Competing views

The present account, which construes justification as a kind of epistemic possibility of knowing, or of being in a position to know, competes with three recently advanced theories of justification. Of these competitors, the first two construe doxastic justification as the metaphysical possibility of knowing. While they differ in some details, these views share certain problematic features: they fail to yield a corresponding account of propositional justification, have trouble vindicating an intuitive principle of closure for justified belief, and fail to comply with the independently plausible principle that if one has a justified belief, one is in no position to rule out that one has knowledge. The present account does not have these problematic features. According to the third competitor, |φ‎| is propositionally justified in one’s situation just in case it would be abnormal—and so require explanation—if |φ‎| were to be false in the presence of the evidence that one possesses in that situation. This normic theory of justification validates the principle that propositional justification agglomerates over conjunction, and in so doing, violates the constraint that propositions of the form ⌜φ‎ & ¬Kφ‎⌝ never be justified. It likewise contradicts the independently plausible principle that whenever |φ‎| is propositionally justified all things considered, |¬Kφ‎| is not. The present account does not face these problems, since it rejects the relevant agglomeration principle and treats the condition encoded by ⌜¬K¬Kφ‎⌝ as luminous.

What’s wrong with internalism?

Extant internalists are either accessibilists or mentalists. Accessibilists standardly claim that whenever p is justified, one is in a position to know this fact by reflection alone or else this fact has grounds that are accessible in this way. The argument for this claim assumes that one ought to believe p only if p is justified; that therefore, grounds for justification must be luminous; and that only facts accessible by reflection fit the bill. It founders already because too few conditions are luminous. A non-standard version of accessibilism avoids this problem by conceiving of the grounds for justification as facts about what one is in a position to know by reflection alone. The argument marshalled in its favour fails to show why they cannot be facts about what one is in a position to know by other means. Mentalists claim that whenever p is justified this fact is grounded in facts about one’s mental states. One argument contends that only mentalism can account for certain structural features of justification. It founders because the present account explains these features equally well. Another argument contends that only mentalism heeds our intuitions about sceptical cases. It founders because mental states can help to confer justification only if they are arrived at in certain ways—a fact not itself determined by such states. Accessibilism and mentalism lack sufficient support and incur costs internalists do better without. The present account delivers all the goods that internalists should wish for, without making justification an internal condition.

Outline of a theory of justification

Core theses of the novel account of justification to be developed are first stated: one has propositional justification for p just in case one is in no position to know that one is in no position to know p; and one has doxastic justification for p just in case one is in no position to know that one does not know p. Unlike other theories that conceive of justification in terms of the metaphysical possibility of knowing, the present account thus construes it as a distinctive kind of epistemic possibility. It treats propositional justification as non-factive, both its presence and its absence as luminous conditions, and by assuming a weak non-normal modal logic for knowledge and being in a position to know, validates principles of positive and negative introspection for it. The account thereby attributes features to justification that internalists care about. But it does so without construing justification as an internal condition. The account allows one to systematically distinguish between the condition of being justified and the metaphysical grounds for its obtaining, thereby heeding externalist insights into the difference between the good cases and the bad cases envisaged by radical scepticism. Lines of argument that show the account’s potential, e.g. in dealing with the preface and lottery paradoxes, are previewed, and so are lines of defence against challenges and objections, including prominent anti-luminosity arguments.

Applications

To earn their keep, theories of justification must be shown to have fruitful applications and to provide the means to address well-known puzzles and paradoxes. It is argued that the present account of justification does very well on this score. Not only does it prove amenable to the idea that standards for knowledge and justification may shift, it allows for an explanation of why they shift in tandem. It lends itself to a justificationist conception of the rules that may guide the formation of beliefs, to the extent that these beliefs aspire to be knowledgeable. The present account moreover affords principled solutions to the preface paradox, the lottery paradox, the related but distinct lottery puzzle, and a more recent sceptical challenge targeting doxastic justification.

Double consciousness to scaffold narrative skills

Determining the utility of auditory hallucinations (including imaginary friends) in developing logic is sorely under-investigated (Fernyhough, Charles. 2016. The voices within: The history and science of how we talk to ourselves. New York: Basic Books). The present account demonstrates how Peirce’s double consciousness fueled by his endoporeutic principle, provides insight into how abduction directs adopting arguments from one source while dismissing others. Peirce’s categories provide hints as to which voices become admitted to logical scrutiny, and which are validated – consequent to irritations imposed by surprise/conflict. Effort/resistance (4.536) clearly illustrates how Secondness legitimizes emerging perspectives, facilitating examination of peripheral voices, which can be competitive (MS 9) or collaborative (4.551). Peirce’s Energetic and Emotional Interpretants (MS 318) impel or inhibit new habits (attention to one stimulus over another). Consciously inhibiting forces hastens self-control (Thirdness) integrating voices on the fringes of conventionality into one’s own (MS 318). Ultimately, incorporating alterity via imagined arguments satisfies Peirce’s endoporeutic maxim because reflecting upon the legitimacy of alien perspectives transforms habits from the outside in.

Advances in the Synthesis of Fluorinated Scaffolds by Transition Metal-Catalyzed C–H Bond Activation

Thanks to the unique features of the fluorine atom and the fluorinated groups, fluorine-containing molecules are essential. Therefore, the search for new fluorinated groups as well as straightforward and original methodologies for their installation is of prime importance. Especially, the combination of organofluorine chemistry with transition metal-catalyzed C–H bond functionalization reactions offered straightforward tools to access original fluorinated scaffolds. In this context, over the last years, our group focused on the development of original methodologies to synthesize fluorine-containing molecules with a special attention to emergent fluorinated groups. The present account highlights our recent contributions to the synthesis of highly value-added fluorine-containing compounds by transition metal-catalyzed C–H bond activation.

Chryzypa twierdzenie o naturalnej wieloznaczności wyrazów

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Chrysippus’ claim about natural ambiguity of words. The present account assumes that the concept formation mechanisms that were outlined by the Stoics throw some light on the notorious contradiction between the claim about natural relationship between words and things, on the one hand, and the claim about natural ambiguity of words, on the other. We know neither the context of Chrysippus’ postulate nor the examples with which he illustrated it. Thus the following analyses are obviously speculative.However, the interpretations of myths and poetry that were put forward by Chrysippus sit very well with his conviction that ambiguity and figurativeness are common and natural in language.

Chryzypa twierdzenie o naturalnej wieloznaczności wyrazów

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Chrysippus’ claim about natural ambiguity of words. The present account assumes that the concept formation mechanisms that were outlined by the Stoics throw some light on the notorious contradiction between the claim about natural relationship between words and things, on the one hand, and the claim about natural ambiguity of words, on the other. We know neither the context of Chrysippus’ postulate nor the examples with which he illustrated it. Thus the following analyses are obviously speculative.However, the interpretations of myths and poetry that were put forward by Chrysippus sit very well with his conviction that ambiguity and figurativeness are common and natural in language.

Thought Experiments and ‘Would’

In The Philosophy of Philosophy, the author used counterfactual conditionals to analyse the logical connections underlying thought experiments. That analysis was conducted in the framework of something like Lewis’s semantics of counterfactuals; this chapter adjusts it to the present account of counterfactuals as contextually restricted strict conditionals. The main line of argument goes through as before, but with some improvements in flexibility: anaphora between antecedent and consequent no longer requires complications in the treatment of natural language sentences, and ‘unintended’ worlds can be treated as excluded by the contextually relevant restriction, so that they do not falsify the counterfactual at issue.

Prospection does not imply predictive processing

Predictive processing models of psychopathologies are not explanatorily consistent with the present account of abstract thought. These models are based on latent variables probabilistically mapping the structure of the world. As such, they cannot be informed by representational ontology based on mental objects and states. What actually is the case is merely some terminological affinity between subjective and informational uncertainty.