scholarly journals Epistemic Contextualism: An Idle Hypothesis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Epistemic Contextualism ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Behavioural Experiments ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

Epistemic contextualism is one of the most hotly debated topics in contemporary epistemology. Contextualists claim that ‘know’ is a context-sensitive verb associated with different evidential standards in different contexts. Contextualists motivate their view based on a set of behavioural claims. In this paper, I show that several of these behavioural claims are false. I also show that contextualist test cases suffer from a critical confound, which derives from people's tendency to defer to speakers’ statements about their own mental states. My evidence consists in results from several behavioural experiments. I conclude that contextualism is an idle hypothesis and I propose some general methodological lessons.

scholarly journals Doing and rethinking. Building resilience with men

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Robinson ◽  
Steve Robertson ◽  
Mary Steen ◽  
Gary Raine ◽  
Rhiannon Day
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Resilience Intervention ◽  
And Coping

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present findings from an evaluation of a mental health resilience intervention for unemployed men aged 45-60. The focus is on examining the place of activities within a multi-dimensional men’s mental health programme, and exploring interactions between social context factors and models of change. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on before and after survey data and qualitative interviews, to report results concerning effectiveness in changing men’s perceived resilience, to consider project processes concerning activities, social support and coping strategies, and to situate these within wider environments. Findings – The programme significantly raised the perceived resilience of participants. Activities were engaging for men, while the complex intersection between activities, social networking, and coping strategies course provided opportunities for men to develop resilience in contexts resonant with their male identities. Research limitations/implications – A limitation is that the evaluation could not measure longer term impacts. Practical implications – The paper discusses emerging considerations for resilience building, focusing on gender-sensitive approaches which can engage and retain men by focusing on doing and talking, in the contexts of men’s life-course, highlighting embodied (male) identities not disembodied “mental states”, and facilitating social support. There are challenges to recruit men despite stigma, support men to speak of feelings, and facilitate progression. Social implications – Potential exists for gender-aware programmes to sustain salutogenic change, co-producing social assets of peer support, male-friendly activities, and context sensitive course provision. Originality/value – The paper adds fresh evidence of gendered intervention approaches, including effects on male resilience. Application of a context-sensitive change model leads to multi-component findings for transferring and sustaining programme gains.

scholarly journals Apical amplification—a cellular mechanism of conscious perception?

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomáš Marvan ◽  
Michal Polák ◽  
Talis Bachmann ◽  
William A Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Cellular Mechanism ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Processing Theory ◽  
Transmission Of Information ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Apical Dendrites ◽  
Integrated Information Theory

Abstract We present a theoretical view of the cellular foundations for network-level processes involved in producing our conscious experience. Inputs to apical synapses in layer 1 of a large subset of neocortical cells are summed at an integration zone near the top of their apical trunk. These inputs come from diverse sources and provide a context within which the transmission of information abstracted from sensory input to their basal and perisomatic synapses can be amplified when relevant. We argue that apical amplification enables conscious perceptual experience and makes it more flexible, and thus more adaptive, by being sensitive to context. Apical amplification provides a possible mechanism for recurrent processing theory that avoids strong loops. It makes the broadcasting hypothesized by global neuronal workspace theories feasible while preserving the distinct contributions of the individual cells receiving the broadcast. It also provides mechanisms that contribute to the holistic aspects of integrated information theory. As apical amplification is highly dependent on cholinergic, aminergic, and other neuromodulators, it relates the specific contents of conscious experience to global mental states and to fluctuations in arousal when awake. We conclude that apical dendrites provide a cellular mechanism for the context-sensitive selective amplification that is a cardinal prerequisite of conscious perception.

scholarly journals Volume Introduction: Gilbert Ryle on Propositions, Propositional Attitudes, and Theoretical Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Tanney
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Mechanistic Explanation ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Special Volume ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
States Of Knowledge

In the introduction to the special volume, Gilbert Ryle: Intelligence, Practice and Skill, Julia Tanney introduces the contributions of Michael Kremer, Stina Bäckström and Martin Gustafsson, and Will Small, each of which indicates concern about the appropriation of Ryle’s distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that in seminal work in contemporary epistemology. Expressing agreement with the authors that something has gone awry in these borrowings from Ryle, Tanney takes this criticism to a deeper level. She argues that the very notion of content-bearing, causally-efficacious mental states, let alone representational states of knowledge-that or knowledge-how, embodies the very presuppositions that Ryle calls into question in his rejection of classical theories of meaning and his related warning of the type-errors involved in conflating rational and mechanistic explanation. That these mental posits are presupposed, unchallenged, in today’s debates make his arguments against intellectualism particularly difficult to discern.

scholarly journals Epistemic contextualism

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Zivan Lazovic
Keyword(s):  
Main Topic ◽  
Epistemic Contextualism ◽  
Inferential Contextualism ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

The aim of this article is to provide an introduction to the main topic of this issue of Theoria. First, the author presents the key thesis of epistemic contextualism, outlines its development in contemporary epistemology and briefly characterizes its two versions, namely conversational and inferential contextualism. Second, the author focuses on some contextualist solutions to three major epistemological problems: the problem of scepticism, lottery, and Gettier's problem. The author agrees with Stewart Cohen that Gettier?s problem does not belong to this group and explains why both its formulation and a solution require a traditional, invariantist approach.

scholarly journals “Psyosphere”: A GPS Data-Analysing Tool for the Behavioural Sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ziepert ◽  
Peter W. de Vries ◽  
Elze Ufkes
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiments ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Research Tool ◽  
Behavioural Science ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Test Application ◽  
Gps Tracks ◽  
Behavioural Experiments

Positioning technologies, such as GPS are widespread in society but are used only sparingly in behavioural science research, e.g., because processing positioning technology data can be cumbersome. The current work attempts to unlock positioning technology potential for behavioural science studies by developing and testing a research tool to analyse GPS tracks. This tool—psyosphere—is published as open-source software, and aims to extract behaviours from GPSs data that are more germane to behavioural research. Two field experiments were conducted to test application of the research tool. During these experiments, participants played a smuggling game, thereby either smuggling tokens representing illicit material past border guards or not. Results suggested that participants varied widely in variables, such as course and speed variability and distance from team members in response to the presence of border guards. Subsequent analyses showed that some of these GPS-derived behavioural variables could be linked to self-reported mental states, such as fear. Although more work needs to be done, the current study demonstrates that psyosphere may enable researchers to conduct behavioural experiments with positioning technology, outside of a laboratory setting.

scholarly journals INTEGRATION TESTING OF CONTEXT-SENSITIVE MIDDLEWARE-BASED APPLICATIONS: A METAMORPHIC APPROACH

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (05) ◽  
pp. 677-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. K. CHAN ◽  
T. Y. CHEN ◽  
HENG LU ◽  
T. H. TSE ◽  
STEPHEN S. YAU
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Integration Testing ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Sensing Application ◽  
Hidden Failures ◽  
Location Sensing

During the testing of context-sensitive middleware-based software, the middleware checks the current situation to invoke the appropriate functions of the applications. Since the middleware remains active and the situation may continue to evolve, however, the conclusion of some test cases may not easily be identified. Moreover, failures appearing in one situation may be superseded by subsequent correct outcomes and, therefore, be hidden. We alleviate the above problems by making use of a special kind of situation, which we call checkpoints, such that the middleware will not activate the functions under test. We recommend testers to generate test cases that start at a checkpoint and end at another. Testers may identify relations that associate different execution sequences of a test case. They then check the results of each test case to detect any contravention of such relations. We illustrate our technique with an example that shows how hidden failures can be detected. We also report the experimentation carried out on an RFID-based location-sensing application on top of a context-sensitive middleware.

scholarly journals ‘KNOWLEDGE’ ASCRIPTIONS, SOCIAL ROLES AND SEMANTICS

Episteme ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin McKenna
Keyword(s):  
Social Roles ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
The State ◽  
Epistemic Contextualism ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Concept Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

AbstractThe idea that the concept ‘knowledge’ has a distinctive function or social role is increasingly influential within contemporary epistemology. Perhaps the best-known account of the function of ‘knowledge’ is that developed in Edward Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature (1990, Oxford University Press), on which (roughly) ‘knowledge’ has the function of identifying good informants. Craig's account of the function of ‘knowledge’ has been appealed to in support of a variety of views, and in this paper I'm concerned with the claim that it supports a sort of epistemic contextualism, which is (roughly) the view that the semantic contents and truth-conditions of ‘knowledge’ ascriptions – instances of ‘S knows that p’ – depend on and vary with the context of ascription (see, for instance, John Greco's ‘What's wrong with contextualism’, Philosophical Quarterly [2008]). Prima facie, this claim should strike us as surprising. A number of concepts and linguistic items (words, sentences) serve functions that have little or nothing to do with semantics. However, I argue that, on the best interpretation of talk of the function of a concept such as ‘knowledge’, the function of ‘knowledge’ is relevant to semantics. Along the way I also suggest how to improve on what I call the ‘usual argument’ that Craig's account of the function of ‘knowledge’ supports epistemic contextualism.

scholarly journals Two linguistic models of the context-sensitivity of ‘know’

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Bojan Milunovic
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Epistemic Contextualism ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
Linguistic Support ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
Linguistic Models

This article aims to assess the validity of two linguistic models of the context-sensitivity of the term ?know?: (I) indexical model, according to which knowledge ascriptions are context-sensitive due to an unstable Kaplanian character of the term ?know?, and (II) hidden-indexical model, that explains context sensitivity of ?know? by referring to its semantic similarities with gradable adjectives. This article is structured as follows. Section 1 briefly reviews contextualism as an epistemic position and introduces key features of both models. Section 2 establishes criteria for their evaluation: (A) their compatibility with our common linguistic practices, and (B) their compatibility with a contextualist solution to the problem of philosophical skepticism. Sections 3 and 4 examine two of the most prominent objections that aim to prove that each of these models fails to meet one or both of the aforementioned criteria. The article concludes that the hidden-indexical model, supplemented by Bloom-Tillman?s Modifiability Constraint, provides the more adequate linguistic support for the thesis of epistemic contextualism.

scholarly journals But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Meaning construction in medical encounters

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-60
Author(s):  
Eszter Kárpáti ◽  
Judit Kleiber
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Medical Context ◽  
The Given

This paper investigates interpretation in medical context. Our question is how institutional context influences the utterance meaning: if it is really triple layered (literal, utterance-type or pragmatic, Levinson 2000), or rather a continuum (Wilson 2016). Even idiomatic language use (Kecskes 2017) can induce uncertainty and obscurity, which can be and has to be solved in the given dialogue or discourse context (Wilson and Kolaiti 2017). The paper analyzes various medical encounters in a formal pragmasemantic model called ÂeALIS (Alberti and Kleiber 2014). The benefit of applying this system is that it represents the interlocutors’ mental states (beliefs, desires, and intentions) supplemented by the parameter of authority, by which the occurring mismatches can be captured formally. We have found that two main types of mismatch can be differentiated, and both of them can be originated from the fact that the context is not the same for the participants. Our findings support the view that meaning construction is rather flexible and context-sensitive: it can be considered as wandering along the meaning continuum without any clues.

Linear Visco-Resistive Computations of Magnetohydrodynamic Waves: I. The Code and Test Cases

1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 503-505
Author(s):  
R. Erdélyi ◽  
M. Goossens ◽  
S. Poedts
Keyword(s):  
Resonant Absorption ◽  
Numerical Code ◽  
Mhd Waves ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Numerical Accuracy ◽  
Element Discretization ◽  
Flux Tubes ◽  
Magnetohydrodynamic Waves ◽  
Viscosity Coefficients ◽  
Magnetic Flux Tubes

AbstractThe stationary state of resonant absorption of linear, MHD waves in cylindrical magnetic flux tubes is studied in viscous, compressible MHD with a numerical code using finite element discretization. The full viscosity tensor with the five viscosity coefficients as given by Braginskii is included in the analysis. Our computations reproduce the absorption rates obtained by Lou in scalar viscous MHD and Goossens and Poedts in resistive MHD, which guarantee the numerical accuracy of the tensorial viscous MHD code.

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