Decisions and Higher‐Order Knowledge

A knowledge‐based decision theory faces what has been called the prodigality problem (Greco, 2013): given that many propositions are assigned probability 1, agents will be inclined to risk everything when betting on propositions which are known. In order to undo probability 1 assignments in high risk situations, the paper develops a theory which systematically connects higher level goods with higher‐order knowledge.     

Sensitivity and Higher‐Order Knowledge

Vogel, Sosa, and Huemer have all argued that sensitivity is incompatible with knowing that you do not believe falsely, therefore the sensitivity condition must be false. I show that this objection misses its mark because it fails to take account of the basis of belief. Moreover, if the objection is modified to account for the basis of belief then it collapses into the more familiar objection that sensitivity is incompatible with closure. (But that is an objection which sensitivity theorists are already prepared to meet, one way or another.)     

Higher‐Order Defeat is Object‐Independent

Higher‐order defeat occurs when one loses justification for one's beliefs as a result of receiving evidence that those beliefs resulted from a cognitive malfunction. Several philosophers have identified features of higher‐order defeat that distinguish it from familiar types of defeat. If higher‐order defeat has these features, they are data an account of rational belief must capture. In this article, I identify a new distinguishing feature of higher‐order defeat, and I argue that on its own, and in conjunction with the other distinguishing features, it favors an account of higher‐order defeat grounded in non‐evidential, ‘state‐given reasons’ for belief.     

Higher‐Order Thought and the Problem of Radical Confabulation

Currently, one of the most influential theories of consciousness is Rosenthal's version of higher‐order‐thought (HOT). We argue that the HOT theory allows for two distinct interpretations: a one‐component and a two‐component view. We further argue that the two‐component view is more consistent with his effort to promote HOT as an explanatory theory suitable for application to the empirical sciences. Unfortunately, the two‐component view seems incapable of handling a group of counterexamples that we refer to as cases of radical confabulation. We begin by introducing the HOT theory and by indicating why we believe it is open to distinct interpretations. We then proceed to show that it is incapable of handling cases of radical confabulation. Finally, in the course of considering various possible responses to our position, we show that adoption of a disjunctive strategy, one that would countenance both one‐component and two‐component versions, would fail to provide any empirical or explanatory advantage.     

Epistemic Warrants and Higher‐Order Theories of Conscious Perception

We present a new account of perceptual consciousness, one which gives due weight to the epistemic commitment of normal perception in familiar circumstances. The account is given in terms of a higher‐order attitude for which the subject has an immediate perceptual epistemic warrant in the form of an appropriate first‐order perception. We develop our account in contrast to Rosenthal's higher‐order account, rejecting his view of consciousness in virtue of so‐called ‘targetless’ higher‐order states. We explain the key notion of an immediate perceptual warrant and show both that it requires the content of the higher‐order attitude to match that of the first‐order perception, and also that it gives a new perspective on the intimate relationship, rightly emphasised by Rosenthal, between consciousness and a subject's testimony as to ‘how it is with her’.     

Privileged Self–Knowledge and Externalism: A Contextualist Approach

Many people argue that privileged self–knowledge is incompatible with semantic externalism. I develop a contextualist approach to self–knowledge, and examine what this approach should lead us to say about the apparent incompatibility. Though such contextualism compels us to re–think the notion of privilege associated with self–knowledge, it can contain the damage wreaked by the externalist doctrine.     

A Deflationist Approach to Indeterminacy and Vagueness

Deflationists cannot make sense ofthe notion of referential indeterminacybecause they deny the existence of substantivereference. One way for them to make sense ofthe objective existence of linguisticindeterminacy is by embracing theworldly (or objectual) view ofindeterminacy, the view that indeterminacyexists not in reference relations but in the(non-linguistic) world itself. On this view,the entire world is divided into precisified worlds, just as it is dividedinto temporal slices and (arguably) alethicpossible worlds. Supervaluationism proves tobe neutral with respect to the debate betweenthe worldly view and the referential view ofindeterminacy.     

Higher‐Order Factor Structures and Intercorrelations of the 16PF5 and FIRO‐B

This study investigated the intercorrelations and the independent and combined factor structures of the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire Fifth Edition (16PF5) and the Fundamental Interpersonal Orientation‐Behaviour Scale (FIRO‐B). Four thousand four hundred and fourteen U.S. participants completed these measures as part of executive assessments between 1994 and 2003. Exploratory factor analyses supported the five‐factor higher‐order structure of the 16PF5; however, the three‐component structure for the FIRO‐B was not supported. A six‐factor structure was found to underlie the variance in the measures in combination. Five of these were close to the 16PF5 higher‐order structure, but a sixth factor labelled Social Independence also emerged. This new factor consisted of the 16PF5 primaries of Liveliness and Social Boldness, and the FIRO‐B Wanted Control scale.     

Vagueness: A Conceptual Spaces Approach

The conceptual spaces approach has recently emerged as a novel account of concepts. Its guiding idea is that concepts can be represented geometrically, by means of metrical spaces. While it is generally recognized that many of our concepts are vague, the question of how to model vagueness in the conceptual spaces approach has not been addressed so far, even though the answer is far from straightforward. The present paper aims to fill this lacuna.     

How Doxastic Justification Helps Us Solve the Puzzle of Misleading Higher‐Order Evidence

Certain plausible evidential requirements and coherence requirements on rationality seem to yield dilemmas of rationality (in a specific, objectionable sense) when put together with the possibility of misleading higher‐order evidence. Epistemologists have often taken such dilemmas to be evidence that we're working with some false principle. In what follows I show how one can jointly endorse an evidential requirement, a coherence requirement, and the possibility of misleading higher‐order evidence without running afoul of dilemmas of rationality. The trick lies in observing the difference between attitudes it is rational to hold (= propositional justification) and rationally holding those attitudes (= doxastic justification).     

Personality Correlates of Midlife Cardiometabolic Risk: The Explanatory Role of Higher‐Order Factors of the Five‐Factor Model

Varying associations are reported between Five‐Factor Model (FFM) personality traits and cardiovascular disease risk. Here, we further examine dispositional correlates of cardiometabolic risk within a hierarchical model of personality that proposes higher‐order traits of Stability (shared variance of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, inverse Neuroticism) and Plasticity (Extraversion, Openness), and we test hypothesized mediation via biological and behavioral factors. In an observational study of 856 community volunteers aged 30–54 years (46% male, 86% Caucasian), latent variable FFM traits (using multiple‐informant reports) and aggregated cardiometabolic risk (indicators: insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, blood pressure, adiposity) were estimated using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The cardiometabolic factor was regressed on each personality factor or higher‐order trait. Cross‐sectional indirect effects via systemic inflammation, cardiac autonomic control, and physical activity were tested. CFA models confirmed the Stability “meta‐trait,” but not Plasticity. Lower Stability was associated with heightened cardiometabolic risk. This association was accounted for by inflammation, autonomic function, and physical activity. Among FFM traits, only Openness was associated with risk over and above Stability, and, unlike Stability, this relationship was unexplained by the intervening variables. A Stability meta‐trait covaries with midlife cardiometabolic risk, and this association is accounted for by three candidate biological and behavioral factors.     

A Contextualist Reply to the Direct Argument

The Direct Argument for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism is designed to side-step complaints given by compatibilist critiques of the so-called Transfer Argument. I argue that while it represents an improvement over the Transfer Argument, it loses some of its plausibility when we reflect on some metalogical issues about normal modal modeling and the semantics of natural language. More specifically, the crucial principle on which the Direct Argument depends appears doubtful where context plays a role in evaluation of normative claims.     

Keeping it Real: Intentional Inexistents,Fineness‐of‐Grain,and the Dilemma for Extrinsic Higher‐Order Representational Theories

According to the standard argument from targetless higher‐order representations, the possibility of such representations presents a dilemma for higher‐order theorists. In this article I argue that there are two theoretically well‐motivated replies to the standard argument. Consequently, the standard argument against higher‐order theories fails. I then go on to argue that while certain versions of higher‐order theory can adequately respond to the standard argument, they both, nevertheless, fail to explain the fineness‐of‐grain that phenomenally conscious experience appears to have.     

A Unification of Two Approaches to Vagueness: The Boolean Many-Valued Approach and the Modal-Precisificational Approach

The Boolean many-valued approach to vagueness is similar to the infinite-valued approach embraced by fuzzy logic in the respect in which both approaches seek to solve the problems of vagueness by assigning to the relevant sentences many values between falsity (or 0) and truth (or 1), but while the fuzzy-logic approach postulates linearly-ordered values (or ‘degrees’) between 0 and 1, the Boolean approach assigns to sentences values in a many-element (including infinite-element) complete Boolean algebra. On the modal-precisificational approach represented by Kit Fine, if a (vague) sentence is indeterminate in truth value in some world (possibly the actual world), it is taken to be true in one precisified world accessible from that world and false in another. This paper points to a way to unify these two approaches to vagueness by showing that Fine’s version of the modal-precisificational approach can be combined with the Boolean many-valued approach instead of supervaluationism, one of the most popular approaches to vagueness.     

A Hierarchical Multi‐Attribute System Approach to Personnel Selection

In this paper, an approach to decision making in managing human resources that integrates multi‐attribute decision making techniques with expert systems is described. The approach is based on the explicit articulation of qualitative decision knowledge which is represented by a tree of attributes and decision rules. The decision making process is supported by DEXi, a specialized expert system shell for interactive construction of the knowledge base, evaluation of options, and explanation of the results. Practical use of the shell is illustrated by an application in the field of personnel selection for a top manager position.     

A Tripartite Approach to Right‐Wing Authoritarianism: The Authoritarianism‐Conservatism‐Traditionalism Model

Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) has been conceptualized and measured as a unidimensional personality construct comprising the covariation of the three traits of authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. However, new approaches have criticized this conceptualization and instead viewed these three “traits” as three distinct, though related, social attitude dimensions. Here we extend this approach providing clear definitions of these three dimensions as ideological attitude constructs of Authoritarianism, Conservatism, and Traditionalism. These dimensions are seen as attitudinal expressions of basic social values or motivational goals that represent different, though related, strategies for attaining collective security at the expense of individual autonomy. We report data from five samples and three different countries showing that these three dimensions could be reliably measured and were factorially distinct. The three dimensions also differentially predicted interpersonal behaviour, social policy support, and political party support. It is argued that conceptualizing and measuring RWA as a set of three related ideological attitude dimensions may better explain complex sociopolitical phenomena than the currently dominant unidimensional personality based model.     

Contextualist Approaches to Epistemology: Problems and Prospects

In this paper we survey some main arguments for and against epistemological contextualism. We distinguish and discuss various kinds of contextualism, such as attributer contextualism (the most influential version of which is semantic, conversational, or radical contextualism); indexicalism; proto-contextualism; Wittgensteinian contextualism; subject, inferential, or issue contextualism; epistemic contextualism; and virtue contextualism. Starting with a sketch of Dretskes Relevant Alternatives Theory and Nozicks Tracking Account of Knowledge, we reconstruct the history of various forms of contextualism and the ways contextualists try to handle some notorious epistemological quandaries, especially skepticism and the lottery paradox. Then we outline the most important problems that contextualist theories face, and give overviews of their criticisms and defenses as developed in this issue.