This paper investigates the question of whether know-how can be regarded as a form of non-propositional intentionality.

I argue that 'know' is only partly, though considerably, gradable. Its being only partly gradable is explained by its multi-parametrical character. That is, its truth-conditions involve different parameters, which are scalar in character, each of which is fully gradable. Robustness of knowledge may be higher or lower along different dimensions and different modes. This has little to do with whether 'know' is context-dependent, but it undermines Stanley's argument that the non-gradability of 'know' renders it non-context-dependent.

Motivated ignorance is an incentivized absence of knowledge that arises in circumstances of unequal power relations, a self-protective non-knowing which frees individuals from having to reflect on the privileges they have in virtue of membership in a dominant social group. In philosophical discussions, the term “motivated ignorance” gets used interchangeably with “willful ignorance.” In the first half of this paper, using Charles Mills’ (2007) white ignorance as the defining case, I argue that this is a mistake. A significant swath (...) of cases of motivated ignorance are non-willful, or deep, following Rik Peels (2010). But in all cases, benefits accrued to some in virtue of their social position are gained and maintained at the expense of harms to others. In the second half of this paper, I argue that these harms are what ground attributions of culpability in cases of motivated ignorance and drive the normative requirement that the subject know better, so long as the facts in question are ordinarily and easily knowable (in a sense to be specified). Willfulness is not a necessary condition for culpability, even if it is a sufficient one. (shrink)

In certain cases, people judge that agents bring about ends intentionally but also that they do not bring about the means that brought about those ends intentionally—even though bringing about the ends and means is just as likely. We call this difference in judgments the Kraemer effect. We offer a novel explanation for this effect: a perceived difference in the extent to which agents know how to bring about the means and the ends explains the Kraemer effect. In several experiments, (...) we replicate the Kraemer effect in a variety of non-moral and moral scenarios, and we find support for our new account. This work accords with a burgeoning area of action theory that identifies an important connection between know-how and intentionality. (shrink)

Serious games are an effective method of reproducing aspects of the complex interplay between environments and stakeholders in business situations. In the game we describe here, The Sustainable Port, players experience what it is like to make decisions in such a complex environment. Their aim in the game is to grow the Port of Rotterdam while keeping economic growth in balance with sustainability goals. In this study, we assessed whether experienced Port of Rotterdam employees (PoR employees) show different psychophysiological patterns, (...) and more specifically EAR-derived features, compared to students. We did this on the assumption that physiological patterns will tell us something about how people who are familiar with the environment of the Port of Rotterdam, more specifically Port of Rotterdam employees, make decisions compared to those lacking such familiarity.Our sample consisted of 28 PoR employees and 65 students, all of whom played The Sustainable Port game and had their faces recorded with a camera. The Eye Aspect Ratio was extracted from these recordings and then from those we extracted EAR-derived features. Our results show that Port of Rotterdam employees perform better than students and that the two groups are characterized by different physiological variations in their EAR-derived features. A logistic regression model used to identify PoR employees and students obtained an F1 score of 0.62, a PR AUC score of 0.64, and a ROC AUC score of 0.70. performing significantly above baseline suggesting the effectiveness of using EAR-derived features for this task. Our interpretation was further confirmed by a pseudo-R2 score used to evaluate the goodness of fit of a logistic regression model on the entire dataset. We found that Port of Rotterdam employees had a lower variation in blink rate per minute (blinks/m) and higher variation in the root mean square difference of successive difference in blinks (RMSSD), the consecutive difference between two continuous blinks. Moreover, this study shows that our methods were robust enough to negate the effects of confounders, such as biological sex and age that affect some other studies that analyze blinks. (shrink)

Discussions of know-how typically focus on task-types. This paper discusses know-how about non-repeatable task-tokens. I define ‘non-particular’ know-how as knowledge of how to complete a task-type and ‘particular’ know-how as knowledge of how to complete a task-token. Particular know-how holds philosophical value by exhibiting interesting features. First, based on an empirical study, I argue that particular know-how makes stronger ability requirements than non-particular know-how. This disparity arises, I propose, because particular know-how is relative to actual rather than normal circumstances. Second, (...) the concept of downstream luck is applicable to particular know-how, not to non-particular know-how. The upshot is a multi-faceted pluralist approach to the essence of know-how. (shrink)

In this paper, I present counterexamples to the evidence thesis, the thesis that S knows that p at t only if S believes that p on the basis of evidence at t. The outline of my paper is as follows. In section 1, I explain the evidence thesis and make clear what a successful counterexample to the evidence thesis will look like. In section 2, I show that instances of non-occurrent knowledge are counterexamples to the evidence thesis. At the end (...) of section 2, I consider the primary thesis of my paper — that the evidence thesis is false — to be successfully defended. In section 3, I consider three variations of the evidence thesis. The first variation restricts the evidence thesis to occurrent knowledge; the second requires for knowledge that one’s belief could be based on evidence; and the third requires for knowledge that the belief was based on evidence at a suitable prior time. The secondary thesis of this paper is that these variations are also subject to serious objections. (shrink)

This paper revisits the epistemological doctrine of fallibilism and discusses its overarching consequences to the whole structure of human knowledge and its extended applications. Fallibilism claims that we can never have absolute certainty to justify our knowledge claims. That means, knowledge needs not have an absolute, definitive warrants. Consequently, using the discursive method of enquiry, the paper argues that, if fallibilism is true, then, the concept of knowledge is redefined. Hence, knowledge would no longer mean the preclusion of error but (...) the contextual absence of doubt. Accordingly, knowledge in this schema, would only be an approximation [or even a verisimilitude] to the truth or a working tool for future progress so long as it serves the purposes of the present. It is the conclusion of the paper, that aside its apparent epistemic implications, fallibilism has also non-epistemic implications which ranges from a more general change in attitude towards our stances to a more applied and direct consequences in both legal, religious or moral enterprises of human endeavours. (shrink)

In chapter 4 of Autonomous Knowledge: Radical Enhancement, Autonomy and the Future of Knowing (OUP, 2021), Carter takes on the question of whether there is an epistemic autonomy condition on know-how, e.g. one that might rule out cases of radical performance enhancement as genuine cases of know-how. In this paper, I examine Carter’s proposal and identify an asymmetry in the way his epistemic autonomy condition is applied to enhanced and non-enhanced instances of know-how. In particular, it seems that either (...) an autonomy condition is required for all forms of knowledge-how or it is not. If it is, then a potential worry is that young children do not manifest their know-how when doing things that we would normally be inclined to say they know how to do. If it is not, then young children do manifest some forms of non-enhanced know-how. While Carter chooses the second option, I argue that it is better to choose the first one, that is, to claim that all know-how needs to be epistemically autonomous along the lines he has described. I also show how this does not exclude young children from knowing how to do things. (shrink)

Reasons are not the same. Normative reasons need to be distinguished from non-normative reasons. Then, due to some considerations, we have to draw a distinction between explanatory reasons and motivating reasons. In this paper, I focus on a rather implicit assumption in drawing the explanatory-motivating distinction. Motivating reasons are mostly characterized as those reasons that the agent takes to be normative. This may imply that the agent always knows the reasons their motivating reasons. This I call the infallibility or transparency (...) assumption. This suggests that there is some sort of report condition on motivating reasons. In contrast, one may ask whether it is possible for the agent to be mistaken about what their motivating reasons are. I argue that we can distinguish motivating reasons and satisfy the motivations for the explanatory-motivating distinction without committing to this infallibility assumption. I briefly sketch a character-based approach to motivating reasons as an alternative. Next, I argue that, in addition to being important on its own, this account has implications for other debates. I illustrate this by mentioning cases such as recalcitrant actions as well as critically discussing one kind of counter-example presented against the guise of the good thesis. (shrink)

The authors of *Linguistic Bodies* appeal to shared know-how to explain the social and participatory interactions upon which linguistic skills and agency rest. However, some issues lurk around the notion of shared know-how and require attention and clarification. In particular, one issue concerns the agent behind the shared know-how, a second one concerns whether shared know-how can be reducible to individual know-how or not. In this paper, I sustain that there is no single answer to the first issue; depending on (...) the case, shared know-how can belong to the participants of a social activity or to the system the participants bring forth together. In relation to the second issue, I sustain, following the authors, a non-reductive account of shared know-how. I also suggest that responsiveness to others, which is a fundamental element of shared know-how, can be extended by perceptual learning. (shrink)

It’s one thing to do the right thing. It’s another to be creditable for doing the right thing. Being creditable for doing the right thing requires that one does the right thing out of a morally laudable motive and that there is a non-accidental fit between those two elements. This paper argues that the two main views of morally creditable action – the Right Making Features View and the Rightness Itself View – fail to capture that non-accidentality constraint: the first (...) because it morally credits agents who make heavy-duty moral mistakes; the second because it fails to generalise and is too conservative – a point which this paper gives renewed defence. The paper then goes on to defend and develop an alternative according to which moral worth is mediated by the agent’s knowing how to respond to the reasons of the type which make acting in that way right. It’s argued that this view avoids the problems for the alternatives, and it’s shown that in order for the view to avoid collapsing into a problematic form of Reliabilism we’ll have to think of states of knowing how as essentially successful in character. (shrink)

What does it mean to be an embodied thinker of abstract concepts? Does embodiment shape the character and quality of our understanding of universals such as 'dog' and 'beauty', and would a non-embodied mind understand such concepts differently? I examine these questions through the lens of Thomas Aquinas’s remarks on the differences between embodied (human) intellects and non-embodied (angelic) intellects. In Aquinas, I argue, the difference between embodied and non-embodied intellection of extramental realities is rooted in the fact that embodied (...) and non-embodied intellects grasp different kinds of universals by means of different kinds of intelligible species (intellectual likenesses), which elicit in them different “modes” of understanding. By spelling out what exactly it means to be an embodied knower, on Aquinas’s account, I argue, we can also shed new light on his mysterious claim that the embodied intellect “turns to phantasms”—the imagination’s likenesses of individuals—in its acts of understanding. (shrink)

There is an as yet unacknowledged and incomparable contribution to the philosophical debates about know-how to be found in the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is sourced in his investigations into knowledge and certainty in On Certainty, though it is not limited to these late passages. Understanding the ramifications of this putative contribution (even if one does not agree with it) highlights the extent to which (i) there is now a new range of issues pertaining to know-how which no future (...) philosophical consideration of the topic can ignore, except on pain of failing to engage comprehensively with the subject; (ii) the topic of know-how has been inappropriately marginalised by naturalized epistemology, and may well be as central to epistemology as the propositional knowledge which currently dominates epistemology’s attention; and (iii) any engagement with these potential Wittgensteinian contributions will need to be conducted in tandem with a reflection on the meta-philosophy of epistemology, since their potential impact extends to epistemology’s main methodology, i.e., naturalized reflective equilibrium. These three conclusions, together with a diagnosis of where and why all the current intellectualist accounts of know-how are either internally inconsistent, or irreconcilably flawed on their own terms, provide the motivation and the opportunity for a New Epistemology of Know-How. These conclusions established, I offer one possible Wittgensteinian-orientated version of the New Epistemology of Know-How, providing the first example of a non-naturalized philosophical approach to the topic since Gilbert Ryle. (shrink)

We seem to enjoy a special kind of access to our beliefs. We seem able to know about them via a distinctively first-personal method, and such knowledge seems epistemically superior to any knowledge that others might attain of our beliefs. This paper defends a novel account of this access. The account is extrospective in that it explains this access in terms of our ability to think about the (non-mental) world. Moreover, it does not require the contentious claim that judging that (...) p suffices for coming to believe that p. This is a significant strength of the account. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that knowledge is dimly luminous. That is: if a person knows that p, she knows how she knows that p. The argument depends on a safety-based account of propositional knowledge, which is salient in Williamson’s critique of the ‘KK’ principle. I combine that account with non-intellectualism about knowledge-how – according to which, if a person knows how to φ, then in nearly all (if not all) nearby possible worlds in which she φes in the same (...) way as in the actual world, she only φes successfully. Thus, the possession of first-order propositional knowledge implies secondorder practical knowledge, and this can be iterated. Because of the assumed nonintellectualism about know-how, dim luminosity does not imply bright luminosity about knowledge, which is expressed by the traditional KK principle. I conclude by considering some potential counterexamples to the view that knowledge is dimly luminous. (shrink)

While we often assume that we can only know what is so, it's clear that we often speak as if we know things that aren't strictly speaking true. What should we make of this? Some would argue that we should take this talk as evidence that it's possible to know things that are strictly speaking false when, say, false representations are adequate for our purposes. I shall argue that it would be better on the whole to say (a) that knowledge (...) ascriptions might be false but felicitous when the ascription relates a thinker to a falsehood than to say (b) that the ascriptions are strictly true. First, it seems that the arguments for thinking that we can know falsehoods overgeneralise (e.g., they don't just threaten the factivity of knowledge-ascriptions but also of claims about what's true or what's a fact). Thus, the motivation for abandoning the traditional view is problematic. Second, it seems that the alternative picture inherits the problems that contextualists face in understanding how knowledge might be normative for assertion and belief. (shrink)

The original concept of epistemic dependence suggests uncritical deference to expert opinions for non-experts. In the light of recent work in science studies, however, the actual situation of epistemic dependence is seen to involve the necessary and ubiquitous need for lay evaluations of scientific experts. As expert knowledge means restricted cognitive access to some epistemic domain, lay evaluations of expert knowledge are rational and informed only when the criteria used by non-experts when judging experts are different from the criteria used (...) by experts when making their claims. The distinction between ‘substantial knowledge’ and ‘contextual knowledge’ allows for the laypeople to know with experts without having to know precisely what experts know. Such meta-expert evaluations are not specific to the public sphere outside science, nor are they limited internally to science, but they are present in a wide range of contexts in and around science. The paper legitimizes the concept of contextual knowledge by relating it to the relevant literature, and expounds the idea by identifying some elements of such a knowledge. (shrink)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, G. E. Moore’s open question argument convinced many philosophers that moral statements were not equivalent to statements made using non- moral or descriptive terms. For any non- moral description of an object or object it seemed that competent speakers could without confusion doubt that the action or object was appropriately characterized using moral terms such as ‘good’ or ‘right’. The question of whether the action or object so described was good or right was (...) always open, even to competent speakers. In the absence of any systematic theory to explain the possibility of synthetic as opposed to analytic identities, many were convinced this demonstrated that moral properties could not be identified with any natural properties. Thus Moore and others concluded that moral properties such as goodness were irreducible sui generis properties, not identical to natural. (shrink)

Parfit's On What Matters offers a rousing defence of non-naturalist normative realism against pressing metaphysical and epistemological objections. He addresses skeptical arguments based on (i) the causal origins of our normative beliefs, and (ii) the appearance of pervasive moral disagreement. In both cases, he concedes the first step to the skeptic, but draws a subsequent distinction with which he hopes to stem the skeptic's advance. I argue, however, that these distinctions cannot bear the weight that Parfit places on them. A (...) successful moral epistemology must take a harder line with the skeptic, insisting that moral knowledge can be had by those with the right kind of psychology -- no matter the evolutionary origin of the psychology, nor whether we can demonstrate its reliability over the alternatives. (shrink)

We can learn much about perceptual experience by thinking about how it can mislead us. In this paper, I explore whether, and how, olfactory experience can mislead. I argue that, in the case of olfactory experience, the traditional distinction between illusion and hallucination does not apply. Integral to the traditional distinction is a notion of ‘object-failure’—the failure of an experience to present objects accurately. I argue that there are no such presented objects in olfactory experience. As a result, olfactory experience (...) can only mislead by means of a kind of property hallucination. The implications of my arguments are twofold. First, we see that accounts of representational content cannot always be based on the visual model. And, secondly, we see that we must recast the notion of nonveridicality, allowing for a notion of non-veridical experience that is disengaged from any particular object. (shrink)

Many Sanskrit epistemologists think there are several basic ways of knowing (pramāṇas). Yet there is also a long tradition of seeking a general definition of pramā, the mental episode of knowing that is the result of a pramāṇa. One popular definition of pramā invokes the concept of anubhava. In ordinary usage, ‘anubhava’ means experience. But in the context of defining pramā it usually receives a more technical-sounding translation, like ‘presentational awareness’ or ‘non-mnemic awareness episode’. This paper considers how (...) to interpret the anubhava condition in Nyāya epistemology. On a presentationalist interpretation, the condition requires pramā to present the cognizer with its object in a perception-like way. On a deflationary interpretation, the condition only functions to exclude memory from counting as a pramāṇa. This paper defends a modest presentationalist interpretation. §2 and §3 present two kinds of arguments for this interpretation. §4 embeds the interpretation within a wider presentationalist framework, but stresses important disanalogies with the presentational conception of knowing Maria Rosa Antognazza claimed was “genuinely traditional” in the history of epistemology. (shrink)

Descartes’s meditator thinks that if she does not know the existence of God, she cannot be fully certain of anything. This statement seems to contradict the cogito, according to which the existence of I is indubitable and therefore certain. Cannot an atheist be certain that he exists? Atheistic knowledge has been discussed almost exclusively in relation to mathematics, and the more interesting question of the atheist’s certainty of his existence has not received the attention it deserves. By examining the question (...) of atheistic knowledge in relation to the cogito, I articulate the advantage Descartes sees in having knowledge of God. I challenge a long-held reading of the cogito where “I exist” is the first full certainty and argue that while atheistic cogito is more certain than atheistic knowledge in mathematics, it cannot be a starting point for lasting and stable science, because science requires knowing the existence of the non-deceiving God. (shrink)

A linguistic convention is a principle or norm that has been adopted by a person or linguistic community about how to use, and therefore what the meaning is of, a specific term. Examples of such norms or principles are those expressed by propositions that express the laws of logic or those that express implicit definitions. Arguments about the epistemic status of linguistic conventions, very broadly, fall into two camps: the one holds that the basis of linguistic conventions is objective and (...) that, therefore, such conventions are genuinely truth-bearing. Knowledge of such conventions is therefore knowledge of the objective truth of such conventions. This camp might be labelled ‘realist’. The other holds that there is no known basis to linguistic conventions and that conventions are, to the best of our knowledge, not objective, but invented. Their truth is stipulated by the relevant speaker or linguistic community. Such truth is, consequently, trivial and knowledge of such conventions simply knowledge of the stipulation. This camp might be labelled ‘anti-realist’. These are three standard accounts of the epistemic status of linguistic conventions, which all play into the first camp: (1) knowledge by intuition, (2) inferential a priori knowledge and (3) a posteriori knowledge. I give reasons why these accounts should be rejected. I then argue that linguistic conventions, if conceived of as trivial truths, are knowable non-inferentially a priori. Such an epistemic account provides support for the second camp. In this regard, I marshal support from some recent work by Wright and Hale. (shrink)

In this article I challenge the positivist view that ethical statements are merely an expression of our emotions or preferences. I consider a moral statement, “Killing innocent civilians is wrong,” and argue that such a statement is a truthful moral norm. I show that what is fundamental to agreement in the realm of both facts and morals is a commonly shared attitude that determines human relatedness to the world. Scientific knowledge is a partial knowledge based on indifference, the state of (...) mind that constitutes scientific attitude. However, knowledge in morals does not presuppose indifference, but love. Once we accept that our thoughts and feelings are not incommunicable, we can arrive at inter-subjective and non-objective moral knowledge which results from our recognition of others as persons and our affective engagement with the world. (shrink)

The goal of this thesis is to model some of the cognitive structures and processes involve d in how people decide what to say in purposeful conversation. The main concern is to show how a speaker's knowledge of his/her hearer influences what s/he says. Utterances in such dialogues, where speakers can be presumed to be speaking for reasons, can best be viewed as the performance of "speech acts" (e.g., requesting). By modeling the process of deciding what to say as one (...) of problem-solving, we show that the same mechanisms used to plan non-linguistic actions are applicable to planning of speech acts. The methodology of this research employs a computer program that integrates beliefs, goals, problem-solving, and reasoning, with the use of language. The program does this by planning speech acts when it determines that to achieve its situational goals, it needs to influence someone else's behavior. The system is able to plan request speech actrions to influence its user's goals, and inform speech acts to influence his/her beliefs. In addition, it is shown that speech acts can be used to achieve subgoals of other such acts. For instance, in addition to requesting that the user perform some action, the system can also decide to supply him/her with information necessary to performing that action -- information that it believes s/he does not already have. Our model is extendable to the more general problem of planning multiparty speech acts -- ones where actions requested by the speaker involve acts to be performed by parties other than the hearer. [MORE]. (shrink)

In this thesis, I propose and defend a theory according to which committing oneself to knowing the proposition expressed counts as an assertion of that proposition. A consequence of this view is the knowledge account of assertion, according to which one asserts that p correctly only if one knows that p. In support of this approach, I offer a strategy of identifying an assertion’s “normative consequences”, types of act that normally take place as a result of one’s making an (...) assertion incorrectly. I outline two such phenomena: retraction and disavowal of knowledge. In continuation, I put the theory to test and critically examine four sets of objections against it, arguing that it can convincingly defuse them. Finally, I discuss two related issues: I maintain that by performing “aesthetic assertions” one also normally performs a non-assertoric speech act of recommendation, and argue for the possibility of “non-linguistic assertions”, whose content is expressed by gestures in appropriate contexts. (shrink)

When travelling to a new city, we acquire knowledge about its physical terrain, directions, historical facts and aesthetic features. Engaging in tourism practices, such as guided walking tours, provides experiences of a city that are necessarily mediated and partial. This has led scholars in tourism studies, and more recently in philosophy, to question the epistemological value of city tours, critiquingthem as passive, lacking in autonomous agency, and providing misrepresentative experiences of the city. In response, we argue that the mediated and (...) partial knowledge of a city acquired through city tours is not epistemologically disvaluable. Although city tours involve the transmission of testimonial knowledge, this does not necessarily render tourists as passive and non-autonomous. Instead,tourists have the potential to participate in the generation of their knowledge actively. Moreover, we argue that city tours also provide a tourist with valuable ‘objectual’ knowledge of a city, whichhas the potential to be first-personal and active, and does not necessarily misrepresent the city’s identity. This type of knowledge is valuable both for tourists as credible epistemic agents, and for the city itself, as the knowledge generated by the tour can facilitate an accurate representation of the city and promote social transformation. We conclude by highlighting four further epistemic and ethical implications of our argument. (shrink)

Scientific studies have shown that non-conscious stimuli and représentations influence information processing during conscious experience. In the light of such evidence, questions about potential functional links between non-conscious brain representations and conscious experience arise. This article discusses models capable of explaining how statistical learning mechanisms in dedicated resonant circuits could generate specific temporal activity traces of non-conscious representations in the brain. How reentrant signaling, top-down matching, and statistical coincidence of such activity traces may lead to the progressive consolidation of neural (...) signatures of conscious experience in networks extending across large distances beyond functionally specialized brain regions is then explained. (shrink)

Knowing someone personally centrally involves engaging in various patterns of affective response. Inasmuch as humans can know God personally, this basic insight about the relationship between personal knowledge and affective response also applies to God: knowing God involves responding to him, and to the world, in various affectively toned ways. In light of this insight, I explore how one particular practice might contribute to human knowledge of God: namely, engaging with sacred music – in particular, sacred music in (...) the Western, classical tradition. In investigating this topic, I tackle an issue at the interface between the philosophy of religion and aesthetics: sacred music’s capacity to arouse religious emotions. I use as a springboard Peter Kivy’s view that ‘music alone’ can only arouse emotions about itself. This view, I argue, has a counterintuitive consequence: the music in sacred works would play no part in arousing emotions with religious objects. In contrast, I develop an account of how music combines with religious factors to arouse religious emotions. I then draw out two consequences for how music can facilitate understanding between religious and non-religious outlooks. The upshot of all this, I suggest, is that by expanding the listener’s religious-emotional landscape, sacred music can enrich her knowledge of God – and that this is possible whether or not the listener subscribes propositionally to God’s reality or to any other religious doctrines. (shrink)

Naturalistic epistemology is usually associated with Quine’s turn from an a priori and traditional to a descriptive understanding of knowledge. In this paper, however, we will look at theories developed from Quine’s ideas - Millikan’s teleosemantics and Kornblith’s cognitive ethology. We will answer three questions: (i) Can a bee know?; (ii) What can a bee know?; and (iii) Does the bee know? First, we will answer the question of animal cognitive capacities using Kornblith’s understanding of the epistemic environment and the (...) basic features of cognitive ethology. We will then set up teleosemantics as a framework in which Millikans attempts to naturalize intentional states and answer the question of the knowledge content in animals. By understanding natural signs and considering the non-propositional content of mental representations in animals, we will answer the third question and show how Kornblith and cognitive ethologists attempt to track the processes of forming reliable true beliefs in different kinds of organisms. We will answer each of the three questions above by drawing on the research of apiologists and cognitive ethologists to provide empirical support for the theses of our work and so that we do not remain only on attempts, possible introductions, and anecdotes of naturalistic conceptions of knowledge, but provide concrete descriptions of the world and the place of knowledge in it. (shrink)

Playing chess is one of the first sectors of human thinking that were conquered by computers. From the historical win of Deep Blue against chess champion Garry Kasparov until today, computers have completely dominated the world of chess leaving no room for question as to who is the king in this sport. However, the better computers become in chess the more obvious their basic disadvantage becomes: Even though they can defeat any human in chess and play phenomenally great and intuitive (...) moves, they do not seem to know what chess it. Recently, the advent of AlphaZero brought the level of computers to even higher grounds, but made that disadvantage even more obvious. Nowadays the best chess algorithm can find the best moves in any position without having any knowledge of any chess principle whatsoever. A new world of capabilities and knowledge lays open in front of us, but the darkness behind it is deeper than we could ever imagine. The neural network algorithms seem capable of being best in something without even knowing what that something is, making questions regarding the essence of what thought is more important than ever. (shrink)

A theory of what we should believe should include a theory of what we should believe when we are uncertain about what we should believe and/or uncertain about the factors that determine what we should believe. In this paper, I present a novel theory of what we should believe that gives normative externalists a way of responding to a suite of objections having to do with various kinds of error, ignorance, and uncertainty. This theory is inspired by recent work in (...) ethical theory in which non-consequentialists 'consequentialize' their theories and then use the tools of decision-theory to give us an account of what we ought (in some sense) to do when we're uncertain about what we ought (in some primary sense) to do. On my proposal, because what we ought to do is acquire knowledge and avoid ignorance, we ought to believe iff the probability of coming to know is sufficiently high. This view has a number of important virtues. Among them, it gives us a unified story about how defeaters defeat (a theory developed with Julien Dutant), explains puzzling intuitions about the differences between lottery cases, preface cases, and cases of perceptual knowledge, and provides externalists (and internalists!) with a general framework for thinking about subjective normativity. It's also relatively brief. (shrink)

Laboratory science is our only source of knowledge about the world as it is apart from our perceptions of the world. Empiricist philosophy, relying on evidence consisting in human perceptions, can only give us knowledge of phenomena making up the world-perceived, which recent neuroscience tells us is wholly and entirely constructed by our neuron-based human perceptual apparatus. In this light, empiricist philosophy should explicitly and fundamentally be reconceived as a method of thinking critically about phenomena, i.e. as a stripped down, (...) fallibilist, non-foundationalist version of “phenomenology”. I also describe implications of these proposals for thinking critically about and conceptualizing phenomena like the Cartesian “I”-that-thinks, consciousness, mind, personal identity, free will, and causal relationships between the brain and the conscious “I.”. (shrink)

Antonio Damasio is known for his research on consciousness from a neurological and evolutionary perspective. His latest book, Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious, starts by focusing on the development, around 3.8 billion years ago, of living organisms with homeostatic processes that involve a “non-explicit” form of intelligence in the service of self-preservation. Here we find sensing, but still no feelings nor mental processes; yet these early forms of sensing are seen as a necessary basis for the development of (...) feelings and consciousness. With the development of organisms with nervous systems, starting around 500 million years ago, feelings and “minding” (in the form of images of the surrounding environment) enter the scene. Feelings are seen to have their origin in the nerve cells’ close interaction with the biochemical processes that occur in the homeostatic regulation of the body. In this interaction between nervous systems and the bodily interior, feelings emerge as subjective experiences of homeostatic bodily processes. Consciousness is described by Damasio as involving an experience of ownership of one’s body, feelings, perspectives, etc. Because consciousness represents a further developmental stage on top of feelings, it cannot be based solely on the nervous system. Although Damasio sees the nervous system as a critical contributor to the development of minds and consciousness, he emphasizes that any theory that relies exclusively on the nervous system to account for minds and consciousness is likely to fail. Damasio’s book contains many innovative parts, that may stimulate new thinking and new research on these matters. It also illustrates how discussions about the nature of sentience, feeling and consciousness all too often suffer from an insufficient differentiation between distinct kinds of phenomena, and the need for an improved conceptual apparatus for a more nuanced description of the phenomena involved. -/- . (shrink)

In July 2024, the Astronist Institution published a video on TikTok that, within a week, amassed thousands of views and, up to that point, was the single largest exposure to the public that Astronism received after being founded in 2013. Since being posted, the video has received over 77,000 views, over 1,150 likes, over 120 comments and 297 shares on the platform. The mixed response to the video among members of the public prompts the question: How have people reacted to (...) Astronism so far online? By scouring the internet for reactions to the story of how Astronism was founded and Astronist beliefs and practices, this article answers that question. In turn, it develops an ethnography of Astronists and non-Astronists about their initial response to content published by the Astronist Institution. The article begins by focusing on the “What is Astronism?” video posted on TikTok but broadens its scope to address reactions to Astronism appearing on other platforms. The aim is to analyse comments on the TikTok video and elsewhere to understand early forms of Astronist self-identification, lines of criticism against Astronist doctrine and the themes that people tend to raise whenever they discuss Astronism. (shrink)

This essay presents an argument against the Identity Theory that does not depend upon the apparent epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths, the existence of qualia, or the conceivability of philosophical zombies. The argument begins by establishing three principles: the Principle of Perceptual Determinacy, the Principle of Perceptual Self-Exclusion, and the Principle of Perceptual Non-Loopability—each identifying a necessary condition underlying the existence, or occurrence, of perceptual states. Next, a contradiction is shown to follow from the three principles and the (...) Identity Theory being jointly true. Since the three principles can be demonstrated a priori, it follows that the Identity Theory is false. Potential objections to the argument are then raised and addressed. (shrink)

What is the relationship between knowledge and ethics? Does what we know and the reason that secures knowledge determine ethical responsibility, or might ethical responsibility itself awaken and animate the enterprise of knowing? The dissertation affirms the priority of ethics by juxtaposing two accounts of the relationship between truth and goodness. It critiques Hegel's systematic conception of absolute knowing by showing that this knowing elides the anarchical ethical demand arising from the other person. Hegel's dialectic reconciles the (...) problem of the relation with the other by transposing it to the plane of cognition where it becomes spirit's self-knowing. However, Emmanuel Levinas's phenomenological reduction of the structures of knowing exposes an ethical level of experience that both inspires and interrupts this adventure of knowing. ;After the introduction of this problematic, Chapter 1 examines the challenge that Levinas poses to Hegel, discovering in experience and subjectivity a ground where real dialogue can take place. Chapter 2 traces the reconception of subjectivity by which Hegel brings all exteriority within the experience of self-consciousness and compares this with Levinas's notion of "lived experience." In Chapter 3, I show how Levinas's account of sensibility and enjoyment resists incorporation into Hegel's notion of self-consciousness. Chapter 4 examines the encounter with the other person and explicates why Hegel's and Levinas's accounts cannot be reconciled or made to complement one another, for the non-allergic responsibility incurred in the face to face relation is inassimilable to the antagonism of the same and the other experienced as self-consciousness. Then, in Chapter 5, I trace Hegel's pursuit of a more authentic recognition of otherness through the development of the concept of spirit, paying special attention to the role of language. The ultimate accomplishment of spiritual recognition in Hegel's account is again challenged by Levinas's notion of responsibility, which signifies as an ethical "saying" apart from the "said." Finally, I contest the absoluteness of knowing without denying the dialectic that animates it by suggesting that philosophy can be maintained as a human enterprise, a pursuit of knowing that is ever subject to and interrupted by the face of the other. (shrink)

What justifies practices of “standing”? Numerous everyday practices exhibit the normativity of standing: forbidding certain interventions and permitting ignoring them. The normativity of standing is grounded in facts about the person intervening and not on the validity of her intervention. When valid, directives are reasons to do as directed. When interventions take the form of directives, standing practices may permit excluding those directives from one’s practical deliberations, regardless of their validity or normative weight. Standing practices are, therefore, puzzling – forbidding (...) giving reasons and, if given, permitting disregarding such reasons. What justifies standing practices are the values that they protect, including privacy, autonomy, independence, valuable relationships, and equal respect. These values count in favor of standing’s duty against certain interventions and, when these duties of non-intervention are breached, the values underpinning those duties count in favor of standing’s permission to discount or exclude those interventions from one’s practical deliberations – the normative weight of those interventions notwithstanding. (shrink)

‘I know his name.’ ‘I know something about him.’ ‘I know him.’ Consider how these uses of ‘know’ differ. The first two instances of know, seem to point to knowledge about something. Yet in the latter claim, the subject of the assertion is not a singular fact, but another person. I call these knowledge claims interpersonal knowledge. In the following paper, I provide an account for these interpersonal knowledge claims which employs the Conversational Contextualist view of language by synthesizing Allan (...) Gibbard’s Norm-Expressivist account for ‘good’ with an account of knowledge based in social epistemology. Under my theory ‘knowing someone claims’ amount to endorsements of our beliefs; as such, there is no truth-apt interpersonal knowledge. What is occurring is a self-assessment of our relationship to another person, based on our non-cognitive attitude towards the fact that we should know them. Therefore interpersonal knowledge claims are self-affirmations that assert we are doing what we believe we should, in an attempt to embody our perceived relationship with another person. (shrink)

Just a silly thought of where we might have come from. Furthermore, who created us? No one knows for sure, but some claim it was God. However, no one has seen God or the actual creators to the best of our knowledge. Moreover, those that claim to have seen God show us no proof. -/- One may wonder, why does God only appear to those who believe in him? What is the point of that if they already believe in God? (...) Wouldn't it be more rational for God to appear to non-believers to make them become Believers? Furthermore, they can spread the word of God and promote his existence. It is not to say that there are no creators but rather to say that God's definition may not be as accurate as we most know it. (shrink)

सम्पादक – श्रमण सुव्रतसागर मुनि; English rendering - Vijay K. Jain 'सत्यार्थ-बोध' सृष्टा आचार्य विशुद्धसागर एक ओर तार्किक मनीषी हैं तो दूसरी ओर शास्त्रज्ञ दार्शनिक। जगत् के इस लक्ष्य-विहीन, अर्थहीन वातावरण में 'सत्यार्थ-बोध' मानवमात्र के लिए परमौषधि है जो अपूर्व-अपूर्व आनन्द की प्रदाता है तथा इष्ट की परमसिद्धि का कारण है। 'सत्यार्थ-बोध' अत्यंत सरल-सुबोध है, वाक्य-वाक्य में नीतियाँ गुंथित हैं। आचार्य विशुद्धसागर के सर्वोदयी, प्राञ्जल, सर्वहितकर एवं सुखकर वचन अतीव शान्तता का रसास्वादन कराने वाले हैं तथा हमारे परिणामों को निर्मल (...) बनाने वाले हैं। English Rendering – Vijay K. Jain; Ācārya Viśuddhasāgara’s ‘Satyārtha-bodha’ – ‘Know The Truth’ – through its thirty-one chapters, instructs us on what attributes we need to adopt or renounce in order to attain the supreme state of perfection and bliss, in life present and beyond. The instructions provided in the book constitute the true 'dharma' – the own-nature of substances – applicable universally to mankind. (shrink)

I would like to thank Renia Gasparatou, Philip Goff, and Andreas Vrahimis for contributing to the book symposium on For and Against Scientism: Science, Methodology, and the Future of Philosophy (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). I am grateful to James Collier for hosting this book symposium on the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. In what follows, I will reply to Gasparatou and Vrahimis’s contributions to this book symposium.1 Before I do so, I will summarize what I take to be (...) their main arguments against my conception of scientism. Briefly, my conception of scientism runs along the weak and broad lines of epistemological scientism (Mizrahi 2022a, 12). More specifically, Weak Scientism is the view that scientific knowledge is the best knowledge (or some other epistemic good, such as justified belief) we have. Weak Scientism is a weaker version of epistemological scientism than Strong Scientism, which is the view that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge we have. According to Weak Scientism, while non-scientific disciplines do produce knowledge, scientific disciplines produce knowledge that is superior—both quantitatively (in terms of research output and research impact) and qualitatively (in terms of explanatory, predictive, and instrumental success)—to non-scientific knowledge (Mizrahi 2017, 354; 2022a, 6–7; 2023, 41). (shrink)

The privacy-as-non-interference conception (PANIC) proposed here provides an adequate conceptualization of privacy by offering a fresh perspective on privacy that shifts the focus from the act of sharing personal information to the consequences that arise once the information becomes accessible to others. This perspective aligns with our common social practices and our intuitive understanding of privacy. Essentially, PANIC asserts that an individual’s privacy is diminished only when others interfere with specific aspects of their life in a manner that restricts their (...) ability to organize and live their life according to their own choices. This represents a fundamental shift from traditional privacy conceptions that emphasize secrecy or control and place the burden of protecting one’s privacy primarily on the individual. Instead, PANIC suggests that the primary responsibility for safeguarding an individual’s privacy lies with others or society as a whole. (shrink)

To understand what non-propositional content is and whether there are any such contents, we first need to know what propositional content is. That issue will be the focus of the first section of this essay. In the second section, with an understanding of propositional content in hand, we will consider representations that fail to have propositional content. In contrast to recent literature, it will be argued that metaphysical considerations concerning what's represented, rather than linguistic considerations, are a more promising way (...) of establishing non-propositional contents. To keep the discussion containable, focus will be on representational mental states, though many of the considerations can be extended to other forms of representation. (shrink)

En este ensayo, examino dos problemas que cualquier teoría del saber cómo y en particular una teoría del saber como grupal debe tratar: el problema de la posesión, que es la necesidad de explicar como un grupo puede estar en un estado de saber como hacer algo, y el problema de la atribución, que es la necesidad de dar cuenta de las condiciones en las que es admisible atribuir saber como a un grupo. Argumento que (a pesar de ciertas apariencias (...) iniciales) estos problemas son independientes, lo que es especialmente importante en el contexto de teorías del saber cómo donde este no puede en general reducirse a actitudes proposicionales. (shrink)

The article analyzes and criticizes the assumptions of Peter Van Inwagen’s argument for the alleged contradiction of the foreknowledge of God and human freedom. The argument is based on the sine qua non condition of human freedom defined as access to possible worlds containing such a continuation of the present in which the agent implements a different action than will be realized de facto in the future. The condition also contains that in every possible continuation of the present state of (...) affairs, the same propositions about the ‘present past’ (the past before the present moment) are true as are true in the present state of affairs. The paper argues that Van Inwagen’s reasoning is inconclusive, it contains the type of mistake of confusing conditional impossibility with unconditional and presents a methodologically wrong method of solving a philosophical problem. It is because in the very construction of the problem determining the available solution. The article points to the possibility that the human freedom of some action is not excluded by the fact that specific past facts logically entail that this event will occur. (shrink)

This paper presents a comparative philosophical dialogue between Socrates and Laozi, two foundational thinkers of Western and Eastern philosophy, whose teachings emerged independently during the Axial Age yet address strikingly similar ultimate questions concerning knowledge, virtue, cosmic order, governance, life, and death. By examining their respective approaches to ignorance, methods of knowing, views of the cosmos, political philosophy, attitudes toward death, and ideals of the good life, the paper reveals a profound contrast—and complementarity—between inner rational inquiry and alignment with (...) the natural Way (Dao). -/- Socrates represents a philosophy of critical questioning, logical dialogue, and moral self-examination, grounded in the conviction that reason and virtue are the path to truth and the good life. Laozi, by contrast, articulates a philosophy of non-knowing, intuitive resonance, and non-interference, emphasizing harmony with the spontaneous order of nature rather than rational control. While Socrates seeks ethical fulfillment through conscious inquiry and the cultivation of virtue, Laozi advocates simplicity, humility, and the return to an unforced mode of being. -/- The paper argues that these two philosophical paths—though methodologically opposed—are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they illuminate complementary dimensions of human wisdom: the courage to question and the wisdom to let go. In an age marked by technological dominance, political anxiety, and ecological crisis, this dialogue between Socrates and Laozi offers a timeless framework for rebalancing reason and nature, action and restraint, speech and silence, thereby pointing toward a more integrated vision of human flourishing. (shrink)

The popularity of theodicy over the past several decades has given rise to a countermovement, “anti-theodicy”, which admonishes attempts at theodicy for various reasons. This paper examines one prominent anti-theodical objection: that it is hubristic, and attempts to form an approach to theodicy which evades this objection. To do so I draw from the work of Eleonore Stump, who provides a framework by which we can glean second-personal knowledge of God. From this knowledge, I argue that we can derive a (...) theodicy which does not utilise the kind of analytic theorising anti-theodicists accuse of intellectual hubris. (shrink)

This paper argues that the central ethical problem of AI-assisted work is not merely phenomena such as burnout or deskilling, but rather the emergence of epistemic dependence: a gradual erosion of workers' capacity to comprehend, justify, and recognize their own beliefs as genuinely their own. Empirical observations indicate that while generative AI demonstrably increases productivity, it simultaneously intensifies workload, expands professional roles, and dissolves the boundaries between work and non-work time. In parallel, knowledge workers increasingly report difficulty solving problems "independently," (...) accompanied by a growing distrust of their own unsupported judgment. This paper interprets these developments as marking a transition from the figure of the creator to that of the evaluator—a subject who primarily prompts, assesses, and corrects machine outputs while becoming progressively reliant on systems whose internal logic remains opaque. -/- Drawing on Byung-Chul Han's analysis of the achievement subject and Hartmut Rosa's theory of social acceleration and resonance, the paper develops a normative account of how generative AI reconfigures the temporal and experiential structure of cognitive work. Efficiency gains are systematically translated into work intensification rather than emancipation. Simultaneously, the very nature of this work undergoes transformation: the dialogical use of AI assumes the form of an alienated dialogue in which the human subject learns to think and speak in machine-legible terms. In this context, traditional concerns about deskilling prove insufficient; the deeper risk lies in the hollowing-out of epistemic agency, as the practices of doubting, searching, and integrating knowledge are increasingly delegated to algorithmic systems. -/- In response, this paper introduces the concepts of epistemic integrity and cognitive sovereignty as central normative ideals. These are not to be understood as merely resource-oriented "cognitive sustainability," but as the protection of the conditions under which individuals can form, justify, and revise their own judgments. Structural and organizational obligations are outlined—concerning task design and the preservation of spaces for genuine thinking—which are to be complemented by practices of care of the self conceived as micro-resistances rather than neoliberal coping strategies. The paper concludes by arguing that this perspective constitutes a necessary supplement to the prevailing, output-oriented paradigm of AI ethics. (shrink)