Boghossian's template and transmission failure

Within his overarching program aiming to defend an epistemic conception of analyticity, Boghossian (1996 and 1997) has offered a clear-cut explanation of how we can acquire a priori knowledge of logical truths and logical rules through implicit definition. The explanation is based on a special template or general form of argument. Ebert (2005) has argued that an enhanced version of this template is flawed because a segment of it is unable to transmit warrant from its premises to the conclusion. This article aims to defend the template from this objection. We provide an accurate description of the type of non-transmissivity that Ebert attributes to the template and clarify why this is a novel type of non-transmissivity. Then, we argue that Jenkins (2008)’s response to Ebert fails because it focuses on doxastic rather than propositional warrant. Finally, we rebut Ebert’s objection on Boghossian’s behalf by showing that it rests on an unwarranted assumption and is internally incoherent

Goldman and Siegel on the epistemic aims of education

Philosophers have claimed that education aims at fostering disparate epistemic goals. In this paper we focus on an important segment of this debate involving conversation between Alvin Goldman and Harvey Siegel. Goldman claims that education is essentially aimed at producing true beliefs. Siegel contends that education is essentially aimed at fostering both true beliefs and, independently, critical thinking and rational belief. Although we find Siegel’s position intuitively more plausible than Goldman’s, we also find Siegel’s defence of it wanting. We suggest novel argumentative strategies that draw on Siegel’s own arguments but look to us more promising

Assessing concept possession as an explicit and social practice

We focus on issues of learning assessment from the point of view of an investigation of philosophical elements in teaching. We contend that assessment of concept possession at school based on ordinary multiple-choice tests might be ineffective because it overlooks aspects of human rationality illuminated by Robert Brandom’s inferentialism––the view that conceptual content largely coincides with the inferential role of linguistic expressions used in public discourse. More particularly, we argue that multiple-choice tests at schools might fail to accurately assess the possession of a concept or the lack of it, for they only check the written outputs of the pupils who take them, without detecting the inferences actually endorsed or used by them. We suggest that school tests would acquire reliability if they enabled pupils to make the reasons of their answers or the inferences they use explicit, so as to contribute to what Brandom calls the game of giving and asking for reasons. We explore the possibility to put this suggestion into practice by deploying two-tier multiple-choice tests

Ebert on Boghossian’s template and transmission failure

Boghossian (1996) has put forward an interesting explanation of how we can acquire logical knowledge via implicit definitions that makes use of a special template. Ebert (2005) has argued that the template is unserviceable, as it doesn't transmit warrant. In this paper, we defend the template. We first suggest that Jenkins (2008)’s response to Ebert fails because it focuses on doxastic rather than propositional warrant. We then reject Ebert’s objection by showing that it depends on an implausible and incoherent assumption

Brandom's Inferentialist Theory and the Meaning Entitlement Connection

According to Brandom’s conceptual role semantics, to grasp a concept involves a commitment to drawing certain inferences. This is a consequence of the inferentialist thesis that the meaning of a term is given by its justification through assertibility conditions. Inferential commitments come out from a material notion of inference which underwrites human rational discourse and activity. In this paper I discuss a problem of Brandom’s semantics allegedly exposed in an argument by Paul Boghossian against Dummett’s and Brandom’s substantive conception of meaning. I contend that Boghossian’s analysis is dubious because it overlooks an important difference between Dummett’s and Brandom’s positions related respectively to a monotonic and a non-monotonic view of the norm underwriting meaning

A partial eclipse of Sun on January 4 1973 at 73.5 cm

La observación realizada en 73.5 cm permitió medir el tamaño de la radio corona para esa fecha y posiciones de las regions activas en 408 MHz. Fue intentada la correlación de estas regiones con plages observada en Ca II con buen acuerdo. Altura de las regiones activas en radio fueron calculadas.Asociación Argentina de Astronomí

Expressive function and categorization of Italian interjections

The article deals with such linguistic units as interjections. Examination of these language components affects the sphere of their semantics, classification and structure. Their categorization permits to determine specific features unique to these linguistic phenomena. A hypothesis is put forward about the correlation of interjection locutions and phraseological unit

Assessing Concept Possession as an Explicit and Social Practice

We are grateful to Jan Derry, Fed Luzzi, Paul Standish, Shone Surendran, the audience of a research seminar of the Institute of Education of UCL, and two anonymous reviewers of this journal for comments on a draft of this paper.Peer reviewedPostprin

THE PO RIVER DELTA (ITALY) AND THE YELLOW RIVER DELTA (CHINA): THE STUDY AREA OF THE PROJECT

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The Pine Woods along the sea shoreline: a natural defence of the north italian Adriatic coastal zone.

Considering the importance of the pine woods in the Adriatic costal zone, like a natural defence against the attack of the storm waves tending to produce the regression of the shoreline, this study is a preliminary attempt for a more detailed investigation that will try to correlate geological, lithological, climatological and paleobotanical parameters to obtain a better knowledge of the evolutional trend of the different environments in different times of the North Italian Adriatic coastal zone