scholarly journals Knowledge and Assertion in "Gettier" Cases

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Collective Inquiry ◽  
Knowledge Account ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

Assertion is fundamental to our lives as social and cognitive beings. By asserting we share knowledge, coordinate behavior, and advance collective inquiry. Accordingly, assertion is of considerable interest to cognitive scientists, social scientists, and philosophers. This paper advances our understanding of the norm of assertion. Prior evidence suggests that knowledge is the norm of assertion, a view known as “the knowledge account.” In its strongest form, the knowledge account says that knowledge is both necessary and sufficient for assertability: you should make an assertion if and only if you know that it is true. The knowledge account has been rejected on the grounds that it conflicts with our ordinary practice of evaluating assertions. This paper reports four experiments that address an important objection of this sort, which focuses on a class of examples known as “Gettier cases.” The results undermine the objection and, in the process, provide further evidence for the knowledge account. The findings also teach some important general lessons about intuitional methodology and the curation of genres of thought experiment.

Mathematical Prelude: A Selective Introduction to Logic and Set Theory for Social Scientists

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Goertz ◽  
James Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Set Theory ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Statistics And Probability ◽  
Aggregation Techniques ◽  
The Social ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

This chapter considers some key ideas from logic and set theory as they relate to qualitative research in the social sciences, including ideas concerning necessary and sufficient conditions. It also highlights a major contrast between qualitative and quantitative research: whereas quantitative research draws on mathematical tools associated with statistics and probability theory, qualitative research is often based on set theory and logic. The chapter first compares the natural language of logic in the qualitative culture with the language of probability and statistics in the quantitative culture. It then considers the necessary conditions and sufficient conditions as basis for qualitative methods, focusing on set theory and Venn diagrams, two-by-two tables, and truth tables. It also discusses the use of qualitative and quantitative aggregation techniques and concludes by explaining the criteria for assessing the “fit” of the model or the “importance” of a given causal factor.

Being Perfect is Not Necessary for Being God

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Jeanine Diller
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Being There ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
Perfect Being Theology

Classic perfect being theologians take ‘being perfect’ (or some careful variant thereof) to be conceptually necessary and sufficient for being God. I argue that this claim is false because being perfect is not conceptually necessary for being God. I rest my case on a simple thought experiment inspired by an alternative I developed to perfect being theology that I call “functional theology.” My findings, if correct, are a boon for theists since if it should turn out that there is no perfect being, there could still be a God.

The Logic of Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Mahoney ◽  
Erin Kimball ◽  
Kendra L. Koivu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
New Method ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

Historical explanations seek to identify the causes of outcomes in particular cases. Although social scientists commonly develop historical explanations, they lack criteria for distinguishing different types of causes and for evaluating the relative importance of alternative causes of the same outcome. This article first provides an inventory of the five types of causes that are normally used in historical explanations: (1) necessary but not sufficient, (2) sufficient but not necessary, (3) necessary and sufficient, (4) INUS, and (5) SUIN causes. It then introduces a new method—sequence elaboration—for evaluating the relative importance of causes. Sequence elaboration assesses the importance of causes through consideration of their position within a sequence and through consideration of the types of causes that make up the sequence as a whole. Throughout the article, methodological points are illustrated with substantive examples from the field of international and comparative studies.

Debating the Reality of Race, Caste, and Ethnicity

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Kincaid
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Science Explanation ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
Realism Question

There is a lively ongoing debate among philosophers and social scientists about the reality of race and among social scientists about the reality of caste and ethnicity. This paper tries to sort out what the issues are and makes some preliminary suggestions about what the evidence shows. Standard philosophical analyses try to find the necessary and sufficient conditions of our concept of race. I argue that this is not the best way to approach the issue and that the reality of these concepts should be taken as a scientific realism question; that is, do our best social scientific accounts of these phenomena show that appealing to the concepts of race, caste, and ethnicity is essential to successful social science explanation? I argue that in some cases that is the case and lay out the empirical issues involved.

PRIVACY AND LACK OF KNOWLEDGE

Episteme ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Fallis
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Alvin Goldman ◽  
Knowledge Account ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
Lack Of Knowledge

AbstractTwo sorts of connections between privacy and knowledge (or lack thereof) have been suggested in the philosophical literature. First, Alvin Goldman has suggested that protecting privacy typically leads to less knowledge being acquired. Second, several other philosophers (e.g. Parent, Matheson, Blaauw and Peels) have claimed that lack of knowledge is definitive of having privacy. In other words, someone not knowing something is necessary and sufficient for someone else having privacy about that thing. Or equivalently, someone knowing something is necessary and sufficient for someone else losing privacy about that thing. In this paper, I argue that both of these suggestions are incorrect. I begin by arguing, contra Goldman, that protecting privacy often leads to more knowledge being acquired. I argue in the remainder of the paper, contra the defenders of the knowledge account of privacy, that someone knowing something is not necessary for someone else losing privacy about that thing.

Unjustified Retribution

1993 ◽  
Vol 27 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 50-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dudley Knowles
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Sufficient Condition ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Condition ◽  
Begging The Question ◽  
Retributive Punishment ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

In a number of related papers Michael S. Moore has advanced a powerful theory of retributive punishment. The position as stated is simple: “retributivism is the view that we ought to punish offenders because and only because they deserve to be punished”. Desert is a necessary and sufficient condition for just punishment. However simple and straightforward the view, it still needs to be defended and Moore has been energetic in defending his corner against traditional objections and against replies that his account has attracted since first publication. His latest effort invites readers to pursue these problems in still greater depth. This is an invitation I am happy to accept. First I want to reexamine the charge that there is circularity in his account and second, I want to look more closely at the intuitions which ground his acceptance of the principle of desert.One worrying thought, for Moore, is that he may be begging the question. His argument proceeds by inviting us to consider a range of cases. In “The Moral Worth of Retribution” the focus is on a couple of savage murders. In “Justifying Retributivism” we are asked to practice Kant's thought-experiment: how should we deal with the last murderer before we leave the island; and ponder the fate of Dostoyevsky's nobleman who set his dogs to tear a child to pieces.

Gamblers Anonymous: A critical review of the literature

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Ferentzy ◽  
Wayne Skinner
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Collective Inquiry ◽  
Current State ◽  
Gamblers Anonymous ◽  
The Subject

This study surveys existing literature on Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and issues that help to contextualise our understanding of this mutual aid association. While GA has been the subject of investigation by social scientists, it is still understudied, with a notable shortage of research on issues facing women and ethnic minorities. A need exists for large-scale assessments of GA's effectiveness, more detailed accounts of GA beliefs and practices, increased knowledge of the ways in which GA attendance interacts with both formal treatment and attendance at other mutual aid organisations, and a better understanding of the profiles of gamblers best (and least) suited to GA, along with a clearer grasp of what GA was able to offer those gamblers that it seems to have helped. This assessment of the current state of knowledge underscores the embryonic state of our collective inquiry into the nature of GA, and the authors emphasise that significant advances have been made. Notably, important targets for study are being identified.

Complexity, Causality, and Control in Statistical Modeling

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian R. Urlacher
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Models ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Causal Framework ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
And Control

Social scientists using statistical models and more qualitative techniques frequently employ divergent approaches to thinking about causality. Statistical methodologies tend to draw on probabilistic understandings of causality. Qualitative research traditions, however, have advanced a sophisticated framework around necessary and sufficient conditions. In particular, the qualitative comparative analysis approach has embraced theory development that emphasizes equifinality and complex causal relationships. This article reviews the two traditions and explores how a causal framework grounded in necessary and sufficient conditions can be adapted to statistical models. A logistic regression analysis of major contributions to peacekeeping missions is used to illustrate both the viability of blending the two traditions as well as the potential for more sophisticated theory development and testing.

The extinction time of a general birth and death process with catastrophes

1986 ◽  
Vol 23 (04) ◽  
pp. 851-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Brockwell
Keyword(s):  
Laplace Transform ◽  
Size Distribution ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Death Process ◽  
Extinction Time ◽  
Birth And Death Process ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Laplace Transform ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

The Laplace transform of the extinction time is determined for a general birth and death process with arbitrary catastrophe rate and catastrophe size distribution. It is assumed only that the birth rates satisfyλ0= 0,λj> 0 for eachj> 0, and. Necessary and sufficient conditions for certain extinction of the population are derived. The results are applied to the linear birth and death process (λj=jλ, µj=jμ) with catastrophes of several different types.

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