Locke’s Authoritarian Education

Locke’s pedagogy follows from his political and epistemic theory, counterposing an authoritarian pedagogy against limited formal parental authority. In light of his fears about the power of public opinion, Locke argued that personal authority in childhood was necessary for intellectual independence in adulthood, and the personal authority of parents was required to shield children against competing authorities in society. Locke’s account of human development reveals that the intervention of a unitary, personal authority to direct the will at the beginning is necessary for the will to be self-directing afterward. The inward-directed Lockean family forms a counterforce against the prevailing fashions outside. The private guidance of familial and pedagogical authority in childhood is a fence against the potential dangers of Locke’s political philosophy. His pedagogy argues that a state grounded in equality and individual liberty requires a hierarchical, authoritarian family to sustain itself.

COGNITIVE CLOSURE CONCEPT: HISTORY AND RELEVANT NOTIONS

In this article a theoretical investigation of the concept of cognitive closure including the historical involvement of research on this issue and an analysis of the relevant notions is presented. The concept of cognitive closure is considered from a historical point of view – concepts and theories that logically lead to the issue of studying cognitive styles and cognitive closure in particular are given. Such notions as ambiguity intolerance, certainty orientation, desire for a simple cognitive structure, dogmatism, fundamentalism and rigidity of thought are presented to be closely related to the cognitive closure. The most extended and developed construct of cognitive closure is found in the Lay Epistemic Theory. The specifi city of the cognitive closure construct is that in the Lay Epistemic Theory, the emphasis was shifted from the tendency to get rid of information as a psychological feature for an active dynamic (motivational) moment. Cognitive research is one of the promising areas of research in psychology, as it has great explanatory potential, which makes it possible to conduct applied research on various topics. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of modern scientifi c periodicals, the most demanded lines of research are presented and it is concluded that the relevance of the topic is currently increasing.

When Protagoras Made Aristotle His Fitch

While defending the principle of non-contradiction in Metaphysics 4, Aristotle argues that the Measure Doctrine of Protagoras is equivalent to the claim that all contradictions are true; given all appearances are true (as the Protagorean maintains), anytime people disagree we get a true contradiction. This argument seems clearly invalid: nothing guarantees that actual disagreement occurs over every matter of fact. The argument in fact works perfectly, I propose, because the Protagorean view falls prey to a version of Fitch's “paradox” of knowability. The proposed reading shows how Aristotle treats the Protagorean view at issue as an epistemic theory of truth distinct from the mere claim that all appearances are true (which other opponents put forward on different grounds) and reveals Aristotle's underlying concern with the modal collapse of possibility into actuality. The revised Protagorean view Aristotle confronts in a subsequent chapter is furthermore best understood as an attempt to avoid this Fitch-style result.

Social and scientific disorder as epistemic phenomena, or the consequences of government dietary guidelines

We begin with a process-oriented model of science according to which signals concerning scientific reputation serve both to coordinate the plans of individuals in the scientific domain and to ensure that the knowledge that emerges from interactions between scientists and the environment is reliable. Under normal circumstances, scientific order emerges from the publication–citation–reputation (PCR) process of science. We adopt and extend F. A. Hayek's epistemology according to which knowledge affords successful plan-based action and we employ this in the development of an epistemic theory of social order. We propose that external interferences with the PCR process have distorting effects on scientific knowledge and, thus, on scientific and social order more broadly. We support this claim by describing the history of the US federal government's development of standardized dietary guidelines for American consumers and its concomitant interference in the PCR process of nutritional science. We conclude that this interference contributed to social disorder in dietary science and beyond.

Deep disagreement and hinge epistemology

This paper explores the application of hinge epistemology to deep disagreement. Hinge epistemology holds that there is a class of commitments—hinge commitments—which play a fundamental role in the structure of belief and rational evaluation: they are the most basic general ‘presuppositions’ of our world views which make it possible for us to evaluate certain beliefs or doubts as rational. Deep disagreements seem to crucially involve disagreements over such fundamental commitments. In this paper, I consider pessimism about deep disagreement, the thesis that such disagreements are rationally irresolvable, and ask whether the Wittgensteinian account of deep disagreement—according to which such disagreements are disagreements over hinge commitments—provides adequate support for pessimism. I argue that the answer to this question depends on what hinge commitments are and what our epistemic relation to them is supposed to be. I argue for two core claims. First, that non-epistemic theories of hinge commitments provide adequate support for pessimism. Nevertheless, such theories have highly implausible consequences in the context of deep disagreement. Secondly, at least one epistemic theory of hinge commitments, the entitlement theory, permits optimism about such disagreements. As such, while hinge epistemology is mainly pessimistic about deep disagreement, it doesn’t have to be.

The Naturalistic Origins of Epistemic Consequentialism

Kornblith argues that epistemic consequentialism has several real advantages over non-consequentialist approaches. It is naturalistically acceptable in that normative properties are present at the ground floor, and it offers a real answer to why we might want beliefs that come highly recommended by an epistemic theory. That is, it not only tells us which beliefs are good, it explains why those beliefs are good.