I will assume here the defenses of epistemic infinitism are adequate and inquire as to the variety standpoints within the view. I will argue that infinitism has three varieties depending on the strength of demandingness of the infinitist requirement and the purity of its conception of epistemic justification, each of which I will term strong pure, strong impure, and weak impure infinitisms. Further, I will argue that impure infinitisms have the dialectical advantage.

The epistemological problem of the external world asks: (1) “How is knowledge of the external world possible given certain obstacles which make it look impossible?” This is a “how-possible?” question: it asks how something is possible given certain obstacles which make it look impossible (cf. Cassam 2007; Nozick 1981; Stroud 1984). Now consider the following question, which asks: (2) “How is a philosophically satisfying answer to (1) possible?” Skepticism is the thesis that knowledge of the external world is impossible. It (...) therefore represents a negative answer to the first question. Meta-epistemological skepticism is the thesis that a satisfying philosophical explanation of how our knowledge of the external world is possible is itself impossible. It therefore represents a negative answer to the second question. In this thesis, I explore the prospects of meta-epistemological skepticism. In particular, I structure the thesis around two master arguments from for meta-epistemological skepticism. The first argument is that skepticism represents a kind of paradox which requires dispensing with a plausible principle or belief, or even 'platitude', which means that there's no philosophically satisfying response to the paradox (see, e.g., Stroud 1984), and the second argument is “Stroud’s dilemma” (cf. Cassam 2009), that either we explain how external world knowledge is possible by reference to what external world knowledge we have, thereby failing to answer the philosophical question adequately, or else we don't, but then we succumb to first-order skepticism. I argue that the first argument fails to provide adequate support for meta-epistemological skepticism. However, the second argument, Stroud’s dilemma, is plausible and withstands serious objections (e.g., from Sosa 1994, Williams 1996, and Cassam 2009). In short, while the worry emerging out of the 'skeptical paradox' view fails to adequately support meta-epistemological skepticism, Stroud’s dilemma succeeds. Fortunately, it doesn't show that we lack external world knowledge; we rather just can't explain, philosophically, how it's possible. We may have first-order knowledge without understanding how it's possible. This thesis therefore represents a partial defense of meta-epistemological skepticism. Meta-epistemological skepticism is a live option in epistemology. (shrink)

Epistemology is an important philosophical discipline, yet little research has directly addressed its aims and criteria of success. This study closes the gap by offering epistemological functionalism as a fully worked-out meta-epistemological framework that accommodates not only questions of traditional epistemology, but also more recent developments such as naturalism, social epistemology, pragmatism and feminism.

The scientific methodology underlying model-building is critically investigated. The modeling views of Popper and Samuelson and their prototypes are critically examined in the light of the theme of the moral law of unity of knowledge and unity of the world-system configured by the meta-epistemology of organic unity of knowledge. Upon such critical examination of received methodology of model-building in economics, the extended perspective?namely of integrating the moral law derived from the divine roots as the meta-epistemology?is rigorously (...) studied. The example of the Islamic prerogative in interpreting the holistic world-system through model-building in economics is highlighted. A religio-philosophical approach is adopted to exemplify some approaches in Islamic model-building. An especial focus is placed here on grassroots types of financing and activities. The critique of these models within the existing Islamic scholarship is carried out. The result is new dimensions of macroeconomic analysis that emanate in a logical way from the meta-epistemological approach, and oppose the mainstream ideas, both in received and Islamic economic thinking as of now. (shrink)

Human, anthropo-centered and subject-oriented social and cultural practices, specialized disciplines such as sciences, humanities and arts, as well as everyday and common sense existence employ and are constituted by means of frames of reference (and the tools and techniques they employ) are intersubjectively These things enable consciousness, knowing that and know how skills and appitudes, but simultaneously impose conditions, restrictions, assumptions and pre-suppositions. These conditions,limits and their underlying paradigms are endlessly refined, altered, modified, extended, transformed and replaced.

Philosophers have always taken an interest not only in what is actually the case, but in what is necessarily the case and what could possibly be the case. These are questions of modality. Epistemologists of modality enquire into how we can know what is necessary and what is possible. This dissertation concerns the meta-epistemology of modality. It engages with the rules that govern construction and evaluation of theories in the epistemology of modality, by using modal empiricism – (...) a form of modal epistemology – as a running example. In particular, I investigate the assumption that it is important to be able to meet the integration challenge. Meeting the integration challenge is a source of serious difficulty for many approaches, but modal empiricism is supposed to do well in this respect. But I argue that once we have a better grasp of what the integration challenge is, it is not obvious that it presents no problem for modal empiricism. Moreover, even if modal empiricism could be said to be in a relatively good position with respect to integration, it comes at the cost of a forced choice between far-reaching partial modal scepticism and non-uniformism about the epistemology of modality. Non-uniformism is the view that more than one modal epistemology will be correct. While non-uniformism might not in itself be unpalatable, it must be defined and defended in a way which squares with the modal empiricist’s other commitment. I explore two ways of doing so, both involving a revised idea of the integration challenge and its role for the epistemology of modality. One involves a bifurcation of the integration challenge, and the other a restriction of the integration challenge’s relevance. Both ways are interesting, but neither is, as it turns out, a walk in the park. (shrink)

The justification of induction is of central significance for cross-cultural social epistemology. Different ‘epistemological cultures’ do not only differ in their beliefs, but also in their belief-forming methods and evaluation standards. For an objective comparison of different methods and standards, one needs (meta-)induction over past successes. A notorious obstacle to the problem of justifying induction lies in the fact that the success of object-inductive prediction methods (i.e., methods applied at the level of events) can neither be shown to (...) be universally reliable (Hume's insight) nor to be universally optimal. My proposal towards a solution of the problem of induction is meta-induction. The meta-inductivist applies the principle of induction to all competing prediction methods that are accessible to her. By means of mathematical analysis and computer simulations of prediction games I show that there exist meta-inductive prediction strategies whose success is universally optimal among all accessible prediction strategies, modulo a small short-run loss. The proposed justification of meta-induction is mathematically analytical. It implies, however, an a posteriori justification of object-induction based on the experiences in our world. In the final section I draw conclusions about the significance of meta-induction for the social spread of knowledge and the cultural evolution of cognition, and I relate my results to other simulation results which utilize meta-inductive learning mechanisms. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to shake up the consensus view on transcendental arguments (TAs) that the ambitious “world-directed” kind fails and that only moderate, “belief-directed” transcendental arguments have a claim to validity. This consensus is based on Barry Stroud’s famous substitution objection: For any transcendental claim ‘p is an enabling condition for X’ we can readily substitute ‘the belief that p’ for ‘p’. I depart from the observation that the force of Stroud’s objection depends on it being applicable (...) to any world-directed TA whatsoever. This requires a much more substantive justification than is commonly supposed. I rehabilitate world-directed TAs by posing a dialectical dilemma for the Stroudian skeptic: a certain moderate TA is required to uphold the skeptical challenge, but this TA brings with it the commitment to a distinction which restricts the scope of the challenge, namely to ‘empirical’ instead of ‘transcendental’ beliefs about the world. The positive result is a new way of understanding what world-directed transcendental arguments are: a way of showing us which of our beliefs about the world are true because they are, in the sense of Wittgenstein’s meter-measure analogy, constitutive of our very standard for objectivity. (shrink)

A priori reflection, common sense and intuition have proved unreliable sources of information about the world outside of us. So the justification for a theory of the categories must derive from the empirical support of the scientific theories whose descriptions it unifies and clarifies. We don’t have reliable information about the de re modal profiles of external things either because the overwhelming proportion of our knowledge of the external world is theoretical—knowledge by description rather than knowledge by acquaintance. This undermines (...) the traditional idea that to be an object of category C is to be an object with such- and-such characteristic possibilities of combination. But this is no loss because de re modal thought lacks utility for creatures like us. (shrink)

본고는 사이버네틱스의 이론적 체계 및 이 이론이 지향하는 인식론을 비판적으로 검토한다. 이때 필자는 특히 이 인식론의 메타-과학적 지위를 정당화하는 것에 몰두할 것이다. 달리 말하면, 필자는 사이버네틱스의 역사, 학문적 체계 그리고 인식론 등을 단순히 소개하는 데 만족하는 것이 아니라, 필자가 강조해 온 구조구성주의의 인식론에서 사이버네틱스의 인식론을 비판적으로 검토할 것이다. 계보학적 관점에서 볼 때, 사이버네틱스는 일반체계론의 한 분파이다. 물론 그 반대를 주장하는 학자도 있다. 그런데 필자의 관점에서 볼 때, 양자는 궁극적으로 구조구성주의의 인식론으로 통합된다. 다른 한편으로, 통사구조, 의미구조, 의미소, 판단체계, 추론체계 등과 같은 (...) 용어들에서 보듯이, 인문학적 사고도 체계론적 사유를 벗어나면, 더 이상 학문적인 지위를 유지하기 어려울 것이다. 철학적 해석학자들이 염려하듯이, 사이버네틱스는 컴퓨터 공학에 고유한 단순환 기계론적 환원주의가 아니다. 이는 오히려 철학적 반성이 구축해 온 모든 고려 사항들을 폭넓게 수용하면서, 특히 관찰 대상과 관찰자의 상호작용을 고려한 체계의 구성과 진화를 해명한다. 또한 이는 모든 과학적 체계들, 즉 공학적 체계, 유기체적 체계, 심리학적 체계, 사회학적 체계 그리고 심지어 체계에 가장 저항적인 인문학적 체계까지 포섭하면서 체계들 상호간의 진정한 상호작용의 본질을 질적으로 기술할 뿐만 아니라, 가능한 한 수학적인 엄밀한 공식을 구성하려고 한다. 바로 이런 점에서 사이버네틱스는 이 시대의 메타과학이며, 가능한 한 전체를 사고하려는 사유운동, 즉 진정한 의미의 철학적 사유이다. (shrink)

This paper argues that the proponents of epistemological scientism must take some stand on scientific methodology. The supporters of scientism cannot simply defer to the social organisation of science because the social processes themselves must meet some methodological criteria. Among such criteria is epistemic evaluability, which demands intersubjective access to reasons. We derive twelve theses outlining some implications of epistemic evaluability. Evaluability can support weak and broad variants of epistemological scientism, which state that sciences, broadly construed, are the best sources (...) of knowledge or some other epistemic goods. Since humanities and social sciences produce epistemically evaluable results, narrow types of scientism that take only natural sciences as sources of knowledge require additional argumentation in their support. Strong scientism, which takes sciences as the only source of knowledge, also needs to appeal to some further principles since evaluability is not an all-or-nothing affair. (shrink)

Traditional philosophy is no longer viable,‭ ‬relevant and acceptable.‭ ‬It might be possible to continue doing philosophizing in traditional ways.‭ ‬It is possible to continue fabricating fictional realities in the manner of the Pre-Socratics,‭ ‬Spinoza,‭ ‬Leibniz,‭ ‬Husserl,‭ ‬Hegel,‭ ‬Plato,‭ ‬et al.‭ ‬It is possible to devise pictures of realities and depictions of‭ ‬human consciousness and cognition like Descartes or in the Kantian manner. -/- One of the major issues with traditional philosophy is its lack of self-awareness,‭ ‬the absence of (...) class='Hi'>meta-cognition.‭ ‬This lack of meta-cognition of traditional philosophers leads to the creation of all sorts of questionable phenomena and fake problems. -/- Traditional philosophy,‭ ‬metaphysics,‭ ‬ontology,‭ ‬epistemology,‭ ‬ethics,‭ ‬philosophy of sciences,‭ ‬religion,‭ ‬arts,‭ ‬etc are little more than the possibilities,‭ ‬limits and restrictions enabled and allowed by the philosopher's methodology,‭ ‬techniques and tools.‭ -/- It is most likely possible to envisage a project to devise a collection or synthesis of‭ ‬many alternative realities by means of the insights and theories of theoretical physics,‭ ‬mathematics,‭ ‬bio-chemistry,‭ ‬biology and other sciences,‭ ‬the depictions produced by the arts and pictures of realities presented by the humanities.‭ ‬If such a system of pictures of reality is philosophically relevant and meaningful is however another matter. -/- The original,‭ ‬creative thinking philosopher constitutes alternattive or new realities by his philosophizing.‭ ‬This philosophizing employs and resembles aspects and stages of the processes of theorizing. -/- The real goal of philosophizing is to increase ever greater wisdom.‭ ‬Not merely wisdom in an abstract sense,‭ ‬but different kinds of practical and applied wisdom in all areas of human,‭ ‬everyday existence.‭ ‬In other words,‭ ‬like spirituality and mysticism philosophizing attempts to embody or incarnate wisdom.‭ ‬While mysticism or the mystical paths and aspects of religions aspire to unity experience,‭ ‬to become one with THE ONE,‭ ‬to become the ONE,‭ ‬REAL SELF,‭ ‬to realize the Buddha mind or to be united or‭ '‬married‭' ‬to the Beloved of Sufism. (shrink)

Although this study inspects context in general, it is even intended as a prerequisite for a meta-study of contextual time&space in zoo-communication. Moving the scope from linguistics to culture, communication, and semiotics may reveal new similarities between context-perceptions. Paradigmatic historical moves and critical context theories are inspected, asking whether there is aleast-common-multiplefor perceptions of context. The short answer is that context is relational – a bi-product of attention from a position, creating a focused object, and hence an obscured (back-)ground (...) – the attention’s context. A more comprehensive one is that when the focused phenomenon is culture, semiotics, or communication, context becomes embodied. This recognition triggers new questions: What is the relation between embodied, immanent context and this perception’s external, physical context (its surroundings)? If utterances are regarded as constituted by the triad form-content-actandthe dyadic chronotope time&space, what and where is then context? Which challenges will empirical (zoo-)communicational research face if context is split in internal and external versions of context? These questions raise some epistemological and methodological issues. These are discussed based on a framework that regards communication as a micro-macro interplay between utterance and genre. Genres are kinds of communication. More specifically animal genres related to their basic life-functions are calledlife-genres. A conclusion is that life-genres function as both mental and situational contexts. This complicates empirical research on communication in general, and zoo-communication in particular. The paper concludes that contexts’ relational and embodied nature and the ‘situational’ characteristics of life-genres challenge researchers to validate continuously, shifting between contextualising, decontextualising, and recontextualising. (shrink)

Meta‐synthesis of qualitative research can be an important way to consolidate and grow nursing knowledge and theory. However, from recent readings of such works in the nursing literature, one can observe that there is increasing use of meta‐synthesis being used as a way to simply aggregate qualitative research findings in a manner claimed to be similar to quantitative meta‐research while also remaining compatible with the qualitative research tradition. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether this (...) meta‐aggregation form of research has a sound epistemological foundation and should be considered a viable form of meta‐synthesis. The conclusion drawn is that meta‐aggregation falls short of being a sound method and is not compatible with the qualitative research philosophy. It is also concluded that meta‐aggregation should not be seen as a form of qualitative meta‐synthesis. Meta‐synthesis is best understood as a way to re‐interpret, compare and translate disparate qualitative studies using different conceptual apparatus into a consolidated knowledge of fundamental importance to nursing care practitioners. To conclude, aggregating qualitative research tends to turn rich descriptions into thin abstractions that are of little use to nursing practice knowledge and does not advance nursing science. (shrink)

Since the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, Anglophone epistemologists have devoted a great deal of attention to the English word ‘know’ and to English sentences used to attribute knowledge. Even today, many epistemologists, including contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists are concerned with the truth conditions of “S knows that p,” or the proposition it expresses. In all of this literature, the method of cases is used, where a situation is described in English, and then philosophers judge whether it is true that (...) S knows that p, or whether saying “S knows that p” is false, deviant, etc. in that situation. However, English is just one of over 6000 languages spoken around the world, and is the native language of less than 6% of the world’s population. When Western epistemology first emerged, in ancient Greece, English did not even exist. So why should we think that facts about the English word “know,” the concept it expresses, or subtle semantic properties of “S knows that p” have important implications for epistemology? Are the properties of the English word “know” and the English sentence ‘S knows that p’ shared by their translations in most or all languages? If that turned out to be true, it would be a remarkable fact that cries out for an explanation. But if it turned out to be false, what are the implications for epistemology? Should epistemologists study knowledge attributions in languages other than English with the same diligence they have shown for the study of English knowledge attributions? If not, why not? In what ways do the concepts expressed by ‘know’ and its counterparts in different languages differ? And what should epistemologists make of all this? (shrink)

Meta‐analysis: the glass eye of evidence‐based practice?Meta‐analysis was developed as a technique for combining the results of many different quantitative studies: it is often used to produce quantitative estimates of causal relations and/or association between variables. Meta‐analysis is sometimes regarded as a central component of evidence‐based practice. We draw attention to an incompatibility in the epistemology and methods of reasoning in quantitative meta‐analysis and the epistemology and reasoning implicit in expert practice. We argue that (...) this may be because the common perception of meta‐analysis appeals to truth as correspondence; we suggest that rejecting the naïve realism that underpins truth as correspondence allows meta‐analysis to be understood in terms of truth as coherence. We can then develop an account of meta‐analysis that does not depend upon reduction to a mathematical procedure but is an attempt to maximise coherence in beliefs about what works that is consistent with clinical reasoning in expert practice. (shrink)

The paper presents a kind of normative anti-realist view of epistemology, in the same ballpark as recent versions of expressivism. But the primary focus of the paper is less on this meta-epistemological view itself than on how it should affect ground-level issues in epistemology: for instance, how it should deal with certain forms of skepticism, and how it allows for fundamental revision in epistemic practices. It is hoped that these methodological consequences will seem attractive independent of the (...) normative anti-realism. Indeed, some normative realists seem to embrace the view on skepticism, but it is argued that their position is unstable: the realism undermines the methodology. The general theme of the paper is that the issue of normative realism is deeply entwined with issues of methodology, in strong contrast to the common claim that meta-epistemological views in the tradition of expressivism have no first order impact. (shrink)

In the recent literature, it has been argued that Nietzsche’s perspectivism should not be reconstructed as an epistemological position. This article criticizes both this view and interpretations that reduce perspectivism to a theory of knowledge. It claims that “perspectivism” is also an appropriate name for Nietzsche’s meta-ethical position. The paper argues that Nietzsche should be interpreted as an anti-realist and moral skeptic. Its epistemological claim is that Nietzsche perspectivism provides a hermeneutic method that allows the human animal to achieve (...) knowledge and truth about the world. The article distinguishes between a strong metaphysical and a weak hermeneutic version of the correspondence theory of truth. It argues that Nietzsche only rejects the former: the possibility of knowledge about the essence of the world and things-in-themselves. With his perspectival hermeneutic method, Nietzsche mainly aims at knowledge and truth about objects that are human products and phenomena. (shrink)

What does it take for some epistemological thinking to be epistemically justified? Indeed, is that outcome even possible? This paper argues that it is not possible: no epistemological thinking can ever be epistemically justified. A vicious infinite regress of epistemological reflection is the price that would have to be paid for having some such justification. Clearly, that price would be too high.

1 1 Ulrich de Balbian Meta-Philosophy Research Center (Meta-Philosophy) Death of Philosophy Part 2 PART 2 Philosophy subject-matter page2 Different approaches to doing philosophy (Methods) page 164 Metaphysics, Ontology, Epistemology page.

My new (Experimental) PHILOSOPHY (XPhi) book for FREE download -/- https://www.academia.edu/31973890/_Meta-Philosophy_Theorizing_about_Philosophy_CMT_CB_and_CM_as_an_e xercise_inXPhi -/- (Meta-Philosophy) Theorizing about Philosophy (CMT, CB and CMA) as an exercise inXPhi -/- The processes of theorizing are explored, Weick's Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Conceptual Blending Theory and Conceptual Metaphor tool are described. This Meta-Philosophy investigation of philosophy and philosophizing is an exercise in Experimental Philosophy. The Empirical Generalization or Hypothesis arrived at states that: Philosophy/izing is like or resembles the process/es of Theorizing.

The epistemological debate about radical skepticism has focused on whether our beliefs in apparently obvious claims, such as the claim that we have hands, amount to knowledge. Arguably, however, our concept of knowledge is only one of many knowledge-like concepts that there are. If this is correct, it follows that even if our beliefs satisfy our concept of knowledge, there are many other relevantly similar concepts that they fail to satisfy. And this might give us pause. After all, we might (...) wonder: What is so great about the concept of knowledge that we happen to have? Might it be more important, epistemically speaking, to investigate whether our beliefs satisfy some other relevantly similar concept instead? And how should questions such as these even be understood? This paper discusses the epistemological significance of these issues. In particular, a novel skeptical stance called ‘meta-skepticism’ is introduced, which is a kind of skepticism about the idea that some knowledge-like concepts are epistemically more important than others. It suggested that it is unclear whether this form of skepticism can be avoided. (shrink)

Many democratic countries have failed to stand up to the challenge presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that the collective response to the pandemic has been incapacitated by an ‘epistemic crisis’, (i.e., a breakdown in the social division of epistemic labor) that led to a failure of citizens’ beliefs to converge towards a shared perception of the situation. Neither a paucity of relevant expert knowledge nor democratic citizens’ irrationality is required for the crisis to emerge. In particular, I highlight (...) three obstacles capable of preventing relevant expert testimony from gaining democratic legitimacy necessary for an effective policy response: 1) the proper domain of expertise is uncertain; 2) regular citizens’ meta-expertise – (i.e., ability to discriminate among the putative experts based on their relative epistemic merit) – is not efficacious enough to trigger truth-convergence of the public opinion; 3) the prominent sources of third-party meta-expertise lack credibility due to their conflicts of interest. Since the first two problems appear irresolvable, I propose that the search for a path towards preclusion of future epistemic crises concentrates on upgrading the institutional fundament for meta-expertise provision. Social epistemology plays a vital role in this search, but its close cooperation with other disciplines is a must. (shrink)

Twenty-first century critics frequently misread Quinean ontological commitment as a toothless doctrine of anti-metaphysical pragmatism. Janssen-Lauret's historical investigations reveal that they misinterpret the influence of Quine's naturalism. His naturalistic view of philosophy as continuous with science informs a much more interesting conception of ontological commitments as generated by indispensable explanatory roles. But Janssen-Lauret uncovers a previously undetected weakness in Quine's meta-ontology. Careful examination of his debate with another naturalistic nominalist, Ruth Barcan Marcus, reveals that his holism leaves him blind (...) to her acquaintance-based ontological commitment via proper names. Janssen-Lauret examines some crucial misunderstandings between Barcan Marcus and Quine, centring on their wildly different interpretations of proper names, quantification and identity, and argues that these are motivated by their diametrically opposed positions on epistemology. (shrink)

What is the mission of epistemology, and what is its proper methodology? Such meta-epistemological questions have been prominent in recent years, especially with the emergence of various brands of "naturalistic" epistemology. In this paper, I shall reformulate and expand upon my own meta-epistemological conception (most fully articulated in Goldman, 1986), retaining many of its former ingredients while reconfiguring others. The discussion is by no means confined, though, to the meta-epistemological level. New substantive proposals will also (...) be advanced and defended. (shrink)

Bringing the meta-mathematics of Hero of Alexandria and Claudius Ptolemy into conversation for the first time, I argue that they employ identical rhetorical strategies in the introductions to Hero’s Belopoeica, Pneumatica, Metrica and Ptolemy’s Almagest. They each adopt a paradigmatic argument, in which they criticize the discourses of philosophers and declare epistemological supremacy for mathematics by asserting that geometrical demonstration is indisputable. The rarity of this claim—in conjunction with the paradigmatic argument—indicates that Hero and Ptolemy participated in a single (...) meta-mathematical tradition, which made available to them rhetoric designed to introduce, justify, and bolster the value of mathematics. (shrink)

I have been working on meta-philosophy for quite some time and was pleasantly surprised to encounter, mid-May 2017, someone who shares this commitment (apart from his many other interests and specializations) for very similar reasons as my own. He is Dr Desh Ray Sirswal from India and one of his numerous websites, blogs, journals, etc is - http://drsirswal.webs.com/ I let him speak for himself. “My objective is to achieve an intellectual detachment from all philosophical systems, and not to solve (...) specific philosophical problems but to become sensitively aware of what it is when we philosophize.” Copyright© Desh Raj Sirswal . I commence by dealing with the teaching of philosophy, because the contents of what is being taught at under-graduate level is for most people who are slightly informed about the subject what philosophy is about. This usually consists of the history of Ideas of Western Philosophy. Although an increasing number of faculties now broaden the scope to the ‘philosophies’ of Asia, the Far East and the Middle East. This international broadening of what is being included in curricula of or as philosophy is another index that Western Philosophy is in need of subject-matter as its traditional subject-matter have all but died out. Apart from the History of Philosophical ideas, the subject often is presented in terms of so-called branches, for example metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic, and so on. A number of authors suggest that both ways of teaching the discipline is very selective because of the departments adherence to some form of either ‘analytical’ or ‘continental’ philosophy. Apart from the traditional lecture-style the teaching of philosophy is dealt with by means of some variation on the Oxbridge ‘tutorial’-style. Tutorials are often acclaimed as being an amazing, to be highly regarded innovation. Some studies and research of it however revealed that is not at all very comprehensive but is restricted to a number of items concerning reasoning, argumentation and critical re-viewing and thinking. This approach forms part of the attempt by contemporary research universities to teach aspects of ‘research’. This brings us to my next section on methods of doing philosophy. I suggest that the doing of philosophy resembles certain aspects and contexts of some of the steps and stages of doing theorizing. This is the rationale for including the next section on theorizing, its steps, stages and other aspects such as the use of metaphors, imaginary experiments, heuristic devices, etc. The next section deals with the changing nature of traditional philosophy as it lost most of its subject-matter to other disciplines that have been socio-culturally differentiated. And the search for new philosophical subject-matter such as Experimental Philosophy or XPhi, the involvement of philosophers in inter-disciplinary studies, especially the latest fad of cognitive studies or sciences and of course the fabrication of philosophies of all areas of human behaviour and kinds of socio-cultural activities for example sport, the arts, sciences, cognition, sex, violence, gender, race, religion, etc etc. I then turn to the question about how, where and why one could perhaps do philosophy against the background of the above. In this investigation I make explicit some of the self-imposed limits of the discourse. Some of these restrictions have been created because of the absolute institutionalization of the discipline as just another subject of universities. This institutionalization of course requires that those involved in the discipline of institutionalized philosophy must be professionals. This absolute requirement lays down the condition that to be a philosopher one must be a professional and an academic. The conditions of institutionalization and professionalization have far reaching consequences for the philosophical discourse, its subject-matter, methods, principles, values, aims, purposes and norms. One of these is the need to publish and to publish often especially in peer-reviewed journals and in their required, institutionalized format. Because of these institutionalized restrictions of what philosophy is, what it must be like, what it may be like and what it may not be like I explore the lack of self-cognition of academically institutionalized philosophy and the associated absence of critical, meta-cognition and self-awareness of professional philosophers. I question the values of doing that type of philosophy, philosophy-on-demand and because of demand and suggest that it is preferable to engage with the more original, creative-thinking philosophers’ work. All of the above are of course intersubjectively determined and this is why I finally explore the nature and operation of different forms of intersubjectivity, for example of common sense, everyday existence, that of the different sciences, the arts, etc and the roles or functions of these things in the creation or constitution of alternative discourses, their realities, life-worlds or perspectives on ‘the world, reality, and existence’. This is the phantom, the ghost of the deceased discourse of philosophy that I chased, encountered and describe. -/- . (shrink)

Various real and imagined criminal law cases rest on “naked statistical evidence”. That is, they rest more or less entirely on a probability for guilt/liability derived from a single statistical model. The intuition is that there is something missing in these cases, high as the probability for guilt/liability may be, such that the relevant standard for legal proof is not met. Here we contribute to the considerable debate about how this intuition is best explained and what it teaches us about (...) evidential reasoning in the legal setting. We part ways with the recent scholarship, however. Unlike most others, our diagnosis is not that there is an important qualitative property that some evidence or bodies of evidence have, and that naked statistical evidence, most strikingly, lacks. Rather, we see cases resting on naked statistical evidence as lying at the extreme of a continuum of cases that are vulnerable to challenge due to “meta-uncertainty” about the underlying model. (shrink)

This paper addresses the meta-epistemological dispute over the basis of epistemic evaluation from the standpoint of meliorative epistemology. Meliorative epistemology aims at guiding our epistemic practice to better results, and it comprises two levels of epistemic evaluation. At the social level (meliorative social epistemology) appropriate experts conduct evaluation for the community, so that epistemic evaluation is externalist since each epistemic subject in the community need not have access to the basis of the experts' evaluation. While at (...) the personal level (meliorative personal epistemology) epistemic evaluation is internalist since each member of the community must evaluate the reliability of the (apparent) experts from the first-person perspective. I argue that evaluation at the social level should be the primary focus of meliorative epistemology since meliorative personal epistemology does not provide informative epistemic norms. It is then pointed out that epistemic evaluation at the social level can be considered internalist in the extended sense (social internalism) in that every component of the evaluation needs to be recognized by some members of the community at some points. As a result, some familiar problems of internalist epistemology, such as regress and circularity of epistemic support, carry over to meliorative social epistemology. (shrink)

Since the early 20th century, two new disciplines emerged in the tradition of analytic philosophy: meta-ethics and political epistemology. Nevertheless, debates on such questions go back to the ancient Greeks and, in particular, to the debates between Plato and Protagoras. This article elucidates the controversy between Plato and the influential sophist Protagoras from the perspective of contemporary meta-ethics and political epistemology. It argues that the main motivation of Plato’s philosophical endeavors is to overcome Protagoras’s skeptical claims (...) that no moral facts and no moral knowledge applicable to political issues exist. The paper defends the thesis that there exists a deep disagreement between Protagoras and Plato on the existence of moral facts and moral knowledge. A deep disagreement is a disagreement that cannot be resolved through the use of reasons and arguments. Applying the foundationalist approach Robert J. Fogelin proposes in his seminal paper “The Logic of Deep Disagreements”, this article argues that the deep disagreement between Protagoras and Plato exists because their political thought is based on “underlying principles” that clash. While Plato’s political philosophy rests on his religious and theological convictions, the political thought of Protagoras is based on his skepticism, relativism, and agnosticism. (shrink)

Continuity lies at the heart of the recent naturalistic turn in epistemology. Naturalists are united by a shared commitment to the continuity of science and epistemology, and tend to advocate one or more species of continuity: contextual, semantic, epistemological methodological, metaphysical, and axiological. Naturalists divide, however, over the interpretation and scope of this continuity. The naturalism of Goldman, Kim and Sosa is criticised for leaving meta-epistemology methodologically and epistemologically autonomous from science. A more plausible approach naturalizes (...) epistemology 'all the way up', i.e., including meta-epistemology itself. (shrink)

I explore the frame of reference of the multiverse and the universe as point of reference for the meta-philosophical reflection on philosophy and the doing of philosophy. -/- Some of the many topics being dealt with in this frame of reference and from this perspective of the bigger picture are - -/- Determinism, -/- The absence of Free Will, -/- Consequences of this for Law, -/- God and determinism, -/- Embodied Consciousness and Conscious Embodiment, -/- Radical Scepticism, -/- Nihilism, (...) -/- Libertarianism, minarchism and anarchism, -/- Amoralism, -/- Intersubjectivity, -/- Mysticism and the Unity Experience, -/- Theorizing, -/- Philosophizing as part of the processes of theorizing, -/- Contexts, many levels and multi-dimensionality, -/- The Institutionalization of philosophy, -/- The professionalization of philosophy, -/- Philosophy as realization of wisdom, -/- Knowing that, facts, factual information, knowing how, insights and understanding, -/- Art and music as making the invisible visible without the use of words... (shrink)

Quine has called the question, ‘What is there?’ the “ontological question.” But if we call this question by that name, what name shall we use for the question, ‘What are we asking when we ask “What is there?”’? I shall call it ‘the meta-ontological question’. I shall call the attempt to answer the meta-ontological question ‘meta-ontology’ and any proposed answer to it ‘a meta-ontology’. In this essay, I shall briefly sketch a meta-ontology. The meta-ontology (...) I shall present is broadly Quinean. I am, in fact, willing to call it an exposition of Quine’s meta-ontology. (shrink)

This is a course in recent and contemporary approaches to the theory of knowledge. We'll be looking at some of the major debates in epistemology, including those over the structure of knowledge, the proper analysis of knowledge, justification, and related notions, as well as some meta-epistemological issues that have arisen in recent discussions of so-called naturalized epistemology. The course will not presuppose any exposure to the relevant literatures, and will be a broad overview of some of the (...) going accounts and controversies. (shrink)

The main theme of this dissertation is to explore how to establish a better relationship between sociological and philosophical investigations of science; how should epistemological considerations be used in sociological studies of scientific knowledge, and how should sociological findings be used in epistemological studies? To answer these questions, I review both sociological and social epistemological literatures on scientific knowledge, with more emphasis on the latter. On the sociological side, I point out that a large part of SSK literature is, contrary (...) to what some philosophers believe, totally compatible with the idea of scientific rationality. Given that, I propose the 'even stronger' program of SSK that can better utilize the philosophical literature on scientific rationality. ;On the philosophical side, I review works of four philosophers in detail. I classify them into two general categories, the descriptive approach and the normative approach . After critical analyses of each of them, I apply their insights to a concrete case study, namely the issues related with diversification of Post WW II American sociology. These analyses and applications aim to show that all of them have some interesting things to say. One interesting observation in terms of the case study is that the diversity in theory and methodology in American sociology may be a good thing for various philosophical reasons, offered by these authors. ;Finally, the general characteristics of descriptive and normative approaches are compared. Some seeming incompatibilities between two approaches can be resolved by introducing some meta-epistemological notions. Especially the notion of WRE is important in identifying different roles played by two approaches. In any case, a good philosophical analysis cannot ignore sociological findings on actual scientific practices. To say the least, when there are two epistemological views, one of them does better than the other in accounting for actual scientific practices, this is a prima facie reason to prefer the one to the other. (shrink)

If you wish to think/write about many dimensional things like the‭ ‘‬world‭’‬,‭ ‬persons,‭ ‬consciousness,‭ ‬human thinking etc,‭ ‬you should at least think multi-dimensional and many levelled. Questioning the purpose,‭ ‬the subject-matter and the methodology,‭ ‬methods of the discipline. I have already dealt in detail about the disappearance of different subject from the philosophical discourse with the differentiation of other disciplines, as well as the involvement in philosophy in inter-disciplinary areas such as cognitive sciences, the creation of experimental philosophy and the (...) philosophies of other discourses, eg art, religion, science, mathematics, sport and every subject possible. Philosophy has/is often interpreted as consisting of logic, which in has its own discourse, while other aspects or forms of logic really form part of mathematics. The doing of philosophy as the doing of (usually informal) logic is in some way related to this belief. As far as the method of philosophy goes, it is always seen as employing arguments, argumentation and reasoning. But all kinds of writing and talking employ arguments, argumentation, reasoning and informal logic – not just philosophy. I conclude with a discussion from theoretical physics (in the past associated with the philosophical discourse) that provides us with ontologies as philosophy used to do. Against that background I present articles on the multiverse, more conventional articles on our universe, our world, our physical reality and the origins of life. I think these are some of the many things that it is necessary that philosophy should take note of and consequently question itself, its aims, objectives, subject-matter and methodologies. We might then have something different than one-levelled and one-dimensional thinking and more many layered and levelled and multi-dimensional thinking. Is this not how our consciousness functions? On many levels, layers and dimensions simultaneously? So should this not be the manner in which we conceive of ‘it’, its nature and functioning? We, philosophy, should at least be thinking ( instead of individual concepts, or statements, linear thinking - we should simultaneously think on many layers, on many levels and in several dimensions) in terms of 3D, for example 3D scatter plots .By this I mean the many different aspects of the person (mentally and physically, socially, culturally, as well as our environment, planetary and universe context should be included in every concept we employ; each concept should therefore be at least like a 3D scatter plot image, including all these levels and information). (shrink)