Problems with Split-brain experiments in real life...

http://pbfcomics.com/?comic=random

I'm baaaa--aaaak!

The semester is O-V-E-R! Looking forward to summer blogging!

Geneva Report

I've just returned from the Epistemic Agency conference in Switzerland held at the University of Geneva. It was hosted by Pascal Engel (pronounced, appropriately, like "Angel") and was preceded by a week of lectures by John Greco. It was quite a gathering of the virtue epistemologists: JanusBlog Editor-in-Chief Guy Axtell, Jason Baehr, Adam Carter, and myself--a regular ABCD of virtue epistemology, it was quite a blessing. All we need is an E and F and we can connect ourselves directly to John!

[Aside: I'm writing this on the flight back to New York. Swiss Air (or whatever it really is) rules. I just got free red wine with my (delicious) pasta and when I acted surprised she gave me an extra bottle with a wink! But here's the aside: I put the bottles aside to finish this note and let it assume room temperature to drink and had the following thought: "I'm going to be pissed if this plane crashes and I don't get a chance to drink that first." What's the matter with me?]

At any rate, it was a very productive and enjoyable time. I'll be sorting pictures today hoping to get them up by tonight amongst the necessary catching up on work.

Both my talks went very well, and I hope to post some thoughts on the conference over on JanusBlog in the next couple of weeks. Right now it's on to finals!

Off to Switzerland...

Heading out to the Epistemic Agency conference in Switzerland! I'll report from there!

Rochester Epistemology Conference

I'm happy to announce the 5th Biennial University of Rochester Graduate Epistemology Conference.

It will be held Friday-Saturday, October 10th-11th on the beautiful campus of the University of Rochester, hosted by the Philosophy Department.

The main speaker is Alvin Goldman and Richard Feldman will be commenting.

The call for paper is here.

Kripke Center Gala Opening and Unpublished Works

Most will have seen that the Kripke Center is having a big event (like, insanely big), but I'm not sure how many followed the links and saw that there's an "unpublished works" link. Unfortunately it's just a place-holder, but that's a link I want to keep my eye on!

Heading to another S____land epistemology conference: Epistemic Agency

Well I'll be heading out in a few weeks to the Epistemic Agency Conference in Geneva, Switzerland put on by the Episteme group there. I look forward to seeing Julien Detant again whom I met briefly at the Aberdeen Linguistics and Epistemology conference, Olivier Massin and Anne Meyen whom I met at the Edinburgh epistemology conference, and hanging out with El Greco, the main speaker and all around good guy.

This will be my third time abroad: twice to Scotland and now Switzerland. It struck me that I should next go to Swaziland to keep with the theme of taveling to S___land. I can't think of any more countries that meet that pattern, so maybe it'll just be a trifecta.

England doesn't count since I was just on my way to Scotland, but even if you counted it it would make a consistent _____land theme. Now that would have more opportunities I think. Any conferences in Iceland?

Realistic Foundationalism

Preping for seminar, must write fast. Richard Fumerton over-intellectualizes both basic and inferential justification. His view require too many epistemic thoughts for non-epistemologists to be justified. Richard Feldman has stayed closer to Chisholm on this but has not built as much theory as Fumerton has leaving his view too undeveloped to constitute a rival. He provides an important new detail in Chapter 8 of _Evidentialism_ more aptly named in Chapter 4 of _Sosa and His Critics_. Feldman uses a mid-grade awareness relation to justify foundational beliefs and vaguely invokes IBE for inferential justification. Fumerton also has a two-tired view.

My last two papers have attempted to combine and streamline these views and I think I just got a step closer to seeing how it works. I call it "Realistic Foundationalism" the acronym seems appropriate.

(RF) S is justified in believing p at t iff there is some proposition q such that S is aware of q and aware of an objective epistemic supports relation holding between q and p.

I want to grade this giving us

(RFd) S is justified in believing p to degree d at t iff there is some proposition q such that S is aware of q and aware of an objective epistemic supports relation of strength d holding between q and p.

Key caveats are that awareness can come in a continuum of grades and I don't know how to denote the threshold above which justification occurs. My current view is that one is aware enough of q iff it is psychonomically possible that S consciously use q as a premise in reasoning.

For basic external world beliefs q will be the contents of an experience. For inferences it will be the conjunction of the premises. For introspective beliefs I suppose it would be the contents of the relevant mental state, might even be p itself hosted in a different way.

That's where I am right now and I'm pretty excited about it.