Modest meta‐philosophical skepticism

Intractable disagreement among philosophers is ubiquitous. An implication of such disagreement is that many philosophers hold false philosophical beliefs (i.e. at most only one party to a dispute can be right). Suppose that we distribute philosophers along a spectrum arranged from philosophers with mostly true philosophical beliefs on one end (high‐reliability), to those with mostly false philosophical beliefs on the other (low‐reliability), and everyone else somewhere in‐between (call this is the reliability spectrum). It is hard to see how philosophers could accurately locate themselves on the reliability spectrum; they are prima facie as well positioned as their peers with respect to philosophical matters (call this the placement problem). In this paper, I argue that the reliability spectrum and placement problem lend support to modest meta‐philosophical skepticism: we have a pro tanto (but not an all‐things‐considered) reason to withhold ascent to philosophical claims.     

The scientific positivism of Michael Oakeshott

Seventeenth-century philosopher Margaret Cavendish wrote not only several philosophical treatises, but also many fictional works. I argue for taking the latter as serious objects of study for historians of philosophy, and sketch a method for doing so. Cavendish's fiction is full of conflicting viewpoints, and many authors have argued that this demonstrates that she did not intend her literary works to serve serious philosophical purpose. But if we consider philosophers more central to the canon, such as Plato or Kierkegaard, who sometimes used literary forms to do serious philosophy, we see that these arguments are unfounded. Like those philosophers, Cavendish had several philosophical motivations for pursuing value-theoretic issues through the flexible formats of literary genres. This suggests that Cavendish's literary corpus may be fruitful and largely unexplored ground for the history of philosophy.     

Why We Care Whether Our Beliefs Are True: An Answer to Stephen Stich?

Do we really care whether our beliefs are true? Stephen Stich gives us a very surprising but challenging answer: Once we find out what it means for a belief to be true, the answer to the above question is “a consistently negative” one. He argues that there is neither intrinsic nor instrumental value in having true beliefs. However, his argument is based on some very dubious reasons. For instance, one of his reasons is that if we value true beliefs intrinsically, we will leave out a huge space of mental states that have no truth values but would vastly increase their user’s power or happiness or biological fitness. But this is false because we can value different things intrinsically at the same time. He is even less successful in arguing against instrumental value in having true beliefs. He admits that he does not establish a knockdown argument against the value of having true beliefs, but he insists that the burden of argument be surely on those who maintain that there is value in having true beliefs. To meet his challenge, we have shown that there is cognitive intrinsic value in holding true beliefs and that generally, true beliefs are more conducive to our survival than false beliefs. If we completely depend on our false beliefs to achieve our goals, we will act like a blind cat who can only catch a mouse by chance.     

Disagreeing with the (religious) skeptic

Some philosophers believe that, when epistemic peers disagree, each has an obligation to accord the other’s assessment equal weight as her own. Other philosophers worry that this Equal-Weight View is vulnerable to straightforward counterexamples, and that it requires an unacceptable degree of spinelessness with respect to our most treasured philosophical, political, and religious beliefs. I think that both of these allegations are false. To show this, I carefully state the Equal-Weight View, motivate it, describe apparent counterexamples to it, and then explain away the apparent counterexamples. Finally, I adapt those explanations to cases of religious disagreement. In the end, we reach the surprising conclusion that—even if the Equal-Weight View is true—in very many cases of religious disagreement between apparent epistemic peers, the parties to the disagreement need not be conciliatory. And what goes for religious beliefs goes for political and philosophical beliefs as well. This strongly suggests that the View does not demand an unacceptable degree of spinelessness.     

Philosophy,Famine Relief,and the Skeptical Challenge From Disagreement

Disagreement has been grist to the mills of sceptics throughout the history of philosophy. Recently, though, some philosophers have argued that widespread philosophical disagreement supports a broad scepticism about philosophy itself. In this paper, I argue that the task for sceptics of philosophy is considerably more complex than commonly thought. The mere fact that philosophical methods fail to generate true majority views is not enough to support the sceptical challenge from disagreement. To avoid demanding something that human reasoning cannot supply, sceptics must show that philosophers have sufficient overlap to resolve their disagreements in particular concrete cases.     

Agnosticism About Other Worlds: A New Antirealist Programme in Modality

The modal antirealist, as presented here, aims to secure at least some of the benefits associated with talking in genuine modal realist terms while avoiding commitment to a plurality of Lewisian (or ersatz) worlds. The antirealist stance of agnosticism about other worlds combines acceptance of Lewis's account of what world-talk means with refusal to assert, or believe in, the existence of other worlds. Agnosticism about other worlds does not entail a comprehensive agnosticism about modality, but where such agnosticism about modality is enforced, the aim of the agnostic programme is to show that it is not detrimental to our modal practices. The agnostic programme consists in an attempt to demonstrate the rational dispensability of that disputed class of modal beliefs which the agnostic eschews, but which are held by the realist and the folk. Here I attempt to motivate, describe, and illustrate such an agnostic antirealist programme in modal philosophy.     

A study of the foundations of ethical decision-making of nurses

A study of nurses and nursing students was conducted to determine the various philosophical positions they hold with respect to ethical decision-making in nursing and their relationship to the subjective-objective controversy in value theory. The study revealed that most nurses and nursing students tend to be subjectivists in value theory, i.e., believe that value judgments are purely personal, private expressions of one's own opinion or inner-feelings and not believe that value judgments are knowledge claims capable of being true or false and therefore not expressions of moral requirements and normative imperatives emanating from an external value structure or moral order in the world. In addition, the study revealed that most nurses and nursing students are inconsistent in the philosophical foundations of their ethical decision-making, i.e., in decision-making regarding values they tend to hold beliefs which are incompatible with other beliefs they hold about values.     

Investigative and Suspensive Scepticism

Sextus Empiricus portrays the Pyrrhonian sceptics in two radically different ways. On the one hand, he describes them as inquirers or examiners, and insists that what distinguishes them from all the other philosophical schools is their persistent engagement in inquiry. On the other hand, he insists that the main feature of Pyrrhonian attitude is suspension of judgement about everything. Many have argued that a consistent account of Sextan scepticism as both investigative and suspensive is not possible. The main obstacle to characterizing Pyrrhonism as both investigative and suspensive is the fact that it seems that the mature sceptics, after they have suspended judgement and thus reached tranquillity, have no motivation for further inquiry. Any inquiry they seem to be interested in after they have suspended judgement is the refutation of (relevant) beliefs needed for maintaining tranquillity. I try to show that the mature sceptics' removal of distress does not ipso facto mean removal of the desire for knowledge. This is because distress is not just a matter of unsatisfied desire, but of belief that one of the opposed appearances must be true, or, more generally, of belief that the truth is the only worthwhile epistemic goal. Having abandoned this belief, the sceptics can still engage in philosophical inquiries. This is because Sextus does not assume that philosophy is the search for truth: it is so only for the dogmatists. In a more general sense, applicable to the sceptics as well, philosophy is just an inquiry into certain things, and for the sceptics, its epistemic goal is still open.     

NTV观点引发的逻辑哲学问题——直陈条件句能嵌套吗

NTV观点的核心思想是直陈条件句不是命题,它没有真值条件并且无真值,其既不为真也不为假,而只表现为一个相应的概率值。这就引发了一个有争论的逻辑哲学问题——直陈条件句能否嵌套。如果把直陈条件句视为无真值的,那么嵌套后的复合条件句就不能判断其真假（真值表不能使用）。对于直陈条件句能否嵌套的问题,学界有不同的观点,我们认为要完全解决真之条件主义与条件概率主义两者之间的矛盾是非常困难的,然而,完全接受条件概率论题的哲学后果是非常危险的,同样,暗示放弃真之语义观也是非常危险的。     

Philosophy,Logic, Science,History

Analytic philosophy is sometimes said to have particularly close connections to logic and to science, and no particularly interesting or close relation to its own history. It is argued here that although the connections to logic and science have been important in the development of analytic philosophy, these connections do not come close to characterizing the nature of analytic philosophy, either as a body of doctrines or as a philosophical method. We will do better to understand analytic philosophy—and its relationship to continental philosophy—if we see it as a historically constructed collection of texts, which define its key problems and concerns. It is true, however, that analytic philosophy has paid little attention to the history of the subject. This is both its strength—since it allows for a distinctive kind of creativity—and its weakness—since ignoring history can encourage a philosophical variety of “normal science.”     

The persistence of false beliefs

Do false beliefs last? To explore this question, this study planted false beliefs or memories of a childhood experience with asparagus. We found that these false beliefs had consequences for subjects, when assessed directly after the suggestive manipulation. Moreover, subjects were brought back two weeks later to see if their false beliefs persisted. After two weeks, subjects' confidence in their new memories, and the consequences of those memories were diminished, but not extinguished. These false beliefs were found to be somewhat weaker than other subjects' true beliefs for the same events. Another novel finding was that the manipulation was sufficiently powerful to affect actual food choices.     

The puzzle of philosophical testimony

An epistemologist tells you that knowledge is more than justified true belief. You trust them and thus come to believe this on the basis of their testimony. Did you thereby come to know that this view is correct? Intuitively, there is something intellectually wrong with forming philosophical beliefs on the basis of testimony, and yet it's hard to see why philosophy should be significantly epistemically different from other areas of inquiry in a way that would fully prohibit belief by testimony. This, I argue, is the puzzle of philosophical testimony. In this paper, I explore the puzzle of philosophical testimony and its ramifications. In particular, I examine the case for pessimism about philosophical testimony—the thesis that philosophical belief on the basis of testimony is impossible or is in some way illegitimate—and I argue that it lacks adequate support. I then consider whether the source of the apparent intellectual wrongness of testimonial‐based philosophical belief is grounded in non‐epistemic norms and goals of philosophical practice itself and argue that such norms are implausible, don't conflict with testimonial‐based philosophical belief, or else are mere disciplinary norms, lacking substantial normative force that would make it wrong to form testimonial‐based philosophical belief.     

Strict Finitism and the Happy Sorites

Call an argument a ‘happy sorites’ if it is a sorites argument with true premises and a false conclusion. It is a striking fact that although most philosophers working on the sorites paradox find it at prima facie highly compelling that the premises of the sorites paradox are true and its conclusion false, few (if any) of the standard theories on the issue ultimately allow for happy sorites arguments. There is one philosophical view, however, that appears to allow for at least some happy sorites arguments: strict finitism in the philosophy of mathematics. My aim in this paper is to explore to what extent this appearance is accurate. As we shall see, this question is far from trivial. In particular, I will discuss two arguments that threaten to show that strict finitism cannot consistently accept happy sorites arguments, but I will argue that (given reasonable assumptions on strict finitistic logic) these arguments can ultimately be avoided, and the view can indeed allow for happy sorites arguments.     

The Philosophical Role of Illness

This article examines the philosophical role of illness. It briefly surveys the philosophical role accorded to illness in the history of philosophy and explains why illness merits such a role. It suggests that illness modifies, and thus sheds light on, normal experience, revealing its ordinary and therefore overlooked structure. Illness also provides an opportunity for reflection by performing a kind of suspension (epoché) of previously held beliefs, including tacit beliefs. The article argues that these characteristics warrant a philosophical role for illness. While the performance of most philosophical procedures is volitional and theoretical, however, illness is uninvited and threatening, throwing the ill person into anxiety and uncertainty. As such it can be viewed as a radical philosophical motivation that can profoundly alter our outlook. The article suggests that illness can change the ways in which we philosophise: it may shape philosophical methods and concerns and change one's sense of salience and conception of philosophy.     

Memory illusions and consciousness: Examining the phenomenology of true and false memories

Several recent false memory studies have addressed the question of how false memories are experienced phenomenologically. In this article we argue that it is not only possible to address questions of this sort, but it is necessary for a full understanding of memory illusions. We define memory illusions as false beliefs about the past that are experienced as memories. We then review a corpus of evidence that addresses the phenomenological experience of false memories. None of this evidence is perfect, but taken in its totality it suggests that false memories are similar to true memories but are also subtly different. We conclude with several recommendations for how the phenomenology of false memories can be fruitfully explored.     

Pragmatism, Relativism, and the Critique of Philosophy

The relativist strain in Rorty's work should be distinguished from the Davidsonian strain. The latter may be exploited in support of Rorty's critique of philosophy but it is at odds with his use of "solidarity" and "ethnocentrism"as explanatory concepts. Once this is recognized, there remains in Rorty's work a consistent challenge to the search for general philosophical theories of truth, objectivity, and rationality (of which relativism itself is an example). On this reading, however, Rorty's pragmatism is not a theory that offers answers to questions about the authority of beliefs and practices but rather a critical tool used to open detailed, concrete, and critical investigation into particular questions about the establishment and viability of the beliefs and practices we have.     

Psychologism, Practical Reason and the Possibility of Error

Psychologism is the view that practical reasons are psychological states. It is widely thought that psychologism is supported by the following principle governing explanation:
TF. The difference between false and true beliefs on A's part cannot alter the form of the explanation which will be appropriate to A's actions. (TF) seems to imply that we always need to cite agents' beliefs when explaining their actions, no matter whether those beliefs are true or false. And this seems to vindicate psychologism. I argue, however, that the standard argument for psychologism which includes (TF) as a premise in fact fails to establish its intended conclusion. As a result, the overall case for psychologism is not as strong as it may initially seem.     

On Educating While Hoping for the Impossible: Gabriel Marcel’s Absolute Hope as a Rejection of Educational Instrumentalism

Over the last 20 years, there has been an increase in philosophical inquiries of hope both in philosophy of mind and of virtue as well as in the philosophy of education. This paper wishes to add to this discussion by presenting the analysis of hope by French existentialist philosopher and theologian Gabriel Marcel and examining its possible contribution to educational practices and beliefs. As one of the very few modern, systematic accounts of hope, Marcel’s provocative conception of it and his critique of its common “technical” use could prove promising when applied to educational theory and practice. Following Marcel, I argue that in hope we find a complex and possibly contradictory view of the future: as a result of planning and technical problem-solving on one hand, and on the other, as an inclination towards the mysterious and radically unexpected. I suggest that maintaining educational hope within the tension between the planned and the unexpected, and specifically rejecting a complete disenchantment of the educational act, could help in securing education from being reduced to instrumental training and socializing, opening it up to new and unimaginable possibilities.     

The Nctm Standards and the Philosophy of Mathematics

It is argued that the philosophical and epistemological beliefs about the nature of mathematics have a significant influence on the way mathematics is taught at school. In this paper, the philosophy of mathematics of the NCTM's Standards is investigated by examining is explicit assumptions regarding the teaching and learning of school mathematics. The main conceptual tool used for this purpose is the model of two dichotomous philosophies of mathematics-absolutist versus- fallibilist and their relation to mathematics pedagogy. The main conclusion is that a fallibilist view of mathematics is assumed in the Standards and that most of its pedagogical assumptions and approaches are based on this philosophy.