PERSPECTIVAL EXTERNALISM IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR RADICAL SKEPTICISM

ABSTRACTHilary Putnam (1981) provides an anti-skeptical argument motivated by semantic externalism. He argues that our best theorizing about what it takes to experience, think, and so on, entails that the world is much as we take it to be. This fact eliminates the possibility of radical skeptical scenarios, where from our perspective everything seems as it does in the actual case, but we are widely and systematically mistaken. I think that this approach is generally correct, and that it is the most promising strategy for undermining radical skepticism. There are, however, well-discussed difficulties with Putnam's way of pursuing this strategy (see especially Anthony Brueckner 1986). I argue that in order to avoid these objections we will have to be more radical externalists than Putnam proposed; in particular, we will have to beperspectival externalists. According to perspectival externalism, a subject's reliable relations to her environment play a crucial role in determining not only the contents of her mental events, but also what it is like for her to grasp those contents. While semantic externalism is widely accepted in epistemology, perspectival externalism is not. I argue that perspectival externalism is independently more plausible than mere semantic externalism, and that such an account can enable us to better pursue Putnam's anti-skeptical strategy.

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Cartesian Skepticism, Content Externalism, and Self-Knowledge

Veritas (Porto Alegre) ◽

10.15448/1984-6746.2005.4.1815 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 50 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Anthony Brueckner

Keyword(s):

Key Words ◽

Philosophy Of Language ◽

Hilary Putnam ◽

Skeptical Argument ◽

Content Externalism ◽

Cartesian Skepticism ◽

Meditations On First Philosophy ◽

The World ◽

Self Knowledge ◽

Brains In Vats

Há um argumento cético clássico derivado das Meditações sobre a filosofia primeira. Este artigo oferece uma formulação contemporânea padrão do argumento, pretendendo mostrar que ninguém sabe qualquer coisa sobre o mundo extramental. A obra de Hilary Putnam na filosofia da linguagem e da mente parece fornecer uma resposta a uma versão atualizada do argumento cético cartesiano. Em sua maior parte, este artigo é dedicado a uma análise e crítica das meditações anti-céticas de Putnam. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Descartes. Putnam. Ceticismo. Cérebros em cubas. Externalismo de conteúdo. ABSTRACT There is a classical skeptical argument that derives from Descartes’s Meditations on first Philosophy. This paper offers a standard contemporary formulation of the argument, which purports to show that no one knows anything about the world that exists outside our minds. The work of Hilary Putnam in the philosophy of language and mind seems to afford an answer to an updated version of the Cartesian skeptical argument. The bulk of this paper is devoted to an analysis and critique of Putnam’s anti-skeptical meditations. KEY WORDS – Descartes, Putnam, Skepticism, Brains in vats, Content externalism.

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Rapamycin: Drug Repurposing in SARS-CoV-2 Infection

Pharmaceuticals ◽

10.3390/ph14030217 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 217

Author(s):

Jiri Patocka ◽

Kamil Kuca ◽

Patrik Oleksak ◽

Eugenie Nepovimova ◽

Martin Valis ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Literature Review ◽

Human Health ◽

World Economy ◽

Web Of Science ◽

Drug Repurposing ◽

Final Analysis ◽

High Rate ◽

Suitable Candidate ◽

Promising Strategy ◽

The World

Since December 2019, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has been a worldwide pandemic with enormous consequences for human health and the world economy. Remdesivir is the only drug in the world that has been approved for the treating of COVID-19. This drug, as well as vaccination, still has uncertain effectiveness. Drug repurposing could be a promising strategy how to find an appropriate molecule: rapamycin could be one of them. The authors performed a systematic literature review of available studies on the research describing rapamycin in association with COVID-19 infection. Only peer-reviewed English-written articles from the world’s acknowledged databases Web of Science, PubMed, Springer and Scopus were involved. Five articles were eventually included in the final analysis. The findings indicate that rapamycin seems to be a suitable candidate for drug repurposing. In addition, it may represent a better candidate for COVID-19 therapy than commonly tested antivirals. It is also likely that its efficiency will not be reduced by the high rate of viral RNA mutation.

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Ideological Underpinnings in President John Dramani Mahama’s 2013 State of the Nation Address

Linguistics Initiative ◽

10.53696/27753719.17 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 1-17

Author(s):

Kojo Fenyi ◽

◽

Georgina Afeafa Sapaty ◽

Keyword(s):

Critical Discourse Analysis ◽

Thematic Analysis ◽

Crucial Role ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

Cultural Character ◽

Economic Difficulty ◽

Human Value ◽

Biblical Allusion ◽

The World

This study sets out to investigate, examine and understand the hidden ideologies and ideological structures/devices in the 2013 State of the Nation Address of President John Dramani Mahama. The study specifically aimed to (i) ascertain the ideologies embedded in the speech and (ii) investigate linguistic expressions and devices which carry these ideological colourations in the speech under review. It uses Critical Discourse Analysis as the theoretical framework to examine the role of language in creating ideology as well as the ideological structures in the speech. These hidden ideologies are created, enacted and legitimated by the application of certain linguistic devices. The researchers deem a study of this nature important as it will expose hidden motives that Ghanaian presidents cloth in language in order to manipulate their audience through their speeches in order to win and/or sustain political power. Through thematic analysis, it was revealed that Mahama projected these ideologies in his speech: ideology of positive self-representation, ideology of human value, ideology of economic difficulty, ideology of power relations and ideology of urgency. It also revealed that Mahama projects his ideologies through the following ideological discursive structures: pronouns, biblical allusion and metaphor. The study has shown that language plays a crucial role in human existence as a means of socialisation. Language has been revealed as a means of communicating ideologies and events of the world. In the tradition of CDA, this study has confirmed that text and talk have social and cultural character and that discourse functions ideologically.

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Design of a Migrating Crawler Based on a Novel URL Scheduling Mechanism using AHP

International Journal of Rough Sets and Data Analysis ◽

10.4018/ijrsda.2017010106 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 95-110 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Deepika Punj ◽

Ashutosh Dixit

Keyword(s):

World Wide Web ◽

Significant Role ◽

Crucial Role ◽

World Wide ◽

Web Crawler ◽

Redundancy Elimination ◽

The World ◽

Meta Information ◽

Elimination Mechanism ◽

The Web

In order to manage the vast information available on web, crawler plays a significant role. The working of crawler should be optimized to get maximum and unique information from the World Wide Web. In this paper, architecture of migrating crawler is proposed which is based on URL ordering, URL scheduling and document redundancy elimination mechanism. The proposed ordering technique is based on URL structure, which plays a crucial role in utilizing the web efficiently. Scheduling ensures that URLs should go to optimum agent for downloading. To ensure this, characteristics of both agents and URLs are taken into consideration for scheduling. Duplicate documents are also removed to make the database unique. To reduce matching time, document matching is made on the basis of their Meta information only. The agents of proposed migrating crawler work more efficiently than traditional single crawler by providing ordering and scheduling of URLs.

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State Actor Dynamics in Brunei’s Healthcare Policies

10.53105/jig.5-3 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

Author(s):

Syazana Fauzi

Keyword(s):

Medical Ethics ◽

Crucial Role ◽

World Health Organisation ◽

The State ◽

World Health ◽

Top Down ◽

The World ◽

Prevention And Treatment ◽

State Actor ◽

State Actors

This study seeks to ascertain the state actor dynamics in Brunei’s healthcare policies from the perspectives of an Islamic system of governance, by first identifying the state actors, or institutions, involved in influencing, formulating and implementing Brunei’s healthcare policies. The ‘IGC Matrix’ is employed to establish the Islamic health ‘sets of expectations’ (SoEs), particularly in terms of prevention and treatment, and medical ethics, primarily derived from the Qur’ān and Prophet Muhammadﷺ’s Sunnah, in order to construct for this study a framework of reference. The SoEs are then compared against Brunei’s healthcare policies and activities to determine how much of the Islamic health SoEs are met. This study reveals that Brunei’s healthcare policies are largely motivated by non-Islamic inspirations, specifically by the World Health Organisation (WHO), but with numerous overlaps with Islamic demands. In other words, Brunei’s healthcare policies may be stemmed from a non-Islamic influence, but it does not necessarily mean that they are un-Islamic. And most, if not all, of Brunei’s healthcare policies demonstrate a top-down approach, where the state actors play a crucial role in shaping Brunei’s dynamical SoEs.

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The City with Imaginary Walls

Caribbean New Orleans ◽

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645186.003.0003 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 94-142

Author(s):

Cécile Vidal

Keyword(s):

New Orleans ◽

Crucial Role ◽

Racial Formation ◽

Urban Center ◽

European Descent ◽

The World ◽

Civic Community ◽

The City

This chapter shows that racial formation was also shaped by the relationships French New Orleans maintained with its hinterland. Racial tensions were instrumental in developing a sense of collective belonging among urban dwellers of European descent that was defined in confrontation with the world beyond the city’s imaginary walls. The Natchez Wars in 1729–1731 and slave unrest afterward played a crucial role in the construction of the Louisiana capital as a white civic community. In contrast, for the slaves living on the plantations nearby, the urban center increasingly symbolized both a place of greater autonomy and a place of repression.

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Politics and practice

Bob Crow: Socialist, Leader, Fighter ◽

10.7228/manchester/9781526100290.003.0008 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Gregor Gall

Keyword(s):

Crucial Role ◽

Union Leader ◽

Mass Action ◽

Left Wing ◽

Union Power ◽

Political Struggles ◽

The World ◽

The Relationship

This chapter and the following ones provide an analysis of Crow in terms of his person, politics and members’ potential power. So left-wing radicalism provided the parameters for how Crow looked at the world and guided his role a union leader. Indeed, this intellectual framework attributed a crucial role to unions as agents for radical ends. This chapter then begins by look at his intellectual worldview before moving on to examine how it played out in practice and the conditions which allowed it to be played out. It thus considers his ‘socialism/communism’ (his words), and despite his political training, his political heterodoxy along with his views on the synergy of industrial and political struggles, the relationship between class and sectionalism, and the sources of union power and his bargaining strategy. The chapter also examines his relationship with citizens as members of the travelling public and his calls for mass action to defeat austerity.

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Knowledge Representation Technologies Using Semantic Web

Web Services ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-7501-6.ch056 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1068-1076

Author(s):

Vudattu Kiran Kumar

Keyword(s):

Semantic Web ◽

Crucial Role ◽

World Wide ◽

Global Information ◽

Semantic Technologies ◽

Semantic Web Technologies ◽

Web Technologies ◽

Knowledge Repositories ◽

The World ◽

The Web

The World Wide Web (WWW) is global information medium, where users can read and write using computers over internet. Web is one of the services available on internet. The Web was created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Since then a great refinement has done in the web usage and development of its applications. Semantic Web Technologies enable machines to interpret data published in a machine-interpretable form on the web. Semantic web is not a separate web it is an extension to the current web with additional semantics. Semantic technologies play a crucial role to provide data understandable to machines. To achieve machine understandable, we should add semantics to existing websites. With additional semantics, we can achieve next level web where knowledge repositories are available for better understanding of web data. This facilitates better search, accurate filtering and intelligent retrieval of data. This paper discusses about the Semantic Web and languages involved in describing documents in machine understandable format.

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On Habit and Fiction in Latours' Inquiry and Fictional Knowledge on Habit in Proust's Recherche

Advances in Media, Entertainment, and the Arts - Applying the Actor-Network Theory in Media Studies ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-0616-4.ch012 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 198-219

Author(s):

Michael Cuntz

Keyword(s):

Network Analysis ◽

Crucial Role ◽

Literary Texts ◽

Vital Importance ◽

Works Of Art ◽

The World ◽

Lost Time ◽

Modes Of Existence ◽

Opposite Tendency

Latour's Inquiry into Modes of Existence undertakes a re-evaluation of both modern ontology and ANT: Adding qualitative differentiation to quantitative network analysis is tantamount to the outline of a pluralist ontology distinguishing a variety of different modes of being in the world. The aim is to make more space in order to provide proper accommodation for all enti-ties, especially for those a monist ontology could not account for. Both [HAB], habit, and [FIC], fiction, are modes that deserve a particular amount of space; [HAB] due to its all-pervasiveness in everyday courses of action, [FIC] due to its crucial role in anthropogenesis and its vital importance for many other modes. Nonetheless, there is an opposite tendency to restrict the possibilities of these modes. This is elucidated first by comparing [HAB] with other philosophical assessments of habit and [FIC] with Serres' readings of works of art and literary texts, and second via a confrontation of [FIC] and [HAB] with Proust's In Search of Lost Time, a work of fiction inquiring deeply into the workings of habit.

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