Understanding friendship

Although belief formation is sometimes automatic, there are occasions in which we have the power to put it off, to wait on belief-formation. Waiting in this sense seems assessable by epistemic norms. This paper explores what form such norms might take: the nature and their content. A key question is how these norms relate to epistemic norms on belief-formation: could we have cases in which one ought to believe that p but also ought to wait on forming a belief on whether p? Plausibly not. But if not, how can we explain this impossibility? I suggest that the best resolution is to view the traditional core norms on belief as themselves conditional in a certain sense, one that I think has independent plausibility. The results of this investigation may also tell us something about epistemic norms on suspension, on the assumption, which I defend elsewhere, that suspension is waiting.

Naturalized epistemology, or what the Strong Programme can’t explain

Scientific rationality as instrumental rationality

Sosa famously argues that epistemic normativity is a species of “performance normativity,” comparing beliefs to archery shots. However, philosophers have traditionally conceived of beliefs as states, which means that they are not dynamic or telic like performances. A natural response to this tension is to argue that belief formation rather than belief itself is the proper target of epistemic normativity. This response is rejected here on grounds of the way it obscures the “here and now” exercise of cognitive agency that I view as central to any account of epistemic normativity and doxastic agency. Although the etiology of a belief can be relevant to its normative status, often so much more is relevant and more centrally so. This generates a dilemma for anyone following Sosa in pursuing the idea that epistemic normativity is a species of performance normativity.

Belief normativism is roughly the view that judgments about beliefs are normative judgments. Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss (G&W) suggest that there are two ways one could defend this view: by appeal to what might be called ‘truth-norms’, or by appeal to what might be called ‘norms of rationality’ or ‘epistemic norms’. According to G&W, whichever way the normativist takes, she ends up being unable to account for the idea that the norms in question would guide belief formation. Plausibly, if belief normativism were true, the relevant norms would have to offer such guidance. I argue that G&W’s case against belief normativism is not successful. In section 1, I defend the idea that truth-norms can guide belief formation indirectly via epistemic norms. In section 2, I outline an account of how the epistemic norms might guide belief. Interestingly, this account may involve a commitment to a certain kind of expressivist view concerning judgments about epistemic norms.

On a traditional view of perceptual justification, perceptual experiences always provide prima facie justification for beliefs based on them. Against this view, Matthew McGrath and Susanna Siegel argue that if an experience is formed in an epistemically pernicious way then it is epistemically downgraded. They argue that "wishful seeing"—when a subject sees something because he wants to see it—is psychologically and normatively analogous to wishful thinking. They conclude that perception can lose its traditional justificatory power, and that our epistemic norms should govern how experiences are formed. To make this case, the downgrader must first isolate a feature of wishful thinking that makes it epistemically defective, then show that this feature is present in wishful seeing. I present a dilemma for the downgrader. There are two features of wishful thinking that could plausibly explain why it is irrational: the fact that a desire causes you to form a belief not supported by adequate evidence, or the mere influence that desire holds over belief formation. Each option presents formidable difficulties. Although the first “bad evidence” explanation, which McGrath employs, explains the irrationality of wishful thinking, it does not transfer to wishful seeing, since experiences are not formed in response to evidence. The second “influence of desire” explanation, which Siegel employs, fails to isolate an epistemically defective feature of wishful thinking, and also does not transfer to wishful seeing. I conclude that the downgrader’s argument from wishful seeing fails.

Reconciling scientific and commonsense values to improve reasoning.

This paper develops the structural framework for epistemic integrity in artificial reasoning systems, preserving the original theoretical foundations while adapting them into a concise, direct form. The model enforces truth-preservation, justification, contradiction management and verifiability across the system’s reasoning processes. Epistemic norms are embedded into belief acceptance thresholds, metacognitive supervision mechanisms and hybrid inference architectures, ensuring that all outputs are both semantically grounded and logically coherent. Immutable audit trails secured through blockchain technology maintain a verifiable record of belief formation and revision, enabling sustained accountability over time.

This paper explores the grounds upon which moral judgment of a person's beliefs is properly made. The beliefs in question are non-moral beliefs and the objects of moral judgment are individual instances of believing. We argue that instances of believing may be morally wrong on any of three distinct grounds: (i) by constituting a moral hazard, (ii) by being the result of immoral inquiry, or (iii) by arising from vicious inner processes of belief formation. On this way of articulating the basis of moral judgment of belief it becomes clear that rational and epistemic norms do not exhaust the kinds of normative judgment properly made of a person's state of believing. We argue that there are instances of believing that are both rational and true and yet morally wrong.

Pragmatic theories of epistemic normativity ground norms of belief formation in true belief's instrumental value as a means to promoting our desires. I argue that advocates of this view face a dilemma: either they agree that epistemic norms prescribe truth-conducive procedures of belief formation, which is untenable against the backdrop of their theory, or they dismiss the truth-conduciveness criterion and thereby render themselves incapable of explaining an intuition that most of us share: in cases where false beliefs generate the same pragmatic output as true ones, truth-conducive procedures of belief formation are still preferable to fallacious ones. After establishing this objection, I make a case for the position that regards the intrinsic value of true belief as the source of epistemic normativity by showing how it meets the challenge that pragmatism falls victim to.

Our beliefs and inferential transitions are subject to evaluation as rational or irrational by reference to general epistemic norms. But what could determine certain norms as the correct ones? This chapter explores and opposes the answer that certain patterns of belief formation (e.g., in arithmetic and in deductive logic) are justified by virtue of the fact that they constitute the relevant concepts or the meanings of the relevant words (e.g., ‘number’, ‘successor’, ‘every’, ‘not’, etc.). This ‘semantogenetic’ proposal goes back to Hilbert, Poincare, and the logical positivists, and was recently defended by Boghossian, Peackocke, Hale, and Wright. Among the arguments developed against it are that although it might account for the epistemic legitimacy of certain beliefs, it cannot explain why certain commitments are epistemically obligatory; and that the practices that provide words with their meanings are ‘conditionalized’ and therefore do not coincide (even approximately) with the practices recommended by our epistemic norms.

Neoliberal restructuring has engendered significant economic and social changes. The advent of deregulation, diminished role of the state, and the crisis of social contract have meant that a vast number of subaltern groups are now left on their own to survive and better their lives. Consequently, a strong view in the current debates seems to suggest that neoliberal city is a lost city—where capital rules, the affluent enjoy, and the subaltern is entrapped; it is a city of glaring inequality and imbalance, where the ideal of the “right to the city” is all but vanished. While this conclusion enjoys much plausibility, I want to suggest in this paper that there is more to neoliberal urbanity than elite rule and subaltern's failure. For the new realities of these cities tend to engender a new discrete form of politics. Drawing on the recent urban transformation in the Middle East, the paper elaborates on this distinct politics by discussing how a key spatial feature of neoliberal city, what I call the “city‐inside‐out,” is likely to instigate “street politics” and inform the “political street.”

Summary Although Raoul van Caenegem claimed otherwise, he had very strong views on what legal history should be. In his opinion, legal history belonged to the disciplinary field of history, not to law. The legal historian should not only chronicle past evolutions of the law, but also explain them. To this purpose, van Caenegem himself turned to sociology, trying to work with types and models in order to generalise. Van Caenegem rejected the idea of a Volksgeist and advocated to look at the European context in a comparative legal history. Nevertheless, his ‘Europe’ was limited to the founding members of the European Union, joined by England. He constructed legal history as a history of power and preferred to study groups of law makers instead of individuals. In his legal history, the European ‘Second Middle Ages’, from 1100 until 1750, stand out as the cradle of the modern rule of law, with a special role for the cities of medieval Flanders. Although well-known for a leading handbook promoting the idea of the ius commune, the common law of Europe, van Caenegem actually deemed custom to have been the primary source of law in medieval Europe, whereas the role of the ius commune had been, in his opinion, overestimated. As he showed many times during his distinguished career, van Caenegem wanted legal historians to take part in current debates. In the end, his main lesson from legal history was a plea for moderation, as taking a sound idea to its extreme leads to absurd or unintended consequences.

This report presents findings from the second survey of the Australian component of the World Internet Project. Australians shop till they drop online Australians may be the world's most avid online shoppers, bargain hunters and browsers according to the latest Digital Futures Report. Fifty-seven per cent of Australians search the internet for something to buy at least once a week and more than half buy something online every month. Australians Won't Pay for Digital Info Seven in ten Australians are unwilling to pay for news and information obtained from the internet. Most users rate the internet as important or very important as an information source, but there is a strong view that content should continue to be free. Young Australians are even less willing to pay for internet content, with more than three quarters of those aged under 24 saying they are not prepared to pay up. Australians Favour Internet Freedom - With Limits Australians are overwhelmingly in favour of free speech and freedom to criticise their governments on the internet - but equally strongly of a view that children's content should be restricted. Notably, given the current debate on internet censorship, eighty-three per cent of Australians believe that children's internet content should have restrictions and that responsibility for this should be shared. This survey is a project of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology. This report provides an overview of the study, presenting a broad picture of the Internet in Australia, with comparisons to our earlier 2007 study, and to the international findings of our partners in the World Internet Project. At the end of each section we have added some further analysis, examining an aspect of the Australian data in more detail and providing some international context using results from the 2008 findings of our international research partners. Related identifier: ISSN: 1836-1250 (print) | 1836-1269 (online)

Antidepressant use in adolescence: We're asking the wrong questions