Constructing Spanish Identity at the Center of the Old World: The Spanish Nation in Rome, 1558-1625

no abstrac

Constructing Spanish Identity at the Center of the Old World: The Spanish Nation in Rome, 1558-1625

no abstrac

Midwestern Latino caregivers’ knowledge, attitudes and sense making of the oral health etiology, prevention and barriers that inhibit their children’s oral health: a CBPR approach

Using community-based participatory research, the Health Protection Model was used to understand the cultural experiences, attitudes, knowledge and behaviors surrounding caries etiology, its prevention and barriers to accessing oral health care for children of Latino parents residing in Central Indiana

Interdisciplinarity to reconstruct historical introductions: solving the status of cryptogenic crayfish

Anciently introduced species can be confounded with native species because introduction pre-dates the first species inventories or because of the loss of the collective memory of the introductions. The term ‘cryptogenic species’ denotes species of unknown or unclear status (native versus non-native) in a given territory, and disciplinary approaches are often insufficient for solving their true status. Here, we follow an integrative, multidisciplinary approach to solve the status of a cryptogenic species, proposing that building on evidence from multiple disciplines can produce robust and clarifying insights. We undertook an exhaustive review of information on a putatively native crayfish (Austropotamobius italicus) in Spain. The reviewed information included taxonomy, genetics and phylogeography, history, archaeology, linguistics, biogeography, ecology, symbiotic organisms and even gastronomy and pharmacy. The knowledge produced by different scientific disciplines converges to indicate that A. italicus is a non-native species in Spain. Historical documents even identify the first introduction event: crayfish were shipped from Italy to Spain in 1588 as a diplomatic gift from Francesco I de' Medici to King Philip II of Spain. Previous discussions on the status of A. italicus focussed on inconclusive and often confusing genetic results and excluded the rich and clarifying evidence available from other approaches and disciplines. Interdisciplinarity is an often-invoked but rarely implemented practice in an academic environment that increasingly promotes narrow-focussed specialization. Our review shows that the integration of disciplines can surpass disciplinary approaches in solving scientific controversies. Our results have straightforward implications for strategies to conserve biological diversity in Spain and Europe, urging a debate on the appropriateness of devoting conservation efforts to non-native species.Peer Reviewe

Arbitrary switching and concern for truth

This essay is about a special kind of transformative choice that plays a key role in debates about permissivism, the view that some bodies of evidence permit more than one rational response. A prominent objection to this view contends that its defender cannot vindicate our aversion to arbitrarily switching between belief states in the absence of any new evidence. A prominent response to that objection tries to provide the desired vindication by appealing to the idea that arbitrary switching would involve a special kind of transformative choice: the choice to change one's epistemic standards, i.e., one's commitments regarding the relative importance of achieving true belief and avoiding false belief. My first aims here are to argue that this response is unsuccessful and propose an alternative. My secondary aim is to consider how this discussion might bear on more general debates about transformative choice

Making Up Our Minds: Ethical Norms in Epistemic Inquiry

From our limited perspectives, there are many ways the world could be. We could all be brains in vats, and the "zebra" at the local zoo could be no zebra at all but a mule cleverly disguised to look like one. Much more troublingly, at least for the average person and for philosophers outside of their studies, your unfavorable opinion of a colleague's work could be the product of your own biases, and your memory of a disagreement with a friend could be distorted by a self-serving lens. When presented with a possibility that you cannot rule out, there are two reactions you might have. You could dismiss the possibility, assuming that it does not obtain. Or, you could take the possibility seriously, treating it as a threat to your claims of knowledge. Which possibilities a person takes seriously is a matter of ethical as well as epistemic importance. In certain circumstances, for instance, cleaving to an unfavorable opinion of a colleague, despite not being able to rule out the possibility that it is biased, is not only unreasonable but also mean-spirited and self-indulgent. What is it to take a possibility seriously, and how should we decide when to do it? The few existing philosophical treatments of this question largely ignore the ethical dimensions of the phenomenon. My dissertation offers a fresh approach to the question of which possibilities to take seriously, one that is fully attentive to the interactions between the ethical and epistemic norms that guide us as we construct our pictures of reality. On my view, our decisions about which possibilities to take seriously are not first-order epistemic decisions about what to believe, but second-order epistemic decisions about how to decide what to believe, and they are properly based upon pragmatic and ethical considerations. As epistemic inquirers, then, we are not just faced with the question of what to believe given our evidence. We also face the prior, second-order question of what standards to use as we answer first-order questions of what to believe. I show how this view refreshes longstanding philosophical debates over evidentialism, the view that only evidence can be a reason for belief. I also explain how it can be used to give satisfying accounts of several important and puzzling phenomena concerning assessment of one's own epistemic achievements, including self-gaslighting. This last topic has recently received considerable attention in popular discussions of gendered injustice, but it has not yet been explored in the philosophical literature. Self-gaslighting is a form of self-doubt that is often identified as one of the harms that women face under sexism. But it is difficult to say what the harm could consist in, especially since self-gaslighting seems like a perfectly rational exercise of epistemic self-regulation. I argue that the harm of self-gaslighting is not rooted in any epistemic mistake, but rather in the fact that it involves a coerced change in the way that the subject structures inquiry concerning her own beliefs. Thus, my project not only addresses traditional topics in epistemology and the ethics of belief, but can also be fruitfully applied to new questions in feminist philosophy

Arbitrary switching and concern for truth

AbstractThis essay is about a special kind of transformative choice that plays a key role in debates about permissivism, the view that some bodies of evidence permit more than one rational response. A prominent objection to this view contends that its defender cannot vindicate our aversion to arbitrarily switching between belief states in the absence of any new evidence. A prominent response to that objection tries to provide the desired vindication by appealing to the idea that arbitrary switching would involve a special kind of transformative choice: the choice to change one’s epistemic standards, i.e., one’s commitments regarding the relative importance of achieving true belief and avoiding false belief. My first aims here are to argue that this response is unsuccessful and propose an alternative. My secondary aim is to consider how this discussion might bear on more general debates about transformative choice.</jats:p