2012-03-22T22:48:12Z

AdamMorton:

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 19: week of March 19: second order knowledge/reply (2)

2012-03-18T02:04:50Z

AdamMorton: Reply to forum 10: week of March 19 - second order knowledge

Robert asked about the term "warrant". Partly it's just a fancy word for "justfied". But there are three other ideas connected with it. (They're different, so I avoid the word.) 
1) externalists started using the word "justified" with an externalist flavour. So if you get your belief in a way that is usually reliable, even if it is failing to give you a true belief in this case, they call it justified. Internalists said "To hell with this; we'll use our own word, and we won't let them take it away from us." 
2) it's part of a fake solution to the existence of Gettier cases. Knowledge is not the same as justified true belief, so we declare that it is the same as true belief with warrant. That is, all warranted belief needs to become knowledge is truth. But then it is utterly unclear how we are to define warrant. 
3) There might be something in someone's situation that makes it reasonable to hold a belief, even though it is not part of what would traditionally justify it, for example the fact that the person who told it to you is trustworthy. Then we call this part of your warrant for the belief. (This is inconsistent with 1) - you can't have both motives for using the term. See how it's confusing.)

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 19: week of March 19: second order knowledge

2012-03-17T19:03:35Z

AdamMorton: New thread: forum 19: week of March 19: second order knowledge

A detailed question and a broader one. 
A) You can see why someone might think that if they know that 63+12=75, they will know that they know it. For they can check all the steps of the calculation and conclude that it was correct. (I don't think this is right, but you can see how it is attractive.) So could we make a parallel argument that if someone knows something much more ordinary, like that there is a computer screen in front of them, then they will know that they know it? 
B) The more interesting questions about second order knowledge do not concern whether you know that you know that P, but whether you can know ''which'' of your beliefs are knowledge, or know ''how much'' you know about a topic. ("I have a lot of opinions about religion, but how much of this is really knowledge, is unclear to me." People often say things like this.) How do these topics relate to the much dry-er ones discussed in the paper?

Course:Phil440A/Notes

2012-03-17T18:24:38Z

AdamMorton:

Mobility at UBC

2012-03-15T03:04:06Z

AdamMorton: /* Observations */

This is a page for people to compare their experiences navigating the UBC campus, when walking is not easy. 
Grumbles, suggestions, encouragement or embarrassment for the university. 

==Observations==
I have far fewer problems than some. I walk with a cane and I can manage the distance from the bus loop to Buchanan or Koerner. But not more, not in one effort. I avoid going down stairs for fear of falling, but I will do it if I have to. So here are some recent observations from this mildly disabled point of view. Add your own if you think it worthwhile. 
*The placement of elevators on many UBC buildings is not very helpful. Barber learning centre is an interesting case, as it is a recent design. The elevators stop one set of stairs below the ground level and one set above it. So either way ... Why would any architect? 
update about Barber (14 March): this is just wrong. On the East Mall side the elevators have a stop at the entrance level. 
*There was construction on campus last week - a zebra-striped digger - that involved a detour on the path from the trolley loop to the main campus, which doubled the distance to some destinations. That may have been inevitable, but they put the "detour" sign so that you do not see it until you have already come a long way, and it is probably easier to struggle on than to turn back and take an alternate route. A place of mind? 
''Update:'' (A few days later -20 Jan - the distinctive digger is still there, and you can see it from the trolley loop, So I guess the detour is still there. But no sign.) 
*The library will get books for you and hold them at the desk for you to collect. That's nice. But they charge to deliver them to your office. They charge per book, so there's no saving by having several delivered at once, even though it cannot be more labour time for them. Perhaps some tweaking of the rules? 

Is it useful to collect observations like this? Will others add to it? This might become a useful forum, or it might be a waste of time. I'm hoping that it might help discover small things that one person wouldn't bother complaining or suggesting about until learning that they are problems for many people. 
Adam Morton - department of philosophy 
 
 
(6 March) I've learned more about having library books delivered. Two points 
~ You can ask for books to be held for you at any branch library, and there may be one nearer to you than the library the books are shelved at. In my case, Barber is nearer than Koerner, so I can have books sent there and then walk to pick them up. 
~ If you do get a student assistant assigned to pick up books for you they are hired by the disability office out of the University Access Fund not your Department’s budget. (Thanks to Ruth Warick for this information.) 
 
(11 March) An event at the University Centre Lower Level (UCLL). That's really hard to get to, dangerous. And I expect that there are elevators, inside the building, but there's no way of getting to them. 
Peter Wall and Sage have some of the same problems. 

[[Category:Campus Life]] [[Category:Accessibility]]

Mobility at UBC

2012-03-11T18:32:27Z

AdamMorton: /* Observations */

This is a page for people to compare their experiences navigating the UBC campus, when walking is not easy. 
Grumbles, suggestions, encouragement or embarrassment for the university. 

==Observations==
I have far fewer problems than some. I walk with a cane and I can manage the distance from the bus loop to Buchanan or Koerner. But not more, not in one effort. I avoid going down stairs for fear of falling, but I will do it if I have to. So here are some recent observations from this mildly disabled point of view. Add your own if you think it worthwhile.
*The placement of elevators on many UBC buildings is not very helpful. Barber learning centre is an interesting case, as it is a recent design. The elevators stop one set of stairs below the ground level and one set above it. So either way ... Why would any architect? 
*There was construction on campus last week - a zebra-striped digger - that involved a detour on the path from the trolley loop to the main campus, which doubled the distance to some destinations. That may have been inevitable, but they put the "detour" sign so that you do not see it until you have already come a long way, and it is probably easier to struggle on than to turn back and take an alternate route. A place of mind? ''Update:'' (A few days later -20 Jan - the distinctive digger is still there, and you can see it from the trolley loop, So I guess the detour is still there. But no sign.) 
*The library will get books for you and hold them at the desk for you to collect. That's nice. But they charge to deliver them to your office. They charge per book, so there's no saving by having several delivered at once, even though it cannot be more labour time for them. Perhaps some tweaking of the rules? 

Is it useful to collect observations like this? Will others add to it? This might become a useful forum, or it might be a waste of time. I'm hoping that it might help discover small things that one person wouldn't bother complaining or suggesting about until learning that they are problems for many people. 
Adam Morton - department of philosophy 
 
 
(6 March) I've learned more about having library books delivered. Two points 
~ You can ask for books to be held for you at any branch library, and there may be one nearer to you than the library the books are shelved at. In my case, Barber is nearer than Koerner, so I can have books sent there and then walk to pick them up. 
~ If you do get a student assistant assigned to pick up books for you they are hired by the disability office out of the University Access Fund not your Department’s budget. (Thanks to Ruth Warick for this information.) 
 
(11 March) An event at the University Centre Lower Level (UCLL). That's really hard to get to, dangerous. And I expect that there are elevators, inside the building, but there's no way of getting to them. 
Peter Wall and Sage have some of the same problems. 

[[Category:Campus Life]] [[Category:Accessibility]]

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 9: week of 12 March: Fisher and the design of experiments/reply

2012-03-11T18:22:59Z

AdamMorton: Reply to forum 9: week of 12 March: Fisher and the design of experiments

Endorsing what Nicole said: let's get really clear about the idea here, as epistemology as well as take-it-or-leave-it scientific method. So let's have a variety of questions, problems, puzzles. One issue that I think is central is this 
When we do an experiment the results are interesting if they are surprising. Take 'surprising' as 'improbable'. Improbable given what, given which assumptions about probabilities? (You're testing a coin for bias so you do a long series of tosses, and they're mostly heads. This is not surprising if we assume that it is biased, but is if we assume that it is fair. But we don't want to assume either: that's just what we want to find out.) Different attitudes to this separate different philosophies of testing.

Mobility at UBC

2012-03-06T20:00:52Z

AdamMorton: /* Observations */

This is a page for people to compare their experiences navigating the UBC campus, when walking is not easy. 
Grumbles, suggestions, encouragement or embarrassment for the university. 

==Observations==
I have far fewer problems than some. I walk with a cane and I can manage the distance from the bus loop to Buchanan or Koerner. But not more, not in one effort. I avoid going down stairs for fear of falling, but I will do it if I have to. So here are some recent observations from this mildly disabled point of view. Add your own if you think it worthwhile.
*The placement of elevators on many UBC buildings is not very helpful. Barber learning centre is an interesting case, as it is a recent design. The elevators stop one set of stairs below the ground level and one set above it. So either way ... Why would any architect? 
*There was construction on campus last week - a zebra-striped digger - that involved a detour on the path from the trolley loop to the main campus, which doubled the distance to some destinations. That may have been inevitable, but they put the "detour" sign so that you do not see it until you have already come a long way, and it is probably easier to struggle on than to turn back and take an alternate route. A place of mind? ''Update:'' (A few days later -20 Jan - the distinctive digger is still there, and you can see it from the trolley loop, So I guess the detour is still there. But no sign.) 
*The library will get books for you and hold them at the desk for you to collect. That's nice. But they charge to deliver them to your office. They charge per book, so there's no saving by having several delivered at once, even though it cannot be more labour time for them. Perhaps some tweaking of the rules? 

Is it useful to collect observations like this? Will others add to it? This might become a useful forum, or it might be a waste of time. I'm hoping that it might help discover small things that one person wouldn't bother complaining or suggesting about until learning that they are problems for many people. 
Adam Morton - department of philosophy 
 
 
(6 March) I've learned more about having library books delivered. Two points 
~ You can ask for books to be held for you at any branch library, and there may be one nearer to you than the library the books are shelved at. In my case, Barber is nearer than Koerner, so I can have books sent there and then walk to pick them up. 
~ If you do get a student assistant assigned to pick up books for you they are hired by the disability office out of the University Access Fund not your Department’s budget. (Thanks to Ruth Warick for this information.) 

[[Category:Campus Life]] [[Category:Accessibility]]

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 8: week of 5 March: tests and evidence

2012-03-03T23:39:21Z

AdamMorton:

First of all, I should say that I am even less sure than usual which parts of this reading may be difficult to you and for which reasons. So be uninhibited in asking for clarification, on this forum and in class. 
Staley and Cobb state their central claim as follows: 
"... justification in science is externalist* in character insofar as the evidential relations that are of concern in addressing the problem of misleading evidence are objective ..., and internalist* in character insofar as addressing the problem of justification requires the capacity to access and provide reasons that support one’s inferences from the data." 
You might disagree with this either because (a) you are not convinced that scientific tests and the process of checking them are objective and truth-conducive, or (b) you suspect that expecting scientists/us to understand and manage the ways conclusions are got from the date is asking too much. 
Does either of these attract you?

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 8: week of 5 March: tests and evidence

2012-03-03T23:36:10Z

AdamMorton: New thread: forum 8: week of 5 March: tests and evidence

First of all, I should say that I am even less sure than usual which parts of this reading my be difficult to you and for which reasons. So be uninhibited in asking for clarification, on this forum and in class. 
Staley and Cobb state their central claim as follows: 
"... justification in science is externalist* in character insofar as the evidential relations that are of concern in addressing the problem of misleading evidence are objective ..., and internalist* in character insofar as addressing the problem of justification requires the capacity to access and provide reasons that support one’s inferences from the data." 
You might disagree with this either because (a)you are not convinced that scientific tests and the process of checking them are objective and truth-conducive, or (b) you suspect that expecting scientists/us to understand and manage the ways conclusions are got from the date is asking too much. 
Does either of these attract you?

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 7: week of 27 Feb - pragmatic encroachment

2012-02-23T23:38:29Z

AdamMorton: New thread: forum 7: week of 27 Feb - pragmatic encroachment

I hope you've all got my email with reading suggestions. Contact me if you have not. 
On page 564, in the last whole paragraph, F & McG state their assumptions. You may have worries about (1), fallibilism. But that's going down a well-explored route. (Comments welcome, all the same.) I think (3) is the assumption doing the most work. Think about it: is it as obvious as it might seem? 
( (2) is important too. Worth pausing to think out what it is saying.)

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 6: week of 13 Feb - K & practical interests

2012-02-11T01:49:15Z

AdamMorton: New thread: forum 6: week of 13 Feb - K & practical interests

I assume you've all got my message changing the reading from Stanley to Russell & Doris. 
Does the bank example work for you? 
~ If it does, what feature of the example makes you think that knowledge depends on the practical situation of the knower? 
~ If it doesn't, what do you think is fishy about it?

Thread:Talk:Stumbling diary/New Title?/reply

2012-02-05T04:41:47Z

AdamMorton: Reply to New Title?

fine: let's re-name it. How is that done? Can you do it? Say "Mobility at UBC"?
Adam

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 5: week of 6 Feb. Hawthorne and lotteries

2012-02-05T04:38:01Z

AdamMorton: New thread: forum 5: week of 6 Feb. Hawthorne and lotteries

Puzzles about belief and knowledge in connection with lotteries have been around for a while. But Hawthorne's contribution was to point out how similar some of the issues are to issues about skepticism. The common pattern is something (A) that we readily admit to knowing but which has as a consequence something (B) that we are reluctant to say we know. For this to be so, there have to be examples of A that do look like knowledge, and of B that don't. 
So, which examples work for you? 
And what conclusions about knowledge and the way we organize our beliefs does this push you towards?

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 4: week of 30 Jan: DeRose on skepticism/reply

2012-02-02T00:04:52Z

AdamMorton: Reply to forum 4: week of 30 Jan: DeRose on skepticism

move-it-to-the-top reply, as before.

Course:Phil440A/Notes

2012-01-28T01:58:09Z

AdamMorton:

Course:Phil440A/Notes

2012-01-28T01:57:33Z

AdamMorton:

some very brief notes on issues that arose during the classes.

'''*Dretske*''' (notes from both weeks)

~ note the connection with perception. when you see a thing you don't have to see all of it or know what it is. this is like the woman in the bus who saw that D's brother was being a pain, without knowing that it was D's brother. (She knew by seeing that D's brother *was a pain*, but she didn't know by seeing that *D's brother* was a pain.) 
~ he is very vague about what makes an alternative relevant. relevant for whom (the person in question or the person judging what she knows?) thought to be relevant or really relevant? (suppose the person has silly ideas about what is relevant.) same questions about what is an alternative. 
~ there's an obvious link to skepticism, and one idea that surfaced in the class was that whatever philosophical line we take on knowledge, we are going to have to reject some ordinary claims about what and when people know as confused. 
 

'''*Lewis*''' (both weeks) 

~ there's a huge and basic contrast between Lewis and Dretske over what is now called 'closure', believing consequences of what you believe. For Dretske it will vary from case to case whether someone believes something that follows from her belief, even when she knows that it follows. But for Lewis it is built into his definition of a proposition that a belief in something (a relation between a believer and a believed proposition) just is the same belief as a belief in something logically or necessarily equivalent to it. 
:''"Did you know that Sally believes - knows, in fact - that e^(πi)= -1 and cats chase mice?"'' 
:"And she's only in grade 2, what a smart kid?" 
:''"But anyone who believes that cats chase mice believes that cats chase mice and e^(πi)= -1 . They're the same proposition, so the same belief."'' 
There are a lot of smart children out there, on this way of counting beliefs. 

~ Lewis' paper is built around a simple idea: the variations in context that make "know" sometimes very demanding and sometimes fairly weak (if there are such variations), are a special case of the variation in the force of "all", and related words ("everything", "something") so that "after the party, everyone was happy"
says just that the people at the party were happy, not that all six billion of us were. "Know" is a special case of this because it means - for Lewis - that ''all'' relevant alternatives have been excluded. 

~ the rules he gives are ''not'' rules for good, rational, thinking for a person. They are rules that specify what alternatives ''we'' the people discussing a person have to check she has ruled out before we can truly attribute knowledge to her. 

~ L's contextualism comes from his rule of attention. It says that when A and B are discussing C's beliefs they will count her belief as knowledge only if her experience rules out all the alternatives, except those that the rules allow *A and B* to ignore. So it is an 'ascriber-relative' contextualism, not a 'subject-relative' one. 

~ I take this to be plausible when A and B are discussing their own beliefs, and less so when they are discussing some other person's, especially when that other person is distant in space or time. I used the example of two criminals discussing whether the police know that they committed the crime. It doesn't seem that one of them can produce a far-out possibility that the police will not have ruled out (that fingerprints do not uniquely identify people, perhaps), and conclude that the police are still ignorant. That seems like a way to get arrested. 

~ At the end he makes some brief remarks on how talking of knowledge is a shortcut. The real business of science, he says, lies in excluding alternatives. So - I take it - by suitable use of context we can identify the kinds of alternatives that a particular style of science excludes. Interesting, but he doesn't elaborate on it.

Thread:Course talk:Phil440A/forum 4: week of 30 Jan: DeRose on skepticism

2012-01-28T01:32:13Z

AdamMorton: New thread: forum 4: week of 30 Jan: DeRose on skepticism

Remember that we are only meeting onThursday, so we have to cover DeRose in once class. We will focus on how his contextualism is different from Lewis's, and whether it has advantages. Note that like Lewis, and unlike Dretske, DeRose resists the idea that you can fail to know consequences that you see following from things you know. In fact he hates this idea. (I don't.) 
A basic question: how is his diagnosis of the appeal of skepticism different from Lewis's? 
A subtler one: how can "she knows it" vary from one conversation to another on DeR's approach and is it different from the variations L allows? (I don't know the answer to this one. But it's an important question if we want to understand what useful work "knows" does, besides giving employment to philosophers.) 
Are there useful comparisons with other context-dependent words? ''Flat, big, here, left, starboard, bank'': which is ''know'' most similar to?

2012-01-15T19:55:00Z

AdamMorton: moved Stumbling diary - getting around UBC with mobility problems to Stumbling diary: former title is too long to make a tidy url. The page had been posted just 2 minutes and I, the author, want to rename it.

#REDIRECT [[Stumbling diary]]

Mobility at UBC

2012-01-15T19:55:00Z

This is a page for people to compare their experiences navigating the UBC campus, when walking is not easy. 
Grumbles, suggestions, encouragement or embarrassment for the university. 
 
I have far fewer problems than some. I walk with a cane and I can manage the distance from the bus loop to Buchanan or Koerner. But not more, not in one effort. I avoid going down stairs for fear of falling, but I will do it if I have to. So here are some recent observations from this mildly disabled point of view. Add your own if you think it worthwhile. 
 
~ The placement of elevators on many UBC buildings is not very helpful. Barber learning centre is an interesting case, as it is a recent design. The elevators stop one set of stairs below the ground level and one set above it. So either way ... Why would any architect? 
 
~ There was construction on campus last week - a zebra-striped digger - that involved a detour on the path from the trolley loop to the main campus, which doubled the distance to some destinations. That may have been inevitable, but they put the "detour" sign so that you do not see it until you have already come a long way, and it is probably easier to struggle on than to turn back. A place of mind? 
 
~ The library will get books for you and hold them at the desk for you to collect. That's nice. But they charge to deliver them to your office. They charge per book, so there's no saving by having several delivered at once, even though it cannot be more labour time for them. Perhaps some tweaking of the rules? 
 
Is it useful to collect observations like this? Will others add to it? This might become a useful forum, or it might be a waste of time. I'm hoping that it might help discover small things that one wouldn't bother complaining or suggesting about until one learned that they were problems for many people. 
Adam Morton - department of philosophy

Mobility at UBC

2012-01-15T19:47:46Z

AdamMorton: a forum for comments by people with mobility problems

This is a page for people to compare their experiences navigating the UBC campus, when walking is not easy. 
Grumbles, suggestions, encouragement or embarrassment for the university. 
 
I have far fewer problems than some. I walk with a cane and I can manage the distance from the bus loop to Buchanan or Koerner. But not more, not in one effort. I avoid going down stairs for fear of falling, but I will do it if I have to. So here are some recent observations from this mildly disabled point of view. Add your own if you think it worthwhile. 
 
~ The placement of elevators on many UBC buildings is not very helpful. Barber learning centre is an interesting case, as it is a recent design. The elevators stop one set of stairs below the ground level and one set above it. So either way ... Why would any architect? 
 
~ There was construction on campus last week - a zebra-striped digger - that involved a detour on the path from the trolley loop to the main campus, which doubled the distance to some destinations. That may have been inevitable, but they put the "detour" sign so that you do not see it until you have already come a long way, and it is probably easier to struggle on than to turn back. A place of mind? 
 
~ The library will get books for you and hold them at the desk for you to collect. That's nice. But they charge to deliver them to your office. They charge per book, so there's no saving by having several delivered at once, even though it cannot be more labour time for them. Perhaps some tweaking of the rules? 
 
Is it useful to collect observations like this? Will others add to it? This might become a useful forum, or it might be a waste of time. I'm hoping that it might help discover small things that one wouldn't bother complaining or suggesting about until one learned that they were problems for many people. 
Adam Morton - department of philosophy

Course:Phil440A

2012-01-15T05:52:17Z

AdamMorton:

{{Infobox_New_Course

|title= epistemology

|picture=Image:wiki.png

|subject code=PHIL

|course number=440A
|section number=

|instructor=Adam Morton

|instructor 2=

|instructor 3=

|instructor 4=

|instructor 5=

|email=adam.morton@ubc.ca

|office=BUCH E 275

|office hours= Tues 2 - 3

|schedule= Tues, Thurs 12:30 -2

|classroom= BUCH D 325

}}


shortcut phrox

see the "course discussion" link at the bottom of the banner to the right, for the forum. 
 
I am also adding very brief remarks after the classes under "lecture notes".