Representation, Interpretation, and Surrogative Reasoning

In this paper, I develop Mauricio Suárez’s distinction between denotation, epistemic representation, and faithful epistemic representation. I then outline an interpretational account of epistemic representation, according to which a vehicle represents a target for a certain user if and only if the user adopts an interpretation of the vehicle in terms of the target, which would allow them to perform valid (but not necessarily sound) surrogative inferences from the model to the system. The main difference between the interpretational conception I defend here and Suárez’s inferential conception is that the interpretational account is a substantial account—interpretation is not just a “symptom” of representation; it is that in virtue of what something is an epistemic representation of a something else

Logic in the tradition of Prabhacandra

The characterization of truth-preserving arguments is a core issue in India and received the detailed attention of philosophers. This chapter presents Prabhācandra’s theory of inference from the eleventh century, stressing its uniqueness and detailed critique of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. In Prabhācandra’s framework, the inferential evidence has not three but just one characteristic, “being impossible otherwise.” The epistemological problem of the means to know when evidence has this characteristic is solved without regress by appeal to a non-inferential source of knowing, the “discernment of universals” (tarka). Finally, important advances in the role of negation in logical inference are related to a greater emphasis on linguistic form

Models, Brains, and Scientific Realism

Prediction Error Minimization theory (PEM) is one of the most promising attempts to model perception in current science of mind, and it has recently been advocated by some prominent philosophers as Andy Clark and Jakob Hohwy. Briefly, PEM maintains that “the brain is an organ that on aver-age and over time continually minimizes the error between the sensory input it predicts on the basis of its model of the world and the actual sensory input” (Hohwy 2014, p. 2). An interesting debate has arisen with regard to which is the more adequate epistemological interpretation of PEM. Indeed, Hohwy maintains that given that PEM supports an inferential view of perception and cognition, PEM has to be considered as conveying an internalist epistemological perspective. Contrary to this view, Clark maintains that it would be incorrect to interpret in such a way the indirectness of the link between the world and our inner model of it, and that PEM may well be combined with an externalist epistemological perspective. The aim of this paper is to assess those two opposite interpretations of PEM. Moreover, it will be suggested that Hohwy’s position may be considerably strengthened by adopting Carlo Cellucci’s view on knowledge (2013)

Prospects For Peircean Epistemic Infinitism

Epistemic infinitism is the view that infinite series of inferential relations are productive of epistemic justification. Peirce is explicitly infinitist in his early work, namely his 1868 series of articles. Further, Peirce's semiotic categories of firsts, seconds, and thirds favors a mixed theory of justification. The conclusion is that Peirce was an infinitist, and particularly, what I will term an impure infinitist. However, the prospects for Peirce's infinitism depend entirely on the prospects for Peirce's early semantics, which are not good. Peirce himself revised the semantic theory later, and in so doing, it seems also his epistemic infinitism

Buddhist Philosophy of Logic

Logic in Buddhist Philosophy concerns the systematic study of anumāna (often translated as inference) as developed by Dignāga (480-540 c.e.) and Dharmakīti (600-660 c.e.). Buddhist logicians think of inference as an instrument of knowledge (pramāṇa) and, thus, logic is considered to constitute part of epistemology in the Buddhist tradition. According to the prevalent 20th and early 21st century ‘Western’ conception of logic, however, logical study is the formal study of arguments. If we understand the nature of logic to be formal, it is difficult to see what bearing logic has on knowledge. In this paper, by weaving together the main threads of thought that are salient in Dignāga’s and Dharmakīti’s texts, I shall re-conceive the nature of logic in the context of epistemology and demarcate the logical part of epistemology which can be recognised as logic. I shall demonstrate that we can recognise the logical significance of inference as understood by Buddhist logicians despite the fact that its logical significance lies within the context of knowledge

Perception, Evidence, and our Expressive Knowledge of Others' Minds.

‘How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were?’ So asks Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. It is this question, rather than any concern about pretence or deception, which forms the basis for the philosophical problem of other minds. Responses to this problem have tended to cluster around two solutions: either we know others’ minds through perception; or we know others’ minds through a form of inference. In the first part of this paper I argue that this debate is best understood as concerning the question of whether our knowledge of others’ minds is based on perception or based on evidence. In the second part of the paper I suggest that our ordinary ways of thinking take our knowledge of others’ minds to be both non- evidential and non-perceptual. A satisfactory resolution to the philosophical problem of other minds thus requires us to take seriously the idea that we have a way of knowing about others’ minds which is both non-evidential and non-perceptual. I suggest that our knowledge of others’ minds which is based on their expressions – our expressive knowledge - may fit this bill

The taste of the mango: a Jaina-Buddhist controversy on evidence

In the classical framework of Indian philosophy, the different schools of thought agree on the fact that the correctness of an inference relies on a special necessary relation standing between the evidence-property and the target-property. The aim of this paper is to give a presentation of these discrepancies between the Jain and the Buddhist theories of inference, as they are found in Māṇikyanandi’s Parīkṣāmukham, the Introduction to Philosophical Investigation, a digest of Akalaṅka’s mature philosophy on one side, and in Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttikasvavṛtti, his Auto-commentary on the Essay on Knowledge on the other side

Phenomenal Conservatism

Peer reviewe

Jeremy Bentham, social criticism and levels of meaning

Published in an e-journal