Against Voluntarism about Doxastic Responsibility

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 33-51
Author(s):  
Stephen J. White ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Plausible Account ◽  
Doxastic Responsibility

According to the view Rik Peels defends in Responsible Belief (2017), one is responsible for believing something only if that belief was the result of choices one made voluntarily, and for which one may be held responsible. Here, I argue against this voluntarist account of doxastic responsibility and in favor of the rationalist position that a person is responsible for her beliefs insofar as they are under the influence of her reason. In particular, I argue that the latter yields a more plausible account of the conditions under which ignorance may serve as an excuse for wrongdoing.

Acting on Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Direction Of Fit ◽  
General Schema ◽  
Action Intention ◽  
Knowledge Norms

This chapter develops and refines the analogy between knowledge and action in Knowledge and its Limits. The general schema is: knowledge is to belief as action is to intention. The analogy reverses direction of fit between mind and world. The knowledge/belief side corresponds to the inputs to practical reasoning, the action/intention side to its outputs. Since desires are inputs to practical reasoning, the desire-as-belief thesis is considered sympathetically. When all goes well with practical reasoning, one acts on what one knows. Belief plays the same local role as knowledge, and intention as action, in practical reasoning. This is the appropriate setting to understand knowledge norms for belief and practical reasoning. Marginalizing knowledge in epistemology is as perverse as marginalizing action in the philosophy of action. Opponents of knowledge-first epistemology are challenged to produce an equally systematic and plausible account of the relation between the cognitive and the practical.

Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Robson
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Plausible Account

This chapter discusses a position it terms ‘belief pessimism concerning aesthetic testimony’ (BP). According to BP (i) judgements of aesthetic value are beliefs and (ii) aesthetic judgements are subject to some additional norm not active with respect to judgements concerning more mundane matters which (inter alia) prevents such judgements from legitimately being formed on the basis of testimony. The chapter argues that BP should be rejected since it faces a number of pressing objections relating to the nature of belief. First, it proposes a fundamental difference between aesthetic beliefs and beliefs of other kinds without properly motivating this distinction. Secondly, BP is in tension with any plausible account of the nature of belief. The chapter concludes, then, that at least one of (i) or (ii) should be rejected.

scholarly journals Grounding Personal Persistence

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet E. Baber
Keyword(s):  
Counterpart Theory ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Temporal Properties ◽  
What Matters In Survival ◽  
What Matters

Abstract Modal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s possibly being F with its having a counterpart that is F at another possible world; temporal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s having been F or going to be F, with its having a counterpart that is F at another time. Benovsky, J. 2015. “Alethic Modalities, Temporal Modalities, and Representation.” Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 29: 18–34 in this journal endorses modal counterpart theory but holds that temporal counterpart theory is untenable because it does not license the ascription of the intuitively correct temporal properties to ordinary objects, and hence that we should understand ordinary objects, including persons, as transtemporal ‘worms’. I argue that the worm theory is problematic when it comes to accounting for what matters in survival and that temporal counterpart theory provides a plausible account of personal persistence.

The Comic Stance

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Lauren Olin
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cognitive Architectures ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
The Future ◽  
Intentional Systems

Abstract Despite sustained philosophical attention, no theory of humor claims general acceptance. Drawing on the resources provided by intentional systems theory, this article first outlines an approach to investigating humor based on the idea of a comic stance, then sketches the Dismissal Theory of Humor (DTH) that has resulted from pursuing that approach. According to the DTH, humor manifests in cases where the future-directed significance of anticipatory failures is dismissed. Mirth, on this view, is the reward people get for declining to update predictive representational schemata in ways that maximize their futureoriented value. The theory aims to provide a plausible account of the role of humor in human mental and social life, but it also aims to be empirically vulnerable, and to generate testable predictions about how the comic stance may actually be undergirded by cognitive architectures.

Knowledge by default

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Analysis By Synthesis

Abstract The target article presents strong empirical evidence that knowledge is basic. However, it offers an unsatisfactory account of what makes knowledge basic. Some current ideas in cognitive neuroscience – predictive coding and analysis by synthesis – point to a more plausible account that better explains the evidence.

Self-Cultivation and Self-Absorption

2020 ◽  
pp. 146-171
Author(s):  
Rebecca Stangl
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Virtuous Agent ◽  
Moral Risk

This chapter argues that self-cultivation, as a virtue, can be successfully distinguished from a morally problematic kind of self-absorption. Indeed, we need such a virtue in order to explain just those situations in which agents really should think about their own character, and not merely the goods that the traditional virtues are directed toward, when deciding what particular actions to undertake. In particular, we need such a virtue to give a plausible account of how an imperfectly virtuous agent should act when confronted with what I shall call a situation of moral risk. But while imperfectly virtuous agents confronting such a situation should think about their own character, that is not all they should think about. Introducing concerns about the character of the self at the level of explicit deliberation as the target of one virtue among others rightly captures this fact.

Two Kinds of Reasons

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-112
Author(s):  
Christopher Woodard
Keyword(s):  
Practical Significance ◽  
Rule Consequentialism ◽  
Good Outcome ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Good Pattern ◽  
Act Consequentialism ◽  
Reason For Action

One kind of reason for action is that the action would have a good outcome. According to Act Consequentialism all reasons are like this. However, these ‘act-based’ reasons may be contrasted with ‘pattern-based’ reasons, which flow from the fact that an action is part of some good pattern of action. This chapter argues that both kinds of reasons exist, and explores some of the issues facing any theory of pattern-based reasons. One such issue is whether they can exist in cases where the valuable pattern would not be realized because other agents are unwilling to play their parts. According to idealizing forms of Rule Consequentialism, they can. However, the chapter endorses an argument made by Alexander Dietz that this is incompatible with any plausible account of the strength of pattern-based reasons. It ends by explaining how pattern-based reasons may nevertheless retain their practical significance.

The Value of Fallible Knowledge

2019 ◽  
pp. 56-80
Author(s):  
Michael Hannon
Keyword(s):  
Perceived Value ◽  
Threshold Level ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Degree Of Justification ◽  
Threshold Problem

This chapter attempts to solve the “threshold problem”: how to provide a plausible account of what fixes the threshold (level, degree) of justification (evidence, probability, warrant, supporting ground) for knowledge in a nonarbitrary way that also makes sense of the perceived value of knowledge. Epistemologists have been largely silent about how strong the justificatory component of fallible knowledge must be. Indeed, nothing like a precise specification of this level of justification has ever been seriously suggested, let alone more widely endorsed. This chapter attempts to answer this challenge. By appealing to the hypothesis that the concept of knowledge is used to identify reliable informants, we can determine the level of justification required for fallible knowledge. Further, we may explain why this level of justification has the significance that makes knowledge valuable. This chapter also explores the alleged payoffs of rejecting fallibilism and shows these benefits to be illusory.

6. Language, truth, and care

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-63
Author(s):  
Michael Inwood
Keyword(s):  
Free World ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
The World ◽  
Necessary Existence

‘Language, truth, and care’ examines how interpretations of the world can be formed and communicated. Language emerges from interpretation and consists of a multiplicity of meanings. Words and their meanings are already world-laden. This results in an everyday condition of ‘fallenness’ where meaning is inauthentic and comes from an anonymous ‘they’, not from original thought. The difficulty of communicating truth means that the philosopher’s message sheds light and should be built on, not merely accepted. Dasein’s necessary existence in the world involves it in the world, through ‘care’. Phenomenology dictates that science is only a secondary perception and there is no plausible account of a Dasein-free world.

Identity as Social Location

2018 ◽  
pp. 114-126
Author(s):  
Ásta
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Subjective Identity ◽  
Reason For Action

The author offers conception of social identity that accompanies the theory of social. This conception is to meet the following requirements: 1) do justice to how our identity is constrained by others; 2) do justice to our own contribution to our identity; 3) do justice to how highly contextual our identity is; 4) make sense of the phenomenon of passing; 5) make sense of the intersection of the various aspects of our identity; and 6) be compatible with a plausible account of agency in which identity can be a source of reason for action, including a moral reason for action. The conception of identity the author offers is this: our objective social identity is the location on a social map that we occupy stably in a context; our subjective identity is the location on that same map that we identify with.

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