Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Krzysztof Sękowski (University of Warsaw) on his recent paper,  Concept Revision, Concept Application and the Role of Intuitions in Gettier Cases ( Episteme, 2022). Krzysztof Sękowski According to the standard view, in thought experiments (or more specifically in the method of cases) the conclusion is justified by intuitions about the applicability of a given concept. For instance, in Gettier Cases our intuition that we can not say that the protagonist in a story KNOWS something justifies our conclusion that JTB theory of knowledge is false. According to this view, the method of cases enables us to establish some truths about that concept. Therefore, it is considered a descriptive method, as it helps discover truths about a given concept without revising, regulating or explicating its meaning. The paper presents a different view on this method. According to it this method can be interpreted as a normative method, within which arguments for revising the meaning o...

This post is by James Andow  (pictured above), a Lecturer in Moral Philosophy at the University of Reading . James’s main research interests are in philosophical methodology, in particular, on intuitions and experimental philosophy. In this post, he talks about some recent work in epistemology. On the basis of no evidence at all, Jo comes to the private belief that aliens from another planet are helping her navigate the social world. Without that belief, Jo would experience profound social anxiety, develop paranoid tendencies, and come to suffer worse delusions that would severely impact her ability to maintain her physical wellbeing, personal relationships, employment, and so on. With her belief, Jo does pretty well for herself. Overall it is probably good Jo has this belief about aliens. There are certainly comparative benefits to having this belief. The overall quality of Jo's cognitions is improved by having this belief. She is closer to the truth, has fewer false co...

This post is by James Andow (pictured above), a Lecturer in Moral Philosophy at the University of Reading. James’s research interests are in philosophical methodology, in particular, on intuitions and experimental philosophy. In this post he summarises his paper ‘ How Distinctive Is Philosophers' Intuition Talk ?’ There’s a bomb on the funicular railway. It is about to go off. It’s a tragic disaster in the making. There are two carriages connected by a rope. In the carriage nearest the pier, headed down the cliff, there is a party of schoolchildren with buckets and spades. In the carriage nearest the bandstand, headed up the cliff, there is a bomb planted by ecoterrorists. The carriages are currently alongside each other. If the carriages are stopped, …  Philosophers use intuitions. They use them a lot. This much is beyond question. If you have ever studied any philosophy or talked about philosophy with a philosopher you will doubtless have noted the tendency ...

Caitrin Donovan  and  Reinier Schuur  report from the 2015 University of Sydney Winter School. The programme was entitled "Cross-cultural psychological differences and their philosophical implications" and seminars were led by  Stephen Stich  (Rutgers) and  Dominic Murphy  (University of Sydney). From the 19th till the 23rd of October the unit for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney held its second winter school programme, this year on the topic of “Cross-cultural psychological differences and their philosophical implications”. Intuitions have been long been the bread and butter of various philosophical projects, which use them to evaluate semantic, epistemic, ethical and ontological theories and concepts. This can be seen in ‘Gettier cases’ in epistemology where accounts of knowledge are tested against intuitions on what counts as knowledge, and in ‘trolley cases’ in ethics where what is morally justified action i...

This post is by James Andow  (pictured above), a Lecturer in Moral Philosophy at the University of Reading. James’s research interests are in philosophical methodology, in particular, on intuitions and experimental philosophy. In this post he summarises his paper ‘ Expecting Moral Philosophers to be Reliable ’. You can read the paper in draft form here . Consider the following case: A bomb is about to go off. It’s a big one. If this bomb goes off, every single living thing will die instantaneously and painlessly, and the universe will be rendered incapable of ever supporting life again. There is but one way to stop the bomb: pushing a big red button. Pushing the button would stop the bomb from going off. Pushing the button would also cure all disease, eradicate poverty, remove the Tories from government, provide everyone with a free kitten, stop climate change, and bring Duke Ellington back. Is it morally permissible to push the button? If you thought of an answer, y...

Jonathan Farrell My name is Jonathan Farrell , and I am a post-doc at the University of Manchester on Tim Bayne’s Architecture of Consciousness project. I am interested in providing a taxonomy of seemings —   the states we are in when things seem some way to us. In this post I will try to explain why a taxonomy would be useful. In brief: there are different kinds of seemings, and we have different, non-equivalent, ways of ascribing seemings to subjects. Thus philosophers need to be careful when and how they use ‘seem’ to make sure that their arguments do not equivocate and that they do not talk past each other. Providing a taxonomy of seemings can help us to avoid these problems. In everyday speech it is common to talk about some of our mental states by using ‘seem’: the stick half in water, for example, seems bent to me, and it seems that this winter will be colder than last winter. Philosophers also talk about seemings. Indrek Reiland ( 2014) appeals to seemings to reso...