Epistemic Issue Research Articles

XII—The Ethical Problem of Evil

Abstract I introduce a distinct challenge to religious belief: the Ethical Argument from evil. By this argument, paradigmatic forms of religious practice constitutively involve failures of ethical acknowledgement with respect to the reality of evil. I show how standard discussions of the problem of evil, as a purely logical or epistemic issue, abstract away from its fundamentally ethical dimensions. Drawing on an analogy with Moore’s paradox, I argue that the Ethical Argument presents a genuine theoretical problem, not merely a practical or pastoral one: the problem of how religious devotion can be compossible with properly acknowledging the reality of evil. I further argue that, in order properly to address this problem, the philosophy of religion needs to take a phenomenological turn. To illustrate this approach, I focus on the case of thankful prayer and draw out from Kierkegaard’s writings a religious ideal of unconditional gratitude. Developing the relevant notion of a failure of ethical acknowledgement in terms of two vices—wishful self-deception and spiritualized self-absorption—I show how Kierkegaard’s account can help us to assess whether expressions of religious devotion are objectionable on these grounds.

Testability and viability: is inflationary cosmology “Scientific”?

We provide a philosophical reconstruction and analysis of the debate on the scientific status of cosmic inflation that has played out in recent years. In a series of critical papers, Ijjas, Steinhardt, and Loeb have questioned the scientificality of current views on cosmic inflation. Proponents of cosmic inflation, such as Guth and Linde, have in turn defended the scientific credentials of their approach. We argue that, while this defense, narrowly construed, is successful against Ijjas, Steinhardt, and Loeb, the latters’ reasoning does point to a significant epistemic issue that arises with respect to inflationary theory. We claim that a broadening of the concept of theory assessment to include meta-empirical considerations is needed to address that issue in an adequate way.

Why Simpler Computer Simulation Models Can Be Epistemically Better for Informing Decisions

For computer simulation models to usefully inform climate risk management, uncertainties in model projections must be explored and characterized. Because doing so requires running the model many times over, and because computing resources are finite, uncertainty assessment is more feasible using models that demand less computer processor time. Such models are generally simpler in the sense of being more idealized, or less realistic. So modelers face a trade-off between realism and uncertainty quantification. Seeing this trade-off for the important epistemic issue that it is requires a shift in perspective from the established simplicity literature in philosophy of science.

Structural uncertainty through the lens of model building

An important epistemic issue in climate modelling concerns structural uncertainty: uncertainty about whether the mathematical structure of a model accurately represents its target. How does structural uncertainty affect our knowledge and predictions about the climate? How can we identify sources of structural uncertainty? Can we manage the effect of structural uncertainty on our knowledge claims? These are some of the questions that an epistemology of structural uncertainty faces, and these questions are also important for climate scientists and policymakers. I develop three desiderata for an epistemological account of structural uncertainty. In my view, an account of structural uncertainty should (1) identify sources of structural uncertainty, (2) explain how these sources limit the applicability of a model, and (3) show how the severity of structural uncertainty depends on the questions that can be asked of a model. I argue that analyzing structural uncertainty by paying attention to the details of model building can satisfy these desiderata. I focus on parametrizations, which are representations of important processes occurring at scales that are not resolved by climate models. Parametrizations are often thought to be ad-hoc, but I show that some important parametrizations are theoretically justified by explicit or implicit scale separation assumptions. These assumptions can also be supported empirically. Analyzing these theoretical and empirical justificatory roles of the scale separation assumptions can provide insights into how parametrizations contribute to structural uncertainty. I conclude by sketching how my approach can satisfy the desiderata I set out at the beginning, highlighting its importance for policy-relevant scientific statements about the climate.

The anatomical representation of the human body: From epistemological examples deriving from medical history to morphometric imaging performed with the laser scanner technique

The anatomical illustration of the human body is a topic rich in epistemological elements in the course of medical history. Since ancient times concerns about the real correspondence of the scientific and/or artistic representation of human anatomy with the original one arose. First of all, a static two-dimensional representation, the one typical of drawings, was not able to get the depth and complexity of dynamic three-dimensional anatomical morphology. In addition, the epistemic issue that a post-mortem illustration could not somehow correspond to living structures was present even in the past. For a long time the anatomical representation of the human body has been attracting the interest of medical doctors, artists, scholars and philosophers as a fact-finding technique of dissection of corpses preparatory to curative surgical practice in the living body. With regard to that, in the Western world the sixteenth century is often seen as the golden age of normal and macroscopic human anatomy. Major steps in the evolution of the anatomical discipline are the switch from the “normal” to the “pathological” area during the seventeenth century and the transition from the macroscopic to the microscopic level in the eighteenth century; that is true also from an illustrative and iconographic point of view. The tradition of setting up three-dimensional models for the study of the human body dates back to the eighteenth century too. Today’s research techniques in the field of anatomical images are so advanced that they allow the full conformity of human representation, the continuous availability of preserved images, the complete multi-dimensionality of the rendering and the complete dynamism of the whole view. In this context, laser scanner could be the ideal tool to create a new Atlas of Human Anatomy composed of models which are rotatable, observable from every perspective, absolutely faithful to reality, analysable as in a real dissection and carefully measurable.

Epistemic issues in classroom mathematical activity: There is more to students’ conversations than meets the teacher’s ear

We report on a comparative investigation of student mathematical activity in two settings of a secondary mathematics classroom: peer interaction in small group and group interaction with the teacher. Our framework draws on the understanding of school mathematics as activity in between the historicity of knowledge and the situatedness of norms. We propose the term epistemic issue to refer to instances of knowledge about the construction and justification of school mathematics knowledge whose use is traceable in student activity. A major finding points to the presence of a number of epistemic issues during peer work and their omission in the communication of this work to the teacher; a phenomenon we call epistemic shift. To illustrate this finding and the methods of analysis, we take data from a group of students during a lesson of probability and the lesson-based video stimulated recall interview. We finish by discussing some implications for the development of the mathematical culture of the classroom.

LA EXPRESIÓN IMPROPIA DE LA LEY Y LA FORMA DEL DERECHO

O presente artigo pretende encontrar, a partir da análise conceitual do trabalho, qual é a solução que Fernando Atria dá em "A Forma do Direito" aos dois problemas colocados pela indevida expressão da lei. Em relação ao problema institucional, são os juízes que devem ajustar os casos de expressão imprópria, e fazê-lo é a maneira paradigmática de exercer jurisdição. Em relação ao problema epistêmico, Atria não tem resposta, o que faz com que seu modelo de juiz não possa identificar casos de expressão imprópria quando apresentados a ele. Isso leva ao fato de que, de fato, a jurisdição atria não pode não colapsar com o conceito de legislação. No documento, propõe-se, a partir da perspectiva institucional, quebrar a idéia de aplicabilidade da lei em duas facetas, aplicabilidade formal e aplicabilidade institucional. Além disso, em relação ao problema epistêmico, é postulado um critério para a identificação de uma expressão imprópria com base na violação de princípios legais.

Social Domination and Epistemic Marginalisation: towards Methodology of the Oppressed

Marginalisation is both a structural and an epistemic issue. The struggle against exclusion and marginalisation should take place within larger social structures. Moreover, we should address the legitimacy offered, through the knowledge production process itself, for exclusion and marginalisation. Knowledge production regarding the oppressed should document their lives, experiences and concerns. It must take place with an appropriate methodological struggle informed by alternative epistemologies. While creating alternative epistemologies, it is important to challenge the value-neutrality claim of mainstream research practices. We should acknowledge that mainstream epistemic domination exists ‘not because of objectivity or universality of their research practices but their privileged location within a historical, material and social setup of dominant power relations’. A ‘situated knowledge’ building process may help to end the epistemic oppression of marginalised groups. This process lends new forms and applications of enquiry that are necessarily inclusive and that pay closer attention to elements such as personal experiences, subjectivity, worldviews, and emotions.

Judgment and Agency

<i>Judgment and Agency</i>

A Review of Similarities between Hakim Tirmizi and Ibn Arabi, with Regard to the Issue of wilayat (authority)

Wilayat (authority) is one of the most important issues in theoretical Sufism. The main reason for dealing with this epistemic issue in Islamic mysticism is perhaps rooted in Islamic texts, especially the Quran, which has led to numerous interpretations and views provided by commentators. In the meantime, the mystical interpretations have had a significant role in changing the meaning and concept of the term and in proposing various discussions in this regard. Among these views, it can be referred to the view of Hakim Tirmizi, Iranian Sufi in the fifth century and that of Ibn Arabi, the founder of theoretical Sufism in the seventh century. The importance of the discussion lies in the fact that there are significant doctrinal and rhetorical similarities between these two famous Sufis, such that the influence of Tirmizi's view on Ibn Arabi cannot be ignored or denied. Proposing the theory of the need for wilayat (authority) and wali (religious authority), the concept of preference of wilayat over prophecy, the characteristics of true wali of the Most High God, and finally the concept and instance of seal of wilayat and seal of prophecy are among the key issues related to wilayat. The present paper seeks to study these issues from the view of Tirmizi and Ibn Arabi's views due to their particular importance in order to find their views and refer to their doctrinal similarities.

Dissolving an epistemological puzzle of time perception

Robin Le Poidevin (2007) claims that we do form perceptual beliefs regarding order and duration based on our perception of events, but neither order nor duration are by themselves objects of perception. Temporal properties are discernible only when one first perceives their bearers, and temporal relations are discernible only when one first perceives their relata. The epistemic issue remains as to whether or not our perceptual beliefs about order and duration are formed on the causal basis of an event’s objective order and duration. Le Poidevin raises this issue in the form of an epistemological puzzle of time perception, from which he derives the claim that the order and duration of events do not causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them. Since his view is motivated by a causal truthmaker principle for grounding knowledge, it also holds that perceptual beliefs about temporal features must be caused by the features themselves in order to count as knowledge. Given these theoretical commitments, there is a puzzle concerning how such perceptual beliefs could constitute knowledge of temporal properties. In response to Le Poidevin, I argue for an account according to which order and duration are objects of perception, causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them, and such beliefs are capable of counting as knowledge. I conclude by showing that, on my alternative account, the epistemological puzzle dissolves and his own solution to it fails.

Social Issue Emergence on the Web: A Dual Structurational Model

In this paper, we unravel the complex ontological relationship between the empirical hyperlink networks enacted by strategic organizational actors and the epistemic issue networks enacted by decision makers who navigate hyperlinks to construct the boundaries of an issue. To conceptualize this relationship, we present a dual structurational model of issue network emergence that demonstrates the processes by which decision makers come to read and structure their comprehension of an issue out of their experience navigating a hyperlink network. We then discuss how the emergence of an issue network from a hyperlink network has consequences for both the decision makers that wish to act on the social issue and the organizational actors who create links. The model is demonstrated using the Chicago Climate Action Plan, a climate change initiative underway in Chicago, as an abbreviated case study. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

On the Graphic in Postmodern Theoretical Writing

This evictive state naturally corresponds to a plenitude of virtualities: it is an absence of meaning full of all the meanings. --Roland Barthes (Rhetoric 39) word postmodern. conjures up a number of concepts and associations that are by now quite familiar: incredulity toward metanarratives; incommensurability among different forms of knowledge; the commodity- and nostalgia-driven cultural logic of late capitalism; play with artistic forms from collage and pastiche to repetition and citation; cultural relativism, and so forth. For those working in the literary humanities, the postmodern cannot not be, in addition, a question about language. How so? Although there are many possible ways to respond to this question, postmodernity's inheritance of modernity's fraught relation to language seems a logical place to begin. In the Anglo-American context, T.S. Eliot's well-known experiments with language in his early poetic work, experiments that are as morally pessimistic as they are stylistically innovative, are chancteristic of high modernism's twin one might say schizophrenic) approach. In the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, for instance, the relationship of the poet to language is implicitly homologized to a balding middle-aged man haunted by his own sexual impotence. But while this anxiety about a medium that seems increasingly unreliable and untrustworthy shapes literary modernism's classic sense of its own predicament (It is impossible to say just what I mean! [16]), the lack of fit between words and things (what Samuel Beckett's plays dramatize as the condition of unhappiness) also proves to be a source of immense artistic productivity, as modernist writings in different genres, by authors such as Joyce, Woolf, Stein, and innumerable others, have shown. incontrovertible epistemic issue seems to be the sense of a definitive transformation in language's status in relation to representation. This transformation is commonly conceived of as a loss: language, once in possession of a sovereign overview of the world like a polished windowpane, is said to have become opaque, incapacitated, and unable or unwilling to communicate. With reference to Jean-Francois Lyotard's work, it is perhaps possible to include this assumption (or story) of language's previous potency among the meta-narratives whose passing has, according to Lyotard, come to define the postmodern condition. Whether or not language was ever really the master of representation, the collective mournful belief--one that has powerfully influenced philosophical and artistic thinking about the modern condition--is that it has, somehow, slipped from this magical status. In response to language's putative decline, scholars of the humanities have typically attempted to reinvest in language's relevance by emphasizing the antagonism and incompatibility between humanistic learning, on the one hand, and science and technology, on the other. Martin Heidegger is an outstanding example of a philosopher who tries to reanimate language from this perspective. For Heidegger language is not only the dwelling of Being; it is also equipped with the mystical power to interpellate, to call and bid things to come forth (189-210). Similarly turning to poetic language as a way to reclaim humanistic learning's universal significance, the Anglo-American New Critics exemplify the poem appreciated in isolation as an organic whole, whose reality is deemed independent of history and authorial intention. A poem should not mean /But be: in this well-known proclamation from Archibald MacLeish's Ars Poetica (126-27), one detects a purist desire for the work of art to be (understood as) ontologically self-sufficient, as though any swerve into meaning would amount to a detraction. Once ontological self-sufficiency has ascended to the place of a supreme moral virtue, it becomes an ideal to which everyone aspires. postmodern trends in multiplying narratives, in particular narratives about the self, may in this light be seen as a continuation of the ongoing revitalization and reinvention of (the relevance of) poetic language. …

The good, the bad and the ugly

This paper discusses the neo-logicist approach to the foundations of mathematics by highlighting an issue that arises from looking at the Bad Company objection from an epistemological perspective. For the most part, our issue is independent of the details of any resolution of the Bad Company objection and, as we will show, it concerns other foundational approaches in the philosophy of mathematics. In the first two sections, we give a brief overview of the “Scottish” neo-logicist school, present a generic form of the Bad Company objection and introduce an epistemic issue connected to this general problem that will be the focus of the rest of the paper. In the third section, we present an alternative approach within philosophy of mathematics, a view that emerges from Hilbert’s Grundlagen der Geometrie (1899, Leipzig: Teubner; Foundations of geometry (trans.: Townsend, E.). La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1959.). We will argue that Bad Company-style worries, and our concomitant epistemic issue, also affects this conception and other foundationalist approaches. In the following sections, we then offer various ways to address our epistemic concern, arguing, in the end, that none resolves the issue. The final section offers our own resolution which, however, runs against the foundationalist spirit of the Scottish neo-logicist program.

World–Views and the Epistemic Foundations of Theism

Epistemological issues have inevitably been perennial issues for theism. For any claim to have insight into the nature and acts of the divine requires some sort of substantiation. And the appeal to faith typically made to meet this demand is often unconvincing. This raises a fundamental question: what could constitute proper grounds for theistic belief? In attempting to anwser this question, we will need to address the underlying epistemic issue of what justifies commitment to any world–view.