Virtue and Contingent History

Some philosophers of science suggest that a narrow calculus of rationality—the axioms of probability calculus and the rule of conditionalization—suffices to characterize the epistemic aspect of science, including the phenomena of scientific knowledge and empirical justification. But what if a rationality constricted to a narrow calculus is a rationality inhibited in its pursuit of epistemic aims key to science? This chapter uses virtue as Aristotle understands it to develop a broader picture of rationality, a picture that likens some varieties of rationality to second-nature capacities. It discusses not only the epistemic aims that might be advanced by the exercise of epistemic second natures in the sciences but also the social conditions promoting this advancement.

Equal Respect, Liberty, and Civic Friendship. Why Liberal Public Justification Needs a Dual Understanding of Reciprocity

This paper critically discusses the generally recognized dualism in the interpretation of the moral basis of public reason. We argue that in order to maintain the complementarity of both liberal and democratic values within the debate on public reason, the arguments from liberty and from civic friendship cannot be considered in isolation. With regard to the argument from liberty, we contend that because the idea of natural liberty is an indispensable starting point of liberal theory, no explanation of the justification of political power can do without it. In particular, we focus on the requirement of reasonableness and show that we should retain the epistemic aspect of the reasonableness of persons. Perhaps the main reason for this is to be found in the criterion of reciprocity which provides the deepest justification of the respect for people’s liberty – that is, the liberal aspect of liberal democracy. At the same time, however, we argue that reciprocity also provides the grounds for responding to the criticism that the essentially liberal approach fails to adequately take into consideration the role of political community. Because reciprocity may also be interpreted as being based on civic friendship, it provides the resources to respond to such criticism. It thus supplies the normative background also for the second, democratic pillar of public reason. We then critically examine the newly emerging approach built predominantly on the argument from civic friendship, arguing that by prioritising the civic friendship interpretation and, at times, tending to completely abandon the liberty-based one, it overlooks the indispensability of liberty-based considerations for the criterion of reciprocity. We conclude that in order to adequately capture the common liberal-democratic basis of public reason, both interpretations of reciprocity must be linked within a comprehensive account.

Double trouble? The communication dimension of the reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience

Most discussions of the reproducibility crisis focus on its epistemic aspect: the fact that the scientific community fails to follow some norms of scientific investigation, which leads to high rates of irreproducibility via a high rate of false positive findings. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a heretofore underappreciated and understudied dimension to the reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience that may prove to be at least as important as the epistemic dimension. This is the communication dimension. The link between communication and reproducibility is immediate: independent investigators would not be able to recreate an experiment whose design or implementation were inadequately described. I exploit evidence of a replicability and reproducibility crisis in computational science, as well as research into quality of reporting to support the claim that a widespread failure to adhere to reporting standards, especially the norm of descriptive completeness, is an important contributing factor in the current reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience.

An interactions-based interpretation for quantum mechanics

A small group of simple, lateral assumptions about the structure and nature of space, some of them at the Planck scale, produces a new conceptual basis. The background theory allows a rederivation of several areas of theory it interprets, leading in other areas to alternative mathematics that closely mimics existing physics, but diverging enough for testable predictions. This paper focusses on the phenomenology of quantum mechanics (QM), with a nonlocal interpretation, in which the wave function is primarily ontic, but also has an epistemic aspect. It differs widely from all other interpretations for QM, but has general similarities to some objective collapse theories, and in particular to relational QM (RQM). State reduction is set off by interactions, not measurements, but unlike in RQM, the “exchange of information” between two systems is not only made possible by the interaction, it is a direct result of it. The interpretation includes an explanation for quantization, the probabilistic aspect of QM, entanglement, and state reduction as in decoherence.

Artistic Conflict as a Model of Philosophical Reclaiming of Reality

This a lecture of Doctor of Philosophical Arts, Candidate of Arts, Professor of the Ufa State Institute for the Arts Galina Verbitskaya illuminates the crucial issue of the theory of drama — the theory of confl ict. The material is presented in a philosophical-epistemic aspect in the light of the nature of the confl ict, its varieties (the sources, means of realization and possibility of resolution) — the local, the Hegelian, the substantive, the irresolvable. Special attention is drawn towards the issue of the self-identifi cation of the protagonists of landmark times. The publication is addressed to students of higher educational institutions for the arts and humanitarian disciplines.

Cognitive Consistency Theory in Social Psychology: A Paradigm Reconsidered

From the 1950s onward, psychologists have generally assumed that people possess a general need for cognitive consistency whose frustration by an inconsistency elicits negative affect. We offer a novel perspective on this issue by introducing the distinction between epistemic and motivational impact of consistent and inconsistent cognitions. The epistemic aspect is represented by the updated expectancy of the outcome addressed in such cognitions. The motivational aspect stems from value (desirability) of that outcome. We show that neither the outcome’s value nor its updated expectancy are systematically related to cognitive consistency or inconsistency. Consequently, we question consistency’s role in the driving of affective responses, and the related presumption of a universal human need for cognitive consistency.

Dimensions Of Epistemic Authority Of University Professors

The article analyses the issue of the concept of social epistemology regarding knowledge transmission from the point of view of social psychology. Knowledge transmission is related to the epistemic aspect of authority, which is demonstrated by the structural element of authority – source of knowledge or the assumed truth. In higher education, the distinction of epistemology is related to epistemological views, their multiple dimensions which show the extent and type how students perceive professors as epistemic authorities – sources of knowledge who are trusted and relied on.