1,674 research outputs found
Should I believe the truth?
Many philosophers hold that a general norm of truth governs the attitude of believing. In a recent and influential discussion, Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi raise a number of serious objections to this view. In this paper, I concede that Bykvist and Hattiangadiâs criticisms might be effective against the formulation of the norm of truth that they consider, but suggest that an alternative is available. After outlining that alternative, I argue that it is not vulnerable to objections parallel to those Bykvist and Hattiangadi advance, although it might initially appear to be. In closing, I consider what bearing the preceding discussion has on important questions concerning the natures of believing and of truth
Unacknowledged Permissivism
Epistemic permissivism is the view that it is possible for two people to rationally hold incompatible attitudes toward some proposition on the basis of one body of evidence. In this paper, I defend a particular version of permissivism â unacknowledged permissivism (UP) â which says that permissivism is true, but that no one can ever rationally believe that she is in a permissive case. I show that counter to what virtually all authors who have discussed UP claim, UP is an attractive view: it is compatible with the intuitive motivations for permissivism and avoids a significant challenge to permissivism: the arbitrariness objection
Towards a More Rigorous Science of Blindspot Discovery in Image Models
A growing body of work studies Blindspot Discovery Methods ("BDM"s): methods
that use an image embedding to find semantically meaningful (i.e., united by a
human-understandable concept) subsets of the data where an image classifier
performs significantly worse. Motivated by observed gaps in prior work, we
introduce a new framework for evaluating BDMs, SpotCheck, that uses synthetic
image datasets to train models with known blindspots and a new BDM, PlaneSpot,
that uses a 2D image representation. We use SpotCheck to run controlled
experiments that identify factors that influence BDM performance (e.g., the
number of blindspots in a model, or features used to define the blindspot) and
show that PlaneSpot is competitive with and in many cases outperforms existing
BDMs. Importantly, we validate these findings by designing additional
experiments that use real image data from MS-COCO, a large image benchmark
dataset. Our findings suggest several promising directions for future work on
BDM design and evaluation. Overall, we hope that the methodology and analyses
presented in this work will help facilitate a more rigorous science of
blindspot discovery
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Revisiting and revitalizing political ecology in the American West
Political ecology, initially conceived to better understand the power relations implicit in management and distribution of natural resources in the developing world, came âhomeâ to the American West in the 1990s and 2000s. This groundswell of research did much to problematize socio-environmental conflicts in the region, long typified by tensions over land and resources, identity and belonging, autonomy and authority. Since first touching down in the West, however, the âbig tentâ of political ecology has only grown bigger, incorporating new perspectives, epistemologies, and ontologies. At the same time, the nexus of environment and society is perhaps even more salient today, amid a regional conjuncture of populist revolt, climate change, and rapid political economic transformation. Here we reflect on three longstanding regional concerns â energy development, wolf reintroduction, and participatory governance â leveraging the pluralism of contemporary political ecology to better understand their contemporary incarnations. In so doing, we highlight the need to bring together insights from both âtraditionalâ approaches and newer directions to better understand and engage contemporary challenges, with their heightened stakes and complexity. Such an approach demonstrates what we might learn about global processes in this place, as well as what insights regional praxis (often woefully provincial) might gain from elsewhere â new ways of seeing and doing political ecology. Our goal is to generate discussion among and between political ecologists and regional critical scholars, initiating new collaborative engagements that might serve the next wave of political ecology in the 21st century American West
Blind spots in IPE : marginalized perspectives and neglected trends in contemporary capitalism
Which blind spots shape scholarship in International Political Economy (IPE)? That question animates the contributions to a double special issueâone in the Review of International Political Economy, and a companion one in New Political Economy. The global financial crisis had seemed to vindicate broad-ranging IPE perspectives at the expense of narrow economics theories. Yet the tumultuous decade since then has confronted IPE scholars with rapidly-shifting global dynamics, many of which had remained underappreciated. We use the Blind Spots moniker in an attempt to push the topics covered here higher up the scholarly agendaâissues that range from institutionalized racism and misogyny to the rise of big tech, intensifying corporate power, expertise-dynamics in global governance, assetization, and climate change. Gendered and racial inequalities as blind spots have a particular charge. There has been a self-reinforcing correspondence between topics that have counted as important, people to whom they matter personally, and the latterâs ability to build careers on them. In that sense, our mission is not only to highlight collective blind spots that may dull IPEâs capacity to theorize the current moment. It is also a normative oneâa form of disciplinary housekeeping to help correct both intellectual and professional entrenched biases
Should I believe all the truths?
Should I believe something if and only if itâs true? Many philosophers have objected to this kind of truth norm, on the grounds that itâs not the case that one ought to believe all the truths. For example, some truths are too complex to believe; others are too trivial to be worth believing. Philosophers who defend truth norms often respond to this problem by reformulating truth norms in ways that do not entail that one ought to believe all the truths. Many of these attempts at reformulation, Iâll argue, have been missteps. A number of these different reformulations are incapable of carrying out a central role a truth norm is meant to play, that of explaining justification. The truth norm Iâll defend, however, avoids the implausible results of a prescription to believe all the truths, but doesnât thereby fail to explain justification. This norm, introduced (but not defended) by Conor McHugh, states that if one has some doxastic attitude about pâi.e. if one believes, disbelieves, or suspends judgement about whether pâthen one ought to believe that p if and only if p is true
The promise of public sociology
extraordinary event. There was a buzz of excitement, the culmination of a week of high energy discussions of âpublic sociologyâ, and the product also of a year in which Burawoy had criss-crossed the USA speaking to dozens of groups and urging those who often give the ASA a pass in favour of local or activist meetings to come to San Francisco. The excitement was fueled also by a sense of renewed engagement with the reasons many â especially of the baby boom and 1960s generations â had chosen to become sociologists in the first place. A ballroom with seating for several thousand was filled to overflowing (I arrived early yet had to stand in the back). The talk ran to nearly twice the allotted time but few left. And at the end, teams of Berkeley students wearing black T-shirts proclaiming Marx âthe first public sociologist â roamed the aisles to collect questions. The excitement was not a fluke, but reflected a coincidence of good timing with shrewd recognition of the enduring commitments and desires of many sociologists. Sociologists found not only found their activism encouraged bu
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