Epistemology Commons^™

Ephesians And Ecumenism, Toby Eisenberg

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Christian ecumenism has made great strides during the twentieth century but is now widely seen as needing a new path. Avery Dulles has proposed an “exchange of gifts” notion of dialogue in which the participant churches share their understanding of the Christian life and all of the reasons they have for holding their particular doctrines and practices, drawing on whatever normative sources they believe are appropriate. The approach enables the participants to bear testimony in love in the hopes that they may better understand and appreciate each other more fully, thereby opening a path to increased doctrinal consensus and thus …

Metaphors For Meaningful Documents, Martin I. Nord

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The ever-increasing speed and reach of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are often lauded for the beneficial social effects we are told they have. This raises questions about the connection between knowledge and social relationships, especially concerning meaningful relationships in a world where people are increasingly represented as data. To answer this question, one approach is to consider the role of documents in communicating “meaningful” content in pursuit of understanding. Because this is difficult to articulate, this paper takes the approach of using metaphors—specifically of the document as a bridge, a window, a painting, a briefcase, and a mirror—to consider …

Functional Corporate Knowledge, Mihailis Diamantis

William & Mary Law Review

The line between guilt and innocence often turns on what a defendant knew. Although the law’s approach to knowledge may be relatively straightforward for individuals, its doctrines for corporate defendants are fraught with ambiguity and opportunities for gamesmanship. Corporations can spread information thinly across employees so that it is never “known.” And prosecutors can exploit legal uncertainties to bring knowledge-based charges where corporations were merely negligent in how they handled information. Whereas knowledge as a mens rea has unique practical and normative properties that vary with a corporation’s size and industry, corporate law treats knowledge just like any other mental …

Breaking The Epistemic Pornography Habit: Cognitive Biases, Digital Discourse Environments, And Moral Exemplars, Andrew D. Spear

Articles, Book Chapters, Essays

Purpose: This paper analyzes some of the epistemically pernicious effects of use of the Internet and social media. In light of this analysis, it introduces the concept of epistemic pornography and argues that epistemic agents both can and should avoid consuming and sharing epistemic pornography.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The paper draws on research on epistemic virtue, cognitive biases, social media use and its epistemic consequences, Fake News, paternalistic nudging, pornography, moral philosophy, moral elevation, and moral exemplar theory to analyze the epistemically pernicious effects of the Internet and social media.

Findings: There is a growing consensus that Internet and social media activate …

The Reliable Revisionist, Caitlyn Schaffer

Philosophy: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The present text explores how the topic of head and heart is much more complicated than one would expect, according to Paul Henne and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, contributors of Neuroexistentialism. “Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality” aims at figuring out the problem of which moral judgments we can trust, judgments from one’s head (revisionism) or judgments from one’s heart (conservatism). My hypothesis suggests the opposite of the authors, I believe that if you are a revisionist, your first order intuitions are reliable. After setting the framework, I make three main arguments. (A.) If you are able to self-correct then you can identify errors …

How Racial Injustice Causes Ignorance, Eric Bayruns

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

According to a (Jones and Saad) 2016 Gallup poll 69% of US whites and 32% of US blacks believe that blacks and whites have equal opportunity in the US job market. Much ink has been spilt showing that this belief is false (Alcoff 2015; Anderson 2010; Bertrand and Mullainathan 2003; Fricker 2007; McConahay 1983; Mills 1997; Mills 2007; Stanley 2015). But if its falsity is well publicized, then why do so many people persist in believing this falsehood? In this dissertation, I argue that racial injustice and whites’ current dominant-group status explains why such a high percentage of people in …

Signals In The Black Stack / Geometyr Design Manual, Jason T. Scaglione

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The following white paper provides a critical accompaniment to my capstone project: the GEOMEtyr Design Manual. GEOMEtyr is a virtual reality to be made accessible as a mobile and web platform for the visualization of certain systemic elements of a utopic world that parallels our own planet’s geographies, polities, and climates. As such, the GEOMEtyr virtualization is designed to derive utopian space from the informational structures of our own world. The operations by which this may be accomplished are broadly described within the accompanying GEOMEtyr manual. The white paper, Signals in the Black Stack, elaborates vital world-building characteristics of informational …

Is Ai Intelligent, Really?, Bruce D. Baker

SPU Works

The question of intelligence opens up a bouquet of interrelated questions:

Suppose that some future AGI systems (on-screen or robots) equaled human performance. Would they have real intelligence, real understanding, real creativity? Would they have selves, moral standing, free choice? Would they be conscious? And without consciousness, could they have any of those other properties?[1]

The only way out of the morass is to recognize that truth claims do not stand on their own, aloof and cut off from the sea of meaning which grants epistemic access. In other words, truth presumes access to: (1) a way of knowing, …

Replies To Laura Guerrero, Rachanna Kamtekar, And Jennifer Nagel, Ethan A. Mills

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Classical Indian Skepticism: Reforming Or Rejecting Philosophy, Jennifer Nagel

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

The Presuppositions Of A Skeptic, Rachana Kamtekar

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Don’T Stop Believing: An Argument Against Buddhist Skepticism, Laura Guerrero

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Overview, Ethan A. Mills

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Implicit Bias And The Boundaries Of Belief: A Single-Representational Dual-Attitude Account Of Implicit Attitudes, Austin Dakota Synoground

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since their inception, implicit attitudes have been defined as associative mental states, separate from beliefs, which are considered to be propositional in nature. Recently, several philosophers have challenged this distinction, arguing that implicit attitudes are actually unconscious beliefs. In turn, I argue that the attitudes detected by current experimental paradigms are blind to distinctions between implicit attitudes, which I define as the products of an associative learning mechanism, and unconscious beliefs, which are the products of a propositional learning mechanism. Specifically, I argue for a single-representational dual-attitude account of implicit bias.

Wholeheartedness And Acquaintance With God, Sarah Naomi Dannemiller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I demonstrate that wholeheartedness is a constitutive intellectual virtue. Wholeheartedness consists of a definite and unified volitional structure in which one’s desires are integrated around union with God and which contributes to one’s personal intellectual worth by positively orienting her toward acquaintance with God. Since wholeheartedness consists of a hierarchy of the will that prioritizes a desire for union with God, wholeheartedness aims towards the epistemic good of acquaintance. By desiring that one have a will that wills union with God, she cooperates with God toward wholeheartedness. As one becomes aware of her volitional structure changing, she …

The Color Of Water: An Autoethnographically-Inspired Journey Of My Becoming A Researcher, Trude Klevan, Bengt Karlsson, Alec Grant

The Qualitative Report

In this paper, the first author autoethnographically describes, discusses and reflects on her process of becoming a researcher based on her PhD journey. She explores how the development of knowledge and her understandings of what counts as knowledge is entangled with her personal and professional development. The second and third authors join with her to explore and comment on the ways in which her doctoral topic knowledge and her process of becoming a researcher co-evolved. On this basis, all authors challenge and trouble what counts as qualitative knowledge and inquiry in contemporary academia and discuss the need for the provision …

A Metacognitive Approach To Trust And A Case Study: Artificial Agency, Ioan Muntean

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Trust is defined as a belief of a human H (`the trustor') about the ability of an agent A (the `trustee') to perform future action(s). We adopt here dispositionalism and internalism about trust: H trusts A iff A has some internal dispositions as competences. The dispositional competences of A are high-level metacognitive requirements, in the line of a naturalized virtue epistemology. (Sosa, Carter) We advance a Bayesian model of two (i) confidence in the decision and (ii) model uncertainty. To trust A, H demands A to be self-assertive about confidence and able to self-correct its own models. In the Bayesian …

“To Be Men, Not Destroyers”: Developing Dabrowskian Personalities In Ezra Pound’S The Cantos And Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Michelle A. Nicholson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Kazimierz Dabrowski’s psychological theory of positive disintegration is a lesser known theory of personality development that offers an alternative critical perspective of literature. It provides a framework for the characterization of postmodern protagonists who move beyond heroic indoctrination to construct their own self-organized, autonomous identities. Ezra Pound’s The Cantos captures the speaker-poet’s extensive process of inner conflict, providing a unique opportunity to track the progress of the hero’s transformation into a personality, or a man. American Gods is a more fully realized portrayal of a character who undergoes the complete paradigmatic collapse of positive disintegration and deliberate self-derived self-revision …

Universe Of Things: A Human Presentation Of Food-For-Thought., Madeline Halpern

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

I present this statement under three loose categories: People, Objects and their Environment. I consider People as human, Objects as art objects, domestic objects, and food, and Environment as the shared space of the former groups. Food directs this statement as I present each concept and creative process as a metaphorical dish. Material exploration carried me from a direct practice of reorienting acrylic paint and questioning object functionality through personified sculptures into theoretical thesis work in which I use interpersonal relations and the idea of consumption to translate tactile, gustatory and olfactory sensations into digital film. In this meal I …

Qualia, The Heart Of The Mind-Body Problem And Epistemology’S Quagmire, Allison Mangan

Augsburg Honors Review

Qualia are layered and complex, a labyrinth of a concept, rife with debate as to their existence, state, and what they mean for our understanding of knowledge, relationship with the world, and ourselves. Thoughtful exploration into the complexities of what qualia are and how they relate to the mind-body problem will be wrestled with though research applied within this paper.