In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:F/Actual Knowing:Putting Facts and Values in PlaceHolmes Rolston III (bio)Knowing needs to be actualized, an act of ours, yet also a discovery of what is actually, factually there. In place ourselves, we manage some awareness of other places. Agents in our knowing, we co-respond, and this emplaces us. But we humans have powers of dis-placement too, of taking up, whether empathetically or objectively, the situations (...) of others, other humans, sometimes others than humans. How do our facts depend on our acts? Do we humans always put in place, or sometimes find put, placed there before us, what we variously value on Earth?To put this provocatively: We need to "green" our beliefs; but every educated person knows that nothing out there is really "green." "Seeing green" is an interaction experience. Perhaps this perceptual experience is a model for the whole: all of our human concepts and percepts color up the world. This is true alike of facts and of values, discoveries and evaluations. Such knowing might be well enough placed, but it is always and only "placed." Our geographical position controls our epistemic composition. Epistemology is inevitably anthropocentric; we are always located in the center of our knowing.But what if the "green" we see is mostly chlorophyll? Photosynthesis is not something we can see at all. In place on Earth, we humans breathe oxygen and would die in minutes without it; we depend on photosynthesis at the foundation of our food chains. We know our own respiratory [End Page 137] and trophic interactions with the plants, and this not simply at the native range experiences of breathing and eating. We have figured out the oxygen/carbon-dioxide/water cycles taking place at molecular levels.Now it seems, however, that we are discovering ourselves placed where the facts are bigger than our acts, including our respiratory (and perceptual) interactions; these extend systemically and are hardly anthropocentric. Epistemologically, we have more to evaluate. "Greening" our belief, environmentally grounding it, will require knowing and appropriately respecting these vital life processes—of which we are a part, but which also are "in place" and "take place" apart from us.1. Embodied, Knowledgeable PersonsWhatever knowledge we gain has to "come through" at our native range. That seems uncontroversial, but what are the implications? Knowledge is relative to our location, our embodiment, our size, our terrestrial habitat. This situation constricts, it may be claimed, what can "come through." Mark Johnson concludes: "Our consciousness and rationality are tied to our bodily orientations and interactions in and with our environment. Our embodiment is essential to who we are, to what meaning is, and to our ability to draw rational inferences and to be creative." He urges us to "put the body back into the mind," that is, epistemologically, to become aware of how the body is there, willy-nilly (1987, xxxviii, xxxvi). Joining with George Lakoff, he claims: "Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature" (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 4).Katherine Hayles continues: "To be incorporated within a different body would be to live in a different world." She features "interactivity" and explains:Interactivity foregrounds rather than obscures the importance of embodiment. In the interaction model, the body does more than provide a biological support system for the mind. Interaction is possible only because we are embodied, and the precise conditions of our embodiment have everything to do with the nature of those interactions. The range and nature of sensory stimuli available to us, the contexts that affect how those sensory stimuli achieve meaning, the habituated movements and postures that we learn through culture and that are encoded for gender, ethnicity, and class—all affect how learning takes place and how the world comes into being for us.(1995, 56) [End Page 138]All this seems true, if one means that with reincarnation our native range experiences would be different. Wolves have keen noses and with them they experience, if you like, a different world. But the survival value of wolf noses, a situated knowledge for them, is equally true for humans, wolves, and elk, because all three... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:F/Actual Knowing:Putting Facts and Values in PlaceHolmes Rolston III (bio)Knowing needs to be actualized, an act of ours, yet also a discovery of what is actually, factually there. In place ourselves, we manage some awareness of other places. Agents in our knowing, we co-respond, and this emplaces us. But we humans have powers of dis-placement too, of taking up, whether empathetically or objectively, the situations (...) of others, other humans, sometimes others than humans. How do our facts depend on our acts? Do we humans always put in place, or sometimes find put, placed there before us, what we variously value on Earth?To put this provocatively: We need to "green" our beliefs; but every educated person knows that nothing out there is really "green." "Seeing green" is an interaction experience. Perhaps this perceptual experience is a model for the whole: all of our human concepts and percepts color up the world. This is true alike of facts and of values, discoveries and evaluations. Such knowing might be well enough placed, but it is always and only "placed." Our geographical position controls our epistemic composition. Epistemology is inevitably anthropocentric; we are always located in the center of our knowing.But what if the "green" we see is mostly chlorophyll? Photosynthesis is not something we can see at all. In place on Earth, we humans breathe oxygen and would die in minutes without it; we depend on photosynthesis at the foundation of our food chains. We know our own respiratory [End Page 137] and trophic interactions with the plants, and this not simply at the native range experiences of breathing and eating. We have figured out the oxygen/carbon-dioxide/water cycles taking place at molecular levels.Now it seems, however, that we are discovering ourselves placed where the facts are bigger than our acts, including our respiratory (and perceptual) interactions; these extend systemically and are hardly anthropocentric. Epistemologically, we have more to evaluate. "Greening" our belief, environmentally grounding it, will require knowing and appropriately respecting these vital life processes—of which we are a part, but which also are "in place" and "take place" apart from us.1. Embodied, Knowledgeable PersonsWhatever knowledge we gain has to "come through" at our native range. That seems uncontroversial, but what are the implications? Knowledge is relative to our location, our embodiment, our size, our terrestrial habitat. This situation constricts, it may be claimed, what can "come through." Mark Johnson concludes: "Our consciousness and rationality are tied to our bodily orientations and interactions in and with our environment. Our embodiment is essential to who we are, to what meaning is, and to our ability to draw rational inferences and to be creative." He urges us to "put the body back into the mind," that is, epistemologically, to become aware of how the body is there, willy-nilly (1987, xxxviii, xxxvi). Joining with George Lakoff, he claims: "Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature" (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 4).Katherine Hayles continues: "To be incorporated within a different body would be to live in a different world." She features "interactivity" and explains:Interactivity foregrounds rather than obscures the importance of embodiment. In the interaction model, the body does more than provide a biological support system for the mind. Interaction is possible only because we are embodied, and the precise conditions of our embodiment have everything to do with the nature of those interactions. The range and nature of sensory stimuli available to us, the contexts that affect how those sensory stimuli achieve meaning, the habituated movements and postures that we learn through culture and that are encoded for gender, ethnicity, and class—all affect how learning takes place and how the world comes into being for us.(1995, 56) [End Page 138]All this seems true, if one means that with reincarnation our native range experiences would be different. Wolves have keen noses and with them they experience, if you like, a different world. But the survival value of wolf noses, a situated knowledge for them, is equally true for humans, wolves, and elk, because all three... (shrink)

The purpose of Plato’s investigation of justice in the ideal polis of the Republic is neither to formulate an abstract conception of justice in itself nor to work out a blueprint for the perfectly just state. Rather, through the contemplation of an ideal social/political order where justice might be found “writ large,” Plato intends to bring about the actualization of justice in the “polity” of the individual soul. It must be kept in mind, of course, that, while possessing a notion (...) of the individual, the Greeks lacked our modern, Cartesian conception of subjectivity, burdened as it is with the existential task of creating and sustaining a meaningful cosmos. But precisely for this reason the ancients had a clearer perspective of the synergistic and mutually determinative dialectic that conjoins the individual and the state, a conjunction grounded in the ethical. This can be seen, Hegel suggests, in terms of the “unwritten and infallible law” that Antigone takes to be the “law of the gods” which “is right because it is what is right,” placing the individual “within the ethical substance; and this substance is thus the essence of self-consciousness.”. (shrink)

IN RETURNING again and again, over the years, to the same topics in first philosophy, I have tried on each occasion to justify what I was doing by reassessing our cognitive authority for dealing with such topics. By doing so, I allied myself with an old and familiar tradition: the one that takes it for granted that first philosophy is always under an obligation to justify itself. Its substantive topics, according to this tradition, can be legitimately pursued only if it (...) is also shown in that very pursuit by what right, by what authority, one does so. If, proceeding in this way, we should ever manage to achieve a first philosophy that commanded general respect, it would then be seen to be first not just in its substantive findings but in its rational authority as well. That prospect is enough to make me wish to persuade all those who are interested in bringing the discipline into being to call it, as I do here, by its earliest and most illuminating name. And to say "bring it into being" is no mere flourish, for the discipline has never become fully actual--has never, that is, achieved the pervasive and living authority that continues to be our deepest intellectual need. (shrink)

Philosophers talk routinely of 'Hume's problem of induction'. But the usual accompanying exegesis is mistaken in a way that has led epistemologists to conceive of 'Hume's problem' in needlessly narrow terms. They have overlooked a way of articulating the conceptual problem, along with a potential way of solving it. Indeed, they have overlooked Hume's own way. In explaining this, I will supplement Hume's insights by adapting Ryle's thinking on knowledge-how and knowledge-that. We will also see why Hume's 'sceptical solution' was (...) a perfectly appropriate response to his 'sceptical argument' -- rather than (as is often thought by analytic epistemologists) a merely descriptive response patently missing the normative sceptical point so strikingly formulated by Hume. (shrink)

Philosophers talk routinely of ‘Hume's problem of induction’. But the usual accompanying exegesis is mistaken in a way that has led epistemologists to conceive of ‘Hume's problem’ in needlessly narrow terms. They have overlooked a way of articulating the conceptual problem, along with a potential way of solving it. Indeed, they have overlooked Hume's own way. In explaining this, I will supplement Hume's insights by adapting Ryle's thinking on knowledge-how and knowledge-that. We will also see why Hume's ‘sceptical solution’ was (...) a perfectly appropriate response to his ‘sceptical argument’ — rather than a merely descriptive response patently missing the normative sceptical point so strikingly formulated by Hume. (shrink)

The traditional tripartite and tetrapartite analyses describe the conceptual components of propositional knowledge from a universal epistemic point of view. According to the classical analysis, since truth is a necessary condition of knowledge, it does not make sense to talk about “false knowledge” or “knowing wrongly.” There are nonetheless some natural languages in which speakers ordinarily make statements about a person’s knowing a given subject matter wrongly. In this paper, we first provide a brief analysis of “knowing (...) wrongly” in Turkish. Then, taking Allan Hazlett’s recent account of the gap between traditional analyses of knowledge and actual epistemic practices of real cognitive agents as a point of departure, we spell out a non-universalist and non-extensionalist perspective on the value of “knowing wrongly.”. (shrink)

How do you know what you want? Philosophers have lately developed sophisticated accounts of the practical and doxastic knowledge that are rooted in the point of view of the subject. Our ability to just say what we are doing or what we believe—that is, to say so authoritatively, but not on the basis of observation or evidence—is an aspect of our ability to reason about the good and the true. However, no analogous route to orectic self-knowledge is feasible. Knowledge of (...) desire is distinctive in being a matter of our affective response to imagined prospects. An examination of this idea yields the following thesis: I know what I want just in case the object pursued in anticipation of a certain pleasure actually yields the anticipated pleasure. (shrink)

Knowing that some state of affairs—expressed by a proposition, p—is possible, and the possibility that one knows that p have, quite obviously, different meanings. This paper focuses only on their logical relationship—whether they entail one another. I will argue for the following three claims: the basic verificationist principles of anti-realism, at least in their simplest forms, and in conjunction with some other, intuitively reasonable principles, do entail that these two concepts are substitutionally equivalent. Our pre-theoretical expectations question this outcome, (...) as counterexamples can be manufactured. I will also argue that this substitutional equivalence has further, highly counter-intuitive implications. Finally, I will argue that some of the standard strategies to avoid the well-known paradoxes of anti-realism fail to solve this new paradox, while others may be able to do that, but only at a considerable price. However, the introduction of a moderate anti-realist truth operator, the actual objective of this paper, does dissolve the paradox, and arguably at an affordable price. (shrink)

Political ecology and science studies have found fertile meeting ground in environmental studies. While the two distinct areas of inquiry approach the environment from different perspectives—one focusing on the politics of resource access and the other on the construction and perception of knowledge—their work is actually more closely aligned now than ever before. Knowing Nature brings together political ecologists and science studies scholars to showcase the key points of encounter between the two fields and how this intellectual mingling (...) creates a lively and more robust ecological framework for the study of environmental politics. The contributors all actively work at the interface between these two fields, and here they use empirical material to explore questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics that surround nature-society relations, from wildlife management in the Yukon to soil fertility in Kenya. In addition, they examine how various environmental knowledge claims are generated, packaged, promoted, and accepted (or rejected) by the different actors involved in specific cases of environmental management, conservation, and development. Finally, they ask what is at stake in the struggles surrounding environmental knowledge, how such struggles shape conceptions of the environment, and whose interests are served in the process. (shrink)

In his 1987 article “Indeterminacy, Empiricism and the First Person”, John Searle argues that we actually know what we mean; therefore, W. V. O. Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation must be wrong. In this paper, I will try to identify the mistakes in Searle’s criticism of Quine’s story. I will argue that Quine’s indeterminacy thesis can be construed as containing two theses- that is, the immanent indeterminacy and the transcendent indeterminacy. With these two indeterminacies in mind, Quine’s (...) indeterminacy thesis will still remain tenable even if we actually know what we mean. (shrink)

This paper considers the subjectivation of students in light of the increasing amounts of digital data that are now being produced within schools. Taking a lead from critical data studies and the sociology of numbers, the paper draws on staff interviews in three Australian secondary schools to explore the various types of student data being generated, and the forms of student subjectivities that result. In particular, the paper contrasts the ‘holistic’ possibilities that some school leaders and administrators ascribe to data (...) in terms of expanding the capacity to ‘know’ students, against the limited ways that data is actually being used within the schools. Most notably, the paper details how digital data appears to be configured within schools’ official data procedures and practices to build student subjectivities and position students in narrow terms of performance and attendance. The paper also highlights how teachers make practical use of these limited data ‘profiles’ in a relational manner – as a way of stimulating dialogue with students to know them better, rather than a source of precise calculation. In this sense, the paper considers how ‘data’ might be reframed in educational discourse as a practical starting-point for teacher inquiry and professional judgment rather than an imagined source of all-encompassing knowledge. (shrink)

The literature on agentive or practical knowledge tends to be focused on knowing what one is doing or what one is going to do. Knowing what one has done and has achieved thereby seems to be another matter. In fact, achievements are often taken to be beyond the ken of practical knowledge. I argue that this is a mistake. The intelligibility of the very idea of practical knowledge depends on the possibility of knowing one's achievements in the (...) same manner. For if it is to be intelligible as knowledge of the actuality of one's action in the material world, knowing what one is doing has to include knowledge of what one has done so far. (shrink)

A. Koriat distinguishes between feeling-based and inferentially based feeling-of-knowing judgments. The former are attributable to partial information that is activated in implicit memory but not fully articulated. They are not, however, attributable to direct access to the target-an hypothesis that Koriat specifically repudiates. While there is considerable merit in the distinction that Koriat draws, and his emphasis on the possibility that people base at least some of their metacognitive judgments on implicit information seems well founded, it is argued that (...) his rejection of the direct access view is premature. There may be a state-a true noetic state-in which people actually know the answer before they are able to express it. A case is made for further consideration of the scientific merits of the direct-access view of the noetic feelings people experience in imminent tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states. (shrink)

Many scholars note that the Analects, and Confucian philosophy more generally, hold a conception of knowing that more closely approximates ‘knowing-how’ than ‘knowing-that’. However, I argue that this description is not sufficiently sensitive to the concerns of the early Confucians and their focus on self-cultivation. I propose that a particular conception of knowing—knowing to act in the moment—is better suited to capturing the Analects’ emphasis on exemplary lives in actual contexts. These investigations might also contribute (...) to discussions on know-how in epistemology in western philosophy. (shrink)

To be told, ‘know thyself’ is to be told that I don't know myself yet: it carries the assumption that I am in some sense distracted from what or who I actually am, that I am in error or at least ignorance about myself. It thus further suggests that my habitual stresses, confusions and frustrations are substantially the result of failure or inability to see what is most profoundly true of me: the complex character of my injuries or traumas, (...) the distinctive potential given me by my history and temperament. I conceal my true feelings from my knowing self; I am content to accept the ways in which other people define me, and so fail to ‘take my own authority’ and decide for myself who or what I shall be. The therapy-orientated culture of the North Atlantic world in the past couple of decades has increasingly taken this picture as foundational, looking to ‘self-discovery’ or ‘self-realization’ as the precondition of moral and mental welfare. And the sense of individual alienation from a true and authoritative selfhood mirrors the political struggle for the right of hitherto disadvantaged groups, especially non-white and non-male, to establish their own self-definition. The rhetoric of discovering a true but buried identity spreads over both private and political spheres. The slogan of the earliest generation of articulate feminists, ‘The personal is the political’, expresses the recognition of how this connection might be made. (shrink)

Most clinicians take for granted a simple, reductionist understanding of medical knowledge that is at odds with how they actually practice medicine; routine medical decisions incorporate more complicated kinds of information than most standard accounts of medical reasoning suggest. A better understanding of the structure and function of knowledge in medicine can lead to practical improvements in clinical medicine. This understanding requires some familiarity with epistemology, the study of knowledge and its structure, in medicine. Michael Polanyi's theory of tacit (...) knowing is advanced as the basis for developing a more accurate understanding of medical knowledge. Tacit knowing, which explores the taken-for-granted background knowledge that underlies all human knowing, is explained in detail with a focus on its relevance for clinical medicine. The implications of recognizing tacit knowing in medicine and medical decisions are discussed. These include the ability to explain the importance of the clinical encounter in medical practice, mechanisms for analysing patient and doctor as persons, and the need for humility given the uncertainty that the tacit dimension injects into all medical decisions. This more robust medical epistemology allows clinicians to better articulate the nature and importance of patient-centred care, to avoid pitfalls inherent in reductionist approaches to medical knowledge, and to think more clearly about the relationships between medicine and health care at the individual and population levels. (shrink)

The humanities represent a type of knowledge distinct from, and yet encompassing, scientific knowledge. Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics in the tradition of the Geisteswissenschaften, as well as on the Latin rhetorical tradition and on Greek paideia, this essay presents humanities knowledge as "involved knowing." Science, in principle, abstracts from the subjective, psychological conditions of knowing, including its emotional and willful determinants, as introducing personal biases, and it attempts also to neutralize historical and cultural contingencies. Humanities knowledge, in contrast, (...) focuses attention on precisely these subjective and historical factors as intrinsic to any knowledge in its full human purport. In particular, poetry, which historically is the matrix of knowledge in all fields, including science, deliberately explores and amply expresses these specifically human registers of significance. The poetic underpinnings of knowledge actually remain crucial to human knowing and key to interpreting its significance in all domains, including the whole range of scientific fields, throughout the course of its development and not least in the modern age so dominated by science and technology. (shrink)

This chapter argues that it is possible to identify, in the coming to be of knowledge, the three elements that Aristotle says are involved in any kind of coming to be whatsoever (viz., matter, form, and the generated composite object). Specifically, it is argued that in this schema the passive intellect (pathetikos nous) corresponds to the matter, the active intellect (poetikos nous) corresponds to the form, and the composite object corresponds to the mind as actually knowing.

Understanding and empathy on the part of those in privileged positions are often cited as powerful tools in the fight against oppression. Too often, however, those in positions of power assume they know what it is like to be less well off when, in actuality, they do not. This kind of assumption represents a thinking vice we dub synecdoche epistemic arrogance. In instances of synecdoche epistemic arrogance, a person who has privilege wrongly assumes, based on limited experiences, that she can (...) know what it is like to experience a particular form of oppression. We argue two main points. First, synecdoche epistemic arrogance can lead to a variety of moral harms. Second, synecdoche epistemic arrogance is often tied to other troubling epistemic patterns, which we discuss in the context of disability and race simulations. Overall, the essay helps demonstrate how synecdoche epistemic arrogance can contribute to injustice. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that knowledge is dimly luminous. That is: if a person knows that p, she knows how she knows that p. The argument depends on a safety-based account of propositional knowledge, which is salient in Williamson’s critique of the ‘KK’ principle. I combine that account with non-intellectualism about knowledge-how – according to which, if a person knows how to φ, then in nearly all (if not all) nearby possible worlds in which she φes in the same (...) way as in the actual world, she only φes successfully. Thus, the possession of first-order propositional knowledge implies secondorder practical knowledge, and this can be iterated. Because of the assumed nonintellectualism about know-how, dim luminosity does not imply bright luminosity about knowledge, which is expressed by the traditional KK principle. I conclude by considering some potential counterexamples to the view that knowledge is dimly luminous. (shrink)

In his 1987 article “Indeterminacy, Empiricism and the First Person”, John Searle argues that we actually know what we mean; therefore, W. V. O. Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation must be wrong. In this paper, I will try to identify the mistakes in Searle’s criticism of Quine’s story. I will argue that Quine’s indeterminacy thesis can be construed as containing two theses- that is, the immanent indeterminacy and the transcendent indeterminacy. With these two indeterminacies in mind, Quine’s (...) indeterminacy thesis will still remain tenable even if we actually know what we mean. (shrink)

This paper discusses an important puzzle about the semantics of indicative conditionals and deontic necessity modals (should, ought, etc.): the Miner Puzzle (Parfit, ms; Kolodny and MacFarlane, J Philos 107:115–143, 2010). Rejecting modus ponens for the indicative conditional, as others have proposed, seems to solve a version of the puzzle, but is actually orthogonal to the puzzle itself. In fact, I prove that the puzzle arises for a variety of sophisticated analyses of the truth-conditions of indicative conditionals. A comprehensive (...) solution requires rethinking the relationship between relevant information (what we know) and practical rankings of possibilities and actions (what to do). I argue that (i) relevant information determines whether considerations of value may be treated as reasons for actions that realize them and against actions that don’t, (ii) incorporating this normative fact requires a revision of the standard ordering semantics for weak (but not for strong) deontic necessity modals, and (iii) an off-the-shelf semantics for weak deontic necessity modals, due to von Fintel and Iatridou, which distinguishes “basic” and “higher-order” ordering sources, and interprets weak deontic necessity modals relative to both, is well-suited to this task. The prominence of normative considerations in our proposal suggests a more general methodological lesson: formal semantic analysis of natural language modals expressing normative concepts demands that close attention be paid to the nature of the underlying normative phenomena. (shrink)

In What Science Knows, the Australian philosopher and mathematician James Franklin explains in captivating and straightforward prose how science works its magic. It offers a semipopular introduction to an objective Bayesian/logical probabilist account of scientific reasoning, arguing that inductive reasoning is logically justified (though actually existing science sometimes falls short). Its account of mathematics is Aristotelian realist.

Abstractabstract:A desideratum for Buddhist-Christian exchange is more first-order philosophical engagement—engagement that brings our traditions into direct conversation on genuinely shared first-order questions. To converse in that way, we have to identify shared philosophical loci, areas where our systems are—as much as this is possible—reflecting on the same problem, or the same data. This essay identifies one such shared locus, so that the Christian philosopher Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) can philosophize together with the broadly Yogācārin authors Dignāga (ca. 480–540 ce) and Dharmakīrti (...) (mid-sixth–mid-seventh century). That shared locus is, as Lonergan describes it, the fact that what is "primary" in our knowing is the identity of knowing and known. Nondual cognition plays, for both parties, a constitutive and primary role in our knowing. But Lonergan and the Yogācārins draw divergent conclusions from the shared phenomenological insights. For the Yogācārins, this observation motivates their distinctive mind-only idealism—the conclusion that nothing but mere nondual experiencing can be established as real. For Lonergan, this same identity is the basis for affirming that our knowing attains to objective knowledge of an intelligible order whose actuality is distinct from our knowing it. Those divergent conclusions are grounded in divergent accounts of what the real is, and how it is to be known. What Lonergan shares with the Buddhists, though, makes him the rare Christian philosopher whose technical cognitional theory is quietly pervaded by the notion of cognition's "primary" nonduality. Lonergan, then, can provide the technical philosophical basis for wider ranging Christian receptions of Indian accounts of nondual cognition—including theological receptions which enshrine nondual cognition in accounts of the Trinity, and of human consciousness as a created image of the Trinity. (shrink)

This paper takes on several distinct but related tasks. First, I present and discuss what I will call the “Ignorance Thesis,” which states that whenever an agent acts from ignorance, whether factual or moral, she is culpable for the act only if she is culpable for the ignorance from which she acts. Second, I offer a counterexample to the Ignorance Thesis, an example that applies most directly to the part I call the “Moral Ignorance Thesis.” Third, I argue for a (...) principle—Don’t Know, Don’t Kill—that supports the view that the purported counterexample actually is a counterexample. Finally, I suggest that my arguments in this direction can supply a novel sort of argument against many instances of killing and eating certain sorts of animals. (shrink)

The subject of my dissertation is the notion, what could turn out, extracted from Naming and Necessity, in a context in which it is being used to show the contingency of gold's yellowness. ;In general, I seek to establish an actuality-oriented notion of what could turn out that makes a break with an epistemological picture of this notion as well as another making what could turn out for an object depend on what's metaphysically possible for it. ;In particular, I distinguish (...) various what-could-turn-out notions. I then develop an actuality-oriented notion of what could turn out on which what-could-turn-out truths are in subject-predicate form. Afterwards, I provide some of the necessary conditions for an object's possessing a what-could-turn-out predicate. That a what-could-turn-out predicate applies to an object depends on at least two conditions: that the object in question actually possess the simple property P contained within the complex modal one, could turn out P; and that, in principle, we could come to know of the object's actually possessing P. For example, in order for neutrinos to possibly turn out to have infinitesimal mass, it must at least be the case that they actually have infinitesimal mass, and that, in principle, we could come to know of their actually being as such. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that virtuous behaviour ought to be motivated in the right way, done for the right reasons, and an appropriate response to the values manifested in a situation. In this article I describe how cases of individuals having poor understanding of the reasons for their behaviour, can nevertheless be conducive to the development of virtue. One way in which giving reasons for one's own behaviour can be inaccurate is when the reasons given are confabulatory. In confabulation, the (...) reasons given for behaviour are post hoc, do not capture factors which actually brought the behaviour in question about, and are not well supported by evidence. Confabulations protect an individual's positive self-representations at the expense of more accurate appraisals of themselves and the circumstances. However, I argue that engaging in the construction of a positive self-narrative can be efficacious in making it a reality. Importantly, this is only possible when agents have the know-how of certain self-relational skills and attitudes, which are captured in a meta-virtue of self-regulation. When individuals can regulate their values and their behaviour effectively, such that they are in keeping, they can ultimately consistently embody virtues. Confabulation can be, and probably often is, part of this process. (shrink)

Martin Buber wrote his 1904 dissertation on Nicholas of Cusa, but the relationship between the two has been little studied. This article focuses on four ways in which Buber appropriated Cusa’s ideas. (1) Cusa’s theory of participation argues for the absolute worth of the individual, foreshadowing Buber’s ethics of actualization. (2) Buber takes Cusa’s model of how one may know God as other through “learned ignorance” and applies it to how one may know and adequately respond to beings as others (...) in his distinction between “I-Thou” and “I-It” relations. (3) Buber employs Cusa’s term “coincidence of opposites” to describe what happens in dialogue. Seeing the coincidence of opposites moves subjects to adopt intersubjective perspectives and give up unhealthy relations of conflict. (4) Buber’s 1938 criticism of Cusa for maintaining that selves evolve in isolation illuminates Buber’s creation of his own dialogic philosophy. (shrink)

In 1980s, neuroscientists joined philosophers and psychologists in the investigation of volitional actions and freedom of will. In a series of experiments pioneered by Benjamin Libet, it was observed that some neural activities correlated with volitional action regularly precedes the conscious will to perform it, which suggests that what appears to be a free action may actually be predetermined by some neural activities, even before the conscious intention to act arises. Shortly after publication of that study, Libet’s findings and (...) interpretations were started to be criticized on philosophical and methodological grounds. In this study, the legitimacy of the criticisms directed to Libet’s and his successors’ experiments is discussed by taking recent neuroscience studies on volition into account and it is argued that these criticisms are not sufficient to eliminate the doubt that these experiments casted on the freedom of the will.Keywords: Free will, Benjamin Libet, neuroscience, unconscious intentions. (shrink)

This paper is inspired by and develops on E. J. Lowe’s work, who writes in his book The Possibility of Metaphysics that ‘metaphysical possibility is an inescapable determinant of actuality’ (1998: 9). Metaphysics deals with possibilities – metaphysical possibilities – but is not able to determine what is actual without the help of empirical research. Accordingly, a delimitation of the space of possibilities is required. The resulting – controversial – picture is that we generally need to know whether something is (...) possible before we can know whether it is actual. In order to appreciate this picture, we need to understand Lowe’s slogan: ‘essence precedes existence’ (Lowe 2008: 40). This slogan has both an ontological and an epistemic reading. The ontological reading is related to the now familiar idea that essence grounds modality, as popularised by Kit Fine. The epistemic reading suggests that we can know the essence of some entity before we know whether or not that entity exists. However, this idea is often met with puzzlement and Lowe himself sadly passed away before he had a chance to clarify this framework. I will present the framework as I understand it, develop it on my own terms, and put forward a qualified defence of it. I will also illustrate how the framework can be put to use with a case study concerning the discovery of transuranic elements. (shrink)

Increasing public knowledge of science is a widely recognized goal, but what that knowledge might consist of is rarely unpacked. Existing measures of science literacy tend to focus on textbook knowledge of science. Yet constructing a meaningful list of facts, even facts in application, is not only difficult but less than satisfying as an indicator of what people actually know—or need to know—as citizens. Revisiting this concept from a more sociological perspective yields a rather different concept that is here (...) termed “critical science literacy.” The implications of this reconsideration for thinking about citizen perspectives, for the work of science journalists and other professional interpreters, and for the design and evaluation of new approaches to science communication are explored. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers, Jane Friedman has argued that attitudes like wondering, enquiring, and suspending judgement are question-directed and have the function of moving someone from a position of ignorance to one of knowledge. Call such attitudes interrogative attitudes. Friedman insists that all IAs are governed by the following Ignorance Norm: Necessarily, if one knows Q at t, then one ought not have an IA towards Q at t. However, I argue that key premisses in Friedman’s argument (...) class='Hi'>actually point towards an opposing conclusion; namely, that IAs are not governed by the Ignorance Norm, and IAs have functions other than moving someone from a position of ignorance to one of knowledge. I conclude that the Ignorance Norm should be rejected. (shrink)

How partners encounter each other plays a role in whether they will be able to sustain their interaction. How partners go about maintaining their interaction reveals features of their epistemological system, particularly with respect to factors like what they know, what they take to be relevant to the interpretation, and what they value. In this way, the value system (what partners want) and the epistemological system (what partners know) intersect. By focusing on the role of reasoning and understanding, I believe (...) we stand to gain a clearer picture of how expectations about interactions inform the dynamics between partners. This, in turn, affords a picture of what partners can actually achieve in and through their connection. I am particularly interested in considering what features of interaction are necessary for maximizing the affordances of the partnership. I say this not as a utilitarian interested in maximizing good simpliciter, but as a social epistemologist thinking about the contingent goods that are present in relation (e.g. care). The epistemic picture assumes that there are things that are knowable in dancing together, while the ethical picture assumes that partners are responsible for the things they ought to know. -/- . (shrink)

In recent years there has been growing attention paid to a kind of human action or activity which does not issue from a process of reflection and deliberation and which is described as, e.g., ‘engaged coping’, ‘unreflective action’, and ‘flow’. Hubert Dreyfus, one of its key proponents, has developed a phenomenology of expertise which he has applied to ethics in order to account for ‘everyday ongoing ethical coping’ or ‘ethical expertise’. This article addresses the shortcomings of this approach by examining (...) the pre-reflective ethical know-how individuals first develop and on which all later forms of ethical expertise are dependent. In the first section an account is given of the ‘ethical second nature’ which every individual develops from childhood onwards and which forms the basis of pre-reflective ethical know-how. The acquisition of an ethical second nature early on opens up the very domain of ‘the ethical’ for us in the first place and is constitutive of our sensitivity to it. The second section turns to pre-reflective ethical know-how and whether it is conceptual in nature. Just as sensorimotor understanding forms the basis of our reflective perceptual concepts, pre-reflective ethical know-how is similarly proto-conceptual and is the source of our reflective ethical and moral concepts. Finally, the third section examines the process whereby ethical second nature and pre-reflective ethical know-how are actually acquired, namely, through immersion in an ‘ethical world’. This world consists of both the web of ethical meanings and significances which has evolved in a particular society or community as well as its members whose actions and interactions continually reproduce that web. (shrink)

How partners encounter each other plays a role in whether they will be able to sustain their interaction. How partners go about maintaining their interaction reveals features of their epistemological system, particularly with respect to factors like what they know, what they take to be relevant to the interpretation, and what they value. In this way, the value system (what partners want) and the epistemological system (what partners know) intersect. By focusing on the role of reasoning and understanding, I believe (...) we stand to gain a clearer picture of how expectations about interactions inform the dynamics between partners. This, in turn, affords a picture of what partners can actually achieve in and through their connection. I am particularly interested in considering what features of interaction are necessary for maximizing the affordances of the partnership. I say this not as a utilitarian interested in maximizing good simpliciter, but as a social epistemologist thinking about the contingent goods that are present in relation (e.g. care). The epistemic picture assumes that there are things that are knowable in dancing together, while the ethical picture assumes that partners are responsible for the things they ought to know. (shrink)

Gendlin's Philosophy of the Implicit offers root concepts, and a schema derived from them, for thinking about living and experiencing in very general terms, in ways that build bridges for thinking about human experience and animal experience together. He describes living as occurring into implying - what occurs is happening into implying something helpful - and when what occurs actually is helpful he describes this as living carrying forward. His term “the implicit” points towards the complexity involved in being (...) helpful, from the standpoint of a life appreciated as a whole. His concepts support disciplined thick description of animals’ lives. Looking, for example, at passages of kangaroo mothers' living, reveals their concurrent, crossed sensitivity to grass and other food, to their young's behavior, to predators, and to what other members of their group are doing. Standard methods for researching behavior hide this complexity. Looking at animal lives from the perspective of implying creates opportunities for describing animals’ lives holistically. This creates new research opportunities, and provides new tools for practical problems like designing conservation strategies so they work from animals' perspectives. (shrink)

In this second of a 2-part survey of Aristotle’s epistemology, I present an overview of Aristotle’s views on technē (craft or excellent productive reason) and phronēsis (practical wisdom or excellent practical reason). For Aristotle, attaining the truth in practical matters involves actually doing the right action. While technē and phronēsis are rational excellences, for Aristotle they are not as excellent or true as epistēmē or nous because the kinds of truth that they grasp are imperfect and because they are (...) excellent states for humans, not simply speaking. I then discuss why Aristotle takes sophia (wisdom), understanding and scientific knowledge of the best things, to be its own excellence. While this is the best cognitive state for human beings, I argue that Aristotle thinks divine cognitive activity is different in kind and more perfect than any human activity. (shrink)

Simon argues that there is an objectivity possible in moral action analogous to the objectivity found in science. While it does not allow algorithmic reasoning to certain conclusions, it does allow the agent who is determined to achieve the good to attain a relative level of comfort in his choices while acknowledging the possibility of a bad outcome resulting from contingency or unavoidable ignorance. Simon calls this "affective knowledge." He argues that the best way to grasp this "affective knowledge" is (...) to explore "intentional" relations. Simon argues that there is an analogical relation between intentional existence as it is found in cognitive knowledge and as it is found in affective knowledge. In this thesis we explore the nature of the object that exists intentionally in cognition and compare it with the object that exists intentionally in acts of volition. ;We argued that, according to Simon's metaphysics, the cognitive object is involved in several different intentional relations that deliver it intact to the cognitive agent and allow the agent to be formed by the thing itself, precisely as that extramental thing is formed in the world. Things in the world are able to make their forms present to the knower and the knower is able to achieve that form without altering the form or itself. This is intentional existence in the realm of forms. ;In volition, the agent conforms his own possibilities in relation to the good he desires to constitute a physical action that is determined to achieve that good. What allows us to choose one good possibility over another is the intentional relation our created nature gives us to that which is good in itself. We make the possible good actual. This is intentional existence in the realm of finality. ;The objectivity of knowing, then, is a relation of formal consonance between the thing itself and that thing known. The objectivity of practical action is an existential consonance between the good of the possibility, the truly good desire, and the good choice. (shrink)

The original concept of epistemic dependence suggests uncritical deference to expert opinions for non-experts. In the light of recent work in science studies, however, the actual situation of epistemic dependence is seen to involve the necessary and ubiquitous need for lay evaluations of scientific experts. As expert knowledge means restricted cognitive access to some epistemic domain, lay evaluations of expert knowledge are rational and informed only when the criteria used by non-experts when judging experts are different from the criteria used (...) by experts when making their claims. The distinction between ‘substantial knowledge’ and ‘contextual knowledge’ allows for the laypeople to know with experts without having to know precisely what experts know. Such meta-expert evaluations are not specific to the public sphere outside science, nor are they limited internally to science, but they are present in a wide range of contexts in and around science. The paper legitimizes the concept of contextual knowledge by relating it to the relevant literature, and expounds the idea by identifying some elements of such a knowledge. (shrink)

Looking at set of 76 representative articles published by social psychologists between 2017 and 2023 (reviewed between December 2022 and February 2023), I examine the role of motivating examples---a kind of illustrative example, typically used by researchers at the beginning of their work to motivate the issue or problem they want to resolve or address in that work---in the social psychological work on conspiracy theory. Through an examination of the language around how motivating examples are introduced and used in the (...) social psychological literature, I argue that the abstract and vague way that social psychologists employ such examples ends up relying on what Joseph Uscinski and Adam Enders deem as an unviable and easily abused `I-know-it-when-I-see-it' standard. As will be demonstrated, much of the recent work in the social psychology of conspiracy theory assumes and thus fails to establish what is supposedly problematic about belief in the conspiracy theories used as motivating examples. As a consequence the surveyed work typically fails to adequately capture belief in actual conspiracy theories, let alone establish a case for a general suspicion of such beliefs. This work, then, adds to and extends upon existing critiques of the social psychology of conspiracy theory by members of the wider community of scholars studying conspiracy theories. The upshot of this research is that if social psychologists want their work to be of use to the broader scholarly community studying these things called `conspiracy theories', then they need to connect their work on the problems of conspiracy beliefs or mindsets to concrete examples of belief in unwarranted conspiracy theories. (shrink)

In this Essay, I examine some apparent difficulties with what I call the "actualization criterion" connected to Rawls's notion of public reason, that is, the criterion for determining when Rawlsian public reason is concretely actualized by citizens in their deliberating and deciding about constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. While these apparent difficulties have led some commentators to reject Rawlsian public reason altogether, I offer an interpretation that might allow Rawlsian public reason to escape the difficulties. My reading involves (...) the claim that Rawlsian public reason is to be understood essentially as an imperative or an ideal, and as not necessarily grounded in any stock of existing beliefs or opinions. I make this claim on the basis of the seemingly counterintuitive observation that it is possible for citizen-interlocutors to know that public reason has been violated without necessarily knowing who the violator is (and thus without being able to foreclose the possibility that the violator may even be oneself). This observation is based in turn on my analysis of the necessary reciprocity and self-referentiality built in to the very concept of public reason as such. (shrink)

Authorial and artistic declarations would seem to be a boon to interpreters who favor actual intentionalism. However, because they believe there are limits on the power of authors and artists to embody their intentions in their works, moderate actual intentionalists hold that some intentions are irrelevant. Looking closely at authorial declaration about the sexuality of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter novels, I argue in favor of the extreme actual intentionalist position that genuine authorial declarations should not be ignored because (...) authorial intention always determines meaning. The answer to the question in the subtitle is that we do not know with certainty, even though there is a definite right answer. We can argue for the answer we think is most likely, however. And aided by the distinction between meaning and significance, extreme actual intentionalism provides a clear and consistent way of making such arguments while avoiding the problem of being stuck with an interpretation we find aesthetically displeasing. (shrink)

Many traditional theists have said that God is propositionally omniscient, i.e. knows all truths. Many traditional theists also hold that God is timeless. That is, these theists hold that though God exists, there is no time at which He exists, and He does not exist earlier or later than anything. Some recent philosophers, among them Arthor Prior, Robert Coburn, Norman Kretz mann, Nicholas Wolterstorfl Richard Gale and Patrick Grim, have argued that There are truths to whose expression ‘now’ is essential, (...) and that – compose an inconsistent set of propositions. These writers argue that due to the semantics of ‘now’, a timeless God cannot know truths to whose expression ‘now’ is essential. To know a truth, it is claimed, one must be able to mentally token a proposition expressing what one knows. To token a truth to whose expression ‘now’ is essential, one must token ‘now’. ‘Now’ and relevantly similar terms inter alia locate those who use them in time: if one says truly that it is now 3 p.m., it follows that one exists at 3 p.m. So a timeless being cannot use ‘now’ and relevantly similar terms, and so cannot know truths for whose expression ‘now’ and its ilk are required. (shrink)

Meet the God Who Is Greater Than Your Biggest Questions. The Bible never shies away from seeming contradictions. We are told both to resist our enemies and to love them, and that our all-knowing God can sometimes forget. Unable to reconcile such biblical paradoxes, some people abandon Christianity, while others pretend that the seeming contradictions don’t exist–preferring to believe in an uncomplicated, easy-to-comprehend God. Yet countless others are hungry for new insight into the God behind the Bible’s mysterious paradoxes. (...) Responding to this spiritual hunger, James Lucas delves into the mysteries of Scripture, demonstrating that biblical “contradictions” are actually exquisite paradoxes that enlarge our understanding of God. With this book as your guide, you can embrace the paradoxes of Scripture and pursue honest answers to your hardest questions. The study of biblical paradox leads to greater devotion to the majestic God who makes himself known even while he surpasses human understanding. Today, you can begin Knowing the Unknowable God. (shrink)

This study takes its shape around two fundamentally opposed ways of understanding the discipline of history. The one regards historical inquiry as capable of discovering "what really happened" in the human past and considers historical truth to be a matter of the correspondence between historical accounts and the past as it actually was. The other regards historical inquiry as actually constructing the human past by its methods of interpreting evidence and considers historical truth to be a matter of (...) the internal coherence of historical accounts and their compatibility with the evidence upon which they are based. My thesis is that neither the "Discovery Theory" nor the "Construction Theory" offers a satisfactory analysis of history. I offer an alternate theory which regards the concepts of correspondence and coherence as complementary and mutually necessary to such an analysis. ;The primary material of this study is to be found in two recent books, Jack Meiland's Scepticism and Historical Knowledge and Leon Goldstein's Historical Knowing , which attempt systematically to defend a Construction Theory of history. These two defenses are particularly interesting because they are grounded in very different epistemological orientations. Meiland approaches the subject from a logical positivist point of view; Goldstein takes a perspective an idealist or phenomenologist would appreciate. ;I begin in Chapter 1 with a brief historical sketch of the way the Construction Theory has evolved out of criticisms of the Discovery Theory. In Chapter 2 I argue against Meiland's claim that there cannot be present evidence of past events. Here I consider the nature and the role of general correlation principles in history. In Chapter 3 I argue against Meiland's use of the positivist Verifiability Criterion to prove that historical statements are meaningless. My claim is that historical statements are indirectly verifiable in principle. In Chapter 4 I develop Goldstein's theory of historical verification and support his view that the concept of coherence plays the major role in this process. In Chapter 5 I argue against Goldstein's theory of historical reference and develop the claim that verified historical statements must be regarded as referring to the past. In Chapter 6 I return to Meland in order to consider the relevance of the concept of correspondence to the analysis of historical reference. ;In Chapter 7 I attempt to define the middle ground between the two theories by developing the idea of historical truth. I argue that the concept of coherence is an indispensable part of the analysis of historical verification, that the concept of correspondence is indispensable to the understanding of historical reference, and that both are involved in the notion of historical meaningfulness. (shrink)