Reasoning about knowledge: Children’s evaluations of generality and verifiability

In a series of experiments, we examined 3- to 8-year-old children’s (N = 223) and adults’ (N = 32) use of two properties of testimony to estimate a speaker’s knowledge: generality and verifiability. Participants were presented with a “Generic speaker” who made a series of 4 general claims about “pangolins” (a novel animal kind), and a “Specific speaker” who made a series of 4 specific claims about “this pangolin” as an individual. To investigate the role of verifiability, we systematically varied whether the claim referred to a perceptually-obvious feature visible in a picture (e.g., “has a pointy nose”) or a non-evident feature that was not visible (e.g., “sleeps in a hollow tree”). Three main findings emerged: (1) young children showed a pronounced reliance on verifiability that decreased with age. Three-year-old children were especially prone to credit knowledge to speakers who made verifiable claims, whereas 7- to 8-year-olds and adults credited knowledge to generic speakers regardless of whether the claims were verifiable; (2) children’s attributions of knowledge to generic speakers was not detectable until age 5, and only when those claims were also verifiable; (3) children often generalized speakers’ knowledge outside of the pangolin domain, indicating a belief that a person’s knowledge about pangolins likely extends to new facts. Findings indicate that young children may be inclined to doubt speakers who make claims they cannot verify themselves, as well as a developmentally increasing appreciation for speakers who make general claims.     

Alice-in-Wonderland terminological usage in,and communicational concerns about,that peculiarly American flight of technological fancy

Alice-in-Wonderland (AW) terminological usage employs basic terms in a systematically misleading and taxonomically anarchic way. The so-called “control” question “test” (CQT) polygraph procedure, which enjoys a controversial but nevertheless scientific status in North America, involves such AW terminological usage. The basic concepts of “test,” “control,” and “quantification” are loosely employed. There is loose talk about the “detection ofdeception,” which generates the paradox that in the CQT it is in the innocent that deception should be detected. Moreover, deception is not really assessed either in the CQT or in the more scientifically-based Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT). Finally, there is loose practice in evaluating the CQT, which should not be primarily assessed in terms of its overall accuracy, but in terms of its specific effects in improving accuracy through the provision of physiological information to the examiner. Such an assessment has not been carried out even in laboratory analogues of polygraphy. The treatment of the CQT exemplifies most psychophysiologists’ reluctance to treat basic definitional issues seriously, and also means that opponents of the CQT are unable to communicate clearly about it with non-psychophysiologist professionals and with the lay community.     

Addressing confounding errors when using non-experimental, observational data to make causal claims

In their recent book, Is Inequality Bad for Our Health?, Daniels, Kennedy, and Kawachi claim that to “act justly in health policy, we must have knowledge about the causal pathways through which socioeconomic (and other) inequalities work to produce differential health outcomes.” One of the central problems with this approach is its dependency on “knowledge about the causal pathways.” A widely held belief is that the randomized clinical trial (RCT) is, and ought to be the “gold standard” of evaluating the causal efficacy of interventions. However, often the only data available are non-experimental, observational data. For such data, the necessary randomization is missing. Because the randomization is missing, it seems to follow that it is not possible to make epistemically warranted claims about the causal pathways. Although we are not sanguine about the difficulty in using observational data to make warranted causal claims, we are not as pessimistic as those who believe that the only warranted causal claims are claims based on data from (idealized) RCTs. We argue that careful, thoughtful study design, informed by expert knowledge, that incorporates propensity score matching methods in conjunction with instrumental variable analyses, provides the possibility of warranted causal claims using observational data.     

Cheshire Calhoun's Project of Separating Lesbian Theory from Feminist Theory

I support Cheshire Calhoun's argument that there is a distinctive type of sexuality injustice addressed to lesbians and gays, but challenge her definitional strategy regarding the concepts of “lesbian” and “gay” and the “universalistic essentialist” distinction that she draws between patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality. Finally, I take issue with the political implications of her claim that lesbians’ and gays’ special oppression stems from our exclusion from the legal prerogatives of marriage and parenthood.     

THE PROBLEM OF “GOD” IN PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION: LONERGAN'S “COMMON SENSE” (RELIGION) VERSUS “THEORY” (THEOLOGY)

The emphasis on God in American psychology of religion generates the problem of explaining divine‐versus‐natural causality in “spiritual experiences.” Especially “theistic psychology” champions divine involvement. However, its argument exposes a methodological error: to pit popular religious opinions against technical scientific conclusions. Countering such homogenizing “postmodern agnosticism,” Bernard Lonergan explained these two as different modes of thinking: “common sense” and “theory”—which resolves the problem: When theoretical science is matched with theoretical theology, “the God‐hypothesis” explains the existence of things whereas science explains their natures; and, barring miracles, God is irrelevant to natural science. A review of the field shows that the problem is pervasive; attention to “miracles”—popularly so‐named versus technically—focuses the claims of divine‐versus‐natural causality; and specifications of the meaning of spiritual, spirituality, science, worldview, and meaning itself (suffering that same ambiguity: personal import versus cognitive content) offer further clarity. The problem is not naturalism versus theism, but commonsensical versus theoretical thinking. This solution demands “hard” social science.     

The osteopathic distinction: Fact or fancy?

Since osteopathic medicine's inception its distinction has been proclaimed steadfastly in the osteopathic literature. The uniqueness has been claimed to reside in: (1) rigid adherence to A.T. Still's tenets; (2) osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT); (3) claims of “holism”; (4) “osteopathic principles”, (5) esoteric definitions; and (6) other suggested differences. None of these claims can be successfully defended. An aspect of the osteopathic distinction may lie in the didactic of OMTper se. Certain experiences in medical school contribute to the “reconstruction” of the student's view of the patient. Touch, through OMT, may be a quality that affects this change and helps make the osteopathic physician different. When blended with traditional medical modalities thismay result in a unique medical perspective. The ideal approach for the osteopathic profession would be an honest evaluation of its function in society and its uniqueness in medicine. The profession may discover a uniqueness withtouch as an integral part.     

Sleeping Beauty, evidential support and indexical knowledge: reply to Horgan

Terence Horgan defends the thirder position on the Sleeping Beauty problem, claiming that Beauty can, upon awakening during the experiment, engage in “synchronic Bayesian updating” on her knowledge that she is awake now in order to justify a 1/3 credence in heads. In a previous paper, I objected that epistemic probabilities are equivalent to rational degrees of belief given a possible epistemic situation and so the probability of Beauty’s indexical knowledge that she is awake now is necessarily 1, precluding such updating. In response, Horgan maintains that the probability claims in his argument are to be taken, not as claims about possible rational degrees of belief, but rather as claims about “quantitative degrees of evidential support.” This paper argues that the most plausible account of quantitative degree of support, when conjoined with any of the three major accounts of indexical thought in such a way as to plausibly constrain rational credence, contradicts essential elements of Horgan’s argument.     

Why Husserl’s Universal Empiricism is a Moderate Rationalism

Husserl claims that his phenomenological–epistemological system amounts to a “universal” form of empiricism. The present paper shows that this universal moment of Husserl’s empiricism is why his empiricism qualifies as a rationalism. What is empiricist about Husserl’s phenomenological–epistemological system is that he takes experiences to be an autonomous source of immediate justification. On top of that, Husserl takes experiences to be the ultimate source of justification. For Husserl, every justified belief ultimately depends epistemically on the subject’s experiences. These are paradigms of empiricist claims and thus Husserl seems to subscribe to empiricism. However, what is universal about Husserl’s “empiricism” is that he does not limit the concept of (justification-conferring) experiences to sensory experiences or sensory experiences plus introspective intuitions but broadens the concept of experience such that also a priori intuitions are included. Husserl insists that logical, mathematical, and phenomenological intuitions such as?~?(p ∧ ?~?p), 2?+?2?=?4, and “Experiences necessarily bear the mark of intentionality” provide non-inferential justification analogous to how sensory experiences can non-inferentially justify beliefs such as “There is a table in front of me.” Importantly, Husserl makes clear that such a priori intuitions are not about our concepts but about reality. This is why Husserl’s universal empiricism is a rationalism. Husserl differs from traditional rationalism as he allows that a priori intuitions can be fallible and empirically underminable. This distinguishes Husserl’s rationalism from Descartes’ and makes him a proponent of moderate rationalism as currently championed by Laurence BonJour.     

Thinking about the Needy: A Reprise

This article discusses Jan Narveson’s “Welfare and Wealth, Poverty and Justice in Today’s World,” and “Is World Poverty a Moral Problem for the Wealthy?” and their relation to my “Thinking about the Needy, Justice, and International Organizations.” Section 2 points out that Narveson’s concerns differ from mine, so that often his claims and mine fail to engage each other. For example, his focus is on the poor, mine the needy, and while many poor are needy, and vice versa, our obligations may differ regarding the poor than regarding the needy. Also, Narveson invokes a narrow conception of morality as those rules that government or society may compel people to follow. Given a broader, more plausible, conception of morality, many of Narveson’s claims actually support my substantive views. Section 3 shows that many of Narveson’s claims are relevant to the best means of aiding the needy, but do not challenge the validity of that end. This is true, for example, of his claims about the role of poor governments, the importance of freedom, the undesirability of mere “handouts,” and the effects of bad economic policies. Section 4 defends the importance of my distinction between acting justly and acting for reasons of justice. It illustrates that on several widely shared conceptions of justice there might be agent-neutralreasons of justice to aid the needy, even if from an agent-relative perspective one would not be acting unjustly if one failed to do so. Section 5 contests Narveson’s portrayal of egalitarianism as concerned about inequality of wealth, per se, as insensitive to prior wrongs, and as holding that the worse-off have a right to be made better off at the expense of the well-off. In addition, it rejects Narveson’s contention that egalitarians violate impartiality, and aim to impose their personal tastes on others. Section 6 challenges a fundamental assumption underlying Narveson’s doctrine of mutual advantage. In addition, it denies that egalitarians are irrational merely because equality can conflict with the pareto principle. More generally, by appealing to impersonal ideals, it challenges the widely held view that the pareto principle is a condition of rationality. Section 7 argues that Narveson’s meta-ethical assumptions are controversial, internally inconsistent, in tension with his normative views, and ultimately a version of skepticism. In addition, it challenges Narveson’s view about the role intuitions play in moral theory. Section 8 clarifies points where Narveson’s discussion of my views may be misleading. Finally, the paper notes the role that moral reasons may play in deliberation and action, but emphasizes the philosophical and theoretical nature of my work. My aim is to determine the moral considerations that are relevant to how people should act regarding the needy. Whether people will actually be moved to so act, for those reasons or otherwise, is another matter.     

On the importance of critical thinking: A response to Wulf's (2015) commentary

In a recent paper (Toner & Moran, 2015), we argued that continued improvement among elite athletes requires alternation between external and internal foci of attention. In her commentary on this paper, Wulf (2015) claims that we have misunderstood the ‘attentional focus’ effect. Our rejoinder has three objectives. Firstly, we critically evaluate Wulf's arguments and counter her false allegations and spurious reasoning. Secondly, we explain our concerns about certain aspects of attentional focusing research. Finally, we propose that in order to explore the dynamic nature of attentional focusing, we need to go beyond restrictive theoretical dichotomies (e.g., “internal” versus “external” processes) using new approaches.     

Meaning and Conversational Impropriety in Sceptical Contexts

According to “disjunctivist neo‐Mooreanism”—a position Duncan Pritchard develops in a recent book—it is possible to know the denials of radical sceptical hypotheses, even though it is conversationally inappropriate to claim such knowledge. In a recent paper, on the other hand, Pritchard expounds an “überhinge” strategy, according to which one cannot know the denials of sceptical hypotheses, as “hinge propositions” are necessarily groundless. The present article argues that neither strategy is entirely successful. For if a proposition can be known, it can also be claimed to be known. If the latter is not possible, this is not because certain propositions are either “intrinsically” conversationally inappropriate (as Pritchard claims in his book) or else “rationally groundless” (as Pritchard claims in his paper), but rather that we are dealing with something that merely presents us with the appearance of being an epistemic claim.     

Mourning the Religious Self: An Experience of Multiplicity,Loss, and Religious Melancholia

The loss of religion is not one thing to all people, nor even one thing to one person. This article asks the question, “when we are talking about the loss of religion, who is mourning what?” The author considers what the loss of religion looks like if we view the self as abiding in both multiplicity and melancholia, and claims that the loss of religion requires a reconfiguration of the inner landscape of centrality and marginality. A clinical example illustrates how one patient’s “loss of faith” calls her to a complex mourning process that includes confronting many personal losses and their relation to her transgendered self.     

Epistemic Principles and Sceptical Arguments: Closure and Underdetermination

Anthony Brueckner has argued that claims about underdetermination of evidence are suppressed in closure-based scepticism (“The Structure of the Skeptical Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54:4, 1994). He also argues that these claims about underdetermination themselves lead to a paradoxical sceptical argument—the underdetermination argument—which is more fundamental than the closure argument. If Brueckner is right, the status quo focus of some predominant anti-sceptical strategies may be misguided. In this paper I focus specifically on the relationship between these two arguments. I provide support for Brueckner’s claim that the underdetermination argument is the more fundamental sceptical argument. I do so by responding to a challenge to this claim put forward by Stewart Cohen (“Two Kinds of Skeptical Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58:1, 1998). Cohen invokes an alternative epistemic principle which he thinks can be used to challenge Brueckner. Cohen’s principle raises interesting questions about the relationship between evidential considerations and explanatory considerations in the context of scepticism about our knowledge of the external world. I explore these questions in my defence of Brueckner.     

Luck and Equality: A Reply to Hurley1

In Chapter 6 (“Why the Aim to Neutralize Luck Cannot Provide a Basis for Egalitarianism”) of her Justice, Luck, and Knowledge, Susan Hurley defends two claims: that “the aim to neutralize luck [does not] contribute to identifying and specifying what egalitarianism is”, and that it also provides no “independent non‐question‐begging reason or justification for egalitarianism” (p. 147). In the present response, I reject the first of Hurley's claims, and I show that the second, while true, lacks polemical force. I said, in “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice” (Ethics, 1989), that     

Plural self-awareness

It has been claimed in the literature that collective intentionality and group attitudes presuppose some “sense of ‘us’” among the participants (other labels sometimes used are “sense of community,” “communal awareness,” “shared point of view,” or “we-perspective”). While this seems plausible enough on an intuitive level, little attention has been paid so far to the question of what the nature and role of this mysterious “sense of ‘us’” might be. This paper states (and argues for) the following five claims: (1) it is neither the case that the sense in question has the community (or “us”) in its content or as its object nor does the attitude in question presuppose a preexistent community (or “us”) as its subject. (2) The “sense of ‘us’” is plural pre-reflective self-awareness. (3) Plural pre-reflective self-awareness plays the same role in the constitution of a common mind that singular pre-reflective self-awareness plays in the individual mind. (4) The most important conceptions of plural subjects, collective persons, or group agents in the current literature fail to recognize the nature and role of plural self-awareness, and therefore fall short in important respects. (5) In spite of the striking similarities between the plural and the singular mind, there are important differences to consider. The authority of the singular first person point of view has no equivalent in the plural case.     

Against definitions

Definitional accounts of language structure are explored in this paper. Several classes of arguments for definitions are reviewed; those which connect to: classical theories of reference, theories of informal validity, theories of sentence comprehension, and theories of concept learning. We suggest that, for each of these areas, accounts which rely upon definition are, in fact, not to be preferred on evidential grounds to plausible non-definitional alternatives. We also present a series of experimental observations bearing on one of these areas — that of sentence comprehension. We show that one widely cited class of examples of definitional structures — that of “causative verbs” — fails to affect subject judgements of those relations among the words of causative sentences which depend upon the putative definitional structures. Such subject judgements are independently demonstrated to be sensitive to structural relations of comparable type for other linguistically non-problematic types.     

A response to Penrose’s “Sandel on enhancement: A response to Van Niekerk”

In this article the author responds to Brian Penrose’s critical response to his (Van Niekerk’s) article “Biomedical enhancement and the pursuit of mastery and perfection: a critique of the views of Michael Sandel” that appeared in the PSSA conference edition of the SAJP 33(2), 2014. While Van Niekerk is appreciative of the opportunity for spirited dialogue that Penrose’s response provides, he nevertheless takes issue with several charges Penrose raises. He responds to Penrose’s claims that Van Niekerk does not fully understand “the Sandel project” and thus that Van Niekerk creates and shoots down a straw man in his argument against Sandel. Van Niekerk argues that Penrose’s claims are indicative of significant methodological differences between their respective approaches. Penrose acknowledges the “fuzziness” of Sandel’s arguments with regards to biomedical enhancement. He then develops an interpretation of Sandel’s views that claims to have “filled in the complete picture” of what Sandel attempts to do, and then reproaches Van Niekerk for not responding to that “completed picture”, i.e. the “Sandel project”. Van Niekerk finds this to be an unreasonable and methodologically highly problematic demand on him. Van Niekerk responds to a number of Penrose’s arguments, and then concludes that while there are, of course, good reasons to exercise caution at the prospect of biomedical enhancement with regard to its risks, the possibilities offered by enhancement need not elicit a prima facie reaction of pessimism. Rather, such prospects can also be regarded in a positive light as an exciting opportunity to take our own evolution in hand.     

Strict Confidentiality: An Alternative to Pre’s “Limited Confidentiality” Doctrine

In “Advisory Opinion on Confidentiality, Its Limits and Duties to Others” the Canadian Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics (PRE) articulates a rationale for a priori limitations to research confidentiality, based largely on putative legal duties to violate confidentiality in certain circumstances. We argue that PRE promotes a “Law of the Land” doctrine of research ethics that is but one approach to resolving potential conflicts between law and research ethics. PRE emphasises risks that have never materialized, and ignores jurisprudence on challenges to research confidentiality. When we examine what the courts have actually done with research-based claims of privilege, we find they clearly recognize and affirm researchers’ ethical obligations to maintain strict confidentiality and protect research participants. Ironically, the one exception – where the court ordered that information be disclosed – occurred precisely because the researchers had limited confidentiality. The passive approach PRE espouses leaves vital questions about what protecting confidentiality to the “full extent possible in law” means, and leaves the impression that academics should accept whatever limitations the courts may impose without participating in the courtroom dialogue determining where those limits are drawn. In contrast, we believe confidentiality is so important to the protection of research participants and the integrity of the research enterprise that it is worth fighting for. The “ethics-first” doctrine of “strict confidentiality” we describe adheres to the social sciences’ and humanities’ longstanding commitment to research confidentiality and duty to the research participant.