Luminosity Guaranteed

This article aims to show that Williamson's anti‐luminosity argument does not succeed if we presuppose a constitutive connection between the phenomenal and the doxastic. In contrast to other luminists, however, my strategy is not to critically focus on the refined safety condition in terms of degrees of confidence that anti‐luminists typically use in this context. Instead, I will argue that, given a certain conception of what Chalmers calls ‘direct phenomenal concepts,’ luminosity is guaranteed even if the refined safety condition in terms of degrees of confidence is taken for granted.     

Internalism without Luminosity1

Internalists face the following challenge: what is it about an agent's internal states that explains why only these states can play whatever role the internalist thinks these states are playing?  Internalists have frequently appealed to a special kind of epistemic access that we have to these states. But such claims have been challenged on both empirical and philosophical grounds.  I will argue that internalists needn't appeal to any kind of privileged access claims.  Rather, internalist conditions are important because of the way in which we expect them to act as causal mediators between states of the world, on the one hand, and our beliefs and actions on the other.     

Knowledge Utilisation in Road Safety Policy: Barriers to the Use of Knowledge from Economic Analysis

Previous research has found that the priority given to road safety measures is not based on the results of economic analyses, in particular cost–benefit analysis. This paper tries to identify some reasons for this fact. Knowledge utilisation theory is applied as a framework for identifying barriers. A typology of barriers to the use of economic efficiency analyses in road safety policy is developed. The presence of the barriers is investigated empirically by means of interviews of 83 road safety decision-makers in various European countries. Various technical barriers, particularly a lack of knowledge of the effects of road safety measures, are found. Based on a multivariate correspondence analysis (HOMALS), respondents can be placed in two groups with respect to the barriers they regard as most important. One group regards ethical objections to cost–benefit analyses as important, the other group but regards a large group of other barriers as important.     

Knowledge,Safety, and Meta‐Epistemic Belief

This article raises problems both for the view that safe belief is necessary for knowledge and for the view that it is sufficient. Focusing on ‘meta‐epistemic beliefs,’ or beliefs about the epistemic status of one's own beliefs, it is shown that the necessity claim has counterintuitive implications and that the sufficiency claim implies a contradiction. It is then shown that meta‐epistemic beliefs raise similar problems for a wide range of accounts of knowledge, and hence that they provide a powerful test for theories of knowledge.     

Foley's Threshold View of Belief and The Safety Condition on Knowledge

This paper introduces a new argument against Richard Foley's threshold view of belief. Foley's view is based on the Lockean Thesis (LT) and the Rational Threshold Thesis (RTT). The former thesis is the claim that it is epistemically rational to believe a proposition if and only if it is epistemically rational to have a degree of confidence in that proposition sufficient for belief. The latter thesis is the claim that it is epistemically rational to believe a proposition if and only if it is epistemically rational to have a degree of confidence in that proposition that meets or exceeds a specified threshold. The argument introduced here shows that the views derived from the joint endorsement of the LT and the RTT violate the safety condition on knowledge in way that threatens the LT and/or the RTT.     

Outcome Knowledge and Under‐reporting of Safety Concerns in Aviation

High‐risk industries may learn from accidents, incidents and unsafe behaviours if they are reported and investigated. Despite this, significant under‐reporting of safety concerns occurs. One possible explanation is that because concerns cannot always be reported immediately, the outcome of the concern may influence whether reports are made. In Study 1, participants judged six vignettes in which unsafe acts were described: bad outcomes were judged as more likely to be reported than identical acts with innocuous outcomes. Informing participants that luck may determine whether an outcome is innocuous or bad could increase the reporting of unsafe acts with innocuous outcomes. Although implicit prompts did not increase the likelihood of reporting innocuous outcomes (Study 2), there was evidence that explicit prompts to report safety issues with innocuous outcomes increased the likelihood of reporting. Suggestions for further research and a means to reduce the effect of outcome bias on under‐reporting are presented. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

内隐学习中的知识习得及其无意识性测量*

本研究采用经典的人工语法范式,并引入迁移任务探讨在记忆和规则探索两种指导语条件下,被试所习得的究竟是规则还是组块？同时采用结构知识主观测量的方法,对内隐学习习得知识的无意识性进行测量。结果发现记忆指导语条件下的被试能成功区分合法串和非法串,即出现语法学习效应,但规则探索指导语条件下的被试并没有表现出语法或组块学习效应,结构知识的主观测量发现这种内隐学习的优势效应主要来自无意识结构知识的贡献;在迁移研究中发现附带学习组和有意学习组均在迁移任务上表现出语法学习效应,这表明在人工语法学习中所获得的语法规则是抽象的和可迁移的。     

Moral Knowledge Without Knowledge of Moral Knowledge

The Journal of Ethics - Most people believe some moral propositions are true. Most people would say that they know that rape is wrong, torturing people is wrong, and so on. But despite decades of...     

Knowledge and the Norms of Assertion

An account of the norms of assertion is proposed which is supported by the same considerations that motivate the familiar knowledge account of those norms, but does not have a problematic consequence of the latter. This alternative account is defended against others to be found in the literature, and some larger epistemological issues it raises are considered briefly.     

Externalism and Knowledge of the Attitudes

Usually, discussions about the compatibility of content externalism with self-knowledge focus on our knowledge of content. I look at externalist consequences for our knowledge of our own attitude-types. I show that there is a certain kind of mistake about the nature of one's own attitudes which would not be possible if externalism were false. While this does not cause trouble for externalism in general, it does cause trouble for some externalists' explanations of the compatibility of externalism with self-knowledge. I end with a picture of our knowledge of the attitudes that is compatible with externalism.     

Psychoanalysis and the Growth of Knowledge

This paper discusses two kinds of complexities inherent in psychoanalysis' concept of transference. The first kind: transference emotions usually appear in the shape of polarities—that is, an emotion is accompanied by its opposite that may be manifest or latent. This is true both of emotions that are split off and ambivalent. In addition, two or more such polarities often co-exist, running like parallel tracks, e.g., an aggression polarity together with a dependence polarity. A clinical vignette illustrates this train of thought. The second kind: Starting from Winnicott's concept of transitional phenomena, the epistemologicaI status of the transference concept is discussed. Transference phenomena take place in an intermediate area between reality and phantasy, and between past and present. The ensuing paradoxes that will characterize the concept-formation have to be accepted and respected. Some technical consequences of these complexities are discussed.     

Predictability and the Growth of Knowledge

In The Poverty of Historicism, Popper claimed that because the growth of human knowledge cannot be predicted, the future course of human history is not foreseeable. For this reason, historicist theories like Marxism are unscientific or untrue. The aims of this article are: first, to reconstruct Poppers argument, second, to defend it against some critics, and third, to show that it is itself based a weak form of historicism.