Sven Bernecker

What conditions does a robot have to satisfy to qualify as a moral agent? Should robots become moral agents, or should humanity fully retain agency and personhood for itself? Is it permissible to prevent robots from developing moral agency? This paper examines these questions from a viewpoint-neutral and a Kantian perspective. Regarding the first question, we argue that the Kantian standards for moral agency could not possibly be met by robots. The second and third questions are more difficult to answer, in part because the viewpoint-neutral perspective does not provide a clear verdict. We argue that it is a feature of the Kantian perspective to propose a plausible answer. The idea is that preventing robots from achieving moral personality is morally permissible, insofar as our intention is consistent with the respect of human life and its rational nature.

This paper challenges Sosa’s account of the epistemic propriety of suspension of judgment. We take the reader on a test drive through some common problem cases in epistemology, to see how the account of suspension deals with them. Section 1 outlines Sosa’s account of accurate and apt suspension. Sections 2 and 3 focus on the skeptical scenario to argue that Sosa makes it too easy for suspension to be accurate and apt. Section 4 applies Sosa’s account of accurate and apt suspension to BonJour’s case of Norman the clairvoyant. The upshot is that Sosa makes accurate and apt suspension not only too easy but also too hard.

Triangular externalism is the view that a subject's thought content is determined by the communication the subject has with others about objects or events in the shared public environment. The process of triangulation is said to constitute thought content. Section 1 characterizes triangular externalism and sets it apart from other forms of content externalism. Section 2 is concerned with the tensions within Davidson's views: the tension between historical externalism and interpretationism, as well as the tension between triangular externalism and holism. Section 3 explicates Davidson's criticisms of two rival forms of externalism: Putnam's physical externalism and Burge's anti‐individualism. Sections 4 and 5 contain a critical discussion of Davidson's arguments for triangular externalism: the argument from content determination and the argument from objectivity.

According to Greco’s early explanatory salience contextualism, S knows that p if and only if S’s cognitive abilities are the salient factor in a causal explanation of why S holds a true belief rather than a false belief or no belief at all. Greco abandoned this view because it cannot handle fake barn cases and because it proves impossible to analyze knowledge in terms of a quantitative characterization of explanatory salience. The paper argues that the core idea of explanatory salience contextualism could have been saved if only the causal notion of explanation had been replaced by an abductive notion.

Mark Schroeder’s Reasons First is admirable in its scope and execution, deftly demonstrating the theoretical promise of extending the reasons-first approach from ethics to epistemology. In what follows we explore how (not) to account for the evidence-that relation within the reasons-first program, we explain how factive content views of evidence can be resilient in the face of Schroeder’s criticisms, and we explain how knowledge from falsehood threatens Schroeder’s view of knowledge. Along the way we sketch a reliabilist account of the reasons-for relation (inspired by Alston) and show how it limits the applicability of Schroeder’s arguments.

Wie der Titel des Aufsatzes bereits signalisiert, werde ich dafür argumentieren, dass das Gettier-Problem ein genuines Problem ist, keines, das sich lediglich einer falschen Fragestellung verdankt. Versuche, das Gettier-Problem aufzulösen statt zu lösen, sind zum Scheitern verurteilt. In den ersten beiden Abschnitten wird eine Typologisierung von Gettier-Fällen vorgenommen und zwischen zwei Lesarten des Gettier-Problems unterschieden. Im dritten Abschnitt werden einige Auflösungsversuche des Gettier-Problems der kritischen Prüfung unterzogen. Der vierte Abschnitt diskutiert die reliabilistische Antwort auf das Gettier-Problem. Es wird gezeigt, dass sich mit Hilfe des Reliabilismus nicht alle Gettier-Fälle ausschließen lassen. Im fünften Abschnitt wird eine neue Lösung des Gettier-Problems entwickelt.

The global method safety account of knowledge states that an agent’s true belief that p is safe and qualifies as knowledge if and only if it is formed by method M, such that her beliefs in p and her beliefs in relevantly similar propositions formed by M in all nearby worlds are true. This paper argues that global method safety is too restrictive. First, the agent may not know relevantly similar propositions via M because the belief that p is the only possible outcome of M. Second, there are cases where there is a fine-grained belief that is unsafe and a relevantly similar coarse-grained belief that is safe and where both beliefs are based on the same method M. Third, the reliability of conditional reasoning, a basic belief-forming method, seems to be sensitive to fine-grained contents, as suggested by the wide variation in success rates for thematic versions of the Wason selection task.

The first section explains and motivates the truth condition on memory. The second section discusses positions whereupon memory reports need not be completely true but only true to a degree. The third section explores the authenticity condition on memory. A memory report is authentic if it correctly represents the subject's initial representation of reality, regardless of whether the initial representation was veridical. The fourth and final section deals with the question of how we assess whether someone's recollection of an event accurately depicts the event or his initial representation of the event.

It is a mistake to think that we cannot be morally responsible for forgetting because, as a matter of principle, forgetting is outside of our control. Sometimes we do have control over our forgetting. When forgetting is under our control there is no question that it is the proper object of praise and blame. But we can also be morally responsible for forgetting something when it is beyond our control that we forget that thing. The literature contains three accounts of the blameworthiness of forgetting over which the agent has no control—the tracing account, the liberalized awareness condition, and attributionism. Even though these are competing accounts of the blameworthiness of harmful forgetting they are compatible with one another. In particular, it is possible to come up with a position that endorses the tracing account for certain kinds of harmful forgetting and attributionism for other kinds of harmful forgetting.

Philosophy of medicine has traditionally examined two issues: the scientific ontology for medicine and the epistemic significance of the types of evidence used in medical research. In answering each question, philosophers have typically brought to bear tools from traditional analytic philosophy. In contrast, this volume explores medical knowledge from the perspective offered by social epistemology.While many of the same issues are addressed, the approach to these issues generates both fresh questions and new insights into old debates. In addition, the broader purview offered by social epistemology opens up opportunities to address new topics such as the role of consensus conferences, epistemic injustice, the value of medical knowledge, continuing medical education, and industry funding. This article situates and summarizes the contributions to this special issue.

This paper attempts to answer the question of what defines mnemonic confabulation vis-à-vis genuine memory. The two extant accounts of mnemonic confabulation as “false memory” and as ill-grounded memory are shown to be problematic, for they cannot account for the possibility of veridical confabulation, ill-grounded memory, and wellgrounded confabulation. This paper argues that the defining characteristic of mnemonic confabulation is that it lacks the appropriate causal history. In the confabulation case, there is no proper counterfactual dependence of the state of seeming to remember on the corresponding past representation.

This paper examines Quine's dismissal of external world skepticism. Quine maintains that since skeptical doubts are scientific doubts we can neutralize the skeptical challenge empirically without begging the question. On closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Quine's only argument against skepticism is his naturalism. Naturalism states that because we cannot adopt an external perspective onto our beliefs about the world the skeptic's mistake is to demand that we gain an objective understanding of human knowledge. Given naturalism, skeptical challenges, though not incoherent, are idle, artificial, and neurotic. Since Quine's dismissal of skepticism is grounded in his naturalism this raises the question of what motivates naturalism. Quine's main reason for adopting naturalism is his confidence in the natural sciences for which he gives no arguments. Since Quine doesn't justify his naturalistic anti-skepticism he robs himself of the possibility to fully understand the significance of skepticism.

The chapter starts out by explaining the taxonomy of kinds of memory used in analytic philosophy. Following this, it offers a tentative analysis of the kind of memory analytic philosophers discuss the most—propositional memory. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to the discussion of three questions in the epistemology of memory: Is memory a form or a source of knowledge? Is memory merely a preservative source of justification and knowledge or can it also function as a generative source? Do we have reasons to trust our memories? The last section of the chapter deals with the dependence of memory on personal identity through time.

Designed for readers who have had little or no exposure to contemporary theory of knowledge, _Reading Epistemology_ brings together twelve important and influential writings on the subject. Presents twelve influential pieces of writing representing two contrasting views on each of six core topics in epistemology. Each chapter contains an introduction to the topic, introductions to the authors, extensive commentaries on the texts, questions for debate and an annotated bibliography. Includes writings from Robert Nozick, Ernest Sosa, Laurence BonJour, and Fred Dretske. Encourages readers to engage with the texts and to think for themselves.

This article argues that anti-skeptical arguments from semantic externalism fail on their own terms. Examining Hilary Putnam's brain-in-a-vat argument and an analogous argument by Fred Dretske, it shows that such arguments presuppose that we can know non-empirically that we possess beliefs—and thus that we are not zombies. It then argues that, given semantic externalism, we cannot know non-empirically whether we have beliefs at all or are merely zombies. The article closes by drawing out the consequences of this result for Putnam's and Dretske's anti-skeptical arguments.