Extended cognition and robust virtue epistemology: response to Vaesen

In a recent exchange, Vaesen (Synthese 181: 515–529, 2011; Erkenntnis 78:963–970, 2013) and Kelp (Erkenntnis 78:245–252, 2013a) have argued over whether cases of extended cognition pose (part of) a problem for robust virtue epistemology. This paper responds to Vaesen’s (Erkenntnis 78:963–970, 2013) most recent contribution to this exchange. I argue that Vaesen latest argument against the kind of virtue epistemology I favour fails

Kann etwas mit absoluter Gewissheit erkannt werden? - Einige Gedanken zur »Urfrage« der Philosophie

Für viele Vertreter der modernen Philosophie ist entgegen der vorphilosophischen »Alltagserfahrung« die Fähigkeit des Menschen, etwas mit Gewissheit zu erkennen, mehr als fragwürdig geworden. An die Stelle des schauenden Empfangens, des geistigen Blickes auf das objektive Wesen der Erkenntnis, der das Wesen der Erkenntnis in seinem Sosein offenbaren würde, treten zunehmend »Denkkonstrukte«, philosophische Systeme, die versuchen, Wesen der Erkenntnis systemkonform »neu« zu verstehen und zu begründen. \ud Ist verkannt worden, was Erkenntnis überhaupt ist?¬ – Wenn also das objektive Wesen der Erkenntnis verkannt wird, besteht die Gefahr, dass der Mensch sich in das »bitterste« Gefängnis, aus dem es fast kein Entrinnen mehr gibt, in den idealistischen Immanentismus begibt, der letztendlich in den Solipsismus führt... \u

A note on Morato on modality and explanation

This brief note critically assesses the central arguments in Morato’s (Erkenntnis 79:327–349, 2014) recent contribution to the growing literature on Blackburn’s dilemma about necessity. In particular, I demonstrate that (i) neither of Morato’s two novel reconstructions of the dilemma’s contingency horn succeed, since both turn on false premises; and, (ii) Morato fails to adequately motivate his own response to these reconstructions. The upshot is that Morato has set himself a pair of flawed problems, then offered a flawed solution

Die Erkenntnis der Liebe

Mit der Frage nach der Erkenntnis der Liebe möchte ich mich der verbreiteten, einfachen Gegenüberstellung von dem Wahn der Leidenschaften einerseits und der nüchternen Verstandeserkenntnis andererseits widersetzen. Ich trete für ein phänomenologisch angeleitetes Verständnis der liebenden Erkenntnis als Erkenntnis des Geliebten in seiner haecceitas ein. Der liebende Blick schaut meiner Ansicht nach den Geliebten in seinen Eigenschaften als diese besondere Person, die ihre Eigenschaften hat. Im Rückgriff auf Überlegungen der Dialogphilosophie trete ich dafür ein, dass das Liebesgeschehen selbst den Erkenntnisstatus der liebenden Schau begründet. Dabei ist die Liebe als dialogisch verfasste Gegenwart der Begegnung zu begreifen, die den Liebenden die Möglichkeit eröffnet, für einander als die Personen hervorzutreten, die ihre Eigenschaften haben, und einander damit zugleich als diese besonderen Personen zu erkennen

Whence philosophy of biology?

A consensus exists among contemporary philosophers of biology about the history of their field. According to the received view, mainstream philosophy of science in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s focused on physics and general epistemology, neglecting analyses of the ‘special sciences’, including biology. The subdiscipline of philosophy of biology emerged (and could only have emerged) after the decline of logical positivism in the 1960s and 70s. In this paper, I present bibliometric data from four major philosophy of science journals (Erkenntnis, Philosophy of Science, Synthese, and the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science), covering 1930-1959, which challenge this view

It Takes More than Moore to Answer Existence-Questions

© 2019 Springer Nature. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Erkenntnis. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00107-4Several recent discussions of metaphysics disavow existence-questions, claiming that they are metaphysically uninteresting because trivially settled in the affirmative by Moorean facts. This is often given as a reason to focus metaphysical debate instead on questions of grounding. I argue that the strategy employed to undermine existence-questions fails against its usual target: Quineanism. The Quinean can protest that the formulation given of their position is a straw man: properly understood, as a project of explication, Quinean metaphysics does not counsel us to choose between obvious ordinary-language claims and absurd revisionist claims, even if appeal to Moorean facts is permitted.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Imprecise Probability and Chance

Understanding probabilities as something other than point values (e.g., as intervals) has often been motivated by the need to find more realistic models for degree of belief, and in particular the idea that degree of belief should have an objective basis in “statistical knowledge of the world.” I offer here another motivation growing out of efforts to understand how chance evolves as a function of time. If the world is “chancy” in that there are non-trivial, objective, physical probabilities at the macro-level, then the chance of an event e that happens at a given time is e goes to one continuously or not is left open. Discontinuities in such chance trajectories can have surprising and troubling consequences for probabilistic analyses of causation and accounts of how events occur in time. This, coupled with the compelling evidence for quantum discontinuities in chance’s evolution, gives rise to a “(dis)continuity bind” with respect to chance probability trajectories. I argue that a viable option for circumventing the (dis)continuity bind is to understand the probabilities “imprecisely,” that is, as intervals rather than point values. I then develop and motivate an alternative kind of continuity appropriate for interval-valued chance probability trajectories

Perceptual Knowledge, Discrimination, and Closure

Carter and Pritchard (2016) and Pritchard (2010, 2012, 2016) have tried to reconcile the intuition that perceptual knowledge requires only limited discriminatory abilities with the closure principle. To this end, they have introduced two theoretical innovations: a contrast between two ways of introducing error-possibilities and a distinction between discriminating and favoring evidence. I argue that their solution faces the “sufficiency problem”: it is unclear whether the evidence that is normally available to adult humans is sufficient to retain knowledge of the entailing proposition and come to know the entailed proposition. I submit that, on either infallibilist or fallibilist views of evidence, Carter and Pritchard have set the bar for deductive knowledge too low. At the end, I offer an alternative solution. I suggest that the knowledge-retention condition of the closure principle is not satisfied in zebra-like scenarios