ON THE KNOWABILITY OF EPISTEMIC CONTEXTUALISM: A REPLY TO M. MONTMINY AND W. SKOLITS

Episteme ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Freitag

AbstractIt has been frequently suggested that epistemic contextualists violate the knowledge norm of assertion; by its own lights contextualism cannot be known and hence not be knowingly stated. I have defended contextualists against this objection by showing that it rests on a misunderstanding of their commitments (Freitag 2011, 2012, 2013b). In M. Montminy's and W. Skolits' recent contribution to this journal (2014), their criticism of my solution forms the background against which the authors develop their own. The present reply ventures to demonstrate that their objections are ineffective, since they rest on a confusion of two different ways in which contextualism is unknowable. The precise nature of the original problem will be clarified and my solution briefly restated.

Episteme ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Montminy ◽  
Wes Skolits

AbstractAccording to a popular objection against epistemic contextualism, contextualists who endorse the factivity of knowledge, the principle of epistemic closure and the knowledge norm of assertion cannot coherently defend their theory without abandoning their response to skepticism. After examining and criticizing three responses to this objection, we offer our own solution. First, we question the assumption that contextualists ought to be interpreted as asserting the content of their theory. Second, we argue that contextualists need not hold that high epistemic standards govern contexts in which they defend their theory.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Anmari Meerkotter

The Constitutional Court (CC) judgment of Lee v Minister of Correction Services 2013 2SA 144 (CC) is a recent contribution to transformative constitutional jurisprudence in the field of the law of delict. This matter turned on the issue of factual causation in the context of wrongful and negligent systemic omissions by the state. In this case note, I explore the law relating to this element of delictual liability with specific regard to the traditional test for factual causation – the conditio sine qua non (‘but-for’) test. In particular, I note the problems occasioned by formalistic adherence to this test in the context of systemic state omissions as evidenced by the SCA judgment in the same matter. I also consider the manner in which English courts have addressed this problem. Thereafter, I analyse the CC’s broader approach to the determination of factual causation as one based on common sense and justice. I argue that this approach endorses a break from a formalistic application of the test and constitutes a step towards an approach which resonates with the foundational constitutional values of freedom, dignity and equality. Furthermore, it presents an appropriate solution to the problems associated with factual causation where systemic omissions are concerned. I then consider the transformative impact of the Lee judgment. In particular, I argue that the broader enquiry favoured by the CC facilitates the realisation of constitutionally guaranteed state accountability, and amounts to an extension of the existing norm of accountability jurisprudence. Hence, I contend that the judgment presents a further effort by the Constitutional Court to effect wholesale the constitutionalisation of the law of delict, as well as a vindicatory tool to be used by litigants who have been adversely affected by systemic state omissions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garry D. Carnegie

ABSTRACT This response to the recent contribution by Matthews (2019) entitled “The Past, Present, and Future of Accounting History” specifically deals with the issues associated with concentrating on counting publication numbers in examining the state of a scholarly research field at the start of the 2020s. It outlines several pitfalls with the narrowly focused publications count analysis, in selected English language journals only, as provided by Matthews. The commentary is based on three key arguments: (1) accounting history research and publication is far more than a “numbers game”; (2) trends in the quality of the research undertaken and published are paramount; and (3) international publication and accumulated knowledge in accounting history are indeed more than a collection of English language publications. The author seeks to contribute to discussion and debate between accounting historians and other researchers for the benefit and development of the international accounting history community and global society.


Author(s):  
Mikkel Gerken

Chapter 6 concerns the normative relationship between action and knowledge ascriptions. Arguments are provided against a Knowledge Norm of Action (KNAC) and in favor of the Warrant-Action norm (WA). According to WA, S must be adequately warranted in believing that p relative to her deliberative context to meet the epistemic requirements for acting on p. WA is developed by specifying the deliberative context and by arguing that its explanatory power exceeds that of knowledge norms. A general conclusion is that the knowledge norm is an important example of a folk epistemological principle that does not pass muster as an epistemological principle. More generally, Chapter 6 introduces the debates about epistemic normativity and develops a specific epistemic norm of action.


Author(s):  
Jessica Brown

This chapter distinguishes between fallibilism and infallibilism by appeal to entailment: infallibilists hold that knowledge that p requires evidence which entails that p; fallibilists deny that. It outlines some of the recent motivations for infallibilism, including the infelicity of concessive knowledge attributions, the threshold problem, closure, and the knowledge norm of practical reasoning. Further, we see how contemporary infallibilists attempt to avoid scepticism by appeal either to a generous conception of evidence or a shifty view of knowledge, such as contextualism. The chapter explains the book’s focus on non-shifty versions of infallibilism which defend a generous conception of evidence. It ends by defending the entailment definition of infallibilism over other potential definitions, and outlining the chapters to come.


Author(s):  
Giovanni Fusco ◽  
Monica Motta

AbstractIn this paper we consider an impulsive extension of an optimal control problem with unbounded controls, subject to endpoint and state constraints. We show that the existence of an extended-sense minimizer that is a normal extremal for a constrained Maximum Principle ensures that there is no gap between the infima of the original problem and of its extension. Furthermore, we translate such relation into verifiable sufficient conditions for normality in the form of constraint and endpoint qualifications. Links between existence of an infimum gap and normality in impulsive control have previously been explored for problems without state constraints. This paper establishes such links in the presence of state constraints and of an additional ordinary control, for locally Lipschitz continuous data.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
ERIC BOARO

The last two decades have seen the opening of several new paths in eighteenth-century musicology, and Robert O. Gjerdingen has opened one of these: schema theory. Schemata are ‘stock musical phrases employed in conventional sequences’ that function as harmonic, melodic and rhythmic frameworks for musical passages. Evidence of such schematic thinking has emerged through related studies on partimento and solfeggio. Solfeggio practice of the time manifests a schematic way of thinking about music, being mostly based on simple hexachordal patterns which, as studies progressed, could be embellished in different ways. Vasili Byros has addressed the ‘archaeology’ of hearing through reception history, and offered strong evidence that eighteenth-century ears did hear schemata. Interweaving corpus studies on music of the long eighteenth century (1720–1840), contemporary music criticism and reception history, as well as didactic documents from that era, Byros sheds new light on the ways in which schemata were perceived at the time. A recent contribution by Gilad Rabinovitch uses a live improvisation in the style of Mozart by Robert Levin to demonstrate the importance of conventional schemata for historical improvisation.


Author(s):  
Lu Chen ◽  
Handing Wang ◽  
Wenping Ma

AbstractReal-world optimization applications in complex systems always contain multiple factors to be optimized, which can be formulated as multi-objective optimization problems. These problems have been solved by many evolutionary algorithms like MOEA/D, NSGA-III, and KnEA. However, when the numbers of decision variables and objectives increase, the computation costs of those mentioned algorithms will be unaffordable. To reduce such high computation cost on large-scale many-objective optimization problems, we proposed a two-stage framework. The first stage of the proposed algorithm combines with a multi-tasking optimization strategy and a bi-directional search strategy, where the original problem is reformulated as a multi-tasking optimization problem in the decision space to enhance the convergence. To improve the diversity, in the second stage, the proposed algorithm applies multi-tasking optimization to a number of sub-problems based on reference points in the objective space. In this paper, to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, we test the algorithm on the DTLZ and LSMOP problems and compare it with existing algorithms, and it outperforms other compared algorithms in most cases and shows disadvantage on both convergence and diversity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wassila Ghecham ◽  
Salah-Eddine Rebiai ◽  
Fatima Zohra Sidiali

Abstract A wave equation in a bounded and smooth domain of ℝ n {\mathbb{R}^{n}} with a delay term in the nonlinear boundary feedback is considered. Under suitable assumptions, global existence and uniform decay rates for the solutions are established. The proof of existence of solutions relies on a construction of suitable approximating problems for which the existence of the unique solution will be established using nonlinear semigroup theory and then passage to the limit gives the existence of solutions to the original problem. The uniform decay rates for the solutions are obtained by proving certain integral inequalities for the energy function and by establishing a comparison theorem which relates the asymptotic behavior of the energy and of the solutions to an appropriate dissipative ordinary differential equation.


Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Mueller

AbstractI will argue for a novel variant of the knowledge norm for practical reasoning. In Sect. 2, I will look at current variations of a knowledge norm for practical reasoning and I will provide reasons to doubt these proposals. In Sects. 3 and 4, I develop my own proposal according to which knowledge is the norm of apt practical reasoning. Section 5 considers objections. Finally, Sect. 6 concerns the normativity of my proposed knowledge norm and its significance.


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