Complete information dispositional metasemantics says that our expressions get their meaning in virtue of what our dispositions to apply those terms would be given complete information. The view has recently been advanced and argued to have a number of attractive features. I argue that that it threatens to make the meanings of our words indeterminate and doesn’t do what it was that made a dispositional view attractive in the first place.

The kleptocratic supremacy of the praetorian prefect C. Fulvius Plautianus was felt throughout the city of Rome, the Empire and even beyond the imperial frontiers. Indeed, for the senatorial historian Dio Cassius, there was no more picturesque demonstration of Plautianus' acquisitiveness than his seizure of strange striped horse-like creatures from ‘islands in the Erythraean Sea’. The passage, as preserved in the text of Xiphilinus' Epitome, reads as follows : καὶ τέλος ἵππους Ἡλίῳ τιγροειδεῖς ἐκ τῶν ἐν τῇ Ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῃ νήσων, (...) πέμψας ἑκατοντάρχους, ἐξέκλεψεν·In the end he even stole tiger-like horses to Helios from the islands in the Erythraean Sea, having sent some centurions to carry out the task. (shrink)

Working retrospectively in an uncertain field of knowledge, physicians are engaged in an interpretive practice that is guided by couterweighted, competing, sometimes paradoxical maxims. When you hear hoofbeats, don't think zebras, is the chief of these, the epitome of medicine's practical wisdom, its hermeneutic rule. The accumulated and contradictory wisdom distilled in clinical maxims arises necessarily from the case-based nature of medical practice and the narrative rationality that good practice requires. That these maxims all have their opposites enforces in (...) students and physicians a practical skepticism that encourages them to question their expectations, interrupt patterns, and adjust to new developments as a case unfolds. Yet medicine resolutely ignores both the maxims and the tension between the practical reasoning they represent and the claim that medicine is a science. Indeed, resolute epistemological naivete is part of medicine's accommodation to uncertainty; counterweighted, competing, apparently paradoxical (but always situational) rules enable physicians simultaneously to express and to ignore the practical reason that characterizes their practice. (shrink)

Two tenets are of significant concern to today’s philosophers of science: one continues to be that age-old idea of Scientific Realism, the other is a more contemporary assertion of the Metaphysical Unity to science. Although the motivations for or against them are very different, there seems to be a payoff with the degree to which anyone has so-far been able to accept one given their acceptance of the other. Or at least, that is what a survey of recent debate would (...) seem to suggest. Why is this? I’ll hazard a guess after laying out what exactly the tenets claim and how philosophers have tried to orient themselves between them. (shrink)

In an influential paper, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin contrasted selection-driven adaptation with phylogenetic, architectural, and developmental constraints as distinct causes of phenotypic evolution. In subsequent publications Gould has elaborated this distinction into one between a narrow “Darwinian Fundamentalist” emphasis on “external functionalist” processes, and a more inclusive “pluralist” emphasis on “internal structuralist” principles. Although theoretical integration of functionalist and structuralist explanations is the ultimate aim, natural selection and internal constraints are treated as distinct causes of evolutionary change. This (...) distinction is now routinely taken for granted in the literature in evolutionary biology. I argue that this distinction is problematic because the effects attributed to non-selective constraints are more parsimoniously explained as the ordinary effects of selection itself. Although it may still be a useful shorthand to speak of phylogenetic, architectural, and developmental constraints on phenotypic evolution, it is important to understand that such “constraints” do not constitute an alternative set of causes of evolutionary change. The result of this analysis is a clearer understanding of the relationship between adaptation, selection and constraints as explanatory concepts in evolutionary theory. (shrink)

The cross-cultural differences in epistemic intuitions reported by Weinberg, Nichols and Stich (2001; hereafter: WNS) laid the ground for the negative program of experimental philosophy. However, most of WNS’s findings were not corroborated in further studies. The exception here is the study concerning purported differences between Westerners and Indians in knowledge ascriptions concerning the Zebra Case, which was never properly replicated. Our study replicates the above-mentioned experiment on a considerably larger sample of Westerners (n = 211) and Indians (n = (...) 204). The analysis found a significant difference between the ethnic groups in question in the predicted direction: Indians were more likely to attribute knowledge in the Zebra Case than Westerners. In this paper, we offer an explanation of our result that takes into account the fact that replications of WNS’s other experiments did not find any cross-cultural differences. We argue that the Zebra Case is unique among the vignettes tested by WNS since it should not be regarded as a Gettier case but rather as a scenario exhibiting skeptical pressure concerning the reliability of sense-perception. We argue that skepticism towards perception as a means of gaining knowledge is a trope that is deeply rooted in Western epistemology but is very much absent from Classical Indian philosophical inquiry. This line of reasoning is based on a thorough examination of the skeptical scenarios discussed by philosophers of the Indian Nyaya tradition and their adversaries. (shrink)

Earlier evidence suggests that besides humans, some species of mammals and birds demonstrate visual self-recognition, assessed by the controversial “mark” test. Whereas, there are high levels of inter-individual differences amongst a single species, some species such as macaques and pigeons which do not spontaneously demonstrate mirror self-recognition can be trained to do so. We were surprised to discover that despite being widely used as a model system for avian research, the performance of zebra finches on the mark test had not (...) been studied earlier. Additionally, we studied the behavioral responses of another species of passerine songbirds to a mirror and the MSR mark test. Although a small number of adult male zebra finches appeared to display heightened responses toward the mark while observing their reflections, we could not rule out the possibility that these were a part of general grooming rather than specific to the mark. Furthermore, none of the house crows demonstrated mark-directed behavior or increased self-exploratory behaviors when facing mirrors. Our study suggests that self-directed behaviors need to be tested more rigorously in adult male zebra finches while facing their reflections and these findings need to be replicated in a larger population, given the high degree of variability in mirror-directed behaviors. (shrink)

Vocal imitation in songbirds exhibits interesting parallels to infant speech development and is currently the model system of choice for exploring the behavioural, molecular and electrophysiological substrates of vocal learning. Among songbirds, the Zebra Finch ( Taeniopygia guttata ) is currently used as the `flying mouse' of birdsong research. Only males sing and they develop their song primarily during a short sensitive period in early life. They learn their speciesspecific song patterns by memorizing and imitating the songs of conspecifics, mainly (...) adults. Since Immelmann's pioneering work, thousands of zebra finches have been raised in strictly controlled auditory environments to examine how their experience affected their songs. In this article, I review the different experimental procedures that have been used in the laboratory to study the social influences on song learning in the Zebra Finch. Poor song learning was observed using passive playback of taped songs, whereas self-eliciting exposure using operant tutoring techniques induced significant learning, but with a high interindividual variability. The success of the training paradigm is often measured by the quality of imitation of the songs to which the young bird is exposed. Using empirical evidence from the field and the laboratory, I will also discuss this issue, by summarizing possible advantages and disadvantages of producing a perfect imitation. So far, the best method to get a close copy of a song model in the Zebra Finch is to place a single young bird with an adult male. This situation, which is rather unnatural, does not meet the criteria for precise control necessary in experimental conditions. Optimizing the methods used to train a zebra finch to learn a song, in order to be able to predict the imitation success, will improve our understanding of the dynamics of vocal production learning. It would also consolidate this species as a research model of relevance to human speech development and disorders. Keywords: Zebra Finch; birdsong; learning; development; memory; social influences. (shrink)

Quaggas had a striking appearance: the face, neck, and anterior part of their bodies had white stripes like zebras, but unlike other zebras, their legs were not striped. The remainder of the quagga and the background color in the areas with white stripes was a brownish color, sometimes described as light brown, reddish-brown, or yellowish-brown (Figure 1). In 1758, Linnaeus created the genus Equus to include horses, donkeys, and zebras, and he gave the binomial name E. zebra (...) to the Cape mountain zebra. This was one of three zebras occurring in South Africa, the others being the plains zebra or Burchell’s zebra, E. burchelli, and the quagga, E. quagga. The species name, quagga, was the common name for .. (shrink)

Health care organizations are increasingly asked to show accountability about their performance. This paper proposes that accountability can best be achieved through evaluative methods that are based on evidence regarding the relationship between processes of care and expected outcomes. Root cause analysis (RCA) is used as an illustration of how a generic method of inquiring can be transformed into an ongoing monitoring, evaluation, user education and accountability strategy. The role of performance indicators, as well as patient and community expectations, is (...) discussed. (shrink)

Vocal imitation in songbirds exhibits interesting parallels to infant speech development and is currently the model system of choice for exploring the behavioural, molecular and electrophysiological substrates of vocal learning. Among songbirds, the Zebra Finch is currently used as the ‘flying mouse’ of birdsong research. Only males sing and they develop their song primarily during a short sensitive period in early life. They learn their speciesspecific song patterns by memorizing and imitating the songs of conspecifics, mainly adults. Since Immelmann's pioneering (...) work, thousands of zebra finches have been raised in strictly controlled auditory environments to examine how their experience affected their songs. In this article, I review the different experimental procedures that have been used in the laboratory to study the social influences on song learning in the Zebra Finch. Poor song learning was observed using passive playback of taped songs, whereas self-eliciting exposure using operant tutoring techniques induced significant learning, but with a high interindividual variability. The success of the training paradigm is often measured by the quality of imitation of the songs to which the young bird is exposed. Using empirical evidence from the field and the laboratory, I will also discuss this issue, by summarizing possible advantages and disadvantages of producing a perfect imitation. So far, the best method to get a close copy of a song model in the Zebra Finch is to place a single young bird with an adult male. This situation, which is rather unnatural, does not meet the criteria for precise control necessary in experimental conditions. Optimizing the methods used to train a zebra finch to learn a song, in order to be able to predict the imitation success, will improve our understanding of the dynamics of vocal production learning. It would also consolidate this species as a research model of relevance to human speech development and disorders. Keywords: Zebra Finch; birdsong; learning; development; memory; social influences. (shrink)

While Sigmund Freud and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty both acknowledge the role that spatiality plays in human life, neither pays any explicit attention to the intersections of race and space. It is Franz Fanon who uses psychoanalysis and phenomenology to provide an account of how the psychical and lived bodily existence of black people is racially constituted by a racist world. More precisely, as I argue in this paper, Fanon's work demonstrates how psychical and bodily spatiality cannot be adequately understood apart from (...) the environing space of the social world. For Fanon, body, psyche, and world mutually influence and constitute each other. In a raced and racist world, therefore, the lived bodily experience and the unconscious of human beings will be racially and racist‐ly constituted as well. This will show you how in psychoanalysis we take spatial ways of looking at things seriously. Sigmund Freud1 Sigmund Freud, “The Question of Lay Analysis,” in volume 20 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1959), 195. Everything throws us back on to the organic relations between subject and space, to that gearing of the subject onto his world which is the origin of space. Maurice Merleau‐Ponty2 Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York: Routledge, 1962), 251. Hence we are driven from the individual back to the social structure. If there is a [neurotic] taint, it lies not in the “soul” of the individual but rather in that of the environment. Franz Fanon3 Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Mask, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 213. (shrink)

The Neo-Moorean Deduction (I have a hand, so I am not a brain-in-a-vat) and the Zebra Deduction (the creature is a zebra, so isn’t a cleverly disguised mule) are notorious. Crispin Wright, Martin Davies, Fred Dretske, and Brian McLaughlin, among others, argue that these deductions are instances of transmission failure. That is, they argue that these deductions cannot transmit justification to their conclusions. I contend, however, that the notoriety of these deductions is undeserved. My strategy is to clarify, attack, defend, (...) and apply. I clarify what transmission and transmission failure really are, thereby exposing two questionable but quotidian assumptions. I attack existing views of transmission failure, especially those of Crispin Wright. I defend a permissive view of transmission failure, one which holds that deductions of a certain kind fail to transmit only because of premise circularity. Finally, I apply this account to the Neo-Moorean and Zebra Deductions and show that, given my permissive view, these deductions transmit in an intuitively acceptable way—at least if either a certain type of circularity is benign or a certain view of perceptual justification is false. (shrink)

Stephen Mumford puts forward a new theory of dispositions, showing how central their role is in metaphysics and philosophy of science. Much of our understanding of the physical and psychological world is expressed in terms of dispositional properties--from the solubility of sugar to the belief that zebras have stripes. Mumford discusses what it means to say that something has a property of this kind, and how dispositions can possibly be real things in the world. His clear, straightforward, realist account (...) reveals them to be less mysterious than they seem, and shows that an understanding of dispositions is essential to an understanding of properties, causation, and scientific laws. (shrink)

Lewis thought concessive knowledge attributions (e.g., ‘I know that Harry is a zebra, but it might be that he’s just a cleverly disguised mule’) caused serious trouble for fallibilists. As he saw it, CKAs are overt statements of the fallibilist view and they are contradictory. Dougherty and Rysiew have argued that CKAs are pragmatically defective rather than semantically defective. Stanley thinks that their pragmatic response to Lewis fails, but the fallibilist cause is not lost because Lewis was wrong about the (...) commitments of fallibilism. There are problems with Dougherty and Rysiew’s response to Stanley and there are problems with Stanley’s response to Lewis. I’ll offer a defense of fallibilism of my own and show that fallibilists needn’t worry about CKAs. (shrink)

Some twenty years ago, Bogen and Woodward challenged one of the fundamental assumptions of the received view, namely the theory-observation dichotomy and argued for the introduction of the further category of scientific phenomena. The latter, Bogen and Woodward stressed, are usually unobservable and inferred from what is indeed observable, namely scientific data. Crucially, Bogen and Woodward claimed that theories predict and explain phenomena, but not data. But then, of course, the thesis of theory-ladenness, which has it that our observations are (...) influenced by the theories we hold, cannot apply. On the basis of two case studies, I want to show that this consequence of Bogen and Woodward’s account is rather unrealistic. More importantly, I also object against Bogen and Woodward’s view that the reliability of data, which constitutes the precondition for data-to-phenomena inferences, can be secured without the theory one seeks to test. The case studies I revisit have figured heavily in the publications of Bogen and Woodward and others: the discovery of weak neutral currents and the discovery of the zebra pattern of magnetic anomalies. I show that, in the latter case, data can be ignored if they appear to be irrelevant from a particular theoretical perspective (TLI) and that, in the former case, the tested theory can be critical for the assessment of the reliability of the data (TLA). I argue that both TLI and TLA are much stronger senses of theory-ladenness than the classical thesis and that neither TLI nor TLA can be accommodated within Bogen and Woodward’s account. (shrink)

Lipkind et al. compare the development of vocal units and sound sequences in sound production in human infants and songbirds. Early in development, infant as well as songbird vocalizations vary along continuous acoustic parameters, with discrete vocal categories and structured vocalizations only emerging later on. This emergence process shows remarkable similarities between infants and zebra finches. Contrary to earlier views, Lipkind et al. suggest that the early development of songbird song (subsong) is more comparable to the phonation stage in infants (...) than to babbling. (shrink)

In a series of recent articles, Duncan Pritchard argues for a ‘neo-Moorean’ interpretation of John McDowell’s anti-sceptical strategy. Pritchard introduces a distinction between ‘favouring’ and ‘discriminating’ epistemic grounds in order to show that within the radical sceptical context an absence of ‘discriminating’ epistemic grounds allowing one to distinguish brain-in-a-vat from non-brain-in-a-vat scenarios does not preclude possessing knowledge of the denials of sceptical hypotheses. I argue that Pritchard’s reading is mistaken for three reasons. First, the distinction between ‘favouring’ and ‘discriminating’ epistemic (...) grounds only works for ‘mules-disguised-as zebras’ examples, but breaks down in the radical sceptical case. Second, McDowellian disjunctivism neutralizes the radical sceptical threat, but does not refute it. Third, any attempt to refute scepticism is confronted by the following dilemma: either one accepts the ‘highest common factor’ conception of perceptual experience thus rendering radical scepticism in principle irrefutable, or one discards it in favour of the disjunctive conception, but then there is no radical sceptical scenario left to refute. So, whichever horn of this dilemma Pritchard grasps, refutation is either impossible or superfluous. (shrink)

I argue that Traditional Christian Theism is inconsistent with Truthmaker Maximalism, the thesis that all truths have truthmakers. Though this original formulation requires extensive revision, the gist of the argument is as follows. Suppose for reductio Traditional Christian Theism and the sort of Truthmaker Theory that embraces Truthmaker Maximalism are both true. By Traditional Christian Theism, there is a world in which God, and only God, exists. There are no animals in such a world. Thus, it is true in such (...) a world that there are no zebras. That there are no zebras must have a truthmaker, given Truthmaker Maximalism. God is the only existing object in such a world, and so God must be the truthmaker for this truth, given that it has a truthmaker. But truthmakers necessitate the truths they make true. So, for any world, at any time at which God exists, God makes that there are no zebras true. According to Traditional Christian Theism, God exists in our world. In our world, then, it is true: there are no zebras. But there are zebras. Contradiction! Thus, the conjunction of Traditional Christian Theism with Truthmaker Necessitation and Truthmaker Maximalism is inconsistent. (shrink)

Philip Ball explores the science of the shapes we see in nature, revealing how, from the stripes of a zebra to the development of a snowflake or even a human embryo, there is a pattern-forming tendency in the basic processes of nature, and from a few simple themes, and the repetition of simple rules, endless beautiful variations can arise.

Development in animals is frequently characterized by periods of heightened capacity for both neural and behavioral change. So‐called sensitive periods of development are windows of opportunity in which brain and behavior are most susceptible to modification. Understanding what factors regulate sensitive periods constitutes one of the main goals of developmental neuroscience. Why is the ability to learn complex behavioral patterns often restricted to sensitive periods of development? Songbirds provide a model system for unraveling the mysteries of neural mechanisms of learning (...) during development. Like many songbirds, zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) learn a specific vocal pattern during a restricted period early in life. Young birds must hear songs produced by members of their species; this auditory experience is thought to engender specific changes in the brain to guide the process of vocal learning. Many studies of the songbird system have focused on examining relationships between brain development and learning. One goal of this work is to elucidate mechanisms that regulate basic processes of neural development, and in so doing to shed light on factors governing the emergence of a complex learned behavior. (shrink)

Basic research is often weird, and it's often boring. It's the years spent mapping the neurons of zebra fish, so that future scientists can have a more detailed biological model to work with. It's the chemical analysis that has to happen, so that two decades from now somebody else can discover a new cancer-fighting drug. Basic research is about curiosity, and knowledge for knowledge's sake. By it's very nature, basic research relies on public funding. But by it's very nature, it's (...) hard to explain how the public benefits from the basic research we fund. (shrink)

Carter and Pritchard (2016) and Pritchard (2010, 2012, 2016) have tried to reconcile the intuition that perceptual knowledge requires only limited discriminatory abilities with the closure principle. To this end, they have introduced two theoretical innovations: a contrast between two ways of introducing error-possibilities and a distinction between discriminating and favoring evidence. I argue that their solution faces the “sufficiency problem”: it is unclear whether the evidence that is normally available to adult humans is sufficient to retain knowledge of the (...) entailing proposition and come to know the entailed proposition. I submit that, on either infallibilist or fallibilist views of evidence, Carter and Pritchard have set the bar for deductive knowledge too low. At the end, I offer an alternative solution. I suggest that the knowledge-retention condition of the closure principle is not satisfied in zebra-like scenarios. (shrink)

Critical comments on Guido Melchior’s book, Knowing and Checking: An Epistemological Investigation (2019). In the second part of his book, Melchior aims to employ his sensitivity account of the epistemic concept of checking to explain well-known puzzle cases about knowing. My comments focus on Melchior’s explanation of knowledge-closure puzzles, as exemplified by Dretske’s zebra case. I raise three critical points about the explanation Melchior proposes for puzzles of this type.

The discounting principle states that 'the role of a given cause in producing a given effect is discounted if other plausible causes are present' (Kelley, 1972, p. 8). The principle has only been tested with cases where the two explanations are of the same kind (i.e., causal explanations). However, explanations of properties of objects, people, or events often involve functions. Zebras have stripes in order to be better camouflaged. Humans have eyebrows to keep sweat from running into their eyes. (...) Adrenaline is secreted in order to modulate fight and flight responses. Thus, what happens when we are faced with two different kinds of explanation for the same property: one functional and one causal? People evaluated explanations of properties for natural kinds and artefacts. Functional explanations were discounted in favour of causal explanations, however this was only true for properties of artefacts. The presence of an alternative explanation for properties of natural kinds did not affect the plausibility of either kind of explanation. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that zebras, goats, lions, and similar animals matter morally, but not in quite the same way people do. This might lead us to adopt a hybrid view of animal ethics such as ‘Utilitarianism for Animals; Deontology for People’. One of the core commitments of deontology is the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing (DDA): the view that doing harm is harder to justify than allowing harm. I explore how this core tenant of deontology applies to (...) non-person, non-human animals and whether hybrid views of animal ethics can accept it. In doing so, I aim to do three things. First, to show that my defence of the DDA can solve a problem surrounding our duties to wild animals, while making only minimal claims about animal moral status. Second, to offer an argument that for many non-person, non-human animals, we should recognise deontological constraints on their treatment, but also see those constraints as importantly different from the constraints against doing harm to persons. Third, to get clearer on how we should understand Utilitarianism for Animals and Nozickian hybrid approaches to animal ethics. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that zebras, goats, lions, and similar animals matter morally, but not in quite the same way people do. This might lead us to adopt a hybrid view of animal ethics such as ‘Utilitarianism for Animals; Deontology for People’. One of the core commitments of deontology is the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing (DDA): the view that doing harm is harder to justify than allowing harm. I explore how this core tenant of deontology applies to (...) non-person, non-human animals and whether hybrid views of animal ethics can accept it. In doing so, I aim to do three things. First, to show that my defence of the DDA can solve a problem surrounding our duties to wild animals, while making only minimal claims about animal moral status. Second, to offer an argument that for many non-person, non-human animals, we should recognise deontological constraints on their treatment, but also see those constraints as importantly different from the constraints against doing harm to persons. Third, to get clearer on how we should understand Utilitarianism for Animals and Nozickian hybrid approaches to animal ethics. (shrink)

In the Author’s Note that introduces the Life of Pi, Yann Martel claims that he first heard of Pi in a coffee shop in India. A chance acquaintance tells him, “I have a story that will make you believe in God” (LP, vii).[i] The story concerns the life of an Indian boy who grows up surrounded by the animals of his father’s zoo. When Pi is sixteen, his family decides to emigrate. His father sells off the animals to an American (...) zoo and the family travels with them across the Pacific. The steamer sinks during a storm and Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan, and a Bengal tiger. The hyena attacks the zebra and then the orangutan, devouring both. He, in turn, is killed and eaten by the tiger. Pi stays alive by acting as the tiger’s zookeeper. Feeding it with the fish he catches and giving it water from the solar stills that he finds on the lifeboat, he survives until the boat, carried by the equatorial current, reaches the shores of Mexico. (shrink)

There are remarkable behavioral, neural, and genetic similarities between the way songbirds learn to sing and human infants learn to speak. Furthermore, the brain regions involved in birdsong learning, perception, and production have been identified and characterized in detail. In particular, the caudal medial nidopallium (the avian analog of the mammalian auditory‐association cortex) has been found to contain the neural substrate of auditory memory, paving the way for analyses of the underlying molecular mechanisms. Recently, the zebra finch genome was sequenced, (...) and annotated cDNA databases representing over 15,000 unique brain‐expressed genes are available, enabling high‐throughput gene expression analyses. Here we review the involvement of immediate early genes (e.g. zenk and arc), their downstream targets (e.g. synapsins), and their regulatory signaling pathways (e.g. MAPK/ERK) in songbird memory. We propose that in‐depth investigations of zenk‐ and ERK‐dependent cascades will help to further unravel the molecular basis of auditory memory. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that two claims usually included in any minimally detailed presentation of the epistemic closure principle are inconsistent, namely, that closure explains how we extend our knowledge through deduction and that it is different from another epistemic principle, to wit, transmission. The attempt to offer a correct diagnosis of reasonings such as the one involved in Dretke’s zebra case is an instance of a discussion in which the distinction takes part. My argument has the following structure. (...) First, I introduce the distinction between closure and transmission following the standard presentation. Second, I introduce the main motivations behind the principles; in particular, I establish that the main motivation behind closure consists in explaining the phenomenon of the advancement of knowledge through deductive reasoning. Third, based on the identification of a restriction on any plausible formulation of closure capable of explaining the phenomenon aforementioned, I cast doubts on the distinction between this principle and transmission. I conclude that any formulation of the epistemic principle of closure which satisfies its main motivation collapses into the epistemic principle of transmission. (shrink)

Many epistemologists hold that the Zebra Deduction fails to transmit knowledge to its conclusion, but there is little agreement concerning why it has this defect. A natural idea is, roughly, that it fails to transmit because it fails to improve the safety of its conclusion. In his ‘Transmission Failure Explained’, Martin Smith defends a transmission principle which is supposed to underwrite this natural idea. There are two problems with Smith's account. First, Smith's argument for his transmission principle relies on a (...) dubious premise. Second, even if his transmission principle is true, Smith shows neither that it prevents the Zebra Deduction from transmitting knowledge to its conclusion, nor that it secures the natural idea. I suspect that the failures of Smith's account will be instructive for anyone who wants to connect transmission failure with a failure to enhance the safety, reliability or probability of one's conclusion.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.THE DANGERS OF USING SAFETY TO EXPLAIN TRANSMISSION FAILURE: A REPLY TO MARTIN SMITHVolume 9, Issue 4Chris TuckerDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.24Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. THE DANGERS OF USING SAFETY TO EXPLAIN TRANSMISSION FAILURE: A REPLY TO MARTIN SMITHVolume 9, Issue 4Chris TuckerDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.24Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. THE DANGERS OF USING SAFETY TO EXPLAIN TRANSMISSION FAILURE: A REPLY TO MARTIN SMITHVolume 9, Issue 4Chris TuckerDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.24Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)