Asian journal of philosophy最新文献

Jakob Ohlhorst’s Trust Responsibly develops a dual process, virtue-theoretic answer to a crucial challenge to hinge epistemology, the so-called “demarcation problem” of distinguishing epistemically good from epistemically bad hinges. The book is packed with insightful ideas about many epistemological issues, offering carefully crafted arguments for a picture of knowledge that merges in an extremely attractive way hinge epistemology, virtue epistemology, and dual process theory. In this contribution to the book symposium on Trust Responsibly, I focus on Ohlhorst’s characterisation of cornerstone propositions, his take on epistemic alchemy, and the internalist credentials of his answer to the sceptical challenge, raising some worries about these aspects of his account.

Although shame is not listed in Ekman’s (1999) basic emotions, it is recognized by many psychologists as one of the universal human emotions observed across different cultures throughout the world as a secondary self-conscious emotion (self-critical awareness of one’s social reputation) (Tangney et al., in Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345–372, 2007). However, there are culturally specific forms and words of shame that can pose a serious challenge to cross-linguistic communication. I will categorize different forms of shame and discuss if there exist any incomparable or incompatible notions of shame in Korean and Japanese cultures. I will argue that there are at least three semantic categories in Korean and Japanese words of shame. However, one of the semantic categories of Korean shame words represents a unique notion of shame (an inner sense or disposition of morality) which is not fully or properly translated into the Japanese words of shame. Therefore, shame provides an intriguing case of culturally en-formed emotions, emotions that are developed in particular cultural environments. This type of culturally embedded semantic difference seems to be persistent or perhaps pervasive even between closely related cultures such as Korean and Japanese cultures with many comparable social practices and linguistic characteristics. The current study shows that cultural variance and semantic incomparability (although they do not necessarily demonstrate fundamental cultural relativity or radical incommensurability between different linguistic or conceptual systems) can affect cross-linguistic communication and cause, in certain contexts, cross-linguistic disagreement.

This paper uses the notion of Natural Kinds to defend the “scientific” character of Marxian economics as a discipline. Drawing from Saul Kripke and other natural kind theorists, a criterion will be supplied that is at once logical, modal, semantic, ontological, and empirical. This would represent an encapsulation of the intuitive standards around which different economic theories compete, representing a theory-indistinct target that all scientific claims of economics aim to hit. We will demonstrate this using the case example of the work of Marx. This procedure could be repeated with any contending economic theory, giving us a theory-neutral condition for evaluating the “scientific” status of economic claims. Three results follow: (a) we get a logical framework for defining the validity-space of claims that would make up “economics;” (b) we get a tool for comparing varying economic claims or theories against one another, a tool that could be used with many others; and (c) we will see how counter to some theorists, economics does in fact represent a Natural Kind.

In ‘Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence’, we develop a novel account of how it is that AI can be trustworthy and what it takes for an AI to be trustworthy. In this paper, we respond to a suite of recent comments on this account, due to J. Adam Carter, Dong-yong Choi, Rune Nyrup, and Fei Song. We would like to thank all four for their thoughtful engagement with our work, as well as the Asian Journal of Philosophy for publishing the symposium on our paper. The game plan for the paper is as follows. We will first briefly rehearse the account and then respond to comments in turn.

In The Knowledge Machine, Michael Strevens challenges traditional views of the scientific method and defends the “iron rule of explanation.” This commentary introduces an evolutionary game perspective to explore the emergence and sustainability of the iron rule. Modeling the dynamics of theory-competing strategies in a population of theorists demonstrates that whether following the iron rule is rational depends on the frequency of iron-rule players one encounters. The study suggests that the social constraints of localized networks for iron-rule followers are critical factors in transitioning from a philosophical-dispute equilibrium to a scientific-dispute equilibrium.

The cut-free validity theory (textsf{STV}) proposed by Barrio, Rosenblatt, and Tajer suffers from incompleteness with respect to its object language validity predicate. The validity predicate of (textsf{STV}) fails in validating some valid inferences of its underlying logic, the Strict Tolerant logic (textsf{ST}). In this paper, we will present the non-normal modal logic (textsf{ST}^{Box Diamond }) whose modalities (Box ) and (Diamond ) capture the tautologies/valid inferences and the consistent formulas of the logic (textsf{ST}), respectively. We show that (textsf{ST}^{Box Diamond }) does not trivialize when extended with self-referential devices. We also show that such a solution poses a dilemma. If we extend (textsf{ST}^{Box Diamond }) in such a way that it allows iterated modal formulas among its theorems, then the resulting interpretation of (Box ) as validity implies that metametainferences of (textsf{ST}) behave like classical logic. On the other hand, if we allow these modalities to receive intermediate truth values, we obtain formulas incompatible with the proposed reading of (Box ).

In the semantic debate about perspectival expressions—predicates of taste, aesthetic and moral terms, epistemic modals, etc.—intuitions about armchair scenarios (e.g., disagreement, retraction) have played a crucial role. More recently, various experimental studies have been conducted, both in relation to disagreement (e.g., Cova, 2012; Foushee and Srinivasan, 2017; Solt, 2018) and retraction (e.g., Knobe and Yalcin, 2014; Khoo, 2018; Beddor and Egan, 2018; Dinges and Zakkou, 2020; Kneer 2021; 2022; Almagro, Bordonaba Plou, and Villanueva, 2023; Marques, 2024), with the aim of establishing a more solid foundation for semantic theorizing. Both these types of data have been used to argue for or against certain views (e.g., contextualism, relativism). In this talk, I discern a common thread in the use of these data and argue for two claims: (i) which perspective is adopted by those judging the armchair scenarios put forward and by the participants in experimental studies crucially matters for the viability of the intended results; (ii) failure to properly attend to this puts recent experimental work at risk. Finally, I consider the case of cross-linguistic disagreement and retraction and assess their importance for the semantic debate about perspectival expressions, as well as for the claim that perspective matters in putting forward the data on which decisions about the right semantic view are made.

In this symposium piece, I follow Lu-Adler’s lead in scrutinizing the connections between linguistic Othering and prevailing yet exclusionary academic practices of knowledge production, focusing on linguistic epistemic injustice in academia. Specifically, I suggest that in a global academic context marked by sharp inequalities of opportunity due inter alia to linguistic Othering, language often operates as a threefold criterion for knowledge validation and hence for the allocation of credibility and intelligibility. I submit that linguistic selection (i.e., which language is used for knowledge production and transmission), linguistic form (i.e., the way a given language is spoken or written), and linguistic content (i.e., the words or concepts a given language offers and uses to describe and make sense of the world) are all ways in which language can be used to validate or invalidate processes of knowledge production and thereby result in unjust allocations of credibility and intelligibility. I argue that language can thus sometimes function as what I have called elsewhere a “meta-epistemic filter,” which creates an unjust credibility and intelligibility economy by predetermining in a structurally biased way what kinds of epistemic contributions are (made) available or count as admissible or inadmissible in the first place. I close by exploring how we might foster greater linguistic epistemic justice in academia by cultivating meta-linguistic awareness and how this might be facilitated by attending to the role that experiential (as opposed to merely propositional) knowledge might play.

In this response to Lu-Adler’s article, I focus on her claim that Kant’s positionality gives his theorizing “ideology-forming” and “world-making” power. I explore a way of understanding this idea through speech act theory, and in particular the way in which speech act theory interacts with the phenomenon of silencing. I propose two ways in which Kant’s positionality could give him world-making power. First, Kant (and other scholars) can be in a position of performing the kinds of speech acts that themselves constitute the creation of certain forms of oppression, much in the way in which a legislator can create an oppressive law simply by proclaiming it to be so. Second, Kant can be in a position of creating an illocutionary disabling effect, namely a situation in which Chinese scholars become unable to perform the speech act of assertion in academic contexts.

This is an introduction to the Topical Collection Current Themes in Epistemology: Asian Epistemology Network.