The epistemological challenge to metanormative realism: how best to understand it,and how to cope with it

Metaethical—or, more generally, metanormative—realism faces a serious epistemological challenge. Realists owe us—very roughly speaking—an account of how it is that we can have epistemic access to the normative truths about which they are realists. This much is, it seems, uncontroversial among metaethicists, myself included. But this is as far as the agreement goes, for it is not clear—nor uncontroversial—how best to understand the challenge, what the best realist way of coping with it is, and how successful this attempt is. In this paper I try, first, to present the challenge in its strongest version, and second, to show how realists—indeed, robust realists—can cope with it. The strongest version of the challenge is, I argue, that of explaining the correlation between our normative beliefs and the independent normative truths. And I suggest an evolutionary explanation (of a pre-established harmony kind) as a way of solving it.     

On voluntary ocular accommodation

Young observers were challenged to induce a marked monocular accommodative response to a relatively weak accommodative stimulus by placing a-9 diopter contact lens on the eye. At first, observers could not produce the desired response, but with training, three of four subjects achieved criterion. Both a voluntary accommodative response and a response to an adequate accommodative stimulus were apparently involved. The voluntary component of the response could be demonstrated by having the observers repeat the task in total darkness.     

Transfers of stimulus function during roulette wagering

Twenty‐five recreational gamblers were initially asked to place bets on either red or black positions on a roulette board in a simulated casino setting. Each participant was then exposed to a stimulus pairing observing procedure which attempted to develop equivalence classes between one color (black or red) and traditionally positive words (e.g., love, happy, sex) and another color (black or red) and traditionally negative words (e.g., death, cancer, taxes), in the absence of consequence manipulations. Twenty‐one of the twenty‐five participants demonstrated greater response allocation to the color position on the roulette board that participated in a relational network with the positive words. Variations in sequencing of experimental conditions had no impact on poststimulus‐pairing wagers, but did impact tests for equivalence accuracy.     

Developmental Reversals in Report Conformity: Psycho‐Legal Implications

Young children, young adults, and older adults witnessed a scene in groups of four same‐aged acquaintances. Unbeknownst to the group, a technology allowed the scene to appear differently to one member (minority) than to the others (majority), which obviated the need to rehearse confederates or to artificially provide misinformation for the report conformity effect. After viewing, participants had public recollections, and 3 days later, their cued memory and confidence (for adults) were tested privately. Majority members' reports influenced the minority members' but only for adults, not for children (17% conformity compared with 35% for adults), thus providing evidence of developmental reversals in memory reports of verbatim details. Answer changes between the sessions were dramatically higher for minority participants at all three ages (6.7 vs. 66.7% for children, 10 vs. 50% for younger adults, and 26.7 vs. 63.3% for older adults). We discuss the implications of these findings for questioning cowitnesses.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Epistemicism and Nihilism about Vagueness: What’s the Difference?

In this paper I argue, first, that the only difference between Epistemicism and Nihilism about vagueness is semantic rather than ontological, and second, that once it is clear what the difference between these views is, Nihilism is a much more plausible view of vagueness than Epistemicism. Given the current popularity of certain epistemicist views (most notably, Williamson’s), this result is, I think, of interest.