Discussions of group knowledge typically focus on whether a group’s knowledge that p reduces to group members’ knowledge that p. Drawing on the cumulative reading of collective knowledge ascriptions and considerations about the importance of the division of epistemic labour, I argue what I call the Fragmented Knowledge account, which allows for more complex relations between individual and collective knowledge. According to this account, a group can know an answer to a question in virtue of members of the group knowing (...) parts of that answer, when the whole answer is available to group-level action. I argue that this account explains a swathe of central cases of group knowledge, as well as explaining some central features of group knowledge. (shrink)

It has been widely accepted since Stanley and Williamson (2001) that the only linguistically acceptable semantic treatments for sentences of the form ‘S knows how to V’ involve treating the wh-complement ‘how to V’ as an interrogative phrase, denoting a set of propositions. Recently a number of authors have suggested that the ‘how to V’ phrase denotes not a proposition, but an object. This view points toward a prima facie plausible non-propositional semantics for knowledge-how, which treats ‘how to V’ as (...) a free relative noun phrase. In this paper I argue that the free relative semantics is implausible. I show that linguistic phenomena which seem to support a free relative semantics can be explained by the supporter of an interrogative semantics, and demonstrate that standard linguistic tests strongly suggest that ‘how to V’ has an interrogative reading, and no free relative reading. (shrink)

All ethics has a religious dimension. This paper considers how specific Christian insights concerning death, suffering, human nature and human creatureliness can help to expose more fully the moral issues at stake in some of the dilemmas faced by doctors. It ends by acknowledging the crushing burden of decision-making which rests on many in the medical profession, and indicates the importance of religious resources in dealing with this.

Why is it useful to talk and think about knowledge-how? Using Edward Craig’s discussion of the function of the concepts of knowledge and knowledge-how as a jumping off point, this paper argues that considering this question can offer us new angles on the debate about knowledge-how. We consider two candidate functions for the concept of knowledge-how: pooling capacities, and mutual reliance. Craig makes the case for pooling capacities, which connects knowledge-how to our need to pool practical capacities. I argue that (...) the evidence is much more equivocal. My suggested diagnosis is that the concept of knowledge-how plays both functions, meaning that the concept of knowledge-how is inconsistent, and that the debate about knowledge-how is at least partly a metalinguistic negotiation. In closing, I suggest a way to revise the philosophical concept of knowledge how. (shrink)

Who should be the author(s) of an academic paper? This question is becoming increasingly pressing, due to the increasing prevalence and scale of scientific collaboration, and the corresponding diversity of authorship practices in different disciplines and subdisciplines. This paper addresses the conceptual issues underlying authorship, with an eye to ameliorating authorship practices. The first part of the paper distinguishes five roles played by authorship attributions: allocating credit, constructing a speaker, enabling credibility judgements, supporting accountability, and creating an intellectual marketplace. The (...) second part of the paper argues that distinguishing these functions helps us see that at least some of the confusions around authorship are due to tensions between these functions. The final part of the paper suggests a way to resolve these conceptual confusions, which we will call the CSWG proposal. This proposal suggests replacing authorship with a bundle of roles tailored to the functions of authorship—contributor, spokesperson, writer, and guarantor—which can be distributed in a number of different ways. (shrink)

How should we think about the ways search engines can go wrong? Following the publication of Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression (Noble 2018), a view has emerged that racist, sexist, and other problematic results should be thought of as indicative of algorithmic bias. In this paper, I offer an alternative angle on these results, building on Noble’s suggestion that search engines are complicit in a racial contract (Mills 1990). I argue that racist and sexist results should be thought of as (...) part of the workings of the social system of white ignorance. Along the way, I will argue that we should think about search engines not as sources of testimony, but as information-classification systems, and make a preliminary case for the importance of the social epistemology of technology. (shrink)

How should we measure knowledge? According to the Counting Approach, we can measure knowledge by counting pieces of knowledge. Versions of the Counting Approach that try to measure knowledge by counting true beliefs with suitable support or by counting propositions known run into problems, stemming from infinite numbers of propositions and beliefs, difficulties in individuating propositions and beliefs, and cases in which knowing the same number of propositions contributes differently to knowledge. In this paper I develop a novel question-relative and (...) contextualist version of the counting approach, which measures an agent's knowledge by counting the number of complete answers of a contextually salient issue they can rule out. The question-relative and contextualist version of the Counting Approach avoids the issues for the proposition and belief-based systems, and offers a general, systematic, and explanatory system for measuring knowledge. (shrink)

"What do natural behaviour, natural landscapes, natural yoghurt and natural theology have in common? This wide-ranging study of the origins and use of the concept of nature aims to throw light on many of today's controversial issues - from sexuality and designer babies to GM foods." "John Habgood explores some of the meanings of the complex word nature in ancient classical thought, and the development of these in the context of the natural sciences, environmentalism, ethics, genetics and theology. The (...) Concept of Nature examines practical questions such as whether there are laws of nature which can lead us to describe some human behaviours as natural and others as unnatural, and seeks to guide Christian thinking by indentifying God as the source both of nature's givenness and of its immense potential for change."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 2004 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesFrances S. AdeneyThe 2004 meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies was held in San Antonio, Texas, 19–20 November 2004. This year's theme was "Dealing with Illness and Promoting Healing: Buddhist and Christian Resources." During the first session panelists Laura Habgood Arsta, Jay McDaniel, and Beth Blizman presented Christian views on dealing with illness, and Rita Gross responded from a (...) Buddhist perspective. The second session focused Buddhist resources for promoting healing by panelists Francis Tsio and Grace Buford, with Laurel Curran presenting a Christian response.Laura Habgood Arsta presented research done by undergraduate students in border communities between the United States and Mexico. The topic was the connection between the Pentecostal movement and environmental health. Pentecostal Christianity (250–400 million members worldwide) emphasizes the signs that accompany the presence of Christ, evidenced by experiences of spirit baptism and faith healing.Their sample indicated that poor and minority people don't identify with the environmental movement until personal health problems emerge. One possible reason for Pentecostal religion thriving, according to this research, might be that exposure to toxins and poverty draws people to healing, a theological pillar of Pentecostalism. Religious services provide an emotional outlet and inspire self-confidence, which can become a mental health component of a healing solution. Women are free to share and lead services, finding leadership opportunities and a social group in churches. As an inexpensive alternative to medical care, healing in the Pentecostal church provides a sense of physical healing as well as help in overcoming addictions.Beth Blizman informed the group of the toxicity of the Lake Erie area of northern Ohio. Cancer is becoming normalized in this region, which has the highest level of multiple cancers in the United States. Beth feels called to heal her own body and become part of the healing process of that region. She argued that an attitude that disrespects the earth leads to disrespect of one another. "How can healing be found?" she asked. She discussed many resources from ancient monastics to modern women religious, from process and feminist thought to new cosmologies. Finally she connected [End Page 149] Audre Lourde's work on the rejection of difference to the bioregional studies that she has been doing on toxicity and illness.Jay McDaniels followed by giving a Christian perspective on Alzheimer's disease as an ecumenical Christian influenced by Buddhism. He addressed three questions that Christians ask in this situation. The first question is "Where is God now? Is God inside my loved one? How?" In response to this question, Jay outlined an evangelical view of God that understands God as a transcendent being, "way up there, watching from a distance." He contrasted this view with a process view of God as an "umbrella of compassion that envelops the world without smothering it." In this view, God is the great companion, sharing the confusion and anxiety of the ill person.So where is the person as they experience personality changes caused by the disease? Jay addressed this second question through process theology, stating that in process theology the person is defined in Buddhist terms, inheriting from the past and contributing to the future. A person is constantly in flux or transformation, so the person with illness may be a different person than they once were but can be embraced as the person that they are now. The multidimensional universe of process theology allows for a person to live "with one foot on earth and one foot in heaven."Help for dealing with Alzheimer's disease, Jay's third question, can be found in the Benedictine vow of obedience, stability, and ongoing conversion. The deepest need for those with Alzheimer's is to be with them, being available to others to listen. Stability is the vow to stay with the relationship through these changes. Ongoing conversion can come through Alzheimer's as those with this disease invite us into a space of creative imagination and a new kind of respect.Rita Gross responded to the three presentations by arguing that how one perceives a situation changes it tremendously. Two Buddhist principles that apply here are... (shrink)

[Author note: There is a video explainer of this paper on youtube at the new work in philosophy channel (search for surname+deepfakes).] -/- It is widely thought that deepfake videos are a significant and unprecedented threat to our epistemic practices. In some writing about deepfakes, manipulated videos appear as the harbingers of an unprecedented _epistemic apocalypse_. In this paper I want to take a critical look at some of the more catastrophic predictions about deepfake videos. I will argue for three (...) claims: (1) that once we recognise the role of social norms in the epistemology of recordings, deepfakes are much less concerning, (2) that the history of photographic manipulation reveals some important precedents, correcting claims about the novelty of deepfakes, and (3) that proposed solutions to deepfakes have been overly focused on technological interventions. My overall goal is not so much to argue that deepfakes are not a problem, but to argue that behind concerns around deepfakes lie a more general class of social problems about the organisation of our epistemic practices. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that public discourse as we know it is less than ideal from an epistemological point of view. In this paper, we develop an underappreciated aspect of the trouble with public discourse: what we call the Listening Problem. The listening problem is the problem that public discourse has in giving appropriate uptake and reception to ideas and concepts from oppressed groups. Drawing on the work of Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser, we develop an institutional response to the (...) listening problem: the establishment of what we call Receptive Publics, discursive spaces designed to improve listening skills and to give space for counterhegemonic ideas. (shrink)

Since 2016, there has been an explosion of academic work and journalism that fixes its subject matter using the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’. In this paper, I argue that this terminology is not up to scratch, and that academics and journalists ought to completely stop using the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’. I set out three arguments for abandonment. First, that ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ do not have stable public meanings, entailing that they are either nonsense, context-sensitive, or contested. (...) Secondly, that these terms are unnecessary, because we already have a rich vocabulary for thinking about epistemic dysfunction. Thirdly, I observe that ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ have propagandistic uses, meaning that using them legitimates anti-democratic propaganda, and runs the risk of smuggling bad ideology into conversations. (shrink)

The debate about the nature of knowledge-how is standardly thought to be divided between intellectualist views, which take knowledge-how to be a kind of propositional knowledge, and anti-intellectualist views, which take knowledge-how to be a kind of ability. In this paper, I explore a compromise position—the interrogative capacity view—which claims that knowing how to do something is a certain kind of ability to generate answers to the question of how to do it. This view combines the intellectualist thesis that knowledge-how (...) is a relation to a set of propositions with the anti-intellectualist thesis that knowledge-how is a kind of ability. I argue that this view combines the positive features of both intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. (shrink)

In this paper we apply social epistemology to mathematical proofs and their role in mathematical knowledge. The most famous modern collaborative mathematical proof effort is the Classification of Finite Simple Groups. The history and sociology of this proof have been well-documented by Alma Steingart (2012), who highlights a number of surprising and unusual features of this collaborative endeavour that set it apart from smaller-scale pieces of mathematics. These features raise a number of interesting philosophical issues, but have received very little (...) attention. In this paper, we will consider the philosophical tensions that Steingart uncovers, and use them to argue that the best account of the epistemic status of the Classification Theorem will be essentially and ineliminably social. This forms part of the broader argument that in order to understand mathematical proofs, we must appreciate their social aspects. (shrink)

It is a widely shared intuition that there is a close connection between knowledge-how and intentional action. In this paper, I explore one aspect of this connection: the normative connection between intending to do something and knowing how to do it. I argue for a norm connecting knowledge-how and intending in a way that parallels the knowledge norms of assertion, belief, and practical reasoning, which I call the knowledge-how norm of Intention. I argue that this norm can appeal to support (...) from arguments which parallel those for other epistemic norms, that it can deal with a number of prima facie problem cases, and that alternative conditions in a norm on intention are implausible. (shrink)

According to Intellectualism knowing how to V is a matter of knowing a suitable proposition about a way of V-ing. In this paper, I consider the question of which ways of acting might figure in the propositions which Intellectualists claim constitute the object of knowledge-how. I argue that Intellectualists face a version of the Generality Problem – familiar from discussions of Reliabilism – since not all ways of V-ing are such that knowledge about them suffices for knowledge-how. I consider various (...) responses to this problem, and argue that none are satisfactory. (shrink)

Group agents can act, and they can have knowledge. How should we understand the species of collective action which aims at knowledge? In this paper, I present an account of group inquiry. This account faces two challenges: to make sense of how large-scale distributed activities might be a kind of group action, and to make sense of the kind of division of labour involved in collective inquiry. In the first part of the paper, I argue that existing accounts of group (...) action face problems dealing with large-scale group actions, and propose a minimal alternative account. In the second part of the paper, I draw on an analogy between inquiry and conversation, arguing that work by Robert Stalnaker and Craige Roberts helps us to think about the division of labour. In the final part of the paper I put the accounts of group action and inquiry together, and consider how to think about group knowledge, deep ignorance, and the different kinds of division of labour. (shrink)

What does it take for a group of people to know how to do something? An account of collective practical knowledge ought to be compatible with the linguistic evidence about the semantics for collective knowledge-how ascriptions, be able to explain the practicality of collective knowledge, be able to explain both the connection between individual and collective know-how and the possibility of a group knowing how to do something none of its members know, and be applicable to a suitably wide range (...) of groups. In this paper I develop a view which can meet all of these desiderata, which combines a Fragmented account of collective knowledge (Habgood-Coote, 2019a), with the view that practical knowledge is an Interrogative Capacity (Habgood-Coote, 2019b). (shrink)

In this paper I consider the prospects for an epistemic norm which relates knowledge-how to showing in a way that parallels the knowledge norm of assertion. In the first part of the paper I show that this epistemic norm can be motivated by conversational evidence, and that it fits in with a plausible picture of the function of knowledge. In the second part of the paper I present a dilemma for this norm. If we understand showing in a broad sense (...) as a general kind of skill teaching, then the norm faces counterexamples of teachers who know how to teach, but not to do. On the other hand, it we understand showing more narrowly as involving only teaching by doing the relevant activity, then the data which initially supported the norm can be explained away by more general connections between knowledge-how and intentional action. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Habgood-Coote : 1033–1065) I argued that we should abandon ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’, on the grounds that these terms do not have stable public meanings, are unnecessary, and function as vehicles for propaganda. Jessica Pepp, Eliot Michaelson, and Rachel Sterken and Étienne Brown : 144–154) have raised worries about my case for abandonment, recommending that we continue using ‘fake news’. In this paper, I respond to these worries. I distinguish more clearly between theoretical and political reasons for (...) abandoning a term, assemble more evidence that ‘fake news’ is a nonsense term, and respond to the worries raised by Pepp, Michaelson and Sterken, and Brown. I close by considering the prospects for anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian conceptual engineering. (shrink)

What are the proper epistemic aims of social media sites? A great deal of social media critique presupposes an exceptionalist attitude, according to which social media is either uniquely good, or uniquely bad for our collective knowledge-generating practices. Exceptionalism about social media is troublesome, both because it leads to oversimplistic narratives, and because it prevents us making relevant comparisons to other epistemic systems. The goal of this chapter is to offer an anti-exceptionalist account of the epistemic aims of social media. (...) I will argue that social systems (and epistemic institutions in general) ought to pursue three distinct epistemic goals: promoting good epistemic outcomes for users, realising epistemically good institutional features, and achieving structural epistemic justice. Although these goals are often mutually supportive, I will consider a number of cases in which these values conflict. This means that there are epistemic dilemmas about how to design social media platforms (and other kinds of epistemic system) which can only be resolved by appealing to ethical considerations. This discussion highlights that just as in the political realm, there is no such thing as a neutral epistemic system. (shrink)

This paper explains some of the reasoning behind “Can a Good Philosophical Contribution Be Made Just by Asking a Question?,” a paper which consists solely in its title and which is published in the same issue of the journal as the present paper. The method for explaining that reasoning consists in making available a lightly edited version of a letter the authors sent to the editors when submitting the title-only paper. The editors permitted publication of that paper on the condition (...) that the authors also separately publish a version of that letter; the present paper aims to fulfil that condition. (shrink)

We spend a good deal of time thinking about how and when to advise others, and how to respond to other people advising us. However, philosophical discussions of the nature and norms advising have been scattered and somewhat disconnected. The most focused discussion has come from philosophers of language interested in whether advising is a kind of assertive or directive kind of speech act. This paper argues that the ordinary category of advising is much more heterogenous than has been appreciated: (...) it is possible to advise by asserting relevant facts, by issuing directives, and by asking questions and other kinds of adviceless advising. The heterogeneity of advising makes speech act-theoretic accounts of advising look like accounts of special cases, and motivates us to look elsewhere for an account of what advising is. I suggest that we think about advising as a distinctive species of joint practical thinking—which I will call collaborative deliberation—and show how our need for a concept to pick out this kind of joint activity emerges from our practical needs as deliberators. This view helps to shed light on a number of puzzling features of advising and offers some guidance to be better at advising and at being advised. (shrink)

Ocherk 1. Voprosy ontologii -- Ocherk 2. Voprosy ėtiki i ėstetiki -- Ocherk 3. Voprosy gnoseologii i aksiologii.

The paper analyses the factors involved in a series of decisions by the Newcastle Area Health Authority concerning the future of one of its hospitals, as an illustration of the way in which choices about priorities in the health service are actually made. There is no easy way to resolve the various conflicts of interest, notably in this case the competing demands of acute and chronic medicine. Difficult decisions are made more difficult, however, by the over-rigid division of medicine into (...) compartments, by mistrust between the medical profession and administrators, and by the inordinately long time-scale of the decision-making process. It is suggested that there might be value in acknowledging explicitly that occasional examples of 'heroic medicine' must not be allowed too much influence in shaping public expectations. The paper results from the deliberations of a working group on current medical-ethical problems, set up under the auspices of the Northern Regional Health Authority (I). (shrink)

_ To the Best of Our Knowledge: Social Expectations and Epistemic Normativity _ By GoldbergSanfordOxford University Press, 2018. xvi + 278 pp.

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own thought processes. Yanofsky describes (...) simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve; perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense; different levels of infinity; the bizarre world of the quantum; the relevance of relativity theory; the causes of chaos theory; math problems that cannot be solved by normal means; and statements that are true but cannot be proven. He explains the limitations of our intuitions about the world -- our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there. (shrink)

Richard Janko's acclaimed translation of Aristotle's _Poetics_ is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko's translations with notes of both the _Tractatus Coislinianus_, which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the Poetics, and fragments of Aristotle’s dialogue On Poets, including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time.

This chapter develops a perceptual solution to the epistemological problem of other minds, relying on central ideas from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The Merleau-Pontian account is contrasted with another attempted perceptual solution to the other minds problem, and it is argued that only the former meets the phenomenologists' desideratum of providing an alternative to inferential solutions. The chapter also provides responses to various objections to the perceptual solution, including a pair of objections recently put forward by Alec Hyslop.

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

Study of Hans-Georg Gadamer's and Julius Stenzel's interpretations of Plato.