A Humean modal epistemology

I present an exemplary Humean modal epistemology. My version takes inspiration from but incurs no commitment to both Hume’s historical position and Lewis’s Humeanism. Modal epistemology should meet two challenges: the Integration challenge of integrating metaphysics and epistemology and the Reliability challenge of giving an account of how our epistemic capacities can be reliable in detecting modal truth. According to Lewis, modal reasoning starts from certain Humean principles: there is only the vast mosaic of spatiotemporally distributed local matters of fact. The facts can be arbitarily recombined. These principles cannot be taken for granted. I suggest a bottom-up approach instead: Humean principles of recombining the mosaic of facts can be retrieved from the evolutionarily instilled and empirically informed use of imagination in exploring everyday circumstantial possibilities. This use of imagination conforms to a primitive conception of matter as freely recombinable. The modal beliefs that can be obtained from generalizing the more elementary exercise of imagination have to be corrected. Recombination is limited by sortal criteria of identity. Moreover, the overall picture of a recombinable spatiotemporal mosaic must be weighed against the results of science.

Epistemological Advantages

This chapter argues that accepting modal normativism brings significant epistemological advantages. Those who aim to account for modal knowledge face the integration challenge of reconciling an account of what is involved in knowing modal truths with a plausible story about how we can come to know them, and the reliability challenge of explaining how we could have evolved to have a reliable faculty for coming to know modal truths. Recent empiricist accounts of modal knowledge cannot solve these problems regarding specifically metaphysical modal truths—leaving us with the threat of skepticism about large portions of metaphysics. However, by giving a different functional story, the modal normativist can develop a plausible response to the remaining versions of both of these classic problems for modal epistemology. Modal normativists can also respond to further worries parallel to those raised by Sharon Street’s evolutionary debunking arguments in meta-ethics.

The Reliability Challenge in Moral Epistemology

The Reliability Challenge to moral non-naturalism has received substantial attention recently in the literature on moral epistemology. While the popularity of this particular challenge is a recent development, this form of the challenge can be traced back to a skeptical challenge in the philosophy of mathematics raised by Paul Benacerraf. The current Reliability Challenge is widely regarded as the most sophisticated way to develop this skeptical line of thinking, making the Reliability Challenge the strongest epistemic challenge to normative non-naturalism. In this chapter, I argue that the innovations that have occurred since Benacerraf’s statement of the challenge are misconceived and confused in a number of ways. The Reliability Challenge is not the most potent epistemic challenge to moral non-naturalism. The most potent challenge comes from the fact that there is a causal condition on knowledge—or, more precisely, a becaual condition—that non-natural moral facts cannot satisfy.

Explaining our Reliability

This chapter discusses the Benacerraf–Field Challenge – i.e., the reliability challenge. It argues that neither Benacerraf’s formulation of the challenge, nor any simple variations on it, satisfies key constraints which have been placed on it. It then turns to more promising analyses, in terms of sensitivity and safety. The challenge to show that our beliefs are sensitive is widely supposed to admit of an evolutionary answer in the mathematical case, but not in the moral. The chapter argues that it does not, but that, even if it did, this is an inadequate formulation of the challenge. But understanding the reliability challenge as the challenge to show that our beliefs are safe is more promising. The chapter shows that whether this challenge is equally pressing in the moral and mathematical cases depends on whether “realist pluralism” is equally viable in the two areas.

Moral Perception and the Reliability Challenge

Given a traditional intuitionist moral epistemology, it is notoriously difficult for moral realists to explain the reliability of our moral beliefs. This has led some to go looking for an alternative to intuitionism. Perception is an obvious contender. I previously argued that this is a dead end, that all moral perception is dependent on a priori moral knowledge. This suggests that perceptualism merely moves the bump in the rug where the reliability challenge is concerned. Preston Werner responds that my account rests on an overly intellectualized model of perception. In this paper, I argue that though Werner may well be correct, my arguments, properly extended, still suggest that perceptualism leaves realists in no better position than intuitionism when it comes to the reliability challenge.

A Reliable, Low Power and Nonvolatile MTJ-Based Flip-Flop for Advanced Nanoelectronics

Very large-scale integrated circuit (VLSI) design faces many challenges with today’s nanometer CMOS technology, including leakage current and reliability issues. Magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) hybrid with CMOS transistors can offer many advantages for future VLSI design such as high performance, low power consumption, easy integration with CMOS and also nonvolatility. However, MTJ-based logic circuits suffer from a reliability challenge that is the read disturbance issue. This paper proposes a new nonvolatile magnetic flip-flop (MFF) that offers a disturbance-free sensing and a low power write operation over the previous MFFs. This magnetic-based logic circuit is based on the previous two-in-one (TIO) MTJ cell that presents the aforementioned attributes. Radiation-induced single event upset, as another reliability challenge, is also taken into consideration for the MFFs and another MFF robust against radiation effects is suggested and evaluated.