Group agential epistemic injustice: Epistemic disempowerment and critical defanging of group epistemic agency1

Expanding Miranda Fricker's (2007) concept of epistemic injustice, recent accounts of agential epistemic injustice (Lackey, 2020; Medina, 2021; Pohlhaus, 2020) have focused on cases in which the epistemic agency of individuals or groups is unfairly blocked, constrained, or subverted. In this article I argue that agential epistemic injustice is perpetrated against marginalized groups not only when their group epistemic agency is excluded, but also when it is included but receives defective uptake that neutralizes their capacity to resist epistemic oppression. I identify two harms that such injustice inflicts on marginalized groups: epistemic disempowerment and critical defanging of resistant epistemic group agency. My analysis shows how the harms of agential epistemic injustice can occur through unfair epistemic exclusions in group dynamics, but also through forms of inclusion in group dynamics that distort or coopt the epistemic agency of the group. Following Emmalon Davis (2018) and her analysis of epistemic appropriation, I argue that the harms of agential epistemic injustice can occur when the resistant epistemic resources of a marginalized group are appropriated in a way that disempowers them and critically defangs their resistant epistemic agency. I use Taylor Rogers’ (2021) analysis of the epistemic appropriation of “#MeToo” and “intersectionality” to show how epistemic disempowerment and critical defanging work in unjust epistemic group dynamics. The article offers a diagnosis of the failures of epistemic responsibility involved in agential epistemic injustice, and some suggestions for resisting those failures and working toward more responsible and just epistemic group dynamics.     

Emergence and “Science of Ethos”: Toward a Tillichian Ethical Framework

Gordon Kaufman has recently interpreted emergence (“serendipitous creativity”) in religious terms as “ultimate mystery,”“the divine,” or ultimate point of reference. Using Tillich notion of ethics as “science of ethos” or “science of culture” this paper attempts to work out some of the ethical implications of this theological naming of emergence. The implications are brought to light in an ethical framework that not only traces and clarifies the lure of the mystery at work in the culturally-creative functions of persons and social groups, but also shows how the creative functions of human life can express the unconditional eros of serendipitous creativity.     

How navigation systems transform epistemic virtues: Knowledge,issues and solutions

In this paper, we analyse how GPS-based navigation systems are transforming some of our intellectual virtues and then suggest two strategies to improve our practices regarding the use of such epistemic tools. We start by outlining the two main approaches in virtue epistemology, namely virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. We then discuss how navigation systems can undermine five epistemic virtues, namely memory, perception, attention, intellectual autonomy, and intellectual carefulness. We end by considering two possible interlinked ways of trying to remedy this situation: [i] redesigning the epistemic tool to improve the epistemic virtues of memory, perception, and attention; and [ii] the cultivation of cognitive diligence for wayfinding tasks scaffolding intellectual autonomy and carefulness.     

Conceptual Analysis and Epistemic Progress

This essay concerns the question of how we make genuine epistemic progress through conceptual analysis. Our way into this issue will be through consideration of the paradox of analysis. The paradox challenges us to explain how a given statement can make a substantive contribution to our knowledge, even while it purports merely to make explicit what one’s grasp of the concept under scrutiny consists in. The paradox is often treated primarily as a semantic puzzle. However, in “Sect. 1” I argue that the paradox raises a more fundamental epistemic problem, and in “Sects.1 and 2” I argue that semantic proposals—even ones designed to capture the Fregean link between meaning and epistemic significance—fail to resolve that problem. Seeing our way towards a real solution to the paradox requires more than semantics; we also need to understand how the process of analysis can yield justification for accepting a candidate conceptual analysis. I present an account of this process, and explain how it resolves the paradox, in “Sect. 3”. I conclude in “Sect. 4” by considering the implications for the present account concerning the goal of conceptual analysis, and by arguing that the apparent scarcity of short and finite illuminating analyses in philosophically interesting cases provides no grounds for pessimism concerning the possibility of philosophical progress through conceptual analysis.     

Creativity and modelling the measurement process of the Higgs self-coupling at the LHC and HL-LHC

This paper provides an account of the nature of creativity in high-energy physics experiments through an integrated historical and philosophical study of the current and planned attempts to measure the self-coupling of the Higgs boson by two experimental collaborations (ATLAS and CMS) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the planned High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). A notion of creativity is first identified broadly as an increase in the epistemic value of a measurement outcome from an unexpected transformation, and narrowly as a condition for knowledge of the measurement of the self-coupling of the Higgs. Drawing upon Tal’s model-based epistemology of measurement (2012) this paper shows how without change to ‘readings’ (or ‘instrument indicators’) a transformation to the model of the measurement process can increase the epistemic value of the measurement outcome. Such transformations are attributed to the creativity of the experimental collaboration. Creativity, in this context, is both a product, a creative and improved model, and the distributed collaborative process of transformation to the model of the measurement process. For the case of the planned measurements at the HL-LHC, where models of the measurement process perform the epistemic function of prediction, creativity is included in the models of the measurement process, both as projected quantified creativity and as an assumed property of the future collaborations.

     

Creative Reading in the Information Age: Paradoxes of Close and Distant Reading

This article reflects on transformations of modes of reading in an information age, asking what “creative reading” entails in information‐intensive, multimodal environments. We currently face the challenge of the development of reading strategies that oscillate between “close” and “distant” reading. For years, these reading strategies have been a topic of debate between practitioners of Digital Humanities on the one hand, and “traditional” humanists on the other. This ongoing polemics presents reading methods in an unnecessarily polarized manner. I argue that creativity research can be operationalized to come to a more productive model to characterize the ways we read in an information age. I show that the “schism” between close and distant reading is structured around a number of apparent paradoxes that I unravel such as hyper‐ and deep attention/attention and distraction, and convergence and divergence. The paradox of creativity resides in the fact that we find convergence in divergence and vice versa, that the two by definition intertwine. Building on these concepts, I propose a model that considers reading in terms of scale variance. I suggest the humanities turn to creativity research and the interrelations between divergent‐exploratory and convergent‐integrative thinking (Lubart), for a conceptual framework that will allow us to train students on all levels how to read (and how and when not to read), in an information age.     

Rule-Following and Objective Spirit

This paper deals with Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox, focussing on the infinite rule-regress as featured in Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. I argue that one of the most salient and popular proposed solutions (championed by John McDowell), which argues that rule-following is grounded in “custom,” “practice” or “form of life, remains unsatisfactory because part of this proposal is the rejection of further “theory” (commonly attributed to Wittgenstein) which seemingly makes it impossible to substantiate the claim of how customs, practices or forms of life ground rule-following. I argue that this conundrum can be solved by introducing Wilhelm Dilthey’s overlooked notion of objective spirit as the objectivated sediment of historical human communality. This proposal allows us to substantiate Wittgenstein’s hints at the connection between rule-following and customs, practices, and forms of life without introducing “problematic theories.” Combining Wittgenstein’s views with Dilthey’s notion of objective spirit results in a solution that is neither skeptical nor straight, but therapeutic.     

Logical information and epistemic space

Gaining information can be modelled as a narrowing of epistemic space. Intuitively, becoming informed that such-and-such is the case rules out certain scenarios or would-be possibilities. Chalmers’s account of epistemic space treats it as a space of a priori possibility and so has trouble in dealing with the information which we intuitively feel can be gained from logical inference. I propose a more inclusive notion of epistemic space, based on Priest’s notion of open worlds yet which contains only those epistemic scenarios which are not obviously impossible. Whether something is obvious is not always a determinate matter and so the resulting picture is of an epistemic space with fuzzy boundaries.     

An intensional epistemic logic

One of the fundamental properties inclassical equational reasoning isLeibniz's principle of substitution. Unfortunately, this propertydoes not hold instandard epistemic logic. Furthermore,Herbrand's lifting theorem which isessential to thecompleteness ofresolution andParamodulation in theclassical first order logic (FOL), turns out to be invalid in standard epistemic logic. In particular, unlike classical logic, there is no skolemization normal form for standard epistemic logic. To solve these problems, we introduce anintensional epistemic logic, based on avariation of Kripke's possible-worlds semantics that need not have a constant domain. We show how a weaker notion of substitution through indexed terms can retain the Herbrand theorem. We prove how the logic can yield a satisfibility preserving skolemization form. In particular, we present an intensional principle for unifing indexed terms. Finally, we describe asound andcomplete inference system for a Horn subset of the logic withequality, based onepistemic SLD-resolution.     

Motivation as an epistemic ground

In several papers, Mark Wrathall argued that French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, identifies a sui generis type of grounding, one not reducible to reason or natural causality. Following the Phenomenological tradition, Merleau-Ponty called this form of grounding “motivation,” and described it as the way in which one phenomenon spontaneously gives rise to another through its sense. While Wrathall’s suggestion has been taken up in the practical domain, its epistemic import has still not been fully explored. I would like to take up the epistemic dimension of Wrathall’s thought in this paper. Following Wrathall, I explain how motivation can help us understand the manner in which perceptions ground singular, experiential judgments. But I extend this work in two ways. First, I suggest some additional considerations that support Wrathall’s view. Second, I argue that motivation can also help account for the way perceptions ground general judgments. My aim here will not be so much to rule out other answers to these longstanding epistemological questions, as to show that motivation carves out an attractive epistemological space.

     

Creativity and Wonder

The experience of wonder is often said to be at the origin of acts of creativity, both historical and mundane, from big breakthroughs in science to the everyday discoveries of children at play. And yet, wonder and wondering have rarely been theorized until now, at least in the psychology of creativity. Understood as one of the main ways in which we engage with the possible, wonder presents us, upon closer inspection, with a paradox typical for creativity—experiencing what is present (the here and now) through the lenses of what is absent (the not‐yet‐here). Wondering is grounded in the possibility of adopting multiple perspectives on a certain reality; many of which are yet unknown to the creator while anticipated and actively looked for. In this paper, the creative process fuelled by the experience of wonder is described as a cyclical interplay between awareness, excitement, and exploration of the possible. Thus, one of the main consequences of reflecting on wonder and wondering is not only a renewed focus on process in creativity research but, most of all, a new emphasis on the less “visible” and yet essential aspects of creative action as it bridges the actual and the possible.     

Creative Transformation: A Design Perspective

This paper outlines a research program, which seeks to develop strategies to facilitate creative development through paradigmatic transformation. The paper begins with the notion of a “Being strategy” by exploring the Möbius Ring as a model for creativity. The model offers metaphors appropriate to design which seeks to build a connection with the underlying dynamics of subjective life. This paper then explores how these strategies can be employed within a design context to transform the consciousness of the designer.     

The epistemic significance of consensus

Philosophers have often noted that science displays an uncommon degree of consensus on beliefs among its practitioners. Yet consensus in the sciences is not a goal in itself. I consider cases of consensus on beliefs as concrete events. Consensus on beliefs is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for presuming that these beliefs constitute knowledge. A concrete consensus on a set of beliefs by a group of people at a given historical period may be explained by different factors according to various hypotheses. A particularly interesting hypothesis from an epistemic perspective is the knowledge hypothesis: shared knowledge explains a consensus on beliefs. If all the alternative hypotheses to the knowledge hypotheses are false or are not as good in explaining a concrete consensus on beliefs, the knowledge hypothesis is the best explanation of the consensus. If the knowledge hypothesis is best, a consensus becomes a plausible, though fallible, indicator of knowledge. I argue that if a consensus on beliefs is uncoerced, uniquely heterogeneous and large, the gap between the likelihood of the consensus given the knowledge hypothesis and its likelihoods given competing hypotheses tends to increase significantly. Consensus is a better indicator of knowledge than “success” or “human flourishing”.     

Doxastic planning and epistemic internalism

In the following I discuss the debate between epistemological internalists and externalists from an unfamiliar meta-epistemological perspective. In doing so, I focus on the question of whether rationality is best captured in externalist or internalist terms. Using a conception of epistemic judgments as “doxastic plans,” I characterize one important subspecies of judgments about epistemic rationality—focusing on the distinctive rational/functional role these judgments play in regulating how we form beliefs. Then I show why any judgment that plays this role should be expected to behave the manner internalists predict. In this way, I argue, we can explain why our basic toolbox for epistemic evaluation includes an internalist conception of rationality.     

How Can Contextual Variables Influence Creative Thinking? Contributions from the Optimal-Level of Arousal Model

More and more research is showing how different environments can lead to greater or lower creative skills. The purpose of this concept paper is to introduce a novel application of the optimal-level of arousal model that could address inconsistencies present in the literature. After introducing possible definitions of creativity, I discuss the optimal-level of arousal theory and how considering the “arousal” and “mood changing” potentials of contexts could enlighten findings related to inter-individual differences, domain-specificities, developmental aspects, and gender differences. Among other things, this model will clarify the factors influencing motivation to display creative skills which could improve the external validity of creativity studies. Examples of the kinds of hypotheses that can be tested by applying this model in future creative studies will also be proposed.     

让智慧插上创造的翅膀：创造动力系统的激活及其条件

创造力是一个集个人、团体、社会、文化相互交织的系统, 因此创造力的培养也需要综合考虑。本文在融合以往创造力研究的基础上, 建构了一套系统创造力培养的“蝴蝶理论”, 创造力培养需要抓住核心来统领全局, 同时兼顾创造力培养所需要统筹兼顾的各个部分。动力系统的激活是创造力培养的核心。新颖、适用的创造性成果的产出, 需要社会文化中的个体或团体在创造性心理动力的基础上来完成。创造性心理动力有效的激活则需要一些基本条件, 如在认知层面, 需要具备一定的能力, 如一般认知能力、思维方法的掌握、元认知以及高效的资源整合能力等; 在非智力因素方面, 基本心理需要的满足, 个性心理的健康发展等是创造力得以发挥的必要条件, 推而广之还包括：合理的社会支持、互动以及文化的包容等等。除了理论方面的整合, 本文还从实践的角度分析如何激活学生的动力系统, 重点分析了什么是兴趣以及如何激发个体的兴趣, 因为以兴趣爱好为核心的内部动机是自主性最高的动力来源。本文从理论(创造力培养的蝴蝶理论)与实践(创造力培养的兴趣激发)两个角度为创造力培养提供了支持。     

American and Chinese Similarities and Differences in Defining and Valuing Creative Products

This review of the literature explores how Americans and Chinese view creativity and what they expect from creative products. American and Chinese explicit beliefs about creativity (i.e., expert opinions) share many similarities. Implicit beliefs, however, show more divergence: Americans tend to value novelty and more “groundbreaking” types of creativity, whereas Chinese tend to appreciate creativity within constraints, such as reworking a traditional concept. The context of how people respond to creativity obviously varies by culture, although there are also some communal and universal creative ideals.     

There is a distinctively epistemic kind of blame

Is there a distinctively epistemic kind of blame? It has become commonplace for epistemologists to talk about epistemic blame, and to rely on this notion for theoretical purposes. But not everyone is convinced. Some of the most compelling reasons for skepticism about epistemic blame focus on disanologies, or asymmetries, between the moral and epistemic domains. In this paper, I defend the idea that there is a distinctively epistemic kind of blame. I do so primarily by developing an account of the nature of epistemic blame. My account draws on a prominent line of theorizing in moral philosophy that ties blame to our relationships with one another. I argue that with my account of epistemic blame on hand, the most compelling worries about epistemic blame can be deflated. There is a distinctively epistemic kind of blame.     

The Conditions for Creativity

ABSTRACT We must attempt to formulate those conditions which are both necessary and sufficient for creativity. These conditions, at a minimum, appear to be: (1) Motivation. This includes inherent needs, which provide the “push”, and acquired traits and attitudes, which provide the “pull”. (2) Self-limitation (or selectivity). This means proper use and the setting of proper curbs on our talents and energies; the adoption of an adequate valuing-system and the development of the kind of character that will help us meet the demands of the environment and our creative projects. (3) Receptivity (or openness). This makes it possible for us to take in new ideas, experience new feelings and attitudes, apprehend new aesthetic forms relevant to originality. (4) Competence. This involves mastery of those tools used in, and required for, the creative project. These conditions may be held to be minimal for creativity.