Skeptical Conclusion Research Articles

Impossible Ethics: Do Population Ethical Impossibility Results Support Moral Skepticism and/or Anti‐Realism?

AbstractIn this paper, I discuss two different metaethical challenges based on population ethical impossibility results. According to the anti‐realist challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the existence of objective moral facts. According to the skeptical challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the reliability of our moral intuitions. My aim is to systematically explore and evaluate these challenges. In addition to clarifying the issues, I argue that population ethical impossibility results do not in fact support any anti‐realist or skeptical conclusions.

Institution or Individuality? Some Reflections on the Lessons To Be Learned From Personal Accounts of Recovery From Schizophrenia

Abstract: In this paper, I argue for a social conception of subjectivity, via a philosophical reading of first-person accounts of recovery from schizophrenia, published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin . Following the hypothesis that these accounts exemplify a more general tension between, on the one hand, normative and social dimensions of the self, and on the other, experiential and psychological dimensions, the first section of the paper formulates the problem from a philosophical perspective inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein's grammatical approach. The second section explores and rejects different possible readings (sociologistic, phenomenological, or narrativist readings), as conceiving the subject in too passive a relationship with him or herself, and as leading to overly skeptical conclusions about the claims in the first-person accounts insisting on the notion of recovery as a restoration of a sense of self and as empowerment. The third section suggests that a more positive answer can be given via the idea of a certain grammar of recovery governing these narratives, and sketches out how this relates to the more general philosophical question on subjectivity.

Misreadings, Self-Misprisions, and Fabricated Resolutions in Joyce’s “The Dead”

Abstract: Joyce’s “The Dead” contains a number of partial and misleading narratives related in an unexpected manner, and as such greatly rewards a narrative- centered analysis. Misinterpretation is general in this work; one might argue that the text is primarily a record of Gabriel’s repeated misinterpretations of the people and narratives around him. This is true of the women he interacts with; most egregiously, he does not even imagine that his wife has a story independent of her life with him. An attention to narrative and interpretation in turn leads to a different reading of the ending of the text. Far from being a definitive epiphany that finally reveals the bitter truth about himself and his marriage, Gabriel’s closing convictions are yet additional misinterpretations about his marriage, his situation, and his life, and rather Romantic ones at that, which the reader trained by this text would be wise to question and reject in favor of a more skeptical conclusion. In addition, the kind of third-person narration with a single focalizer for nearly all of the text lends itself to the kind of misleading conclusions which Margot Norris has identified; this strategy reproduces and even re-enacts the text’s larger hermeneutical dramas, as the reader is challenged to see through a rhetoric that naturalizes an ideological perspective that seems untroubled by imperial rule.

From book to bedside? A critical perspective on the debate about "translational bioethics".

The concept of "translational bioethics" has received considerable attention in recent years. Most publications draw an analogy to translational medicine and describe bioethical research that aims at implementing and evaluating ethical interventions. However, current accounts of translational bioethics are often rather vague and seem to differ with regard to conceptual and methodological assumptions. It is not clear and scarcely analyzed what exactly "translation" in the field of bioethics means, in particular regarding goals and processes so that it is justified to appeal to translational medicine. In this article, we thus explore possible analogies and disanalogies between translational medicine and translational bioethics to establish whether the often occurring reference to concepts of translational medicine in the field of bioethics can be justified by substantial analogies. We will first provide an account of different models of translational medicine. In a second step, we will propose an analytic definition that explicitly articulates the essential characteristics of "translational research" irrespective of the research field (i.e., biomedicine, bioethics). Subsequently, we will explore whether and in how far general characteristics and phases of translational research in medicine can be applied to translational research in bioethics. Based on our analyses, we will come to the skeptical conclusion that at present there are considerable conceptual disanalogies and unsolved conceptual problems that disallow using "translational bioethics" in a meaningful analogy to respective accounts in biomedicine. Nevertheless, we will demonstrate that some insights gained by the conceptual accounts of translational medicine can contribute to advance current research activities in bioethics.

Illusory Signs as Frustrated Expectations: Undoing Descartes’ Overblown Response

Descartes held that it is impossible to make true statements about what we perceive, but I go over alleged cases of illusory experience to show why such a skeptical conclusion (and recourse to God) is overblown. The overreaction, I contend, stems from an insufficient awareness of the habitual expectations brought to any given experience. These expectations manifest themselves in motor terms, as perception constantly prompts and updates an embodied posture of readiness for what might come next. Such habitual anticipations work best when they efface themselves, so it is easy to blame perception when our expectations get frustrated. I illustrate this misdirected blame with the example of a stick partially in water: it is only because we expect the stick to be straight that its appearance as bent is deemed problematic. I thus conclude that, if we factor in the habitual interpretations operative in perception and switch to a processual view that allows practical engagement, we can deflate the worries that led Descartes to rule out perceptual truths. Distancing myself from the naïve “sign” of folk semiotics, my critique draws inspiration from the triadic semiotic model developed in some late medieval schools of Portugal.

Freedom & Responsibility in Context, by Ann Whittle

When there is seemingly irresolvable and faultless disagreement in philosophy, it is often natural to resort to contextualism: perhaps we are all speaking the truth, but talking past each other in some way. We might get, as Ann Whittle puts it, ‘the sense that both sides were right, at least some of the time, but neither position managed to capture it all’ (p.ix). In epistemology, this is by now a well-rehearsed and popular move: to accommodate both the philosophically persuasive arguments for scepticism and the immense plausibility of ordinary knowledge ascriptions, it is argued that we speak in different contexts, and the sceptical conclusion is true in some philosophical, but false in all or most ordinary, contexts. In the literature on free will, this kind of move seems to suggest itself with equal plausibility: to accommodate both the philosophically persuasive arguments for incompatibilism and the immense plausibility, irrespective of the question of determinism, of our ordinary ascriptions of freedom and responsibility, we might argue that we speak in different contexts, and the incompatibilist conclusion is true in some philosophical, but false in all or most ordinary, contexts. However, in the literature on free will and responsibility, this line of argument has been conspicuously near-absent. In her rich and tightly argued book, Ann Whittle fills this gap and proposes a contextualist account of freedom, control, and responsibility.

Dolování stříbra v Zubří u Rožnova pod Radhoštěm ve světle legend, historických pramenů a nových geologických výzkumů

Several historical sources mention silver mining in Zubří village near Rožnov pod Radhoštěm town in the first half of the 16th century. Critical analysis of these sources, new field observations, stratigraphic and mineralogical evaluation of the rocks were carried out to decide whether mining or prospecting for silver can have a real basis. Historical sources from the 18th and 19th centuries are likely to draw uncritically on popular folk tales and reports of fraudulent prospectors. This is evidenced by contradictions in the location of supposed mining, references to fictitious persons and unrealistic descriptions of mine workings. New field observations in Zubří brought improved knowledge of local geology. Clays and claystones from occasional excavations, soundings and outcrops were stratigraphically classified based on foraminiferal micropaleontology. The study area is built of Hauterivian to Paleocene strata of the Silesian Unit of the Carpathian Flysch Belt. At the site marked on the historical map as a former silver mine, no minerals containing Ag and Pb were found. Framboidal pyrite and traces of sphalerite of diagenetic origin were detected using SEM and microprobe method in the sandy limestone intercalation within the Lhoty Formation. The silt from the colluvial clay in the lower part of the site contained dominantly garnets close to almandine, minerals from the TiO2 group and Fe-oxides. Chemical analysis of colluvial clay showed heavy-metal (Ag, Cu, Mo, Zn, Pb) concentrations close to background values. These negative results are consistent with the sceptical conclusions from the analysis of historical sources. The only historical mine observed in the studied area is revealed by an old heap above the road to Staré Zubří. It is undoubtedly related to the mining of pelosiderite. The pelosiderite is abundant in places in the claystones of the Hradiště Formation on Stříbrník and in the Olšovec stream. This source was probably exploited in the first half of the 18th century for the local iron hammer.

The evolution of moral belief: support for the debunker's causal premise.

The causal premise of the evolutionary debunking argument contends that human moral beliefs are explained by the process of natural selection. While it is universally acknowledged that such a premise is fundamental to the debunker's case, the vast majority of philosophers focus instead on the epistemic premise that natural selection does not track moral truth and the resulting skeptical conclusion(s). Recently, however, some have begun to concentrate on the causal premise. So far, the upshot of this small but growing literature has been that the causal premise is likely false due to the seemingly persuasive evidence that our moral beliefs are in fact not the result of natural selection. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. Specifically, I advocate the Innate Biases Model, which contends that there is not only compelling evidence for an evolved cognitive capacity for acquiring norms but also for the existence of an evolutionarily instilled set of cognitive biases that make it either more or less likely that we adopt certain moral beliefs.

The relevance of J.G.Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (towards the 260th anniversary of the thinker’s birth)

260 years since the birth of Fichte give a good reason to turn to his Wissenschaftslehre, which, together with Kant’s critical philosophy, is a bridge from the past to the future state of philosophical and scientific culture. The first and second parts of the article explore the little-known to Russian historians of philosophy controversy about the spirit and letter of Kant’s teaching, which flared up at the end of the 18th century in Germany and had a discrepancy between Kant’s intention to turn metaphysics into a science and the negative result of all three of his “Critics” in this point. In a dispute with Reinhold, Kreuzer, Schulze (Enesidem), Schmid and Krug, who interpreted Kant’s critical philosophy as based on sensory-rational experience, Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling and Hegel acted as a united front on the side of Fichte. Their consolidation was needed in order, in the struggle against the quasi-philosophy of their time, to support the movement started by Kant and continued by Fichte to reveal the basis of experience, neutralizing dogmatic and skeptical conclusions from the naive-realistic theory of knowledge. In the third part of the article, the reason for this instructive controversy is clarified and it is shown that the innovations of the late period of Fichte’s work do not concern the monistic principle of Wissenschaftslehre, but affect that has become negative the thinker’s attitude to the history of philosophy. It is concluded that the need to overcome Fichte’s ahistorism does not detract, but, on the contrary, only increases the relevance of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre as one of the most important moments of the historical development of the logical method.

Everything and More: The Prospects of Whole Brain Emulation

Whole Brain Emulation (WBE) has been championed as the most promising, well-defined route to achieving both human-level artificial intelligence and superintelligence. It has even been touted as a viable route to achieving immortality through brain uploading. WBE is not a fringe theory: the doctrine of Computationalism in philosophy of mind lends credence to the in-principle feasibility of the idea, and the standing of the Human Connectome Project makes it appear to be feasible in practice. Computationalism is a popular, independently plausible theory, and Connectomics a well-funded empirical research program, so optimism about WBE is understandable. However, this optimism may be misplaced. This article argues that WBE is, at best, no more compelling than any of the other far-flung routes to achieving superintelligence. Similarly skeptical conclusions are found regarding immortality. The essay concludes with some positive considerations in favor of the Biological Theory of consciousness, as well as morals about the limits of Computationalism in both artificial intelligence and the philosophy of mind more generally.

A DEFENCE OF SKEPTICAL THEISM

According to The Evidentialist problem of Evil, the existence of disproportionate, prima facie gratuitous evil and suffering in the world is enough evidence against the existence of the Omnipotent, Perfectly Loving, Omniscient God of Classical Theism. A contemporary way of dealing with this argument is Skeptical Theism , for which the very fact that there is an huge amount of evil that looks gratuitous to us does not mean that we can reasonably believe whether this evil is indeed gratuitous or not . In this paper, I present and discuss a number of influential criticisms against this view according to which a proponent of Skeptical Theism will be forced to accept a number of unpalatable skeptical conclusions. I argue that this is not the case.

KNOWING ABOUT RESPONSIBILITY

Abstract Here is a skeptical trilemma. We know that we are responsible. We do not know that determinism is false. Yet, if we do not know that determinism is false, we do not know that we are responsible. If we want to avoid the skeptical conclusion of rejecting the first claim, we ought to reject the third. It does not follow that compatibilism is true. But it follows that libertarianism, the view that we are responsible even though responsibility requires indeterminism, is unknowable, at least for now. To see this, we need to compare different forms of skepticism and their response.

The no-free-lunch theorems of supervised learning

The no-free-lunch theorems promote a skeptical conclusion that all possible machine learning algorithms equally lack justification. But how could this leave room for a learning theory, that shows that some algorithms are better than others? Drawing parallels to the philosophy of induction, we point out that the no-free-lunch results presuppose a conception of learning algorithms as purely data-driven. On this conception, every algorithm must have an inherent inductive bias, that wants justification. We argue that many standard learning algorithms should rather be understood as model-dependent: in each application they also require for input a model, representing a bias. Generic algorithms themselves, they can be given a model-relative justification.

Pragmatic Skepticism

AbstractPragmatic responses to skepticism have been overlooked in recent decades. This paper explores one such response by developing a character called the Pragmatic Skeptic. The Pragmatic Skeptic accepts skeptical arguments for the claim that we lack evidence for our ordinary beliefs, and that they do not constitute knowledge. However, they do not think we should give up our beliefs in light of these skeptical conclusions. Rather, we should retain them, since we have good practical reasons for doing so. This takes the sting out of skepticism: we can be skeptics, of a kind, without thereby succumbing to practical or intellectual disaster. I respond to objections, and compare the position of the Pragmatic Skeptic to views found in the work of (among others) David Hume, William James, David Lewis, Berislav Marušić, and Robert Pasnau.

A Justification of the Probabilistic Explanation of the Entropy Principle

In many ways, entropy and probability are two concepts that complement each other. But it has been argued that there is no ‘straightforward connection’ between them with a no-go thesis from Kevin Davey. However, this skeptical conclusion rests on counterexamples that fail to do justice to the entropy principle and the equivocality of the notion of probability. Proceeding from the disambiguation of probability, and acknowledging the explanatory goal of the entropy principle, it is argued that the Boltzmannian statistical mechanics account can be vindicated with a justification of the explanandum, the reference class, and the standard uniform probability measure.

Austin’s Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method by Mark Kaplan

Reviewed by: Austin’s Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method by Mark Kaplan Jason Bridges KAPLAN, Mark. Austin’s Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 192 pp. Cloth, $66.00 John Austin encouraged philosophers to pay attention to how language is ordinarily used. If we seek philosophical insight into such topics as knowledge, truth, and possibility, then, he thought, we would do well to examine how speakers use words like “know,” “true,” and “can” as they go about the business of everyday life. This advice sounds refreshingly down to earth. But how is it to work? What is the nature of the path Austin envisions from observations about ordinary use to philosophical understanding? No doubt his own essays are meant to illustrate the advice’s merits. But it turns out to be difficult to distill from the variegated arguments, examples, and aperçus contained in these essays straightforward answers to our questions. Mark Kaplan’s Austin’s Way with Skepticism is one of a recent flurry of monographs seeking to do what Austin himself apparently did not: to tell us what, in general, is the method of “ordinary-language philosophy.” Kaplan’s book is a fine work. It is thought-provoking and elegantly written. It patiently examines objections and carefully disposes of competing interpretations. There is much to be learned here, and anyone interested in Austin and his legacy should give it careful study. Although the discussion of particulars can get complex, Kaplan’s master thought is simple. What Austin demands of the philosopher is that “she must not be willing to espouse any philosophical doctrine that she would be unwilling to take to heart and act on in ordinary life.” This, says Kaplan, is the “requirement” of “fidelity to ordinary language.” We might just as well think of it as a requirement of fidelity to one’s espoused philosophical doctrines. Either way, the demand is: Live your philosophical truth—and if you find you cannot, then admit it was not your truth after all. It is not hard to see how to bring this “fidelity requirement” to bear against epistemological skepticism. Consider the initial reflections of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, which purport to show that we are incapable of acquiring knowledge of the world around us. This result is manifestly at odds with our perennial readiness in everyday contexts to ascribe instances of such knowledge to ourselves and others. The fidelity requirement directs a philosopher who professes to accept the skeptical result to give up making such ascriptions. Presumably no one would be willing to do this. Indeed, it seems plausible that no one could do this, willing or not. So the only way to honor the fidelity requirement is to renounce any commitment to the skeptical result. If this is indeed the substance of Austin’s “way with skepticism,” it seems to me to fall short of providing an adequate reckoning with the problem. It is a familiar point that philosophical arguments can have implications that look outrageous from the perspective of ordinary thought and talk. Certainly, this would not be news to skeptics themselves. Hume, to take a familiar example, is painfully aware that his skeptical conclusions will look absurd to him the moment he leaves his [End Page 410] study and ventures into the world outside. He is tempted on this account to throw his writings into the fire. Why doesn’t he? His problem is that, so far as he can see, his philosophical arguments are solid. To convince him he is wrong about this, it would hardly do to point out that there is an incongruity between the conclusions of these arguments and what he is inclined to think and say when immersed in the commerce of everyday life. Rather, we would need to take the actual measure of the arguments. We would need to examine the reasons Hume gives for his conclusions and endeavor to explain why they lack the force they at first seem to have. It is just this that Kant and other serious critics of Hume sought to do. It leaves us with the falsity of Hume’s conclusions...

Социологический скептицизм в отношении научного прогресса

Progress, truth, and rationality form a basic vocabulary for epistemology and philosophy of science. Sociological investigations of scientific knowledge, start­ing from the works of Thomas Kuhn, Barry Barnes and David Bloor, eliminate these traditional and central categories of philosophy. Their profound works be­came the source for the new types of scepticism toward scientific cognition, its proclaimed goals and received results. Within sociological studies of knowledge, science is researched as an integral part of culture. The scientific belief is deter­mined not only by achievements of reason, transcendental conditions, ways of perception or acquired experience, but rather by social authority, collec­tive agreements and distribution of power. In the article “What is scientific pro­gress?” Alexander Leonidovich Nikiforov outlines perspectives for compromise in sociological and philosophical thinking in order to overcome relativism and sceptical conclusions toward scientific progress. After all, scientific and social progress is not the unconditional ideal for humankind. It means only that scien­tific progress requires a new justification, especially in the light of synthesis be­tween philosophical and sociological methodologies. Another important aspect, stressed by Nikiforov, interprets the progress within the socio-humanitarian field. In the future, it is surely possible to expect the results from human sciences, whereas the resources of natural history evaporate and arrive to the last frontier. The most difficult is the knowledge of ourselves. Perhaps, it explains why the progress in human sciences has been gaining strength and promising the visi­ble, quite instrumental outbreaks.

Knowledge and Truth in the Greatest Difficulty Argument: Parmenides 133b4–134b5

Abstract One of Plato’s central tenets is that we can know forms. In Parmenides 133b4–134b5, Plato presents an argument whose sceptical conclusion is that we can’t know forms. Although he indicates that the argument doesn’t succeed, he also says it’s difficult to explain how it fails. Commentators have suggested a variety of flaws. I argue that the argument can be defended against some, though not all, of the alleged flaws. But I also argue that Plato hints at a crucial distinction that hasn’t been brought to bear in this context, and that indeed he is sometimes thought not to draw: that between the content and object of knowledge. Once we are clear about this distinction, we can see that the sceptical argument doesn’t imply that we can’t know forms.

Is the Judicial Role Just a Descriptive Social Fact?

El libro Moral Combat: The Dilemma of Legal Perspectivalism, de Heidi Hurd, intenta determinar el ámbito de las obligaciones morales en la toma de decisiones judiciales, y llega a una conclusión escéptica sobre moralidades relacionadas con papeles. Continuaré esta discusión relacionando las tesis de Hurd con tres teorías conocidas sobre obligaciones de papales. En seguida, argumentaré qué papeles profesionales en sí mismos no pueden generar obligaciones morales. Y, finalmente, explicaré cómo otra teoría puede explicar mejor la relación entre papeles judiciales y obligaciones morales de una manera no constitutiva.

Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels

Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels