Emergence and advancement of basic human capacities

The article departs from the Teilhardean opposition of the inside (le dedans) and the outside (le dehors), notions of reflection and self-enclosure (enroulement sur lui-même), and an experimental law of recurrence (une loi expérimentale de recurrence). The author supplements them with his own apparatus of simplex-complex transformations as an epistemic principle and a set of related practices. The article starts with quantum emergence, forging its inside and outside by an interface and an alternative way to represent it as Diracean membrane, branes of the string theory, and the eigenform. The interface instrumentality for operating the inside and outside of the quantum allows their structured totality to enact agency potential. Simplex-complex transformations allow to represent an evolutionary series of agency transformations as modules of a single model up to a developed human self. The article discusses the recurrence, enclosure, and other trickeries of emergence as well as their representation with the help of cognitive metaphors likme Ouroboros or mathematical formalisms like the Moebius strip. It proceeds to chemical catalysis and autocatalysis, further to emergence of autopoiesis, and finally to biogenesis. Forms of life internalize environmental productive factor (Umwelt) by duplication, recursion, enclosing, folding, etc. to evolve a series of codes, making up integral genetic agency and genome as its key vehicle. The article considers organismic symbiosis and respective autocatalytic recursions, addresses the emergence of signal systems and cognition, which is parallel to and duplicating neural processes. It discusses primary cognitive abilities and their further autocatalytic transformations into a range of more advanced capabilities, along with the emergence of higher levelhigher-level signal systems. Finally, it ends up by discussing anthropogenesis and stepwise emergence and advancement of human language and thought in a series of internalizations of communicative contexts (frames, typical communicative settings, mementoes and typical remembrances, etc.) into codes of the first, second, and further orders.

Common Sense, Scepticism and Deep Epistemic Disagreements

Considering the persisting disagreement between the common sense philosophers and the sceptics, it seems that they are faced with a deep epistemic disagreement. Taking stock from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, one generally thinks that deep epistemic disagreements cannot be rationally resolved. Hinge epistemology, inherited from Wittgenstein, is also considered as an illuminating detour to understand common sense epistemology. But is there really a deep epistemic disagreement between the common sense philosophers and the sceptics? Could it not be considered that they share a common background? If so, is the rational resolution of their disagreement logically possible? What rational means can common sense use to convince someone of the privileged status of an epistemic principle? Relying on Reid’s, Alston’s and Lynch’s arguments, I show that common sense epistemology is a more promising approach than hinge epistemology, because it is driven by an optimism about reason in the solving of deep epistemic disagreements.

Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology

Sensitivity is a modal epistemic principle. Modal knowledge accounts are externalist in nature and claim that the knowledge yielding connection between a true belief and the truthmaker must be spelled out in modal terms. The sensitivity condition was introduced by Robert Nozick. He suggests that if S knows that p, then S’s belief that p tracks truth. Nozick argues that this truth-tracking relation can be captured by subjunctive conditionals. As a first approximation, he provides the following modal analysis of knowledge: S knows that p iff (1) p is true; (2) S believes that p; (3) if p were false, S wouldn’t believe that p and (4) if p were true, S would believe that p. The dominant terminology in the literature, also adopted here, is to call condition (3) the sensitivity condition and condition (4) the adherence condition. The sensitivity condition is intuitively appealing since it states that a subject does not know that p if she would believe that p even if p were false. Nozick used the sensitivity condition to accomplish two major tasks. First, he provided a solution to the Gettier problem by arguing that in Gettier cases subjects do not know since the sensitivity condition is violated. Second, he presented a controversial solution to the skeptical problem according to which we have external world knowledge but do not know that the skeptical hypothesis is false. This solution is available because sensitivity is not closed under known entailment. Quickly, criticism of the sensitivity condition emerged. First, most epistemologists regarded the price of abandoning knowledge closure as a price too high to pay. Second, it was noted that sensitivity leads to the counterintuitive consequence of precluding us from inductive knowledge since induction typically yields insensitive beliefs. The most dominant reaction to these problems was to replace sensitivity by the modal principle of safety, nowadays the most popular modal principle. However, sensitivity is not only important as a starting point of modal epistemology. Because of its intuitive attractiveness, many authors aimed at refining the original sensitivity account in order to avoid well-known problems. This has led to a second wave of sensitivity accounts. As of today, various sensitivity-based theories are on the market, including accounts that avoid closure failure, probabilistic interpretations of sensitivity and adherence, and contextualist approaches. There is thus a vivid and ongoing debate about the sensitivity principle in epistemology.

WORKING PAPER SERIES: PHILOSOPHY AND KNOWLEDGE: Reflexion on a flexible management method.

In this discussion, we reflect on the value given to knowledge in a businesscontext and deliberate a contrary philosophical perspective which does notconform to prevailing knowledge theory. We consider why, if knowledge iskey for business success and competitive advantage, the transfer ofknowledge within an organisation remains problematic. Whereby, if thecreation of knowledge before transfer is recognised is a significant factor indetermining a starting point for analogous scrutiny, then what makes thisfocal point so difficult to establish and measure?We therefore consider parallelism between agents who believe propositionsand the formal system that derives proposition. In doing so, we synthesisefrom current literature and research, the epistemic principal of ‘knowledge’,which underpins the understanding of the many congruent knowledgetransfer theories, in a business context. To do this we reflect on Lindströmand the epistemic states of Spohn, wherein, we can draw on descriptions ofconditional doxastic maps, as a natural extension of contemporary Kripkemodels. We conclude the epistemic principle of ‘knowledge’, whichunderpins the plausibility of comparisons between epistemicallydistinguishable knowledge transfer, must include perspectives and doyennesfrom a recognisable, not implied, value standpoint

The Self-Hollowing Problem of the Radical Sceptical Paradox

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new solution to the radical sceptical paradox. A sceptical paradox purports to indicate the inconsistency within our fundamental epistemological commitments that are all seemingly plausible. Typically, sceptics employ an intuitively appealing epistemic principle (e.g., the closure principle, the underdetermination principle) to derive the sceptical conclusion. This paper will reveal a dilemma intrinsic to the sceptical paradox, which I refer to as the self-hollowing problem of radical scepticism. That is, on the one hand, if the sceptical conclusion turns out to be true, then the epistemic principle employed by sceptics would lose its foundation of plausibility; on the other hand, if the sceptical conclusion does not follow, then the sceptical problem would not arise. In either case, the so-called sceptical paradox cannot be a genuine paradox. This new solution has three theoretical merits: it is undercutting, less theory-laden, and widely applicable.

State-Nations

In The Order of Things, Foucault failed to distinguish between modern and modernist moments in the epoch beginning around 1800 because he attributed interiority as an epistemic principle to the modern age when this is modernism’s defining feature. Instead, the scalar effects of demographic, scientific, and industrial revolutions define modernity as people came to experience it in their daily lives. Transformations in scale provoked the institutional development of lateral frames or levels. Modern states as nations occupy one level. Hegel took the revolutionary step of merging people as a collective singular with state as an apparatus, thereby granting the state-nation the agency of an “actual individual.” The society of state-nations stands a level above, people as individuals in various arrangements fill the level below. The central mechanism in making the modern epoch an age of levels is recognition of states by states.

Attention and Knowledge

The recognition that attention performs two roles enables one to argue that the epistemology of attention is such that attention provides an immediate improvement to justification, as long as there are no defeaters, and also that suitably expert attention is sufficient for knowledge. Attentional justification is an underived epistemic principle, related to a view known as ‘Dogmatism’ in the epistemology of perception. There is cognitive penetration of attention by beliefs and interests, as well as by past actions, but it is restricted in scope. So attention improves justification, and sometimes, when attention is trained or cultivated, the improvement is such as to deliver knowledge.

Zalabardo on Pritchard and the Evidential Problem

It is an alleged virtue of Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism (ed) that it makes available a promising line of resistance against the sceptic about perceptual knowledge. According to José Zalabardo’s reconstruction of it, however, this line of resistance—in particular, the solution it supplies to what Pritchard calls the Evidential Problem—is ultimately flawed. Whether or not the solution criticized by Zalabardo is the one supplied by ed—which Pritchard has denied—my aim in this paper is to show that Zalabardo’s criticism of this solution fails. To begin with, I show that it is based on excessively demanding epistemic principles. Moreover, I argue that on a more plausible epistemic principle Zalabardo’s conclusion doesn’t go through.

Algumas considerações sobre lógicaSome considerations on logic

This objective point out some birth steps of logic in ancient Greece highlighting the contribution of the first philosophers including Heraclitus and Parmenides. Highlighting becoming, stated at first that everything changes, that change is real, and the view taken by Parmenides that the real and true is what never changes: the being is non-being is not. It also highlights the contribution of Plato with the epistemic principle that makes and gives presence to the real. First criterion for logic for rationality. And Aristotle with logos whose purpose was to show the correct way to build the knowledge and scientific evidence. Also studied the contribution in the medieval period especially with the flowering of scholasticism of some of the most important and brilliant philosophers who contributed to the development of Aristotelian logic, including Abelard, Aquinas and William of Ockham. He worked with the division of logic in most logic also called material logic that determines the particular and special rules laws and less than or formal logic laying down the conditions of conformity of thought working with the seizure of definitions and the term, understanding and extension, judgment and proposition, reasoning and argument. Also notable was the deductive reasoning or syllogism, the legal syllogism and inductive reasoning.