search within this framework, focusing on the dynamics of the school development process, is identified. (shrink)

From early in childhood, humans exhibit sophisticated intuitions about how to share knowledge efficiently in simple controlled studies. Yet, untrained adults often fail to teach effectively in real‐world situations. Here, we explored what causes adults to struggle in informal pedagogical exchanges. In Experiment 1, we first showed evidence of this effect, finding that adult participants failed to communicate their knowledge to naïve learners in a simple teaching task, despite reporting high confidence that they taught effectively. Using a computational model of (...) rational teaching, we found that adults assigned to our teaching condition provided highly informative examples but failed to teach effectively because their examples were tailored to learners who were only considering a small set of possible explanations. In Experiment 2, we then found experimental evidence for this possibility, showing that knowledgeable participants systematically misunderstand the beliefs of naïve participants. Specifically, knowledgeable participants assumed naïve agents would primarily consider hypotheses close to the correct one. Finally, in Experiment 3, we aligned learners’ beliefs to knowledgeable agents’ expectations and showed learners the same examples selected by participants assigned to teach in Experiment 1. We found that these same examples were significantly more informative once learners’ hypothesis spaces were constrained to match teachers’ expectations. Our findings show that, in informal settings, adult pedagogical failures result from an inaccurate representation of what naïve learners believe is plausible and not an inability to select informative data in a rational way. (shrink)