Cohen on ‘Epistemic’

Stewart Cohen offers a critique of much contemporary epistemology. Epistemologies use the term ‘epistemic’ in order to specify the issues they investigate and about which they disagree. Cohen sees widespread confusion about these issues. The problem, he argues, is that ‘epistemic’ is functioning as an inadequately defined technical term. I will argue, rather, that the troubles come more from non-technical vocabulary, in particular with ‘justification’ and ‘ought’, and generally from the difficulty of explaining normativity. Overall, the message of this paper is that normativity is what’s hard to understand, not the term ‘epistemic.’     

想象积极群际接触对利他型集体行动意愿的影响:系统公正感和群际评价的中介作用

集体行动是维护和实现社会公平正义的有效途径之一。以往研究主要聚焦于弱势群体利己型集体行动,很少有研究考察利他型集体行动的影响因素。本研究采用双随机设计,通过三个实验探讨积极群际接触与利他型集体行动的中介效应因果模型。实验1采用想象性群际接触范式操纵积极群际接触,发现积极群际接触促进利他型集体行动,系统公正感和群际评价中的热情维度起中介作用。实验2与实验3分别操纵系统公正感和热情,检验中介变量与因变量间的因果关系,证实了积极群际接触-系统公正感、热情-利他型集体行动的因果关系链。     

Who's in power matters: System justification and system derogation in Hungary between 2002 and 2018

The present study employed European Social Survey (ESS) data collected between 2002 and 2018 to investigate system justification versus derogation in Hungary. In all nine ESS rounds, system derogation was stronger than system justification. System justification was consistently at its strongest among those who had voted for the ruling party, be it left-wing MSZP (until 2008) or right-wing Fidesz (2010 onward). This pattern can be explained by ego and group justification motives alone, with no need to posit an autonomous system justification motive. Voters of Jobbik, who were as right-wing as Fidesz voters, but whose party was not in power, did not believe the system to be any more just than did left-wing voters. Much of the research supporting system justification theory has been conducted in stable Western democracies. Our results highlight the need for research in more politically volatile contexts.     

Are our moral responsibility practices justified? Wittgenstein,Strawson and justification in ‘Freedom and Resentment’

D. Justin Coates argues that, in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, P. F. Strawson develops a modest transcendental argument for the legitimacy of our moral responsibility practices. I disagree with Coates’ claim that Strawson’s argument provides a justification, in Wittgenstein’s and/or Strawson’s sense of that term, of our responsibility practices. I argue that my interpretation of Strawson solves some difficulties with Coates’ argument, while retaining its advantages.     

Fichte’s method of moral justification

ABSTRACT

While Kant’s claim that the moral law discloses our freedom to us has been extensively discussed in recent decades, the reactions to this claim among Kant’s immediate successors have gone largely overlooked by scholars. Reinhold, Creuzer, and Maimon were among three prominent thinkers of the era unwilling to follow Kant in making the moral law the condition for knowing our freedom. Maimon went so far as to reject Kant’s method of appealing to our everyday awareness of duty on the grounds that common human understanding is susceptible to error and illusion. In this paper I shall examine how these skeptical reactions to Kant’s position shaped the background for Fichte’s method of moral justification, leading up to his own deduction of the moral law in the System of Ethics (1798). By way of conclusion, I shall propose a new interpretation of how consciousness of the moral law serves as an entry-point to Fichte’s form of idealism.     

Mentalism and Epistemic Transparency

Questions about the transparency of evidence are central to debates between factive and non-factive versions of mentalism about evidence. If all evidence is transparent, then factive mentalism is false, since no factive mental states are transparent. However, Timothy Williamson has argued that transparency is a myth and that no conditions are transparent except trivial ones. This paper responds by drawing a distinction between doxastic and epistemic notions of transparency. Williamson's argument may show that no conditions are doxastically transparent, but it fails to show that no conditions are epistemically transparent. Moreover, this reinstates the argument from the transparency of evidence against factive mentalism.     

Think of the Children

Often, the deepest disagreements are about starting points, and which considerations are relevant.     

Keep the Faith,for Christ's Sake!

The central Lutheran doctrine of justification through faith served to critique the theology of the medieval Roman church but remains an important, though underutilized, theological resource today. The Lutheran emphasis on faith as trust in God's promise of mercy for Christ's sake is an important corrective to the contemporary culture of privatized faith, offering both a personal and a corporate relationship with a gracious God.