Account Of Truth Research Articles

‘You Want the Truth? You Can't Handle the Truth’: Poetic Representations of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre

The 1968 massacre of students demonstrating in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City, has been the subject of a corpus known as la literatura de Tlatelolco, whose aim is to keep the event alive in the collective memory and to provide a true account of the massacre. This article explores poetic representations of the massacre, and seeks to establish whether ‘the truth’ about the massacre is necessary to preserve the event in the collective memory.

Intellectual Hope as Convenient Friction

In this paper, I examine recent treatments of Peircean truth in terms of regulative principles or intellectual hopes, drawing on work by Christopher Hookway, Cheryl Misak, and Andrew Howat. In doing this I show that recent arguments by Huw Price that Peirce’s account cannot provide an effective truth norm do not apply when Peircean truth is construed as a regulative assumption on inquiry. I conclude by comparing the “anthropological” sensibilities of Price’s account of truth as convenient friction , and Peirce’s account of truth as a regulative assumption or intellectual hope.

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Adoption on Financial Decisions

Expansion of business environment in 1990s changed the financial set up of India from the conventional bank based borrowings to market based one. This necessitated companies to address global stakeholders. The regulatory requirement of different countries also necessitated companies to do multiple reporting i.e., one as per home country standard and the other as per the host country standard. To avoid multiple reporting and to address global stakeholders, a uniform system of reporting was felt necessary to facilitate comparisons, which resulted in the establishment of International Accounting Standard Board (IASB) which issued International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Financial reporting is to present financial information about the status of a company which is used by the stakeholders before any decisions are made with regard to investment, finance, dividend etc. Users of financial reports are; investors, creditors, employees, customers, competitors, government, public etc. and purpose of usage of these reports differ from person to person. Certain Indian companies having listed in foreign stock exchanges are reporting IFRS voluntarily in their financia statements. The present study tries to understand the impact of this voluntary adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards on the financial decision makers, through a case analysis of Wipro Ltd. The analysis compared the major financial parameters under IFRS and Indian GAAP as reported by Wipro Ltd. for a period of four years from 2009-10 to 2012 - 13. The results postulate an increase in liquidity ratio; equity ratio; interest coverage ratio; marginal increase in debt equity ratio; and no significant increase in profitability ratios except net profit ratio which rose marginally in the year 2013. Overall the results indicate that the adoption of fair value accounting and strict requirement in adhering to accounting standards have strengthened the financial indicators and provided the decision makers a transparent, true and fair accounting highlighters.

Does Audit Transparency Improve Audit Quality and Investment Efficiency?

We examine eects of disclosing precisions of audit opinions (i.e., enhancing audit transparency) on auditor quality and investment e¢ ciency in a setting where the useful- ness of an audited …nancial report is jointly determined by the quality of the underlying …nancial reporting (i.e., a mapping from a …rm's fundamentals into an unobservable true accounting signal), misreporting of the true signal by the …rm's manager, and audit quality (i.e., the precision with which audit evidence collected by the auditor correctly captures the underlying true accounting signal and hence uncovers manager- ial misreporting). In our model, the auditor exerts an unobservable eort to in‡uence audit quality and is motivated by liability in the event of an audit failure. We show that while higher transparency enhances the information decision usefulness of audited …nancial reports for investors, it can also adversely aect the auditor's incentives and consequently lower the expected audit quality and investment e¢ ciency. We show that the underlying quality of …nancial reporting is an important determinant for this

Approximations of stand water use versus evapotranspiration from three mangrove forests in southwest Florida, USA

Leaves from mangrove forests are often considered efficient in the use of water during photosynthesis, but less is known about whole-tree and stand-level water use strategies. Are mangrove forests as conservative in water use as experimental studies on seedlings imply? Here, we apply a simple model to estimate stand water use (S), determine the contribution of S to evapotranspiration (ET), and approximate the distribution of S versus ET over annual cycles for three mangrove forests in southwest Florida, USA. The value of S ranged from 350 to 511mmyear−1 for two mangrove forests in Rookery Bay to 872mmyear−1 for a mangrove forest along the Shark River in Everglades National Park. This represents 34–49% of ET for Rookery Bay mangroves, a rather conservative rate of S, and 63–66% of ET for the Shark River mangroves, a less conservative rate of S. However, variability in estimates of S in mangroves is high enough to require additional study on the spatial changes related to forest structural shifts, different tidal regimes, and variable site-specific salinity concentrations in multiple mangrove forests before a true account of water use conservation strategies can be understood at the landscape scale. Evidence does suggest that large, well-developed mangrove forests have the potential to contribute considerably to the ET balance; however, regionally most mangrove forests are much smaller in stature in Florida and likely contribute less to regional water losses through stand-level transpiration.

Analyticity and Context-Sensitivity. On Gillian Russell´s Account of Truth in Virtue of Meaning

An objection is made to Gillian Russell’s (2008) attempt to give an account of analyticity in its metaphysical understanding —that is, that a sentence is analytic just in case it is true in virtue of its meaning. The objection focuses on the semantic aspects of the account, arguing that the kind of context sensitivity envisaged in it ends up yielding the disastrous result that no sentence is analytic in the intended manner. Two possible replies to the objection are analyzed and rebutted.

Truth matters: knowledge, politics, ethics, religion

Why should we seek and tell the truth? Does anyone know what truth is? Many are skeptical about the relevance of truth. Truth Matters endeavours to show why truth is important in a world where the very idea of truth is contested. Putting philosophers in conversation with educators, literary scholars, physicists, political theorists, and theologians, Truth Matters ranges across both analytic and continental philosophy and draws on the ideas of thinkers such as Aquinas, Balthasar, Brandom, Davidson, Dooyeweerd, Gadamer, Habermas, Kierkegaard, Plantinga, Ricoeur, and Wolterstorff. Some essays attempt to provide a systematic account of truth, while others wrestle with the question of how truth is told and what it means to live truthfully. Contributors address debates between realists and anti-realists, explore issues surrounding relativism and constructivism in education and the social sciences, examine the politics of truth telling and the ethics of authenticity, and consider various religious perspectives on truth. Most scholars agree that truth is propositional, being expressed in statements that are subject to proof or disproof. This book goes a step farther: yes, propositional truth is important, but truth is more than propositional. To recognize how it is more than propositional is crucial for understanding why truth truly matters. Contributors include Doug Blomberg (ICS), Allyson Carr (ICS), Jeffrey Dudiak (King's University College), Olaf Ellefson (York University), Gerrit Glas (VU University Amsterdam), Gill K. Goulding (Regis College), Jay Gupta (Mills College), Clarence Joldersma (Calvin College), Matthew J. Klaassen (ICS), John Jung Park (Duke University), Pamela J. Reeve (St. Augustine's Seminary), Amy Richards (World Affairs Council of Western Michigan), Calvin Seerveld (ICS), Ronnie Shuker (ICS), Adam Smith (Brandeis University), John Van Rys (Redeemer University College), Darren Walhof (Grand Valley State University), Matthew Walhout (Calvin College), and Lambert Zuidervaart (ICS).

"The Peculiar Climate of this Region" The 1854 Cairo Lynching and the Historiography of Racist Violence Against Blacks in Illinois

PERHAPS SOME OF OUR READERS MAY REMEMBER a tragical affair that occurred in mudwalled city' of Cairo, Illinois, in autumn of 1854, wrote Edward Willett nearly a decade later. I refer to lynching of a negro named Joseph Spencer. In lengthy article that followed, Willett, a lawyer and a participant in events described, provided what he called a truthful account of a story that had garnered significant national attention when it occurred. Because of location of this small but growing Illinois town at confluence of Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, witnesses soon carried reports of Tragedy along these vibrant waterways, as well as by rail, to newspaper editors throughout Illinois and in larger regional centers like St. Louis, Louisville, and Cincinnati.1With minor variations, newspaper accounts reported that on or about November 27,1854, authorities pressed a charge of trespassing against Joseph Spencer, a well-known black resident who operated a hotel in cabin of his boat, Patrick Henry. When summoned to court, Spencer arrived for hearing armed a pistol and a keg of gunpowder. entered little room, took a chair, drew a six-shooter, deliberately knocked in head of keg, cocked his pistol, and inserted barrel in gleaming black powder, announcing that if justice was not done him he would blow them all to hell.2 Not surprisingly, Spencer succeeded in persuading judge to postpone hearing; a commentator noted that the court wisely took time to consult,' and adjourned in hot haste. With his threat, Spencer enraged white residents. This outrageous affair soon got wind, and excitement against negro became intence [sic], and propositions to lynch him were received general favor.3Well aware of fury that his actions had unleashed, Spencer retreated to his boat and locked himself in cabin, a mob hot on his heels. Like Revolutionary namesake of his boat, Spencer clearly adhered to mantra, Give me liberty, or give me death! When whites threatened to storm boat, Spencer again placed muzzle of his gun into keg and threatened to kill anyone who dared to approach. For a time, whites contented themselves cries of Kill d-d nigger! With as many as three hundred white men assembled at wharf, snipers stationed themselves around boat waiting for him to make his appearance. When Spencer refused to leave his cabin, whites boarded ship only to be driven back by a fusillade from their well-positioned quarry. Five of white men, including Willett, were shot and quickly retreated onto wharf. At that point, mob members determined to burn boat. To prevent other vessels from catching fire, they cut Spencer's boat away from its mooring and set it aflame. While all this was going forward, several shots were exchanged between crowd and negro, who had previously supplied himself two double barreled shot guns and a revolver.4Joe's boat was cut loose, set on fire, and turned adrift, and went blazing out into river, amid yells of excited recalled Willett. mob, however, was not satisfied letting Spencer take his chances on his fiery barge. The river around burning boat was soon dotted skiffs and other boats, many containing armed men, waiting to shoot doomed negro, if he should attempt to escape. Once Spencer had endured flames for as long as possible, he appeared on deck with a weight of some kind tied around his neck. He gave vent to some undistinguishable exclamation, cast himself into river, and sank to rise no more. boat burned to water's edge, and grounded on Kentucky shore, and thus ended what was known in West as Joe Spencer tragedy.5Three primary objectives drive this investigation. first is to analyze lynching of Joe Spencer, as reported by Willett and contemporary press, in order to gauge white racial attitudes in Cairo in 1854. …

I—Ian Rumfitt: Truth and Meaning

Should we explicate truth in terms of meaning, or meaning in terms of truth? Ramsey, Prior and Strawson all favoured the former approach: a statement is true if and only if things are as the speaker, in making the statement, states them to be; similarly, a belief is true if and only if things are as a thinker with that belief thereby believes them to be. I defend this explication of truth against a range of objections. Ramsey formalized this account of truth (as it applies to beliefs) as follows: B is true =df ∃P(B is a belief that P∧P); in §i, I defend this formula against the late Peter Geach's objection that its right-hand side is ill-formed. Davidson held that Ramsey and co. had the whole matter back to front: on his view, we should explicate meaning in terms of truth, not vice versa. In §ii, I argue that Ramsey's approach opens the way to a more promising approach to semantic theorizing than Davidson's. Ramsey presents his formula as a definition of truth, apparently contradicting Tarski's theorem that truth is indefinable. In §iii, I show that the contradiction is only apparent: Tarski assumes that the Liar-like inscription he uses to prove his theorem has a content, but Ramsey can and should reject that assumption. As I explain in §iv, versions of the Liar Paradox may be generated without making any assumptions about truth: paradox arises when the impredicativity that is found when a statement's content depends on the contents of a collection of statements to which it belongs turns pathological. Since they do not succeed in saying anything, such pathological utterances or inscriptions pose no threat to the laws of logic, when these are understood as universal principles about the ways things may be said or thought to be. There is, though, a call for rules by following which we can be sure that any conclusion deduced from true premisses is true, and hence says something. Such rules cannot be purely formal, but in §v I propose a system of them: this opens the way to the construction of deductive theories even in circumstances where producing a well-formed formula is no guarantee of saying anything.

Disputed Heroes: Early Accounts of the Siege of Londonderry

Disputed Heroes:Early Accounts of the Siege of Londonderry Karen A. Holland The one hundred-and-five day Siege of Londonderry in 1689, at the close of a conflict-ridden seventeenth century, was a crucial episode in the larger War of the Two Kings (1688–91) that brought Catholic forces into conflict with Protestants in Ireland. The deposed James II had arrived in Ireland in March 1689 to capitalize on the support of his fellow Catholics in an attempt to regain his crown. By the time the king began his march north, Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell—whom James II had appointed lord deputy of Ireland—had established Jacobite control of all of Ireland with the exception of Londonderry and Enniskillen in Ulster. The Siege of Londonderry began in April 1689 when the combined Irish and allied French forces led by James II arrived before the city walls and demanded the surrender of the Protestant town. Instead of the expected capitulation, they were met with gunfire that killed several of the king’s bodyguards and the possibility of surrender was lost. By June, the military siege had entered a second phase with a blockade of the neighboring River Foyle in an attempt to starve the resistance into submission. It would take an English relief expedition six weeks to break the boom and, with vital supplies now reaching the city, the Siege was lifted on July 31, 1689.1 The relationship between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland was marked by a deep and enduring animosity; the relationship among the various Protestant sects on the island was likewise often rancorous. Religious tenets, politics, and ethnicity all divided the two predominant confessions in the North, the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians. Ethnically, most Presbyterians were [End Page 21] Scots colonists to Ulster. The Episcopalians were the New English immigrants to Ireland.2 The episcopal Church of Ireland was the established church. Presbyterians, who dissented on church organization and theology, were suppressed. In matters of governance, the Episcopalian church was administered by bishops, whereas the Presbyterians favored a more republican organization overseen by ministers and elders. The Puritanism of the Dissenters was also in conflict with the remnants of popery that the Presbyterians believed continued to be practiced by the Churchmen. Furthermore, both sects had fundamentally different political philosophies. Anglicans were, by and large, supporters of “divine right” monarchy that saw the ruler as a chosen representative of God. Presbyterians, on the other hand, tended to be versed in resistance theory and supported the concept of the deposition of a tyrannical monarch. Presbyterians were frequently quicker in their support of William III than the Episcopalians, who struggled intellectually with the overthrow of the hereditary monarch James II.3 Historical and literary accounts of military engagements often unanimously extol one outstanding individual as the hero of the campaign—for instance, the role of Patrick Sarsfield at the Siege of Limerick. The varying accounts of the Siege of Londonderry, however, present no clear-cut hero. 4 Four works authored in the first two decades after the Siege, in a range of literary genres, propose a variety of individuals as the hero. Two of the authors promote themselves as the heroes of the Siege: Rev. George Walker in his journal A True Account of the Siege of Londonderry (1689) and John Mitchelburne in his five-act tragicomedy Ireland Preserv’d or The Siege of Londonderry (1705). The other two texts acknowledge Colonel Adam Murray as the champion of 1689: Rev. John Mackenzie in his history A Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry (1690) and Joseph Aickin in his epic poem Londeriados or a Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry (1699), each portray Murray as the hero, though they emphasize different aspects of his personality. The conventions of the literary genre that each author purposefully selected—a journal, a drama, a narrative history, and an epic poem—require certain attributes of the hero and create certain expectations and interpretations on the part of the reader. Readers do not treat genres as interchangeable; rather, as one recent scholar of the history of reading noted, they link the text to others they have already read, signaling “the appropriate ‘pre-knowledge’ in...

Impact of care pathway-based approach on outcomes in a specialist intellectual disability inpatient unit.

Specialist intellectual disability inpatient units have come under increased scrutiny, leading to questions about the quality of service provision in this sector. A care pathway-based approach was implemented in such a unit and its impact on outcome variables was measured. The care pathway-based approach resulted in the turnover of more patients, increased capacity for admissions to the unit, reduced lengths of stay in hospital, timely assessments and treatments, which resulted in better outcomes in patients. Care pathway-based approach to service provision provides not only better outcomes in patients but also a reliable way of ensuring true multi-agency working and accountability. If used widely, it can reduce the variability in the quality of current service provision.

On Cheryl Misak’s Modest Pragmatism

1. IntroductionDisagreement about meaning of pragmatism has characterised it from its earliest years. Peirce hoped that his work would aid natural sciences by clarifying concepts scientists use in course of their investigations. In contrast, James focused on role pragmatism might play in all areas of human life, seeing it in particular as a way of reconciling science with religious belief. James was excited by what he saw as radical potential of his philosophy, going so far as to express hope that pragmatism might become a movement with consequences comparable in signifycance to those of Protestant Reformation.1 For his part, Peirce was sceptical of radical aspirations of some pragmatists, and regarded versions such as that of James to have fallen away from sober insights of his own position.In 1908, Arthur Lovejoy was able to discriminate thirteen versions of pragmatism, and a century later its diversity appears considerably greater.2 In light of number of philosophers who either identify as pragmatists or have been associated with pragmatism, it is natural that attempts have been made to take account of this diversity. These attempts often follow Peirce by contrasting his formulations of pragmatism with apparent deficiencies of Jamesian and Deweyan varieties.3 This is approach adopted by Cheryl Misak. Misak draws on elements in Peirce's work in order to develop what she describes as a desirably form of pragmatism.4 This she sets against problems of Jurgen Habermas' Kantian pragmatism on one hand, and of what she thinks radicalism of writers such as Richard Rorty on other.5 She claims that pragmatists should have no truck with aspiration to justify beliefs and practices by means of transcendental argument, yet at same time thinks that we might draw upon resources present within our social practices in order to move beyond kind of ethnocentrism proposed by Rorty. Specifically, these practices are said to provide for a substantive account of truth. Misak rejects transcendental and metaphysical theories of truth but also argues that if we inspect our practices, we nevertheless find robust standards of truth and objectivity operating there. As she remarks, trail of human serpent is over everything (to use James' phrase), but (as James himself may or may not have seen) this does not toss us into a sea of arbitrariness, where there is no truth or where truth varies from person to person or culture to culture.6I argue that Misak is unsuccessful in identifying a position which is modest in sense she claims. I begin by examining her most important contribution to pragmatism, her reworking of Peirce's account of truth into an understanding of truth as indefeasibility. Contrary to what Misak claims, I argue that idea of indefeasibility does not take us further than general pragmatist commitment to fallibilism and open-mindedness. I then suggest that Misak's occasionally expressed willingness to side with Rorty's wholehearted acceptance of contingency is correct insight to take from pragmatism, and that it should not be thought threatening once it is seen that apparent dangers of radical pragmatism are not in fact present.2. Misak's account of truth as indefeasibilityIn The American Pragmatists and other important work, Misak takes pragmatists to be in broad agreement in giving up on many of assumptions of modern philosophy. Pragmatists accept that there is no bedrock upon which to anchor belief; they set aside the idea that we might find a foundation for our principles of right belief and of right action in some infallible source - from God, from some special faculty of intuition, or from what is given to us with certainty by experience. Once this step is taken, however, a danger threatens, which is that the source for, and status of, our judgements, theories, and principles is altogether human and therefore arbitrary. …

Aristotle’s Conception of Practical Truth

Aristotle’s notion of practical truth is fundamentally important to both the rationality and the practicality of practical reasoning. But what is practical truth? I argue for an original interpretation according to which practical truth is the truth about what is unqualifiedly good for a particular person when all of her particular circumstances are taken into account. In contrast to other current interpretations, this one allows practical truth to fall within Aristotle’s standard account of truth, and it explains the sense in which practical truth is nonetheless distinctly practical, using Aristotle’s so-called Guise of the Good account of motivation.

Charles Peirce's Limit Concept of Truth

AbstractThis entry explores Charles Peirce's account of truth in terms of the end or ‘limit’ of inquiry. This account is distinct from – and arguably more objectivist than – views of truth found in other pragmatists such as James and Rorty. The roots of the account in mathematical concepts is explored, and it is defended from objections that it is (i) incoherent, (ii) in its faith in convergence, too realist and (iii) in its ‘internal realism’, not realist enough.

Accuracy of direct genomic values for functional traits in Brown Swiss cattle

In this study, direct genomic values for the functional traits general temperament, milking temperament, aggressiveness, rank order in herd, milking speed, udder depth, position of labia, and days to first heat in Brown Swiss dairy cattle were estimated based on ~777,000 (777K) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) information from 1,126 animals. Accuracy of direct genomic values was assessed by a 5-fold cross-validation with 10 replicates. Correlations between deregressed proofs and direct genomic values were 0.63 for general temperament, 0.73 for milking temperament, 0.69 for aggressiveness, 0.65 for rank order in herd, 0.69 for milking speed, 0.71 for udder depth, 0.66 for position of labia, and 0.74 for days to first heat. Using the information of ~54,000 (54K) SNP led to only marginal deviations in the observed accuracy. Trying to predict the 20% youngest bulls led to correlations of 0.55, 0.77, 0.73, 0.55, 0.64, 0.59, 0.67, and 0.77, respectively, for the traits listed above. Using a novel method to estimate the accuracy of a direct genomic value (defined as correlation between direct genomic value and true breeding value and accounting for the correlation between direct genomic values and conventional breeding values) revealed accuracies of 0.37, 0.20, 0.19, 0.27, 0.48, 0.45, 0.36, and 0.12, respectively, for the traits listed above. These values are much smaller but probably also more realistic than accuracies based on correlations, given the heritabilities and samples sizes in this study. Annotation of the largest estimated SNP effects revealed 2 candidate genes affecting the traits general temperament and days to first heat.

Setting the Standard: Don Garrett’s Hume

Setting the Standard: Don Garrett’s Hume Louis E. Loeb (bio) Who other than Don Garrett could construct a work this rigorous and comprehensive, encompassing Hume’s aesthetics, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion—not as add-ons but tightly integrated into a genuinely new interpretation? Garrett’s intricate reading has no equal in the architectonic it locates in Hume’s philosophical corpus. This elegantly crafted work will reinvigorate thinking about Hume’s theory of normativity across the epistemic and moral realms.1 1. Introductory Overview I center my comments on a central line of argument in chapters 4, 5, and 7. In chapter 4, Garrett focuses on four “sense-based” concepts or pairs of such concepts: virtue (and vice), beauty (and deformity), causation, and probability. (Following Garrett, I place names of concepts in small capital letters. See Hume, xxii). The sense-based concepts arise from distinctive “senses” (Hume, 118; see also 5), “primitive capacities to have a specific kind of felt mental response” (Hume, 119; see also 137, 162). In this characterization, the mental response must be felt. This is by design. Hume’s account of causation and probable truth is “modeled” (Hume, 5) on his treatments of virtue and beauty, so that the two sets of concepts are “analogous in many crucial respects” (Hume, 117); “it is not unreasonable to suppose that the parallels . . . result at least in part from Hume’s extension, however conscious or unconscious,” of Hutcheson’s “conceptions of beauty and virtue as discerned by the ‘senses’” (Hume, 118). As Garrett appreciates, this thesis has affinities with a proposal due to Norman Kemp Smith: that Hume was guided [End Page 243] by “a realization prompted by reflection on the sentiment-based moral theory of Francis Hutcheson . . . specifically, that a similar feeling-based approach could be ‘carried over to the theoretical domain of belief’” (Hume, 13).2 Garrett identifies “four elements—best thought of as overlapping stages—in the full development of a Humean sense-based concept” (Hume, 119). I judge the third element, “natural correction” (Hume, 120), pivotal. According to Garrett, a sense-based concept involves a standard of judgment; correction results from proper application of the standard. At this level of description, the idea is familiar from Hume’s “steady and general points of view” or “common point of view” in the correction of moral judgment (Hume, 121). Judgments are “corrected and refined through convergence on a standard” (Hume, 139), “serv[ing] to reduce intrapersonal and interpersonal disagreement” (Hume, 126). Application of sense-based concepts is nevertheless susceptible to “blameless diversity” (Hume, 127) or “blameless disagreement” (Hume, 144) “as a result of openness in the specification of an idealized set of respondent qualities” (Hume, 141), and thus “openness of the standard of judgment” (Hume, 144). Garrett does not distinguish between “ideal” points of view and ones idealized to some extent. Hume invokes a merely “judicious” spectator (T 3.3.1.14; SBN 581).3 Though one could stipulate that the “ideal” point of view is that on which humans converge, it is an interpretive question whether, for Hume, humans would converge on a standard involving endowments that are optimal or perfect. Garrett allows that “it might be better just to speak of a ‘standardized’ observer rather than an ‘ideal’ or ‘idealized’ observer” (“Replies,” n1). In order to preempt confusion, I will most often write that the corrected and refined judgments issue from the standardized or the standard point of view; similarly, I will refer to the occupant of that point of view as the standard observer. Garrett writes, “In its general form, a standard of judgment for a sense-based concept consists of an idealized situation or ‘point of view’ from which to be responsive, plus idealized endowments or ‘qualities’ of a perceiver with which to be responsive” (Hume, 120). The standard of moral judgment consists in the point of view of the “individual [judged] himself together with those who ‘have a connexion with him’ (THN 3.3.1.15/581; THN 3.3.1.30/591)”—Hume’s doctrine of the narrow circle—and respondent qualities that include “sympathy” and “strong but delicate moral sentiments” (Hume, 121).4 The standard of judgments of...

Inferential, Coherential, and Foundational Warrant: an Eclectic Account of the Sources of Warrant

A warranted belief may derive inferential warrant from warranted beliefs which support it. It may possess what I call coherential warrant in virtue of being consistent with, or lacking improbability relative to, a large system of warranted beliefs. Finally, it may have foundational warrant, which does not derive from other beliefs at all. I define and distinguish these sources of warrant and explain why all three must be included in the true and complete account of the structure of knowledge, and why the first two sources are significant at all levels of knowledge. Only foundherentism and a weak version of foundationalism can satisfy this criterion. My analysis has significant, and happy, consequences for the epistemological tradition. The project of describing the structure of knowledge is nearly complete. Those who have pronounced the death of epistemology are partially correct, not because epistemology has failed, but because it has been so successful.

Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature by Jan C. Leuchtenberger (review)

Reviewed by: Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature by Jan C. Leuchtenberger Peter Nosco Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature. By Jan C. Leuchtenberger. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2013. 240pages. Hardcover $65.00; softcover $25.00. One of the more vexing problems in the study of the social and cultural history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Japan concerns the memory of Christianity. The common wisdom on the subject has long been that after Christianity was proscribed in the 1610s and the priests were subsequently expelled, most Christians in Japan renounced their faith, and the few who did not were driven underground. Because of the absence of priests, the Catholic Church had long tended to discount the integrity of the faith of these underground Christians. In a remarkable reversal, however, on 15 January 2014 Pope Francis said of them, “They maintained, even in secrecy, a strong spirit of community because baptism made them become one single body in Christ: they were isolated and hidden, but they were always members of [End Page 275] the people of God, of the Church.”1 Japanese scholarship on the Tokugawa state has generally exaggerated the effectiveness of the Bakuhan state’s efforts to eradicate the despised creed and has tended to represent Tokugawa religious life as if the waters simply closed over Christians, Christianity, and their memory with nary a ripple. More recent scholarship in English has challenged this narrative, though often indirectly, by focusing on anti-Christian rhetoric of the early seventeenth century. Building on the work of George Elison’s Deus Destroyed (Harvard University Press, 1973), both Nam-lin Hur’s Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2007) and Kiri Paramore’s Ideology and Christianity in Japan (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009) demonstrate how anti-Christian rhetoric contributed in various ways to the formation and subsequent character of the early modern Japanese state. But left unaddressed in this scholarship has been the intriguing question of whether what Charles Boxer and others have styled “Japan’s Christian Century” survived in the popular imagination of subsequent centuries, and if so, in what manner. The volume under review adds an important dimension to this earlier scholarship by focusing on the demonized Christian/European Other in both seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japanese literature, thereby taking us away from the world of ideology and political rhetoric and into the world of narrative and popular memory. Conquering Demons begins with the official end to the European missions to Japan in 1614 and carefully traces the image of Christian missionaries and priests—author Jan Leuchtenberger argues in favor of the Japanese term “Kirishitan”—through their caricatured appearance in three works: Baterenki (History of the Padres), Kirishitan monogatari (The Christian Story), and Kirishitan shūmon raichō jikki (True Account of the Arrival of the Kirishitan Sect in Japan). Leuchtenberger then extends the analysis into late-Edo discourse up to and including Aizawa Seishisai’s 1825 Shinron (New Theses). Except for Shinron, the exact dates of these works are not known. Baterenki dates from around 1610, when European priests were still much in evidence. Kirishitan monogatari dates in printed form from 1639, but the fact that the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–1638 is unmentioned in most variants of the text indicates that it was almost certainly written earlier. Kirishitan shūmon raichō jikki dates from the Kyōhō era (1716–1735), i.e., the first twenty years of the culturally liberal bakufu of Tokugawa Yoshimune (r. 1716–1745). Although their precise dates are uncertain, the sequence of these three works is crystal clear, and so in Conquering Demons we have for the first time in English a study that provides a sense of the “evolving discourses on Japan and its Others,” whereby the Kirishitan Other is transformed from “a relentless would-be conqueror to a grotesque and uncanny foreigner who uses money, magic, and medicine to lure the gullible” (pp. 4–5). The volume also includes annotated translations of Baterenki and Kirishitan shūmon raichō jikki, the latter in a variant titled Nanbanji [End Page 276] monogatari (Tale of...

Does James have a Place for Objectivity?

In her new book The American Pragmatists Cheryl Misak provides a reading of the history of American Pragmatism in which it is composed of two related yet distinct types of pragmatism. She characterizes the debate between these two types of pragmatism as a debate between those who assert (or whose view entails) that there is no truth and objectivity to be had anywhere and those who take pragmatism to promise an account of truth that preserves our cognitive aspiration of getting things right. O...

Revisiting truth and freedom in Orwell and Rorty

This article uses differing interpretations of a thread of narrative taken from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a springboard to exploring the connection between philosophical truth and political liberalism. It argues that while no positive connection exists between realist truth and political liberalism, minimal negative connections do exist between Rorty’s humanistic account of truth and a basic commitment to democratic and liberal frameworks. It sees these minimal connections as limiting in their failure to provide a politics that moves beyond an exclusive concern with liberty and democracy to more substantive political issues of equality and justice. However, it also sees them as reassuring in showing how acceptance of Rorty’s humanistic account of truth in no way necessitates adopting his own ethnocentric political stance.