Research Articles, XII, 4

Miguel LÓPEZ-ASTORGA ABSTRACT: In his search for a better scientific language, Carnap offered a number of definitions, ideas, and arguments. This paper is devoted to one of his definitions in this regard. In particular, it addresses a definition providing rules to add new properties to the descriptions of objects or beings by taking into account other properties of those very …

Erhan DEMIRCIOGLU ABSTRACT: My aim in this paper is to cast doubt on the idea of undercutting defeat by showing that it is beset by some serious problems. I examine a number of attempts to specify the conditions for undercutting defeat and find them to be defective. Absent further attempts, and on the basis of the considerations offered, I conclude …

Steven DIGGIN ABSTRACT: Plausible probabilistic accounts of evidential support entail that every true proposition is evidence for itself. This paper defends this surprising principle against a series of recent objections from Jessica Brown. Specifically, the paper argues that: (i) explanationist accounts of evidential support convergently entail that every true proposition is self-evident, and (ii) it is often felicitous to cite …

Tsung-Hsing HO ABSTRACT: A popular evidentialist argument against pragmatism is based on reason internalism: the view that a normative reason for one to φ must be able to guide one in normative deliberation whether to φ. In the case of belief, this argument maintains that, when deliberating whether to believe p, one must deliberate whether p is true. Since pragmatic …

Shane RYAN ABSTRACT: There is a well-established literature on the ethics of belief. Our beliefs, however, are just one aspect of our intellectual lives with which epistemology should be concerned. I make the case that epistemologists should be concerned with an ethics of intellectual agency rather than the narrower category of ethics of belief. Various species of normativity, epistemic, moral, …