Epistemology Commons^™

Objectivity And The Role Of Journalism In Democratic Societies, Tyler Sonnemaker

CMC Senior Theses

In this essay, I argue that the institution of journalism plays a vital role in informing citizens of a deliberative democratic society, and that to effectively fulfill this role, journalists must report the news objectively. I first examine the historical evolution of objectivity as it pertains to journalism. Then, I elaborate on some of the philosophical concepts that provide the foundation for objectivity. Next, I introduce John Rawls’ idea of public reason, which provides an improved understanding of the role of journalism within a democratic society. I claim from this that journalism must re-envision its role as guardian of the …

Reducing Subjectivity: Meditation And Implicit Bias, Diana M. Ciuca

CMC Senior Theses

Implicit association of racial stereotypes is brought about by social conditioning (Greenwald & Krieger, 2006). This conditioning can be explained by attractor networks (Sharp, 2011). Reducing implicit bias through meditation can show the effectiveness of reducing the rigidity of attractor networks, thereby reducing subjectivity. Mindfulness meditation has shown to reduce bias from the use of one single guided session conducted before performing an Implicit Association Test (Lueke & Gibson, 2015). Attachment to socially conditioned racial bias should become less prevalent through practicing meditation over time. An experimental model is proposed to test this claim along with a reconceptualization of consciousness …

Natural Kindness, Matthew H. Slater

Faculty Journal Articles

Philosophers have long been interested in a series of interrelated questions about natural kinds. What are they? What role do they play in science and metaphysics? How do they contribute to our epistemic projects? What categories count as natural kinds? And so on. Owing, perhaps, to different starting points and emphases, we now have at hand a variety of conceptions of natural kinds—some apparently better suited than others to accom- modate a particular sort of inquiry. Even if coherent, this situation isn’t ideal. My goal in this article is to begin to articulate a more general account of ‘natural kind …

Wilderness And Epistemic Wildness, John T. Stanfield

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The traditional concept of wilderness was a product of the time out of which it came. Times have changed. The social context of conservation, how humans affect nature, and scientific understanding of how ecosystems function have all shifted in ways that make the wilderness idea problematic. The values that people found in wilderness are still relevant, however. It is the way that they are tied together in the concept of wilderness that has become a problem.

I propose a revised concept of wilderness that meets the concerns of critics of wilderness, and accounts for the tension between the wild and …

Quasi-Subjectivity And Ethics In Non-Modernity, Justin T. Simpson

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The inspiration behind this philosophical endeavor is an ethical one: interested in what it means to flourish as a human being – how to live well and authentically. Similar to medicine and how the ability to prescribe the appropriate treatment depends on first making a diagnosis, the focus of this work will to be understand the human condition and the ways in which subjectivity, one’s sense of self, is constituted. Given the general dissatisfaction with the modern metaphysical picture of the world, which analyzes the world in terms of the mutually exclusive and completely separate categories of nature/objects and society/subjects, …

Epistemic Categories And Causal Kinds, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Within philosophy of science, debates about realism often turn on whether posited entities exist or whether scientific claims are true. Natural kinds tend to be investigated by philosophers of language or metaphysicians, for whom semantic or ontological considerations can overshadow scientific ones. Since science crucially involves dividing the world up into categories of things, however, issues concerning classification ought to be central for philosophy of science. Muhammad Ali Khalidi's book fills that gap, and I commend it to readers with an interest in scientific taxonomy and natural kinds. He works through general issues to craft a useful philosophical conception and …

Esquisse D’Un Projet Épistémologique Pour La Science Politique Dans Une Afrique Post-Génocide, Mame-Penda Ba

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article attempts to answer two main questions: “What does it mean to teach political science in an African university when oneself is African?” and “what social realities are we documenting (or should we document)?” As a political scientist, I came to ask myself these questions based on my encounter with the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, and based on the questions that this major event had kindled in me. My encounter with the subject of “genocide” was in all respects an upheaval because I understood suddenly a large weakness in the way political science was taught at Université …

Epistemological Realism And Onto-Relations, Max Lewis Edward Andrews

Liberty Theological Review

The traditional concept of knowledge is a justified true belief. The bulk of contemporary epistemology has focused primarily on that task of justification. Truth seems to be a quite obvious criterion—does the belief in question correspond to reality? My contention is that the aspect of ontology is far too separated from epistemology. This onto-relationship of between reality and beliefs require the epistemic method of epistemological realism. This is not to diminish the task of justification. I will then discuss the role of inference from the onto-relationships of free invention and discovery and whether it is best suited for a foundationalist …

A Humean Account Of Testimonial Justification, Shane Ryan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I argue that a Humean account can make sense of the phenomenology associated with testimonial justification; the phenomenology being that in standard cases hearers regularly simply accept a testifier’s assertions as true – hearers don't engage in monitoring. The upshot is that a Humean account is in a better position dialectically than is usually supposed. I provide some background to the debate before setting out two challenges facing accounts of testimonial justification. The first challenge is to provide an account that accords with the phenomenology of testimonial reception; the second challenge is to provide an account that can make sense …

A Critique Of Immaterial Labour: Dublin's Independent Music Scene As A Strategic Site Of Investigation, Susan Gill

Doctoral

This study critiques the autonomist concept of immaterial labour. Both diagnostic and prescriptive, the term immaterial labour was coined by Lazzarato (1997), but became synonymous with Hardt and Negri’s (2001a; 2004; 2010) ‘Empire’ trilogy. They describe post-industrial labour as characterised by the production of immaterial commodities such as culture, creativity and information. Seeing it as a hegemonic form of production, accelerationist Marxists Hardt and Negri (ibid.) suggest that immaterial labour has the radical potential to restructure socio-economic life, resulting in spontaneous communism. However, their thesis has been subject to critique as it homogenises post-industrial production and lacks empirical engagement. This …

The Radical Possibilities Of Being Human: Exploring The Risk, Violence, And Rewards Of Knowing And Being Known (A Survival Guide For Liminal Feminists), Parvoneh Shirgir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Within this liminal feminist survival guide I present a collection of personal experiences and analysis of these moments in order to elucidate how and when violence occurs. I foreground my thought process and the ideas and figures that keep me hopeful, help remind me that our world is not concrete but instead changing, shifting, and malleable. What follows is a necessarily partial (and somewhat useless, somewhat useful) survival guide for liminal feminists, those who exist on the edges of boundaries and encounter all of the possibilities and fears that come with such a position. I present not so much a …

Reliability For Degrees Of Belief, Jeffrey Dunn

Philosophy Faculty publications

We often evaluate belief-forming processes, agents, or entire belief states for reliability. This is normally done with the assumption that beliefs are all-or-nothing. How does such evaluation go when we’re considering beliefs that come in degrees? I consider a natural answer to this question that focuses on the degree of truth-possession had by a set of beliefs. I argue that this natural proposal is inadequate, but for an interesting reason. When we are dealing with all-or-nothing belief, high reliability leads to high levels of truth-possession. However, when it comes to degrees of belief, reliability and truth-possession part ways. The natural …

The Unlevel Knowing Field: An Engagement With Dotson’S Third-Order Epistemic Oppression, Alison Bailey

Faculty Publications - Philosophy

Social justice demands that we think carefully about the epistemic terrain upon which we stand and the epistemic resources each of relies upon to move across that ground safely. Epistemic cartographies are politically saturated. Broadly speaking these terrains are unlevel playing fields—I think of them as unlevel knowing fields— that offer members of socially dominant groups an epistemic home turf advantage. Members of marginalized groups must learn to navigate this field creatively.

Everyone Knew He Did It, But He Was Not Condemned! Knowledge And Knowledge Attributions In Legal Contexts, Danny Marrero Avendano

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Theorizing about knowledge attributions has revolved almost exclusively around the problem of skepticism and knowledge attributions in everyday conversations. Sutton (2007), however, points out that Epistemic Contextualism seems to settle another field: "[i]t is sometimes suggested that courtroom proceedings provide a context that shows the context-sensitivity of knowledge ascription truth-conditions" (p. 87). This dissertation is devoted to the evaluation of this contextualist suggestion (CS). Epistemic Contextualism claims that the correctness of knowledge attributions depends on the salience of error possibilities or the practical states of a knowledge attributor's context of utterance. I interpret CS implies that the context of utterance …

A Defence Of Epistemic Consequentialism, Jeffrey Dunn

Philosophy Faculty publications

Epistemic consequentialists maintain that the epistemically right (e.g., the justified) is to be understood in terms of conduciveness to the epistemic good (e.g., true belief). Given the wide variety of epistemological approaches that assume some form of epistemic consequentialism, and the controversies surrounding consequentialism in ethics, it is surprising that epistemic consequentialism remains largely uncontested. However, in a recent paper, Selim Berker has provided arguments that allegedly lead to a ‘rejection’ of epistemic consequentialism. In the present paper, it is shown that reliabilism—the most prominent form of epistemic consequentialism, and one of Berker's main targets—survives Berker's arguments unscathed.

Collapsing The Secret Self: Thackeray's The History Of Pendennis As A Performative Parody, Rachel Freire

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

By collapsing the distinctions between private and public as he presents individual interiority as yet another performance, Thackeray’s The History of Pendennis undercuts disciplinary individualism, so that performances are not the product of social regulation but rather are as genuine as any presumed private thoughts or feelings. Pendennis actively performs the dissolution of interiority, as it thematically and stylistically enacts the awkwardness of genuine affectation as a routine and unavoidable reality of modern life. Reveling in the discomfort that accompanies the absence of secrecy, Thackeray parodies the privileging of secrecy and one’s interior self that pervades the Bildung genre he …

In Between The Dots And Dashes: Telegrams And The Mediation Of Intimacy In The Golden Bowl, Sean Jemison

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Using a poststructural and reader-response theoretical framework, the author explores competing ideas of interpretation, epistemology, and the problematic nature of truth and meaning in Henry James’s novel, The Golden Bowl. The author analyzes the ways in which emergent nineteenth century communication technologies, specifically how telegraphy both mediates and facilitates intimacy in a modern landscape. James anticipates modern forms of social media by exploring the nuances and the potential erotic nature of mediated communication and knowledge.

Novels, Philosophies, And Sex, Aleksondra Hultquist

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

On The Relation Between Quantum Mechanical And Neo-Mechanistic Ontologies And Explanatory Strategies, Meinard Kuhlmann, Stuart Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Advocates of the New Mechanicism in philosophy of science argue that scientific explanation often consists in describing mechanisms responsible for natural phenomena. Despite its successes, one might think that this approach does not square with the ontological strictures of quantum mechanics. New Mechanists suppose that mechanisms are composed of objects with definite properties, which are interconnected via local causal interactions. Quantum mechanics calls these suppositions into question. Since mechanisms are hierarchical it appears that even macroscopic mechanisms must supervene on a set of “objects” that behave non- classically. In this paper we argue, in part by appeal to the theory …

Common Knowledge: The Epistemology Of American Realism, Mark Sussman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation, Common Knowledge: The Epistemology of American Realism, focuses on realist fiction (primarily the novel) at the end of the nineteenth century. Its motivating claim is that the central descriptive and thematic imperative of realism--to depict life "as it is" rather than in some idealized form--emerged in response to crises in the status of knowledge that resulted from an attempt by writers and readers to come to a common understanding of the relationship between private experience and an increasingly fragmented social world. While William Dean Howells's definition of realism as a form of writing that displays "fidelity to experience …