One central debate in recent literature on epistemic normativity concerns the epistemic norm for action. This paper argues that this debate is afflicted by a category mistake: strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an epistemic norm for action. To this effect, I introduce a distinction between epistemic norms and norms with epistemic content; I argue that, while it is plausible that norms...

Napoleon III's ambition to construct a paradoxical liberal empire encountered major obstacle in the realm of press, which chafed under censure and forced Emperor consider ramifications that absolutism would have for his reign, given France's revolutionary history. The article traces history Second Empire, identify motivations liberalization its consequences regime.

In this paper, a new argument for an expressivist account of epistemic modals is developed. The argument starts from a puzzle about epistemic modals that Seth Yalcin recently presented. Yalcin’s own solution to the puzzle is rejected and a better explanation is given which is based on expressivism concerning epistemic modals. Furthermore, two alleged problems for expressivism are addressed: fir...

I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an epistemic decision theory, in a consequentialist spirit. Previous work has focused on cases in which the truth-values of the propositions in which the agent is selecting credences do not depend, either causally or merely evidentially, on the agent’s choice of credences. Relaxing that restriction lead...

This paper is about Spohn’s theory of epistemic beliefs. The main ingredients of Spohn’s theory are (i) a functional representation of an epistemic state called a disbelief function, and (ii) a rule for revising this function in light of new information. The main contribution of this paper is as follows. First, we provide a new axiomatic definition of an epistemic state and study some of its pr...

For linear evolution control system described by ẋ = Ax(t) + Bu(t), x(0) = x0 (A generates a strongly continuous semigroup {S(t)}t≥0 on a Banach space X; B is a linear unbounded operator), the attainable set K (t) set is studied. Conditions of the independence of t for its closure K(t) are established. Controllability conditions for some classes of evolution systems are obtained.

According to the principle of epistemic closure, knowledge is closed under known implication. The principle is intuitive but it is problematic in some cases. Suppose you know you have hands and you know that ‘I have hands’ implies ‘I am not a brain-in-a-vat’. Does it follow that you know you are not a brain-in-a-vat? It seems not; it should not be so easy to refute skepticism. In this and simil...

1. Epistemic closure The general principle of epistemic closure stipulates that epistemic properties are transmissible through logical means. The principle of epistemic closure under known entailment (ECKE), a particular instance of epistemic closure (EC), has received a good deal of attention since the last thirty years or so. ECKE states that: if one knows that p, and she knows that p entails...

In this paper I examine the feminist claim that non-epistemic values ought to play a role in scientific inquiry. I examine four holist arguments that non-epistemic values ought to play a role not only in the external aspects of scientific inquiry such as problem selection and the ethics of experimentation but also in its internal aspects, those that have to do with epistemic justification. In s...