On the Very Possibility of Historiography

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Boulter
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Theories Of Truth ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Fundamental Challenge ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Central Claim

The familiar challenges to historiographical knowledge turn on epistemological concerns having to do with the unobservability of historical events, or with the problem of establishing a sufficiently strong inferential connection between evidence and the historiographical claim one wishes to convert from a true belief into knowledge. This paper argues that these challenges miss a deeper problem, viz., the lack of obvious truth-makers for historiographical claims. The metaphysical challenge to historiography is that reality does not appear to co-operate in our cognitive endeavours by providing truth-makers for claims about historical entities and events. Setting out this less familiar, but more fundamental, challenge to the very possibility of historiography is the first aim of this paper. The various ways in which this challenge might be met are then set out, including ontologically inflationary appeals to abstract objects of various kinds, or to “block” theories of time. The paper closes with the articulation of an ontologically parsimonious solution to the metaphysical challenge to historiography. The cost of this approach is a revision to standard theories of truth. The central claim here is that the standard theories of truth have mistaken distinct causes of truth for truth itself. This mistake leads to distorted expectations regarding truth-makers for historiographical claims. The truth-makers of historiographical claims are not so much the historical events themselves (for they do not exist) but atemporal modal facts about the order of things of which those events were a part.

Research and Design of Intelligent Lighting Control System Based on Industrial Wireless Technology

2011 ◽  
Vol 467-469 ◽  
pp. 620-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Wang ◽  
Wei Ru Chen
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Control Technology ◽  
Wireless Technology ◽  
Lighting Control ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Point Control ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Research And Design ◽  
The Internet Of Things

The intelligent lighting control system is one of typical applications of the Internet of things. The method of intelligent lighting control system based on industrial wireless technology is proposed in the paper. It used proposed three-point-control technology, and adjusting the brightness of lamps, turn on/off the lamps and a part of fault detection can be realized. At the same time, it can greatly reduce the cost of system. It will be useful to engineer and researchers.

scholarly journals The role of the Moscow Slavophils in the release of Bulgaria from the Ottoman yoke

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-162
Author(s):  
Marina G. Smolyaninova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Freedom ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Russian People ◽  
The World ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
Bulgarian People

In 1396 the Ottomans occupied Bulgaria. It disappeared from the world map, becoming part of the Ottoman Empire. In the XIX century Russian society contributed to the spiritual revival of the Bulgarian people. I.S.Aksakovbelieved that Russia should help not only the spiritual revival of the Bulgarians, but also the acquisition of political freedom, lost in the XIV century.On April 12, 1877, Emperor Alexander II declared war on Turkey. At the cost of enormous human sacrifice, the Russian people freed Bulgaria from slavery, which, after 500 years of non-existence, reappeared on the world map. In the modern press, it can be observed that Russia's role in the liberation of Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke is reappraising. Some scholars believe that the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 was not liberating, but conquering, occupying. The article refutes the opinion of false scientists who seek to distort the truth based on archival documents, as well as on the testimonies of eyewitnesses of historical events (including the testimonies of Bulgarian writers of that time - Petko Rachev Slaveykov, Ilya Blyskov, Vasil Drumyov, Ivan Vazov and others). Ivan Vazov called the Russian soldiers "Knights of Good." P.R. Slaveykov wrote: "Russia has given us freedom with its blood."

Relative Locations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Bacon
Keyword(s):  
Space Time ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Time Points ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Physical Laws

The fact that physical laws often admit certain kinds of space-time symmetries is often thought to be problematic for substantivalism—the view that space-time is as real as the objects it contains. The most prominent alternative, relationism, avoids these problems but at the cost of giving abstract objects (rather than space-time points) a pivotal role in the fundamental metaphysics. This incurs related problems concerning the relation of the physical to the mathematical. This paper presents a version of substantivalism that respects Leibnizian theses about space-time symmetries, and argues that it is superior to both relationism and the more orthodox form of substantivalism.

Reply to Forrai: No Reprieve for Gettier “Beliefs”

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-331
Author(s):  
John Biro ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Belief Condition ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Central Claim

In a recent paper in this journal, Gabor Forrai offers ways to resist my argument that in so-called Gettier cases the belief condition is not, as is commonly assumed, satisfied. He argues that I am mistaken in taking someone's reluctance to assert a proposition he knows follows from a justified belief on finding the latter false as evidence that he does not believe it, as such reluctance may be explained in other ways. While this may be true, I show that it does not affect my central claim which does not turn on considerations special to assertion.

Virtues and Vices of Virtue Epistemology

1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Greco
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Generality Problem ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cognitive Virtue ◽  
Central Claim

In recent years, virtue epistemology has won the attention of a wide range of philosophers. A developed form of the position has been expounded forcefully by Ernest Sosa and represents the most plausible version of reliabilism to date. Through the person of Alvin Plantinga, virtue epistemology has taken philosophy of religion by storm, evoking objections and defenses in a wide variety of journals and volumes. Historically, virtue epistemology has its roots in the work of Thomas Reid, and the explosion of Reid scholarship in the last few years is perhaps both a cause and an effect of recent interest in the position.In this paper I want to examine the virtues and vices of virtue epistemology. My conclusion will be that the position is correct, when qualified appropriately. The central claim of virtue epistemology is that, Gettier problems aside, knowledge is true belief which results from a cognitive virtue. In section one I will clarify this claim with some brief remarks about the nature of virtues in general, and cognitive virtues in particular. In section two I will consider two objections to the theory of knowledge which results. In section three of the paper I will argue that virtue epistemology can be qualified so as to avoid the objections raised in section two. Finally, I will argue that the amendments which solve the objections of section two also allow us to solve a version of the dreaded generality problem.

scholarly journals On Artifacts and Truth-Preservation

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn Standefer
Keyword(s):  
Theories Of Truth ◽  
Hartry Field ◽  
The Cost

In Saving Truth from Paradox, Hartry Field presents and defends a theory of truth with a new conditional. In this paper, I present two criticisms of this theory, one concerning its assessments of validity and one concerning its treatment of truth-preservation claims. One way of adjusting the theory adequately responds to the truth-preservation criticism, at the cost of making the validity criticism worse. I show that in a restricted setting, Field has a way to respond to the validity criticism. I close with some general considerations on the use of revision-theoretic methods in theories of truth.

A realist epistemology of faith

2005 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL A. MACDONALD
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Central Claim

In this paper, I analyse and interpret Thomas Aquinas's account of faith in order to show how Thomistic faith is a veridical cognitive state that directs the mind to God, and consequently constitutes a distinct form of knowledge of God. By assenting to the revealed propositions of faith (which express the truth about God), and thereby forming true beliefs about God under the authority and guidance of God's grace, the possessor of faith comes to know or apprehend truly something about God, even if she fails to ‘see’ or know fully the truth that she believes. A further task of the paper is to show how Thomistic faith qualifies (at least potentially) as knowledge from a contemporary epistemological standpoint, insofar as it consists of true belief that is appropriately justified and warranted, by virtue of being supernaturally informed and generated. By expositing and defending this central claim – focusing specifically on faith as a form of knowledge – I show how Aquinas offers an epistemologically realist account of faith.

The Metaphysics of Meaning: Propositions and Possible Worlds

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Theories Of Truth ◽  
Cognitive States

This chapter examines two crucial aspects of the metaphysics of meaning—propositions and possible world-states. It reviews why propositions—needed as meanings of sentences and objects of the attitudes—can neither be extracted from theories of truth conditions, nor defined in terms of possible world-states, It then explains why they also cannot be the mysterious, inherently representational, abstract objects they have traditionally been taken to be. Instead of explaining the representationality of sentences and cognitive states in terms of their relations to the supposedly prior and independent representationality of propositions, we must explain the representationality of propositions in terms of the representationality of the cognitive states with which they are connected. A new account of is presented along these lines.

Turn-on fluorescence sensing of hydrazine using MnO2 nanotube-decorated g-C3N4 nanosheets

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (33) ◽  
pp. 13196-13204 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Stanly John Xavier ◽  
G. Siva ◽  
M. Ranjani ◽  
S. Divya Rani ◽  
N. Priyanga ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fluorescence Sensing ◽  
Turn On ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Preparation Strategy

The cost and time efficient preparation strategy is developed for the preparation of g-C3N4 nanosheets using urea and the challenges of g-C3N4 toward hydrazine sensing are addressed via the modification of g-C3N4 nanosheets with MnO2 nanotubes.

scholarly journals The Qur'anic Semio-Ethics of Nature

ICR Journal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Elma Berisha
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
External World ◽  
Systematic Bias ◽  
Advanced Stage ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Natural Signs ◽  
Ecological Implications ◽  
Representations Of Nature ◽  
The Cost

This article goes behind the semiotic stereotypes of western representations of nature and language, to track and discuss discursive limitations in an attempt to place these semiotic concepts within their Qur’anic paradigmatic context. A cursory literature review of Western semiotics suggests systematic bias towards conventional signs, at the cost of naturally occurring ones. Drawing on the work of U. Eco, J. Deely, J. Hoffmeyer and other prominent semioticians, as well as the Qur’an as a ‘semiotician’s paradise par excellence’, I examine a more comprehensive notion of sign and its relevance as a potential epistemological bridge between nature and culture, between internal phenomenological realities and the external world. My argument is that even at this postmodern, advanced stage of semiotics as a more comprehensive and inclusive study field, the downplaying of the semiotics of nature and its communication value continues to run as a subtext of the process of secularisation. Thus, the ethical and religious meta-representations that come with nature are likely to be neglected, with further ecological implications. All these findings seem to suggest that there is a need to reconsider and review these matters in a much more comprehensive way, given that reflection on the natural signs is one of the major themes in the Qur’an, alongside the reoccurring message that the only way to attain true belief in the Creator is to think through signs.

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