The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a (...) robust argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

Wesley Salmon is renowned for his seminal contributions to the philosophy of science. He has powerfully and permanently shaped discussion of such issues as lawlike and probabilistic explanation and the interrelation of explanatory notions to causal notions. This unique volume brings together twenty-six of his essays on subjects related to causality and explanation, written over the period 1971-1995. Six of the essays have never been published before and many others have only appeared in obscure venues. The volume includes a (...) section of accessible introductory pieces, as well as more advanced and technical pieces, and will make essential work in the philosophy of science readily available to both scholars and students. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende investigar a possível articulação entre o pensamento filosófico de Friedrich Nietzsche e a fenomenologia de Edmund Husserl. Para tanto, usaremos autores internacionais que abordam o tema e indicam a possibilidade da relação entre eles. Usaremos como principal referência as pesquisas de Christine Daigle e Babette Babich.

Through his S–R model of statistical relevance, Wesley Salmon offers a solution to the scientific explanation of objectively improbable events.

As Aristotle stated, scientific explanation is based on deductive argument--yet, Wesley C. Salmon points out, not all deductive arguments are qualified explanations. The validity of the explanation must itself be examined. _Four Decades of Scientific Explanation_ provides a comprehensive account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. It continues to stand as the most comprehensive treatment of the writings on the subject during these years. Building on the historic 1948 (...) essay by Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” which introduced the deductive-nomological model on which most work on scientific explanation was based for the following four decades, Salmon goes beyond this model's inherent basis of describing empirical knowledge to tells us “not only _what,_ but also _why_.” Salmon examines the predominant models in chronological order and describes their development, refinement, and criticism or rejection. _Four Decades of Scientific Explanation_ underscores the need for a consensus of approach and ongoing evaluations of methodology in scientific explanation, with the goal of providing a better understanding of natural phenomena. (shrink)

In disputes about the ontology of music, musical idealism—that is, the view that musical compositions are ideas—has proven to be rather unpopular. We argue that, once we have a better grip on the ontology of ideas, we can formulate a version of musical idealism that is not only defensible, but plausible and attractive. We conclude that compositions are a particular kind of idea: they are completed ideas for musical manifestation.

Approximation involves representing things in ways that might be close to the truth but are nevertheless false. Given the widespread reliance on approximations in science and everyday life, here we ask whether it is conceptually possible for false approximations to qualify as knowledge. According to the factivity account, it is impossible to know false approximations, because knowledge requires truth. According to the representational adequacy account, it is possible to know false approximations, if they are close enough to the truth for (...) present purposes. In this paper, we adopt an experimental methodology to begin testing these two theories. When an agent provides a false and practically inadequate answer, both theories predict that people will deny knowledge. But the theories disagree about an agent who provides a false but practically adequate answer: the factivity hypothesis again predicts knowledge denial, whereas the representational adequacy hypothesis predicts knowledge attribution. Across two experiments, our principal finding was that people tended to attribute knowledge for false but practically adequate answers, which supports the representational adequacy account. We propose an interpretation of existing findings that preserves a conceptual link between knowledge and truth. According to this proposal, truth is not necessary for knowledge, but it is a feature of prototypical knowledge. (shrink)

It is widely accepted in epistemology that knowledge is factive, meaning that only truths can be known. We argue that this theory creates a skeptical challenge: because many of our beliefs are only approximately true, and therefore false, they do not count as knowledge. We consider several responses to this challenge and propose a new one. We propose easing the truth requirement on knowledge to allow approximately true, practically adequate representations to count as knowledge. In addition to addressing the skeptical (...) challenge, this view also coheres with several previous theoretical proposals in epistemology. (shrink)

Not since Ernest Nagel’s 1939 monograph on the theory of probability has there been a comprehensive elementary survey of the philosophical problems of probablity and induction. This is an authoritative and up-to-date treatment of the subject, and yet it is relatively brief and nontechnical. Hume’s skeptical arguments regarding the justification of induction are taken as a point of departure, and a variety of traditional and contemporary ways of dealing with this problem are considered. The author then sets forth his own (...) criteria of adequacy for interpretations of probability. Utilizing these criteria he analyzes contemporary theories of probability, as well as the older classical and subjective interpretations. (shrink)

It is often thought that judgments about what we ought to do are limited by judgments about what we can do, or that “ought implies can.” We conducted eight experiments to test the link between a range of moral requirements and abilities in ordinary moral evaluations. Moral obligations were repeatedly attributed in tandem with inability, regardless of the type (Experiments 1–3), temporal duration (Experiment 5), or scope (Experiment 6) of inability. This pattern was consistently observed using a variety of moral (...) vocabulary to probe moral judgments and was insensitive to different levels of seriousness for the consequences of inaction (Experiment 4). Judgments about moral obligation were no different for individuals who can or cannot perform physical actions, and these judgments differed from evaluations of a non-moral obligation (Experiment 7). Together these results demonstrate that commonsense morality rejects the “ought implies can” principle for moral requirements, and that judgments about moral obligation are made independently of considerations about ability. By contrast, judgments of blame were highly sensitive to considerations about ability (Experiment 8), which suggests that commonsense morality might accept a “blame implies can” principle. (shrink)

The literature has indicated some approximations between Skinner’s and Wittgenstein’s proposals, such as a critical standpoint on traditional psychological language conceptions. For Wittgenstein, the critique refers to the impossibility of a private language. On the other hand, Skinner’s critique culminates in defense of the concept of private events. However, this concept seems inconsistent with Wittgenstein’s proposal. Based on this assumption, this paper aims to reevaluate the role of the concept of ‘private events’ in Skinnerian behaviorism in the light of Wittgenstein’s (...) critical discussions. For this, Wittgenstein’s and Skinner’s proposals were systematically compared. It is concluded that the concept of private events is not to escape Wittgenstein’s criticisms of the traditional psychological language. (shrink)

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view (a version of the epistemic conception) is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic (...) conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a robust argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation (that explanations are arguments) to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

In this article, we tell a story about incompleteness in modal logic. The story weaves together an article of van Benthem, “Syntactic aspects of modal incompleteness theorems,” and a longstanding open question: whether every normal modal logic can be characterized by a class of completely additive modal algebras, or as we call them, ${\cal V}$-baos. Using a first-order reformulation of the property of complete additivity, we prove that the modal logic that starred in van Benthem’s article resolves the open question (...) in the negative. In addition, for the case of bimodal logic, we show that there is a naturally occurring logic that is incomplete with respect to ${\cal V}$-baos, namely the provability logic $GLB$. We also show that even logics that are unsound with respect to such algebras do not have to be more complex than the classical propositional calculus. On the other hand, we observe that it is undecidable whether a syntactically defined logic is ${\cal V}$-complete. After these results, we generalize the Blok Dichotomy to degrees of ${\cal V}$-incompleteness. In the end, we return to van Benthem’s theme of syntactic aspects of modal incompleteness. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have empirically challenged the connection between intuition and philosophical expertise. This paper reviews these challenges alongside other research findings in cognitive science on expert performance and argues for three claims. First, evidence taken to challenge philosophical expertise may also be explained by the well-researched failures and limitations of genuine expertise. Second, studying the failures and limitations of experts across many fields provides a promising research program upon which to base a new model of philosophical expertise. Third, a model (...) of philosophical expertise based on the limitations of genuine experts may suggest a series of constraints on the reliability of professional philosophical intuition. Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. — Bertrand Russell, On the Value of Scepticism. (shrink)

In two of the earliest papers on extending modal logic with propositional quantifiers, R. A. Bull and K. Fine studied a modal logic S5Π extending S5 with axioms and rules for propositional quantification. Surprisingly, there seems to have been no proof in the literature of the completeness of S5Π with respect to its most natural algebraic semantics, with propositional quantifiers interpreted by meets and joins over all elements in a complete Boolean algebra. In this note, we give such a proof. (...) This result raises the question: For which normal modal logics. (shrink)

Let the day perish in which I was born… [Job 3: 3a] 1.

A standard principle in ethics is that moral obligation entails ability, or that “ought implies can”. A strong case has been made that this principle is not well motivated in moral psychology. This paper presents an analogous case against the theoretical motivation for the principle. The principle is in tension with several foundational areas of ethical theorizing, including research on apologies, excuses, promises, moral dilemmas, moral language, disability, and moral agency. Across each of these areas, accepting the principle that obligation (...) entails ability creates a theoretical problem that is more easily solved by rejecting it rather than accepting it. I conclude that the motivation for the principle is weak and that “ought implies can” should be rejected in ethics on theoretical grounds. (shrink)

The contributions to this special collection concern issues and problems discussed in or related to the work of Wesley C. Salmon. Salmon has long been noted for his important work in the philosophy of science, which has included research on the interpretation of probability, the nature of explanation, the character of reasoning, the justification of induction, the structure of space/time and the paradoxes of Zeno, to mention only some of the most prominent. During a time of increasing preoccupation with (...) historical and sociological approaches to under standing science (which characterize scientific developments as though they could be adequately analysed from the perspective of political movements, even mistaking the phenomena of conversion for the rational appraisal of scientific theories), Salmon has remained stead fastly devoted to isolating and justifying those normative standards distinguishing science from non-science - especially through the vindi cation of general principles of scientific procedure and the validation of specific examples of scientific theories - without which science itself cannot be (even remotely) adequately understood. In this respect, Salmon exemplifies and strengthens a splendid tradi tion whose most remarkable representatives include Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap and Carl G. Hempel, all of whom exerted a profound influence upon his own development. (shrink)

According to one picture of the mind, decisions and actions are largely the result of automatic cognitive processing beyond our ability to control. This picture is in tension with a foundational principle in ethics that moral responsibility for behavior requires the ability to control it. The discovery of implicit attitudes contributes to this tension. According to the ability argument against moral responsibility, if we cannot control implicit attitudes, and implicit attitudes cause behavior, then we cannot be morally responsible for that (...) behavior. The purpose of this paper is to refute the ability argument. Drawing on both scientific evidence in cognitive science and philosophical arguments in ethics and action theory, I argue that it is invalid and unsound because current evidence is insufficient to establish the premises that implicit attitudes are uncontrollable, that they significantly cause behavior, that responsibility always requires ability, and that even if uncontrollable attitudes did fully cause behavior, this entails that the behavior they cause is uncontrollable. The rejection of the ability argument questions the priority of the unconscious over the conscious mind in cognitive science, deprioritizes ability in theories of moral responsibility in ethics, and provides a strong reason to uphold moral responsibility for implicitly biased behavior. (shrink)

Reviews the scope, nature, and applications of the philosophical discipline, focusing on methods for distinguishing between valid and fallacious arguments and inferences.

If moral responsibilities prescribe how agents ought to behave, are there also intellectual responsibilities prescribing what agents ought to believe? Many theorists have argued that there cannot be intellectual responsibilities because they would require the ability to control whether one believes, whereas it is impossible to control whether one believes. This argument appeals to an “ought implies can” principle for intellectual responsibilities. The present paper tests for the presence of intellectual responsibilities in social cognition. Four experiments show that intellectual responsibilities (...) are attributed to believe things and that these responsibilities can exceed what agents are able to believe. Furthermore, the results show that agents are sometimes considered responsible for failing to form true beliefs on the basis of good evidence, and that this effect does not depend on the seriousness of the consequences for failing to form a belief. These findings clarify when and how responsibilities for belief are attributed, falsify a conceptual entailment between ability and responsibility in the intellectual domain, and emphasize the importance of objective truth in intellectual evaluations. (shrink)

We distinguish between two categories of belief—thin belief and thick belief—and provide evidence that they approximate genuinely distinct categories within folk psychology. We use the distinction to make informative predictions about how laypeople view the relationship between knowledge and belief. More specifically, we show that if the distinction is genuine, then we can make sense of otherwise extremely puzzling recent experimental findings on the entailment thesis (i.e. the widely held philosophical thesis that knowledge entails belief). We also suggest that the (...) distinction can be applied to debates in the philosophy of mind and metaethics. (shrink)

According to a prominent claim in recent epistemology, people are less likely to ascribe knowledge to a high stakes subject for whom the practical consequences of error are severe, than to a low stakes subject for whom the practical consequences of error are slight. We offer an opinionated "state of the art" on experimental research about the role of stakes in knowledge judgments. We draw on a first wave of empirical studies--due to Feltz & Zarpentine (2010), May et al (2010), (...) and Buckwalter (2010)--which cast doubt on folk stakes sensitivity, and a second wave of empirical studies--due to Pinillos (2012) and Sripada & Stanley (2012)--said to vindicate it, as well as new studies of our own. We conclude that the balance of evidence to date best supports Folk stakes insensitivity, or that all else equal, stakes do not affect knowledge ascription. (shrink)

The ethical question is whether university mask mandates should be relaxed. I argue that the use of face masks by healthy individuals has uncertain benefits, which potential harms may outweigh, and should therefore be voluntary. Systematic reviews by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections concluded that the use of face masks by healthy individuals in the community lacks effectiveness in reducing viral transmission based on moderate-quality evidence. The only two randomized controlled trials of face masks published (...) during the pandemic found little to no benefit. Without high-quality evidence, it is difficult to justify a requirement rather than a recommendation. Notwithstanding, one might argue that the precautionary principle justifies mask mandates. If the precautionary principle can justify implementing mask mandates due to the risk of forgoing possible benefit, then it might also be able to justify not implementing mask mandates due to the risk of potential harm caused by the intervention. It is commonly thought that there is little to lose from the use of face masks, but this is not necessarily true. It is possible that masks have done more harm than good. (shrink)

Neste artigo, traremos a distinção entre vontade própria e liberdade, para designar como a relação do homem não é a de domínio com as coisas, tampouco de si mesmo, e sim um desprendimento que une a alma com a dimensão plena e livre de Deus em si mesmo. As noções de sujeição e obediência se mostram aí em sentido ontológico, nas quais o homem mantém uma ligação de dependência no ser com o transbordamento de tal dimensão maior. Ao se retirar (...) da posição de apego consigo próprio e com um entendimento de ser enquanto materialidade definitiva, o homem muda a relação com o mundo e passa a ver e a ter Deus em todas as coisas, na sua soltura e desprendimento de categorização e pré-determinação. (shrink)

As substâncias imateriais não são compostas de matéria sensível, não partem dos entes; são diretamente inteligíveis. O conhecimento assim precisa de outra via para apreendê-las. Tomás, ainda no artigo 7 da questão 84, parece ver esta via a partir do pensador Dionísio Areopagita que, ao cogitar nomes para Deus, em seu tratado Nomes Divinos, enumerou quais as possibilidades de conhecimento para o intelecto humano ante a substância primeira. São três: o conhecimento por causa, por via de eminência, ultrapassamento ou por (...) negação ou remoção. Em Dionísio, conhecer negativamente Deus significa dizer que tudo o que se pode afirmar a respeito de sua natureza é aquilo que Ele não é. Tomás amplia o princípio para as substâncias imateriais em geral e há a possibilidade de se transpor o modo teológico do Areopagita para um modo gnosiológico, em que as substâncias imateriais, entendendo-as como toda aquela imune a qualquer mudança e movimento da matéria, assumem um possível caráter apofático e ainda assim possam ser afirmadas enquanto noções do entendimento. (shrink)

Resumo: Analisaremos o conceito foucaultiano de governamentalidade e os seus impactos sobre a memória. Veremos como aquilo que Foucault chama de governo contém em si uma forma específica de conduzir os sujeitos ao exame das próprias consciências, direcionando-as para um objetivo pré-estabelecido. Trataremos de explicitar a articulação entre memória e reflexão a fim de verificarmos como o sujeito que examina a sua própria consciência é um sujeito que reflete, essa reflexão, no entanto, quando influenciada pelo governo, se torna aquilo que (...) chamaremos de flexão. Em seguida, veremos como a flexão é um modo particular de memória da sociedade competitiva, uma memória que contém em seu íntimo a competitividade. Por fim, indicaremos os impactos da flexão na memória e, por conseguinte, na educação. Palavras-chave: Governamentalidade; Memória; Reflexão; Flexão; Consciência. Governmentality and memory: when reflection becomes flexion Abstract: We will analyze the foucauldian concept of governmentality and its impacts on memory. We will see how what Foucault calls government contains in itself a specific way of leading subjects to examine their own consciences, directing them to a pre-established objective. We will try to explain the articulation between memory and reflection in order to verify how the subject who examines his own conscience is a subject who reflects, this reflection, however, when influenced by the government, becomes what we will call flexion. Next, we will see how flexion is a particular mode of memory of the competitive society, a memory that contains competitiveness in its heart. Finally, we will indicate the impacts of flexion on memory and, therefore, on education. Key-words: Governamentality; Memory; Reflection; Flexion; Consciousness. Gubernamentalidad y memoria: cuando la reflexión se convierte en flexión Resumen: Analizaremos el concepto foucaultiano de gubernamentalidad y sus impactos en la memoria. Veremos cómo lo que Foucault llama gobierno contiene en sí mismo una forma específica de llevar a los sujetos a examinar sus propias conciencias, orientándolos hacia un objetivo preestablecido. Intentaremos explicar la articulación entre memoria y reflexión para verificar cómo el sujeto que examina su propia conciencia es un sujeto que reflexiona, esta reflexión, sin embargo, al ser influida por el gobierno, se convierte en lo que llamaremos flexión. A continuación, veremos cómo la flexión es un modo particular de memoria de la sociedad competitiva, una memoria que contiene la competitividad en su seno. Finalmente, indicaremos los impactos de la flexión sobre la memoria y, por tanto, sobre la educación. Palabras clave: Gubernamentalidad; Memoria; Reflexión; Flexión; Conciencia. Data de registro: 05/05/2022 Data de aceite: 26/10/2022. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSilencing is a practice that disrupts linguistic and communicative acts, but its relationship to knowledge and justice is not fully understood. Prior models of epistemic injustice tend to c...

We report two experiments exploring the perception of how contemporary philosophy is often conducted. We find that (1) participants associate philosophy with the practice of conducting thought experiments and collating intuitions about them, and (2) that this form of inquiry is viewed much less favourably than the typical form of inquiry in psychology: research conducted by teams using controlled experiments and observation. We also found (3) an effect whereby relying on intuition is viewed more favorably in the context of team (...) inquiry than in individual inquiry and (4) that greater prior exposure to philosophy lowered one’s opinion of inquiry driven by intuitions and thought experiments. Finally with respect to participant gender, we found that (5) women favored observation over intuition more than men did, and (6) tended to view a question pursued by a research team as more important than men viewed it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Central to the United Nations Framework setting out the human rights responsibilities of corporations proposed by John Ruggie is the principle that corporations have a responsibility to respect human rights in their operations whether or not doing so is required by law and whether or not human rights laws are actively enforced. Ruggie proposes that corporations should respect this principle in their strategic management and day-to-day operations for reasons of corporate (enlightened) self-interest. This paper identifies this as a serious weakness (...) and argues that identifying the responsibility to respect human rights as an explicitly ethical obligation to be respected for that reason would provide a much stronger justificatory foundation for respecting the principle seen from a corporate perspective, given that corporations are accountable to their shareholders for their deployment of the firm’s financial resources. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualism is the theory that “knows” is a context sensitive expression. As a linguistic theory, epistemic contextualism is motivated by claims about the linguistic behavior of competent speakers. This chapter reviews evidence in experimental cognitive science for epistemic contextualism in linguistic behavior. This research demonstrates that although some observations that are consistent with epistemic contextualism can be confirmed in linguistic practices, these observations are also equally well explained both by psychological features that do not provide support for contextualism and (...) by rival theories that are inconsistent with contextualism. I conclude that the motivation for epistemic contextualism is underdetermined by existing experimental evidence, yielding little reason to accept it as an account of our actual linguistic practices. (shrink)

Intelligent design advocate William Dembski has introduced a measure of information called “complex specified information”, or CSI. He claims that CSI is a reliable marker of design by intelligent agents. He puts forth a “Law of Conservation of Information” which states that chance and natural laws are incapable of generating CSI. In particular, CSI cannot be generated by evolutionary computation. Dembski asserts that CSI is present in intelligent causes and in the flagellum of Escherichia coli, and concludes that neither have (...) natural explanations. In this paper, we examine Dembski’s claims, point out significant errors in his reasoning, and conclude that there is no reason to accept his assertions. (shrink)

Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens have recently articulated the Idea Idea, the thesis that “in conceptual art, there is no physical medium: the medium is the idea.” But what is an idea, and in the case of works such as Duchamp's Fountain, how does the idea relate to the urinal? In answering these questions, it becomes apparent that the Idea Idea should be rejected. After showing this, I offer a new ontology of conceptual art, according to which such artworks are (...) not ideas but artifacts imbued with ideas. After defending this view from objections, I briefly discuss some implications it has for the ontology of art in general. (shrink)

We give a new Esakia-style duality for the category of Sugihara monoids based on the Davey-Werner natural duality for lattices with involution, and use this duality to greatly simplify a construction due to Galatos-Raftery of Sugihara monoids from certain enrichments of their negative cones. Our method of obtaining this simplification is to transport the functors of the Galatos-Raftery construction across our duality, obtaining a vastly more transparent presentation on duals. Because our duality extends Dunn's relational semantics for the logic R-mingle (...) to a categorical equivalence, this also explains the Dunn semantics and its relationship with the more usual Routley-Meyer semantics for relevant logics. (shrink)

This essay has its origin in a project on the globalization of science that rediscovered the wisdom of past research practices through the technology of the future. The main argument of this essay is that a convergence of digital video technologies with practices of social surveillance portends a methodological shift towards a new variety of qualitative methodology. Digital video is changing the way that students of the social world practice their craft, offering not just new ways of presenting but new (...) ways of practicing field research. We introduce concepts of the fluid wall and videoactive context to emphasize that the camera is an actor in the research process, and both behaviour and observation occur in both directions--in front of and behind the camera. While these practices and procedures are novel in some ways, they may also be viewed as old methods in the context of new instruments for recording as well as a new social understanding of these instruments. Since new technologies interact with the social context, the digital video methods we discuss in this essay are likely to become increasingly important for generations to come. We provide an overview of the use of digital video in research practice and present an account of the use of digital video methodology in Chile. (shrink)

Stephen Davies’s Adornment lays an admirable foundation upon which much fruitful philosophical discussion about the topic of adornment can—and likely, will—be b.

Epistemic closure has been a central issue in epistemology over the last forty years. According to versions of the relevant alternatives and subjunctivist theories of knowledge, epistemic closure can fail: an agent who knows some propositions can fail to know a logical consequence of those propositions, even if the agent explicitly believes the consequence (having “competently deduced” it from the known propositions). In this sense, the claim that epistemic closure can fail must be distinguished from the fact that agents do (...) not always believe, let alone know, the consequences of what they know—a fact that raises the “problem of logical omniscience” that has been central in epistemic logic. This paper, part I of II, is a study of epistemic closure from the perspective of epistemic logic. First, I introduce models for epistemic logic, based on Lewis’s models for counterfactuals, that correspond closely to the pictures of the relevant alternatives and subjunctivist theories of knowledge in epistemology. Second, I give an exact characterization of the closure properties of knowledge according to these theories, as formalized. Finally, I consider the relation between closure and higher-order knowledge. The philosophical repercussions of these results and results from part II, which prompt a reassessment of the issue of closure in epistemology, are discussed further in companion papers. As a contribution to modal logic, this paper demonstrates an alternative approach to proving modal completeness theorems, without the standard canonical model construction. By “modal decomposition” I obtain completeness and other results for two non-normal modal logics with respect to new semantics. One of these logics, dubbed the logic of ranked relevant alternatives, appears not to have been previously identified in the modal logic literature. More broadly, the paper presents epistemology as a rich area for logical study. (shrink)

DIE BESTIMMUNG DER PHILOSOPH IE 1M DEUTSCHEN I. IDEALISMUS I 2. VERNUNFT UND SPRACHE 2I VERNUNFT UND LEBENSWELT 3· 45 LEBENSWELT UND LEBENSWELTEN 63 4· DIE BESTIMMUNG DES ANDERSANFANGLICHEN 5· DENKENS 8 7 6. DIE WELT 1M ANDEREN ANFANG - DIE ROLLE DES DICHTERS UND DAS "DICHTERISCHE WOHNEN" 8 9 VORWORT In der heutigen Zeit, in der auf vielen Gebieten die iiberkommenen Gedanken ihre Geltung und Wirkungskraft verloren haben, liegt vielleicht die Aufgabe der Philo sophie darin, bewahrend auf die iiberlieferten (...) Prinzipien und die in ihnen liegenden Bestim­ mungen und Grundprobleme zuriickzuschauen und dabei zu­ gleich zu beachten, was in ihnen "iibergangig" auf Neues hin­ weist, um so fiir aIle Versuche eines "anderen Anfangs" kritisch offen zu sein. Ein Philosophieren, das sich dergestalt " zwischen" Tradition und anderem Anfang bewegt, hat sein Dilemma durch­ schaut: Es bleibt auf der Suche nach dem Wahren, obwohl es keinen giiltigen Wahrheitsbegriff hat. Ein allein aus transzen­ dentaler Subjektivitat begriindeter Wahrheitsbegriff iiberzeugt es nicht mehr, und Wahrheit, wie sie dem erfahrenden Ver­ stehen "geschieht," ist in ihrem Wesen noch nicht zureichend bestimmt worden. Hat sich das Philosophieren so erkannt, wird es sich nicht einseitig auf die eine oder die andere Position fest­ legen; vielmehr wird es seine Aufgabe gerade darin sehen, den Gedanken in Bewegung zu halten. Diese Auffassung eines heutigen Philosophierens soIl die hier vor­ gelegte Sammlung von Aufsatzen bezeugen. (shrink)