Mereological Nominalism

Mereological nominalism is the thesis that properties are identical to fusions of their instances. Long ignored, this paper argues that it's a plausible ontology of properties. Whilst not everyone will accept it, it's going to appeal to many philosophers and (at the least) should no longer be relegated to the annals of the history of metaphysics.¹     

Knowledge,certainty, and assertion

Researchers have debated whether knowledge or certainty is a better candidate for the norm of assertion. Should you make an assertion only if you know it's true? Or should you make an assertion only if you're certain it's true? If either knowledge or certainty is a better candidate, then this will likely have detectable behavioral consequences. I report an experiment that tests for relevant behavioral consequences. The results support the view that assertability is more closely linked to knowledge than to certainty. In multiple scenarios, people were much more willing to allow assertability and certainty to come apart than to allow assertability and knowledge to come apart.     

LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited

A main thread of the debate over mathematical realism has come down to whether mathematics does explanatory work of its own in some of our best scientific explanations of empirical facts. Realists argue that it does; anti-realists argue that it doesn't. Part of this debate depends on how mathematics might be able to do explanatory work in an explanation. Everyone agrees that it's not enough that there merely be some mathematics in the explanation. Anti-realists claim there is nothing mathematics can do to make an explanation mathematical; realists think something can be done, but they are not clear about what that something is.

I argue that many of the examples of mathematical explanations of empirical facts in the literature can be accounted for in terms of Jackson and Pettit's [1990] notion of program explanation, and that mathematical realists can use the notion of program explanation to support their realism. This is exactly what has happened in a recent thread of the debate over moral realism (in this journal). I explain how the two debates are analogous and how moves that have been made in the moral realism debate can be made in the mathematical realism debate. However, I conclude that one can be a mathematical realist without having to be a moral realist.     

Is Every Theory of Knowledge False?

Is knowledge consistent with literally any credence in the relevant proposition, including credence 0? Of course not. But is credence 0 the only credence in p that entails that you don't know that p? Knowledge entails belief (most epistemologists think), and it's impossible to believe that p while having credence 0 in p. Is it true that, for every value of ‘x,’ if it's impossible to know that p while having credence x in p, this is simply because it's impossible to believe that p while having credence x in p? If so, is it possible to believe that p while having (say) credence 0.4 in p? These questions aren't standard epistemological fare—at least in part because many epistemologists think their answers are obvious—but they have unanticipated consequences for epistemology. Let ‘improbabilism’ name the thesis that it's possible to know that p while having a credence in p below 0.5. Improbabilism will strike many epistemologists as absurd, but careful reflection on these questions reveals that, if improbabilism is false, then all of the most plausible theories of knowledge are also false. Or so I shall argue in this paper. Since improbabilism is widely rejected by epistemologists (at least implicitly), this paper reveals a tension between all of the most plausible theories of knowledge and a widespread assumption in epistemology.     

Distant Peers

What is the nature of rational disagreement? A number of philosophers have recently addressed this question by examining how we should respond to epistemic conflict with a so‐called epistemic peer—that is, someone over whom you enjoy no epistemic advantage. Some say that you're rationally required to suspend judgment in these cases—thereby denying the very possibility of a certain kind of rational disagreement. Others say that it's permissible to retain your beliefs even in the face of epistemic conflict. By distinguishing between close peers and distant peers, I argue that it's rational to respond to different types of peers in different ways. I also argue that remote peers—a particularly distant kind of distant peer—provide us with an important lesson in epistemic humility.     

MAKING MEANING OF 1984 IN CYBERSPACE

VANCOUVER –A group of B.C. Sikh students who wore controversial T-shirts to school have sparked a debate within their community and left some wondering why a group of youths would latch onto a divisive movement dating from before they were born.

The students showed up to Surrey's Princess Margaret Secondary School earlier this month wearing shirts emblazoned with the word Khalistan, referring to a Sikh separatist movement advocating for a Sikh homeland in India's Punjab region that was often linked to violence in the 1980s.

On the back was a quote from Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Khalistan advocate who was killed during India's 1984 raid on the Golden Temple.

School administrators told the students not to wear the shirts again.

Some have brushed off the T-shirts as youthful rebellion or dismissed the students as naive and uninformed.

The teens, however, insist they know the history and wanted to make a statement that would be heard.

‘When people see this, they'll look at it and be like, “Wow, there's people still out there that still believe in this stuff. And it's not just the older generation, it's the youth”,’ one of the boys said last week during a call-in show on a local multicultural radio station.

Another student – they didn't provide their names – made it clear the group was, in fact, advocating for an independent Sikh state.

‘We want freedom in Punjab’, he said.

Students at Surrey's Princess Margaret High School wear T-shirts some say are controversial, Friday, April 18th, 2008.

The Canadian Press. April 27 2008 12:53 PM ET     

Affaire Vincent L. : les maux de la fin

As called back it June 24th, Council of State in its press release, the Vincent L.’s case “raise scientific, ethical and human questions”. At first, to decide on the fate of this 38-year-old man, the administrative jurisdiction recovered from it in expert opinions asked to establish the existence or not of an unreasonable stubbornness. But the objectivity of the medical science cannot solve only this litigation where the outcome is the life or the death of a patient. That is why the court opened its doors to the ethical speech too. If in this case, the science could not exist without consciousness, if the legal word could not exist without the ethical word, it's because of the human dimension which fills this media and legal affair. So behind this patient's case, called now “the Vincent L.’s affair”, it's a question about the death, that of a young man in the incapacity to express its will. It's also a question of a family disagreement on the future of their son, brother, or husband. In this context, “politically and mediatically charged”, the administrative jurisdiction pronounced four times on the decision of the stop of Vincent L.’s treatment. The educational position of the French judges allowed to clear up statutory provisions of the Leonetti's act.     

HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT ‘HOW DO YOU KNOW?’ CHALLENGES A SPEAKER'S KNOWLEDGE?

It is often argued that the general propriety of challenging an assertion with ‘How do you know?’ counts as evidence for the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA). Part of the argument is that this challenge seems to directly challenge whether a speaker knows what she asserts. In this article I argue for a re‐interpretation of the data, the upshot of which is that we need not interpret ‘How do you know?’ as directly challenging a speaker's knowledge; instead, it's better understood as challenging a speaker's reasons. Consequently, I argue that reasons‐based norms can equally well explain this data.     

SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF LOGICAL OMNISCIENCE

This paper looks at three ways of addressing probabilism's implausible requirement of logical omniscience. The first and most common strategy says it's okay to require an ideally rational person to be logically omniscient. I argue that this view is indefensible on any interpretation of ‘ideally rational’. The second strategy says probabilism should be formulated not in terms of logically possible worlds but in terms of doxastically possible worlds, ways you think the world might be. I argue that, on the interpretation of this approach that lifts the requirement of certainty in all logical truths, the view becomes vacuous, issuing no requirements on rational believers at all. Finally, I develop and endorse a new solution to the problem. This view proposes dynamic norms for reasoning with credences. The solution is based on an old proposal of Ian Hacking's that says you're required to be sensitive to logical facts only when you know they are logical facts.     

Computer-Assisted Concept Analysis of HCR's First 25 Years

Human Communication Research's (HCR) silver anniversary provides an occasion for an examination of the journal's history of publication. This was accomplished using new procedures for computer-assisted content analysis of text. Titles of 634 HCR articles were normalized using linguistic reduction, elimination of common words and terms with indiscriminate meaning, and tokenization of phrases and compound concepts. The resulting 86 most frequently occurring tokens were submitted to hierarchical cluster analysis to study conceptual linkage. Concepts represented in HCR articles were found to group into five large clusters: media, family, conflict, and learning; culture, social organization, and self; gender and language; cognition, conversation, persuasion, and influence; and group decision making. Support and clarification are provided for findings that HCR serves as a liaison journal between mass and interpersonal communication. It is suggested that HCR's history of publication manifests a theory of communication that is rooted in social psychological traditions.     

“A Big Piece of News”: Théodule Ribot and the Founding of the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger

This paper describes the founding of the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger by Théodule Ribot (1839–1916) in 1876. Like the English journal Mind, which was launched the same year, this journal introduced the new scientific psychology to France. Its founding increased Ribot's scientific credibility in psychology and led him to be regarded as the most distinguished French specialist in the field. First, we review the state of French philosophy at the time of the journal's founding, focusing on the three main French schools of thought in philosophy and on their relations with psychology. Second, after analyzing the preface written by Ribot in the first issue of the Revue Philosophique, we examine how the journal was received in French philosophical circles. Finally, we discuss its subsequent history, highlighting its founder's promotion of new ideas in psychology.     

Martin Bucer and the Revision of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer: Reform of Ceremonies and the Didactic Use of Ritual

Abstract

This paper looks again at Erasmus's Ciceronianus, a satire published in 1528, which created enormous controversy on it's appearance. The text raises questions which are difficult to answer. One of the central characters in the work is Nosoponus (Mr Workmad). The paper puts the case for identifying this character with Giulio Camillo Delminio (c. 1480-1544).