Tomoji Shogenji

This paper outlines a subjectivist theory of well-being that can provide objective axiological guidance to well-being. According to the subjectivist theories of well-being, conditions that make life go well for you are determined by your subjective attitude toward the conditions, such as desiring, enjoying, and believing to be good. This is a natural idea, but there is a worry that if your subjective attitude determines the conditions of your well-being, then the theory cannot provide axiological guidance (as distinguished from instrumental guidance on what to do for realizing the given value) when your subjective attitude is defective. Axiological guidance is possible by the objectivist theories of well-being, according to which certain conditions make life go well for you regardless of your subjective attitude toward them, but it is difficult to explain why conditions you do not desire, enjoy, or believe to be good make life go well for you. This paper proposes to resolve this dispute in favor of subjectivism: Given that your subjective attitudes, such as desiring, enjoying, and believing to be good, change over time in response to the conditions of your life, a version of the subjectivist theory of well-being can provide objective axiological guidance to well-being.

The aim of this article is to outline a version of "non-attachment" that is conceptually clear and practically viable. We turn to the Buddhist traditions for their wealth of insights into non-attachment, but our goal is not exegetical. We are not constrained by the Buddhist traditions and turn to Anglophone moral psychology as well to point out a close connection between non-attachment and adaptive preference. We offer the reason for adopting the outlined version of non-attachment and depict what it is like in practice to live with no attachment.

The aim of this paper is to outline a version of “non-attachment” that is conceptually clear and practically viable. We turn to the Buddhist traditions for their wealth of insights into non-attachment, but our goal is not exegetical. We are not constrained by the Buddhist traditions and turn to Anglophone moral psychology as well to point out a close connection between non-attachment and adaptive preference. We offer the reason for adopting the outlined version of non-attachment and depict what it is like in practice to live with no attachment.

One of the central issues in the recent discussion of rule-following has been the apparent gap between the finitude of any facts about the rule-follower and the infinitude of possible applications of rules. In this paper the author argues that the combination of the rule-follower's disposition and explicit directions can fill this gap with respect to the interpretation of individual words, but that the problem of finitude remains a serious threat to compositional semantics for natural language because there are no explicit directions we can rely on in learning its rules

This paper examines a twofold tension in Gerhard Schurz’s (2019) recent proposal to solve Hume’s problem of induction. Schurz concedes to the skeptic that there is no non-circular epistemic justification of the reliability of induction, but then argues for the optimality of meta-induction so that if any prediction method is reliable, then meta-induction is. There is a tension in this proposal between meta-induction and our inductive practice: Are we supposed to abandon our inductive practice in favor of meta-induction? Schurz claims that given the actual way the world has been, the meta-inductive method supports the standard inductive method. There then arises a second tension: The challenges Schurz cites against the reliability of induction—such as the anti-inductive hypothesis and the state-uniform probability distribution—cast doubt on Schurz’s claim that meta-induction supports induction. The reasoning in this paper moves in the opposite direction: There are ways of answering these challenges in defense of Schurz’s claim that meta-induction supports induction, but these ways also point to ways of defending induction directly without the mediation of meta-induction.

This paper proposes an analysis of surprise formulated in terms of proximity to the truth, to replace the probabilistic account of surprise. It is common to link surprise to the low probability of the outcome. The idea seems sensible because an outcome with a low probability is unexpected, and an unexpected outcome often surprises us. However, the link between surprise and low probability is known to break down in some cases. There have been some attempts to modify the probabilistic account to deal with these cases, but as we shall see, they are still faced with problems. The new analysis of surprise I propose turns to accuracy and identifies an unexpected degree of inaccuracy as reason for surprise. The shift from probability to proximity allows us to solve puzzles that strain the probabilistic account of surprise.

This paper considers two novel Bayesian responses to a well-known skeptical paradox. The paradox consists of three intuitions: first, given appropriate sense experience, we have justification for accepting the relevant proposition about the external world; second, we have justification for expanding the body of accepted propositions through known entailment; third, we do not have justification for accepting that we are not disembodied souls in an immaterial world deceived by an evil demon. The first response we consider rejects the third intuition and proposes an explanation of why we have a faulty intuition. The second response, which we favor, accommodates all three intuitions; it reconciles the first and the third intuition by the dual component model of justification, and defends the second intuition by distinguishing two principles of epistemic closure.

It is well known that the probabilistic relation of confirmation is not transitive in that even if E confirms H1 and H1 confirms H2, E may not confirm H2. In this paper we distinguish four senses of confirmation and examine additional conditions under which confirmation in different senses becomes transitive. We conduct this examination both in the general case where H1 confirms H2 and in the special case where H1 also logically entails H2. Based on these analyses, we argue that the Screening-Off Condition is the most important condition for transitivity in confirmation because of its generality and ease of application. We illustrate our point with the example of Moore’s ‘‘proof’’ of the existence of a material world, where H1 logically entails H2, the Screening-Off Condition holds, and confirmation in all four senses turns out to be transitive.

In this paper we examine C. I. Lewis's view on the roleof coherence – what he calls ''congruence'' – in thejustification of beliefs based on memory ortestimony. Lewis has two main theses on the subject. His negativethesis states that coherence of independent items ofevidence has no impact on the probability of a conclusionunless each item has some credibility of its own. Thepositive thesis says, roughly speaking, that coherenceof independently obtained items of evidence – such asconverging memories or testimonies – raises the probabilityof a conclusion to the extent sufficient for epistemicjustification, or, to use Lewis's expression, ''rationaland practical reliance''.It turns out that, while thenegative thesis is essentially correct, astrong positive connection between congruence andprobability – a connection of the kind Lewis ultimatelyneeds in his validation of memory – is contingent on thePrinciple of Indifference. In the final section we assess therepercussions of the latter fact for Lewis's theory in particularand for coherence justification in general.

We propose a coherence account of the conjunction fallacy applicable to both of its two paradigms. We compare our account with a recent proposal by Tentori et al. : 235–255, 2013) that attempts to generalize earlier confirmation accounts. Their model works better than its predecessors in some respects, but it exhibits only a shallow form of generality and is unsatisfactory in other ways as well: it is strained, complex, and untestable as it stands. Our coherence account inherits the strength of the confirmation account, but in addition to being applicable to both paradigms, it is natural, simple, and readily testable. It thus constitutes the next natural step for Bayesian theorizing about the conjunction fallacy.

This paper proposes a new interpretation of mutual information (MI). We examine three extant interpretations of MI by reduction in doubt, by reduction in uncertainty, and by divergence. We argue that the first two are inconsistent with the epistemic value of information (EVI) assumed in many applications of MI: the greater is the amount of information we acquire, the better is our epistemic position, other things being equal. The third interpretation is consistent with EVI, but it is faced with the problem of measure sensitivity and fails to justify the use of MI in giving definitive answers to questions of information. We propose a fourth interpretation of MI by reduction in expected inaccuracy, where inaccuracy is measured by a strictly proper monotonic scoring rule. It is shown that the answers to questions of information given by MI are definitive whenever this interpretation is appropriate, and that it is appropriate in a wide range of applications with epistemic implications.

This article proposes a new interpretation of mutual information. We examine three extant interpretations of MI by reduction in doubt, by reduction in uncertainty, and by divergence. We argue that the first two are inconsistent with the epistemic value of information assumed in many applications of MI: the greater is the amount of information we acquire, the better is our epistemic position, other things being equal. The third interpretation is consistent with EVI, but it is faced with the problem of measure sensitivity and fails to justify the use of MI in giving definitive answers to questions of information. We propose a fourth interpretation of MI by reduction in expected inaccuracy, where inaccuracy is measured by a strictly proper monotonic scoring rule. It is shown that the answers to questions of information given by MI are definitive whenever this interpretation is appropriate, and that it is appropriate in a wide range of applications with epistemic implications. _1_ Introduction _2_ Formal Analyses of the Three Interpretations _2.1_ Reduction in doubt _2.2_ Reduction in uncertainty _2.3_ Divergence _3_ Inconsistency with Epistemic Value of Information _4_ Problem of Measure Sensitivity _5_ Reduction in Expected Inaccuracy _6_ Resolution of the Problem of Measure Sensitivity _6.1_ Alternative measures of inaccuracy _6.2_ Resolution by strict propriety _6.3_ Range of applications _7_ Global Scoring Rules _8_ Conclusion

This book develops new techniques in formal epistemology and applies them to the challenge of Cartesian skepticism. It introduces two formats of epistemic evaluation that should be of interest to epistemologists and philosophers of science: the dual-component format, which evaluates a statement on the basis of its safety and informativeness, and the relative-divergence format, which evaluates a probabilistic model on the basis of its complexity and goodness of fit with data. Tomoji Shogenji shows that the former lends support to Cartesian skepticism, but the latter allows us to defeat Cartesian skepticism. Along the way, Shogenji addresses a number of related issues in epistemology and philosophy of science, including epistemic circularity, epistemic closure, and inductive skepticism.

This paper examines how coherence of the contents of evidence affects the transmission of probabilistic support from the evidence to the hypothesis. It is argued that coherence of the contents in the sense of the ratio of the positive intersection reduces the transmission of probabilistic support, though this negative impact of coherence may be offset by other aspects of the relations among the contents. It is argued further that there is no broader conception of coherence whose impact on the transmission of probabilistic support is never offset by other aspects of the relations among the contents. The paper also examines reasons for the contrary impression that coherence of the contents increases the transmission of probabilistic support, especially in the special case where the hypothesis to evaluate is the conjunction of the contents of evidence.

This paper describes a formal measure of epistemic justification motivated by the dual goal of cognition, which is to increase true beliefs and reduce false beliefs. From this perspective the degree of epistemic justification should not be the conditional probability of the proposition given the evidence, as it is commonly thought. It should be determined instead by the combination of the conditional probability and the prior probability. This is also true of the degree of incremental confirmation, and I argue that any measure of epistemic justification is also a measure of incremental confirmation. However, the degree of epistemic justification must meet an additional condition, and all known measures of incremental confirmation fail to meet it. I describe this additional condition as well as a measure that meets it. The paper then applies the measure to the conjunction fallacy and proposes an explanation of the fallacy.

ABSTRACT This article aims to achieve two things: to identify the conditions for transitivity in probabilistic support in various settings, and to uncover the components and structure of the mediated probabilistic relation. It is shown that when the probabilistic relation between the two propositions, x and z, is mediated by multiple layers of partitions of propositions, the impact x has on z consists of the purely indirect impact, the purely bypass impact, and the mixed impact. It is also shown that although mediated confirmation as a whole is not transitive, the indirect part of mediated confirmation is transitive. _1_ Introduction _2_ The Structure of the Mediated Probabilistic Relation _3_ Transitivity and Anti-transitivity _4_ Bypass Disconfirmation _5_ Horizontal Generalization _6_ Coarse Screens _7_ Vertical Generalization _8_ Conclusion Appendix

It is well known that probabilistic support is not transitive. But it can be shown that probabilistic support is transitive provided the intermediary proposition screens off the original evidence with respect to the hypothesis in question. This has the consequence that probabilistic support is transitive when the original evidence is testimonial, memorial or perceptual (i.e., to the effect that such and such was testified to, remembered, or perceived), and the intermediary proposition is its representational content (i.e., to the effect that the such and such occurred).

Among many reasons for which contemporary philosophers take coherentism in epistemology seriously, the most important is probably the perceived inadequacy of alternative accounts, most notably misgivings about foundationalism. But coherentism also receives straightforward support from cases in which beliefs are apparently justified by their coherence. From the perspective of those against coherentism, this means that an explanation is needed as to why in these cases coherence apparently justifies beliefs. Curiously, this task has not been carried out in a serious way in the anti-coherentist literature although there is no scarcity of objections to coherentism. The traditional charge has been that justification by coherence is circular. More recently the isolation problem allegedly reveals that coherentism justifies beliefs that should not be justified. Questions have also been raised with respect to the basing relation and feasibility.1 However, these objections do not explain why some beliefs appear to be justified by their coherence. This paper fills this gap in the anti-coherentist literature by offering a noncoherentist account of justification by coherence. The paper proceeds as follows. Section I delineates the framework of discussion and develops some conceptual tools needed in later analyses. Section II argues that there are genuine cases of an increase in existing empirical justification by coherence, but that it does not require coherence to generate additional justification—coherence serves as a channel of justification among beliefs, which is no more problematic than channeling of justification from basic to derived beliefs in foundationalism. Section III makes a stronger case for justification by coherence, where each of the coherent beliefs has no independent empirical justification; but Section IV argues that even in these cases coherence need not generate justification—coherence licenses the channeling of justification from outside sources..

This paper disputes the widely held view that one cannot establish the reliability of a belief-forming process with the use of belief's that are obtained by that very process since such self-dependent justification is circular. Harold Brown ([1993]) argued in this journal that some cases of self-dependent justification are legitimate despite their circularity. I argue instead that under appropriate construal many cases of self-dependent justification are not truly circular but are instances of ordinary Bayesian confirmation, and hence they can raise the probability of the hypothesis as legitimately as any such confirmation does. I shall argue in particular that despite its dependence on perception we can use naturalized epistemology to confirm the reliability of a perceptual process without circularity.

This paper addresses the meta-epistemological dispute over the basis of epistemic evaluation from the standpoint of meliorative epistemology. Meliorative epistemology aims at guiding our epistemic practice to better results, and it comprises two levels of epistemic evaluation. At the social level (meliorative social epistemology) appropriate experts conduct evaluation for the community, so that epistemic evaluation is externalist since each epistemic subject in the community need not have access to the basis of the experts' evaluation. While at the personal level (meliorative personal epistemology) epistemic evaluation is internalist since each member of the community must evaluate the reliability of the (apparent) experts from the first-person perspective. I argue that evaluation at the social level should be the primary focus of meliorative epistemology since meliorative personal epistemology does not provide informative epistemic norms. It is then pointed out that epistemic evaluation at the social level can be considered internalist in the extended sense (social internalism) in that every component of the evaluation needs to be recognized by some members of the community at some points. As a result, some familiar problems of internalist epistemology, such as regress and circularity of epistemic support, carry over to meliorative social epistemology

It is well known that the probabilistic relation of confirmation is not transitive in that even if E confirms H1 and H1 confirms H2, E may not confirm H2. In this paper we distinguish four senses of confirmation and examine additional conditions under which confirmation in different senses becomes transitive. We conduct this examination both in the general case where H1 confirms H2 and in the special case where H1 also logically entails H2. Based on these analyses, we argue that the Screening-Off Condition is the most important condition for transitivity in confirmation because of its generality and ease of application. We illustrate our point with the example of Moore’s “proof” of the existence of a material world, where H1 logically entails H2, the Screening-Off Condition holds, and confirmation in all four senses turns out to be transitive

This paper examines the epistemic status of the reflective belief about the content of one’s own conscious mental state, with emphasis on perceptual experience. I propose that the process that gives a special epistemic status to a reflective belief is not observation, inference, or conceptual articulation, but semantic ascent similar to the transition from a sentence in the object language to a sentence in the meta-language that affirms the truth of the original sentence. This account of the process of reflection explains why a reflective belief is (subject to some qualification) infallible.

This paper defends reductionism about testimonial justification of beliefs against two influential arguments. One is the empirical argument to the effect that the reductionist justification of our trust in testimony is either circular since it relies on testimonial evidence or else there is scarce evidence in support of our trust in testimony. The other is the transcendental argument to the effect that trust in testimony is a prerequisite for the very existence of testimonial evidence since without the presumption of people’s truthfulness we cannot interpret their utterances as testimony with propositional contents. This paper contends that the epistemic subject can interpret utterances as testimony with propositional contents without presupposing the credibility of testimony, and that evidence available to the normal epistemic subject can justify her trust in testimony