The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe’s economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…”. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns the (...) gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the “digital divide”, which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation. Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them. (shrink)
The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe’s economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…”. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns the (...) gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the “digital divide”, which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation. Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them. (shrink)
We extend to the predicate frame a previous characterization of the maximal intermediate propositional constructive logics. This provides a technique to get maximal intermediate predicate constructive logics starting from suitable sets of classically valid predicate formulae we call maximal nonstandard predicate constructive logics. As an example of this technique, we exhibit two maximal intermediate predicate constructive logics, yet leaving open the problem of stating whether the two logics are distinct. Further properties of these logics will be also investigated.
Eugenio Lecaldano offers an important contribution to the tradition of Italian liberal thought. In his book on bioethics, he deals with the subject’s most relevant topics by adopting a utilitarian perspective, which clearly demonstrates the influence of J.S. Mill’s philosophy. The indication of some significant analogies and the distinction between different moral problems are some of the most interesting and useful aspects of Lecaldano’s work.
The ?values of sport? is a concept that is often used to justify actions and policies by a range of agents and agencies from coaches and teachers to governing bodies and educational institutions. From a philosophical point of view, these values deserve to be analysed with great care to make sure we understand their nature and reach. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the values carried by the educational conception of sport that Pierre de Coubertin developed and (...) to see how they relate to certain values in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. To be able to understand in depth the moral construct of de Coubertin's system, it is essential to delve into the entire system he builds in order to develop athletic participants closer to his ideal of what a human should be. This in turn rests on his conception of Man, which is comprised of body, spirit and character. An understanding of his structure opens the way to a broader awareness of de Coubertin's educational system, of which sport was only part. We will then see that the values are a consequence of this pedagogical search for the ideal human. It is argued that this ideal of a human is similar to the one described by Nietzsche as the Übermensch . A philosophical case study is conducted, taking as its object the story of the first recipient of the Pierre de Coubertin medal, which rewards fair play among Olympic competitors. Judging the story through Nietzschean eyes allows for his thoughts to be put into practice. His lesser-known texts such as Homer and Competition on the emulation of creative powers shed light on today's sports. Concepts such as guilt, excellence, will to power and effectiveness help us compare these two authors and understand that competition is not necessarily about dominating others, but more about generating human excellence. (shrink)
La síntesis de la filosofía africana aporta datos sorprendentes sobre el origen de la cultura occidental. Ni los filósofos y literatos griegos surgieron de la nada, ni la civilización egipcia nació en sí misma, como un milagro. El hilo conductor, la fuente nutricia de ambos “milagros” culturales “egipcio y griego” está en la cultura africana. Y no podía ser de otra manera ya que nuestra especie, el homo sapiens, surgió en África hace tan sólo 200 milenios. Allí se dieron los (...) primeros logros esenciales de la condición humana: el lenguaje oral y escrito y la emergencia del pensamiento sistematizado, de la dimensión ética y artística del género humano. Con gran profundidad Eugenio Nkogo demuestra que la civilización humanista vino desde África a Occidente a través de Egipto y Roma. Después de sufrir el esclavismo y el colonialismo, el pensamiento africano se está convirtiendo en la vanguardia de un nuevo movimiento que sigue ayudando al género humano en su ruta hacia un mundo más civilizado y libre. (shrink)
Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument says that if all physical effects have sufficient physical causes, and no physical effects are caused twice over by distinct physical and mental causes, there cannot be any irreducible mental causes. In addition, Kim has argued that the nonreductive physicalist must give up completeness, and embrace the possibility of downward causation. This paper argues first that this extra argument relies on a principle of property individuation, which the nonreductive physicalist need not accept, and second that (...) once we get clear on overdetermination, there is a way to reject the exclusion principle upon which the causal exclusion argument depends, but third that this should not lead to the belief that mental causation is easily accounted for in terms of counterfactual dependencies. (shrink)
David Chalmers' conceivability argument against physicalism relies on the entailment from a priori conceivability to metaphysical possibility. The a posteriori physicalist rejects this premise, but is consequently committed to psychophysical strong necessities. These don't fit into the Kripkean model of the necessary a posteriori, and they are therefore, according to Chalmers, problematic. But given semantic assumptions that are essential to the conceivability argument, there is reason to believe in microphysical strong necessities. This means that some of Chalmers' criticism is unwarranted, (...) and the rest equally afflicts the dualist. Moreover, given that these assumptions are independently plausible, there's a general case to be made for the existence of strong necessities outside the psychophysical domain. (shrink)
Kripke's argument against the identity theory in the philosophy of mind runs as follows. Suppose some psychophysical identity statement S is true. Then S would seem to be contingent at least in the sense that S seems possibly false. And given that seeming contingency entails genuine contingency when it comes to such statements S is contingent. But S is necessary if true. So S is false. This entry considers responses to each of the three premises. It turns out that each (...) response does not fully withstand scrutiny, and so Kripke's conclusion is hard to resist. Section 1 lays out Kripke's argument, and Sections 2 to 4 then discuss responses to each of the three premises respectively. (shrink)
This paper offers a new solution to the knowledge argument. Both a priori and a posteriori physicalists reject the claim that Mary does not know all the facts, but they do so for different reasons. While the former think that Mary gains no new knowledge of any fact, the latter think that Mary gains new knowledge of an old fact. This paper argues that on a broad understanding of what counts as physical, it is consistent with physicalism that Mary does (...) not know all the physical facts, and that on a narrow understanding, it is consistent with physicalism that Mary knows all the physical facts, but not all the facts. Either way, Mary gains new knowledge of a new fact that is not non-physical. The resultant view. (shrink)
Whereas a number of recent articles have focussed upon whether the thesis of content externalism is compatible with a certain sort of knowledge that is gained via first-person authority,1 far less attention has been given to the relationship that this thesis bears to the possession of knowledge in general and, in particular, its relation to internalist and externalist epistemologies. Nevertheless, although very few actual arguments have been presented to this end, there does seem to be a shared suspicion that content (...) externalism must be incompatible with epistemic internalism. In a recent and influential paper, however, James Chase has challenged this conventional wisdom by offering a subtle defence of the view that content externalism and epistemic internalism are, in fact, compatible after all.2 Our aim here is twofold. First, to show that Chase is only able to achieve this result because he focuses upon the internalist conception of justification, rather than knowledge. Second, to formulate one prima facie argument which shows that an internalist conception of knowledge is incompatible with an externalist conception of content, an argument which, moreover, is not touched by Chase. (shrink)
Reliabilists accept the possibility of basic knowledge—knowledge that p in virtue of the reliability of some belief-producing process r without antecedent knowledge that r is reliable. Cohen (Philos Phenomenol Res 65:309–329, 2002 , Philos Phenomenol Res 70:417–430, 2005 ) and Vogel (J Philos 97:602–623, 2000 , J Philos 105:518–539, 2008 ) have argued that one can bootstrap knowledge that r is reliable from basic knowledge. This paper provides a diagnosis of epistemic bootstrapping, and then shows that recent attempts at embracing (...) bootstrapped knowledge are found wanting. Instead it is argued that such arguments are afflicted by a novel kind of generalized epistemic circularity. The ensuing view is defended against various objections, and an explanation of the source of that circularity is offered. (shrink)
Wright (In Gendler and Hawthorne (Eds.), Conceivability and possibility, 2002) rejects some dominant responses to Kripke’s modal argument against the mind-body identity theory, and instead he proposes a new response that draws on a certain understanding of counterpossibles. This paper offers some defensive remarks on behalf of Lewis’ objection to that argument, and it argues that Wright’s proposal fails to fully accommodate the conceivability intuitions, and that it is dialectically ineffective.
The debate between the reductive and emergent materialist is still very much a live one. (Antony and Levine 1997; Auyang 2000; Bechtel and Richardson 1992; Block 1997; Boyd 1999; Crane 2001; David 1997; Fodor 1989; Fodor 1997; Kim 1993b; Kim 1994; Kim 1996; Kim 1999; Le Pore and Loewer 1987; Millikan 1999; Pereboom 2002; Rueger 2000; Van Gulick 2001; Yablo 1992). We argue that the best way to settle this debate is to take a step back and consider the metaphysics (...) that is motivated by a careful consideration of some scientific examples. We argue that an account of emergence which bases emergence of a complex whole in the physical organisation of the parts can account for the emergent explicable novelty can be found throughout science. This. (shrink)
Referentialism is the view that all there is to the meaning of a singular term is its referent. Referentialism entails Substitutivity, i.e., that co-referring terms are intersubstitutable salva veritate . Frege's Paradox shows that Referentialism is inconsistent given two principles: Disquotation says that if S assents to 'P', then S believes that P, and Consistency says that if S believes that P and that not-P, then S is not fully rational. Kripke's strategy was to save Substitutivity by showing that those (...) intuitively plausible principles already led to paradox. I argue that this generalising strategy fails. The Descriptivist, who thinks that a singular term has descriptive meaning, will reject Substitutivity in Frege's Paradox, and deny that Consistency finds application in Kripke's Paradox. The Referentialist, however, may reject Consistency: if the logical properties of the contents of S's beliefs are not reflectively accessible, then S can hold contradictory beliefs without being irrational. Even if successful against Frege's and Kripke's Paradox, this response is ineffective against a strengthened version of the former which rests on Disquotation and Substitutivity, and a strengthened version of the latter which rests only on Disquotation. (shrink)
Call knowledge where so-and-so, knowledge who so-and-so, etc., knowledge-wh . The reductive view says that knowledge- wh reduces to the two-place knowledge relation Ksp. Schaffer (2007) argues that this view has no viable response to the problem of convergent knowledge: how can a knowing- wh ascription be reduced to a Ksp ascription if a second knowing- wh ascription intuitively inequivalent to the first can be reduced to the same Ksp ascription? Instead he suggests that knowledge- wh be understood as a (...) three-place knowledge relation Kspq, where q is a contextually salient contrast proposition. I argue firstly that once we realise that wh -questions can have more than one true answer, the reductivist has an obvious response to this problem. Secondly, I pose a revenge problem for Schaffer's contrastivist alternative: how can a knowing- wh ascription be reduced to a Kspq ascription if a second knowing- wh ascription intuitively equivalent to the first can be reduced to a distinct Kspq ascription? (shrink)
In "Knowing the Answer" I argued that knowledge-wh is question-relative. For example, to know when the movie starts is to know the answer p to the question Q of when the movie starts. Berit Brogaard and Jesper Kallestrup have each responded with insightful critiques of my argument, and novel accounts of knowledge-wh. I am grateful to them both for continuing the discussion in so thoughtful a way.
We review the use of introspective and phenomenological methods in experimental settings. We distinguish different senses of introspection, and further distinguish phenomenological method from introspectionist approaches. Two ways of using phenomenology in experimental procedures are identified: first, the neurophenomenological method, proposed by Varela, involves the training of experimental subjects. This approach has been directly and productively incorporated into the protocol of experiments on perception. A second approach may have wider application and does not involve training experimental subjects in phenomenological method. (...) It requires front-loading phenomenological insights into experimental design. A number of experiments employing this approach are reviewed. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for both the cognitive sciences and phenomenology. Ó 2006 Published by Elsevier Inc. (shrink)
This paper examines two recent objections against contextualism. The first is that contextualists are unable to assert their own position, and the second is that contextualists are forced to side with common-sense against scepticism. It is argued that once we get clear on the commitments of contextualism, neither objection succeeds in what it aims to show.
Process reliabilists hold that in order for a belief to be justified, it must result from a reliable cognitive process. They also hold that a belief can be basically justified: justified in this manner without having any justification to believe that belief is reliably produced. Fumerton (1995), Vogel (2000), and Cohen (2002) have objected that such basic justification leads to implausible easy justification by means of either epistemic closure principles or so-called track record arguments. I argue that once we carefully (...) distinguish closure principles from transmission principles, and epistemic consequences from epistemic preconditions, neither version of this objection succeeds. (shrink)
A popular form of virtue epistemology—defended by such figures as Ernest Sosa, Linda Zagzebski and John Greco—holds that knowledge can be exclusively understood in virtue-theoretic terms. In particular, it holds that there isn't any need for an additional epistemic condition to deal with the problem posed by knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. It is argued that the sustainability of such a proposal is called into question by the possibility of epistemic twin earth cases. In particular, it is argued that such cases demonstrate (...) the need for virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge to appeal to an independent epistemic condition which excludes knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. (shrink)
There is widespread suspicion that there is a principled conflict between epistemic internalism and content externalism (or anti-individualism). Despite the prominence of this suspicion, it has rarely been substantiated by explicit arguments. However, Duncan Pritchard and Jesper Kallestrup have recently provided a prima facie argument concluding that internalism about knowledge and externalism about content are incompatible. I criticize the incompatibilist argument and conclude that the purported incompatibility is, at best, prima facie. This is, in part, because several steps in (...) the argument are faulty and, in part, because there are promising responses available to the compatibilists. (shrink)
Norms conferring public or private powers, i.e., the competence to issue other norms, play a very important rôle in law. But there is no agreement among legal philosophers about the nature of such norms. There are two main groups of theories, those that regard them as a kind of norms of conduct (either commands or permissions) and those that regard them as non-reducible to other types of norms. I try to show that reductionist theories are not quite acceptable; neither the (...) command-variety (Kelsen, Alf Ross inOn Law and Justice), nor the permission-variety (von Wright, Kanger, Lindahl) provide a satisfactory account of competence norms.Among the authors who maintain that competence norms are different from (and hence not reducible to) norms of conduct are Hart, Ross inDirectives and Norms, and Searle. Ross and Searle distinguish between regulative and constitutive rules as two radically different kinds of rules and classify competence norms among constitutive rules. This distinction runs parallel to von Wright's distinction between rules that are prescriptions and determinative rules. While the first regulate actions (by commanding, prohibiting, or permitting them), determinative rules define certain concepts. To view competence norms as (partial) definitions of certain legal concepts (like those of legislator, judge, etc.) seems to open interesting perspectives and to shed light on at least one aspect of these elusive norms. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction: does information matter?; Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen; Part I. History: 2. From matter to materialism ... and (almost) back Ernan McMullin; 3. Unsolved dilemmas: the concept of matter in the history of philosophy and in contemporary physics Philip Clayton; Part II. Physics: 4. Universe from bit Paul Davies; 5. The computational universe Seth Lloyd; 6. Minds and values in the quantum universe Henry Pierce Stapp; Part III. Biology: 7. The concept of information (...) in biology John Maynard Smith; 8. Levels of information: Shannon-Bolzmann-Darwin Terrence W. Deacon; 9. Information and communication in living matter Bernd-Olaf Küppers; 10. Semiotic freedom: an emerging force Jesper Hoffmeyer; 11. Care on earth: generating informed concern Holmes Rolston; Part IV. Philosophy and Theology: 12. The sciences of complexity - a new theological resource? Arthur Peacocke; 13. God as the ultimate informational principle Keith Ward; 14. Information, theology and the universe John F. Haught; 15. God, matter, and information: towards a Stoicizing Logos christology Niels Henrik Gregersen; 16. What is the 'spiritual body'? Michael Welker; Index. (shrink)
In response to Kripke's modal argument contemporary descriptivists suggest that referring terms, e.g., ‘water’, are synonymous with actually-rigidified definite descriptions, e.g., ‘the actual watery stuff’. Following Scott Soames, this strategy has the counterintuitive consequence that possible speakers on Perfect Earth cannot be ascribed water-beliefs without beliefs about the actual world. Co-indexing the actuality and possibility operators has the equally untoward result that possible speakers on Twin Earth are ascribed water-beliefs. So, Soames's dilemma is that the descriptivist can account for either (...) Twin Earth or Perfect Earth but not both. In response, this paper argues that since ‘actual’ is an indexical, the content of water-beliefs is egocentric, and so if the descriptivist avails herself of relativized propositions as the content of such beliefs, she is able to account for both Twin Earth and Perfect Earth. The lesson is that we have to tread carefully when making inferences about the contents of beliefs from the semantics of belief-reporting sentences that contain actually-rigidified expressions. (shrink)
Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. XII: Linguistics and Adjacent Arts and Sciences, The Hague - Paris 1974, pp. 103-171, entitled: "Linguistics and ...
There are few more unsettling philosophical questions than this: What happens in attempts to reduce some properties to some other more fundamental properties?
According to robust virtue epistemology, knowledge is a cognitive achievement, where this means that the agent's cognitive success is because of her cognitive ability. One type of objection to robust virtue epistemology that has been put forward in the contemporary literature is that this view has problems dealing with certain kinds of testimonial knowledge, and thus that it is in tension with standard views in the epistemology of testimony. We build on this critique to argue that insofar as agents epistemically (...) depend on third-party members of their epistemic community as many social epistemologists contend, then there will be cases where two agents differ epistemically despite being virtue-theoretic duplicates. This means that robust virtue epistemology, at least insofar as it is understood along standard lines such that it endorses epistemic individualism, is also in tension with a central commitment of contemporary social epistemology. (shrink)
In this work I argue that Descartes was not a trialist by showing that the main tenets of trialist interpretations of Descartes's theory of substance are either not supported by the text or are not sufficient for establishing the trialist interpretation.
According to the discontinuity view we can have a (lower) pleasure which, no matter how often a certain unit of it is added to itself, cannot become greater in value than a unit of another (higher) pleasure. All recent adherents of this view seem to rely basically on the same sort of reasoning which is referred to here as the preference test. This article presents three arguments, each of which indicates that the inference from the preference test to the discontinuity (...) view is not conclusive. (shrink)
In Derek Parfit's original formulation the Repugnant Conclusion is characterized as follows: “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living” (Parfit 1984). The Repugnant Conclusion highlights a problem in an area of ethics which has become known as population ethics . The (...) last three decades have witnessed an increasing philosophical interest in questions such as “Is it possible to make the world a better place by creating additional happy creatures?” and “Is there a moral obligation to have children?” The main problem has been to find an adequate theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. Since, arguably, any reasonable moral theory has to take these aspects of possible states of affairs into account when determining the normative status of actions, the study of population ethics is of general import for moral theory. As the name indicates, Parfit finds the Repugnant Conclusion unacceptable and many philosophers agree. However, it has been surprisingly difficult to find a theory that avoids the Repugnant Conclusion without implying other equally counterintuitive conclusions. Thus, the question as to how the Repugnant Conclusion should be dealt with and, more generally, what it shows about the nature of ethics has turned the conclusion into one of the cardinal challenges of modern ethics. (shrink)
A sign is something that refers to something else. Signs, whether of natural or cultural origin, act by provoking a receptive system, human or nonhuman, to form an interpretant (a movement or a brain activity) that somehow relates the system to this "something else." Semiotics sees meaning as connected to the formation of interpretants. In a biosemiotic understanding living systems are basically engaged in semiotic interactions, that is, interpretative processes, and organic evolution exhibits an inherent tendency toward an increase in (...) semiotic freedom. Mammals generally are equipped with more semiotic freedom than are their reptilian ancestor species, and fishes are more semiotically sophisticated than are invertebrates. The evolutionary trend toward the production of life forms with an increasing interpretative capacity or semiotic freedom implies that the production of meaning has become an essential survival parameter in later stages of evolution. (shrink)
Theses on the semiotic study of life as presented here provide a collectively formulated set of statements on what biology needs to be focused on in order to describe life as a process based on semiosis, or sign action. An aim of the biosemiotic approach is to explain how life evolves through all varieties of forms of communication and signification (including cellular adaptive behavior, animal communication, and human intellect) and to provide tools for grounding sign theories. We introduce the concept (...) of semiotic threshold zone and analyze the concepts of semiosis, function, umwelt, and the like as the basic concepts for theoretical biology. (shrink)
To Aristotle, spoken words are symbols, not of objects in the world, but of our mental experiences related to these objects. Presently there are two major strands of interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign. First, there is the structuralist account offered by Coseriu (Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie. Von den Anfängen bis Rousseau, 2003 [1969], pp. 65–108) whose interpretation is reminiscent of the Saussurean sign concept. A second interpretation, offered by Lieb (in: Geckeler (Ed.) Logos Semantikos: Studia Linguistica in Honorem (...)Eugenio Coseriu 1921–1981, 1981) and Weidemann (in: Schmitter (Ed.) Geschichte der Sprachtheorie 2. Sprachtheorien der abendländischen Antike, 1991), says that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is similar to the one presented in Ogden and Richard’s (The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of language upon thought and of the science of symbolism, 1970 [1923]) semiotic triangle. This paper starts off with an introductory outline of the so-called phýsei-thései discussion which started during presocratic times and culminated in Plato’s Cratylus. Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is to be regarded as a solution to the stalemate position reached in the Cratylus. Next, a discussion is offered of both Coseriu’s and Lieb’s analysis. We submit that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign shows features of both Saussure’s and Ogden and Richards’s sign concept but that it does not exclusively predict one of the two. We argue that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is based on three different relations which together evince his teleological as well empiricist point of view: one internal (symbolic) relation and two external relations, i.e. a likeness relation and a relation katà synthéken. (shrink)
This article addresses the question of how multiple offenders – that is, offenders who have committed more than one crime before they are apprehended – should be punished from a retributivist point of view. Two theories are evaluated, both defending the view that there should be a bulk discount for multiple offending. According to the first theory, a bulk discount follows from the idea of a punishment ceiling for types of crimes and the principle of parsimony in punishing. (...) According to the second, the discount follows from a certain view on mercy. However, it is argued that both theories suffer from theoretical flaws and that they are also insufficient in practical terms. That is, they fail to provide a basis for the making of decisions about how multiple-offence cases should be dealt with by the criminal justice system. (shrink)
This article considers the question of whether it is meaningful to speak of privacy rights in public spaces, and the possibility of such rights framing the basis for regulating or restricting the use of surveillance technologies such as closed circuit television (CCTV). In particular, it responds to a recent article by Jesper Ryberg that suggests that there is little difference between being watched by private individuals and CCTV cameras, and instead argues that state surveillance is qualitatively different from (and (...) more problematic than) surveillance by ‘lonely old ladies’. (shrink)
The aim of this paper is to bring to light all the available information upon the circumstances and import of the course on "Matter and spirit. The system of atomist logic" that Bertrand Russell gave in Barcelona in the spring of 1920, which has received no attention to date. The paper relies upon the letters kept at the Russell Archives and the papers left by the two Catalan philosophers who were the organizers of Russell's visit, Joan Crexells (1896-1926) and (...) class='Hi'>Eugenio d'Ors (1881-1954). Also a tentative assessment of Russell's influence on Spanish philosophy is put forward. -/- . (shrink)
Our main aim in this paper is to contribute towards a better understanding of the epistemology of absence-based inferences. Many absence-based inferences are classified as fallacies. There are exceptions, however. We investigate what features make absence-based inferences epistemically good or reliable. In Section 2 we present Sanford Goldberg’s account of the reliability of absence-based inference, introducing the central notion of epistemic coverage. In Section 3 we approach the idea of epistemic coverage through a comparison of alethic and evidential principles. The (...) Equivalence Schema–a well-known alethic principle–says that it is true that $p$ if and only if $p$ . We take epistemic coverage to underwrite a suitably qualified evidential analogue of the Equivalence Schema: for a high proportion of values of $p$ , subject $S$ has evidence that $p$ due to her reliance on source $S^{*}$ if and only if $p$ . We show how this evidential version of the Equivalence Schema suffices for the reliability of certain absence-based inferences. Section 4 is dedicated to exploring consequences of the Evidential Equivalence Schema. The slogan ‘absence of evidence is evidence of absence’ has received a lot of bad press. More elaborately, what has received a lot of bad press is something like the following idea: absence of evidence sufficiently good to justify belief in $p$ is evidence sufficiently good to justify belief in $\sim p$ . A striking consequence of the Evidential Equivalence Schema is that absence of evidence sufficiently good to justify belief in p is evidence sufficiently good to justify belief in $\sim p$ . We establish this claim in Section 4 and show how this supports the reliability of an additional type of absence-based inference. Section 4 immediately raises the following question: how can we make philosophically good sense of the idea that absence of evidence is evidence of absence? We address this question in Section 5. Section 6 contains some summary remarks. (shrink)
A vcry important question raised by Dcrck Parfit in the part 0i` Reasons and Persons which dcals with population ethics is how t0 compare thc future outcomes 0i` those policies which differ in thc way they afTcct population growth} Such comparisons arc complicated by the fact that thcsc 0utcomcs may differ not only in thc avcragc Icvcls 0f well-being they gcncratc but also in thc identity and number 0i` thc persons who cxist.
