729 research outputs found

    Logical disagreement : an epistemological study

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    While the epistemic signiļ¬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 ā€˜logical disagreementā€™. 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 speciļ¬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 ā€˜logical disagreementā€™. 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 justiļ¬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 oneā€™s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (oļ¬ƒcially). 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 signiļ¬cance of central principles from the literature are at best deļ¬‚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 reļ¬‚ections on the potential epistemic signiļ¬cance of convergence in logical theorizing

    The Constitutional Model of Mootness

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    Article III limits the federal courts to deciding cases and controversies, and this limitation has given rise to the black-letter law of standing, ripeness, and mootness. But the law of mootness presents a puzzle: Over time, the Court has recognized various exceptions to ordinary mootness rules, allowing federal courts to hear arguably moot cases. On one hand, the Court consistently asserts that mootness doctrine, including its exceptions, is compelled by the original understanding of Article III. On the other hand, the scholarly consensus is that these exceptions are logically inconsistent with the Court s claims about Article III and that their existence proves that mootness is fundamentally prudential, not constitutional. This Article seeks to provide a coherent justification for the mootness exceptions within the constitutional model. First, some exceptions are not really exceptions at all. Collateral consequences; voluntary cessation; and capable of repetition to the same plaintiff, yet evading review ā€” these doctrines merely recognize a shift from a present harm to a potential future harm. And that harm might be sufficiently likely to occur when examined in the light of Bayes\u27 Theorem. Second, the other exceptions, for class actions, are justified through a better understanding of the history of representative litigation. And that understanding also justifies the extension of the capable of repetition, yet evading review exception to non parties who are similarly situated to the plaintiff. Modern mootness doctrine is therefore conceptually consistent with the Court s understanding of the original meaning of Article III

    Navigating Families, Negotiating Identities: Asian-White Mixed Family Experiences

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    This dissertation examines how White and second-generation Asian American heterosexual couples negotiate race, ethnicity, and gender as they come together and form families. While Asian-White intermarriage is often theorized as an endpoint of assimilation, this research concerns itself with the ways in which race plays a central role in shaping various domains of family life among mixed couples. Drawing on 62 semi-structured interviews with White and second-generation Asian American individuals, I find that race and gender jointly shape how the couples navigate household divisions of labor, in-law relationships, naming decisions, and transmitting ethnicity to children. By revealing the ongoing processes of racialization within mixed families, this study challenges the popular imagination of intermarriage as a symbol of racial transcendence. Instead, it argues that Asian-White mixed families are an important site to interrogate intersectional inequalities

    Leveraging Uncertainties to Infer Preferences: Robust Analysis of School Choice

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    Inferring applicant preferences is fundamental in many analyses of school-choice data. Application mistakes make this task challenging. We propose a novel approach to deal with the mistakes in a deferred-acceptance matching environment. The key insight is that the uncertainties faced by applicants, e.g., due to tie-breaking lotteries, render some mistakes costly, allowing us to reliably infer relevant preferences. Our approach extracts all information on preferences robustly to payoff-insignificant mistakes. We apply it to school-choice data from Staten Island, NYC. Counterfactual analysis suggests that we underestimate the effects of proposed desegregation reforms when applicants' mistakes are not accounted for in preference inference and estimation

    Countering Justification Holism in the Epistemology of Logic: The Argument from Pre-Theoretic Universality

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    A key question in the philosophy of logic is how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical entailment (assuming we have such justification at all). Justification holism asserts that claims of logical entailment can only be justified in the context of an entire logical theory, e.g., classical, intuitionistic, paraconsistent, paracomplete etc. According to holism, claims of logical entailment cannot be atomistically justified as isolated statements, independently of theory choice. At present there is a developing interest inā€”and endorsement ofā€”justification holism due to the revival of an abductivist approach to the epistemology of logic. This paper presents an argument against holism by establishing a foundational entailment-sentence of deduction which is justified independently of theory choice and outside the context of a whole logical theory

    The Myth of Broad Naturalism: The Case of Owen Flanagan

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    In The Really Hard Problem, Owen Flanagan seeks to explain how we can live meaningfully in a material world despite naturalismā€™s supposed scientific reductionism, which more often engenders disenchantment with reality than the ā€œjoyful optimismā€ he believes ought to be produced by the naturalist position. In this paper I argue that Flanaganā€™s theory of subjective realism, as well as his faulty identification of consciousness with neurological states, fails to overcome the criticisms he and others have pinned against scientific reductionism, and thus he fails to ever go beyond it. While Flanaganā€™s intentions to make a case for ethical and political normativity are good, his bridging of the chasm between the empirical and the normative is too weak to be a groundwork for our talk of a ā€œmeaningful lifeā€ as we actually think of it

    The Uncertain Judge

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    The intellectually honest judge faces a very serious problem about which little has been said. It is this: What should a judge do when she knows all the relevant facts, laws, and theories of adjudication, but still remains uncertain about what she ought to do? Such occasions will arise, for whatever her preferred theory about how she ought to decide a given caseā€”what I will call her preferred ā€œjurisprudenceā€ā€” she may harbor lingering doubts that a competing jurisprudence is correct instead. And sometimes, these competing jurisprudences provide conflicting guidance. When that happens, what should she do? Drawing on emerging debates in moral theory, I call this problem the problem of ā€œnormative uncertainty.ā€ It is often overlooked because the common answer is that the judge should just swallow her doubts and do what she thinks is right. But that obvious solution turns out to be wrong. Sometimes, she should not follow her preferred jurisprudence, but do what a different jurisprudence suggests instead. Developing a full solution will be difficult, and I do not attempt one here. Instead, I sketch a solution based on the familiar example of expected utility and use it to illustrate why developing a solution to normative uncertainty is considerably more difficult than developing solutions to other kinds of uncertainty. By the end, I hope to have convinced you only that there is a problem and that it is hard. But even without a solution, just seeing the problem will change how you think about judging

    Sino-African journalism and journalistic fields: CGTN Africaā€™s workers between worlds

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    Much academic criticism and public-political opinion has been made of Chinaā€™s ā€œgoing outā€ in Africa, and particularly of its media apparatusā€™ role in this project. But there has been little concerted research into the forces that influence production at these news organisations. Why do they produce the news they do? Why do the journalists that work for them choose to do so? Drawing on almost fifty hours of semi-structure interviews and life histories with staff at one of these Sino-African news organisations, CGTN Africa, I will seek to explain and theorise its production of news. This thesis argues that field theory, as proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, can provide a useful theoretical basis for studying the particular context of news production at CGTN Africa, and can contribute to wider understandings of international news production. Bourdieusian concepts such as habitus, capital, and field, are helpful analytical tools to explain the processes of work at an organisation like CGTN Africa, but also need considerable adaptation to the specificities of the context of this case study. The analysis is presented in four chapters, the first three of which use the prism of differing vertical layers of field to interrogate the practice of CGTN Africa and its journalists: the global field, where CGTN competes with its international competitors; national fields, where journalists themselves emanate from; and urban fields, where news organisations tend to be based. The final analysis chapter then considers the overlapping of these layers of fields, and the unique patterns of practice this can produce. In the case of each layer, the context of news production at CGTN Africa is used to reflect back on Bourdieuā€™s ā€œthinking tools,ā€ and propose novel theoretical approaches to studying international news production. It first considers how competing heteronomies work to protect unique forms of journalistic practice at CGTN Africa. Second, how journalists interact with forms of capital emanating from competing national fields, developing new dispositions to engage with their work. Third, it considers how social position within journalistic fields relates to physical mobility and geographic positioning within and in relation to urban environments. And finally, it reflects on the role of race and racism in the day-to-day work and career trajectories of journalists working for international news organisations. Together, these analyses argue that, when used reflexively, field theory provides a fruitful toolkit for researchers investigating journalistic practice in a wider variety of contexts

    Divergence vs. Decision P-values: A Distinction Worth Making in Theory and Keeping in Practice

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    There are two distinct definitions of 'P-value' for evaluating a proposed hypothesis or model for the process generating an observed dataset. The original definition starts with a measure of the divergence of the dataset from what was expected under the model, such as a sum of squares or a deviance statistic. A P-value is then the ordinal location of the measure in a reference distribution computed from the model and the data, and is treated as a unit-scaled index of compatibility between the data and the model. In the other definition, a P-value is a random variable on the unit interval whose realizations can be compared to a cutoff alpha to generate a decision rule with known error rates under the model and specific alternatives. It is commonly assumed that realizations of such decision P-values always correspond to divergence P-values. But this need not be so: Decision P-values can violate intuitive single-sample coherence criteria where divergence P-values do not. It is thus argued that divergence and decision P-values should be carefully distinguished in teaching, and that divergence P-values are the relevant choice when the analysis goal is to summarize evidence rather than implement a decision rule.Comment: 49 pages. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 2023, issue 1, with discussion and rejoinder in issue
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