Epistemic Perceptualism, Skill, and the Regress Problem

A novel solution is offered for how emotional experiences can function as sources of immediate prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs, and in such a way that suffices to halt a justificatory regress. Key to this solution is the recognition of two distinct kinds of emotional skill (what I call generative emotional skill and doxastic emotional skill) and how these must be working in tandem when emotional experience plays such a justificatory role. The paper has two main parts, the first negative and the second positive. The negative part criticises the epistemic credentials of Epistemic Perceptualism (e.g., Tappolet 2012, 2016; Doring 2003, 2007; Elgin 2008; Roberts 2003), the view that emotional experience alone suffices to prima facie justify evaluative beliefs in a way that is analogous to how perceptual experience justifies our beliefs about the external world. The second part of the paper develops an account of emotional skill and uses this account to frame a revisionary form of Epistemic Perceptualism that succeeds where the traditional views could not. I conclude by considering some objections and replies

The Big Picture: A Fishery System Approach Links Fishery Management and Biodiversity

This article was published in the Proceedings of the sixth conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade. Successful fishery development can be defined as the simultaneous achievement of ecological, socioeconomic, community and institutional sustainability. This paper incorporates these sustainability elements within an integrated framework, which is applied in a case of Puerto Thiel, a fishing community in the Gulf of Nicoya on Costa Rica's Pacific Coast. The economic performance of the local fishing cooperative is analysed, and experiences with economic diversification are reviewed. We highlight the importance, especially in heavily exploited fisheries, of policies that simultaneously pursue development (to increase local socioeconomic and community fishery benefits within resource limitations) and economic diversification (to lessen the impact of fishery management restrictions by creating non-fishery employment alternatives)

Musica ex machina:a history of video game music

The history of video game music is a subject area that has received little attention by musicologists, and yet the form presents fascinating case studies both of musical minimalism, and the role of technology in influencing and shaping both musical form and aesthetics. This presentation shows how video game music evolved from simple tones, co-opted from sync circuits in early hardware to a sophisticated form of adaptive expression

Corporate manslaughter: new horizon or false dawn? Update: The Prosecution of Lion Steel

In Corporate Manslaughter: New Horizon of False Dawn? The author concluded with a somewhat melodramatic cliff-hanger as we awaited the trial of Lion Steel Equipment Ltd (‘LS’). In July 2012, Judge Gilbart QC, Honorary Recorder of Manchester, published his remarks on sentencing in the trial and, so, this paper becomes an essential sequel to the former, in which we analyse what progress, if any, can be said to have been achieved in the development of the current law in corporate accountability

Pleasure as self-discovery

This paper uses readings of two classic autobiographies, Edmund Gosse’s Father & Son and John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, to develop a distinctive answer to an old and central question in value theory: What role is played by pleasure in the most successful human life? A first section defends my method. The main body of the paper than defines and rejects voluntarist, stoic, and developmental hedonist lessons to be taken from central crises in my two subjects’ autobiographies, and argues for a fourth, diagnostic lesson: Gosse and Mill perceive their individual good through the medium of pleasure. Finally, I offer some speculative moral psychology of human development, as involving the waking, perception, management, and flowering of generic and individual capacities, which I suggest underlies Gosse and Mill’s experiences. The acceptance of one’s own unchosen nature, discovered by self-perceptive pleasure in the operation of one’s nascent capacities, is the beginning of a flourishing adulthood in which that nature is fully developed and expressed