Tracing the Territory. A Unitary Foundationalist Account

The paper offers an integrative interpretation of the different lines of thought Wittgenstein was inspecting in On Certainty and what he might have been looking for through them. It suggests that we may have been focusing our attention too strongly in the wrong place and comes to a new conclusion about where the real import of these reflections lies. This leads to an answer to the initially posed question of Foundationalism that revises the way in which there can be said to be a grounding intention in On Certainty

Wittgenstein on Knowledge (1949-1951)

In this paper, I want to characterize Wittgenstein"s epistemology, namely his contextualism, presented in his notes published under the title On Certainty. This characterization will be made in terms of a comparison with four control points in order to put into light the peculiarities of Wittgenstein"s epistemological position. The markers I will use for that purpose will give an indication of the level of conceptual commitment toward four important epistemological theses: holism, internalism, fallibilism, and egalitarianism. These markers have been chosen in function of the power of discrimination they provide regarding the two main trends in the past 40 years (or so) of debate in contemporary epistemology, i.e., foundationalism and coherentism. Using these conceptual markers, one can easily distinguish between strict foundationalism, which shows a low level of each markers, and strict coherentism, which shows a high level of each markers

Modeling of Phenomena and Dynamic Logic of Phenomena

Modeling of complex phenomena such as the mind presents tremendous computational complexity challenges. Modeling field theory (MFT) addresses these challenges in a non-traditional way. The main idea behind MFT is to match levels of uncertainty of the model (also, problem or theory) with levels of uncertainty of the evaluation criterion used to identify that model. When a model becomes more certain, then the evaluation criterion is adjusted dynamically to match that change to the model. This process is called the Dynamic Logic of Phenomena (DLP) for model construction and it mimics processes of the mind and natural evolution. This paper provides a formal description of DLP by specifying its syntax, semantics, and reasoning system. We also outline links between DLP and other logical approaches. Computational complexity issues that motivate this work are presented using an example of polynomial models

Democracy and Inquiry in the Post-Truth Era: A pragmatist Solution

Post-truth has become a commonplace strategy. No longer are objective facts viewed as having evidentiary value; scientific knowledge is on a par with emotions or personal beliefs. We intend to show that in the context of post-truth, those proffering and receiving an assertion do not care about the truth-value of the assertion or about the best way to gather evidence concerning it. Such attitudes raise several questions about how relativism can be a corrupting influence in contemporary democracies. We will analyse Steve Fuller’s use of the term «post-truth» – especially, the political connotations about epistemic democracy that he highlights. Instead, we offer a pragmatist defence of the truth and an alternative meaning of epistemic democracy

The Topology-Free Construction of the Universal Type Structure for Conditional Probability Systems

We construct the universal type structure for conditional probability systems without any topological assumption, namely a type structure that is terminal, belief-complete, and non-redundant. In particular, in order to obtain the belief-completeness in a constructive way, we extend the work of Meier [An Infinitary Probability Logic for Type Spaces. Israel Journal of Mathematics, 192, 1-58] by proving strong soundness and strong completeness of an infinitary conditional probability logic with truthful and non-epistemic conditioning events.Comment: In Proceedings TARK 2017, arXiv:1707.0825