Dr Livingstone, I Presume?

Presumption is often discussed in law, less often in epistemology. Is it an attitude? If so where can we locate it within the taxonomy of epistemic attitudes? Is it a kind of belief, a judgment, an assumption or a supposition? Or is it a species of inference? There are two basic models of presumption: judgmental, as a kind of judgment, and legal, taken from the use of presumptions in law. The legal model suggests that presumption is a practical inference, whereas the judgmental model suggests that presumption is an epistemic attitude. I argue that presumption is neither a practical inference nor a merely epistemic attitude: it involves both, within the category of what we may call the inquiring attitudes.

Scientific Progress and Collective Attitudes

Psychological-epistemic accounts take scientific progress to consist in the development of some psychological-epistemic attitude. Disagreements over what the relevant attitude is – true belief, knowledge, or understanding – divide proponents of the semantic, epistemic, and noetic accounts of scientific progress, respectively. Proponents of all such accounts face a common challenge. On the face of it, only individuals have psychological attitudes. However, as I argue in what follows, increases in individual true belief, knowledge, and understanding are neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific progress. Rather than being fatal to the semantic, epistemic, and noetic accounts, this objection shows that these accounts are most plausible when they take the psychological states relevant to scientific progress to be states of communities, rather than individuals. I draw on recent work in social epistemology to develop two ways in which communities can be the bearers of irreducible psychological-epistemic states. Each way yields a strategy by which proponents of one of the psychological-epistemic accounts might attempt to account for the social dimensions of scientific progress. While I present serious reasons for concern about the first strategy, I argue that the second strategy, at least, offers a promising path forward for a psychological-epistemic account of scientific progress.

Is Faith a Path to Knowledge?

In this paper, I consider whether (religious) faith has any role to play in conferring positive epistemic status to (especially religious) beliefs. I outline several conceptions of faith that have been historically important within Western religious traditions. I then consider what role faith might be supposed to play, so understood, within the framework of internalist and externalist accounts of knowledge. My general conclusion is that, insofar as faith itself is a justified epistemic attitude, it requires justification and acquires that justification only through the regular faculties for contingent truths: sense perception and reason. I also argue, however, that the operations of our cognitive faculties in arriving at epistemic judgments on matters of substance are sufficiently complex, subtle, and often temporally prolonged, to make it exceptionally difficult to reconstruct the cognitive process and to judge whether it meets standards of rationality.

Philosophy of Medicine

Philosophy of Medicine seeks to answer two questions: (1) what is medicine? and (2) what should we think of it? The first question is motivated by the observation that medicine has existed and continues to exist in many different forms in different times and places. There is no activity or belief that is common to all medical traditions in all times and places. What, if anything, makes us count these activities as varieties of the same thing—namely, medicine? The book distinguishes the goal and business of medicine, arguing that the goal is cure, while the business of medicine cannot be, because medical traditions have been too hit-and-miss at achieving cure. The core medical competence is identified as engaging with the project of understanding the nature and causes of disease. A model of health is also required to say what medicine is, since health is part of its subject matter, and a novel theory of health as a secondary property is offered. In the second part of the book, the proper epistemic attitude to medicine is considered. Contrary to much contemporary work, the book argues against positions setting very rigid constraints on what counts as admissible evidence in forming beliefs either about whole traditions or about specific interventions. Thus both Evidence-Based Medicine and Medical Nihilism are rejected. Instead a view called Medical Cosmopolitanism is developed from Appiah’s corresponding work in ethics. The view is applied to alternative and non-Mainstream traditions, as well as to the project of decolonizing medicine.

Why episodic memory may not be for communication

Three serious challenges to Mahr & Csibra's (M&C's) proposal are presented. First, we argue that the epistemic attitude that they claim is unique to remembering also applies to some forms of imaginative simulations that aren't memories. Second, we argue that their account cannot accommodate critical neuropsychological evidence. Finally, we argue that their proposal looks unconvincing when compared to more parsimonious evolutionary accounts.

Indicadores psicossociais: um olhar ampliado para processos educativos

<p>Questões voltadas para o encadeamento de relações em que a pertinência dos indicadores ganha sentido e legitimação – tais como as condições sociais de produção, difusão, reprodução e transformação – foram abordadas com vistas a introduzir uma discussão teórico -metodológica que abarque a construção de indicadores psicossociais. Ao adotar a teoria das representações sociais, o estudo identificou que sua fecundidade para o desenvolvimento de avaliações educacionais ainda é insuficientemente explorada, apesar de o fenômeno das representações sociais conter o ato de avaliar. Nesse sentido, a proposição de adoção de um paradigma psicossocial para a elaboração de indicadores avaliativos no âmbito educacional foi entendida a partir de um novo ethos, bem como de uma renovada postura epistêmica, sem desconsiderar o rigor e a seriedade indispensáveis às pesquisas avaliativas.</p><p><strong>Palavras-chave:</strong> Indicadores Psicossociais; Avaliação da Educação; Representações Sociais; Psicologia Social.</p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Indicadores psicosociales: una mirada ampliada a los procesos educativos</em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Resúmen:</em></strong></p><p><em>Cuestiones relacionadas con el encadenamiento de relaciones en que la pertinencia de los indicadores gana sentido y legitimación – como las condiciones sociales de producción, difusión, reproducción y transformación – fueron abordadas con miras a introducir una discusión teórico-metodológica a fin de abarcar la construcción de indicadores psicosociales. Al adoptar la teoría de las representaciones sociales, el estudio identificó que su fecundidad para el desarrollo de evaluaciones educacionales todavía es insuficientemente explotada, a pesar de que el fenómeno de las representaciones sociales contenga el acto de evaluar. En este sentido, la proposición de adopción de un paradigma psicosocial para elaborar los indicadores evaluativos en el ámbito educacional fue entendida desde un nuevo ethos, así como la adopción de una postura epistémica, sin desconsiderar el rigor y la seriedad indispensables a las investigaciones evaluativas.</em></p><p><strong><em>Palabras Clave:</em></strong><em> Indicadores Psicosociales; Evaluación de la Educación; Representaciones Sociales; Psicología Social.</em></p><p><em><br /></em></p><p><strong><em>Psychosocial indicators: a wide view of evaluation processes</em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Abstract:</em></strong></p><p><em>Questions associated with the binding of relations, in which the pertinence of indicators gain meaning and legitimization such as social conditions of production, promotion, reproduction and transformation, were raised in order to present a theoretic-methodological discussion about the construction of psychosocial indicators. Adopting the theory of social representations, the study identified that its contribution to the development of educational evaluation is insufficiently explored, even if the phenomenon of social representations is suitable to assess it. In this respect, the proposal to adopt a psychosocial paradigm with the aim of elaborating evaluation indicators in the educational context was understood from a new ethos, as well as from a renewed epistemic attitude, without ignoring the necessary rigor and seriousness for the studies.</em></p><p><strong><em>Keywords:</em></strong><em> Psychosocial Indicators; Education Evaluation; Social Representations; Social Psychology.</em></p>

Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory

Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential,autonoeticcharacter. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken toward an event simulation. In this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs about the past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in future-oriented mental time travel do justice neither to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons why we hold certain beliefs about the past. In this process, autonoesis corresponds to the capacity to determine when and how to assert epistemic authority in making claims about the past. A domain where such claims are indispensable are human social engagements. Such engagements commonly require the justification of entitlements and obligations, which is often possible only by explicit reference to specific past events.

Naturalizing Perspectives. On the Epistemology of Nietzsche’s Experimental Naturalizations

This paper argues that Nietzsche indeed pursues a philosophical project of naturalization. But that neither implies the uncritical adoption of naturalistic doctrines nor that he employs ontological or methodological naturalism in a strict sense of the word. To this end I not only dwell upon the extensive terminological difficulties for any non-empty definition of ‘naturalism’ but also on Nietzsche’s well justified reservations against clear defined doctrines. His naturalizing philosophical experiments cannot be understood without an appreciation of his critical epistemic attitude towards the sciences. A contextual reading of the naturalizing and the critical epistemological aphorisms in the first book of Beyond Good and Evil rather reveals that Nietzsche experimentally adopts naturalizing perspectives for abductive reasons without ascribing a privileged position to the natural sciences above philosophy. Nietzsche’s project of naturalization is perspectival.

Skepticism, Belief, and the Criterion of Truth

This paper deals with Pyrrhonian skepticism. It argues that the central argument presented by Jonathan Barnes in favor of the view that skepticism precludes the possession of any belief fails. In brief, Barnes maintains that, because skepticism requires suspending judgment whether criteria of truth exist, no skeptic can, consistently with her skepticism, possess a criterion of truth; this entails, he argues, that no skeptic can make any judgments about anything and, hence, cannot come to possess any beliefs. I evaluate this argument in two ways: first, if we understand criteria of truth along the lines proposed by Sextus’ Hellenistic opponents, the argument fails because such criteria were introduced to guarantee that at least some of our beliefs could count as knowledge, and not to guarantee the very possibility of making judgments in the first place. Second, if we broaden our conception of a criterion of truth, such that a criterion is any standard against which an impression can be evaluated, the argument fails because it equivocates on the notion of ‘possession’. On the one hand, in the sense in which someone must possess such a criterion in order to make judgments, the skeptic’s suspension of judgment concerning their existence does not entail that she does not possess a criterion of truth. On the other hand, in the sense in which the skeptic does not possess such a criterion, possession of a criterion of truth is not a necessary condition for making judgments. Thus, I conclude that the skeptics’ epistemic attitude towards the existence of criteria of truth (i.e. suspension of judgment) does not entail that skeptics cannot possess any beliefs.