Through Virtues to Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 6-21
Author(s):  
Artur R. Karimov ◽  

By all accounts, virtue epistemology is making a value turn in contemporary analytic epistemology. In this article, this twist is explicated through the transformation of the understanding of epistemic values and the value of the epistemic. In the first sense, we are talking about how the view has changed on what determines the epistemic value of such categories as truth, knowledge, understanding, etc. In the second sense, we are talking about the value of our epistemic concepts (the value of the epistemic): what is true belief, knowledge, etc. for? It is shown how the causal link between our beliefs and intellectual virtues allows us to explain the nature and value of knowledge as a central category of epistemology. The author reveals the difference between the main types of virtue epistemology through the prism of two different approaches to the justification of values: value internalism and value externalism. Value externalism assumes that a state/motive/action gains value from something outside of a person's consciousness. In contrast, value internalism holds that the conditions that determine value are internal to consciousness. For reliabilism, the value of cognitive success lies in its causal connection with the reliable competences of the subject, for responsibilism – with virtuous motives of cognitive activity. Common to reliabilism and responsibilism is that they shift the focus from the value of an effect (truth) to its relationship with the value of a cause – an ability or excellent trait of intellectual character. The main approaches to substantiating the fundamental value of knowledge in virtue epistemology are analyzed. If for reliabilism the highest epistemic value is truth as cognitive achievement, then for responsibilism the value of epistemic categories is primarily in their moral significance – the achievement of a good life and happiness (eudaimonia). In conclusion, the problematic aspects of virtue epistemology are formulated and promising directions for its further development are shown.

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-104
Author(s):  
Lance K. Aschliman

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I question the orthodox position that true belief is a fundamental epistemic value. I begin by raising a particularly epistemic version of the so-called “value problem of knowledge” in order to set up the basic explanandum and to motivate some of the claims to follow. In the second section, I take aim at what I call “bottom-up approaches” to this value problem, views that attempt to explain the added epistemic value of knowledge in terms of its relation to a more fundamental value of true belief. The final section is a presentation of a value-theoretic alternative, one that explains the value problem presented in the first section while also doing justice to intuitions that may cause us to worry about bottom-up approaches. In short, knowledge and not mere true belief is a fundamental epistemic value as it is the constitutive goal of propositional inquiry.


Episteme ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Konigsberg

AbstractSarah Moss has recently suggested that when they encounter conflict, epistemic peers should not split the difference between the credence that they each assign to some disputed proposition p, as has been suggested by conciliatory approaches to belief revision in the debate surrounding disagreement in the literature. Moss contends that an epistemic compromise between peers need not be the arithmetic mean of prior credences, in the sense that if my credence in some proposition p is x and yours is y, the credence that is the result of our compromise need not be (x + y)/2. More generally, Moss's proposal advocates an approach to how estimations of truth value, exhibited in credences, should in fact be considered in resolving conflict and disagreement. The general idea is that splitting the difference between credences may be inadequate, seeing as agents may assign different epistemic values to different credences. While novel and clearly argued, I think that Moss's proposal fails to provide entirely convincing reasons for abandoning the traditional symmetrical approach to epistemic compromise and for adopting the scoring rule model instead. I demonstrate two problems with the model that Moss advocates.


Dialogue ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Matheson

ABSTRACT: In this paper I defend an epistemic value pluralism according to which true belief, justified belief, and knowledge are all fundamental epistemic values. After laying out reasons to reject epistemic value monism in its central forms, I present my pluralist alternative and show how it can adequately explain the greater epistemic value of knowledge over both true belief and justified belief, despite their fundamentality. I conclude with a sketch of how this pluralism might be generalized beyond the epistemic domain to the ethical.


Author(s):  
Sherrilyn Roush

I characterize Gettier cases as failures of understanding, and give a theory of what it is to understand why proposition p is true. This view is based on the concept of probabilistic relevance matching, having one’s dispositions to believe p mirror the probabilistic relations that p has to all other matters. Based in probability, the view yields a clear relationship, and also distinction, between the concept of understanding and the concept of knowledge defined in terms of probabilistic tracking. With these tools we are able to see that gettierization avoidance has a value independent of the value of knowledge, viz. understanding, but that it is also in the nature of tracking-type knowledge to discourage gettierization quite specifically. The concept of understanding here captures several key features of this phenomenon, such as breadth, depth, and appreciation of connections, and allows us to see understanding as simulation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6914
Author(s):  
Frikkie Alberts Maré ◽  
Henry Jordaan

The high water intake and wastewater discharge of slaughterhouses have been a concern for many years. One neglected factor in previous research is allocating the water footprint (WF) to beef production’s different products and by-products. The objective of this article was to estimate the WF of different cattle breeds at a slaughterhouse and cutting plant and allocate it according to the different cuts (products) and by-products of beef based on the value fraction of each. The results indicated a negative relationship between the carcass weight and the processing WF when the different breeds were compared. Regarding a specific cut of beef, a kilogram of rib eye from the heaviest breed had a processing WF of 614.57 L/kg, compared to the 919.91 L/kg for the rib eye of the lightest breed. A comparison of the different cuts indicated that high-value cuts had higher WFs than low-value cuts. The difference between a kilogram of rib eye and flank was 426.26 L/kg for the heaviest breed and 637.86 L/kg for the lightest breed. An option to reduce the processing WF of beef is to lessen the WF by slaughtering heavier animals. This will require no extra investment from the slaughterhouse. At the same time, the returns should increase as the average production inputs per kilogram of output (carcass) should reduce, as the slaughterhouse will process more kilograms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yin Chung Au

AbstractThis paper proposes an extended version of the interventionist account for causal inference in the practical context of biological mechanism research. This paper studies the details of biological mechanism researchers’ practices of assessing the evidential legitimacy of experimental data, arguing why quantity and variety are two important criteria for this assessment. Because of the nature of biological mechanism research, the epistemic values of these two criteria result from the independence both between the causation of data generation and the causation in question and between different interventions, not techniques. The former independence ensures that the interventions in the causation in question are not affected by the causation that is responsible for data generation. The latter independence ensures the reliability of the final mechanisms not only in the empirical but also the formal aspects. This paper first explores how the researchers use quantity to check the effectiveness of interventions, where they at the same time determine the validity of the difference-making revealed by the results of interventions. Then, this paper draws a distinction between experimental interventions and experimental techniques, so that the reliability of mechanisms, as supported by the variety of evidence, can be safely ensured in the probabilistic sense. The latter process is where the researchers establish evidence of the mechanisms connecting the events of interest. By using case studies, this paper proposes to use ‘intervention’ as the fruitful connecting point of literature between evidence and mechanisms.


1966 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 1377-1384
Author(s):  
A. V. Willi

Kinetic carbon-13 and deuterium isotope effects are calculated for the SN2 reaction of CH3I with CN-. The normal vibrational frequencies of CH3I, the transition state I · · · CH3 · · · CN, and the corresponding isotope substituted reactants and transition states are evaluated from the force constants by solving the secular equation on an IBM 7094 computer.Values for 7 force constants of the planar CH3 moiety in the transition state (with an sp2 C atom) are obtained by comparison with suitable stable molecules. The stretching force constants related to the bonds being broken or newly formed (fCC, fCC and the interaction between these two stretches, /12) are chosen in such a way that either a zero or imaginary value for νʟ≠ will result. Agreement between calculated and experimental methyl-C13 isotope effects (k12/ k13) can be obtained only in sample calculations with sufficiently large values of f12 which lead to imaginary νʟ≠ values. Furthermore, the difference between fCI and fCC must be small (in the order of 1 mdyn/Å). The bending force constants, fHCI and fHCC, exert relatively little influence on k12/k13. They are important for the D isotope effect, however. As soon as experimental data on kH/kD are available it will be possible to derive a value for fHCC in the transition state if fHCI is kept constant at 0.205 mdynA, and if fCI, fCC and f12 are held in a reasonable order of magnitude. There is no agreement between experimental and calculated cyanide-C13 isotope effects. Possible explanations are discussed. — Since fCI and fCC cannot differ much it must be concluded that the transition state is relatively “symmetric”, with approximately equal amounts of bond making and bond breaking.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Farah Aida Qotrun Nada ◽  
Tintrim Rahayu ◽  
Ari Hayati

Ground coffee is coffee beans that have been roasted, ground or ground so that they have a smooth shape. The purpose of this study was to determine the content of compounds in robusta coffee roasted seed extract (Coffea canephora) from plants produced by organic and inorganic fertilization, and to know the difference in compounds between the results of organic and inorganic fertilization. The characteristics of phytochemical screening were carried out qualitatively on alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, terpenoids and saponins and the antioxidant activity was carried out by the DPPH (1,1-dipenyl-2-picrihidrazil) method. Phytochemical screening characteristic test results show that robusta coffee bean extract extract from the results of organic and inorganic fertilization both contain flavonoids, alkaloids, tannins, and saponins, while the antioxidant test activity of robusta coffee beans extracts shows differences based on the results of statistical tests of linear regression analysis with the IC50 value the highest antioxidant content was inorganic coffee roasted bean extract only 14.0629 ppm compared to the organic roasted extract with a value of 30.6159 ppmKeywords: Robusta Coffee (Coffea canophora), Phytochemical Screening, DPPH MethodABSTRAKKopi bubuk adalah biji kopi yang telah disangrai digiling atau ditumbuk sehingga mempunyai bentuk halus. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui kandungan senyawa dalam ekstrak biji sangrai kopi robusta (Coffe canephora) dari tanaman hasil pemupukan organik dan anorganik, dan mengetahui perbedaan senyawa antara hasil pemupukan organik dan anorganik. Karakteristik skrining fitokimia dilakukan secara kualitatif yang dilakukan terhadap alkaloid, flavonoid, tanin, terpenoid dan saponin dan aktivitas antioksidan dilakukan dengan metode DPPH (1,1-difenil-2-pikrihidrazil). Hasil uji karakteristik skrining fitokimia menunjukkan bahwa ekstrak biji sangrai kopi robusta dari hasil pemupukan oganik dan anorganik keduanya sama mengandung senyawa flavonoid, alkaloid, tanin, dan saponin,  sedangkan pada aktifitas uji antioksidan ekstrak biji sangrai kopi robusta menunjukan perbedaan berdasarkan hasil uji statistik analisis regresi linear dengan nilai IC50 kadar antioksidan paling tinggi adalah ekstrak biji sangrai kopi anorganik hanya 14,0629 ppm dibandingkan dengan ekstrak sangrai dari organik dengan nilai 30,6159 ppm.Kata kunci : Kopi Robusta (Coffea canophera), Skrining Fitokimia, Metode DPPH


1976 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-291
Author(s):  
B. TOUATI ◽  
C. PLENCHETTE ◽  
M. TABI

In a pot-type experiment with ryegrass, 32P was used to label isotopically exchangeable soil phosphorus as well as a phosphate fertilizer. The tagging of both forms of phosphorus enable us to determine the pool (L) for soil reserves and the A value which is the availability of these reserves in the presence of fertilizer. The authors establish correlations between the ratio K = L/A and the assimilable phosphorus as determined by the Bray II method, and also between K and the "extra" phosphorus. The authors state that the latter was the difference between the plant phosphorus with and without fertilizer. From this study it is concluded: (1) that the K value seems to be a better criterion than the amount of assimilable phosphorus to estimate the phosphorus fertility of a soil; (2) that the study of the variation of the K value according to the soil types informs us about the reserves behavior and about the way of nutrition for the plant. The calculation of the K value is aimed toward a more adequate fertilization for given types of soil.


Solid Earth ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 1157-1169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul W. J. Glover

Abstract. When scientists apply Archie's first law they often include an extra parameter a, which was introduced about 10 years after the equation's first publication by Winsauer et al. (1952), and which is sometimes called the “tortuosity” or “lithology” parameter. This parameter is not, however, theoretically justified. Paradoxically, the Winsauer et al. (1952) form of Archie's law often performs better than the original, more theoretically correct version. The difference in the cementation exponent calculated from these two forms of Archie's law is important, and can lead to a misestimation of reserves by at least 20 % for typical reservoir parameter values. We have examined the apparent paradox, and conclude that while the theoretical form of the law is correct, the data that we have been analysing with Archie's law have been in error. There are at least three types of systematic error that are present in most measurements: (i) a porosity error, (ii) a pore fluid salinity error, and (iii) a temperature error. Each of these systematic errors is sufficient to ensure that a non-unity value of the parameter a is required in order to fit the electrical data well. Fortunately, the inclusion of this parameter in the fit has compensated for the presence of the systematic errors in the electrical and porosity data, leading to a value of cementation exponent that is correct. The exceptions are those cementation exponents that have been calculated for individual core plugs. We make a number of recommendations for reducing the systematic errors that contribute to the problem and suggest that the value of the parameter a may now be used as an indication of data quality.


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