Foundationalism, Probability, and Mutual Support

The phenomenon of mutual support presents a specific challenge to the foundationalist epistemologist: Is it possible to model mutual support accurately without using circles of evidential support? We argue that the appearance of loops of support arises from a failure to distinguish different synchronic lines of evidential force. The ban on loops should be clarified to exclude loops within any such line, and basing should be understood as taking place within lines of evidence. Uncertain propositions involved in mutual support relations are conduits to each other of independent evidence originating ultimately in the foundations. We examine several putative examples of benign loops of support and show that, given the distinctions noted, they can be accurately modeled in a foundationalist fashion. We define an evidential “tangle,” a relation among three propositions that appears to require a loop for modeling, and prove that all such tangles are trivial in a sense that precludes modeling them with an evidential circle.

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Moral Expertise and the Credentials Problem

Philosophers have harbored doubts about the possibility of moral expertise since Plato. I argue that irrespective of whether moral experts exist, identifying who those experts are is insurmountable because of the credentials problem: Moral experts have no need to seek out others’ moral expertise, but moral non-experts lack sufficient knowledge to determine whether the advice provided by a putative moral expert in response to complex moral situations is correct and hence whether an individual is a bone fide expert. Traditional accounts of moral expertise require that moral experts give reliably correct moral advice supported by adequate justification, an account which, I argue, is too lean in allowing for the possibility of a moral expert who is motivationally indifferent to her own moral judgments and advice. Yet even if the proposition that a moral expert is an individual who provides reliably correct moral advice supported by adequate justification and is necessarily motivated by that advice exhausts the necessary and sufficient conditions for moral expertise, this proposition cannot function as an applicable criterion for non-experts to use in appraising would-be experts’ claims to expertise. The credentials problem thus remains unanswered.

Contrastivism Rather than Something Else? On the Limits of Epistemic Contrastivism

One of the most recent trends in epistemology is contrastivism. It can be characterized as the thesis that knowledge is a ternary relation between a subject, a proposition known and a contrast proposition. According to contrastivism, knowledge attributions have the form “S knows that p, rather than q”. In this paper I raise several problems for contrastivism: it lacks plausibility for many cases of knowledge, is too narrow concerning the third relatum, and overlooks a further relativity of the knowledge relation.

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Philosophy on steroids: why the anti-doping position could use a little enhancement

There is currently much concern over the use of pharmaceuticals and other biomedical techniques to enhance athletic performance—a practice we might refer to as doping. Many justifications of anti-doping efforts claim that doping involves a serious moral transgression. In this article, I review a number of arguments in support of that claim, but show that they are not conclusive, suggesting that we do not have good reasons for thinking that doping is wrong.

Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics

In this introduction we discuss the motivation behind the workshop “Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics” of which this special issue constitutes the proceedings. We elaborate on historical and empirical aspects of the desired new epistemology, connect it to the public image of mathematics, and give a summary and an introduction to the contributions to this issue.

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Are There Stable Factors in Preadolescent Girls’ Externalizing Behaviors?

Relatively little is known about the factor structure of disruptive behavior among preadolescent girls. The present study reports on exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of disruptive girl behavior over four successive data waves as rated by parents and teachers in a large, representative community sample of girls (N = 2,451). Five factors were identified from parent ratings (oppositional behavior/conduct problems, inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, relational aggression, and callous-unemotional behaviors), and four factors were identified derived from teacher ratings (oppositional behavior/conduct problems/callous-unemotional behaviors, inattention, hyperactivityimpulsivity, and relational aggression). There was a high degree of consistency of items loading on equivalent factors across parent and teacher ratings. Year-to-year stability of factors between ages five and 12 was high for parent ratings (ICC = 0.70 to 0.88), and slightly lower for teacher ratings (ICC = 0.56 to 0.83). These findings are discussed in terms of possible adjustment to the criteria for children's disruptive behavior disorders found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders.

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A consistent way with paradox

Consideration of a paradox originally discovered by John Buridan provides a springboard for a general solution to paradoxes within the Liar family. The solution rests on a philosophical defence of truth-value-gaps and is consistent (non-dialetheist), avoids ‘revenge’ problems, imports no ad hoc assumptions, is not applicable to only a proper subset of the semantic paradoxes and implies no restriction of the expressive capacities of language.

Not So Enticing Reasons

A common view of the relation between oughts and reasons is that you ought to do something if and only if that is what you have most reason to do. One challenge to this comes from what Jonathan Dancy calls ‘enticing reasons.’ Dancy argues that enticing reasons never contribute to oughts and that it is false that if the only reasons in play are enticing reasons then you ought to do what you have most reason to do. After explaining how enticing reasons supposedly work and why accepting them may appear attractive, I firstly show why we are not committed to accepting them into our conceptual framework and then argue that no reasons work in the way enticing reasons are claimed to. Thus we should reject the category of enticing reasons entirely.

The possibility of pragmatic reasons for belief and the wrong kind of reasons problem

In this paper I argue against the stronger of the two views concerning the right and wrong kind of reasons for belief, i.e. the view that the only genuine normative reasons for belief are evidential. The project in this paper is primarily negative, but with an ultimately positive aim. That aim is to leave room for the possibility that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for belief. Work is required to make room for this view, because evidentialism of a strict variety remains the default view in much of the debate concerning normative reasons for belief. Strict versions of evidentialism are inconsistent with the view that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for belief.

Sosa on scepticism

 In my remarks, I discuss Sosa's attempt to deal with the sceptical threat posed by dreaming. Sosa explores two replies to the problem of dreaming scepticism. First, he argues that, on the imagination model of dreaming, dreaming does not threaten the safety of our beliefs. Second, he argues that knowledge does not require safety, but a weaker condition which is not threatened by dreaming skepticism. I raise questions about both elements of his reply.

Categorical and Agent-neutral Reasons in Kantian Justifications of Morality

The dispute between Kantians and Humeans over whether practical reason can justify moral reasons for all agents is often characterized as a debate over whether reasons are hypothetical or categorical. Instead, this debate must be understood in terms of the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. This paper considers Alan Gewirth’s Reason and Morality as a case study of a Kantian justification of morality focused on deriving categorical reasons from hypothetical reasons. The case study demonstrates first, the possibility of categorical agent-relative reasons, and second, that inattention to this possibility has caused considerable confusion in the debate between Kantians and Humeans.

Die Geschichte der „Stellungnahme zur psychoanalytischen Therapie“

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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The Chrysippus intuition and contextual theories of truth

Contextual theories of truth are motivated primarily by the resolution they provide to paradoxical reasoning about truth. The principal argument for contextual theories of truth relies on a key intuition about the truth value of the proposition expressed by a particular utterance made during paradoxical reasoning, which Anil Gupta calls “the Chrysippus intuition.” In this paper, I argue that the principal argument for contextual theories of truth is circular, and that the Chrysippus intuition is false. I conclude that the philosophical motivation for contextual theories of truth fails.

Justice, Holism and Principles

Some moral theorists defend a holistic account of practical reasons and deny that the possibility of moral thought depends upon the existence of moral principles. This article explores the implications of this position for theorising about justice, which has often aspired to provide us with an ordered list of principles to govern our institutions and practices.

Visualizations in Mathematics

In this paper we discuss visualizations in mathematics from a historical and didactical perspective. We consider historical debates from the 17th and 19th centuries regarding the role of intuition and visualizations in mathematics. We also consider the problem of what a visualization in mathematical learning can achieve. In an empirical study we investigate what mathematical conclusions university students made on the basis of a visualization. We emphasize that a visualization in mathematics should always be considered in its proper context.

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Aktuelle Probleme der Krankenhausplanung in der Psychosomatischen Medizin und Psychotherapie

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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The effect of infant-like characteristics on empathic concern for adults in need

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that empathic concern for adults in need is enhanced by the degree of target infant-like characteristics. Participants reported feeling more empathic concern for an adult target with a more infant-like face than for an adult with a more adult-like face in a Spanish sample (Experiment 1) and in an American sample (Experiment 2). A similar effect was found when participants were presented with either an adult with a more infant-like voice or an adult with a more adult-like voice in a second American sample (Experiment 3). Additional analyses suggest that the infant-like characteristic effect on empathic concern is not mediated by observer perceptions of target attractiveness, target age or youthfulness, target vulnerability, or observer similarity to the target. These results support the proposition that infant-like cues enhance empathic concern in human observers and that the phenomenon generalizes across stimulus modality, gender, and nationality.

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Freedom and Practical Reason

Practical reasons, roughly, are reasons to have our desires and goals, and to do what might secure these goals. I argue for the view that lack of freedom to do otherwise undermines the truth of judgments of practical reason. Thus, assuming that determinism expunges alternative possibilities, determinism undercuts the truth of such judgments. I propose, in addition, that if practical reason is associated with various values in a specified way, then determinism precludes such values owing to determinism's imperiling practical reason.

A Quintet,a Quartet,a Trio,a Duo? The Epistemic Regress Problem,Evidential Support,and Skepticism

In his topical article, Andrew Cling claims that the best extant formulation of the so-called epistemic regress problem rests on five assumptions that are too strong. Cling offers an improved version that rests on a different set of three core epistemic assumptions, each of which he argues for. Despite of owing a great deal to Cling’s ideas, I argue that the epistemic regress problem surfaces from more fundamental assumptions than those offered by Cling. There are ultimately two core assumptions—in fact two contradictory strands within the concept of epistemic support—which jointly create a powerful challenge for our pursuit of paramount epistemic values.