Colloquium 1 Dialectic, Persuasion, and Science in Aristotle

What is dialectic and what is it for, in Aristotle? Aristotle’s answer in Topics 1.2 seems surprisingly lacking in unity. He seems to imply that insofar as dialectic is an expertise (τέχνη), it is a disposition to three (possibly four) different kinds of productive achievement. Insofar as dialectic is a method, it is one whose use is seemingly subject to multiple, differing standards of evaluation. The goal of the paper is to resist this problematic “multi-tool” view of Aristotelian dialectic, by explaining how dialectic’s contributions to training, encounters, and the philosophical sciences are of the same kind. What unifies them, I argue, is the kind of reasoning that improves the epistemic position of the person that engages with it. The kind of reasoning-based practices in which dialectic is the expertise are, at heart, tools of inquiry, tools for improving people’s understanding. This is why dialectic is beneficial for persuasive encounters: it is an expertise that enables its possessor to persuade by improving the understanding of their participants.

P, but you don’t know that P

Unlike first-person Moorean sentences, it’s not always awkward to assert, “p, but you don’t know that p.” This can seem puzzling: after all, one can never get one’s audience to know the asserted content by speaking thus. Nevertheless, such assertions can be conversationally useful, for instance, by helping speaker and addressee agree on where to disagree. I will argue that such assertions also make trouble for the growing family of views about the norm of assertion that what licenses proper assertion is not the initiating epistemic position of the speaker but the (potential) resulting epistemic position of the audience.

There’s Something about Mary: Challenges and Prospects for Narrative Theodicy

This paper explores the constraints of narrative theodicy to account for the misery of the powerless and uses Mary of Bethany as a case study as evaluated through the early modern theodical writings of Mary Astell and Mary Hays. Eleonore Stump has pointed out that Mary of Bethany’s misery is interesting because it is so personal; it results from losing her heart’s desire. But, Mary of Bethany’s case fails as narrative theodicy because it cannot (unlike other cases, such as Job) sufficiently demonstrate the power of God in situated expressions of suffering, speak to plight of the powerless, nor put the sufferer in a stronger epistemic position. Astell and Hays provide a solution for the problem of lived experiences of systemic oppression for the project of narrative theodicy (it must be for and about suffering), and in so doing, remind us of the continued significance of their work to the philosophical canon. To succeed, narratives used for theodicy must speak directly to the plight of those who suffer, and must allow the powerless, miserable, unprivileged, and oppressed to have access to religious knowledge of the relationship between God and the one in misery, the one powerless.

A heterodox defense of the actualist higher-order thought theory

I defend the actualist higher-order thought theory against four objections. The first objection contends that the theory is circular. The second one contends that the theory is unable to account for the alleged epistemic position we are in with respect to our own conscious mental states. The third one contends that the theory is unable to account for the evidence we have for the proposition that all conscious mental states are represented. The fourth one contends that the theory does not accommodate the intimacy we have with our own conscious mental states. To some extent, my defense will be heterodox, in the sense that I will show that some objections are satisfactorily answerable even if we concede to the objectors a point that higher-order theorists do not seem to be willing to concede, that is, that the theory is the result of conceptual analysis.

Critical Realism: The Epistemic Position of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy

Summary In this contribution, I discuss the relevance of epistemological models for psychotherapy. Despite its importance epistemology is seldom explicitly dealt with in the psychotherapeutic landscape. Based on the presentation of “Critical Realism (CR),” the epistemological position of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy (GTP), I intend to show to which extent this explanatory model supports a differentiated understanding of problems between human beings, arising from the differences in experiencing “reality.” The presentation deals explicitly with some conclusions that can be drawn from the CR model for practical psychotherapeutic work. In particular, the aspects of basic therapeutic attitude, therapeutic relationship, and praxeology are highlighted.

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

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.

Cognitive Penetration, Expertise, and Background Information

Can the way that an experience is caused make a difference to what that experience justifies believing? Presentational Conservatism implies that the answer to this question is no. It thereby incurs two explanatory burdens. One is to explain the apparent epistemic downgrade in cases such as Susanna Siegel’s example of Jack looking angry to Jill because of her unjustified fear. Another explanatory burden is to explain the superior epistemic position of expert perceivers such as bird watchers and radiologists whose trained eyes allow them to see more than those with untrained eyes. This chapter argues that Presentational Conservatism has adequate resources to discharge both explanatory burdens.

Who Contributes Knowledge? Core-Periphery Tension in Online Innovation Communities

Where do valuable contributions originate from in online innovation communities? Prior research provides conflicting answers. One view, consistent with a community of practice perspective, is that valued knowledge contributions are primarily provided by central participants at the core of a community. In contrast, other research—including work adopting an open innovation perspective—predicts that valuable ideas primarily emerge from peripheral participants, those at the margins of a field of knowledge who provide novel ideas and viewpoints. We integrate these contrasting perspectives by considering two distinct forms of position: social embeddedness (a core social position within the social network of participants interacting within a community) and epistemic marginality (a peripheral epistemic position based on the network of topics discussed by a community). Analyzing contributions by 697,412 participants of 52 Stack Exchange online innovation communities, we find that both participants who are socially embedded and participants who are epistemically marginal provide knowledge contributions that are highly valued by fellow community participants. Importantly, among epistemically marginal participants, those with high social embeddedness are more likely to provide contributions valued by the community; by virtue of their epistemic marginality, these participants may offer novel ideas while by virtue of their social embeddedness they may be able to more effectively communicate their ideas to the community. Thus, the production of knowledge in an online innovation community involves a complex interaction between the novelty emanating from the epistemic periphery and the social embeddedness required to make ideas congruent with existing social and epistemic norms.

Ownership and First-Person Authority from a Normative Pragmatist Perspective

Mental episodes are typically associated with subjective ownership and first-person authority. My belief that an apple is red is had by me; it is mine and I’m in a privileged position to know it. Your experience of red is had by you; it is yours and you are in a privileged position to know it. The two assumptions are that mental events are had by individuals to whom they occur, and that owners are in a privileged epistemic position to fallibly report their own. This paper asks how to understand ownership and first-person authority (section 1). It argues that the two assumptions should not be accepted by default (section 2). A normative pragmatism is specified, on which mental episodes are not owned, but owed to practices of reason articulation (section 3). Finally, a positive account of ownership and first-person authority is considered (section 4).

Bayesianism and self-doubt

How should we respond to evidence when our evidence indicates that we are rationally impaired? I will defend a novel answer based on the analogy between self-doubt and memory loss. To believe that one is now impaired and previously was not is to believe that one’s epistemic position has deteriorated. Memory loss is also a form of epistemic deterioration. I argue that agents who suffer from epistemic deterioration should return to the priors they had at an earlier time. I develop this argument regarding memory loss then extend it to cases of self-doubt.