Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology: What’s the Question?

Alvin Plantingas Warranted Christian Belief is without questionone of the central texts of the Reformed epistemology movement. Critiques of Plantingas defence have been both multiple and varied. As varied as these responses are, however, it is my contention that many of them amount to the same thing. It is the purpose of this paper to offer an overview of the main lines of attack that have been directed as Plantingas project, and thereafter to show how many, if not most, of these objections can be understood as versions or aspects of the same criticism, what I call the Inadequacy Thesis.     

‘Feeling the range’: Emotional geographies of sound in prisons

Sound, as a modality of emotion, is central to the everyday constitution of space. For an increasing population in Canada, however, incarceration forms the basis of everyday life. This paper explores the connections between sound and emotion as they play out in the under-researched context of prisons. I use a participant’s term, “feeling the range,” to identify the atmospheric, haptic, and emotive potential of sound as a vital tool of spatial knowledge. These conceptualisations inform three findings that highlight the enabling and constraining complexities of aurality. First, sound and listening are epistemological practices that offer important tools for spatial orientation in otherwise restrictive environments; yet some materialities of sound, like reverberation, also cause great disorientation. Secondly, the extensive capacities of sound enable connection with other beings and contexts during imprisonment; at the same time, sonic practices also disconnect, particularly through sonic techniques that carve out individualised auditory spaces. Finally, sound plays a crucial role in the enactment of power through resistance, and is used to reclaim dignity in undignified settings. This paper demonstrates that soundworlds can be as inclusive as they are exclusive, as convivial as they are hostile, and as therapeutic as they are torturous.     

The S-R information stream: Where’s the filter?

Pavlovian conditioning procedures, in which events such as tastes, lights, and sounds become predictors of food, water, and shocks, have been used for studying the role of the information filter in the selection of conditioned responses. Different models posit the filter at different locations in the S-R stream, but most models suggest either a pre-encoding filter, in which much information is discarded at an early stage of processing, or a post-encoding filter, in which the information is stored but not subsequently expressed in behavior. A selective review of the literature on cue-competition effects reveals a plethora of phenomena that support a post-encoding, but not a pre-encoding filter in Pavlovian processes.     

Who’s Driving the Syntactic Engine?

The property of being the implementation of a computational structure has been argued to be vacuously instantiated. This claim provides the basis for most antirealist arguments in the field of the philosophy of computation. Standard manoeuvres for combating these antirealist arguments treat the problem as endogenous to computational theories. The contrastive analysis of computational and other mathematical representations put forward here reveals that the problem should instead be treated within the more general framework of the Newman problem in structuralist accounts of mathematical representation. It is argued that purely structuralist and purely functionalist accounts of implementation are inadequate to tackle the problem. An extensive evaluation of semantic accounts is provided, arguing that semantic properties are, unlike structural and functional ones, suitable to restrict the intended domain of implementation of computational properties in such a way as to block the Newman problem. The semantic hypothesis is defended from a number of recent objections.     

Creative Cognition and Psychosis Vulnerability: What’s the Difference?

Evidence from experimental psychology provides unequivocal support for enhanced creativity among individuals who are prone to psychotic and mood disorders. At the same time, there is strong epidemiological evidence for greater incidence of creative achievement among those diagnosed with bipolar disorder (but not schizophrenia). This review examines the evidence for common factors predisposing an individual to creativity and psychosis, as well as factors that distinguish the capacity for creative achievement from the creative potential that may be inherent in psychosis vulnerability. Factors implicated as common to creative potential and psychosis vulnerability include enhanced divergent thinking, reduced latent inhibition and preattentive filtering mechanisms; on the other hand, greater cognitive flexibility, motivation, and openness to experience tend to be associated with creative achievement, but not psychosis. This evidence is considered with respect to the utility of tailored vocational interventions to effectively harness creative potential, which may be useful for young individuals in the early stages of illness or their unaffected family members.     

Applying Science and Applied Science: What’s the Difference?

Prandtl’s work on the boundary layer theory is an interesting example for illustrating several important issues in philosophy of science such as the relation between theories and models and whether it is possible to distinguish, in a principled way, between pure and applied science. In what follows I discuss several proposals by the symposium participants regarding the interpretation of Prandtl’s work and whether it should be characterized as an instance of applied science. My own interpretation of this example (1999) emphasised the degree of autonomy embedded in Prandtl’s boundary layer model and the way it became integrated in the larger theoretical context of hydrodynamics. In addition to extending that discussion here I also claim that the characterization of applied science which formed the basis for the symposium does not enable us to successfully distinguish applied science from the general practice of ‘applying’ basic scientific knowledge in a variety of contexts.     

Epistemicism and Nihilism about Vagueness: What’s the Difference?

In this paper I argue, first, that the only difference between Epistemicism and Nihilism about vagueness is semantic rather than ontological, and second, that once it is clear what the difference between these views is, Nihilism is a much more plausible view of vagueness than Epistemicism. Given the current popularity of certain epistemicist views (most notably, Williamson’s), this result is, I think, of interest.     

“Feeling my Sister’s Pain”: Perceived Victim Suffering Moderates the Impact of Sexualized Music Videos on Fijian Women’s Responses to Men’s Intimate Partner Violence against Women

To better understand how sexualized music videos affect women’s responses to intimate partner violence (IPV), we examined the role of individual variability in perceived victim pain and perceived victim culpability in moderating and mediating (respectively) the priming effects of sexual music videos on women. Female Fijian college students (n?=?243) were randomly assigned to one of three viewing conditions: stereotyped sexual music videos, non-stereotyped/non-sexual music videos, or neutral videos. All participants then read a portrayal of a male-toward-female IPV episode and their perceptions of the female victim and male perpetrator were assessed. Only women who minimized the victim’s pain were adversely affected by exposure to the stereotyped sexual videos. Specifically, for women who perceived low victim pain, those in the stereotyped video condition perceived the victim as more culpable and reported greater perpetrator-directed favorable responding than those in the other two conditions. For these women who perceived low victim pain, perceptions of victim culpability mediated the impact of video type on perpetrator-favorable responding. The findings help us better understand susceptibility to the negative impact of stereotypical sexual videos and highlight areas, such as emphasizing the suffering of victims and reducing myths about victim culpability, which may be worthy of particular emphasis in interventions.

     

Can the Russellian Monist Escape the Epiphenomenalist’s Paradox?

Topoi - Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about...     

What’s New about the New Induction?

The problem of underdetermination is thought to hold important lessons for philosophy of science. Yet, as Kyle Stanford has recently argued, typical treatments of it offer only restatements of familiar philosophical problems. Following suggestions in Duhem and Sklar, Stanford calls for a New Induction from the history of science. It will provide proof, he thinks, of “the kind of underdetermination that the history of science reveals to be a distinctive and genuine threat to even our best scientific theories” (Stanford 2001, p. S12). This paper examines Stanford’s New Induction and argues that it – like the other forms of underdetermination that he criticizes – merely recapitulates familiar philosophical conundra.     

What’s the matter with Huck Finn?

This paper explores some key commitments of the idea that it can be rational to do what you believe you ought not to do. I suggest that there is a prima facie tension between this idea and certain plausible coherence constraints on rational agency. I propose a way to resolve this tension. While akratic agents are always irrational, they are not always practically irrational, as many authors assume. Rather, “inverse” akratics like Huck Finn fail in a distinctively theoretical way. What explains why akratic agents are always either theoretically or practically irrational? I suggest that this is true because an agent’s total evidence determines both the beliefs and the intentions it is rational for her to have. Moreover, an agent’s evidence does so in a way such that it is never rational for the agent to at once believe that she ought to Φ and lack the intention to Φ.