Believable Normative Error Theory

Normative error theory is thought by some to be unbelievable because they suppose the incompatibility of believing a proposition at the same time as believing that one has no normative reason to believe it—which believing in normative error theory would seem to involve. In this article, I argue that normative holism is believable and that a normative holist will believe that the truth of a proposition does not invariably generate a normative reason to believe it. I outline five different scenarios in which this is believably the case. I then show how each example can be used to generate a counterexample to the incompatibility claim. I conclude that believing a proposition is compatible with believing there is no reason to believe it and that as such normative error theory has not yet been shown to be unbelievable.

Prospects for Moral Success Theory

<p>In this thesis, I will argue that the existence of moral facts does not rely on the existence of a reason for action, and that moral facts can be made sense of in other ways. My thesis is both a reply to a type of moral error theory that has been advanced by Richard Joyce and John Mackie, and an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments. The argument for error theory that I respond to is roughly as follows: moral judgments are judgments about external practical reasons. But external reasons do not exist, and so no moral judgment is ever true. In the first part of my thesis, I will argue in favour of the latter premise of the error theorist’s argument, but against the former: external reasons do not exist, but moral judgments are not committed to them. In the second half of my thesis I build up a positive account of what moral judgments involve. If moral judgments are not judgments about reasons, then what are moral judgments about? I develop the widely supported idea that moral judgments are judgments that are based on welfarist considerations, and attempt to give this idea a more precise formulation than what has been previously offered. From this account, I go on to develop an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments. The account I end up with is an ideal observer theory that I believe makes sense of a broad range of intuitions about morality. My hope is that this thesis will be of interest to others who feel the pull of moral error theory, but would prefer to see moral success theory vindicated.</p>

Prospects for Moral Success Theory

<p>In this thesis, I will argue that the existence of moral facts does not rely on the existence of a reason for action, and that moral facts can be made sense of in other ways. My thesis is both a reply to a type of moral error theory that has been advanced by Richard Joyce and John Mackie, and an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments. The argument for error theory that I respond to is roughly as follows: moral judgments are judgments about external practical reasons. But external reasons do not exist, and so no moral judgment is ever true. In the first part of my thesis, I will argue in favour of the latter premise of the error theorist’s argument, but against the former: external reasons do not exist, but moral judgments are not committed to them. In the second half of my thesis I build up a positive account of what moral judgments involve. If moral judgments are not judgments about reasons, then what are moral judgments about? I develop the widely supported idea that moral judgments are judgments that are based on welfarist considerations, and attempt to give this idea a more precise formulation than what has been previously offered. From this account, I go on to develop an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments. The account I end up with is an ideal observer theory that I believe makes sense of a broad range of intuitions about morality. My hope is that this thesis will be of interest to others who feel the pull of moral error theory, but would prefer to see moral success theory vindicated.</p>

Knowledge and Asymmetric Loss

This paper offers a novel account of practical factor effects on knowledge attributions that is consistent with the denial of contextualism, relativism and pragmatic encroachemt. The account goes as follows. Knowledge depends on factors like safety, reliability or probability. In many cases, it is uncertain just how safe, how reliably formed or how probable the target proposition is. This means that we have to estimate these quantities in order to form knowledge judgements. Such estimates of uncertain quantities are independently known to be affected by pragmatic factors. When overestimation is costlier than underestimation, for instance, we tend to underestimate the relevant quantity to avoid greater losses. On the suggested account, high stakes and other pragmatic factors induce such “asymmetric loss functions” on quantities like safety, reliability and probability. This skews our estimates of these quantities and thereby our judgements about knowledge. The resulting theory is an error-theory, but one that rationlizes the error in question.

Interpreting published effect sizes in behavioral science: a thought-experiment

Standardized effect size measures (e.g., Cohen’s d) state the observed mean difference, m1-m0, relative to the observed standard deviation, s. These measures are commonly used in behavioral science today in meta-analytical research to quantify the observed m1-m0 across object-level studies that use different measurement-scales, as well as in theory-construction research to point-specify m1-m0 as a theoretically predicted parameter. Since standardization conceptually relates to the quality of measurement, m1-m0 can be interpreted fully only relative to whichever error-theory determines s. The error-theory, however, is what behavioral scientists must typically choose freely, because a theoretically motivated measurement-scale is normally unavailable. Using a thought-experiment, we show that differentially sophisticated error-theories let the observed m1-m0 vary massively given identical observations. This lets the common praxis of publishing m1-m0 “nakedly”—without a transparent error-theory—appear problematic, because it undermines the goals of a cumulative science of human behavior. We advocate reporting standardized effect sizes along with a transparent error-theory.

A Virtue Reliabilist Error-Theory of Defeat

Knowledge defeat occurs when a subject knows that p, gains a defeater for her belief, and thereby loses her knowledge without necessarily losing her belief. It’s far from obvious that externalists can accommodate putative cases of knowledge defeat since a belief that satisfies the externalist conditions for knowledge can satisfy those conditions even if the subject later gains a defeater for her belief. I’ll argue that virtue reliabilists can accommodate defeat intuitions via a new kind of error theory. I argue that in cases where the subject holds dogmatically onto her belief in the face of an apparent defeater, her belief never qualified as knowledge, since the belief was not gained via an exercise of her epistemic virtues. In cases where the subject suspends her judgment upon receiving the putative defeater her original belief might have qualified as knowledge, but crucially, in such cases knowledge is lost due to loss of belief, rather than due to the epistemic force of the defeater. Therefore, knowledge defeat isn’t a genuine phenomenon even though there are no cases where a subject knows what she originally believed after receiving the putative defeater.

Reasons to Be Rational

In the wake of Kolodny (2005) and Raz (2005), the normativity of rationality has become the topic of an intricate debate: what normative reasons are there, if any, to be rational? This article explains what kinds of ‘reasons to be rational’ there are. It then argues that, while we often have reason to be rationally disposed, rationality is neither itself normative nor necessarily underwritten by normative reasons – at any rate not when construed as conformance with coherence requirements. Allegedly omnipresent reasons to be coherent are shown to be ‘ghost-like’: hard to disprove, and yet irrational to believe in. This conclusion is rendered persuasive with scenarios featuring rewards for violating coherence constraints. The article also deals with the long-standing objection that such ‘irrationality rewards’ would be reasons ‘of the wrong kind’. Furthermore, Kolodny’s explanation of why rationality has the appearance of being normative is replaced with a more credible ‘error theory’.

Using and Abusing Moorean Arguments

Metaethical Mooreanism is the view that without being able to explain how we know certain moral claims we can nevertheless be sure that we do know them. In this article I focus on the Moorean argument against moral error theory. I conclude that it fails. To show this failure, I first distinguish Moorean claims from Moorean arguments, and then so-called presumptive support from dialogical support. With these distinctions in place, I argue that the key Moorean claim requires dialogical support in order to be used within the Moorean argument against moral error theory, but metaethical Mooreans have provided only presumptive support for the Moorean claim. Not only is this presumptive support inadequate for fending off the moral error theory, it is doubtful that Mooreans can actually provide dialogical support for the key Moorean claim.

Survey of Nursing Faculty Preparation for Guiding DNP Quality Improvement Projects

BackgroundQuality improvement (QI) projects comprise the majority of University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) projects.MethodsAn online survey was completed by 51% (n = 38) of faculty, who teach or mentor DNP students, and was analyzed using quantitative and descriptive methods.ResultsFaculty were somewhat or not familiar with developing a QI charter 68.4%, human error theory and error proofing 63.2%, driver diagrams 60.5%, characteristics of high-reliability organizations 60.5%, and Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE) guidelines 55.3%. The faculty were most interested in learning more about (n = 97 responses) were human error theory and error proofing (28.9%), SQUIRE guidelines (26.3%), statistical process control (21.1%), and implementation strategies and tactics (21.1%). The most commonly identified challenges included identifying QI projects (24%), project time constraints (16%), keeping up-to-date on QI concepts, methods, and tools (12%), and balancing professional workload (10%).ConclusionsGaps in self-reported QI knowledge indicate there is a need for further development of DNP and PhD prepared faculty at the UMSON.