Search

Within the contemporary epistemology of testimony, it is widely assumed that testimonial scepticism can be dismissed without engaging with possible reasons or arguments supporting the view. This assumption of dismissibility both underlies the debate between reductionist and non-reductionist views of testimony and is responsible for the neglect of testimonial scepticism within contemporary epistemology. This paper argues that even given liberal assumptions about what may constitute valid grounds for the dismissal of a sceptical view, the assumption that testimonial scepticism is dismissible should be rejected. For even if familiar sceptical positions and scepticism about testimonial justification can be dismissed on such grounds, scepticism about testimonial knowledge cannot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our awareness of the boundedness of the spatial sensory field—a paradigmatic structural feature of visual experience—possesses a distinctive epistemic role. Properly understood, this result undermines a widely assumed picture of how visual experience permits us to learn about the world. This paper defends an alternative picture in which visual experience provides at least two kinds of non-inferential justification for beliefs about the external world. Accommodating this justification in turn requires recognising a new way for visual experience to encode information about the world. Reflection upon the epistemic contribution of sensory experience's structural features thus forces us to revise our understanding of how perception, cognition, and the world fit together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents replies to critics that reviewed her book "Fallibilism: Evidence and Knowledge." Topics discussed include the possible avoidance of scepticism by an infallibilist through sufficiency of knowledge for self-support (SKSS), the evidentialist view on the justification to believe one's evidence, and the arguments raised about the alleged epistemic link of testimony to facts.

The article by Ines M. Breinbauer deals with the places of problematizing the use of reason in Jörg Ruhloff's work. Ruhloff was an important figure in scientific pedagogy, whose work may not be known to many young colleagues. The article examines the characteristic places of problematizing the use of reason and raises the question of the usefulness of such a topic. It also discusses whether a "topology" or a "topography" of argumentation is more appropriate. The text also deals with the transcendental-critical skeptical approach in educational and pedagogical philosophy, especially in the works of Wolfgang Fischer and Jörg Ruhloff. It emphasizes that pedagogical knowledge and practices should be critically examined to question hidden or openly proclaimed claims of ultimate justification. The text also discusses the use of transcendental-critical and skeptical thinking in pedagogy and emphasizes the importance of conflict and plurality in pedagogy. Jörg Ruhloff's contribution deals with the problematic use of reason in antiquity and the Renaissance. Ruhloff shows that conflict is a historical constant and that there is a dividing line between educational research and considerations of educational authority. The text also describes various contributions of the pedagogue Jörg Ruhloff to various educational topics and honors him as a role model in problematizing the use of reason. The given list contains a collection of publications by the author Jörg Ruhloff on various topics in educational and pedagogical philosophy. [Extracted from the article]

In this regard, 'Sri Har a criticizes the Nyaya, in what Mills suggests to be yet another expression of skepticism about philosophy - this time, of the mystical sort. Ethan Mills, Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India: Nagarjuna, Jayara'si, and 'Sri Har a. Ethan Mills, Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India: Nagarjuna, Jayara'si, and 'Sri Har a. [Extracted from the article]

Public justification in political liberalism is often conceptualized in light of Rawls's view of its role in a hypothetical well-ordered society as an ideal or idealizing form of justification that applies a putatively reasonable conception of political justice to political matters. But Rawls implicates a different idea of public justification in his doctrine of general reflective equilibrium. The paper engages this second, more fundamental idea. Public justification in this second sense is actualist and fundamental (rather than ideal or idealizing and conception-applying). It is actualist in that it fully enfranchises actual reasonable citizens. It is fundamental in that political liberalism qualifies conceptions of political justice as reasonable to begin with only if they can be accepted coherently by actual reasonable citizens. Together, these features invite the long-standing concern that actualist political liberalism is objectionably exclusionary. I argue that the exclusion objection, while plausible, is more problematic in own right than it seems if actualist and fundamental public justification hypotheticalizes and discursive respect is compatible with substantive discursive inequality. This leaves proponents and critics of political liberalism with deeper questions about the nature of permissible discursive inequality in public justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A promising response to the threat of external world skepticism involves arguing that our commonsense view of the world best explains the sensory experiences that we have. Since our commonsense view of the world best explains our evidence, we are justified in accepting this commonsense view of the world. Despite the plausibility of this Explanationist Response, it has recently come under attack. James Beebe has argued that only a version of the Explanationist Response that provides an a priori justification of inference to the best explanation can hope to respond to two serious objections. Additionally, he has argued that providing such an a priori justification requires an acceptable account of a priori probability and that it is unclear whether such an account can be developed. In this paper I argue that Beebe fails to provide adequate support for either of these claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to challenge the reliabilist interpretation of William Ockham (ca. 1287-1347)'s epistemology. The discussion proceeds as follows. First, I analyse the reliabilist interpretation into two theses: (1) a negative thesis I call the Anti-Internalism Thesis, according to which, for Ockham, epistemic justification does not depend on any internal factors that are accessible by reflection; (2) a positive thesis I call the Reliability Thesis, according to which epistemic justification in Ockham depends on the reliability of a causal process through which a given judgment is produced. Secondly, I argue that the Anti-Internalism Thesis fails since Ockham's notion of evidentness (evidentia), which is at the heart of his theory of justification, strongly suggests that he posits an indispensable, internalist element of justification. Lastly, I argue that the Reliability Thesis also fails since not only can there be a reliable but inevident judgment in Ockham's framework, his emphasis on causality is best read not as talk of reliability, but as his emphasis on the relation between reason (or evidence) and what is based on reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the JUSTIFIED FAIR COINS principle, if I know that a coin is fair, and I lack justification for believing that it won’t be flipped, then I lack justification for believing that it won’t land tails. What this principle says, in effect, is that the only way to have justification for believing that a fair coin won’t land tails, is by having justification for believing that it won’t be flipped at all. Although this seems a plausible and innocuous principle, in a recent paper Dorr, Goodman and Hawthorne use it in devising an intriguing puzzle which places all justified beliefs about the future in jeopardy. They point out, further, that one very widespread theory of justification predicts that JUSTIFIED FAIR COINS is false, giving us additional reason to reject it. In this paper, I will attempt to turn this dialectic around. I will argue that JUSTIFIED FAIR COINS does not inevitably lead to scepticism about the future, and the fact that it is incompatible with a widespread theory of justification may give us reason to doubt the theory. I will outline an alternative theory of justification that predicts both that JUSTIFIED FAIR COINS is true and that we have justification for believing much about the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore the extent to which the dialectical approach of Śrīharṣa can be identified as skeptical, and whether or how his approach resembles that of the first century Mādhyamika philosopher Nāgārjuna. In so doing, I will be primarily reading the first argument found in Śrīharṣa's masterpiece, the Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍa-khādya (KhKh). This argument grounds the position that the system of justification ( pramāṇa) that validates our cognition to be true is not outside of inquiry. Closely adopting Śrīharṣa's polemical style, I am neither proposing a thesis in this paper that Śrīharṣa is a skeptic, nor am I denying such a possibility. I believe we can pursue our arguments on a neutral ground and let the facts speak for themselves. I will outline salient features that define skepticism in the mainstream philosophical discourse so that analyzing Śrīharṣa's first argument becomes easier. In so doing, I will introduce some of the arguments of Nāgārjuna in light of Śrīharṣa's position. This comparison, however, is restricted only to the salient features relevant to further the central argument of this paper and is therefore not aimed to encompass the overall positions of these two giants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present article is to show that the key to understanding the philosophical meaning of the Two Modes of Scepticism is directly linked to the metaepistemic function performed by the criterion of truth (kriterion tes aletheias) in the Hellenistic theories of knowledge. Since the criterion can also be regarded as an epistemic instrument through which it is possible to immediately identify the foundational elements upon which our knowledge of the world is based, the Two Modes show the problems that arise when we try to incontrovertibly identify a set of special and foundational elements that have no need of further justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational agents have (more or less) consistent beliefs. Bayesianism is a theory of consistency for partial belief states. Rational agents also respond appropriately to experience. Dogmatism is a theory of how to respond appropriately to experience. Hence, Dogmatism and Bayesianism are theories of two very different aspects of rationality. It's surprising, then, that in recent years it has become common to claim that Dogmatism and Bayesianism are jointly inconsistent: how can two independently consistent theories with distinct subject matter be jointly inconsistent? In this essay I argue that Bayesianism and Dogmatism are inconsistent only with the addition of a specific hypothesis about how the appropriate responses to perceptual experience are to be incorporated into the formal models of the Bayesian. That hypothesis isn't essential either to Bayesianism or to Dogmatism, and so Bayesianism and Dogmatism are jointly consistent. That leaves the matter of how experiences and credences are related, and so in the remainder of the essay I offer an alternative account of how perceptual justification, as the Dogmatist understands it, can be incorporated into the Bayesian formalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz understands skepticism as the thesis that there is no criterion of truth and that the justification of any thesis is impossible. According to Ajdukiewicz, a typical skeptic confuses two levels of justification: the first order justification of a proposition s and the second order justification of the proposition that s is justified. However, the first-order justification is possible without second-order justification. This argument presented by Ajdukiewicz in 1923 heralded the epistemic externalism concerning justification developed by Alvin Goldman in 1980 and the externalist response to skepticism developed by F. Dretske and M. Williams. They all suggested weakening the traditional concept of justification and concluded that if we accept the possibility of justification without self-justification, the skeptical regress is blocked. However, such a response to skepticism is dependent on the externalist notion of justification. Ajdukiewicz had opportunity to use the stronger argument from self-refutation, but he underestimated its utility. The other side of Ajdukiewicz's relation to skepticism is his radical conventionalism that presupposes some moderate form of skepticism in a broad sense. The article is an attempt to determine what kind of skepticism Ajdukiewicz accepted and what kind he rejected. The conclusion is that Ajdukiewicz is an anti-skeptical fallibilist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about an asymmetry in the justification of praising and blaming behaviour which free will theorists should acknowledge even if they do not follow Wolf and Nelkin in holding that praise and blame have different control conditions. That is, even if praise and blame have the same control condition, we must have stronger reasons for believing that it is satisfied to treat someone as blameworthy than we require to treat someone as praiseworthy. Blaming behaviour which involves serious harm can only be justified if the claim that the target of blame acted freely cannot be reasonably doubted. But harmless praise can be justified so long as the claim that the candidate for praise did not act freely can be reasonably doubted. Anyone who thinks a debate about whether someone acted freely is truth-conducive has to acknowledge that reasonable doubt is possible in both these cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can a belief source confer justification when we lack antecedent justification for believing that it's reliable? A negative answer quickly leads to skepticism. A positive answer, however, seems to commit one to allowing pernicious reasoning known as 'epistemic bootstrapping.' Puzzles surrounding bootstrapping arise because we illicitly assume either that justification requires doxastic awareness of a source's epistemic credentials or that there is no requirement that a subject be aware of these credentials. We can resolve the puzzle by splitting the horns and requiring a non-conceptual awareness of, or direct acquaintance with, a source's legitimacy. Requiring non-conceptual as opposed to doxastic awareness halts the regress and avoids the skeptical results. On the other hand, requiring non-conceptual awareness also guarantees that we are aware of evidence for a source's reliability prior to using that source to form justified beliefs; we thereby avoid the problem of allowing epistemic bootstrapping to generate the illicit gains in justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

White advances two central claims. The first is that a version of the problem of induction involves the reliability principle. Reliability principle: If S considers whether the methods or rules she followed in concluding P are reliable, and she is not justified in believing that they are reliable, then she is not justified in believing P. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to Jim Pryor's dogmatism, when you have an experience with content p, you often have prima facie justification for believing p that doesn't rest on your independent justification for believing any proposition. Although dogmatism has an intuitive appeal and seems to have an antisceptical bite, it has been targeted by various objections. This paper principally aims to answer the objections by Roger White according to which dogmatism is inconsistent with the Bayesian account of how evidence affects our rational credences. If this were true, the rational acceptability of dogmatism would be seriously questionable. I respond that these objections don't get off the ground because they assume that our experiences and our introspective beliefs that we have experiences have the same evidential force, whereas the dogmatist is uncommitted to this assumption. I also consider the question whether dogmatism has an antisceptical bite. I suggest that the answer turns on whether or not the Bayesian can determine the priors of hypotheses and conjectures on the grounds of their extra-empirical virtues. If the Bayesian can do so, the thesis that dogmatism has an antisceptical bite is probably false. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present and discuss a counterexample to the following plausible principle: if you know that a coin is fair, and for all you know it is going to be flipped, then for all you know it will land tails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of this paper is the familiar problem of skepticism about the external world. How can you know that you are not a brain in a vat being fooled by alien scientists? And if you can't know that, how can you know anything about the external world? The paper assumes Evidentialism as a theory about justification, and then argues that you are justified in believing that you are not a brain in a vat, in virtue of the fact that your evidence supports that belief. The paper also considers a number of different objections to this proposal. The upshot is that you do know that you are a not a brain in a vat, and that you also know lots of things about the external world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Discusiones Filosóficas is the property of Universidad de Caldas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Perhaps the most popular and historically important way of responding to skepticism is by an appeal to non-inferential justification. A problem with this sort of response is that while it may constitute a response to skepticism, it does not constitute a response to the skeptic. At some point, the anti-skeptic must simply fall silent, resigned to the fact that his or her non-inferential justification for the belief challenged by the skeptic is not communicable. I want to point out a possible solution to this problem. I will argue that, in certain circumstances, it is possible to adduce circular arguments which are nevertheless rationally persuasive, and that the anti-skeptic may employ these arguments in lieu of simply falling silent when a non-inferentially justified belief is challenged. The almost universal assumption among philosophers that epistemically circular arguments are rationally useless is mistaken, and this fact can be utilized by the clever anti-skeptic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of present-day epistemology is divided between internalists and externalists. Different as these views are, they have in common that they strip justification from its dialectical component in order to block the skeptic's argument from disagreement. That is, they allow that one may have justified beliefs even if one is not able to defend it against challenges and resolve the disagreements about them. Markus Lammenranta recently argued that neither internalism nor externalism convinces if we consider the argument in its most interesting format. In this paper I zoom in on this debate, and fix further details of Lammenranta's lead. Specifically, 1 will side with skepticism that justification is dialectical, yet only if certain conditions are in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

M. Williams' analysis (1999, 2001 and 2004b) of the Prior Grounding Conception (PGC) of epistemic justification --a conception allegedly behind the Agrippan trilemma-- is reviewed and it is contrasted with the Default Challenge Conception of justification (DChC) --the alternative conception of epistemic justification championed by Williams. It is argued that the epistemic default entitlements of the DChC are a euphemism for epistemically arbitrary stipulations, it is also argued that while the PGC might lead to sceptical paradoxes, the DChC leads to a paradoxical pancriticism, and that which of these two paradoxes to prefer will be a matter of taste or temperament. Finally it is argued that the DChC is neither an adequate description of our philosophical, nor, it seems, of our ordinary epistemic practice. It is then concluded that the PGC is the superior conception, even if it might lead to a Pyrrhonian attitude towards the absolute presuppositions of science. We conclude by openly arguing in favour a type of non-epistemic dogmatism with Pyrrhonian implications (some of these dogmas could be, for example, criteria of proper evidence, criteria of rational belief, criteria of rational action, criteria for desirable goals, etc.). These consequences, however, don't have to be inimical to scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modest realism affirms that some of the objects of our beliefs exist independently of our beliefs. That is, there is a mind-independent world that we can epistemically access. The Cartesian skeptic claims that we can't offer any non-question-begging arguments in favor of modest realism and therefore we are not justified in believing that modest realism is true. Reliabilists argue that the skeptic assumes an evidentialist-internalist account of justification and that a proper account of justification jettisons this. Hence, our belief in modest realism can be justified. I argue in this paper that virtue-responsibilism offers an analogous response to the Cartesian skeptic. According to the virtue-responsibilist, my belief that P is an instance of knowledge iff it maps onto reality and is the result of an act of virtue. I show that the virtue- responsibilist theory excludes evidentialist-internalism, and allows for our belief in modest realism to be justified. However, it may be objected that the virtue-responsibilist can't offer non-question-begging reasons for thinking that the virtues are reliable. I argue that this objection fails and that we can know that the virtues are reliable by empirical study. Thus, virtue-responsibilism provides a satisfactory response to the Cartesian skeptic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regress of reasons threatens an epistemic agent's right to claim that any beliefs are justified. In response, Peter Klein's infinitism argues that an infinite series of supporting reasons of the right type not only is not vicious but can make for epistemic justification. In order to resist the sceptic, infinitism needs to provide reason to think that there is at least one justified belief in the world. Under an infinitist conception this involves showing that at least one belief is supported by an infinite series of supporting reasons. This paper argues that showing this makes problems for the infinitist. The finite minds problem that prevents completion of an infinite series is well documented. This paper examines alternative attempts to provide evidence of infinity that the infinitist might take, whether by using a notion of justification without infinite reasons or by altering the notion of evidence. It concludes that both of these fail and consequently infinitism is unable to offer a solution to Agrippa's trilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a reply to Howard Sankey I have maintained that the epistemic relativist cannot use the strategy of the (Pyrrhonian) sceptic since the relativist is at pains not to draw the sceptical solution. Sankey has objected to my argument by distinguishing between weak and strong justification: according to Sankey, the relativist using the sceptic’s strategy aims to provide an argument against the latter form of justification but still maintains that we can have the former. In this counter-response I argue that if this is really the relativist’s strategy then she cannot provide any argument against the absolutist at all. The reason is that she simply fails to address the key question in the debate about relative/absolute justification: are there any absolutely correct epistemic standards? The epistemic relativist using the sceptic’s strategy is thus trapped between the Scylla of undermining her right to maintain that there is relative justification and the Charybdis of providing no argument against absolutism at all. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper is a response to an objection that Markus Seidel has made to my analysis of epistemic relativism. Seidel argues that the epistemic relativist is unable to base a relativist account of justification on the sceptical problem of the criterion in the way that I have suggested in earlier work. In response to Seidel, I distinguish between weak and strong justification, and argue that all the relativist needs is weak justification. In addition, I explain my reasons for employing the idiom of objectivity rather than that of absolutism which Seidel prefers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

I criticize Richard Fumerton's fallibilist acquaintance theory of noninferential justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cartesian skepticism about epistemic justification ('skepticism') is the view that many of our beliefs about the external world-e.g., my current belief that I have hands-aren't justified. I examine the two most influential arguments for skepticism-the Closure Argument and the Underdetermination Argument-from an evidentialist perspective. For both arguments it's clear which premise the anti-skeptic must deny. The Closure Argument, I argue, is the better argument in that its key premise is weaker than the Underdetermination Argument's key premise. Next I examine ways of motivating each argument's key premise. I argue that attempts to motivate them which appeal to one's having the same evidence in skeptical scenarios, to skeptical hypotheses' alleged ability to explain our evidence just as well as real world hypotheses, or to the fact that if skeptical scenarios were true everything would appear just as it does all fail to provide any motivation for the premises or for skepticism. But I close by considering a different argument for the key premises and skepticism that lacks the central defect of these other arguments. Future work on skepticism should focus on this final argument at the expense of the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that most of the alleged straight solutions to the sceptical paradox which Kripke (1982) ascribed to Wittgenstein can be regarded as the first horn of a dilemma whose second horn is the paradox itself. The dilemma is proved to be a by-product of a foundationalist assumption on the notion of justification, as applied to linguistic behaviour. It is maintained that the assumption is unnecessary and that the dilemma is therefore spurious. To this end, an alternative conception of the justification of linguistic behaviour is outlined, a conception that vindicates some of the insights behind Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical solution of the paradox. This alternative conception is defended against two objections (both familiar from McDowell's works): (1) that it would imply that for the linguistic community there is no authority, no standard to meet and, therefore, no possibility of error and (2) that it would lead to a kind of idealism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses Bryan Reynolds's interpretation of Félix Guattari's article “Transversality” to establish an alternative method of studyingteatro brevein which the gypsy character type is constantly represented as an entertaining criminal who eschews hierarchical structures without necessarily subverting them. The figure is also tightly interwoven with a real-world tradition of contracting this supposedly dangerous figure for popular entertainment (as indanzas de gitanos) and thus criminal actions on stage cannot simply be interpreted as momentary comic relief or temporary carnivalesque permissiveness that are closed off by a surroundingcomediaor the presence of authority figures in the audience. To rephrase Guattari's original claim for transversality, we may say that gypsies inhabit a dimension that tries to overcome both the impasse of pure verticality and pure horizontality. The first would be a “top-down” propagandistic model that marginalizes and suppresses outlaws, and the second is the equally problematic notion that interactions between criminals, actors, and audience members were the exclusive province of a limited subculture completely detached from a greater power structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the most prominent objections to skeptical theism in recent literature is that the skeptical theist is forced to deny our competency in making judgments about the all-things-considered value of any natural event. Some skeptical theists accept that their view has this implication, but argue that it is not problematic. I think that there is reason to question the implication itself. I begin by explaining the objection to skeptical theism and the standard response to it. I then identify an assumption that is prevalent in much of the literature concerning the problem of evil, and show that it is a factor in motivating commitment to the implication I mean to question. I argue that the assumption is false, and that once it is rejected there is room to endorse the skeptical theist's strategy in responding to some arguments from evil without endorsing the putative implication that objectors find unacceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I seem to know that I won't experience spaceflight but also that if I win the lottery, then I will take a flight into space. Suppose I competently deduce from these propositions that I won't win the lottery. Competent deduction from known premises seems to yield knowledge of the deduced conclusion. So it seems that I know that I won't win the lottery; but it also seems clear that I don't know this, despite the minuscule probability of my winning (if I have a lottery ticket). So we have a puzzle. It seems to generalize, for analogues of the lottery-proposition threaten almost all ordinary knowledge attributions. For example, my apparent knowledge that my bike is parked outside seems threatened by the possibility that it's been stolen since I parked it, a proposition with a low but non-zero probability; and it seems that I don't know this proposition to be false. Familiar solutions to this family of puzzles incur unacceptable costs—either by rejecting deductive closure for knowledge, or by yielding untenable consequences for ordinary attributions of knowledge or of ignorance. After canvassing and criticizing these solutions, I offer a new solution free of these costs. Knowledge that p requires an explanatory link between the fact that p and the belief that p. This necessary but insufficient condition on knowledge distinguishes actual lottery cases from typical, apparently analogous ‘quasi-lottery’ cases. It does yield scepticism about my not winning the lottery and not experiencing spaceflight, but the scepticism doesn't generalize to quasi-lottery cases such as that involving my bike. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Skeptical positions that threaten the epistemic status of our perception-based beliefs can be classified according to three axes along which they can vary. I stress the importance of a skeptical position, which is modest because it occupies the weaker side of each of the three axes. Variance along the first and the second axes depends, respectively, on the difference between knowledge and justification and on the degree of generality of a skeptical challenge. The third axis concerns the relation between a possible Moorean argument for the conclusion that one is not a brain in a vat and another possible Moorean argument for the conclusion that one knows that one is not a brain in a vat. I will defend that this latter Moorean argument (unlike the previous one) does not beg the question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview on the state of the art of semantics for abstract argumentation, covering both some of the most influential literature proposals and some general issues concerning semantics definition and evaluation. As to the former point, the paper reviews Dung's original notions of complete, grounded, preferred, and stable semantics, as well as subsequently proposed notions like semi-stable, ideal, stage, and CF2 semantics, considering both the extension-based and the labelling-based approaches with respect to their definitions. As to the latter point, the paper presents an extensive set of general properties for semantics evaluation and analyzes the notions of argument justification and skepticism. The final part of the paper is focused on the discussion of some relationships between semantics properties and domain-specific requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Few philosophers believe that G. E. Moore's notorious proof of an external world can give us justification to believe that skepticism about perceptual beliefs is false. The most prominent explanation of what is wrong with Moore's proof-as well as some structurally similar anti-skeptical arguments-centers on conservatism: roughly, the view that someone can acquire a justified belief that p on the basis of E only if he has p-independent justification to believe that all of the skeptical hypotheses that undermine the support lent by E to p are false. In this paper I argue that conservatism does not make trouble for Moore's proof. I do this by setting up a dilemma concerning the notion of 'justification to believe' that figures in conservatism. On one understanding of justification to believe, conservatism is subject to obvious counterexamples. On another understanding of justification to believe, conservatism is consistent with Moore's 'proof' conferring justification upon its conclusion. Since these two understandings exhaust the logical space, the conservative indictment of Mooreanism fails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

I argue against the orthodox view of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification. The view under criticism is: if p is propositionally justified for S in virtue of S’s having reason(s) R, and S believes p on the basis of R, then S’s belief that p is doxastically justified. I then propose and evaluate alternative accounts of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification, and conclude that we should explain propositional justification in terms of doxastic justification. If correct, this proposal would constitute a significant advance in our understanding of the sources of epistemic justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the contention on radical skepticism concerning the existence of the external world (RSE). It highlights several claims related to the knowledge of existence and the content of one's conscious state, including the certainty of the hypothesis regarding the external world, the generated knowledge of the said premise and its justification in relation to one's relevant evidence. Several basic principles for considering the argument are also provided.

I first argue that the skeptic needs an internalist conception of justification for her argument for skepticism. I then argue that the skeptic also needs to show that we do not have perceptual access to the world if her skepticism is to be a real threat to human knowledge of the world. This, I conclude, puts the skeptic in a dilemma, for internalist conceptions of justification presuppose that we have perceptual access to the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on David Hume's problem of induction. It presents the various interpretations made by epistemologists to explain the idea behind Hume's problem of induction, as well as the inductive scepticism. It asserts that many philosophers have overlooked a way of interpreting the conceptual problem along with the potential way of solving it. It notes that Hume's argument involves the understanding of inductive justification and inductive knowledge. It says that Hume's sceptical solution to the problem of induction tells that people have a custom and a habit of continuing to form inductive beliefs, but it is nature which prevents them from ignoring observational evidence.

The aim of the paper is to present some important insights of C. Hookway's pragmatist analysis of knowledge viewed less in the standard (Gettier) way, as justified true belief, than as a dynamic natural and normative question-answer process of inquiry, a reliable and successful agent-based enterprise, consisting in virtuous dispositions explaining how we can be held responsible for our beliefs and investigations. Despite the merits of such an approach, the paper shows that it may be inefficient in accounting for some challenges posed by scepticism or by the nature of epistemic normativity. In which case it might be premature to propose it as a new conception of knowledge against the standard one and worth considering a different, though still pragmatist, strategy, in which inquiry would aim at the fixation of knowledge, still viewed as justified true beliefs, i.e critical commonsensical, warrantedly assertible, intellectual and sentimental dispositions for which the epistemic agent, viewed less as an individual person than as a scientific community of inquirers, should be taken as a knowing and reliable agent, both answerable and responsible for her assertions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  Deontologism in epistemology holds that epistemic justification may be understood in terms of “deontological” sentences about what one ought to believe or is permitted to believe, or what one deserves praise for believing, or in some similar way. If deonotologism is true, and people have justified beliefs, then the deontological sentences can be true. However, some say, these deontological sentences can be true only if people have a kind of freedom or control over their beliefs that they do not in fact have. Thus, deontologism in epistemology, combined with anti-skepticism, has implausible implications. I first describe one sort of control that people typically have over ordinary actions but do not have over typical beliefs. I then argue that there is a paradigmatic type of epistemic evaluation that does properly apply to beliefs even though we lack this sort of control over them. Finally, I argue that these paradigmatic epistemic evaluations are sufficient to make true some of the deontological sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to refute the widespread view that challenging a knowledge-claim always raises the original standards of justification–a view often associated with contextualism. To that purpose the distinction between undermining and overriding defeaters will be used. Three kinds of challenges will be considered that differ in their degree of specification. In all three kinds of challenges, the rising standards of justification model fails to capture the dialectic of justification in the case of undermining defeaters. At the end, the skeptical challenge will more briefly be given a similar analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  I clarify and defuse an argument for skepticism about justification with the aid of some results from recent linguistic theory. These considerations illuminate debates about the structure of justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes to (1) Outline the metamethodological proposal by Larry Laudan in his book "Beyond Positivism and Relativism" (1996) which would provide a foundation for the evaluation of scientific methodologies, that warrants ,according to the author, objectivity in sciences and (2) Develop a detailed criticism of two theses from this proposal. I suggest these theses are not justified so that a reformulation or radical change would be needed in order for the objectivity of science to be maintained. However, replacing a metamethodology with another could be misleading, since this eludes the fundamental skeptical problem of the justification of knowledge. I will not conclude the end of philosophy in skepticism; nevertheless, my arguments point towards this very overwhelming direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objections to reliabilist theories of knowledge and justification have looked insuperable. Reliability is a property of the process of belief formation. But the generality problem apparently makes the specification of any such process ambiguous. The externalism of reliability theories clashes with strongly internalist intuitions. The reliability property does not appear closed under truth-preserving inference, whereas closure principles have strong intuitive appeal. And epistemic paradoxes, like the preface and the lottery, seem unavoidable if knowledge or justification depends on the frequency with which a process generates true beliefs. The present theory has the conceptual resources to meet these challenges. It requires that a justificatory belief-formation process be intentionally applied. It distinguishes the justification of beliefs from that of the believer. And it avoids a frequency interpretation of reliability by introducing a notion of the normalcy of conditions under which processes are intentionally used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]