scholarly journals The Problem of Unwelcome Epistemic Company

Episteme ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Joshua Blanchard
Keyword(s):  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Normative Status

Abstract Many of us are unmoved when it is objected that some morally or intellectually suspect source agrees with our belief. While we may tend to find this kind of guilt by epistemic association unproblematic, I argue that this tendency is a mistake. We sometimes face what I call the problem of unwelcome epistemic company. This is the problem of encountering agreement about the content of your belief from a source whose faults give you reason to worry about the belief's truth, normative status, etiology, or implications. On the basis of an array of cases, I elaborate four distinct kinds of problems that unwelcome epistemic company poses. Two of these are distinctly epistemic, and two are moral. I canvass possible responses, ranging from stubbornness to an epistemic prudishness that avoids unwelcome company at all costs. Finally, I offer preliminary lessons of the problem and distinguish it from the problem of peer disagreement.

Religious Disagreement, Religious Experience, and the Evil God Hypothesis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Lougheed
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Believer ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Epistemic Peer ◽  
Religious Disagreement

Conciliationism is the view that says when an agent who believes P becomes aware of an epistemic peer who believes not-P, that she encounters a (partial) defeater for her belief that P. Strong versions of conciliationism pose a sceptical threat to many, if not most, religious beliefs since religion is rife with peer disagreement. Elsewhere (Removed) I argue that one way for a religious believer to avoid sceptical challenges posed by strong conciliationism is by appealing to the evidential import of religious experience. Not only can religious experience be used to establish a relevant evidential asymmetry between disagreeing parties, but reliable reports of such experiences also start to put pressure on the religious sceptic to conciliate toward her religious opponent. Recently, however, Asha Lancaster-Thomas poses a highly innovative challenge to the evidential import of religious experience. Namely, she argues that an evil God is just as likely to explain negative religious experiences as a good God is able to explain positive religious experiences. In light of this, religious believers need to explain why a good God exists instead of an evil God. I respond to Lancaster-Thomas by suggesting that, at least within the context of religious experience, (i) that the evil God hypothesis is only a challenge to certain versions of theism; and (ii) that the existence of an evil God and good God are compossible.

Connecting Gospels

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Single Field ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Normative Status ◽  
Two Bodies ◽  
Shed Light

By the late second century, early Christian gospels had been divided into two groups by a canonical boundary that assigned normative status to four of them while consigning their competitors to the margins. The project of this volume is to find ways to reconnect these divided texts. The primary aim is not to address the question whether the canonical/non-canonical distinction reflects substantive and objectively verifiable differences between the two bodies of texts—although that issue may arise at various points. Starting from the assumption that, in spite of their differences, all early gospels express a common belief in the absolute significance of Jesus and his earthly career, the intention is to make their interconnectedness fruitful for interpretation. The approach taken is thematic and comparative: a selected theme or topic is traced across two or more gospels on either side of the canonical boundary, and the resulting convergences and divergences shed light not least on the canonical texts themselves as they are read from new and unfamiliar vantage points. The outcome is to demonstrate that early gospel literature can be regarded as a single field of study, in contrast to the overwhelming predominance of the canonical four characteristic of traditional gospels scholarship.

scholarly journals The all-too-flexible abductive method: ATOM's normative status

2008 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 1023-1036 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Willem Romeijn
Keyword(s):  
Normative Status

Slangs as a Special Group of Words

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (11) ◽  
pp. 103-107
Author(s):  
Mehriban Zeynal Hajizade ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Special Group ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The World ◽  
Normative Status ◽  
Over Time

In modern times, the processes in the world have affected the field of linguistics as well as all other fields.These processes require a diffferent approach to issues related to the use of specific word groups. Over time, language develops and changes occur at all levels. Taking into consideration that the main function of language is a means of communication between people, all changes should be taken into account to make the function more convenient and more suitable. Some of the processes that take place in the language are directly related to the speech process, and ends with getting the gradual normative status of variants in the speech of native speakers. Native speakers use some expressions that gained and didn’t gain status of norms in their speech. They use specific word groups to make their speech more specific and expressive. These word groups are used by some groups of people for special goals. Slangs are new meaningful words used in different social groups. Slangs are presented as non-literary concept. Slangs are various and colorful according to their tones. Key words: slang, morphem, term, communication, society

Conciliatory Views on Peer Disagreement and the Order of Evidence Acquisition

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Andree Weber
Keyword(s):  
Belief Revision ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Imprecise Probabilities ◽  
Peer Disagreement

Abstract The evidence that we get from peer disagreement is especially problematic from a Bayesian point of view since the belief revision caused by a piece of such evidence cannot be modelled along the lines of Bayesian conditionalisation. This paper explains how exactly this problem arises, what features of peer disagreements are responsible for it, and what lessons should be drawn for both the analysis of peer disagreements and Bayesian conditionalisation as a model of evidence acquisition. In particular, it is pointed out that the same characteristic of evidence from disagreement that explains the problems with Bayesian conditionalisation also suggests an interpretation of suspension of belief in terms of imprecise probabilities.

A new solution to the problem of peer disagreement

Inquiry ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (8) ◽  
pp. 795-811
Author(s):  
Ruth Weintraub
Keyword(s):  
Peer Disagreement

Truth approximation, belief merging, and peer disagreement

Synthese ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 191 (11) ◽  
pp. 2383-2401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Cevolani
Keyword(s):  
Truth Approximation ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Belief Merging

scholarly journals Memory and reflection

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (spe2) ◽  
pp. 151-168
Author(s):  
Chienkuo Mi
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
First Order ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Analects ◽  
Normative Status ◽  
Previous Learning

Abstract: I have argued that the Analects of Confucius presents us with a conception of reflection with two components, a retrospective component and a perspective component. The former component involves hindsight or careful examination of the past and as such draws on previous learning or memory and previously formed beliefs to avoid error. The latter component is foresight, or forward looking, and as such looks to existing beliefs and factors in order to achieve knowledge. In this paper, I raise the problem of forgetting and argue that most of contemporary theories of knowledge have to face the problem and deal with the challenge seriously. In order to solve the problem, I suggest a bi-level virtue epistemology which can provide us with the best outlook for the problem-solving. I will correlate two different cognitive capacities or processes of “memory” (and “forgetting”) with the conception of reflection, and evaluate them under two different frameworks, a strict deontic framework (one that presupposes free and intentional determination) and a more loosely deontic framework (one that highlights functional and mechanical faculties). The purpose is to show that reflection as meta-cognition plays an important and active role and enjoys a better epistemic (normative) status in our human endeavors (cognitive or epistemic) than those of first-order (or animal) cognition, such as memory, can play.

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