The lottery problem is often regarded as a successful counterexample to reliabilism. The process of forming your true belief that your ticket has lost solely on the basis of considering the odds is, from a purely probabilistic viewpoint, much more reliable than the process of forming a true belief that you have lost by reading the results in a normally reliable newspaper. Reliabilism thus seems forced, counterintuitively, to count the former process as knowledge if it so counts the latter process. (...) -/- I offer a theory of empirical knowledge which, while being recognizably reliabilist, restricts empirical knowledge to cases in which the fact that p and the belief that p are causally connected. I show that this form of reliabilism solves the lottery problem, avoids the problems that beset the causal theory of knowledge, and show how it handles a number of problematic cases in the recent literature. (shrink)

Although Grosseteste's scientific writings have been more adequately studied, particularly of recent years, than any other part of his vast literary legacy, scholars have reached little agreement on even the essentials of their chronology. The reasons for this are not far to seek. The course of Grosseteste's life up until 1225 is almost completely unknown and hence there exists no firm, ready-made structure into which the sequence of his surviving writings can be inserted. In addition to this, few of his (...) works have been adequately edited, with the result that promising chronological indications may upon occasion turn out to be merely corruptions of the text; one reference to Averroës, which would of itself have sufficed to date a work after 1230, proved to have several variants, including “Augustinus” and “Avicenna”! (shrink)

Attributed to Phil Smith ("the Crab Man") on the publisher's webite.

Several high-profile mathematical problems have been solved in recent decades by computer-assisted proofs. Some philosophers have argued that such proofs are a posteriori on the grounds that some such proofs are unsurveyable; that our warrant for accepting these proofs involves empirical claims about the reliability of computers; that there might be errors in the computer or program executing the proof; and that appeal to computer introduces into a proof an experimental element. I argue that none of these arguments withstands scrutiny, (...) and so there is no reason to believe that computer-assisted proofs are not a priori. Thanks are due to Michael Levin, David Corfield, and an anonymous referee for Philosophia Mathematica for their helpful comments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Hofstra University Department of Mathematics colloquium series, and at the 2005 New Jersey Regional Philosophical Association; I am grateful to both audiences for their comments. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Kelly Aguirre, Phil Henderson, Cressida J. Heyes, Alana Lentin, and Corey Snelgrove engage with different aspects of Robert Nichols’ Theft is Property! Dispossession and Critical Theory. Henderson focuses on possible spaces for maneuver, agency, contradiction, or failure in subject formation available to individuals and communities interpellated through diremptive processes. Heyes homes in on the ritual of antiwill called “consent” that systematically conceals the operation of power. Aguirre foregrounds tensions in projects of critical theory scholarship that aim for dialogue and (...) solidarity with Indigenous decolonial struggles. Lentin draws attention to the role of race in undergirding the logic of Anglo-settler colonial domination that operates through dispossession, while Snelgrove emphasizes the link between alienation, capital, and colonialism. In his reply to his interlocutors, Nichols clarifies aspects of his “recursive logics” of dispossession, a dispossession or theft through which the right to property is generated. (shrink)

This book, published in 2000, is a clear account of causation based firmly in contemporary science. Dowe discusses in a systematic way, a positive account of causation: the conserved quantities account of causal processes which he has been developing over the last ten years. The book describes causal processes and interactions in terms of conserved quantities: a causal process is the worldline of an object which possesses a conserved quantity, and a causal interaction involves the exchange of conserved quantities. Further, (...) things that are properly called cause and effect are appropriately connected by a set of causal processes and interactions. The distinction between cause and effect is explained in terms of a version of the fork theory: the direction of a certain kind of ordered pattern of events in the world. This particular version has the virtue that it allows for the possibility of backwards causation, and therefore time travel. (shrink)

The safety analysis of knowledge, due to Duncan Pritchard, has it that for all contingent propositions, p, S knows that p iff S believes that p, p is true, and (the “safety principle”) in most nearby worlds in which S forms his belief in the same way as in the actual world, S believes that p only if p is true. Among the other virtues claimed by Pritchard for this view is its supposed ability to solve a version of the (...) lottery puzzle. In this paper, I argue that the safety analysis of knowledge in fact fails to solve the lottery puzzle. I also argue that a revised version of the safety principle recently put forward by Pritchard fares no better. (shrink)

‘Framing the Refugee’ looks at the power of representation of liberal political theory with regard to refugees. In the author’s view, legal and political arbitrariness lies in the representing of refugees as lacking agency. His key point is that liberalism fails to conceive of refugees as politically capable actors, and he is thus complicit in the arbitrary neutralisation of their emancipatory potential and participatory powers. This paper emphasises the moral justifiability of that state of affairs by seeking some answers to (...) the question of why liberal political theory construes a concept of the refugee that does not contain any element of political agency. Most obviously, the author acknowledges that refugees perform a significant social role in contemporary societies and are hence active members in them. Nonetheless, they remain neglected in their political role by most political theory. What does it mean to have political agency for the author? It means to have the power of self-representation, that is, of being allowed and even enabled by a given legal system to bring about change in the political order, or at least to participate in that change. But the author also calls attention to the role of ‘theory’ in addressing this downside of the contemporary liberal democratic order. Theory becomes even more crucial at times of urgency, that is, when theorists have a moral responsibility to deepen their philosophical imagination, as Hannah Arendt so forcefully noted. The theoretical task of ‘re-framing’ the refugee entails reconfiguring political philosophy and its traditional categories of sovereignty, citizenship and nationality. The liberal inability to accommodate the political agency of many members of the political community – especially of non-nationals – is a sign of the historical contingency of the current rules of political membership. This inability makes evident the imperative of rethinking politics in ways that avoid the arbitrariness of treatment and aim instead at equality and justice. If political leaders can re-write the rules of membership to suit their own ideological agendas, the same demand should be addressed by – indeed demanded from – political and legal theorists. However, this is not as easy as it seems, according to the author. In his view, political theory is confronted with fundamental challenges, the most obvious one being that ‘theory’ is usually unequipped to defeat its own ‘topology’. Note that in saying this the author is raising a more pressing concern about arbitrary law-making: it may be that arbitrariness – especially the arbitrary treatment of aliens by the sovereign state and by liberal democracies in particular – is inscribed in the very DNA of liberalism. No matter how odd this may seem, the author advances the view that ideas, however creative of a new order, or transformative of a given status quo, never appear in "free form", and are instead deeply rooted in a structure that constrains our imagination. The challenge is thus to develop a meta-theory that reconceptualises the very way liberal political theory frames marginalised sectors of society – such as the "poor" – as a product of an international economic order that robs those sectors of their agency as the very condition of its internal functioning. We must therefore question how the very idea of the refugee is produced, because it symbolises the construction of an inside and an outside that is complicit with the arbitrary play of legal statuses involved in migration policy. The author’s main point regarding this is that certain groups are sidelined by economic, political and social systems because they are already excluded from theoretical systems to start with. Keywords: refugees, agency, political theory, migration. (shrink)

This research applies the impression management theory of exemplification in an accounting study by identifying and measuring differences in both auditor and public perceptions of exemplary behaviors. The auditors were divided into two groups, one of which reported self-perceptions (A-S) while the other group reported their perceptions of a typical auditor (A-O). There were two separate public groups, which gave their perceptions of a typical auditor and were divided based on their levels of accounting sophistication. The more sophisticated public group (...) was comprised of bank loan officers (LO) while the less sophisticated public group consisted of investment club members (IC). Comparisons were made on 30 behaviors contained in the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct, which served as the basis for the research instrument. Profile analysis, a special form of MANOVA technique, was used to analyze the results. A-S perceptions were the highest of the four treatment levels and were significantly higher (i.e., more exemplary) than the perceptions of both the A-O and LO groups. The more sophisticated user group (LO) provided the lowest perceptions of the four treatment levels. For at least four of the six measures, the LO treatment group perceived the typical auditor to be less exemplary than both the IC and A-O treatments. There were no differences in perceptions between the A-O group and IC. Additional analysis revealed that auditors overrated the degree to which the public relied on financial statements. However, both public groups reported a reasonably high level of reliance on financial statements when making decisions. (shrink)

Setting the thought of Robert Grosseteste within the broader context of the intellectual, religious, and social movements of his time, this study elucidates the evolution of his ideas on topics ranging from the mathematical laws that govern the movement of bodies, God as the mathematical Creator, and human knowledge, to religious experience and the place of humanity within the social, natural, and providential orders.

Changing patterns of political participation observed by political scientists over the past half-century undermine traditional democratic theory and practice. The vast majority of democratic theory, and deliberative democratic theory in particular, either implicitly or explicitly assumes the need for widespread citizen participation. It requires that all citizens possess the opportunity to participate and also that they take up this opportunity. But empirical evidence gathered over the past half-century strongly suggests that many citizens do not have a meaningful opportunity to participate (...) in the ways that many democratic theorists require, and do not participate in anything like the numbers that they believe is necessary. This paper outlines some of the profound changes that have been experienced by liberal democratic states in the 20th and early 21st Centuries, changes which are still ongoing, and which have resulted in declines in citizens participation and trust, the marginalisation of citizens from democratic life, and the entrenchment of social and economic inequalities which have damaged democracy. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom in rejecting the idea that the future of democracy lies in encouraging more widespread participation. The paper takes seriously the failure of the strategies adopted by many states to increase participation, especially among the poor, and suggests that instead of requiring more of citizens, we should in fact be requiring less of them. Instead of seeking to encourage more citizen participation, we should acknowledge that citizens will probably not participate in the volume, or in the ways, many democratic theorists would like, and that therefore we need an alternative approach: a regime which can continue to produce democratic outcomes, and which satisfies the requirements of political equality, in the absence of widespread participation by citizens. (shrink)

While searching for manuscripts of the writings of Robert Grosseteste, S.H. Thomson examined British Library MS Royal 11 B III and ascribed a short work on poverty to Grosseteste probably since it was found together with the authentic work De decem mandatis and had been copied by the same scribe. Upon closer examination it is concluded that the work is unlikely to have been written by Grosseteste. Nevertheless, the work is of interest as a highly structured anthology of sources regarding (...) poverty, drawn from both Scripture and tradition. The authors examine the message of the text and analyse its structure. Finally, a first edition of the text is presented. (shrink)

Lottery puzzles involve an ordinary piece of knowledge which seems to imply knowledge of a so-called “lottery proposition,” which itself seems unknown: I might be said to know that I won’t be going on safari next year. But if I were to win the lottery, I would go, and I don’t know that I won’t win the lottery. Examples can be multiplied. Thus we seem left either with the paradoxical position of knowing certain ordinary propositions, but failing to know the (...) lottery propositions they imply, or else conceding to the skeptic. I present a version of reliabilism according to which empirical knowledge is true belief produced by a reliable process causally connecting belief and fact. According to this theory, if my ordinary belief and my belief in the lottery proposition are suitably connected to the facts that render them true, both count as knowledge. In cases where my ordinary belief and my belief in the lottery proposition are not suitably connected to the relevant facts, neither count as knowledge. Thus the paradoxical air of lottery puzzles is removed, and skepticism is avoided. (shrink)

Experimental methods and conceptual confusion : philosophy, science, and what emotions really are -- To 'make our voices resonate' or 'to be silent'? : shame as fundamental ontology -- Emotion, cognition, and world -- Shame and world.

According to Hugh Mellor in Real Time II (1998, Ch. 12), assuming the logical independence of causal facts and the 'law of large numbers', causal loops are impossible because if they were possible they would produce inconsistent sets of frequencies. I clarify the argument, and argue that it would be preferable to abandon the relevant independence assumption in the case of causal loops.

Jody Azzouni has offered the following argument against the existence of mathematical entities: if, as it seems, mathematical entities play no role in mathematical practice, we therefore have no reason to believe in them. I consider this argument as it applies to mathematical platonism, and argue that it does not present a legitimate novel challenge to platonism. I also assess Azzouni's use of the ‘epistemic role puzzle’ (ERP) to undermine the platonist's alleged parallel between skepticism about mathematical entities and external-world (...) skepticism. I conclude that ERP fails to undermine this parallel. (shrink)

This paper examines Wesley Salmon's "process" theory of causality, arguing in particular that there are four areas of inadequacy. These are that the theory is circular, that it is too vague at a crucial point, that statistical forks do not serve their intended purpose, and that Salmon has not adequately demonstrated that the theory avoids Hume's strictures about "hidden powers". A new theory is suggested, based on "conserved quantities", which fulfills Salmon's broad objectives, and which avoids the problems discussed.

When Aristotle introduces the perfect moods, he refers back to the dictum de omni et nullo, a semantic condition for universal affirmations and negations. There recently has been renewed interest in the question whether the dictum validates the assertoric syllogistic. I rehearse evidence that Aristotle provides a mereological semantics for universal affirmations and negations, and note that this semantics entails a nonstandard reading of the dictum, under which the dictum, in the presence of a minimal logical apparatus, indeed validates the (...) assertoric syllogistic. I argue that this mereological validation offers advantages over recent discussions in Morison, Malink, Ebert and Vlasits. (shrink)

Mathematical apriorism holds that mathematical truths must be established using a priori processes. Against this, it has been argued that apparently a priori mathematical processes can, under certain circumstances, fail to warrant the beliefs they produce; this shows that these warrants depend on contingent features of the contexts in which they are used. They thus cannot be a priori. -/- In this paper I develop a position that combines a reliabilist version of mathematical apriorism with a platonistic view of mathematical (...) ontology. I argue that this view both withstands the above objection and explains the reliability of a priori mathematical warrant. (shrink)

Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodology (EM) at its core involves a praxeological, or interactional, respecification of Gestalt phenomena. In early EM, this is pursued through the development of a category of praxeological Gestalten in which social facts (or social units) are respecified as Gestalt phenomena, where members are the constituents and the social unit is the whole or Gestalt, produced praxeologically by the methodic work of its members. In later work, Garfinkel would praxeologically transpose traditional perceptual Gestalt phenomena, such as music, to explore (...) the interactional work done in the production and perception of those phenomena. In developing EM by praxeologically reconfiguring Gestaltism, Garfinkel drew on the constitutive phenomenology of Aron Gurwitsch, wherein Gurwitsch sought to integrate Gestalt Psychology and phenomenology. In drawing on Gurwitsch, while also being informed by the work of Schütz and, later, Merleau-Ponty, EM is often depicted as either heavily indebted to phenomenology or as a distinct type of phenomenology: praxeological phenomenology, perhaps. At the same time, parallels have been drawn between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work and EM, since Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology was published in 1967. The parallels drawn have often centred on the treatment of rules and rule-following and on the similarities in the treatment of meaning in EM and in Wittgenstein’s later work. However, given the centrality of Gestalt psychology to the development of EM, it is worth noting that in his later manuscripts Wittgenstein discussed Gestalt phenomena and Gestalt Psychology extensively and in ways that often anticipate what Garfinkel would do with Gestaltist ideas. It is, therefore, worth exploring the similarities and differences between Wittgenstein’s, Gurwitsch’s and Garfinkel’s engagement with Gestaltism. This is what I seek to do in this article. In conclusion, I propose that EM should be seen, like Wittgenstein, as post-phenomenological. (shrink)

Historiography in a metaphysical mode Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-17 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9524-6 Authors Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, CETCOPRA/Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne, 17 Rue de la Sorbonne, 75231 Paris Cedex05, France Jan Golinski, Department of History, University of New Hampshire, 20 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, USA Lissa L. Roberts, Department of Science, Technology and Policy Studies (STePS), University of Twente, Postbox 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands John McEvoy, Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA Journal Metascience Online (...) ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the features of modeling-based abductive reasoning as a disciplinary practice of inquiry in the domain of earth science. The study was based on an undergraduate course of a university of education, Korea, offered for preservice elementary teachers majoring in science as their specialty. The course enrollees participated in an inquiry project in which they were asked to abductively generate models representing past geologic events in order to explain how two units in a (...) sedimentary rock outcrop had been formed. Three students were selected as major informants for the study, and multiple types of qualitative data were collected, including the students’ sketchbook records, audio-recording of whole-class presentation and discussion, and interviews with the students. The data were analyzed according to the method of analytical induction, which yielded three assertions as the findings of the study. First, while an explanatory model can be generated by combining resource models, the combination of resource models does not necessarily result in a scientifically sound explanatory model. Second, a systemic approach can help activate a critical resource model which can in turn lead to a scientifically sound explanatory model. Third, simulations with a model can enhance the plausibility of the model. Based on these findings, causal combinations of resource models, a systemic approach to earth scientific problem-solving, and simulations with a model are suggested and discussed as implications for science education and relevant research. (shrink)

There is, no doubt, a temptation to treat preventions, such as ‘the father’s grabbing the child prevented the accident’, and cases of ‘causation’ by omission, such as ‘the father’s inattention was the cause of the child’s accident’, as cases of genuine causation. I think they are not, and in this paper I defend a theory of what they are. More specifically, the counterfactual theory defended here is that a claim about prevention or ‘causation’ by omission should be understood not as (...) being directly about actual genuine causation but primarily as a counterfactual claim about genuine causation.1 The relation between actual causation and the mere possibility of causation allows my theory to explain both the difference and the similarity between the two notions (causation and prevention/omission). Further, the difference explains certain intuitions we have and the similarity justifies and explains the fact that for practical purposes we usually treat preventions and omissions as if they were genuine causation. Finally, the fact that this counterfactual theory of prevention and omission takes causation as primitive suggests that it is consistent with any theory of causation. This allows us to construct two arguments against what I will call genuinism, the view that cases of prevention and ‘causation’ by omission really are cases of genuine causation. In section II I show that genuinism does not account for the so-called intuition of difference. In section III I outline a number of problems that various theories of causation have with preventions and ‘causation’ by omission. These problems are ipso facto problems for genuinism, whereas I show in section V how the counterfactual theory solves those problems. Further, I answer a genuinist argument based on another type of intuition—the genuinist intuition—by showing why we have that intuition and how it should be handled (section VI). (shrink)

In this paper I show how the conserved quantity theory, or more generally the process theory of Wesley Salmon and myself, provides a sufficient condition in an analysis of causation. To do so I will show how it handles the problem of alleged 'misconnections'. I show what the conserved quantity theory says about such cases, and why intuitions are not to be taken as sacrosanct.

Discussion of the Aristotelian syllogistic over the last sixty years has arguably centered on the question whether syllogisms are inferences or implications. But the significance of this debate at times has been taken to concern whether the syllogistic is a logic or a theory, and how it ought to be represented by modern systems. Largely missing from this discussion has been a study of the few passages in the Prior Analytics where Aristotle provides explicit guidance on how to individuate syllogisms. (...) I argue that syllogisms are individuated by unordered premise pairs and so may be fruitfully thought of as multiple-succedent sequents. I conclude by drawing a few consequences for the representation of the syllogistic. (shrink)

This article explores the history of the prayer Deus qui humanae substantiae dignitatem as a contribution to the conceptualization history of human dignity. It is argued that the prayer can be traced back to pre-Carolingian times, that it forms part of an early tradition of reflection on human dignity, and that it was adapted to use at the offertory, such that an association was made between human dignity and the holy exchange of gifts. In this way, the prayer significantly shaped (...) the Christian concept of human dignity as the holy ‘place’ of commerce with God. (shrink)