Understanding Enkratic Reasoning

Author(s): Olav Gjelsvik / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2013

Beginning from John Broome’s approach to Enkrasia, the paper quickly moves to giving a condensed presentation of an approach to practical reasoning motivated by a Fregean approach to inference (in theoretical reasoning). The suggested account of practical reasoning avoids using rationality requirements to do explanatory work when accounting for correct reasoning, and thus avoids lots of problems. It is strictly conservative in its approach, and no new inference rules are required for moving from the theoretical to the practical case. It is suggested that we can stick to deductive reasoning when accounting for practical reasoning proper; the crucial premiss from theoretical reasoning about practical matters cannot normally be established this way. The paper moves on to tackle counterarguments to the effect that there will simply be too little correct practical reasoning on the present (deductive) approach. The simple account of correct reasoning has too high a cost, it is argued. The paper meets this objection when it argues that much reasoning is enthymematic or incomplete reasoning. By making specific claims about how there may be practical premisses to which we do not attend even when they are, in some sense, before the mind, the approach is defended.

The Distinctive Rationality of Intentions

Author(s): David Botting / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2013

In this paper I intend to defend Broome’s cognitivist view that reduces practical normativity to theoretical normativity, but argue that this leaves unaccounted for distinctively practical norms that I seek to capture as a system of local obligations to have particular intentions. The krasia requirement dictates what obligations we have relative to the normative beliefs that we have but does not tell us what intentions it is rational to have all-things-considered.

On Changing the Past

Author(s): Alex Blum / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2013

We confront two seemingly incompatible positions in regard to the past. One, the modal status of a proposition is unchangeable; and two, that omnipotence is trumped only by necessity.

Prečo externalistické kritériá zdovodnenia principiálne zlyhávajú?

Author(s): Martin Nuhlíček / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2013

The article concerns two basic approaches to the problem of epistemic belief-justification: internalism and externalism. It aims to show that internalism as well as externalism, when confronted with the problem of philosophical skepticism, face various kinds of problems, which lead to implausibility of their respective accounts of justification. The author focuses especially on the externalist approach which was invented as a direct response to the threat of skepticism. The central part of the article contains a brief analysis of main attributes of externalism, and subsequently its criticism which aims to show that the criteria of justification proposed by externalists do not accomplish the basic function of distinguishing between justified and unjustified beliefs. The author argues that the discussed deficiencies of externalism result from its elementary rationale, which implies that they are incurable, and therefore the externalist criteria of justification inevitably fail.

Memories of the Fourth Condition and Lessons to be Learned from Suspicious Externalism

Author(s): Murat Baç / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2009

A significant and interesting part of the post-Gettier literature regarding the analysis of propositional knowledge is the attempt to supplement the traditional tripartite analysis by employing a fourth condition regarding the defeasibility of evidence and thus to preclude the counterexamples displayed in Gettier’s original article. My aim in this paper is to critically examine the sort of externalism that accompanies the most promising of the proposed fourth conditions, due to Pollock, in order to offer some fresh insights on this old epistemological issue. I argue that Pollock’s paradigmatic treatment of the matter gives rise to a critical problem with regard to the exact role of the fourth condition and its relation with the onto-semantic or alethic condition of propositional knowledge, to wit, truth. In the light of this discussion, I draw certain conclusions about epistemic externalism and point out some of its theoretical shortcomings.

Overcoming the Obstacles to the Relativity of Truth

Author(s): Dan Zeman / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2007

Recently, truth-relativism has taken the form of a semantic account to be given to some specific areas of discourse. Among discourses amenable to relativistic treatment are those about future contingents, knowledge attributions, epistemic modals, gradeable adjectives, and discourses that exhibit the phenomenon known as “faultless disagreement” (basically, the evaluative domain). Other applications, not worked out yet, are seen as having good prospects to fit the truth-relativistic model.

Thinking Reeds and the Ideal of Reason: Outline of a Naturalized Epistemology

Author(s): Konrad Talmont-Kaminski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2006

Pascal described human beings as ‘thinking reeds’, weak in flesh but magnificent in mind. While it is a poetic image, it is also an ambivalent one and may suggest an inappropriately dualist view of human nature. It is important to realise that not only are we thinking reeds but that we are thinking because we are reeds. In fact, rationality is reed-like itself, very much of a kind with the rest of human nature. It is now more than two and half centuries since David Hume first pointed out the lack of an argument that would fully justify claims about matters of fact. Being neither made evident by our observations nor arising out of the mere consideration of relations of ideas, claims such as that the turkey will be fed dinner tomorrow – rather than being had for dinner (to use Russell’s famous example) have remained problematic ever since. Many attempts have been made to show that something of the beauty and certainty of reasoning about relations of ideas could be recaptured in our dealings with matters of fact, but all attempts have remained mere shadows of what we tried to grasp. Hume’s argument stands. An infinite being might watch countless sun-sets and yet should witness each new sun-rise with surprise, always withholding its judgement regarding what will follow.

Existenční kvantifikátor a problém predikce existence u B. Bolzana

Author(s): Marta Vlasáková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2005

Instead of the existential quantifier Bernard Bolzano uses his notion of Gegenständlichkeit einer Vorstellung an sich (objectivity of a representation in itself). This approach makes it possible for him to solve the traditional problem of the predication of existence (i.e. whether it is possible to consider existence as a standard property of individuals) in accordance with an approach common today, namely to take existence to be primarily a property („occupation“) of a corresponding representation in itself, and not a characteristic of individuals. However, Bolzano considers a property of real existence to be attributable also to particular individuals, which is essentially different from the usual practice.

O vlivu světa 3 na svět 2 (na příkladu hudby a vědecké teorie)

Author(s): Jiří Raclavský / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2004

In his conception of worlds 1-3 Popper did not make clear how the world 3 (inhabited by abstract objects like scientific theories) can influence on world 2 or 1 (the world 2 is perhaps only psychical, however world 1 is fully material). On example of music we can see that any human invention of “new” tone combination cannot affect already given tone combinatorics which is in world 3 (this “new” combination is only one of possible combinations). Similarily “new” scientific theory cannot make any change in world 3 where all (right or wrong) theories are – according to Popper – settled. Opposite direction of influence seems neither possible: human mind can only feel that it is somehow touched by abstract object during its creative activity; to all appearance abstract objects cannot causaly affect on – presumably material – medium of human thinking.

RECONDIȚIONAREA CONDIȚIEI UMANE ȘI AMURGUL LIBERTĂȚII

Author(s): Gheorghe Văduva / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 26/2016

Depuis toujours, l’homme a reflété sur sa condition. Il n’a jamais touché un jugement catégorique, mais il s’en est contenté seulement à constater qu’il soit ce qu’il soit. Sa condition se trouve quelque parte entre une réalité non-conditionnée et une cognition conditionnée, entre un Univers visible, perceptible, donc cognoscible, et un mystère encore non-solutionné. En même temps, l’homme real ne peut pas être dissocie de l’homme abstract, de l’homme cognitif, de l’homme qui panse sur soi-même. Sa condition se positionne quelque part entre la liberté de la pensée et le conditionnement de la liberté, entre l’existence et le temps, entre ce qu’on est et ce qu’on n’en est pas. Ses horizons, de plus en plus élargies après une matrice chaotique, définissent, en effet, un crépuscule de la liberté qui devienne de plus en plus conditionnée de même éternel droit à liberté.

Četiri shvatanja kauzaliteta

Author(s): Władysław Krajewski / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 03+04/1984

The author explores four fundamental concepts of causality: materialistic, spiritualistic of voluntaristic, racionalistic or aprioristic and phenomenologic or positivistic. In the first part, causality is viewed as a motion or feed-back; in the second, causality is seen as a will or a conscious act; in the third, causality is founded as a phenomenon of a cause-effect type, and in the fourth part, the author demonstrates it as a consistent line.

Prolegomena k formálnej epistemológii

Author(s): Ladislav Kvasz / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 3/1999

The aim of this paper is a philosophical generalisation of the results, which we obtained through the analysis of the development of synthetic geometry. I our papers Náčrt analytickej teórie subjektu (An Outline of the Analytical theory of the Subject, Kvasz 1996a) and Topológia versus teória množín (Topology versus Set Theory, Kvasz 1997) we proposed a method of analysis of the development of geometry based on Wittgensteinś Picture theory of meaning from the Tractatus. It turned out, that the concept of the form of language can be effectively used to characterise the changes, which occured in the course of development of geometry. In the present paper we would like to generalize our approach and outline a universal approach to epistemology, which we call formal epistemology.

Epistemologický relativizmus: Áno a nie

Author(s): Egon Gál,František Novosád,Jan Rybar,Jozef Viceník / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 4/1997

Conversation between Ján Rybár, Jozef Viceník, Egon Gál and František Novosád.

O epistemológii, filozofii mysle a kognitívnych vedách

Author(s): Egon Gál,Jan Rybar / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 4/1996

Conversation between Ján Rybár and Egon Gál,

Niekoľko poznámok k piatim tézam M. Kanovského

Author(s): Peter Stach / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 3/1996

Už dosť dlho sa na stránkach tohto časopisu rozvíja polemika o exaktnosti.

K vývinu pojmov a genetickej väzbe medzi nimi

Author(s): Pavel Cmorej / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/1996

V tomto príspevku sa sústredím na niektoré otázky Čemíkovho chápania vývinu pojmov, ktoré predložil a rozvinul vo svojom dialógu [4],

Wisdom and Reason

Author(s): Andrei Mărăşoiu / Language(s): English Issue: 53/2018

On Ryan’s (2012) theory of wisdom as deep rationality, to believe or act wisely is to believe or act in a justified way, informed by a body of other justified beliefs about the good life. Ryan (2017) elaborates the view along evidentialist lines: one’s belief or act is justified when it is based on the best available evidence. The resulting package faces counterexamples. Transformative experiences are rational ‘leaps of faith’ (Paul 2014), so the agent’s decision to undergo one is not best supported by the evidence available. Many transformative experiences (such as deciding to become a mother, or choosing a career path) often endow lives with meaning, and agents with a sense of purpose (Wolf 2010). Because so much is at stake, it is sometimes rational for agents to take on the risk involved in transforming themselves. Deciding to undergo such experiences may be wise—even if the evidence available at the time doesn’t positively support that decision. In reply to this challenge, I argue that, instead of evidentialism, Ryan’s view should include virtue theory, which helps explain the seeming counterexamples. I focus on the virtues of openness to experience, and of steadfastness in the face of experience.

Epistemológia ako vedná disciplína?

Author(s): Jan Rybar / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/1994

The epistemology is the analysis of principles, foundations, structures and conditions of the scientific knowledge. Is it possible to solve these problems by scientific means and ways only? The traditional empirical epistemology was refuted on ground of the scientific research of perception, behavior, language etc. In this respect N. Chomskyś contribution is considerable. But what his solution represents is the neocartesian interpretation of the language competence. J. Piaget and his followers (the constructive epistemology) do not agree with the conception of N. Chomsky. According to J. Piaget whatever knowledge assumes the schemes, which are not out of subject (Platon), nor the native ability (Descartes), nor constant (Kant) they develop in the interaction between the organism and the environment. Then the constructive epistemology concerns the mechanisms of this development.

THE FATE OF CONTEMPORARY EPISTEMOLOGY: BETWEEN EPISTEMIC REGRESS AND EPISTEMIC ABSOLUTISM

Author(s): Joseph Balogun Babalola / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2018

It seems that the central issue in contemporary epistemology is that of how best to justify our beliefs. This has plunged philosophers into an abysmal ocean of arguments and counter-arguments with no clear way of resolving the resultant epistemological controversies. Focal to this paper is the argument that the problems of epistemic justification as encountered in the contemporary epistemology are resolvable into either the problem of epistemic regress on the one hand, or the problem of epistemic absolutism, on the other. The paper concludes that, consequent upon the nonavailability of the third course, the contemporary epistemology has to choose between these two extremes to remain in the business of philosophizing.

APRIORISMUL PRAGMATIC CONTRIBUŢIUNI LA PSICO-BIOLOGIA GÂNDIRII (I)

Author(s): Eugeniu Sperantia / Language(s): Romanian,Moldavian Issue: 1/2019