Unassertability And The Appearance Of Ignorance

Whether it seems that you know something depends in part upon practical factors. When the stakes are low, it can seem to you that you know that p, but when the stakes go up it'll seem to you that you don't. The apparent sensitivity of knowledge to stakes presents a serious challenge to epistemologists who endorse a stable semantics for knowledge attributions and reject the idea that whether you know something depends on how much is at stake. After arguing that previous attempts to meet this challenge fall short, I offer a new solution: the unassertability account. The account starts with the observation that high stakes subjects aren't in an epistemic position to assert. We generally presuppose that knowing is sufficient for epistemically proper assertion, but this presupposition only stands up to scrutiny if we draw a distinction between two notions of epistemic propriety, and we shouldn't expect ordinary speakers to draw it. A subject in a high stakes situation who fails to draw the distinction will be led by the sufficiency claim to treat anything she isn't in a position to assert as something she isn't in a position to know. The sensitivity of epistemically proper assertion to practical factors explains the merely apparent sensitivity of knowledge to stake

The Bayesian explanation of transmission failure

Even if our justified beliefs are closed under known entailment, there may still be instances of transmission failure. Transmission failure occurs when P entails Q, but a subject cannot acquire a justified belief that Q by deducing it from P. Paradigm cases of transmission failure involve inferences from mundane beliefs (e.g., that the wall in front of you is red) to the denials of skeptical hypotheses relative to those beliefs (e.g., that the wall in front of you is not white and lit by red lights). According to the Bayesian explanation, transmission failure occurs when (i) the subject’s belief that P is based on E, and (ii) P(Q|E) P(Q). No modifications of the Bayesian explanation are capable of accommodating such cases, so the explanation must be rejected as inadequate. Alternative explanations employing simple subjunctive conditionals are fully capable of capturing all of the paradigm cases, as well as those missed by the Bayesian explanatio

Are There Ethical Implications of Karma?

Though Americans have been exposed to Asian philosophical traditions since the nineteenth century – with much recent help from the Beat writers of the 1950s and 1960s – too little attention has been paid to the texts and ideas of these traditions and to their implementation in daily life. This is especially true with regard to Buddhist ideas of ethics and karma. Compounding the problem is the commercial exploitation of Asian philosophical terms like Dharma, karma, tantra and reincarnation, which tends to impede deeper understanding of these important concepts. In America, ethics are once more on the lips of many in academia, business, and government; we must therefore make a careful examination of these ideas so that we can develop practices that will help mitigate world suffering

Introducing Students to the Cinematic Art of Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki

Following Donald Richie’s observation that the “Japanese film is richest in mood or atmosphere, in presenting characters in their own surroundings,” I introduce undergraduate students to the cinematic art of Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki emphasizing each director’s use of mise-en-scène or the way in which the elements of the scene are arranged. For the purposes of the two courses (ASIA 4490/FILM 3220 and HONORS 4490: The Films of Kurosawa and Miyazaki), mise-en-scene was used strictly in reference “to the elements within a scene” or sequence of scenes “which places greater emphasis on pictorial values within a shot” or sequence of shots (Beaver, 2007, pp. 160-161). In both semesters students viewed and analyzed representative films from both directors. Francois Truffaut’s conception of auteurship is used in order for students to understand each director’s creative authority. In conjunction with Bela Belazs’s seminal essay “Visible Man,” students identified both directors’ presentation of embodiment in each film studied. Since both courses took place in conjunction with Kennesaw State University’s Year of Japan program, students also studied both directors in terms of their respective inclusion of elements of traditional and modern Japanese culture particularly the aesthetics of mono no aware and the ethos of yasashisa. Finally, students also studied the ways in which Kurosawa and Miyazaki exemplify international cinema