•We study the role of alternatives in scalar implicature generation on 5-year-olds.•Accessibility of the stronger alternative is important for children’s SI generation.•Alternatives lead children to ...generate SIs only when they are shown to be relevant.
Utterances such as “Megan ate some of the cupcakes” are often interpreted as “Megan ate some but not all of the cupcakes”. Such an interpretation is thought to arise from a pragmatic inference called scalar implicature (SI). Preschoolers typically fail to spontaneously generate SIs without the assistance of training or context that make the stronger alternative salient. However, the exact role of alternatives in generating SIs remains contested. Specifically, it is not clear whether children have difficulty with spontaneously generating possible informationally stronger scalemates, or with considering how alternatives might be relevant. We present three studies with English-speaking 5-year-olds and adults designed to address these questions. We show that (a) the accessibility of the stronger alternative is important for children’s SI generation (Experiment 1); (b) the explicit presence of the stronger alternative leads children to generate SIs only when the stronger scalar term can easily be seen as relevant (Experiment 2); and (c) in contexts that establish relevant alternatives, the explicit presence of the stronger alternative is not necessary (Experiment 3). We conclude that children’s considerations of lexical alternatives during SI-computation include an important role for conversational relevance. We also show that this more nuanced approach to the role of lexical alternatives in pragmatic inference unifies previously unconnected findings about children’s early pragmatic development and bears on major accounts proposed to date for children’s problems with SIs.
ANTI-LUCK VIRTUE EPISTEMOLOGY PRITCHARD, DUNCAN
The Journal of philosophy,
03/2012, Volume:
109, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Pritchard argues that there's an adequate theory of knowledge available which fulfills the remit of the analytical project. Central to his proposal is the idea that people need to reconsider ...anti-luck intuition and ability intuition, which govern their thinking about knowledge, specifically, their thinking regarding what turns true belief into knowledge. He also argues that this conception of how these two master intuitions about knowledge are related to each other is fundamentally flawed. In particular, he claims that these two intuitions in fact impose independent epistemic demands on the theory of knowledge, and that it's only once one recognizes this fact that one can offer a successful resolution of the analytical project. He further explores anti-luck epistemology and virtue epistemology, two popular contemporary approaches to the analytical project which each take one of these intuitions about knowledge as central to their approach.
Before a strategy can be developed, the problem it is supposed to address needs to be formulated. We establish the microfoundations of strategic problem formulation by developing a theory that ...predicts a core set of impediments to formulation that arise when complex, ill-structured problems are addressed by heterogeneous teams. These impediments fundamentally constrain and narrow problem formulation, thereby limiting solution search and potential value creation. We establish these impediments as a set of design goals, which, if remedied by an appropriately constructed mechanism, can expand problem formulation to be more comprehensive. Finally, we consider how organizations can improve problem formulation by creating a structured process that satisfies the theoretically derived design goals and detail a specific example of this mechanism (collaborative structured inquiry).
A (Different) Virtue Epistemology GRECO, JOHN
Philosophy and phenomenological research,
July 2012, Volume:
85, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Section 1 articulates a genus-species claim: that knowledge is a kind of success from ability. Equivalently: In cases of knowledge, S's success in believing the truth is attributable to S's ability. ...That idea is then applied to questions about the nature and value of knowledge. Section 2 asks what it would take to turn the genus-species claim into a proper theory of knowledge; that is, into informative, necessary and sufficient conditions. That question is raised in the context of an important line of objection against even the genus-species claim; namely, that there is no way to understand the attribution relation so that it does all the work that it is supposed to do. Section 3 reviews several extant proposals for understanding the attribution relation, and argues that none of them are adequate for answering the objection. Section 4 proposes a different way of understanding the relation, and shows how the resulting view does resolve the objection. Section 5 completes the new account by proposing a way to understand intellectual abilities. Section 6 briefly addresses Barn Façade cases and lottery propositions. Section 7 briefly addresses a question about the scope of knowledge; in particular, it shows how the new view allows a neo-Moorean response to skepticism.
The epistemology of risk examines how risks bear on epistemic properties. A common framework for examining the epistemology of risk holds that strength of evidential support is best modelled as ...numerical probability given the available evidence. In this essay I develop and motivate a rival ‘relevant alternatives’ framework for theorising about the epistemology of risk. I describe three loci for thinking about the epistemology of risk. The first locus concerns consequences of relying on a belief for action, where those consequences are significant if the belief is false. The second locus concerns whether beliefs themselves—regardless of action—can be risky, costly, or harmful. The third locus concerns epistemic risks we confront as social epistemic agents. I aim to motivate the relevant alternatives framework as a fruitful approach to the epistemology of risk. I first articulate a ‘relevant alternatives’ model of the relationship between stakes, evidence, and action. I then employ the relevant alternatives framework to undermine the motivation for moral encroachment. Finally, I argue the relevant alternatives framework illuminates epistemic phenomena such as gaslighting and crying wolf, and I draw on the framework to diagnose the undue skepticism endemic to rape accusations.
This paper aims to provide a unifying approach to the analysis of understanding coherencies (interrogative understanding, e.g. understanding why something is the case) and understanding subject ...matters (objectual understanding) by highlighting the contextualist nature of understanding. Inspired by the relevant alternatives contextualism about knowledge, I will argue that understanding (in the above mentioned sense) inherently has context-sensitive features and that a theory of understanding that highlights those features can incorporate our intuitions towards understanding as well as consolidate the different accounts of how to analyse understanding. In developing a contextualist account of understanding, I will argue that an account of the features commonly taken to be central to understanding greatly benefits from a contextualist framework. Central to my analysis will be the claim that a person has to fulfill the function of a competent problem solver in order to qualify for the ascription of understanding. In addition to the theoretical elucidation of my contextualist approach to understanding, a demanding hypothetical scenario will be developed to function as a test case.
This paper contributes to the growing literature in social epistemology of diagnosing the epistemically problematic features of fake news. I identify two novel problems: the problem of relevant ...alternatives; and the problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment. The former arises among individual epistemic transactions. By making salient, and thereby relevant, alternatives to knowledge claims, fake news stories threaten knowledge. The problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment arises at the level of entire epistemic communities. I introduce the notion of an epistemic environment, roughly the totality of resources and circumstances relevant to assessing the epistemically interesting statuses, such as knowledge. Fake news degrades our epistemic environment by undermining confidence in epistemic institutions and altering epistemic habits, thereby making the environment less conducive to achieving positive epistemic statuses. This is problematic even if the decrease in confidence and the altering of habits are rational. I end by considering solutions to these problems, stressing the importance of reproaching each other for proliferating fake news. I argue that we should reproach even faultless purveyors of fake news. This is because fake news typically arises in abnormal epistemic contexts, where there is widespread ignorance of, and noncompliance with, correct epistemic norms.
Knowing full well Sosa, Ernest
2011., 20101213, 2010, 2011, 2011-01-01, 20110101, Volume:
3
eBook
In this book, Ernest Sosa explains the nature of knowledge through an approach originated by him years ago, known as virtue epistemology. Here he provides the first comprehensive account of his views ...on epistemic normativity as a form of performance normativity on two levels. On a first level is found the normativity of the apt performance, whose success manifests the performer's competence. On a higher level is found the normativity of the meta-apt performance, which manifests not necessarily first-order skill or competence but rather the reflective good judgment required for proper risk assessment. Sosa develops this bi-level account in multiple ways, by applying it to issues much disputed in recent epistemology: epistemic agency, how knowledge is normatively related to action, the knowledge norm of assertion, and theMenoproblem as to how knowledge exceeds merely true belief. A full chapter is devoted to how experience should be understood if it is to figure in the epistemic competence that must be manifest in the truth of any belief apt enough to constitute knowledge. Another takes up the epistemology of testimony from the performance-theoretic perspective. Two other chapters are dedicated to comparisons with ostensibly rival views, such as classical internalist foundationalism, a knowledge-first view, and attributor contextualism. The book concludes with a defense of the epistemic circularity inherent in meta-aptness and thereby in the full aptness of knowing full well.
Epistemic Luck is the first book to offer a rigorous philosophical examination of the concept of luck and its relationship to knowledge. In particular, Duncan Pritchard shows how a more nuanced ...understanding of the relationship between knowledge and luck can enable us to see our way past some of the most intractable disputes in the contemporary theory of knowledge. Anyone working on epistemology will need to come to terms with his original and incisive contribution to the field.
PDF
