7,620 research outputs found

    Logical disagreement : an epistemological study

    Get PDF
    While the epistemic signiïŹcance of disagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logical disagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer) disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logical disagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical disagreement’. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the Ad Hoc Reading according to which logical disagreements occur when two subjects take incompatible doxastic attitudes toward a speciïŹc proposition in or about logic. Chapter 2 presents a new counterexample to the widely discussed Uniqueness Thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Theory Choice Reading of ‘logical disagreement’. According to this interpretation, logical disagreements occur at the level of entire logical theories rather than individual entailment-claims. Chapter 4 concerns a key question from the philosophy of logic, viz., how we have epistemic justiïŹcation for claims about logical consequence. In Chapters 5 and 6 we turn to the Akrasia Reading. On this reading, logical disagreements occur when there is a mismatch between the deductive strength of one’s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (oïŹƒcially). Chapter 6 introduces logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia and presents a novel dilemma. Chapter 7 revisits the epistemology of peer disagreement and argues that the epistemic signiïŹcance of central principles from the literature are at best deïŹ‚ated in the context of logical disagreement. The chapter also develops a simple formal model of deep disagreement in Default Logic, relating this to our general discussion of logical disagreement. The monograph ends in an epilogue with some reïŹ‚ections on the potential epistemic signiïŹcance of convergence in logical theorizing

    Cyber Conflict and Just War Theory

    Get PDF

    Utilitarianism and the Social Nature of Persons

    Get PDF
    This thesis defends utilitarianism: the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being. Utilitarianism is widely rejected by philosophers today, largely because of a number of influential objections. In this thesis I deal with three of them. Each is found in Bernard Williams’s ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ (1973). The first is the Integrity Objection, an intervention that has been influential whilst being subject to a wide variety of interpretations. In Chapter Two I give my interpretation of Williams’s Integrity objection; in Chapter Three I discuss one common response to it, and in Chapters Four and Five I give my own defence of utilitarianism against it. In Chapter Six I discuss a second objection: the problem of pre-emption. This problem is also found in Williams, but has received greater attention through the work of other authors in recent years. It suggests that utilitarianism is unable to deal with some of the modern world’s most pressing moral problems, and raises an internal tension between the twin utilitarian aims of making a difference and achieving the best outcomes. In Chapter Seven I discuss a third objection: that utilitarianism is insufficiently egalitarian. I find this claim to be unwarranted, in light of recent social science and philosophy. My responses to Williams’s objections draw upon resources from the socialist tradition – in particular, that tradition’s emphasis on the importance of social connections between individuals. Socialists have often been hostile to utilitarianism, in part for socialist-inflected versions of Williams’s objections. Thus, in responding to these objections I aim to demonstrate that socialist thought contains the means to defuse not only mainstream philosophy’s rejection of utilitarianism but also its own, and thus to re-open the possibilities for a productive engagement between the two traditions

    Reshaping Higher Education for a Post-COVID-19 World: Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

    Get PDF
    No abstract available

    Historical Understanding in the U.S. Constitution

    Get PDF
    How did the America’s Founding Fathers use historical knowledge to inform their actions and decisions that ultimately led to the creation of the Constitution? This dissertation begins to answer this question by providing context to the Framers’ education on both colonial and personal levels. Starting with exposure to historical content through learning Greek and Latin, this research explores the depth of historical knowledge possessed by the Founders and how they used that knowledge to explain their thoughts and ideas throughout the tumultuous years surrounding the American Revolutionary War. This aspect of the Constitution’s formation is overshadowed by the prominence of eighteenth-century political theory as part of Enlightenment philosophies that emerged during the same time. Historical analyses of the Constitution overlook the nuance of the Founders’ collective, and oftentimes shared, historical knowledge. Grounded in historical content, the Founders’ education gave them readily available examples to cite as references when discussing matters of policy and governance throughout the last half of the eighteenth century. Thus, this dissertation intends to present historical application to the repertoire of interpreting the formation of the Constitution in addition to the previously established scholarship of Enlightenment philosophy and emerging political theory of eighteenth-century America

    Constitutions of Value

    Get PDF
    Gathering an interdisciplinary range of cutting-edge scholars, this book addresses legal constitutions of value. Global value production and transnational value practices that rely on exploitation and extraction have left us with toxic commons and a damaged planet. Against this situation, the book examines law’s fundamental role in institutions of value production and valuation. Utilising pathbreaking theoretical approaches, it problematizes mainstream efforts to redeem institutions of value production by recoupling them with progressive values. Aiming beyond radical critique, the book opens up the possibility of imagining and enacting new and different value practices. This wide-ranging and accessible book will appeal to international lawyers, socio-legal scholars, those working at the intersections of law and economy and others, in politics, economics, environmental studies and elsewhere, who are concerned with rethinking our current ideas of what has value, what does not, and whether and how value may be revalued

    Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy

    Get PDF
    This Open Access book combines philosophical and historical analysis of various forms of alternatives to mechanism and mechanistic explanation, focusing on the 19th century to the present. It addresses vitalism, organicism and responses to materialism and its relevance to current biological science. In doing so, it promotes dialogue and discussion about the historical and philosophical importance of vitalism and other non-mechanistic conceptions of life. It points towards the integration of genomic science into the broader history of biology. It details a broad engagement with a variety of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century vitalisms and conceptions of life. In addition, it discusses important threads in the history of concepts in the United States and Europe, including charting new reception histories in eastern and south-eastern Europe. While vitalism, organicism and similar epistemologies are often the concern of specialists in the history and philosophy of biology and of historians of ideas, the range of the contributions as well as the geographical and temporal scope of the volume allows for it to appeal to the historian of science and the historian of biology generally

    Reasoning with Attitude

    Get PDF
    This book presents and develops inferential expressivism, a novel approach to the study of meaning which combines elements of the expressivist and inferentialist programmes. Expressivists explain the meaning of words in terms of the attitudes that they are used to express; inferentialists explain the meaning of words in terms of the inferences that they are used to draw. The book lays out the philosophical foundations of inferential expressivism by articulating and defending the view that the meaning of an expression is to be explained in terms of the inferences we draw involving the attitudes we express. The book, moreover, lays out the logical foundations of inferential expressivism by showing how to implement the view rigorously by means of novel formal systems which can deal with a variety of speech acts. As the book shows, by joining forces expressivism and inferentialism can meet their key challenges whilst retaining their distinctive insights and advantages. The book goes on to demonstrate the fruitfulness of the inferential expressivist approach to meaning by applying it to a diverse range of linguistic phenomena, including epistemic modals, probability operators, conditionals, moral predicates, the truth predicate, and propositional attitude predicates
    • 

    corecore