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This paper examines recent attempts to defend Rule-Consequentialism against a traditional objection. That objection takes the form of a dilemma, that either Rule-Consequentialism collapses into Act-Consequentialism or it is incoherent. Attempts to avoid this dilemma based on the idea that using RC has better results than using AC are rejected on the grounds that they conflate the ideas of a criterion of rightness and a decision procedure. Other strategies, Brad Hooker‘s prominent amongst them, involving the thought that RC need contain no overarching concern to maximize the good are acknowledged to avoid the original dilemma, but lead to further problems of motivating and justifying RC in the absence of such a concern. The paper argues that Hooker‘s attempt to deal with these problems by using a ‘Reflective Equilibrium plus‘ method is unsuccessful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the space of possible worlds, there might be a best possible world (a uniquely best world or a world tied for best with some other worlds). Or, instead, for every possible world, there might be a better possible world. Suppose that the latter is true, i.e., that there is no best world. Many have thought that there is then an argument against the existence of God, i.e., the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being; we will call such arguments no-best-world arguments. In this paper, we discuss ability-based objections to such arguments; an ability-based objection to a no-best world argument claims that the argument fails because one or more of its premises conflict with a plausible principle connecting the applicability of some type of moral evaluation to the agent's possession of a relevant ability. In particular, we formulate and evaluate an important new ability-based objection to the most promising no-best world argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predictivism asserts that novel confirmations carry special probative weight. Epistemic pluralism asserts that the judgments of agents (about, e.g., the probabilities of theories) carry epistemic import. In this paper, I propose a new theory of predictivism that is tailored to pluralistic evaluators of theories. I replace the orthodox notion of use-novelty with a notion of endorsement-novelty, and argue that the intuition that predictivism is true has two roots. I provide a detailed Bayesian rendering of this theory and argue that pluralistic theory evaluation pervades scientific practice. I compare my account of predictivism with those of Maher and Worrall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers and analysis of Ernest Sosa's Virtue Perspectivism. Although Sosa has been credited with fathering the influential contemporary movement known as Virtue Epistemology, I argue that Sosa imprudently abandons the reliabilist-based insights of Virtue Epistemology in favor of a reflection-based, ``perspectival'' view. Sosa's mixed allegiance to reliabilist-based and reflection-based views of knowledge, in fact, leads to an unwelcome tension in his thought which can be relieved by recognizing that his reflection-based view is in fact an account of the cognitive state of understanding, rather than an account of knowledge. Sosa makes matters difficult for himself because he expects too much, as it were, from the concept of knowledge, and in the process burdens his view with elements of reflection it does not require. To solve the problem, I suggest that Sosa needs to develop a two-tiered epistemology which recognizes that knowledge, on the one hand, and understanding, on the other, both have necessary and sufficient conditions unique to themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on referential uses and speaker meaning. Speech-act theorists' objection to Donnellan's distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions; Strategy of Searle.

Stephen Grimm finds me inclined to bifurcate epistemic assessment into higher and lower orders while showing awareness of this only in recent writings. Two untoward consequences allegedly follow: (a) my rejection of Virtue Reliabilism, and (b) my knowledge-based account of the value attaching to our knowledge on the higher level. By contrast, Grimm considers Virtue Reliabilism a perfectly adequate account of knowledge, while the higher epistemic state he believes to be, rather, understanding, which he takes to be quite distinct from knowledge. Once knowledge and understanding are seen to be distinct, finally, this will help us to avoid the two untoward consequences. I am grateful for these interesting points, and would like to respond briefly in what follows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a philosophy of the humanities by reading C.P. Snow's famous thesis of "the two cultures" through the early work of Alfred North Whitehead. I argue that, whereas Snow refers to Whitehead's Science and the Modern World, he ultimately paves the way for a reductive interpretation of humanities scholarship, which is a move that can be repaired by delving into Snow's own reference to Whitehead following a diffractive reading methodology. This way of reading was first formulated in the context of feminist epistemology (but can be found elsewhere and under different names) in an attempt to generate constructively conceptual rather than closed hermeneutical readings of theoretical texts by making the reading dynamic and open-ended (in Karen Barad's terms: reading their insights "through" one another). As such, reading diffractively shies away from relying on classification and is playful with the past, present, and future of the humanities. The article argues that the diffraction of Snow and Whitehead hinges on theories of "beauty" and will demonstrate (with Whitehead) that humanities scholarship originates in a total environment in which works of art--as the subject matter of humanities research--stand out and preserve themselves as "enduring objects". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson’s influential article “Knowing How” argues that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that. One objection to their view is that knowledge-how is significantly different than knowledge-that because Gettier cases afflict the latter but not the former. Stanley and Williamson argue that this objection fails. Their response, however, is not adequate. Moreover, I sketch a plausible argument that knowledge-how is not susceptible to Gettier cases. This suggests a significant distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies problems with regard to providing criteria that regulate the matching of logical formulae and natural language. We then take on to solve these problems by defining a necessary and sufficient criterion of adequate formalization. On the basis of this criterion we argue that logic should not be seen as an ars iudicandi capable of evaluating the validity or invalidity of informal arguments, but as an ars explicandi that renders transparent the formal structure of informal reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss Soames’s proposal that Moore could have avoided a central problem in his moral philosophy if he had utilized a method he himself pioneered in epistemology. The problem in Moore’s moral philosophy concerns what it is for a moral claim to be self-evident. The method in Moore’s epistemology concerns not denying the obvious. In review of the distance between something’s being self-evident and its being obvious, it is suggested that Soames’s proposal is mistaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first three sections, I argue that Hobbes has a distinctive conception of philosophy, the highest value of which is not truth, but human benefit; and that his philosophical utterances are constrained by this value (both insofar as they are philosophical in particular, and insofar as they are public utterances of any kind). I address an evidentiary problem for this view in the penultimate section, and then turn to the question of how such a conception of philosophy requires different interpretations of particular philosophical positions. The whole is intended as a case study of the need for an interpreter to understand how the interpreted philosopher conceives of the nature and aim of his undertaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a case in which testimony generates knowledge that the source lacks. Examples offered in Lackey (1999) and Graham (2000); Generation of knowledge through testimony which itself is unreliable, insensitive, and unsafe; Examination of how testimony that is unreliable can nevertheless succeed in being trustworthy; Argument that trustworthiness is that property of testimony, the possession of which renders the testimony worthy of being trusted.

A striking feature of the traditional armchair method of philosophy is the use of imaginary examples: for instance, of Gettier cases as counterexamples to the justified true belief analysis of knowledge. The use of such examples is often thought to involve some sort ofa priorirational intuition, which crude rationalists regard as a virtue and crude empiricists as a vice. It is argued here that, on the contrary, what is involved is simply an application of our general cognitive capacity to handle counterfactual conditionals, which is not exclusivelya prioriand is not usefully conceived as a form of rational intuition. It is explained how questions of metaphysical possibility and necessity are equivalent to questions about counterfactuals, and the epistemology of the former (in particular, the role of conceiving or imagining) is a special case of the epistemology of the latter. A non-imaginary Gettier case is presented in order to show how little difference it makes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to T.M. Scanlon's buck-passing account of value, to be valuable is not to possess intrinsic value as a simple and unanalysable property, but rather to have other properties that provide reasons to take up an attitude in favour of their owner or against it. The 'wrong kind of reasons' objection to this view is that we may have reasons to respond for or against something without this having any bearing on its value. The challenge is to explain why such reasons are of the wrong kind. This is what I set out to do, after illustrating the objection more thoroughly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the epistemic privileges of introspective knowledge, and the frailties of perceptual knowledge. Disagreements over the precise nature and extent of first-person authority; Distinction between introspective and perceptual knowledge; Examination of the privileges that McKinney attributes to first-person introspective knowledge.

Argues for the possibility of inverted first-person authority. Nature and extent of first-person authority; Contrast between the two types of knowledge, first-person introspective knowledge and perceptual knowledge; States of the brain; Examination of whether mental states could be known by means of something analogous to perception; Argument that the inverted first-person authority has an obvious bearing upon skepticism.

Discusses the conceptual role of the first person and the reference of the first person. Example of the kind of transition that constitutes the conceptual role of the first person; Distinction between a relational use of the spatial prepositions and a monadic use; Discussion on how the first person relate to egocentric space; Conditions under which a first-person judgment is verified; Primitive transitions between spatial vision and spatial action.

Since virtually every mathematical theory can be interpreted in set theory, the latter is a foundation for mathematics. Whether set theory, as opposed to any of its rivals, is the right foundation for mathematics depends on what a foundation is for. One purpose is philosophical, to provide the metaphysical basis for mathematics. Another is epistemic, to provide the basis of all mathematical knowledge. Another is to serve mathematics, by lending insight into the various fields. Another is to provide an arena for exploring relations and interactions between mathematical fields, their relative strengths, etc. Given the different goals, there is little point to determining a single foundation for all of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost every contemporary theory of knowledge is a version of fallibilism, yet an adequate statement of fallibilism has not yet been provided. Standard definitions cannot account for fallibilistic knowledge of necessary truths. I consider and reject several attempts to resolve this difficulty before arguing that a belief is an instance of fallibilistic knowledge when it could have failed to be knowledge. This is a fully general account of fallibilism that applies to knowledge of necessary truths. Moreover, it reveals, not only the connection between fallibility and error, but the connection between fallibility and accidental truth as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article states that the Knower paradox exposes the circularity of the conceptualization of knowledge. The article provides an explanation of the Knower paradox for the purpose of demonstrating how the paradox arises. A modification to the concept of knowledge is presented to solve the paradox and structure knowledge.

This article presents information related to the rhetorical situation in philosophy. The rhetorical situation has been visited and revisited since Lloyd F. Bitzer's statement in the first issue of "Philosophy and Rhetoric," in 1968. With each succession, the construct has grown and changed. The rhetorical audience consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change. The constraints of a rhetorical situation are made up of persons, events, objects, and relations that have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence. They derive from beliefs, attitudes, documents, facts, traditions, images, interests, motives and the like. The three constituents, comprise everything relevant in a rhetorical situation. When a rhetor enters the situation and creates discourse, the rhetor and the resulting text become additional constituents. A fitting response for a political campaign, for example, would not be fitting for a presidential inauguration. There are times, says Bitzer, when a rhetor misreads the prescription for fit, at which time, one presumes, the rhetoric does not achieve the ends dictated by the exigence.

Focuses on Donald Davidson's interpretation and understanding of philosophy. Explanation of linguistic understanding; Notion of theorizing.

Discusses the limits of relativism. Consequences of relativism; Description of the effective philosophical criticisms of relativism; Description of the feature of relativism which offered an illustration of P.F. Strawson's general criticism of philosophical sceptic.

The notion of common knowledge is of interest because it raises problems about the complexity of the cognitive states which one can sensibly attribute to finite self-conscious creatures when they confront one another. Common knowledge is of interest also because we need to invoke it in explaining the rationality of certain actions, namely those co-operative enterprises of which many conventional social practices, including language, seem to be examples. In what follows nothing hangs on the use of the word knowledge in the phrase common knowledge. The account one seeks is to be of a structure which can accommodate the mediaeval "common knowledge" that the Sun circles the Earth. What is primarily at issue is the nature of the propositions people can entertain, the routes of perception and inference by which they might come to have confidence in those propositions and the manner in which theft beliefs contribute to justifying their actions.

This article focuses on philosopher George Berkeley's theory of abstract ideas. In this article, the author shows that the essentials of abstraction are contained in Berkeley's own account of general ideas, and that Berkeley mistakenly thought that he was attacking abstraction as such, when he was at most attacking one version of it. Further, there is no reason to believe that the version which he was attacking was any snore central to philosopher John Locke's actual thought than the version which Berkeley himself accepted. In order to substantiate these claims it will be necessary to look again at Locke's account of abstraction and Berkeley's attack on the doctrine.

Demonstrates that Ockham was concerned, except during a very brief period, categorically to reject the Lockean view that a universal is a quality of the mind distinct from the mental act. Objective being of Ockham's fictum theory; Analysis of pertinent topics and relevant issues; Implications on philosophical studies.

Questions the philosophical notions of justification through the examination of the apposite features of the ordinary concept of justification. Difference between the justifications given by philosophers and the justification in everyday life; Relevance of moral philosophy in connection with justification; Things that need justification.

Provides information on the definition of 21st-century philosopher C.S. Peirce's thought on philosophy. Reasons for the near abdication of the question of philosophical responsibility by 20th century philosophy; Overview of the question of philosophical responsibility; Factors to be considered in the definition of philosophy; Implication of the definition of philosophy as a clarification of basic issues.

Deals with Peirce's anti-sceptical argument on the realism-scepticism debate in general philosophy. Discussion on the forms of empiricism; Key problem of empiricism; Peircean response to the realist-empiricist debate.

Comments on the state of analytic philosophy in France in 2000. Key issues of interest; Analysis of pertinent topics and relevant issues; Implications on philosophical studies.