The Epistemological Problem of Relativism – Reply to Olson

Philosophical Studies -     

‘I’ve got to prioritise’: being a parent with cystic fibrosis

Due to advances in earlier diagnosis and treatment, the life expectancy of a person born with cystic fibrosis (CF) has increased. Therefore, more people with CF are becoming parents but the psychological understanding of CF has lagged behind advances in medical treatment; there is very limited applied psychological research on which parents and professionals can draw when considering issues of parenting in this context. This qualitative research explored how mothers and fathers with CF experience and manage the dual roles of being a parent and living with CF. The aim was to facilitate development of an understanding of experience rather than test existing theory. A qualitative methodology was chosen as it allowed participants to reflect openly on their individual experiences. Nine participants completed semi-structured interviews either in their own homes or a clinic base which examined parenting, CF and the interaction between the two roles. Four participants were male and five were female with an age range of 21–50. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis was used to interpret the participants’ accounts and generate super-ordinate and master themes. ‘Being a parent on compressed time’ was the super-ordinate theme which reflected the challenge of parenting within both a limited life trajectory and a complex treatment regime with daily adherence and time pressures. The findings have implications for parents with CF, those considering parenting and for health professionals working in CF services whose guidance needs to be grounded in an evidence-base. Further research is needed to explore the experiences of parents within different family structures, parents who have had a transplant and the perspectives of others in the wider system in which parents with CF are located.     

Reply to Chrzan’s comments

1 This paper discusses the following works: Alvin Plantinga,The Nature of Necessity, Oxford University Press 1974, Chapter 9 Section 11; Keith Chrzan, ‘Plantinga on Atheistic Induction,’Sophia Vol 27 No. 2 (July 1988), 10–14; Bruce Langtry, ‘God, Evil and Probability,’,Sophia Vol 28 No. 1 (April 1989), 32–40; and Keith Chrzan, ‘Comment on Langtry's “God, Evil and Probability”,’Sophia Vol 32 No. 2 (July 1993), 54–58. The numbering of propositions throughout is the same as in my earlier paper. All page references to Chrzan are to his second paper.     

On Kant’s Knowledge of Leibniz’ Metaphysics—a Reply to Garber

Daniel Garber has put forward an argument that aims to show that Kant’s understanding of Leibniz’ metaphysics should be discounted because he could only have had access to a small and narrow sample of Leibniz’ works from around 1710–1714. In particular, Garber argues that as Kant could not have read Leibniz’ correspondence with Arnauld or his correspondence with Des Bosses he could not have had an adequate conception of Leibniz’ understanding of the relation between substance and body. I will show that Kant could have read some of the Arnauld correspondence and practically all of the Des Bosses correspondence, as well as a number of other related texts that are important for understanding Leibniz’ metaphysics, over a decade before writing the Critique of Pure Reason. Garber’s historical-textual argument for dismissing Kant’s account of Leibniz’ metaphysics is therefore seriously misleading.     

Solitude without Souls: Why Peter Unger hasn’t Established Substance Dualism

Unger has recently argued that if you are the only thinking and experiencing subject in your chair, then you are not a material object. This leads Unger to endorse a version of Substance Dualism according to which we are immaterial souls. This paper argues that this is an overreaction. We argue that the specifically Dualist elements of Unger’s view play no role in his response to the problem; only the view’s structure is required, and that is available to Unger’s opponents. We outline one such non-Dualist view, suggest how to resolve the dispute, respond to some objections, and argue that ours is but one of many views that survive Unger’s challenge. All these views are incompatible with microphysicalism. So Unger’s discussion does contain an insight: if you are the only conscious subject in your chair, then microphsyicalism is false. Unger’s mistake was to infer Substance Dualism from this; for microphysicalism is not the only alternative to Dualism.     

BonJour’s Abductivist Reply to Skepticism

The abductivist reply to skepticism is the view that commonsense explanations of the patterns and regularities that appear in our sensory experiences should be rationally preferred to skeptical explanations of those same patterns and regularities on the basis of explanatory considerations. In this article I critically examine Laurence BonJour’s rationalist version of the abductivist position. After explaining why BonJour’s account is more defensible than other versions of the view, I argue that the notion of probability he relies upon is deeply problematic, that he incorporates an implausible double-standard concerning a priori and a posteriori justification, and that his view is vulnerable to skepticism about the a priori. I suggest that some of these problems are due to idiosyncratic commitments BonJour makes and that abductivists would be better off without them. I conclude with some suggestions about how to improve BonJour’s abductivist response to skepticism.

Beyond Recovery? a Reply to Tennant

In his paper ‘Changing the Theory of Theory Change: Reply to My Critics’, N. Tennant (1997b) reacts to the critical reception of an earlier article of his. The present note rectifies some of the most serious misrepresentations in Tennant's reply. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Reply to Critiques of Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake

Philosophia - In what follows, I reply to critical appraisals of my book entitled Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession (Cavanaugh 2018)....     

How to Use Your Mind When You Can’t Think: Reply to Commentaries by Davies and Cooper

There is much area of agreement between the author and the discussants. The author addresses areas of concern and questions raised in the commentaries. These topics include the use of reverie, how I have defined maternal desire, concerns about the avoidance of negative transference, the analyst’s own dissociation, and compassion.     

Is Explanatoriness a Guide to Confirmation? A Reply to Climenhaga

We (2013, 2014) argued that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant in the following sense: Let H be a hypothesis, O an observation, and E the proposition that H would explain O if H and O were true. Then our claim is that Pr(H | O & E) = Pr(H | O). We defended this screening-off thesis (SOT) by discussing an example concerning smoking and cancer. Climenhaga (Philos Sci, forthcoming) argues that SOT is mistaken because it delivers the wrong verdict about a slightly different smoking-and-cancer case. He also considers a variant of SOT, called “SOT*”, and contends that it too gives the wrong result. We here reply to Climenhaga’s arguments and suggest that SOT provides a criticism of the widely held theory of inference called “inference to the best explanation”.     

Interpreting Neurath’s Protocols. Reply to Nottelmann

This paper responds to a recent criticism of Uebel's analysis of Neurath's protocol statements and proposes some independent amendments.

Aging: I don’t want to be a cyborg!

Examination is made of a range of cyborg solutions to bodily problems due to damage, but here with particular reference to aging. Both technological and animal implants, transplants and prosthetic devices are phenomenologically analyzed. The resultant trade-off phenomena are compared to popular culture technofantasies and desires and finally to human attitudes toward mortality and contingency. The parallelism of resistance to contingent existence and to becoming a cyborg is noted.     

God’s Random Selection: Reply to Steinberg

In this reply to Jesse Steinberg’s ‘God and the possibility of random creation’, I suggest a procedure whereby a being such as God could randomly select a number from an infinite set.