Gradability and Knowledge

Epistemic contextualism (‘EC’), the view that the truth-values of knowledge attributions may vary with the context of ascription, has a variety of different linguistic implementations. On one of the implementations most popular in the early days of EC, the predicate ‘knows p’ functions semantically similarly to gradable adjectives such as ‘flat’, ‘tall’, or ‘empty’. In recent work Jason Stanley and John Hawthorne have presented powerful arguments against such implementations of EC. In this article I briefly systematize the contextualist analogy to gradable adjectives, present Stanley’s argument against the analogy, and offer a contextualist response that abandons the analogy in favor of modeling the semantics of ‘knows p’ along the lines of quantifier expressions. I then present Hawthorne’s objection to the views presented, and finally conclude by outlining an argument to the effect that ‘knows p’ is an automatic indexical and as such to be expected to function differently from many other indexicals that the term has been compared to in the literature. I finally point out that no analogy should be expected to be perfect, and that no harm is done by postulating some unique behavior of ‘knows p’

Foundationalism and Coherentism From a Contextualist Point of View

Here is the picture classical foundationalism draws of empirical justification: Our system of beliefs is structured like a pyramid, it consists of a broad foundation of perceptual beliefs, i.e. beliefs reporting the contents of our perceptual states, and a superstructure of worldly beliefs, i.e. beliefs reporting what is going on in the world around us. The beliefs building the foundation, the perceptual beliefs, are to be justified noninferentially, by direct appeal to our perceptual experiences, while the beliefs in the superstructure, beliefs about what is going on in the world around us, are to be justified inferentially, i.e. by appeal to other beliefs. Ultimately, our worldly beliefs thus rest on our perceptual beliefs, which in turn draw upon our perceptual experiences

Statistical Evidence, Normalcy, and the Gatecrasher Paradox

Martin Smith has recently proposed, in this journal, a novel and intriguing approach to puzzles and paradoxes in evidence law arising from the evidential standard of the Preponderance of the Evidence. According to Smith, the relation of normic support provides us with an elegant solution to those puzzles. In this paper I develop a counterexample to Smith’s approach and argue that normic support can neither account for our reluctance to base affirmative verdicts on bare statistical evidence nor resolve the pertinent paradoxes. Normic support is, as a consequence, not a successful epistemic anti-luck condition

Non-Reductive Safety

Safety principles in epistemology are often hailed as providing us with an explanation of why we fail to have knowledge in Gettier cases and lottery examples, while at the same time allowing for the fact that we know the negations of sceptical hypotheses. In a recent paper, Sinhababu and Williams have produced an example—the Backward Clock—that is meant to spell trouble for safety accounts of knowledge. I argue that the Backward Clock case is, in fact, unproblematic for the more sophisticated formulations of safety in the literature. However, I then proceed to construct two novel examples that turn out problematic for those formulations—one that provides us with a lottery-style case of safe ignorance and one that is a straightforward case of unsafe knowledge. If these examples succeed, then safety as it is usually conceived in the current debate cannot account for ignorance in all Gettier and lottery-style cases, and neither is it a necessary condition for knowledge. I conclude from these troublesome examples that modal epistemologists ought to embrace a much more simple and non-reductive version of safety, according to which the notion of similarity between possible worlds that determines in which worlds the subject must believe truly is an epistemic notion that cannot be defined or reduced to notions independent of knowledge. The resulting view is shown to also lead to desirable results with respect to lottery cases, certain quantum phenomena, and a puzzling case involving a cautious brain-in-a-vat

The Pioneer Anomaly and a Rotating G\"odel Universe

Based upon a simple cosmological model with no expansion, we find that the rotational terms appearing in the G/"odel universe are too small to explain the Pioneer anomaly. Although it contributes, universal rotation is not the cause of the Pioneer effect.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Contextualism, Subject‐Sensitive Invariantism, and the Interaction of ‘Knowledge’‐Ascriptions with Modal and Temporal Operators

Jason Stanley has argued recently that Epistemic Contextualism and Subject‐Sensitive Invariantism are explanatorily on a par with regard to certain data arising from modal and temporal embeddings of ‘knowledge’‐ascriptions. This paper argues against Stanley that EC has a clear advantage over SSI in the discussed field and introduces a new type of linguistic datum strongly suggesting the falsity of SSI

Conversational Implicatures (and How to Spot Them)

In everyday conversations we often convey information that goes above and beyond what we strictly speaking say: exaggeration and irony are obvious examples. H.P. Grice introduced the technical notion of a conversational implicature in systematizing the phenomenon of meaning one thing by saying something else. In introducing the notion, Grice drew a line between what is said, which he understood as being closely related to the conventional meaning of the words uttered, and what is conversationally implicated, which can be inferred from the fact that an utterance has been made in context. Since Grice’s seminal work, conversational implicatures have become one of the major research areas in pragmatics. This article introduces the notion of a conversational implicature, discusses some of the key issues that lie at the heart of the recent debate, and explicates tests that allow us to reliably distinguish between semantic entailments and conventional implicatures on the one hand and conversational implicatures on the other

Ridesharing as an Alternative to Ambulance Transport for Voluntary Psychiatric Patients in the Emergency Department

Introduction: Emergency department (ED) crowding is a growing problem. Psychiatric patients have long ED lengths of stay awaiting placement and transportation to a psychiatric facility after disposition.Methods: Retrospective analysis of length of ED stay after disposition for voluntary psychiatric patients before and after the use of Lyft ridesharing services for inter-facility transport.Results: Using Lyft transport to an outside crisis center shortens time to discharge both statistically and clinically from 113 minutes to 91 minutes (p = 0.028) for voluntary psychiatric patients. Discharge time also decreased for involuntary patients from 146 minutes to 127 minutes (p = 0.0053).Conclusion: Ridesharing services may be a useful alternative to medical transportation for voluntary psychiatric patients

Wie erfolgversprechend ist die Reproduktion institutionellen Designs? Individualbeschwerden im Kontext des Inter-Amerikanischen Menschenrechtssystems sowie des juristischen Systems der Andengemeinschaft

Das vorliegende Papier untersucht exemplarisch, ob sich der Erfolg juristischer Systeme reproduzieren lässt. Hierbei wird eine zentrale Annahme der Regimetheorie zugrunde gelegt, wonach das spezifische Design einer Institution für deren effektives Funktionieren eine zentrale Rolle spielt. Das Papier beleuchtet ausführlich die Rechtspraxis des inter-amerikanischen Menschenrechtssystems sowie des juristischen Systems der Andengemeinschaft, deren institutionelles Design sich explizit an erfolgreichen europäischen Vorbildern orientiert: am Menschenrechtssystem des Europarates sowie am Rechtssystem der Europäischen Union. Die lateinamerikanischen Systeme sind jedoch mit gänzlich anderen Kontextbedingungen als ihre europäischen Vorbilder konfrontiert. In vielen Ländern der Region sind Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit äußerst fragil, massive und systematische Menschenrechtsverletzungen waren und sind vielerorts an der Tagesordnung, regionale Bündnisse kranken an den schwachen, meist auf Rohstoffexporten basierenden Ökonomien ihrer Mitgliedsländer. Wie erfolgversprechend ist die Reproduktion des Designs angesichts dieser Rahmenbedingungen? Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage wird mittels der Indikatoren Beschwerdezahlen, Verfahrensdauer, Verfahrensausgang sowie Umsetzung der Urteile die Rechtspraxis der lateinamerikanischen Systeme in vergleichender Perspektive zu den europäischen Institutionen bewertet.The present study analyses the prospects of reproducing successful international judicial systems. The analysis is based on a core assumption of regime theory that specific design plays a crucial role for an institution's effectiveness. The paper scrutinizes the Inter-American human rights system's and the Andean system's legal practice whose institutional design is explicitly modeled on European prototypes: the Council of Europe's human rights system and the judicial system of the European Union. However, apart from the institutional design no further similarities exist between the European institutions and their American counterparts. The latter have to deal with highly problematic background circumstances such as poor economic records, precarious democratic structures, shallow rule-of-law standards, as well as massive human rights violations. How promising is institutional reproduction against these background conditions? In order to answer this question, the legal practice of the Latin-American institutions is evaluated, using the indicators number of complaints, duration and outcome of proceedings, and compliance with rulings