Metonymy in scientific linguistic discourse

The purpose of the article was to show the features of the functioning of different types of metonymy in scientific linguistic discourse, which is understood as a verbalized epistemic situation common to the scientific sphere of communication, taken in the entire totality of linguistic and extralinguistic factors and enshrined in the form of texts (oral and written ones). The article deals with metonymy from the point of view of langue / parole: lexicalized metonymy in langue is a semantic transposition mechanism on contiguity and carries out a terminological nomination; discursive metonymy in parole becomes the result of syntagmatic contiguity of syntactic constructions. Linguistic metonymic terms are grouped by types of knowledge: declarative and procedural ones. The shifts of meaning between the logical terms “object”, “subject”, “general” and “specific”, “abstract” and “concrete”, “form”, “content”, etc., directed towards each other, are observed in metonymic terms of declarative type. Metonymy can reflect the processes due to the causality between adjacent objects. Transitional phenomena between lexicalized (linguistic) and discursive (speech) metonymy reflect those models that contain onyms; they are related to the designation of the subject of knowledge (linguist) and his scientific discovery.

DIVINE HIDDENNESS AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

The paper offers a new strategy for refuting the atheistic hiddenness argument. For that, the argument is modified on the account of the actual epistemic situation in our world. As a result, the success of the modified argument hinges on the truth of the supposition that divine-human loving relationship depends on whether the human had a convincing religious experience of the divine presence and whether the human possesses the capability to recognize this experience as their participation in the relationship with God. This supposition, however, is shown to be unfounded. Moreover, this supposition entails that many people who lack the necessary cognitive abilities to be conscious of their relationship with God are thus unfit for this relationship, which disagrees with the idea of all-encompassing divine love. A successful rebuttal of this supposition results in a refutation of the hiddenness argument.

Propositional and doxastic justification

Drawing on the results of previous chapters, the proposal is made to interpret the complex operator ⌜¬K¬K⌝ as encoding propositional justification and the complex operator ⌜¬K¬K⌝ as encoding doxastic justification—where in each case justification is understood to be justification all things considered. Accordingly, not only propositional but also doxastic justification is construed as a feature of one’s epistemic situation rather than a feature of one’s beliefs. On this view, both types of justification are non-factive. The proposed account is defended against a number of putative counterexamples, the allegation that it confuses epistemic permissibility with epistemic blamelessness, and the charge that it fails to heed plausible reliabilist constraints on justification. At crucial junctures this defence relies on the availability of theorems governing the aforementioned complex operators that were proved in chapter 5.

Science & Speculation

Despite wide recognition that speculation is critical for successful science, philosophers have attended little to it. When they have, speculation has been characterized in narrowly epistemic terms: a hypothesis is speculative due to its (lack of) evidential support. These ‘evidence-first’ accounts provide little guidance for what makes speculation productive or egregious, nor how to foster the former while avoiding the latter. I examine how scientists discuss speculation and identify various functions speculations play. On this basis, I develop a ‘function-first’ account of speculation. This analysis grounds a richer discussion of when speculation is egregious and when it is productive, based in both fine-grained analysis of the speculation’s purpose, and what I call the ‘epistemic situation’ scientists face.

DIFFUSENESS AND DIFFERENTIATION OF THE STYLISTICS OF A SCIENTIFIC TEXT AND SPEECH STUDIES

This article represents a methodological problem that concerns the hypothesis on the possibility to differentiate adjacent scientific directions — the stylistics of a scientific text and speech studies. Theаexplanatory discourse approach (cognitive, discourse, and stylistics) is based on the concept of functional stylistics that is being developed by the Perm Scientific School (by Prof. M. N. Kozhina). The hypothesis represents the semantic structure of scientific text correlated with its extralinguistic base. This base is concretized through scientific knowledge and defined with cognitive and communicative activities of a subject towards an object. The communicative and cognitive activities of a subject are complexes of extralinguistic factors that have different levels of abstraction in a particular epistemic situation. This level of abstraction is a methodological instrument that provides differentiation of those scientific directions. The stylistics has its own niche — the study of language units as well as grammar and functional semantic categories in the framework of functional styles. These styles are influenced by abstract factors, which include public conscience, areas of activities, and cogitation. The stylistics of a scientific text is a fragment of contemporary functional stylistics, it deals with extralinguistic factors and text formation. The speech studies concern the research of unlimited dynamic space of speech and texts (not necessarily scientific ones). This space is interpreted according to dominant discourse factors (strong but not style-forming).

DYNAMICS OF SUBJECT-OBJECT INTERACTIONS IN THE TRANSLATION SPACE

The article is based on two models of texts’ semantic analysis: the synergetic model of translation named as “translation space” conception and the extralinguistic model of scientific text defined as epistemic situation. The short of the approach is that translator studies both objective, - textocentric, -and subjective, - subject oriented, - meanings of the text; their formation can be traced in the fields of the translation space. At that, subject-object interactions characterize also an epistemic situation that is formed by ontological, methodological and axiological features of source and target texts included in the orbit of the translation space. The result of dynamical interaction of all textual meanings and their synergy is a harmonious text of translation determining reciprocal understanding of the author and the recipient that belong to different lingo cultures.

Contextualism and the Logic of Knowledge

A discussion of contextualist accounts of knowledge, and of the epistemic logic that is appropriate to them. David Lewis’s account is compared and contrasted with an alternative, a version of an information-theoretic, “normal conditions” analysis of knowledge. The two accounts are formulated in a common abstract framework making it possible to clarify the structural features they share, and those on which they differ. Central concerns of the discussion are the interplay between facts about the attributor’s context and facts about the subject of the knowledge attribution, and the dynamics of knowledge attribution as contexts shift in response to changes in the epistemic situation of both the attributors and the subject.

Rational Reflection and the Notorious Unmarked Clock

This chapter concerns a reflection principle discussed by David Christensen and Adam Elga according to which a rational agent’s credence in ϕ‎ ought to be his or her expectation of the ideal credence for the agent, which is the degree to which the evidence ideally supports ϕ‎. The principle seems to have paradoxical consequences, illustrated in its application to an example to which the title of this chapter refers, but it is argued that the paradox arises from mistaken assumptions about what determines the agent’s epistemic situation. The principle may still need qualification, and it needs to be reconciled with the possibility of epistemic modesty (uncertainty about whether one’s credences are ideal), but the clock paradox can be dissolved, and doing so helps to clarify issues concerning higher-order evidence.

How Much Should a Person Know? Moral Inquiry & Demandingness

An area of consensus in debates about culpability for ignorance concerns the importance of an agent’s epistemic situation, and the information available to them, in determining what they ought to know. On this understanding, given the excesses of our present epistemic situation, we are more culpable for our morally-relevant ignorance than ever. This verdict often seems appropriate at the level of individual cases, but I argue that it is over-demanding when considered at large. On the other hand, when we describe an obligation to know that avoids over-demandingness at large, it fails to be sufficiently demanding in individual cases. The first half of this paper is dedicated to setting up this dilemma. In the second half, I show that it cannot be easily escaped. Finally, I suggest that this dilemma impedes our ability to morally appraise one another’s ignorance, and even our own.