scholarly journals ACCURACY AND UR-PRIOR CONDITIONALIZATION

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
NILANJAN DAS
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
External World ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Goal

AbstractRecently, several epistemologists have defended an attractive principle of epistemic rationality, which we shall callUr-Prior Conditionalization. In this essay, I ask whether we can justify this principle by appealing to the epistemic goal of accuracy. I argue that any such accuracy-based argument will be in tension withEvidence Externalism, i.e., the view that agent’s evidence may entail nontrivial propositions about the external world. This is because any such argument will crucially require the assumption that, independently of all empirical evidence, it is rational for an agent to be certain that her evidence will always include truths, and that she will always have perfect introspective access to her own evidence. This assumption is incompatible withEvidence Externalism. I go on to suggest that even if we don’t acceptEvidence Externalism, the prospects for any accuracy-based justification forUr-Prior Conditionalizationare bleak.

The Presuppositions of Survival

Philosophy ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 62 (239) ◽  
pp. 17-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Flew
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
External World ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
Special Sciences ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Human Destiny

1. Nowadays, I am told, many popular novels have anti-heroes not heroes. So perhaps it accords with the spirit of the times for my sermon to have not a text but an anti-text. This is taken from the first chapter of Our Knowledge of the External World by Bertrand Russell. It reads: ‘All the questions which have what is called a human interest—such, for example, as the question of a future life—belong, at least in theory, to special sciences and are capable, at least in theory, of being decided by empirical evidence … a genuinely scientific philosophy cannot hope to appeal to any except those who have the wish to understand, to escape from intellectual bewilderment … it does not offer, or attempt to offer, a solution to the problem of human destiny, or of the destiny of the Universe’..

Powerful People Feel Less Fear of Negative Evaluation

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Cai ◽  
Song Wu
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Personal Control ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
External World ◽  
Negative Evaluation ◽  
Fear Of Negative Evaluation ◽  
Control Belief ◽  
Power Study ◽  
And Behavior

Abstract. To directly examine why an individual’s capacity to influence others by providing valued resources (i.e., power) could decrease the concerns about negative evaluation from others (i.e., the fear of negative evaluation, FNE) in daily life, two studies were conducted. Results found that perceived power (Study 1) was associated with lower FNE, and manipulating power levels (Study 2) caused less FNE. Furthermore, results indicate that personal control belief mediated this link. These findings provide empirical evidence of the underlying mechanism of the effect of power on reducing FNE. The current research contributes significantly because it sheds light on how power transferred from a person’s “external world” to their “internal world” (i.e., personal control belief) can influence their cognition and behavior.

Pluralist Consequentialist Anti-Scepticism

2020 ◽  
pp. 297-326
Author(s):  
Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Crispin Wright ◽  
Absence Of Evidence ◽  
Brain In A Vat

How could it be warranted and rational to accept anti-sceptical hypotheses (I’m not a brain in a vat, There is an external world, etc.) in the absence of evidence supporting such propositions? Crispin Wright has introduced entitlement of cognitive project—a non-evidential species of warrant—as a response to the sceptic. Critics (Pritchard and Jenkins) have argued that Wright-style entitlement is not an epistemic kind of warrant and does not sustain epistemic rationality. This chapter develops a consequentialist alternative to Wright’s proposal. Acceptance of anti-sceptical hypotheses is epistemically warranted and rational because it maximizes epistemic value. This is argued within an axiological framework that incorporates pluralism about epistemic value or goods. Truth is not the only epistemic good—contra veritic monism, the most widely held view about epistemic value. Furthermore, the chapter argues that the success of the consequentialist approach eliminates the need for Wright-style entitlement.

scholarly journals Switching between internal and external modes: A multiscale learning principle

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Honey ◽  
Ehren L. Newman ◽  
Anna C. Schapiro
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Prior Information ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
External World ◽  
Internal Models ◽  
Mode Switching ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Error Signal ◽  
New Information ◽  
Modes Of Processing

Brains construct internal models that support perception, prediction, and action in the external world. Individual circuits within a brain also learn internal models of the local world of input they receive, in order to facilitate efficient and robust representation. How are these internal models learned? We propose that learning is facilitated by continual switching between internally biased and externally biased modes of processing. We review computational evidence that this mode-switching can produce an error signal to drive learning. We then consider empirical evidence for the instantiation of mode-switching in diverse neural systems, ranging from subsecond fluctuations in the hippocampus to wake-sleep alternations across the whole brain. We hypothesize that these internal/external switching processes, which occur at multiple scales, can drive learning at each scale. This framework predicts that (a) slower mode-switching should be associated with learning of more temporally extended input features and (b) disruption of switching should impair the integration of new information with prior information.

scholarly journals Against (Neo-Wittgensteinian) Entitlements

2020 ◽  
pp. 327-343
Author(s):  
Annalisa Coliva
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Crispin Wright ◽  
Hinge Propositions ◽  
Brain In A Vat ◽  
Rational Evaluation

Crispin Wright takes his entitlement strategy to be neo-Wittgensteinian. This chapter argues for two conclusions. First, Wright’s entitlement strategy cannot be neo-Wittgensteinian, properly so-called. Wright explicitly characterizes trust in anti-sceptical hypotheses as epistemically rational. However, properly Wittgensteinian approaches place anti-sceptical hypotheses or so-called hinge propositions (I’m not a brain in a vat, There is an external world, etc.) outside the realm of rational evaluation. Second, Wright-style entitlement is fundamentally flawed because it is unclear what kind of epistemic good it is supposed to be. Since entitlements are non-evidential in nature, they cannot be epistemic goods by virtue of supporting the truth of anti-sceptical hypotheses. They cannot sustain anything worthy of the label “epistemic rationality” either.

Challenges to the social motivation theory of autism: The dangers of counteracting an imprecise theory with even more imprecision

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirko Uljarević ◽  
Giacomo Vivanti ◽  
Susan R. Leekam ◽  
Antonio Y. Hardan
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Social Motivation ◽  
Motivation Theory ◽  
The Social

Abstract The arguments offered by Jaswal & Akhtar to counter the social motivation theory (SMT) do not appear to be directly related to the SMT tenets and predictions, seem to not be empirically testable, and are inconsistent with empirical evidence. To evaluate the merits and shortcomings of the SMT and identify scientifically testable alternatives, advances are needed on the conceptualization and operationalization of social motivation across diagnostic boundaries.

Integrating perspectives: How the development of second-personal competence lays the foundation for a second-personal morality

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Corbit ◽  
Chris Moore
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Developmental Process ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Personal Competence ◽  
Triadic Interactions ◽  
Personal Morality ◽  
Integrative Process

Abstract The integration of first-, second-, and third-personal information within joint intentional collaboration provides the foundation for broad-based second-personal morality. We offer two additions to this framework: a description of the developmental process through which second-personal competence emerges from early triadic interactions, and empirical evidence that collaboration with a concrete goal may provide an essential focal point for this integrative process.

Men Are Hierarchical, Women Are Egalitarian: An Implicit Gender Stereotype

2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Schmid Mast
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Gender Stereotype ◽  
Association Test ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
Two Samples

The goal of the present study was to provide empirical evidence for the existence of an implicit hierarchy gender stereotype indicating that men are more readily associated with hierarchies and women are more readily associated with egalitarian structures. To measure the implicit hierarchy gender stereotype, the Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald et al., 1998) was used. Two samples of undergraduates (Sample 1: 41 females, 22 males; Sample 2: 35 females, 37 males) completed a newly developed paper-based hierarchy-gender IAT. Results showed that there was an implicit hierarchy gender stereotype: the association between male and hierarchical and between female and egalitarian was stronger than the association between female and hierarchical and between male and egalitarian. Additionally, men had a more pronounced implicit hierarchy gender stereotype than women.

Socially Shared Regulation of Learning: A Review

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Panadero ◽  
Sanna Järvelä
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Learning Theory ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Optimal Form ◽  
Self Regulated Learning ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recorded Observation ◽  
Socially Shared Regulation

Abstract. Socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL) has been recognized as a new and growing field in the framework of self-regulated learning theory in the past decade. In the present review, we examine the empirical evidence to support such a phenomenon. A total of 17 articles addressing SSRL were identified, 13 of which presented empirical evidence. Through a narrative review it could be concluded that there is enough data to maintain the existence of SSRL in comparison to other social regulation (e.g., co-regulation). It was found that most of the SSRL research has focused on characterizing phenomena through the use of mixed methods through qualitative data, mostly video-recorded observation data. Also, SSRL seems to contribute to students’ performance. Finally, the article discusses the need for the field to move forward, exploring the best conditions to promote SSRL, clarifying whether SSRL is always the optimal form of collaboration, and identifying more aspects of groups’ characteristics.

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