Is Bayesian decision theory a panacea for many of the problems in epistemology and the philosophy of science, or is it philosophical snake-oil? For years a debate had been waged amongst specialists regarding the import and legitimacy of this body of theory. Mark Kaplan had written the first accessible and non-technical book to address this controversy. Introducing a new variant on Bayesian decision theory the author offers a compelling case that, while no panacea, decision theory does in fact have the (...) most profound consequences for the way in which philosophers think about inquiry, criticism and rational belief. The new variant on Bayesian theory is presented in such a way that a non-specialist will be able to understand it. The book also offers new solutions to some classic paradoxes. It focuses on the intuitive motivations of the Bayesian approach to epistemology and addresses the philosophical worries to which it has given rise. (shrink)

Is Bayesian decision theory a panacea for many of the problems in epistemology and the philosophy of science, or is it philosophical snake-oil? For years a debate had been waged amongst specialists regarding the import and legitimacy of this body of theory. Mark Kaplan had written the first accessible and non-technical book to address this controversy. Introducing a new variant on Bayesian decision theory the author offers a compelling case that, while no panacea, decision theory does in fact have the (...) most profound consequences for the way in which philosophers think about inquiry, criticism and rational belief. The new variant on Bayesian theory is presented in such a way that a non-specialist will be able to understand it. The book also offers new solutions to some classic paradoxes. It focuses on the intuitive motivations of the Bayesian approach to epistemology and addresses the philosophical worries to which it has given rise. (shrink)

Orthodox Probabilists hold that an inquirer ought to harbor a precise degree of confidence in each hypothesis about which she is concerned. Modest Probabilism is one of a family doctrines inspired by the thought that Orthodox Probabilists are thereby demanding that an inquirer effect a precision that is often unwarranted by her evidence. The purpose of this essay is (i) to explain the particular way in which Modest Probabilism answers to this thought, and (ii) to address an alleged counterexample to (...) Modest Probabilism meant to offer proof that Modest Probabilism is no better than its orthodox predecessor at avoiding unwarranted precision. (shrink)

J. L. Austin famously thought that facts about the circumstances in which it is ordinarily appropriate and reasonable to make claims to knowledge have a great bearing on the propriety of a philosophical account of knowledge. His major criticism of the epistemological doctrines about which he wrote was precisely that they lacked fidelity to our ordinary linguistic practices. In The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Barry Stroud argues that Austin was misguided: it is one thing for it to be inappropriate under (...) ordinary circumstances to deny that someone knows that P, another thing for it to be true that she knows that P. Thus, to the philosophical enterprise of determining which knowledge attributions are true, Austin’s form of criticism is beside the point. I argue that, attractive though it may be, this response to Austin badly underestimates the force of his sort of criticism. (shrink)

J. L. Austin famously thought that facts about the circumstances in which it is ordinarily appropriate and reasonable to make claims to knowledge have a great bearing on the propriety of a philosophical account of knowledge. His major criticism of the epistemological doctrines about which he wrote was precisely that they lacked fidelity to our ordinary linguistic practices. In The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Barry Stroud argues that Austin was misguided: it is one thing for it to be inappropriate under (...) ordinary circumstances to deny that someone knows that P, another thing for it to be true that she knows that P. Thus, to the philosophical enterprise of determining which knowledge attributions are true, Austin's form of criticism is beside the point. I argue that, attractive though it may be, this response to Austin badly under-estimates the force of his sort of criticism. (shrink)

In Austin's Way with Skepticism, Mark Kaplan argues that J. L Austin's 'ordinary language' approach to epistemological problems has been misread. Contrary to the consensus view, Kaplan presents Austin's methods as both a powerful critique of the project of constructive epistemology and an appreciation of how epistemology needs to be done.

J. L. Austin famously thought that facts about the circumstances in which it is ordinarily appropriate and reasonable to make (challenge) claims to knowledge have a great bearing on the propriety of a philosophical account of knowledge. His major criticism of the epistemological doctrines about which he wrote was precisely that they lacked fidelity to our ordinary linguistic practices. In The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Barry Stroud argues that Austin was misguided: it is one thing for it to be inappropriate (...) under ordinary circumstances to (say) deny that someone knows that P, another thing for it to be true that she knows that P. Thus, to the philosophical enterprise of determining which knowledge attributions are true, Austin’s form of criticism is beside the point. I argue that, attractive though it may be, this response to Austin badly underestimates the force of his sort of criticism. (shrink)

In ”Decision Theory and Epistemology,” Mark Kaplan finds it characteristic of orthodox Bayesians to hold that for each person and each hypothesis she comprehends, there is a precise degree of confidence that person has in the truth of that proposition, and no person can be counted as rational unless the degree of confidence assignment she thus harbors satisfies the axioms of the probability calculus. Kaplan's purpose is twofold. First, he aims to show that, as powerful as many criticisms are against (...) orthodox Bayesianism, there is a credible kind of Bayesianism. Without appeal to idealization or false precision, it offers a substantive account of how the probability calculus constrains the opinions of actual persons and of how this account impinges on traditional epistemological concerns. Second, he aims to show how this Bayesianism finds a foundation in considerations concerning rational preference. (shrink)

Crucial to bayesian contributions to the philosophy of science has been a characteristic psychology, according to which investigators harbor degree of confidence assignments that (insofar as the agents are rational) obey the axioms of the probability calculus. The rub is that, if the evidence of introspection is to be trusted, this fruitful psychology is false: actual investigators harbor no such assignments. The orthodox bayesian response has been to argue that the evidence of introspection is not to be trusted here; it (...) is to investigators' dispositions--not to their felt convictions--that the psychology is meant to be (and succeeds in being) faithful. I argue that this response, in both its orthodox and convex-set bayesian forms, should be rejected--as should the regulative ideals that make the response seem so attractive. I offer a different variant of bayesianism, designed to give the evidence of introspection its due and thus realize (as I claim the other forms of bayesianism cannot) the prescriptive mission of the bayesian project. (shrink)

The work of Ernesto Laclau (both with and without his occasional collaborator, Chantal Mouffe) has exerted considerable influence in rhetorical studies over the past two decades. Emerging alongside the so-called epistemic and cultural turns, the project of "critical rhetoric" and cognate endeavors have found in Laclau a revision of Gramsci's hegemony thesis that places discursive—and thus, evidently, rhetorical—operations at the center of politics, culture, and social processes generally. While Raymie McKerrow's seminal essay (1989) drew on Laclau and Mouffe to outline (...) a set of tasks for rhetoric that clearly remained within the ambit of ideology critique, subsequent appropriations of what is variously called .. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits.

Sexual Justice defends a robust a robust conception of lesbian and gay rights, emphasizing protection against discrimination and recognition of queer relationships and families. Synthesizing materials from law, philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature, Kaplan argues that sexual desire is central to the pursuit of happiness: equal citizenship requires individual freedom to shape oneself through a variety of intimate associations.

(1993). Confessions of a Modest Bayesian. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 23, Supplementary Volume 19: New Essays on Metaphilosophy, pp. 315-337.

In “Other Minds,” Austin maintained that, unless there is a special reason to suspect the bird he saw is stuffed, he does not need to do enough to show it is not stuffed in order to be credited with knowing what he has just claimed to know: that the bird he saw is a goldfinch. But suppose Austin were presented with the following argument: You don’t know the bird is not a stuffed goldfinch. If you don’t know the bird is (...) not a stuffed goldfinch, you don’t know the bird is a goldfinch. Therefore, you don’t know the bird is a goldfinch. Which of the premises of this argument would Austin have rejected? My brief is that the answer is, “Neither”: Austin would have dismissed the very idea that he needed to choose a premise to reject. The burden of this essay is to explain why. (shrink)

Austin wrote as if what we say as epistemologists needs to accord faithfully with what we say, and are committed to saying, in ordinary life. The consensus has long been that Austin wrote this way because he simply didn’t understand the nature of the epistemologist’s project. Austin’s Way with Skepticism explains why the consensus is mistaken. The book shows that, far from reflecting a failure on Austin’s part to understand the epistemologist’s project, Austin’s fidelity requirement was born of a powerful (...) critique of how that project has been conceived. The book also provides evidence of just how fruitful an epistemology is to be had, once we take that critique to heart and do epistemology as Austin thought it should be done. (shrink)

AIDS provides society an opportunity to expand and rationliza control over a broad range of psychological phenomena. Social control today is panoptical, involving dispersed centers and agents of surveillance and discipline throughout the whole community . The control of persons perceived as "dangerous" is effected partly through public psycho-social discourse on AIDS. This reproduces earlier encounters with frightening diseases, most notably the nineteenth-century cholera epidemic, and reveals a morally-laden ideology behind modern efforts at public hygiene.

The publication two decades ago of a collection of essays on the "rhetorical turn" in the natural and social sciences consolidated what had already become a peculiar academic ritual, wherein discipline after discipline discovered, or found itself confronted by, the rhetorical foundations of its own knowledge claims (Simons 1990). The discovery should not have been as shocking as it was, since a robust if often dormant or suppressed tradition dating back to the Sophists had insisted, frequently against fashion, that all (...) truth is the product of rhetorical operations. Nonetheless, the book's editor, Herbert Simons, and most of its contributors eagerly welcomed this belated but auspicious acknowledgment of rhetoric's .. (shrink)