scholarly journals Non-uniformism and the Epistemology of Philosophically Interesting Modal Claims

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Ylwa Sjölin Wirling
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Epistemic Status

Abstract Philosophers often make exotic-sounding modal claims, such as: “A timeless world is impossible”, “The laws of physics could have been different from what they are”, “There could have been an additional phenomenal colour”. Otherwise popular empiricist modal epistemologies in the contemporary literature cannot account for whatever epistemic justification we might have for making such modal claims. Those who do not, as a result of this, endorse scepticism with respect to their epistemic status typically suggest that they can be justified but have yet to develop some distinct, workable theory of how. That is, they endorse a form of non-uniformism about the epistemology of modality, according to which claims about philosophically interesting modal matters need to be justified differently from e.g. everyday or scientific modal claims, but they fail to provide any more detail. This article aims to fill this gap by outlining how such a non-uniformist view could be spelled out and what story about philosophically interesting modal justification it could contain.

scholarly journals Difficult Cases and the Epistemic Justification of Moral Belief

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Schechter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Metaphysics ◽  
Ethical Intuitionism ◽  
Moral Case ◽  
Positive Support ◽  
Difficult Cases

This chapter concerns the epistemology of difficult moral cases where the difficulty is not traceable to ignorance about non-moral matters. The chapter first argues for a principle concerning the epistemic status of moral beliefs about difficult moral cases. The basic idea behind the principle is that one’s belief about the moral status of a potential action in a difficult moral case is not justified unless one has some appreciation of what the relevant moral considerations are and how they bear on the moral status of the potential action. The chapter then argues that this principle has important ramifications for moral epistemology and moral metaphysics. It puts pressure on some views of the justification of moral belief, such as ethical intuitionism and reliabilism. It puts pressure on some antirealist views of moral metaphysics, including simple versions of relativism. It also provides some direct positive support for broadly realist views of morality.

Foundationalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Psychological Process ◽  
Positive View ◽  
Direct Apprehension ◽  
The Way

Some foundationalists are rationalists who rely on intuition and deduction. Others are empiricists, in a broad sense, and accept observation and induction or abduction or yet other ways to support beliefs by means of other beliefs. What they have in common is that they are all willing to hazard a positive view about what in general makes a belief epistemically justified in the way required for it to be a case of knowledge; and they all propose something of the following general form: belief b is justified if and only if either b is foundationally justified through a psychological process of direct apprehension p (such as rational intuition, observation, introspection, and so on) or else b is inferentially justified through a psychological process of reasoning r (such as deduction, induction, abduction, and so on) ultimately from beliefs all of which are acquired or sustained through p. If one rejects all forms of such foundationalism, then a question remains as to what distinguishes in general the cases where a belief is epistemically justified from the cases in which it is not. Can anything general and illuminating be said about what confers epistemic justification on a belief, and what gives a belief the epistemic status required for it to constitute knowledge (provided it is true)?

scholarly journals Full Blooded Entitlement

2020 ◽  
pp. 281-296
Author(s):  
Martin Smith
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
The Other ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Careful Scrutiny

Entitlement is defined as a sort of epistemic justification that one can possess by default—a sort of epistemic justification that does not need to be earned or acquired. Epistemologists who accept the existence of entitlement generally have a certain anti-sceptical role in mind for it—entitlement is intended to help us resist what would otherwise be compelling radical sceptical arguments. But this role leaves various details unspecified and, thus, leaves scope for a number of different potential conceptions of entitlement. At one extreme there are conceptions that portray entitlement as a weak, attenuated epistemic status and, at the other, we have conceptions that portray entitlement as something potent and strong. Certain intermediate conceptions are also possible. This chapter argues that the weak and moderate conceptions of entitlement do not survive careful scrutiny. The stronger conceptions—while they do, in a way, strain credulity—are the only conceptions ultimately viable.

scholarly journals How Do We Know That We Are Free?

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-98
Author(s):  
Timothy O’Connor
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Power Of Choice

We are naturally disposed to believe of ourselves and others that we are free: that what we do is often and to a considerable extent ‘up to us’ via the exercise of a power of choice to do or to refrain from doing one or more alternatives of which we are aware. In this article, I probe thesource and epistemic justification of our ‘freedom belief’. I propose an account that (unlike most) does not lean heavily on our first-personal experience of choice and action, and instead regards freedom belief as a priori justified. I will then consider possible replies available toincompatibilists to the contention made by some compatibilists that the ‘privileged’ epistemic status of freedom belief (which my account endorses) supports a minimalist, and therefore compatibilist view of the nature of freedom itself.

Disease in the family in terms of contemporary literature for children

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
Jowita Gromysz
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Family Environment ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Way

Summary Disease in the family is a literary motif used by many authors. The article contains a description of various ways of representing the disease in contemporary texts for young children. Pedagogical context of reading literary narratives refers to the way the rider repons to the text ( relevance to the age of the reader, therapeutic and educational function). The analyzed texts concern hospitalization, disability of siblings, parent’s cancer. There always relate to the family environment and show the changeability of roles and functions in family.

The Slovene literature in Austria (the national and the polycultural)

2020 ◽  
pp. 446-460
Author(s):  
Nadezhda N. Starikova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Research Methodology ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The State ◽  
National Minority ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Linguistic Terms ◽  
Protective Function ◽  
Slovenian Population ◽  
New Research

In 1920, the native Slovenian lands of southern Carinthia were included into the Austrian Republic, and the Slovenian population fell under the jurisdiction of the state, the official language of which was German. Under these conditions, literature in the native language became an important factor in the resistance against assimilation for the Carinthian Slovenes. However, decades later, the national protective function of the artistic word gradually came to naught. The contemporary literature of the Slovenian minority in Austria is a special phenomenon combining national and polycultural components and having two cultural and historical contexts, two identities - Slovenian and Austro-German. In aesthetic, thematic, linguistic terms, this literature is so diverse that it no longer fits into a literature of a national minority, and can no longer be automatically assigned to only one of the two literatures - Slovenian or Austrian. A variety of works, including proper Slovenian texts, hybrid bilingual forms, and compositions in German, of course, requires a new research methodology that would expand existing approaches and could cover the literary practice of those who create a panorama of Carinthian reality, which is in demand both in Slovenia and in Austria.

Consciousness, Metacognition, & Perceptual Reality Monitoring

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hakwan Lau
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Reality Monitoring ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Brute Fact ◽  
Higher Order Theory ◽  
Subjective Level

I introduce an empirically-grounded version of a higher-order theory of conscious perception. Traditionally, theories of consciousness either focus on the global availability of conscious information, or take conscious phenomenology as a brute fact due to some biological or basic representational properties. Here I argue instead that the key to characterizing the consciousness lies in its connections to belief formation and epistemic justification on a subjective level.

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