Exploring the Dynamics of Justification in the Wake of a Rumor Outbreak on Social Media

This paper explores the dynamics of justification in the wake of a rumor outbreak on social media. Specifically, it examines the extent to which the five types of justification—descriptive argumentation, presumptive argumentation, evidentialism, truth skepticism, and epistemological skepticism—manifested in different voices including pro-rumor, anti-rumor and doubts before and after fact-checking. Content analysis was employed on 1,911 tweets related to a rumor outbreak. Non-parametric cross-tabulation was used to uncover nuances in information sharing before and after fact-checking. Augmenting the literature which suggests the online community’s susceptibility to hoaxes, the paper offers a silver lining: Users are responsible enough to correct rumors during the later phase of a rumor lifecycle. This sense of public-spiritedness can be harnessed by knowledge management practitioners and public relations professionals for crowdsourced rumor refutation.

Three Skepticisms in Cārvāka Epistemology: The Problem of Induction, Purandara’s Fallibilism, and Jayarāśi’s Skepticism about Philosophy

The classical Indian Cārvāka (“Materialist”) tradition contains three branches with regard to the means of knowledge (pramāṇas). First, the standard Cārvākas accept a single means of knowledge, perception, supporting this view with a critique of the reliability and coherence of inference (anumāna). Second, the “more educated” Cārvākas as well as Purandara endorse a form of inference limited to empirical matters. Third, radical skeptical Cārvākas like Jayarāśi attempt to undermine all accounts or technical definitions of the means of knowledge (even perception) in order to enjoy a life free from philosophical and religious speculation. These branches respectively present something akin to David Hume’s problem of induction, endorse a fallibilistic, mitigated skepticism, and embody a thoroughgoing skepticism about philosophy itself. While all three branches are skeptics about religious matters, each branch exemplifies a different variety of epistemological skepticism.

Divine Action and Skepticism in the Book of Exodus

This chapter provides a reading of the book of Exodus in conversation with modern epistemological skepticism. Exodus speaks often of the knowledge of God. At its beginning, the Israelites are seriously doubtful about the account of God they inherited from their forefathers. At the end, they no longer have doubts and construct a tabernacle to express their devotion and worship to God. The chapter argues that the text provides significant epistemic clues that explain this shift from unbelief to belief. It also argues that much of this explanation has to do with divine action, that is, God’s own action on his people.

Facts, Fictions, and Law

Bentham’s analysis of the probative force of evidence appears to be skeptical and relativist. Bentham was convinced that in all aspects of the judicial assessment of evidence, there was no place for formal, rule-bound reasoning, and it is tempting to trace this rule-skepticism to a deeper epistemological skepticism. Yet his monumental Rationale of Judicial Evidence shows few signs of this epistemologically skeptical foundation. Rather, seen in light of his theory of language and fictitious entities, the empiricist, quasi-pragmatist elements of his theory become clear. Bentham was no skeptic or radical subjectivist regarding the evaluation of evidence. Statements of probability, or of the persuasive force of some piece of evidence, on Bentham’s view, are subject to rational assessment. Judgments of the probative value of evidence, like moral judgments, are expressions of the speaker’s state of mind; they express degrees of conviction of the speaker, which are subject to the discipline of rational method.

Endlessly Responsible: Ethics as First Philosophy in Stanley Cavell’s Invocation of Literature

This essay aims to give an overview of the topic ethics and literature in Stanley Cavell’s complete oeuvre. It argues that Cavell’s preoccupation with literature is, from beginning to end, primarily ethical, even though he takes his point of departure in epistemological skepticism. Recent research on the affinities between Cavell’s early writing on Shakespearean tragedy and the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas has helped to establish this but the question of how this part of Cavell’s work is related to his later development of Emersonian perfectionism is rarely touched upon. Consequently, this essay further argues that skepticism and perfectionism in Cavell’s thinking are two sides of one and the same ethics, which are bound together by the genre of romanticism. While Cavell’s work on skepticism is primarily concerned with the other, his work on perfectionism is primarily concerned with the self. Finally, this essay marks the point where Cavell’s and Levinas’ overall thinking part ways due to the fact that Cavell embraces Emersonian perfectionism.

Moore against the New Skeptics

Moore’s method as detailed in Chapter 1 is applied against epistemological skepticism, and shown to have force in a way that other Moorean responses do not. The objections of Keith Lehrer, Peter Unger, and Barry Stroud are rebutted. In addition, this chapter responds to Stroud’s demand for a “deeper” response to the skeptic, and argues that the idea of a deeper response itself succumbs to Moore. It also addresses Moore’s own worry that “I know that I have hands” is both controversial and logically stronger than “I have hands,” arguing that that difference does not disqualify the knowledge claim as a term of the operative credibility comparison.

Modern Literature as a Form of Discourse and Knowledge of Society

Since the 1960’s, epistemological skepticism and constructionism have had a firm position in literary studies. Structuralism’s late phase, post-structuralism, certain sub-branches of current narratology, and certain representatives of recent sociology of literature, in particular, have maintained this sort of philosophical line of thought in literary studies. According to it, literature’s epistemic function can chiefly lie in that it possibly helps us to deconstruct different discourses or world views and to understand their strengths and weaknesses. The article argues for the view that these research trends operate with a unidimensional conception of reality and with a questionable version of constructionism. Hence, they do not understand the specificity of societal-cultural reality and social actors’ specific epistemic relation to it. On this basis, modern literature can be seen as a discursive practice with epistemic and evaluative properties. It is a practice that usually deals with the problems that are caused by the development of societal-cultural reality and that are felt personally important by the authors of literary texts. Often it is just literary texts that first give a public expression to problems such as these.

Why Does Pluralism Matter When We Study Politics? A View from Contemporary International Relations

Pluralism has become a buzzword in International Relations. It has emerged in a number of linked literatures and has drawn the support of an unusual coalition of scholars: advocates of greater methodological diversity; those who feel that IR has degenerated into a clash of paradigmatic “-isms”; those who favor a closer relationship between academics and policy-makers; and those who wish to see greater reflexivity within the field. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no single vision of pluralism unites these scholars; they appear to be using the term in divergent ways. Accordingly, our aim is threefold. First, we wish to highlight this odd state of affairs, by placing it in disciplinary and intellectual context. Second, we distinguish between plurality—the de facto recognition that IR has become a more diverse field—and pluralism—a normative position which values that diversity, given the public vocation of social science. Finally, we lay out a more consistent understanding and defense of pluralism in those latter terms. We argue that, properly understood, pluralism entails a position of epistemological skepticism: the straightforward claim that no single knowledge system, discipline, theory, or method can claim singular access to truth.

BRAINS IN VATS? DON'T BOTHER!

ABSTRACTContemporary discussions of epistemological skepticism – the view that we do not and cannot know anything about the world around us – focus very much on a certain kind of skeptical argument involving a skeptical scenario (a situation familiar from Descartes' First Meditation). According to the argument, knowing some ordinary proposition about the world (one we usually take ourselves to know) requires knowing we are not in some such skeptical scenario SK; however, since we cannot know that we are not in SK we also cannot know any ordinary proposition. One of the most prominent skeptical scenarios is the brain-in-the-vat-scenario: An evil scientist has operated on an unsuspecting subject, removed the subject's brain and put it in a vat where it is kept functioning and is connected to some computer which feeds the brain the illusion that everything is “normal”. This paper looks at one aspect of this scenario after another – envatment, disembodiment, weird cognitive processes, lack of the right kind of epistemic standing, and systematic deception. The conclusion is that none of these aspects (in isolation or in combination) is of any relevance for a would-be skeptical argument; the brain-in-the-vat-scenario is irrelevant to and useless for skeptical purposes. Given that related scenarios (e.g., involving evil demons) share the defects of the brain-in-the-vat-scenario, the skeptic should not put any hopes on Cartesian topoi.