Feeling as the origin of value in Scheler and Mencius

Max Scheler (1874–1928) and Mencius (孟子, 372–289 BC) both take feeling to be the origin of value and could therefore be considered to be proponents of axiological sentimentalism. Despite the great spatial and temporal distance between them, there are striking similarities between the theories of value they developed. It should be noted, however, that there are also some differences between them that are mainly derived from some difficulties with their theories of value. These difficulties should be removed so that a better theory of value could be developed. It is accordingly the aim of this paper to promote a phenomenological dialogue between Scheler and Mencius that could lead to such a better theory. In Sects. 1, 2, I will first delineate Scheler’s theory of value and feeling, then that of Mencius. In Sect. 3, I will point out some difficulties with the two theories and promote a dialogue between them that would improve each theory. In Sect. 4, I will conclude with some remarks concerning the future task of the phenomenological dialogue between Scheler and Mencius.

     

Integrating computation into the mechanistic hierarchy in the cognitive and neural sciences

It is generally accepted that, in the cognitive and neural sciences, there are both computational and mechanistic explanations. We ask how computational explanations can integrate into the mechanistic hierarchy. The problem stems from the fact that implementation and mechanistic relations have different forms. The implementation relation, from the states of an abstract computational system (e.g., an automaton) to the physical, implementing states is a homomorphism mapping relation. The mechanistic relation, however, is that of part/whole; the explaining features in a mechanistic explanation are the components of the explanandum phenomenon and their causal organization. Moreover, each component in one level of mechanism is constituted and explained by components of an underlying level of mechanism. Hence, it seems, computational variables and functions cannot be mechanistically explained by the medium-dependent states and properties that implement them. How then, do the computational and the implementational integrate to create the mechanistic hierarchy? After explicating the general problem (Sect. 2), we further demonstrate it through a concrete example, of reinforcement learning, in the cognitive and neural sciences (Sects. 3 and 4). We then examine two possible solutions (Sect. 5). On one solution, the mechanistic hierarchy embeds at the same levels computational and implementational properties. This picture fits with the view that computational explanations are mechanistic sketches. On the other solution, there are two separate hierarchies, one computational and another implementational, which are related by the implementation relation. This picture fits with the view that computational explanations are functional and autonomous explanations. It is less clear how these solutions fit with the view that computational explanations are full-fledged mechanistic explanations. Finally, we argue that both pictures are consistent with the reinforcement learning example, but that scientific practice does not align with the view that computational models are merely mechanistic sketches (Sect. 6).

     

Kornblith versus Sosa on grades of knowledge

In a series of works Sosa (in: Knowledge in perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991; A virtue epistemology: apt belief and reflective knowledge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; Reflective knowledge: apt belief and reflective knowledge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009; ‘How Competence Matters in Epistemology’, Philos Perspect 24(1):465–475, 2010; Knowing full well, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011; Judgment and agency, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015; Epistemology, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2017) has defended the view that there are two kinds or ‘grades’ of knowledge, animal and reflective. One of the most persistent critics of Sosa’s attempts to bifurcate knowledge is Kornblith (in: Greco (ed) Ernest sosa and his critics, Wiley, Hoboken, 2004; ‘Sosa in Perspective’, Philos Stud 144(1):127–136, 2009; On reflection, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012). Our aim in this paper is to outline and evaluate Kornblith’s criticisms. We will argue that, while they raise a range of difficult (exegetical and substantive) questions about Sosa’s ‘bi-level’ epistemology, Sosa has the resources to adequately respond to all of them. Thus, this paper is a (qualified) defence of Sosa’s bi-level epistemology.

     

A response to Chisholm’s paradox

Essentialists suppose that for every individual, if that individual exists at any possible world, then necessarily that individual exemplifies some non-trivial qualitative property essential to it, as such. Anti-essentialists deny this. One important argument leveled by some anti-essentialists against essentialism takes the form of a thought experiment, one originally introduced by Chisholm (Nous 1(1):1–8, 1967), sometimes referred to as Chisholm’s Paradox (CP). In this essay, I defend essentialism against CP. I begin by presenting the argument and showing how it leads to a contradiction of the essentialist thesis. I then consider one of the most popular solutions to CP to date, that given by Salmon (Midwest Stud Philos 11:75–120, 1986, Philos Rev 98(1):3–34, 1989, Philos Top 21(2):187–197, 1993). Next, I critique Salmon’s proposal and show that it is an insufficient response on behalf of the essentialist. And finally, I propose a novel solution to the paradox and discuss why it is that many metaphysicians in the past have found CP plausible, despite being fallacious.

     

Feyerabend’s well-ordered science: how an anarchist distributes funds

To anyone vaguely aware of Feyerabend, the title of this paper would appear as an oxymoron. For Feyerabend, it is often thought, science is an anarchic practice with no discernible structure. Against this trend, I elaborate the groundwork that Feyerabend has provided for the beginnings of an approach to organizing scientific research. Specifically, I argue that Feyerabend’s pluralism, once suitably modified, provides a plausible account of how to organize science. These modifications come from C.S. Peirce’s account of the economics of theory pursuit, which has since been corroborated by empirical findings in the social sciences. I go on to contrast this approach with the conception of a ‘well-ordered science’ as outlined by Kitcher (Science, truth, and democracy, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001), Cartwright (Philos Sci 73(5):981–990, 2006), which rests on the assumption that we can predict the content of future research. I show how Feyerabend has already given us reasons to think that this model is much more limited than it is usually understood. I conclude by showing how models of resource allocation, specifically those of Kitcher (J Philos 87:5–22, 1990), Strevens (J Philos 100(2):55–79, 2003) and Weisberg and Muldoon (Philos Sci 76(2):225–252, 2009), unwittingly make use of this problematic assumption. I conclude by outlining a proposed model of resource allocation where funding is determined by lottery and briefly examining the extent to which it is compatible with the position defended in this paper.

     

Altering the rhythm of target and background talkers differentially affects speech understanding

Three experiments investigated listeners’ ability to use speech rhythm to attend selectively to a single target talker presented in multi-talker babble (Experiments 1 and 2) and in speech-shaped noise (Experiment 3). Participants listened to spoken sentences of the form “Ready [Call sign] go to [Color] [Number] now” and reported the Color and Number spoken by a target talker (cued by the Call sign “Baron”). Experiment 1 altered the natural rhythm of the target talker and background talkers for two-talker and six-talker backgrounds. Experiment 2 considered parametric rhythm alterations over a wider range, altering the rhythm of either the target or the background talkers. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that altering the rhythm of the target talker, while keeping the rhythm of the background intact, reduced listeners’ ability to report the Color and Number spoken by the target talker. Conversely, altering the rhythm of the background talkers, while keeping the target rhythm intact, improved listeners ability to report the Color and Number spoken by the target talker. Experiment 3, which embedded the target talker in speech-shaped noise rather than multi-talker babble, similarly reduced recognition of the target sentence with increased alteration of the target rhythm. This pattern of results favors a dynamic-attending theory-based selective-entrainment hypothesis over a disparity-based segregation hypothesis and an increased salience hypothesis.

     

The value of knowing how

Know-how has a distinctive, non-instrumental value that a mere reliable ability lacks. Some, including Bengson and Moffett (in: Bengson, Moffett (eds) Knowing how, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 161–195, 2011) and Carter and Pritchard (Australas J Philos 93(4):799–816, 2015b) have cited a close relation between knowhow and cognitive achievement, and it is tempting to think that the value of know-how rests in that relation. That’s not so, however. The value of know-how lies in its relation to the fundamental value of autonomy.

     

Metaphysical and absolute possibility

It is widely alleged that metaphysical possibility is “absolute” possibility (Kripke in Naming and necessity, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1980; Lewis in On the plurality of worlds, Blackwell, Oxford, 1986; van Inwagen in Philos Stud 92:68–84, 1997; Rosen, in: Gendler and Hawthorne (eds) Conceivability and possibility, Clarendon, Oxford, 2002, p 16; Stalnaker, in: Stalnaker (ed) Ways a world might be: metaphysical and anti-metaphysical essays, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, pp 201–215; Williamson in Can J Philos 46:453–492, 2016). Kripke calls metaphysical necessity “necessity in the highest degree” (1980, p. 99). Van Inwagen claims that if P is metaphysically possible, then it is possible “tout court. Possible simpliciter. Possible period…. possib(le) without qualification (1997, p. 72).” And Stalnaker writes, “we can agree with Frank Jackson, David Chalmers, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, and most others who allow themselves to talk about possible worlds at all, that metaphysical necessity is necessity in the widest sense (2003, p. 203).” What exactly does the thesis that metaphysical possibility is absolute amount to? Is it true? In this article, I argue that, assuming that the thesis is not merely terminological, and lacking in any metaphysical interest, it is an article of faith. I conclude with the suggestion that metaphysical possibility may lack the metaphysical significance that is widely attributed to it.

     

Toward a formal analysis of deceptive signaling

Deception has long been an important topic in philosophy (see Augustine in Treatises on various subjects, New York, Fathers of the Church, 1952; Kant in Practical philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996; Chisholm and Feehan in J Philos 74: 143–159, 1977; Mahon in Int J Appl Philos 21: 181–194, 2007; Carson in Lying and deception, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010). However, the traditional analysis of the concept, which requires that a deceiver intentionally cause her victim to have a false belief, rules out the possibility of much deception in the animal kingdom. Cognitively unsophisticated species, such as fireflies and butterflies, have simply evolved to mislead potential predators and/or prey. To capture such cases of “functional deception,” several researchers (e.g., Sober, From a biological point of view, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994; Hauser in: Whiten, Byrne (eds) Machiavellian intelligence II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 112–143, 1997; Searcy and Nowicki, The evolution of animal communication, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005; Skyrms, Signals, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010) have endorsed the broader view that deception only requires that a deceiver benefit from sending a misleading signal. Moreover, in order to facilitate game-theoretic study of deception in the context of Lewisian sender-receiver games, Brian Skyrms has proposed an influential formal analysis of this view. Such formal analyses have the potential to enhance our philosophical understanding of deception in humans as well as animals. However, as we argue in this paper, Skyrms’s analysis, as well as two recently proposed alternative analyses (viz., Godfrey-Smith in Review of signals: evolution, learning, and information by Brian Skyrms, Mind, 120: 1288–1297, 2001; McWhirter in Brit J Philos Sci 67: 757–780, 2016), are seriously flawed and can lead us to draw unwarranted conclusions about deception.

     

Effects of Discontinue Rules on Psychometric Properties of Test Scores

This paper provides results on a form of adaptive testing that is used frequently in intelligence testing. In these tests, items are presented in order of increasing difficulty. The presentation of items is adaptive in the sense that a session is discontinued once a test taker produces a certain number of incorrect responses in sequence, with subsequent (not observed) responses commonly scored as wrong. The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (SB5; Riverside Publishing Company, 2003) and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (KABC-II; Kaufman and Kaufman, 2004), the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test (Kaufman and Kaufman 2014) and the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (2nd ed.) (Bracken and McCallum 2015) are some of the many examples using this rule. He and Wolfe (Educ Psychol Meas 72(5):808–826, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164412441937) compared different ability estimation methods in a simulation study for this discontinue rule adaptation of test length. However, there has been no study, to our knowledge, of the underlying distributional properties based on analytic arguments drawing on probability theory, of what these authors call stochastic censoring of responses. The study results obtained by He and Wolfe (Educ Psychol Meas 72(5):808–826, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164412441937) agree with results presented by DeAyala et al. (J Educ Meas 38:213–234, 2001) as well as Rose et al. (Modeling non-ignorable missing data with item response theory (IRT; ETS RR-10-11), Educational Testing Service, Princeton, 2010) and Rose et al. (Psychometrika 82:795–819, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-016-9544-7) in that ability estimates are biased most when scoring the not observed responses as wrong. This scoring is used operationally, so more research is needed in order to improve practice in this field. The paper extends existing research on adaptivity by discontinue rules in intelligence tests in multiple ways: First, an analytical study of the distributional properties of discontinue rule scored items is presented. Second, a simulation is presented that includes additional scoring rules and uses ability estimators that may be suitable to reduce bias for discontinue rule scored intelligence tests.

     

Towards a Unitary Case for Russellian Panpsychism

One of the most pressing challenges that occupy the Russellian panpsychist’s agenda is to come up with a way to reconcile the traditional argument from categorical properties (Seager Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13(10–11), 129–145, 2006; Alter & Nagasawa, 2015) with H. H. Mørch’s dispositionalism-friendly argument from the experience of causation (2014, Topoi, 39, 1073–1088, 2018, 2020) — on the way to a unitary, all-encompassing case for the view. In this regard, Mørch claims that, via the commitment to the Identity theory of properties, one can consistently hold both panpsychist arguments without contradiction (2020: 281) — I shall refer to such proposal as Reconciliation. In my paper, I shall argue that this is not the case. To this extent, I will first consider H. Taylor’s argument that the Identity theorists have the exact same resources as the dispositionalists (as, after careful enquiry, their views on the metaphysics of properties turn out to coincide (Philosophical Studies, 175, 1423–1440, 2018: 1438)), and thus contend that Reconciliation fails to obtain. Then, I will suggest that one can avoid the problem and reconcile the arguments by adopting a different version of the powerful qualities view, namely the Compound view — and thus advance a reformulated version of the claim, i.e. Reconciliation*. Finally, even though pursuing my proposed solution might expose Russellian panpsychism to the risk of epiphenomenalism, I shall conclude that such specific form of epiphenomenalism is a rather benign one, and thus that, via Reconciliation*, the constitution of a unitary case for panpsychism as a positive proposal (and not as a mere alternative to dualism and physicalism) can be achieved.

     

Does active learning benefit spatial memory during navigation with restricted peripheral field?

Spatial learning of real-world environments is impaired with severely restricted peripheral field of view (FOV). In prior research, the effects of restricted FOV on spatial learning have been studied using passive learning paradigms – learners walk along pre-defined paths and are told the location of targets to be remembered. Our research has shown that mobility demands and environmental complexity may contribute to impaired spatial learning with restricted FOV through attentional mechanisms. Here, we examine the role of active navigation, both in locomotion and in target search. First, we compared effects of active versus passive locomotion (walking with a physical guide versus being pushed in a wheelchair) on a task of pointing to remembered targets in participants with simulated 10° FOV. We found similar performance between active and passive locomotion conditions in both simpler (Experiment 1) and more complex (Experiment 2) spatial learning tasks. Experiment 3 required active search for named targets to remember while navigating, using both a mild and a severe FOV restriction. We observed no difference in pointing accuracy between the two FOV restrictions but an increase in attentional demands with severely restricted FOV. Experiment 4 compared active and passive search with severe FOV restriction, within subjects. We found no difference in pointing accuracy, but observed an increase in cognitive load in active versus passive search. Taken together, in the context of navigating with restricted FOV, neither locomotion method nor level of active search affected spatial learning. However, the greater cognitive demands could have counteracted the potential advantage of the active learning conditions.

     

Dreams,agency, and judgement

Sosa (Proc Addresses Am Philos Assoc 79(2): 7–18, 2005) argues that we should reject the orthodox conception of dreaming—the view that dream states and waking states are “intrinsically alike, though different in their causes and effects” (2005: p. 7). The alternative he proposes is that “to dream is to imagine” (2005: p. 7). According to this imagination model of dreaming, our dreamt conscious beliefs, experiences, affirmations, decisions and intentions are not “real” insofar as they are all merely imagined beliefs, experiences, affirmations, decisions and intentions. This paper assesses the epistemic implications of Sosa’s imagination model of dreaming. Section 1 outlines and assesses the reasons Sosa gives for thinking that his imagination model of dreaming introduces a new dimension to debates about dream scepticism. Sosa argues that his imagination model of dreaming invites a more radical version of dream scepticism, and also makes available a novel and more powerful response to dream scepticism. Objections are raised to both of those claims. This leads to a challenge to Sosa’s imagination model of dreaming. This is the concern that Sosa’s imagination model of dreaming lacks the resources to accommodate the intuition that there is something illusory or misleading about one’s situation when one is dreaming, and as a result his account of dreams fails to accommodate the common intuition that there is a sceptical problem about dreaming but not about dreamless sleep. Section 2 of the paper elaborates a version of the imagination model of dreaming that can overcome that challenge. This version of the imagination model of dreaming goes beyond what Sosa explicitly commits to when he outlines his view of dreams, however, it exploits ideas that are integral to a key theme in Sosa’s recent writings on virtue reliabilism—namely his proposal that epistemic agency should be accorded a central place in that approach to knowledge, and his related proposal that agency is exercised in conscious judgement. An implication of this version of the imagination model of dreaming is that an elucidation of a connection between the wakeful condition and our capacity to exercise agency over our mental lives should be central to an account of the nature, and epistemic significance of, wakeful consciousness. The final section of the paper considers whether this version of the imagination model of dreaming has anything novel to contribute to debates about dream scepticism.

     

Responsibility and the limits of good and evil

P.F. Strawson’s compatibilism has had considerable influence. However, as Watson has argued in “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil” (1987/2008), his view appears to have a disturbing consequence: extreme evil exempts an agent from moral responsibility. This is a reductio of the view. Moreover, in some cases our emotional reaction to an evildoer’s history clashes with our emotional expressions of blame. Anyone’s actions can be explained by his or her history, however, and thereby can conflict with our present blame. Additionally, we too might have been evil if our history had been like the unlucky evildoer’s. Thus, our emotional responses to the evildoer compromise our standing to blame them. Since Strawson’s view demarcates moral responsibility by moral emotional responses, his view appears to be self-defeating. In this paper, I defend the Strawsonian view from the reductio and self-defeat problems. I argue that two emotions, disgust and elevation, can be moral reactive attitudes in Strawson’s sense. First, moral disgust expresses neither blame nor exemption from responsibility. Instead, moral disgust presupposes blameworthiness but is instead a distinct response to the extreme wrongdoer. Secondly, moral disgust involves self-directed attitudes that explain away our apparent lack of standing to blame the evil agent. The structure of disgust as a reactive attitude is mirrored along the positive dimension by the emotion that Haidt (2003a) has called “elevation”, a feeling of moral inspiration. I conclude by defending my view from objections about the moral appropriateness of disgust.

     

Defending the Democratic Argument for Limitarianism: A Reply to Volacu and Dumitru

In this paper, I argue that limitarian policies are a good means to further political equality. Limitarianism, which is a view coined and defended by Robeyns (2017), is a partial view in distributive justice which claims that under non-ideal circumstances it is morally impermissible to be rich. In a recent paper, Volacu and Dumitru (2018) level two arguments against Robeyns’ Democratic Argument for limitarianism. The Democratic Argument states that limitarianism is called for given the undermining influence current inequalities in income and wealth have for the value of democracy and political equality. Volacu and Dumitru’s Incentive Objection holds that limitarianism places an excessive and inefficient burden on the rich in ensuring political equality. The Efficacy Objection holds that even if limitarianism limits excessive wealth it still fails to ensure the preservation of political equality. In this paper, I will argue that both of these objections fail, but on separate grounds. I argue that the Incentive objection fails because one could appeal to limitarian policies that are different from the ones discussed by Volacu and Dumitru and which escape the problem of reduced productivity. I argue against the Efficacy Objection that limitarian policies are a partial but highly valuable step towards establishing political equality, and that they can and should complement or be complemented by other strategies.

     

Review of Growth Modeling: Structural Equation and Multilevel Modeling Approaches (Grimm,Ram & Estabrook, 2017)

Research questions that address developmental processes are becoming more prevalent in psychology and other areas of social science. Growth models have become a popular tool to model multiple individuals measured over several time points. These types of models allow researchers to answer a wide variety of research questions, such as modeling inter- and intra-individual differences and variability in longitudinal process (Molenaar 2004). The recently published book, Growth Modeling: Structural Equation and Multilevel Modeling Approaches (Grimm, Ram & Estabrook 2017), provides a solid foundation for both beginners and more advanced researchers interested in longitudinal data analysis by juxtaposing both the multilevel and structural equation modeling frameworks for several different models. By providing both sufficient technical background and practical coding examples in a variety of both commercial and open-source software, this book should serve as an excellent reference tool for behavioral and methodological researchers interested in growth modeling.

     

Introducing Identity

The best-known syntactic account of the logical constants is inferentialism . Following Wittgenstein’s thought that meaning is use, inferentialists argue that meanings of expressions are given by introduction and elimination rules. This is especially plausible for the logical constants, where standard presentations divide inference rules in just this way. But not just any rules will do, as we’ve learnt from Prior’s famous example of tonk, and the usual extra constraint is harmony. Where does this leave identity? It’s usually taken as a logical constant but it doesn’t seem harmonious: standardly, the introduction rule (reflexivity) only concerns a subset of the formulas canvassed by the elimination rule (Leibniz’s law). In response, Read [5, 8] and Klev [3] amend the standard approach. We argue that both attempts fail, in part because of a misconception regarding inferentialism and identity that we aim to identify and clear up.

     

Relative Necessity and Propositional Quantification

Following Smiley’s (The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 28, 113–134 1963) influential proposal, it has become standard practice to characterise notions of relative necessity in terms of simple strict conditionals. However, Humberstone (Reports on Mathematical Logic, 13, 33–42 1981) and others have highlighted various flaws with Smiley’s now standard account of relative necessity. In their recent article, Hale and Leech (Journal of Philosophical Logic, 46, 1–26 2017) propose a novel account of relative necessity designed to overcome the problems facing the standard account. Nevertheless, the current article argues that Hale & Leech’s account suffers from its own defects, some of which Hale & Leech are aware of but underplay. To supplement this criticism, the article offers an alternative account of relative necessity which overcomes these defects. This alternative account is developed in a quantified modal propositional logic and is shown model-theoretically to meet several desiderata of an account of relative necessity.

     

Military Moral Injury: An Evidence-Based and Intercultural Approach to Spiritual Care

How can spiritual care help veterans struggling with military moral injury? An evidence-based, intercultural approach to spiritual care is proposed. Evidence-based care uses research on military moral injury and religious and spiritual struggles to understand when religious and spiritual practices, beliefs, and values are helping or harming veterans. Intercultural spiritual care recognizes the complex, distinctive ways veterans’ values, beliefs, coping, and spiritual practices are shaped by interacting cultural systems, especially military training and cultures. Pastoral theologian Larry Graham’s (Sacred Spaces: The E-Journal of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors 5, 146–171, 2017) writing on moral injury and lamentation is used to develop two spiritual care strategies: sharing anguish and interrogating suffering. Spiritual care begins with lamenting the shared anguish of moral injury using intrinsically meaningful spiritual practices to help veterans compassionately accept the emotions arising from moral injury so intensely felt in their bodies. The second strategy is sharing the lament of interrogating suffering through exploring values, beliefs, and coping arising from moral injury. A literary case study of a young female veteran based on Cara Hoffman’s (2014) novel Be Safe, I Love You illustrates this evidence-based intercultural approach to spiritual care of military moral injury.

     

Justification,knowledge, and normality

There is much to like about the idea that justification should be understood in terms of normality or normic support (Smith in Between probability and certainty, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016; Goodman and Salow in Philosophical Studies 175: 183–196, 2018). The view does a nice job explaining why we should think that lottery beliefs differ in justificatory status from mundane perceptual or testimonial beliefs. And it seems to do that in a way that is friendly to a broadly internalist approach to justification. In spite of its attractions, we think that the normic support view faces two serious challenges. The first is that it delivers the wrong result in preface cases. Such cases suggest that the view is either too sceptical or to externalist. The second is that the view struggles with certain kinds of Moorean absurdities. It turns out that these problems can easily be avoided. If we think of normality as a condition on knowledge, we can characterise justification in terms of its connection to knowledge and thereby avoid the difficulties discussed here. The resulting view does an equally good job explaining why we should think that our perceptual and testimonial beliefs are justified when lottery beliefs cannot be. Thus, it seems that little could be lost and much could be gained by revising the proposal and adopting a view on which it is knowledge, not justification that depends directly upon normality.