As formulated by Duncan Pritchard and John McDowell, epistemological disjunctivism is the claim that perceptual experience can provide the subject with epistemic justification that is reflectively accessible and externally grounded at the same time. Pritchard calls this thesis ‘the holy grail of epistemology’, since it reconciles two traditionally rival theories of justification, namely epistemic internalism and epistemic externalism. The main objection against epistemological disjunctivism thus understood is that it does not do justice to the well-known internalist intuitions expressed in The New Evil Demon and Brain-in-a-Vat scenarios. I defend epistemological disjunctivism from this objection by indicating that those who apply to such scenarios commit themselves to implausible views in the philosophy of mind. I conclude that epistemological disjunctivism accurately expresses the epistemological attitude of a non-reductive materialist regarding the body-mind problem., Jak formuloval Duncan Pritchard a John McDowell, epistemologický disjunktivismus je tvrzením, že vnímaná zkušenost může poskytnout subjektu epistemické ospravedlnění, které je zároveň reflexně přístupné a zároveň uzemněné. Pritchard tuto práci nazývá „svatým grálem epistemologie“, protože sbližuje dvě tradičně soupeřící teorie ospravedlnění, konkrétně epistemický internalizmus a epistemický externismus. Hlavní námitka proti takto pochopenému epistemologickému disjunktivismu je taková, že nečiní spravedlnost pro známé internacionalistické intuice vyjádřené ve scénářích New Evil Demon a Brain-in-a-Vat. Z této námitky hájím epistemologický disjunktivismus tím, že naznačuji, že ti, kteří se na takové scénáře vztahují, se zavázali k nepravděpodobným názorům ve filozofii mysli., and Paweł Zięba
If our mental attitudes were reasons, we could bootstrap anything into rationality simply by acquiring these mental attitudes. This, it has been argued, shows that mental attitudes cannot be reasons. In this paper, I focus on John Broome’s development of the bootstrapping objection. I distinguish various versions of this objection and I argue that the bootstrapping objection to mind-based accounts of reasons fails in all its versions., Kdyby naše duševní postoje byly důvody, mohli bychom se dostat do racionality jednoduše tím, že bychom získali tyto mentální postoje. To, jak bylo argumentováno, ukazuje, že duševní postoje nemohou být důvody. V tomto příspěvku se zaměřuji na vývoj námitek bootstrappingu Johna Broomeho. Rozlišuji různé verze této námitky a argumentuji tím, že námitka bootstrappingu proti účtům založeným na myslích selhává ve všech jejích verzích., and Christian Piller
Interception is one of the most underestimated processes in hydrological cycle in arid and semiarid regions. In Qilian Mountains of northwestern arid and semiarid China, the Qinghai spruce (Picea crassifolia) forest plays an important role in the hydrological cycle of the inland Heihe River basin. The historical disturbance of Qinghai spruce forest has resulted in various ecological problems. In order to realize the sustainable development of Heihe River basin, the Chinese government implemented restoration practices for Qinghai spruce in the past three decades. In this study, we estimated the rainfall interception in the actual and potential distribution of Qinghai spruce forest. Some of the important findings include: (1) The interception ratio of rainfall events ranged from 11-51% with a mean value of 27.02%; (2) Totally, 147 Mt of rainfall is intercepted by canopy of actual Qinghai spruce forest, in the projected potential distribution of the forest, totally 407 Mt of rainfall will be intercepted.
In the study presented, different hybrid model approaches are proposed for reservoir inflow modeling from the meteorological data (monthly precipitation, one-month-ahead precipitation and monthly mean temperature data) by the combined use of discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and different black box techniques. Multiple linear regression (MLR), feed forward neural networks (FFNN) and least square support vector machines (LSSVM) were considered as the black box methods. In the modeling strategy, meteorological input data were decomposed into wavelet sub-time series at three resolution levels and ineffective sub-time series were eliminated by Mallows’ Cp based all possible regression method. As a result of all possible regression analyses, 2-months mode of time series of monthly temperature (D1_Tt), 8-months mode of time series (D3_Tt) of monthly temperature and approximation mode of time series (A3_Tt) of monthly temperature were eliminated. Remained effective sub-time series were used as the inputs of MLR, FFNN and LSSVM. When the performances of the training and testing periods were compared, it was observed that the DWTFFNN conjunction model has better results in terms of mean square errors (MSE) and determination coefficients (R2 ) statistics. The discrete wavelet transform approach also increased the accuracy of multiple linear regression and least squares support vector machines.
In this paper, I argue that activities as crossing the road, riding a bike or going through a door involve body representations with non-conceptual mental content. Firstly, I discuss some key objections to the notion of body representations for action, in order to draw out their main consequences. Then I introduce an approach to the content of body representations involved in the guidance of everyday action, which seems to satisfy crucial demands in exchange for moving away from conceptual views on mental content. I conclude by discussing a potential objection to that proposal and presenting some thoughts on the relationship between conceptual and non-conceptual content in this field.
Karl Popper lamented the prevalence of dogmatic argument in philosophy and commended the kind of critical argument that is found in the sciences. David Miller criticises the uncritical nature of so-called critical thinking because of its attachment to dogmatic arguments. I expound and clarify Popper’s distinction between critical and dogmatic arguments and the background to it. I criticise some errors in Miller’s discussion. I reaffirm the need for philosophers to eschew dogmatic arguments in favour of critical ones., Karl Popper naříkal nad převahou dogmatického argumentu ve filozofii a pochválil druh kritického argumentu, který se nachází ve vědách. David Miller kritizuje nekritickou povahu takzvaného kritického myšlení z důvodu jeho vazby na dogmatické argumenty. Vysvětluji a objasňuji Popperův rozdíl mezi kritickými a dogmatickými argumenty a pozadím. Kritizuji některé chyby v Millerově diskusi. Znovu potvrzuji, že je třeba, aby se filozofové vyhýbali dogmatickým argumentům ve prospěch kritických argumentů., and Danny Frederick
Current debates on the nature of explanatory understanding have converged on the idea that at least one of the core components of understanding is inferential. Philosophers have characterized the inferential dimension of understanding as consisting of several related cognitive abilities to grasp a given explanation and the nexus of complementing explanations to which it belongs. Whilst analyses of both the subjective epistemic abilities related to grasping and objective features of the inferential links within explanations have received much attention, both within theories of explanation and in the literature on understanding, the criteria for evaluating the specific structure and organization of explanatory clusters or nexuses have received much less attention. Nevertheless, two notable exceptions stand out—Khalifa’s characterization of an explanatory nexus and theories of explanatory unification. I take Khalifa’s ideas, together with the basic criteria of successful explanatory unification, as my starting point. To both, I make some corrections and additions, in order to arrive at a more robust notion of an explanatory nexus and ultimately show that its structural properties and the inter-explanatory relations it contains are relevant to the resulting understanding. I propose to represent such nexuses as directed graph trees and show that some of their properties can be related to the degree of understanding that such nested explanatory structures can offer. I will further illustrate these ideas by a case study on an eco-logical theory of predation.
The paper focuses on the problem of identification of laws of nature and their demarcation from other kinds of regularities. The problem is approached from the viewpoint of several metaphysical, epistemological, logical and methodological criteria. Firstly, several dominant approaches to the problem are introduced. Secondly, the logical and semantic explicatory framework - Transparent Intensional Logic - is presented for the sake of clarification of logical forms of sentences that are supposed to express the laws of nature. Finally, a complementary strategy to the demarcation problem is proposed, including reconsideration of relevant metaphysical, epistemological, logical and methodological requirements and principles behind the former conceptions., Příspěvek je zaměřen na problematiku identifikace přírodních zákonů a jejich vymezení od jiných druhů zákonitostí. K problému je přistupováno z hlediska několika metafyzických, epistemologických, logických a metodologických kritérií. Nejprve je představeno několik dominantních přístupů k problému. Za druhé, logický a sémantický vysvětlující rámec - Transparent Intensional Logic - je prezentován pro objasnění logických forem vět, které mají vyjadřovat přírodní zákony. V neposlední řadě je navržena komplementární strategie k demarkačnímu problému, včetně přehodnocení relevantních metafyzických, epistemologických, logických a metodických požadavků a principů, které jsou v pozadí dřívějších koncepcí., and Lukáš Bielik
Slurs are both derogatory and offensive, and they are said to exhibit “derogatory force” and “offensiveness.” Almost all theories of slurs, except the truth-conditional content theory and the invocational content theory, conflate these two features and use “derogatory force” and “offensiveness” interchangeably. This paper defends and explains the distinction between slurs’ derogatory force and offensiveness by fulfilling three goals. First, it distinguishes between slurs’ being derogatory and their being offensive with four arguments. For instance, ‘Monday’, a slur in the Bostonian argot, is used to secretly derogate African Americans without causing offense. Second, this paper points out that many theories of slurs run into problems because they conflate derogatory force with offensiveness. For example, the prohibition theory’s account of offensiveness in terms of prohibitions struggles to explain why ‘Monday’ is derogatory when it is not a prohibited word in English. Third, this paper offers a new explanation of this distinction from the perspective of a speech act theory of slurs; derogatory force is different from offensiveness because they arise from two different kinds of speech acts that slurs are used to perform, i.e., the illocutionary act of derogation and the perlocutionary act of offending. This new explanation avoids the problems faced by other theories.
In this paper I intend to defend Broome’s cognitivist view that reduces practical normativity to theoretical normativity, but argue that this leaves unaccounted for distinctively practical norms that I seek to capture as a system of local obligations to have particular intentions. The krasia requirement dictates what obligations we have relative to the normative beliefs that we have but does not tell us what intentions it is rational to have all-things-considered., V této práci zamýšlím obhájit Broomeův kognitivistický pohled, který redukuje praktickou normativnost na teoretickou normativitu, ale argumentuje tím, že tyto listy nezohledňují výrazně praktické normy, které se snažím zachytit jako systém místních povinností, které mají konkrétní záměry. Požadavek krasia diktuje, jaké povinnosti máme ve vztahu k normativním názorům, které máme, ale neříká nám, jaké úmysly je racionální mít všechny věci., and David Botting