The fixed-feature viewpoint Schyns et al. are opposing is not a widely held theoretical position but rather a working assumption of cognitive psychologists – and thus a straw man. We accept their demonstration of new-feature acquisition, but question its ubiquity in category learning. We suggest that new-feature learning (at least in adults) is rarer and more difficult than the authors suggest.

Amit's efforts to provide stronger theoretical and empirical support for Hebb's cell-assembly concept is admirable, but we have serious reservations about the perspective presented in the target article. For Hebb, the cell assembly was a building block; by contrast, the framework proposed here eschews the need to fit the assembly into a broader picture of its function.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eleven brothers and sisters followed me in quick succession and the old farm house was bursting at the seams. So Mom and Dad put on a new dining room. Somehow it didn’t fit. It was built differently than the rest of the house. It was out of place, like a new patch on an old shirt. Some parts of the Later Rule of Saint Francis just don’t fit either. (...) They are “patches,” sewed on afterwards. Those little “patches” on the Later Rule stand out and they tell an important story.In 1221 Saint Francis re-edited the legislation of the Order. At the end of the twenty-four chapters of the new edition of the Rule, he commanded that “on behalf of Almighty God and of the Lord Pope, and by obedience ... that no one delete or add to what has been written in this life” . He would do everything possible to avoid changes, but just a couple of years later there was yet a newer edition of the Rule, which we know as the Later Rule. In his Testament, Francis does not distinguish between these two or, in fact, any of the different stages of the development of the Rule. In spite of the changes, even changes that were not to be expected, it seems that for Francis the Rule is one and the same at whatever stage.The Later Rule consists of twelve chapters. The chapters are not enumerated in the two original manuscripts, but rather are simply distinguished by headings set off from the rest of the text by bold lettering.2 The titles give us the theme of each chapter. It will become obvious to us that the number twelve was intentional and limiting, when we examine the Rule’s “patches” and see that they bring extraneous materials into the twelve chapters of the Rule. By “extraneous” I mean that the materials of the “patches” neither pertain to the principal theme of the chapter of the Later Rule into which they are inserted nor are they drawn from the corresponding chapter of the Earlier Rule. The “patches” do not make a good fit with the chapters in which we find them, but they do have two consistent characteristics: each of them comes at the end of its chapter in the Later Rule and, except for the last of the four patches, each of them includes materials from different chapters of the Earlier Rule. The “patches” we will examine are Chapter III, 10–13; Chapter VI, 7–9; Chapter X, 7–10, and Chapter XII, 3–4. The “patches” shed light on claims that Francis was forced to omit from the Rule ideas that were important to him, and even the myth that the whole original copy of the Rule was intentionally lost. They bring us to the conclusion that nothing important was lost in the transition from the Earlier Rule to the Later Rule.Chapter III, 10–13Chapter three of the Later Rule carries the heading, “The Divine Office, Fasting, and how the Brothers should go about in the World.” Chapter three of the Earlier Rule had also dealt with the divine office and fasting. The earlier text had begun with the saying of the Gospel that some evil spirits could only be driven out “through prayer and fasting” . This Gospel phrase explains why the Later Rule, following the Earlier Rule, deals with prayer and fasting in the same chapter. With respect to the Earlier Rule, Francis has included new content in the corresponding chapter of Later Rule. It is material that goes beyond the themes of prayer and fasting, and it doesn’t mesh neatly with these two themes.Chapter three of the Earlier Rule ends saying, “However, at other times, according to this life, let them not be.. (shrink)

In the first section of the article, we examine some recent criticisms of the connectionist enterprise: first, that connectionist models are fundamentally behaviorist in nature (and, therefore, non-cognitive), and second that connectionist models are fundamentally associationist in nature (and, therefore, cognitively weak). We argue that, for a limited class of connectionist models (feed-forward, pattern-associator models), the first criticism is unavoidable. With respect to the second criticism, we propose that connectionist modelsare fundamentally associationist but that this is appropriate for building models (...) of human cognition. However, we do accept the point that there are cognitive capacities for which any purely associative model cannot provide a satisfactory account. The implication that we draw from is this is not that associationist models and mechanisms should be scrapped, but rather that they should be enhanced.In the next section of the article, we identify a set of connectionist approaches which are characterized by “active symbols” — recurrent circuits which are the basis of knowledge representation. We claim that such approaches avoid criticisms of behaviorism and are, in principle, capable of supporting full cognition. In the final section of the article, we speculate at some length about what we believe would be the characteristics of a fully realized active symbol system. This includes both potential problems and possible solutions (for example, mechanisms needed to control activity in a complex recurrent network) as well as the promise of such systems (in particular, the emergence of knowledge structures which would constitute genuine internal models). (shrink)

We propose a way in which Barsalou could strengthen his position and at the same time make a considerable dent in the category/abstraction problem (that he suggests remains unsolved). There exists a class of connectionist models that solves this problem parsimoniously and provides a mechanistic underpinning for the promising high-level architecture he proposes.

This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The Philosopher at the End of the Universe demonstrates how anyone can grasp the basic concepts of philosophy while still holding a bucket of popcorn. Mark Rowlands makes philosophy utterly relevant to our everyday lives and reveals its most potent messages using nothing more than a little humor and the plotlines of some of the most spectacular, expensive, high-octane films on the planet. Learn about: The Nature of Reality from The Matrix, Good and Evil from Star Wars, Morality from (...) Aliens, Personal Identity from Total Recall, The Mind-Body dilemma from Terminator, Free Will from Minority Report, Death and the Meaning of Life from Blade Runner, and much more. A search for knowledge about ourselves and the world around us with a star-studded cast that includes: Tom Cruise, Plato, Harrison Ford, Immanuel Kant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigourney Weaver, René Descartes, and Keanu Reeves. Rowlands anchors his discussions in easily understood everyday terms and relates them in a manner easy to identify with. Interspersed with a ready joke or two, he wonderfully explains why those SciFi movies we love so much are much deeper than they appear to be on the surface. Mark Rowlands's entertaining and stimulating guide is perfect for anyone searching for knowledge of the world around us. If Keanu can understand Descartes surely everyone can. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es poner al descubierto los principales valores cognitivos y epistemológicos desde los que Warren Weaver puso en marcha el Programa de Biología Experimental, un programa que llevado a cabo desde la presidencia de la división de ciencias naturales de la Fundación Rockefeller, marcó y condicionó en buena medida el posterior desarrollo de la investigación biológica. Para tal fin se mostrará, en primer lugar, cómo fue la llegada de Weaver a la Fundación Rockefeller, así (...) como las razones bajo las cuáles el consejo de esa institución decidió entre 1932 y 1933 dar prioridad a las investigaciones biomédicas, y la manera por la cual lo hicieron. En un segundo momento, el más extenso e importante, veremos algunos de los elementos más significativos de la perspectiva epistemológica y cognoscitiva de de Weaver. Finalizaremos viendo cómo esa perspectiva, desarrollada en conexión con el Programa de Biología Experimental, inter-actuó con la visión reduccionista de la biología a la que el programa parecía apuntar. The aim of this article is to uncover the main cognitive and epistemological values that influenced Warren Weaver in starting the Experimental Biology Program, a program carried out from the time that he became president of the Natural Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, and which significantly marked and conditioned the subsequent development of biological research. To this end, we first describe the arrival of Warren Weaver at the Rockefeller Foundation, and the reasons for which the Board of this Foundation, between 1932 and 1933, decided to prioritize biomedical research, and the manner in which they did so. Then, secondly, in the largest and most important part of the article, we will present some of the most significant elements of Weaver's epistemological and cognitive perspective. Finally, we will show how this perspective, developed in connection with the Experimental Biology Program, interacted with the reductionist view of biology to which the program seemed to point. (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

In an attempt to improve upon Alexander Pruss’s work (The principle of sufficient reason: A reassessment, pp. 240–248, 2006), I (Weaver, Synthese 184(3):299–317, 2012) have argued that if all purely contingent events could be caused and something like a Lewisian analysis of causation is true (per, Lewis’s, Causation as influence, reprinted in: Collins, Hall and paul. Causation and counterfactuals, 2004), then all purely contingent events have causes. I dubbed the derivation of the universality of causation the “Lewisian argument”. The (...) Lewisian argument assumed not a few controversial metaphysical theses, particularly essentialism, an incommunicable-property view of essences (per Plantinga’s, Actualism and possible worlds, reprinted in: Davidson (ed.) Essays in the metaphysics of modality, 2003), and the idea that counterfactual dependence is necessary for causation. There are, of course, substantial objections to such theses. While I think a fight against objections to the Lewisian argument can be won, I develop, in what follows, a much more intuitive argument for the universality of causation which takes as its inspiration a result from Frederic B. Fitch’s work (J Symb Logic 28(2):135–142, 1963) [with credit to who we now know was Alonzo church’s, Referee Reports on Fitch’s Definition of value, in: (Salerno (ed.), New essays on the knowability paradox, 2009)] that if all truths are such that they are knowable, then (counter-intuitively) all truths are known. The resulting Church–Fitch proof for the universality of causation is preferable to the Lewisian argument since it rests upon far weaker formal and metaphysical assumptions than those of the Lewisian argument. (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

Many philosophers hypothesize that our concept of personal identity is partly constituted by the one-person-one-place rule, which states that a person can only be in one place at a time. This hypothesis has been assumed by the most influential contemporary work on personal identity. In this paper, we report a series of studies testing whether the hypothesis is true. In these studies, people consistently judged that the same person existed in two different places at the same time. This result undermines (...) some widely held philosophical assumptions, supports others, and fits well with recent discoveries on identity judgments about inanimate objects and non-human animals. (shrink)

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places in addition to players and positions into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the (...) broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing. (shrink)

The chorion genes of Drosophila are amplified in response to developmental signals in the follicle cells of the ovary prior to their transcription. Their expression is regulated both temporally and spatially within this tissue. They thus serve as models both for the regulation of DNA replication and of developmental transcription. The regulatory elements for DNA amplification have been delineated. Their analysis reveals that amplification is mediated by several regulatory regions and initiates at defined origins within the chorion cluster. Proteins involved (...) in amplification are being identified both by mutations affecting amplification and by DNA binding studies. Regulatory elements for temporal as well as spatial control of chorion gene, expression have been characterized, and two candidate transcription factor genes have been cloned. (shrink)

A specific issue for argumentation theory is whether information and communication technologies play any role in governing argument — that is, as parties engage in practical activities across space and time via ICTs, does technology matter for the interplay of argumentative content and process in managing disagreement? The case made here is that technologies do matter because they are not merely conduits of communication but have a role in the pragmatics of communication and argumentation. In particular, ICTs should be recognized (...) as communication-information services that are delegated degrees of responsibility for managing disagreements arising from practical activities. These services are organized around practical theories for designing disagreement space. However, recognizing this relationship between argument and technology requires accounting for procedures, techniques, or rules and speech acts that are not argumentative propositions in any strict sense but that are consequential for what becomes argumentation in any setting. An account about designing disagreement space, grounded in Jackson and Jacobs’s theory of Disagreement Management, is put forward to address these issues while more generally contributing to understanding argument in context. (shrink)

Contemporary Roman Catholic ethics endeavors to take sin seriously by offering theologies of sin that emphasize it as a force and as a basic, personal orientation. Such efforts rightly counter the Catholic tradition's earlier reduction of sin to sins, and sins to external acts and moral culpability. But perhaps they go too far in this regard. By engaging Charles Curran, this study argues that inattention to sins undermines the theological referent of sin as a discourse that concerns more than moral (...) culpability, obscures God as the source of freedom and value, and neglects the way in which acts express and sustain sin and fashion a personal orientation. Drawing on the work of Jean Porter, the essay shows that attention to sins highlights the historicity, particularity, and provisionality of human acts because of the theological referent and analogical character of sin and sins. (shrink)

After an introduction which demonstrates the failure of the equational analogue of Beth?s definability theorem, the first two sections of this paper are devoted to an elementary exposition of a proof that a functional constant is equationally definable in an equational theory iff every model of the set of those consequences of the theory that do not contain the functional constant is uniquely extendible to a model of the theory itself.Sections three, four and five are devoted to applications and extensions (...) of this result.Topics considered here include equational definability in first order logic, an extended notion of definability in equational logic and the synonymy of equational theories.The final two sections briefly review some of the history of equational logic. (shrink)

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

Pacifism is routinely criticized as sectarian, incoherent, and preoccupied with moral purity at the expense of responsibility. The author contends that the pacifism of John Howard Yoder is vulnerable to none of these charges and defends this claim by establishing parallels between Yoder's analysis of killing and Augustine's analysis of lying. Although, within the terms of his own argument, Augustine's rejection of all lying as unjust is consistent with his condoning of some killing as just, the author shows that given (...) a different conception of the defining characteristic of God , Augustine's theological argument against lying would become an argument against violence. The author therefore suggests that Yoder's rejection of killing is no more sectarian, incoherent, or irresponsible than Augustine's rejection of lying. (shrink)

We argue that there exists a necessary causally potent being. We then argue that that being is God.

Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of philosophers’ other (...) commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work, an endeavor that has required new strategies in art-making. To explore recent American manifestations of these interests, the David and Alfred Smart Museum commissioned new projects from artists Mark Dion, Peter Fend, and Dan Peterman, each focusing on interrelationships between particular organisms—human beings-and a specific group of sites—a museum building, a river landscape, and a university campus. The results, exhibited at the Smart Museum during the summer of (...) 2000, evoke the varied scales, from the microscopic to the global, at which human actions affect the environment. This catalog documents each of the artists' projects through an array of images and words: Smart Museum Associate Curator Stephanie Smith provides an introduction and brief overviews of the three projects, each of the artists contribute statements, and photographers Susan Anderson and Tom van Eynde document—in over 100 images—the processes and projects that comprise the exhibition. (shrink)

Debates over physician-assisted suicide comprise a small portion of broader culture wars. Their role in the culture wars obscures an under-acknowledged consensus between those who support PAS and those who oppose it. Drawing insights from personalism, this essay situates PAS within larger moral obligations of solidarity with the dying and their caregivers. The contributions of Roman Catholic personalism relocate debates over PAS and allow us to harness shared moral impulses.

A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime's quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. (...) In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain's obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience. (shrink)

It is argued here that large-scale organization and networked computing enable new divisions of communicative work aimed at shaping the content, direction, and outcomes of societal conversations. The challenge for argumentation theory and practice lies in attending to these new divisions of communicative work in constituting contemporary argumentative realities. Goffman’s conceptualization of participation frameworks and production formats are applied to articulate the communicative work of organizations afforded by networked computing that invents and innovates argument in all of its senses—as product, (...) process, and procedure. Communicative work, however, may be scaffolding argumentative contexts and practices that are quite different than what has constituted past argumentative realities. The computerization of argument happens as organizations invent and innovate argument practice relative to the demands and opportunities of interorganizational communication. The cases and examples examined here suggest that argument practice is evolving around the logic of conversation and the principle of personalization. The analysis challenges argumentation theory to seriously engage with the construction of communicative contexts and the realization of ideas about disagreement management in organizational practice and information infrastructures. Directions for integrating insights from a design perspective on argument with insights from organizational and information systems theory are proposed for coming to terms with an era of large-scale organization and computerization, in particular the evolution of argument practice, the inscription of argument in the built environment, and the absorption of socio-cultural argument practices by organizations and computation. (shrink)

Bringing together the latest scientific advances and some of the most enduring subtle philosophical puzzles and problems, this book collects original historical and contemporary sources to explore the wide range of issues surrounding the nature of life. Selections ranging from Aristotle and Descartes to Sagan and Dawkins are organised around four broad themes covering classical discussions of life, the origins and extent of natural life, contemporary artificial life creations and the definition and meaning of 'life' in its most general form. (...) Each section is preceded by an extensive introduction connecting the various ideas discussed in individual chapters and providing helpful background material for understanding them. With its interdisciplinary perspective, this fascinating collection is essential reading for scientists and philosophers interested in astrobiology, synthetic biology and the philosophy of life. (shrink)

Allusions to the Panathenaia 1 in the final scene of the Eumenides have been pointed out by a number of scholars.2 Headlam identified the red robes of the Eumenides with the cloaks worn by the Metics in the Panathenaic procession.3 In Athena's pronouncement at 1030–1.

Among the complete ℵ0-categorical theories with finite non-logical vocabularies, we distinguish three classes. The classification is obtained by looking at the number of bound variables needed to isolated complete types. In classI theories, all types are isolated by quantifier free formulas; in classII theories, there is a leastm, greater than zero, s.t. all types are isolated by formulas in no more thanm bound variables: and in classIII theories, for eachm there is a type which cannot be isolated inm or fewer (...) bound variables. ClassII theories are further subclassified according to whether or not they can be extended to classI theories by the addition of finitely many new predicates. Alternative characterizations are given in terms of quantifier elimination and homogeneous models. It is shown that for each primep, the theory of infinite Abelian groups all of whose elements are of orderp is classI when formulated in functional constants, and classIII when formulated in relational constants. (shrink)

One hundred years ago the expression "God is dead" was first used by Nietzsche. Now, Nietzsche was reared in a christian home, but at the university he decided there was no god.Now, this philosophy began to pervade German thought. And I believe that history is going to say that this philosophy … contributed to a religious, moral and intellectual vacuum, and into that vacuum came Nazism and the concept of the super race that produced Hitler and the second World War.Now, (...) if we in America reject the idea of god and all that that means, we're going to have a vacuum in which either a fascist type or a communist type of ideology is going to come in … that could eventually lead, in my opinion, to anarchy and chaos.The... (shrink)

This paper delineates the normative and empirical approaches to business ethics based upon five categories: 1) academic horne; 2) language; 3) underlying assumptions; 4) theory purpose and scope; 5) theory grounds and evaluation criteria. The goal of the discussion is to increase understanding of the distinctive contributions of each approach and to encourage further dialogue about the potential for integration of the field.

In this book Timmons defends a metaethical view that exploits certain contextualist themes in philosophy of language and epistemology. He advances what he calls assertoric non-descriptivism, a view that employs semantic contextualism in giving an account of moral discourse. This view, which like traditional non-descriptivist views stresses the practical, action-guiding function of moral thought and discourse, also allows that moral sentences, as typically used, make genuine assertions. Timmons then defends a contextualist moral epistemology thus completing his overall program of contextualism (...) in ethics. (shrink)

Senior managers are important to the successful management of ethics in organizations. Therefore, their perceptions of organizational ethics are important. In this study, we propose that senior managers are likely to have a more positive perception of organizational ethics than lower level employees do largely because of their managerial role and their corresponding identification with the organization and need to protect the organization’s image as well as their own identity. By contrast, lower level employees are more likely to be cynical (...) about the organization’s ethics. In order to compare senior managers’ and lower level employees’ perceptions of ethics in the organization, we surveyed randomly selected senior managers and lower level employees in three firms. We found that perceptions of ethics in the organization differed predictably across levels, with senior managers’ perceptions being significantly more positive and lower level employees’ perceptions being more negative. Implications for practice and research are discussed. (shrink)

forthcoming in reisner and steglich-peterson, eds., Reasons for Belief If I believe, for no good reason, that P and I infer (correctly) from this that Q, I don’t think we want to say that I ‘have’ P as evidence for Q. Only things that I believe (or could believe) rationally, or perhaps, with justification, count as part of the evidence that I have. It seems to me that this is a good reason to include an epistemic acceptability constraint on evidence (...) possessed…1 It is a truism that adopting an unjustified belief does not put you in a better evidential position with respect to believing its consequences. This truism has led many philosophers to assume that there must, at a minimum, be a justification condition (and perhaps even a knowledge condition) on what it takes to count as having evidence. This is the best (or only) possible explanation of the truism, these philosophers have believed. This paper explores an alternative explanation for the truism. According to the alternative explanation that I will offer, unjustified beliefs do not put you in a better evidential position with respect to believing their consequences because any evidence you have in virtue of having an unjustified belief is guaranteed to be defeated. Since the lack of justification for a belief guarantees its defeat, I will suggest, we don't need to postulate a special justification condition (much less a knowledge condition) on what it takes to count as having evidence. Why is this important? It is important because the assumption that there must be a justification condition (or perhaps a knowledge condition) on what it takes to count as having evidence places a high bar on what it takes to have evidence - such a high bar that it is difficult to see how this bar could be met in the case of basic, perceptually justified beliefs. As a result, the high bar set by this condition plays a fundamental role, I will claim, in central features of a core dialectic from the epistemology of basic perceptual belief which plays a central role in the debates between internalism and externalism, foundationalism and coherentism, and rationalism and empiricism.. (shrink)