bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Explaining Value
Authors: Harman Gilbert 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Discusses ways in which people's moral values might be explained, starting with Hume's account of our different attitudes toward chastity in men and in women, Hume's somewhat utilitarian explanation of moral sentiments in general, various theories of moral development, explanations of aspects of morality in terms of natural selection, Posner's explanation of aspects of morality in terms of wealth maximization, explanations that appeal to principles like Double Effect, and sociological and historical explanations of aspects of morality.
Knowledge in a Social World
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractA certain conception of social epistemology is articulated and applied to numerous social arenas. This conception retains epistemology's traditional interest in truth and reliable inquiry, but replaces its customary emphasis on solitary knowers with a focus on social institutions and interpersonal practices. Postmodernism, science studies, and pragmatism pose worries about the meaning and attainability of objective truth and knowledge. After laying these concerns to rest, “veritistic” social epistemology is advanced as a normative discipline seeking practices and institutions that would best foster knowledge. The book explores forms and methods of communication, including norms of argumentation, information technology, and institutional structures governing speech and the media. Social dimensions of knowledge quests are explored in science, law, democracy, and education. The book examines popular topics in contemporary epistemology such as testimony and Bayesianism, while breaking new ground by connecting epistemology with historically unrelated branches of philosophy such as political and legal theory. Democracy's success, it is argued, requires the attainment of certain epistemic desiderata, and substantive justice depends on well‐chosen procedures of legal evidence.
Epistemology and Postmodern Resistance
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractBoth natural curiosity and practical concerns fuel our desire for true belief, i.e., knowledge (in a weak sense). The value of true belief can trumped by other values, but it is of special concern to epistemology. Many writers and contemporary movements (social constructivism, postmodernism, pragmatism) repudiate realist truth as a viable criterion of epistemic phenomena. This chapter responds to six criticisms of truth‐based epistemology, criticisms that appeal to a consensus theory of truth, the social construction of facts, the alleged unknowability of truth, and the denial of epistemic privilege.
Truth
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis chapter surveys several philosophical approaches to the meaning or nature of truth, including instrumentalism, epistemic or verificationist approaches, deflationism, and the correspondence theory. Different versions of the first three approaches are examined, and each faces serious difficulties. The virtues of the correspondence theory are emphasized, including its up‐front acceptance of “worldly” truth‐makers. However, deflationism is also compatible with a realist conception of truth, and if it could surmount its technical problems, it might be acceptable.
The Framework
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractFrom a veritistic standpoint, true belief is better than either ignorance or error, and higher degrees of belief in truths are better than lower degrees of belief, at least on topics of interest. These sorts of states have “fundamental” veritistic value (in varying degrees), and practices that produce changes in veritistically valuable states have “instrumental” veritistic value (V‐value). Veritistic social epistemology evaluates actual and possible social practices in terms of instrumental V‐value. This conception is preferable to rivals such as consensus consequentialism, utility consequentialism, and pure proceduralism. The feasibility of veritistic analysis is defended, worries about circularity are allayed, and various technical details are explored.
The Technology and Economics of Communication
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractInnovations in communication technology make a difference to states of knowledge by changing the “message infosphere”: the set of messages that are sent and selectively retrieved by senders or receivers. Expanding the message infosphere, however, does not guarantee improvements in social knowledge. That depends on the veritistic quality of the messages sent and the ability of receivers to sift the true from the false, the relevant from the irrelevant. This chapter reviews highlights of the digital revolution in terms of its impact on knowledge. The economics of communication regimes is also veritistically significant, as illustrated by the influence owners and advertisers exert on message content in the mass media.
Speech Regulation and the Marketplace of Ideas
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractA classical rationale for the freedom of speech, traceable to John Milton and John Stuart Mill, is the argument that truth will emerge in an open marketplace of ideas. Given an economic twist, it is claimed that the competitive market for speech will maximize truth just as competitive markets in other goods are best in economic terms. If government does not interfere with this market, knowledge will be maximized. Is economic theory sustaining this argument? No, this chapter traces the reasons why no such simple formula for the (non‐) regulation of speech is implied by economic theory, especially when market failures are taken into account.
Science
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractSome sociologists of science debunk science by describing it as historically contingent convention or the politics of persuasion. Another challenge to science's pretensions to truth is a reminder of the motivation that often drives scientific research, viz., desire for credit from one's peers. This challenge is addressed by showing that, under natural assumptions of credit assignment, credit‐driven motivation will still lead researchers to perform experiments that can lead to expected increases in knowledge. Science also depends on deference to authorities, and the chapter concludes with an analysis of the ability of novices to recognize genuine authorities.
Law
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe fundamental aim of legal adjudication is to render substantive justice, but this requires true judgements to be made about material (nonlegal) facts. What institutional provisions for the disposition of evidence and the rendering of judgements will generate the highest ratio of true judgements? The chapter compares the civil‐law system of the Continent with the Anglo‐American adversarial system, pinpointing several aspects of the adversarial system that pose substantial risks of distorting the truth. For example, adversarial control of proceedings implies that lawyers in cross‐examination can make opposing witnesses appear unreliable or untrustworthy even when they are not, thereby leading the jury in the direction of error. If neutral judges conduct witness interrogation, as they do in the civil‐law system, this potential distortion is avoided.
Democracy
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractEpistemic theories of democracy suggest that a prime virtue of democracy is the prospect of making good decisions by utilizing the collective knowledge of the electorate. This chapter argues that good democratic decision‐making depends on voters’ possessing accurate electoral knowledge. In any given race, each voter confronts his/her “core voter question”, i.e., “which candidate, if elected, would produce the best outcomes according to my standards?” It is shown that the more voters have core knowledge (rather than core ignorance or error), the more likely it is they will elect officials whose decisional outputs will serve a majority's interests. A key question facing democracies is: What reporting practices by the press or policies vis‐à‐vis campaign advertising would maximize voters’ core knowledge?
Being Known
Authors: Peacocke Christopher 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe Integration Challenge is the task of reconciling a plausible account of what is involved in the truth of statements of a given kind with a credible account of how we can know those statements, when we do know them. In any domain for which the challenge is difficult, we may revise either our conception of the epistemology of that domain, or our conception of its metaphysics, or both. Successfully meeting the Integration Challenge involves the development of a theory of understanding with both metaphysical and epistemological dimensions. Understanding involves an integrated grasp both of truth conditions, and, via a theory of possession conditions, and of circumstances in which one can come to know that certain of those conditions obtain. Two different models for meeting the Integration Challenge can be developed: the model of constitutive causal sensitivity and the model of implicitly known principles. A model of the first kind is developed for a realistic account of our understanding of past‐tense contents. A model of the second kind is developed for our understanding of contents involving metaphysical necessity; an account that treats modal statements as not mind‐dependent, but not as involving Lewisian modal realism. The Integration Challenge is also addressed for various classical and recent problems of philosophy: the nature of one's knowledge of the contents of one's own mental states; the distinctive nature of first‐person knowledge; and the classical problem of the freedom of the will.
Truth, Content, and the Epistemic
Authors: Peacocke Christopher 
Published: October 2003

AbstractSome concepts can be individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for knowing certain contents containing those concepts (‘the Linking Thesis’). For these concepts, the conditions for outright judgement mentioned in their possession conditions suffice both for the truth of the contents in question and for the knowledge of those contents. Proper analysis of these conditions provides a means of meeting the Integration Challenge in cases in which the Linking Thesis holds. The model of constitutive causal sensitivity and the model of implicitly known principles are distinguished. Indicators of which model is appropriate for a given domain include a priori status, the role of causal explanation of knowledgeable judgement about the domain, and the role of principles concerning the identity of properties.
The Past
Authors: Peacocke Christopher 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Understanding statements containing the past tense involves tacit knowledge of the generalization of such principles as this: ‘Yesterday it rained’ is true if and only if yesterday had the same property as today is required to have for a present‐tense thought ‘It is now raining’ to be true when evaluated with respect to today. This is a variant of the truth‐value link. This tacit knowledge integrates with realism about the past because present‐tense statements are as categorical as their past‐tense counterparts and cannot be reduced to counterfactuals without circularity. An externalist model of the perception of temporal properties and relations can be given, one involving a constitutive sensitivity to instances of those temporal properties and relations themselves. This can contribute to an explanation of how memory supplies knowledge of the past.
Necessity
Authors: Peacocke Christopher 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThere is a set of principles, the Principles of Possibility, that constrains whether a description picks out a genuinely possible world. To grasp the concept of metaphysical necessity is to have tacit knowledge of this set of Principles and to apply them in evaluating modal statements and thoughts. For a statement to be necessary is for it to hold in all descriptions that are not excluded as possible by the principles of possibility. This integrates the metaphysics and epistemology of necessity, without collapsing into mind‐dependence and without a commitment to modal realism. The treatment of the metaphysics validates the modal systems T and S4.
Self‐Knowledge and Intentional Content
Authors: Peacocke Christopher 
Published: October 2003

AbstractA conscious occurrent propositional attitude contributes to the content of consciousness by occupying attention, rather than by being its object. Externally individuated concepts contribute to the nature of this conscious occupation of attention. Those same externally individuated concepts are redeployed when the occurrence of these conscious states gives a subject a reason for self‐ascribing a propositional attitude. This account, involving both conscious states and conceptual redeployment, steers a middle course between accounts of self‐ascription that involve introspection and those accounts under which a subject does not have reasons when she makes such a self‐ascription.
Self‐Knowledge and Illusions of Transcendence
Authors: Peacocke Christopher 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThinkers who have postulated a transcendental subject of experience have responded to an epistemological insight about first‐person thought with a metaphysical error. The distinctive features of the first person that has produced the illusion is not immunity to error through misidentification, but a certain kind of representational independence. Representationally independent uses of the first person are those in which the thinker rationally forms a present‐tense first‐person belief, but not by endorsing the content of some conscious state, which itself has a first‐person representational content. Mis‐characterization of this phenomenon provides an explanation of the source of the illusion that there is a transcendental subject of experience.
Freedom
Authors: Peacocke Christopher 
Published: October 2003

AbstractA reflective person is free to do something just in case there is a close possibility in which he tries to do it, and he would do it if he tried to. On this account, it can be shown that this inference is invalid: ‘If someone is not free not to be F, and it is causally necessary that if he is F, then he is G, then: he is not free not to be G’. This account of freedom is compatibilist, and attributions of freedom involve a substantive metaphysical commitment, rather than being a non‐factual or practical matter.
Concluding Remarks
Authors: Peacocke Christopher 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe objectivity of some area of thought can often be acknowledged without postulating an exotic metaphysics. Statements that may seem to be the merest truisms may have previously hidden metaphysical or epistemological significance. No conclusions about the mind‐dependence of some subject matter can be drawn from the fact that in certain circumstances, it is a priori that a thinker will be right about that subject matter. The notion of an implicit conception with a certain content looms large in an account of understanding. We can learn more about metaphysics and epistemology by considering them not in isolation, but in the light of the relations they must bear to one another.
Ethics, Evil, and Fiction
Authors: McGinn Colin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The main thesis of this book is that literature can enrich the study of ethics, because it provides the resources for the study of ethical problems that contemporary analytical moral philosophy fails to address. In Chapters 2 and 3, McGinn offers a discussion of analytical moral philosophy, in which he argues that moral goodness is an objective fact, and furthermore that ethical knowledge is not inferior to scientific knowledge. In Chapter 4, drawing on Hermann Melville's Billy Budd, McGinn proceeds to examine the nature of the evil character. In Chapter 5, McGinn discusses the notion of the Beautiful Soul, and he sets out his ‘aesthetic theory of virtue’, or the theory that aesthetic properties supervene on ethical attributes. Chapters 6 and 7 consist of close readings of two literary works, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, respectively. In his conclusion, McGinn reiterates his view that moral philosophy is too narrow in its focus. It investigates words and propositions, using what McGinn calls the ‘commandment’ paradigm. McGinn advocates that the study of ethics pursues the ‘parable’ paradigm, as afforded by works of fictional narrative.
Introduction: The Scope of Moral Philosophy
Authors: McGinn Colin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
McGinn argues that there are important ethical questions, such as the moral psychology of evil, which are unsuited to study according to the bipartite division of contemporary analytic moral philosophy into metaethics and normative ethics. McGinn's thesis is that the best way to approach such problems is by appealing to literature, which presents ideal conditions for the study of moral character. McGinn is also interested in the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, and in whether ethical questions might be explicable in terms of aesthetics. However, before turning to these topics, McGinn presents, in chapters 2 and 3, an analytical discussion of ethical knowledge in which he defends an objectivist or ‘cognitivist’ view of moral truth.
Goodness
Authors: McGinn Colin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter is an extensive critique of the thesis of moral psychologism. Appealing to the Naturalistic Fallacy, McGinn argues that moral psychologism, as instanced in emotivism, the dispositional theory of goodness and relativism, confuses what ought to be the case with what is the case, psychologically. After a discussion of moral intentionality, McGinn concludes that goodness and other moral values are not mental properties but conceptually primitive, evaluative properties that have no place in an empirical science like psychology.
Knowledge of Goodness
Authors: McGinn Colin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
In this chapter, McGinn argues that ethical knowledge belongs to a distinct epistemological category from scientific knowledge. Pursuing an analogy with mathematics and modern linguistics, McGinn argues that ethical truths are a priori, innate truths, and in this respect ethics is at least as respectable as science; indeed, epistemologically, it is on a par with logic and mathematics. A key difference between science and ethics is that moral truth, unlike scientific truth, is not coercive. Therefore, moral truth has no pragmatic justification but is something we pursue for its own sake. McGinn concludes the chapter with the suggestion that our moral sensibility is a by‐product of our innate grasp of folk psychology.
The Evil Character
Authors: McGinn Colin 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe Evil Character, e.g. Claggart in Melville's Billy Budd, is one who derives pleasure from other people's pain, and pain from their pleasure. The attraction of Sadism is that, by causing pain, one has the power to subvert the victim's basic principles and values, the ultimate goal being to destroy the victim's will to live. Although envy is often a source of evil, McGinn argues that, from the point of view of folk psychology, an evil disposition is a primitive fact that does not require a special explanation. McGinn considers two possible origins of evil: (1) violent entertainment, and (2) group behaviour. The prevention of evil lies in breaking the hedonic link or the link between pleasure and the evil act.
Beauty of Soul
Authors: McGinn Colin 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe ‘aesthetic theory of virtue’ or ATV, is the thesis, partly inspired by Thomas Reid, that virtue coincides with beauty of soul and vice with ugliness of soul. The basic idea of ATV is that for a person to be virtuous is for his soul (character or personality) to have certain aesthetic properties, which are necessary and sufficient conditions for personal goodness. The relation between morally aesthetic properties and moral attributes is one of supervenience of the former upon the latter. McGinn cites the film Brief Encounter to illustrate the concept of the beautiful soul, and he also draws upon Nabokov's discussion of the aesthetic in Lolita. A morally bad character, McGinn argues, cannot have a beautiful soul, nor can a morally good character have an ugly soul.
The Picture: Dorian Gray
Authors: McGinn Colin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, McGinn argues, presents in an extreme and exemplary form, the power of the aesthetic to conceal and to express evil; it shows us what happens if the aesthetic is allowed to dominate over the moral. The character of Dorian has an exterior beauty, which is taken as a sign of virtue, but he has an inner ugliness or an ugliness of soul, which is identified as moral depravity. The lesson of Dorian Gray , McGinn argues, is that the aesthetic and the moral are inseparable, and it is only the concept of the beautiful soul that can keep the aesthetic impulse under control.
Who Is Frankenstein's Monster?
Authors: McGinn Colin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
In this chapter, McGinn begins with a study of the meaning of monstrosity, in which he considers the view set out in the previous chapters that evil is ugliness of soul. Monsters seem to be visible embodiments of evil: however, the connection between physical ugliness and ugliness of soul is not logically necessary. To pursue this point, McGinn presents a close study of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. McGinn interprets the novel as a metaphorical depiction of the human condition. He argues that the life of Frankenstein's monster can be understood as a model of human life.
Conclusion: Stories and Morals
Authors: McGinn Colin 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
In the conclusion, McGinn distinguishes the ‘commandment’ paradigm and the ‘parable’ paradigm of ethical reflection, and argues that analytical moral philosophy, despite its emphasis on moral language, tends to follow the former. In this book, McGinn has argued that the latter, as exemplified in fictional narrative, with its appeal to our aesthetic sensibility, is the true vehicle of moral thought and persuasion. The fictional world is ideal for the exploration of ethical questions and the acquisition of ethical knowledge.
Self and World
Authors: Cassam Quassim 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe thesis of this book is that it is a necessary condition of self‐consciousness that one is intuitively aware of oneself, qua subject, as a physical object. Intuitive awareness of oneself as a physical object involves various forms of bodily awareness in which one is presented to oneself, qua subject, as shaped, solid, and located. These forms of bodily self‐awareness are required for self‐consciousness because they are necessary for consciousness of one's own identity as the subject of different representations, and for consciousness of these representations as representations of an objective world. This account of self‐consciousness helps undermine various forms of idealism and reductionism about the self.
Self and World
Authors: Cassam Quassim 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe Exclusion Thesis states that the self is not an object among others in the world. This chapter examines and rejects two arguments for the thesis, the Abstraction Argument, and the Self‐Consciousness Argument. The Abstraction argument claims that the metaphysical subject, which is not an object among others in the world, is an abstraction from the empirical self. The Self‐Consciousness argument claims that the cognitive subject cannot, on pain of circularity, become an object for itself.