Lifting the Mantle of Protection from Weber’s Presuppositions in His Theory of Bureaucracy

Early reactions to the publication of Harold Garfinkel??s Studies in Ethnomethodology, which have persisted over the passing decades, was that ethnomethodology could not address what sociology deemed to be socially significant matters such as ??power?? and ??the state??. This, however, is not the case. How such matters enter into the practical everyday affairs of members is of equal interest to ethnomethodology when compared to how any matter enters into members?? everyday life, and how they display that. It just does not have more importance. Egon Bittner spelt this out with regard to Weber??s interest in bureaucracy when he reminds sociology that when Weber talked about efficiency he was not referring to an objective standard but as something that is attuned to practical interests as they emerge in the context of everyday life. This paper examines some of the actions and interactions that were encountered in a Governmental Department in one of the European countries. It makes visible how characterisations of bureaucracy such as ??rational??, and ??efficient?? are achieved in the actions and interactions of Department employees, and some of the practices involved in that achievement. Garfinkel, and ethnomethodology in general, are not, in principle, to be found wanting where matters of overarching, primordial interest to sociology are concerned.     

How different is a 3D‐printed replica from a conspecific in the eyes of a zebrafish?

Robotics is emerging as a promising tool for aiding research on animal behavior. The possibility of generating customizable, controllable, and standardized robotic stimuli has been demonstrated through a number of behavioral assays, involving vertebrates and invertebrates. However, the specific appraisal of the nature of robotic stimuli is currently lacking. Here, we attempt to evaluate this aspect in zebrafish, through a within‐subject design in which experimental subjects are faced with three experimental conditions. In the first test, we investigated sociability by measuring zebrafish response to a conspecific separated by a one‐way glass. In the second test, we studied zebrafish behavior in response to a 3D‐printed zebrafish replica actuated along realistic trajectories through a novel four‐degree‐of‐freedom robotic platform. Last, we investigated fear responses in a shelter‐seeking test. In agreement with our expectations, zebrafish exhibited an equivalent preference for live and robotic stimuli, and the degree of preference for the robotic replica correlated negatively with the individual propensity to seek shelter. The equivalent preference for the replica and conspecific suggests that the appraisal of the target stimuli is analogous. The preliminary evidence of a correlation between behavioral responses across tests points to the readability of robotics‐based approaches to investigate interindividual differences.     

Problems for Mainstream Evidentialism

Evidentialism says that a subject S’s justification is entirely determined by S’s evidence. The plausibility of evidentialism depends on (1) what kind of entities constitute a subject S’s evidence and (2) what one takes the support relation to consist in. Conee and Feldman’s mainstream evidentialism (ME) incorporates a psychologist answer to (1) and an explanationist answer to (2). ME naturally accommodates perceptual justification. However, it does not accommodate intuitive cases of inferential justification. In the second part of the paper, I consider and reject a reply based on a refined explanationist theory of the support relation proposed by K McCain.     

On inconsistent entities. A reply to Colyvan

In a recent article M. Colyvan has argued that Quinean forms of scientific realism are faced with an unexpected upshot. Realism concerning a given class of entities, along with this route to realism, can be vindicated by running an indispensability argument to the effect that the entities postulated by our best scientific theories exist. Colyvan observes that among our best scientific theories some are inconsistent, and so concludes that, by resorting to the very same argument, we may incur a commitment to inconsistent entities. Colyvan’s argument could be interpreted, and in part is presented, as a reductio of Quinean scientific realism; yet, Colyvan in the end manifests some willingness to bite the bullet, and provides some reasons why we shouldn’t feel too uncomfortable with those entities. In this paper we wish to indicate a way out to the scientific realist, by arguing that no indispensability argument of the kind suggested by Colyvan is actually available. To begin with, in order to run such an indispensability argument we should be justified in believing that an inconsistent theory is true; yet, in so far as the logic we accept is a consistent one it is arguable that our epistemic predicament could not be possibly one in which we are justified in so believing. Moreover, also if our logic admitted true contradictions, as Dialetheism does, it is arguable that Colyvan’s indispensability argument could not rest on a true premise. As we will try to show, dialetheists do not admit true contradictions for cheap: they do so just as a way out of paradox, namely whenever we are second-level ignorant as to the metaphysical possibility of evidence breaking the parity among two or more inconsistent claims; Colyvan’s examples, however, are not of this nature. So, even under the generous assumption that Dialetheism is true, we will conclude that Colyvan’s argument doesn’t achieve its surprising conclusion.     

Broadening the study of inductive reasoning: Confirmation judgments with uncertain evidence

Although evidence in real life is often uncertain, the psychology of inductive reasoning has, so far, been confined to certain evidence. The present study extends previous research by investigating whether people properly estimate the impact of uncertain evidence on a given hypothesis. Two experiments are reported, in which the uncertainty of evidence is explicitly (by means of numerical values) versus implicitly (by means of ambiguous pictures) manipulated. The results show that people’s judgments are highly correlated with those predicted by normatively sound Bayesian measures of impact. This sensitivity to the degree of evidential uncertainty supports the centrality of inductive reasoning in cognition and opens the path to the study of this issue in more naturalistic settings.     

Evidentialism and the problem of stored beliefs

Many stored beliefs, like beliefs in one’s personal data or beliefs in one’s area of expertise, intuitively amount to knowledge, and so are justified. This uncontroversial datum arguably tells against evidentialism, the position according to which a belief is justified if it fits the available evidence: stored beliefs are normally not sustained by one’s available evidence. Conee and Feldman have tried to meet this potential objection by relaxing the notion of available evidence. According to their proposal, stored beliefs are dispositionally justified, because they are justified by the evidence one has the disposition to retrieve; such evidence, as a consequence, is to be characterize as available, though in a derivative sense. Goldman has criticized this proposal, by offering a counterexample to the claim that a disposition to generate a piece of evidence may qualify as a justifier. In this paper I critically examine two possible replies to Goldman’s example stemming from Conee and Feldman, and finally propose my own, based on a distinction, inspired by Audi, between dispositional evidence and the disposition to have evidence. Though this proposal differs from Conee and Feldman’s one, I will conclude that it fits pretty well their intuitions.

Microswitch technology and contingent stimulation to promote adaptive engagement in persons with minimally conscious state: a case evaluation

This study assessed whether a post-coma woman functioning at the lower end of the minimally conscious state would (a) develop adaptive responding through the use of microswitch technology and contingent stimulation, (b) consolidate and maintain her responding over time, and (c) show evidence of response-consequences awareness (learning and discrimination). The study involved an ABABB¹CB¹ sequence in which the A represented baseline phases, the B and B¹ intervention phases, and the C a control phase with continuous stimulation. Results indicated that the woman developed adaptive responding and consolidated it over the intervention phases of the study. The woman also showed evidence of being aware of response-consequences links. Potential implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

An epistemological analysis of gossip and gossip-based knowledge

Gossip has been the object of a number of different studies in the past 50 years, rehabilitating it not only as something worth being studied, but also as a pivotal informational and social structure of human cognition: Dunbar (Rev Gen Psychol 8(2):100–110, 2004) interestingly linked the emergence of language to nothing less than its ability to afford gossip. Different facets of gossip were analyzed by anthropologists, linguists, psychologists and philosophers, but few attempts were made to frame gossip within an epistemological framework (for instance Ayim in (Good gossip, pp. 85–99, 1994)). Our intention in this paper is to provide a consistent epistemological (applied and social) account of gossip, understood as broadly evaluative talk between two or more people, comfortably acquainted between each other, about an absent third party they are both at least acquainted with. Hence, relying on the most recent multidisciplinary literature about the topic, the first part of this paper will concern the epistemic dynamics of gossip: whereas the sociobiological tradition individuates in gossip the clue for the (theoretically cumbersome) group mind and group-level adaptations Wilson et al. (The evolution of cognition, pp. 347–365, 2002), we will suggest the more parsimonious modeling of gossip as a soft-assembled epistemic synergy, understood as a function-dominant interaction able to project a higher organizational level—in our case, the group as group-of-gossips. We will argue that the aim of this synergy is indeed to update a Knowledge Base of social information between the group (as a projected whole) and its members. The second and third part will instead focus on the epistemological labeling of the inferences characterizing gossip: our contention is that the ever-present moral/evaluative dimension in gossip—be it tacit or explicit, concerning the objects or the partners of gossip—is best analyzed through the epistemological framework of abduction. Consequently, we will suggest that a significant role of gossip is to function as a group-based abductive appraisal of social matter, enacted at various levels.