One of the surprises from genome sequencing projects is the apparently small number of predicted genes in different eukaryotic cells, particularly human. One possible reason for this ‘shortage’ of genes is multiple distribution of proteins; a single protein is targeted to more than one subcellular compartment and consequently participates in different biochemical pathways and might have completely different functions. Indeed, in recent years, there have been reports on proteins that were found to be localized in cellular compartments other than those (...) initially attributed to them. Furthermore, the phenomenon of highly uneven isoprotein distribution was recently observed and termed ‘eclipsed distribution’. In these cases, the amount of one of the isoproteins, in one of the locations, is significantly minute and its detection by standard biochemical and visualization methods is masked by the presence of the dominant isoprotein. In fact, the minute amounts of eclipsed proteins can be essential. Since detecting eclipsed distribution is difficult, we assume that this phenomenon is probably more common than currently recorded. Hence, developing methods for localization and functional detection of eclipsed proteins is a challenge in cell biology research. Finally, eclipsed distribution may lead to cellular pathologies as has been suggested to occur in human disorders such as Prion diseases and Alzheimer. This review provides a short description of the eclipsed distribution phenomenon followed by an overview of protein distribution mechanisms, examples of eclipsed distribution and experimental approaches for revealing these elusive proteins. BioEssays 29:772–782, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.. (shrink)

A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about the external (...) world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context‐sensitive in their semantics.It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits. and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world. (shrink)

Your evidence constrains your rational degrees of confidence both locally and globally. On the one hand, particular bits of evidence can boost or diminish your rational degree of confidence in various hypotheses, relative to your background information. On the other hand, epistemic rationality requires that, for any hypothesis h, your confidence in h is proportional to the support that h receives from your total evidence. Why is it that your evidence has these two epistemic powers? I argue that various proposed (...) accounts of what it is for something to be an element of your evidence set cannot answer this question. I then propose an alternative account of what it is for something to be an element of your evidence set. 1. Introduction2. The elements of one's evidence set are propositions3. Which kinds of propositions are in one's evidence set?3.1. Doxastic accounts of evidence3.2. Non-doxastic accounts of evidence4. Elaborating and defending the LIE. (shrink)

Right now, I see a computer in front of me. Now, according to current philosophical orthodoxy, I could have the very same perceptual experience that I’m having right now even if I were not seeing a computer in front of me. Indeed, such orthodoxy tells us, I could have the very same experience that I’m having right now even if I were not seeing anything at all in front of me, but simply suffering from a hallucination. More generally, someone can (...) have the very same perceptual experience no matter whether she is enjoying a veridical perception of some mindindependent object, or merely hallucinating. What differs across these two kinds of case is not the kind of experience that she has, but rather the connections between her experience and the rest of the world. So say most philosophers. (shrink)

Liberals claim that some perceptual experiences give us immediate justification for certain perceptual beliefs. Conservatives claim that the justification that perceptual experiences give us for those perceptual beliefs is mediated by our background beliefs. In his recent paper ?Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic?, Nico Silins successfully argues for a non-Moorean version of Liberalism. But Silins's defence of non-Moorean Liberalism leaves us with a puzzle: why is it that a necessary condition for our perceptual experiences to justify (...) us in holding certain perceptual beliefs is that we have some independent justification for disbelieving various sceptical hypotheses? I argue that the best answer to this question involves commitment to Crispin Wright's version of Conservatism. In short, Wright's Conservatism is consistent with Silins's Liberalism, and the latter helps to give us grounds for accepting the former. (shrink)

Contextualist solutions to skeptical puzzles have recently been subjected to various criticisms. In this paper, I will defend contextualism against an objection prominently pressed by Stanley 2000. According to Stanley, contextualism in epistemology advances an empirically implausible hypothesis about the semantics of knowledge ascriptions in natural language. It is empirically implausible because it attributes to knowledge ascriptions a kind of semantic context-sensitivity that is wholly unlike any well- established type of semantic context-sensitivity in natural language.

In his recent Knowledge and its Limits, Timothy Williamson argues that no non-trivial mental state is such that being in that state suffices for one to be in a position to know that one is in it. In short, there are no “luminous” mental states. His argument depends on a “safety” requirement on knowledge, that one’s confident belief could not easily have been wrong if it is to count as knowledge. We argue that the safety requirement is ambiguous; on one (...) interpretation it is obviously true but useless to his argument, and on the other interpretation it is false. (shrink)

According to a doctrine that I call “Cartesianism”, knowledge – at least the sort of knowledge that inquirers possess – requires having a reason for belief that is reflectively accessible as such. I show that Cartesianism, in conjunction with some plausible and widely accepted principles, entails the negation of a popular version of Fallibilism. I then defend the resulting Cartesian Infallibilist position against popular objections. My conclusion is that if Cartesianism is true, then Descartes was right about this much: for (...) S to know that p, S must have reasons for believing that p which are such that S can know, by reflection alone, that she has those reasons, and that she could not possibly have those reasons if p is not true. Where Descartes went wrong was in thinking that our ordinary, fallible, non-theologically grounded sources of belief (e.g., perception, memory, testimony), cannot provide us with such reasons. (shrink)

Your evidence constrains your rational degrees of confidence both locally and globally. On the one hand, particular bits of evidence can boost or diminish your rational degree of confidence in various hypotheses, relative to your background information. On the other hand, epistemic rationality requires that, for any hypothesis h, your confidence in h is proportional to the support that h receives from your total evidence. Why is it that your evidence has these two epistemic powers? I argue that various proposed (...) accounts of what it is for something to be an element of your evidence set cannot answer this question. I then propose an alternative account of what it is for something to be an element of your evidence set. 1 Introduction 2 The elements of one's evidence set are propositions 3 Which kinds of propositions are in one's evidence set? 3.1 Doxastic accounts of evidence 3.2 Non-doxastic accounts of evidence 4 Elaborating and defending the LIE CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Many philosophers accept a “privileged access” thesis concerning our own present mental states and mental events. According to these philosophers, if I am in mental state (or undergoing mental event) M, then – at least in many cases – I have privileged access to the fact that I am in (or undergoing) M. For instance, if I now believe that my cat is sitting on my lap, then (in normal circumstances) I have privileged access to the fact that I now (...) believe that my cat is sitting on my lap. Similarly, if I now imagine a parade coming down Main Street, then (again, in normal circumstances) I have privileged access to the fact that I am now imagining a parade coming down Main Street. And again, if it now visually appears to me as if there is a cloud in the sky, then (again, in normal circumstances) I have privileged access to the fact that it now visually appears to me as if there is a cloud in the sky. In each of these aforementioned cases, if circumstances are normal, then, these philosophers say, I have a distinctive kind of privileged epistemic access to facts about my own mental states or events. Of course, I don’t have privileged epistemic access to all facts about my own mental states or events. For instance, I don’t have privileged epistemic access to facts about which unconscious mental states or events I have. But I do have privileged epistemic access to many facts about my own mental states or events, and in particular to the various facts listed above. (shrink)

Stephen Schiffer has argued that contextualist solutions to skepticism rest on an implausible “error theory” concerning our own semantic intentions. Similar arguments have recently been offered also by Thomas Hofweber and Patrick Rysiew. I attempt to show how contextualists can rebut these arguments. The kind of self‐knowledge that contextualists are committed to denying us is not a kind of self‐knowledge that we need, nor is it a kind of self‐knowledge that we can plausibly be thought to possess.

In recent years, a growing body of experimental literature has called into question the reliability of our intuitions about hypothetical cases, and thereby called into question the use of intuitions in philosophy. In this paper, I critically assess one prominent example of this challenge, namely, Swain, Alexander, and Weinberg’s recent study of order effects on the Truetemp intuition. I argue that the very data that Swain,Alexander, and Weinberg find do not undermine, but instead support, the reliability of intuition. I also (...) show how intuition can itself be marshaled in the service of figuring out just when we can and cannot expect to find order effects on our intuitions. (shrink)

(NEG) is widely accepted both by internalist and by externalists. In fact, there have been very few opponents of (NEG). Timothy Williamson (e.g., 2000) rejects (NEG), for reasons that have by now received a great deal of scrutiny.2 John McDowell also rejects (NEG), but his reasons have not received the scrutiny they deserve. This is in large part because those reasons have not been well understood. We believe that McDowell’s challenge to (NEG) is important, worthy of fair assessment, and maybe (...) even correct. In this paper, we explain McDowell’s challenge to (NEG), and also explain how McDowell can address a seemingly fatal objection to his view. (shrink)

Rieber 1998 proposes an account of "S knows that p" that generates a contextualist solution to Closure. In this paper, I’ll argue that Rieber’s account of "S knows that p" is subject to fatal objections, but we can modify it to achieve an adequate account of "S knows that p" that generates a unified contextualist solution to all four puzzles. This is a feat that should matter to those philosophers who have proposed contextualist solutions to Closure: all of them have (...) motivated their contextualism by appeal to the fact that they can explain the plausibility of each of the statements in Closure taken individually, and they can do this without having to deny that each of those statements is true, at least in the context in which it is plausible. But notice that this consideration would equally well motivate a contextualist approach to the other puzzles. Nonetheless, no contextualist has yet suggested how a contextualist solution to the other puzzles might go. (shrink)

A sophisticated and intellectually powerful analysis of culpability and moral responsibility in war, This book focuses on the causes of many episodes of foreseeable collateral damage. Trenchant, original, and ranging across security studies, international law, ethics, and international relations, Accountability for Killing will reshape our understanding of the ethics of contemporary war.

This article reports data collected from 385 performing arts professionals using the HEartS Professional Survey during the COVID-19 Lockdown 1.0 in the United Kingdom. Study 1 examined characteristics of performing arts professionals’ work and health, and investigated how these relate to standardized measures of wellbeing. Study 2 examined the effects of the lockdown on work and wellbeing in the respondents’ own words. Findings from Study 1 indicate a substantial reduction in work and income. 53% reported financial hardship, 85% reported increased (...) anxiety, and 63% reported being lonelier than before the crisis. 61% sought support on finances while only 45% did so on health and wellbeing. Multiple regression analyses, using the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, Social Connectedness Scale, and Three-Item Loneliness Scale as outcome variables, indicate that perceived financial hardship was associated with lower wellbeing and higher depression and loneliness scores. Higher self-rated health was associated with higher wellbeing and lower depression scores. More physical activity before lockdown was associated with higher wellbeing and social connectedness scores, as well as lower loneliness scores, and an increase in physical activity during lockdown compared with before, as well as older age, were associated with higher wellbeing and social connectedness scores, and lower depression and loneliness scores. Thematic inductive analysis of 341 open responses in Study 2 identified five overarching themes characterizing the effects of Lockdown 1.0: lost or uncertain work and income, including canceled work, financial concerns, and uncertainties for the future; constraints of lockdown working, including challenges of working at home, struggles with online work and skill maintenance, and caring responsibilities; loss and vulnerability, including reduced social connections, lack of support, vulnerability, feelings of loss and grief, and concern for others; detrimental effects on health and wellbeing, including anxiety, low or unstable mood, poorer physical health, and lack of motivation; and professional and personal opportunities, including coping well or living more healthily, more time and less pressure, new possibilities and activities, enhanced social connections, and new skills. Lockdown 1.0 had profound effects on performing arts professionals, but our findings reveal some opportunities and compelling links between positive wellbeing and physical activity. (shrink)

The article investigates the problem of the truth as the purpose of the criminal procedure, the problem of its cognition. Individuals carrying out criminal procedure activities (including the court) are servants of the procedural form and, at the same time, its hostages, therefore they are unable to approach the objective, absolute truth and should be content with the formal (legal) truth. This position falls under criticism. Attempts to artificial segmentation of the truth to its separate categories or forms are nothing, (...) but justification of the procedural erosion of a certain form. The article offers the opinion that the classical criminal procedure shall establish absolute, not formal (legal) truth. The truth is not only an aspiration of the criminal procedure, but, at the same time, a derivative, regulatory principle, the idea that works only in classical criminal procedure. This principle does not work in quasi-processes, i. e. in those criminal procedure forms that are organically separated from the classical procedure form. (shrink)

Sometimes, there are reasons for which we believe, intend, resent, decide, and so on: these reasons are the “bases” of the latter, and the explanatory relation between these bases and the latter is what I will call “the basing relation.” What kind of explanatory relation is this? Dispositionalists claim that the basing relation consists in the agent’s manifesting a disposition to respond to those bases by having the belief, intention, resentment, and so on, in question. Representationalists claim that the basing (...) relation consists in the agent’s representing the bases as justifying the belief, intention, resentment, and so on, in question. This article shows that an adequate account of the basing relation requires a particular refinement and combination of these two views. On the hybrid account defended here, the basing relation involves a disposition exercise that is individuated by the agent’s object-involving de se representation of that very exercise as justifying. (shrink)

Since the publication of W.V. Quine’s “Epistemology Naturalized”1, a growing number of self-described “naturalist” epistemologists have come to hold a particular view of what epistemology can and ought to be. In order to articulate this naturalist view, let me begin by describing the epistemological work that the naturalist tends to criticize – a motley that I will refer to collectively as “non-naturalist epistemology”. I will describe this motley in terms that are designed to capture the naturalist’s discontentment with it, as (...) follows: Non-naturalist epistemology has devoted itself, by and large, to addressing a small set of now familiar questions. What is it for someone to know that something is the case? What is it for someone to be justified in believing that something is the case? How does evidence confirm theory? To what degree ought one to be confident in a theory, given such-and-such evidence? What sorts of semantic properties do our various epistemic appraisals have? In order to answer these familiar questions, the non-naturalist epistemologist typically does not adduce any scientific findings concerning human cognition. Rather, she consults her intuitions about which properties are exemplified by various imagined cases. Unfortunately, if any of these familiar questions have been correctly answered, the correctness of these answers is not generally appreciated as such, even among professional non-naturalist epistemologists. Furthermore, virtually none of the work that’s been done in the course of trying to answer these familiar questions has any clear prospect of helping to guide or improve human intellectual conduct. As it’s been generally practiced then, non-naturalist epistemology offers us no useful advice, and.. (shrink)

The character of potential threats becomes extremely important in evaluating the legitimacy of the new preemption doctrine, and thus the assertion that the United States faces rogue enemies who oppose everything about the United States must be carefully evaluated.

My topic in this paper is a particular species of epistemic justification – a species that, following Roderick Firth, I call “propositional justification.”1 Propositional justification is a relation between a person and a proposition. I will say that for S to bear the propositional justification relation to p is for S to be “justified in believing” that p. What is propositional justification? What is it for S to be justified in believing that p? Here’s my answer.

What is the epistemological value of perceptual experience? In his recently influential paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”1, James Pryor develops a seemingly plausible answer to this question. Pryor’s answer comprises the following three theses: (F) “Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible – there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs.” (517) (PK) “This justification that you get merely by having an experience as of p can sometimes (...) suffice to give you knowledge that p is the case.” (520) (D) “When it perceptually seems to you as if p is the case, you have a kind of justification for believing p that does not presuppose or rest on your justification for anything else, which could be cited in argument (even an ampliative argument) for p. To have this justification for believing p, you need only have an experience that represents p as being the case. No further awareness or reflection or background beliefs are required.” (519) Let’s use the phrase “fallibilist dogmatism” to refer to the conjunction of (F), (PK), and (D).2 Pryor does not argue for either (F) or (PK) in his paper; he simply shares the widespread and plausible assumption that (F) and (PK) are both true. But the conjunction of (F) and (PK) implies that we can have knowledge on the basis of defeasible justification. And this view leads to paradox. Consider the following individually plausible but jointly incompatible statements. (shrink)

In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded, 125,000 people were members of credit cooperative societies, which provided over 20 percent of all market financing. For several years this number continued to rise, reaching a total of 250,000 members in more than 100 credit cooperative societies. Credit associations — part of the thriving cooperative movement of early Zionism — symbolized the attempt to create a new and just Jewish society by fusing socialist and capitalist ideals. From the mid-1950s, however, (...) in a rapid process of centralization of Israel’s capital market and financial institutions, almost all credit associations were absorbed into Israel’s commercial banks and dissolved. Today, Israel’s two largest banks control over 63 percent of credit provision, and 90 percent of credit is provided to less than 1 percent of borrowers. The official policy of the Bank of Israel is to rule out the establishment of credit associations, credit unions or other non-bank financial institutions. In the light of current renewed interest in "social businesses," i.e., innovative business models designed to achieve desired social outcomes, this Article traces the waning of credit associations in Israel, and the role law has played in that process. Their disappearance from the capital market marked not only a change in economic policy, but also the final abandonment of the ideals which underlay the provision of cooperative financial services: mutuality, partnership and solidarity. (shrink)

This article discusses the legal concept of excessive use of force by analyzing a particular incident that took place in Israel in the summer of 1997: eighty families, faced with dire housing needs, squatted in vacant apartments in an immigrant absorption center in the town of Mevasseret Zion near Jerusalem. After a period of failed attempts to persuade the families to leave the apartments peacefully, the police moved to evacuate the families, and did so by use of massive force. In (...) the article I describe the violent measures used by the State, and analyze the media portrayal of the squatting and the evacuation. I argue that both these forceful measures and the media portrayal of the squatting and evacuation cumulatively took part in constructing the squatters as criminal deviants rather than political protesters. I claim further that we should understand the concept of use of force not only as a means to achieve certain ends by the state, but also as a mechanism through which the state constructs a social problem and presents it in a manner beneficial to its own interests. Excessive use of force, in this sense, is not just a disproportionate response to a real or perceived threat posed by an individual or group, but a means by which the state fosters a belief that the individual or group present some danger, which must be tackled through the use of a certain level of force. By drawing a line between the legitimate and illegitimate use of force, the state affirms its monopoly on violence, which ultimately can be used to suppress political resistance. (shrink)

Historically, prominent proponents of the guidance deontological conception of epistemic justification have thought that the guidance deontological conception entails access internalism. Alvin Goldman has argued that this is not so, and that there is no good argument from the guidance deontological conception of justification to access internalism. This paper refutes Goldman's argument. If the guidance deontological conception of epistemic justification is correct, then so is access internalism.

In Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, Ned Dobos highlights several negative consequences the preparation for war has for individuals and states. But he misses what I consider perhaps the most significant consequence of military mobilization for states, especially democracies: how war and the preparation for it affect deliberative politics. While many argue that all states, including democracies, require strong militaries—and there is some evidence that long wars can build democracies and states—I focus on the other effects of militarization and war (...) on democratic states. War and militarism are antipodal to democracy and undermine it. Their normative bases are conflicting—democracy takes force off the table, whereas force is legitimate in war. Thus, while militarism and militarization can sometimes yield liberalization and the expansion of civil rights, they are arguably more likely to undermine democratic norms and practices. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold some verion of the doctrine of "basic knowledge". According to this doctrine, it's possible for S to know that p, even if S doesn't know the source of her knowledge that p to be reliable or trustworthy. Stewart Cohen has recently argued that this doctrine confronts the problem of easy knowledge. I defend basic knowledge against this criticism, by providing a contextualist solution to the problem of easy knowledge.

Epistemology is one of the oldest, yet still one of the most active, areas of philosophical research today. There currently exists many annotated tomes of primary sources, and a handful of single-authored introductions to the field, but there is no book that captures epistemology’s dynamic growth and lively debates for a student audience. In this volume, eight leading philosophers debate four topics central to recent research in epistemology: The A Priori: C. S. I. Jenkins and Michael Devitt The A Posteriori: (...) Richard Fumerton and Nicholas Silins The Regress of Justification: Declan Smithies and Peter Klein Skepticism: Anthony Brueckner and Ernest Sosa Ram Neta’s introduction to the volume, descriptions of each chapter, annotated bibliographies for each controversy, and supplemental guide to further controversies in epistemology help provide clearer and richer views of active controversies for all readers. (shrink)

Why do women sellers in product markets receive lower prices than men sellers when selling the same identical products? This Article investigates the effects of cultural beliefs about competence, desert and trust on market interactions with women and men sellers. We use an experimental approach to show that the prices people are willing to pay for the exact same product are affected by cultural beliefs about gender; when a woman sells a gift card, she is likely to receive five percent (...) less for it, compared to when a man does. Our analysis further suggests that it is beliefs about women’s relative competence and moral entitlement that drive the gender price gap in product markets. When the participants in the experiment were presented with information that suggested that the woman seller was a competent or entitled seller, no gender price differences were found between such women sellers and their equally qualified male counterparts. Nonetheless, information about the trustworthiness of sellers did not decrease the gap between women and men sellers. This suggests that price gaps between women and men in product markets are not generated by beliefs about the trustworthiness of women and men. (shrink)

Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is conceptualized here as a cultural condition in which late modern ethno-national cultural uniqueness is associated with contemporary cultural forms like film and pop-rock music, and as such it is produced from within the national framework. The social production of aesthetic cosmopolitanism is analyzed through elaborations on Bourdieu's field theory, as an outcome of the intersection of and interplay between global fields of art and fields of national culture. A sociological explanation for the emergence of aesthetic cosmopolitanism is (...) proposed. It focuses on claims by social sectors within national contexts for status and recognition of their own contemporary cultural uniqueness. (shrink)