Justification and evidence

Thesis. Rational belief should vary with evidence along an epistemic gradient; doubt is not a vice but the rational complement of belief wherever evidence is incomplete. Scriptural discouragement of doubt (e.g., Jas 1:5-8; Matt 21:21-22) and commendation of belief without sight (John 20:29) conflict with this norm. This paper uniquely contributes by integrating Bayesian proportionality with virtue epistemology and empirical social psychology, showing how theological discouragement of doubt undermines truth-tracking mechanisms across multiple domains. Beyond biblical exegesis, the argument applies to any worldview that stigmatizes doubt. A deity who prohibits doubt would thereby undercut conditions for genuine truth-seeking.

This paper critically examines Coliva and Palmira's characterization of the disagreement between Humean skeptics and hinge epistemologists as a distinctive kind of conceptual disagreement. Humean skepticism requires evidential justification for all rational beliefs, presenting a narrower conception of rationality. This contrasts with constitutivist hinge epistemology, which posits that our unwarranted hinge propositions-the basic certainties which makes the justifications for ordinary empirical propositions possible-are constitutive of the concept of epistemic rationality, thus they are also rationally accepted by us. Coliva and Palmira (2020, 2021) argue that this divergence reflects a conceptual disagreement over the conception of epistemic rationality, implying a dispute about how the concept of epistemic rationality should be understood. Their strategy is twofold: they first mentioned Stroud's (2019) categorization of conceptual disagreement, but contended that the disagreement between Humean skeptics and hinge epistemologists represents a novel kind of conceptual disagreement that Stroud's categorization cannot encompass. They suggest this new framing allows for a rational resolution of the disagreement; second, they argue that the extended conception of rationality is superior because it coherently accounts for the rationality of our epistemic practices. However, I contend that both parts of their twofold strategy fail. Even if the disagreement is conceptual, it can be understood as a type of disagreement within Stroud's categorization; therefore, it does not represent a novel type of disagreement. Additionally, I argue that they misinterpret the skeptic's stance. Skeptics do not assume that our epistemic practices are rational; rather, they doubt the rationality of these practices and the possibility of knowledge. Therefore, for a skeptic, there is no advantage from a conceptual proposal that makes a coherent account of the alleged rationality of our epistemic practices.

L'articolo offre una ricostruzione teorica del giudizio di responsabilità, inteso come cornice logica ideale entro cui inquadrare ciascuna delle diverse forme di responsabilità previste dall'ordinamento, analizzandone la struttura e i presupposti epistemologici. A partire da un'idea dell'ordinamento come insieme di enunciati normativi, capaci di orientare condotte e generare aspettative, si assume che ogni decisione di condanna segua, in linea di principio, una forma deduttiva riconducibile al modus ponens: data una regola e un fatto accertato, ne consegue logicamente una decisione di condanna. Tuttavia, si vedrà come la premessa di questa deduzione-il giudizio di responsabilità-sia il risultato di un processo complesso che coinvolge, nel senso che verrà chiarito, inferenze non deduttive. In particolare, l'accertamento del nesso causale si fonda su regolarità empiriche, operando nel dominio della probabilità più che della necessità logica, mentre la colpevolezza viene ricostruita attraverso l'interpretazione di segni esteriori e modelli culturali di comportamento. Il lavoro intende mostrare come diritto positivo, prassi giurisprudenziale e teorie della decisione possano concorrere, ciascuna secondo il proprio lessico, alla costruzione del giudizio di responsabilità: una costruzione in cui logica, probabilità e interpretazione si intrecciano nel tentativo di rendere razionalmente giustificabile una decisione che è, in ultima analisi, un atto di comprensione umana.

The article offers a theoretical reconstruction of the judgment of responsibility, understood as an ideal logical framework within which each of the various forms of responsibility provided by the legal system can be situated, analyzing its structure and epistemological foundations. Starting from a conception of the legal order as a set of normative statements capable of guiding conducts and generating expectations, it is assumed that any conviction decision follows, in principle, a deductive form traceable to modus ponens: given a rule and an established fact, a conviction logically follows. However, it will be shown that the premise of this deduction-the judgment of responsibility-is the result of a complex process involving, as will be clarified, non-deductive inferences. In particular, the establishment of the causal link relies on empirical regularities, operating within the domain of probability rather than that of logical necessity, while culpability is reconstructed through the interpretation of external signs and culturally embedded models of behavior. The article seeks to illustrate how positive law, judicial practice, and decision theory may each contribute-through their own conceptual frameworks-to the construction of the judgment of responsibility: a construction in which logic, probability, and interpretation converge in the effort to render rationally justifiable a decision that remains, in the final analysis, an act of human understanding.

The direct way to argue for scepticism is to take a sceptical hypothesis (H) like Descartes' Evil Demon and argue that nothing is known (~Kp) since H is true. IA 1. H 2. H entails ~Kp (definition) 3. ~Kp This direct argument for scepticism, the Argument For Ignorance (IA) as it might be called, is obviously indefensible since the premise, H, can never be known to be true. That, however, is more of a pragmatic, procedural objection to scepticism than a substantive refutation, since scepticism might still be true even if it is indefensible. We might still be being deceived by an evil demon even if philosophers assure us that it is indefensible to say so. It is this modal dimension of the problem that philosophers have found most troubling. 1 What makes radical scepticism indefensible makes it irrefutable and possibly true. Now if "irrefutable" and "possibly true" mean anything more than that the sceptical hypothesis is logically possible (not contradictory), it must be that it is not known to be false, the alternative to maintaining that it is true. It's thus really just a continuation of the defense of scepticism: since H entails ~Kp and H is not known to be false, it follows that it is not known that anything is known (~K~~Kp, ie. ~KKp) in accordance with the principle that knowledge is closed under entailment (CP), hence that nothing is known, ~Kp, in accordance with the principle that ~KKp is virtually equivalent to ~Kp (KK). AI 1. ~K~H (by definition) 2. H entails ~Kp (by definition) 3. ~KKp (CP) 4. ~Kp (KK) This indirect argument has been called the "Argument From Ignorance" (DeRose, 1995) because it opens quietly with a demurrer instead of a dogmatic affirmation of H, in keeping with scepticism's spirit of agnosticism. While it begins unassumingly with a shift of epistemic modality, AI still somehow manages to produce the radical sceptical conclusion at the end-the very thing it was supposed to get around the problem of arguing directly for. How is it possible to get ~Kp from ~K~H and ~KKp, when we know a priori that any argument for ~Kp is selfdefeating? If it looks like a mouse has come into being by spontaneous generation out of gray rags and dust, we would do well (says Wittgenstein) to examine the rags carefully to see how a mouse may have hidden in them. Here the mouse is hiding in the rules of inference-not CP, but KK. 1 Pritchard (2005) says that the modal dimension of the sceptic's conclusion is what makes it so troubling: '... regardless of whether we are ... the victim of a sceptical hypothesis, it remains that we do not know ... everyday propositions ...' (p2) He means that the mere possibility of H implies that we know nothing (~Kp).

Jonathan Schaffer (2010) has provided a new expression of its threat. The Debasing Demon appears to generate a novel form of radical doubt, one that has gained prominence in recent debates. Instead of targeting the connection between belief and truth, it undercuts the link between belief and evidence (or its reasons). This contribution presents the Debasing Demon Problem, analyzing its reach. It will provide an account for explaining how its threat is raised, explore its relationship to classical varieties of skepticism, and assess some of the main objections against it. It will be argued that Schaffer's Demon institutes a consistent epistemic threat, one that might represent the main variety of skepticism to be tackled in epistemology. Some consequences of this analysis are then presented concerning how to face this open problem.

Since the 9/11 bombing, religion, terrorism and violence have been associated and have been viewed to be "coextensive". The leading voice of secularism, darwinistic evolutionism and atheism (i.e., Dennett, Harris, Dawkins and the late Hitchens) found their way into popular media and publication and had an old hardline skeptic stance "repacked" as New Atheism. This apparent resurgence of skepticism to the possibility, probability and reality of the Supernatural (God) has been, in some way, gaining success in owning the explanation for the phenomenon of morality eliminating any sense of religion, if possible. But are their claims epistemically and ontologically viable? This paper will revisit, compare and contrast, and examine the new and the preexisting worldviews and ideologies that actively participate in the contemporary discussion of moral issues. More specifically, this critique will look into the assumptions, presuppositions of Evolutionist, Secular Humanist, Post-marxist, Post-feminist (and other dominant atheist frameworks) that attempt at explaining morality and its nature. The findings will be juxtaposed against the Judaeo-Christian paradigm, as it is the traditional and standard argument on the need for God as the ground of moral values and duties. What this paper wishes to accomplish is a clear and coherent set of explanations which the other contrarian perspectives may consider viable as they consider present their ideas elsewhere. Finally, the paper aims to find its contextual significance in the Philippines as the country is slowly, but steadily receiving the winds of atheistic/materialistic ideologies through contemporary media: print, visual, and social.

van Fraassen’s ‘Constructive Empiricism’ trades in apparent isotheneia much like a Pyrrhonist, to characterise and advocate his voluntarism regarding the empiricist stance, in the voluntarist strain of fideism tracing back to Augustine. To show how and why this matters philosophically, I review main Pyrrhonist tropes, the Dilemma of the Criterion and Pyrrhonism’s key basis step (§2). I then summarise why Constructive Empiricism is quasi-Pyrrhonist (§3). To substantiate this claim I recount van Fraassen’s empiricist stance (§4), his own sceptical tropes (§5) and its key basis step (§6). I conclude with some reflections upon method, scepticism and the philosophical importance of historical philosophy (§7). Despite the ‘retreat’ from The Scientific Image announced by van Fraassen in Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective (2008), the same basic Pyrrhonist tendencies persist throughout van Fraassen’s empiricist stance.

Frege was one of the greatest logicians of all time, and also one of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy. For much of the 20th century, his work tended to be read in abstraction from its historical context. In the last decades, however, there have been more attempts to relate him not only to developments in the mathematics of his time, but also to the philosophical and logical debates preceding and surrounding him, especially also in Jena's academic circles. As several of the books reviewed here demonstrate, this contextualisation has intensified in recent years, not least in German-speaking Frege studies. What is still missing, apart from a more critical engagement with his ideas (as done by Wittgenstein), is a reliable intellectual biography.

Este artigo investiga a natureza epistemológica do ato de crer, buscando esclarecer em que medida a crença pode ser considerada uma instância legítima do conhecimento ou um estado mental com valor epistêmico. A análise parte da concepção da crença como uma disposição psicológica representacional associada a uma proposição predicativa, cuja validade e veracidade são assumidas a previamente pelo sujeito. Defende-se que, para que uma crença possua status epistêmico pleno, ela deve ser devidamente justificada e verdadeira, resultando de um processo cognitivo orientado à realidade. São examinadas as implicações dos experimentos de Gettier e as abordagens de Alvin Plantinga sobre warrant, confrontando-se perspectivas internalistas e externalistas de justificação. Conclui-se que o crer, embora psicologicamente necessário, é epistemicamente válido apenas quando se abre ao crivo racional e ontológico da verdade, podendo, sob certas condições, coincidir com conhecimento. A crença é, assim, concebida como um estado mental que participa da economia do saber, mas cujo valor epistêmico é condicional, escalonado e dependente de seu enraizamento na realidade.

Appraising the worth of others' testimony is always complex; appraising the worth of expert testimony is even harder; appraising the worth of expert testimony in a legal context is harder yet. Legal efforts to assess the reliability of expert testimony -I'll focus on evolving U.S. law governing the admissibility of such testimony-seem far from adequate, offering little effective practical guidance. My purpose in this paper is to think through what might be done to offer courts more real, operational help. The first step is to explain why the legal formulae that have evolved over the years may seem reassuring, but aren't really of much practical use. The next is to suggest that we might do better not by amending evidentiary rules but by helping judges and attorneys understand what questions they should ask about expert evidence. I focus here on (i) epidemiological testimony, and (ii) the process of peer review.

Genesis 15:6 has long been interpreted-particularly within Christian theology-as when YHWH declares 'Avram righteous based on his faith. This reading, heavily influenced by Paul's appeal to the Septuagint (LXX), has served as a cornerstone for the doctrine of "justification by faith alone." This study argues that verse 15:6, when translated in light of the Hebrew syntax and literary context, does not support such a reading. A syntactically correct and more contextually faithful rendering is therefore proposed: "But 'Avram trusted in YHWH, and reckoned His promises-sincere though unfulfilled-as righteousness." Through a detailed analysis of Hebrew grammar, narrative sequencing, and scene structurealongside a critical comparison with the LXX-this paper demonstrates that the traditional reading obscures the original Hebrew nuance. Moreover, it is not until the Aqedah (Genesis 22) that 'Elohim finally and explicitly judges 'Avraham's righteousness, but doing so based on covenantal obedience (22:12). This reinterpretation returns us to the voice of the Hebrew narrator, whose theology of justification is expressed not as a forensic imputation, but as faithfulness tested and proven through obedience.

Even though the virtues may be interconnected, it seems obviously possible to have one of the virtues without having them all. Some have defended the unity thesis against this concern by arguing that the virtues are still unified in their ideal forms. The problem with this defense is that it simply admits that the unity thesis, as traditionally conceived, is mistaken, taking the unity of the virtues to be limited to the ideal case. In this paper, I outline a blueprint for how the ideal virtue response can be used to defend the original unity thesis.

Argumentation is a major topic in the study of artificial intelligence. In particular, the problem of solving certain reasoning tasks of Dung's abstract argumentation frameworks is central to many advanced argumentation systems. The fact that problems to be solved are mostly intractable requires efficient algorithms and solvers, that are to be evaluated on meaningful benchmarks. In this report, we introduce the Second International Competition on Computational Models of Argumentation (ICCMA'17), which is jointly organized by TU Dresden (Germany), TU Wien (Austria), and the University of Genoa (Italy), in affiliation with the 2017 International Workshop on Theory and Applications of Formal Argumentation (TAFA'17).

In this paper I defend a version of Wittgensteininan contextualism. This is a view about justification on which some beliefs are epistemically appropriate because evidence cannot be adduced in their favour. I trace the history of the view from Wittgenstein and Ortega to the present day, defend one version from the charge of relativism, and suggest some applications of the view both within and without philosophy.

A single argument template-the EPH template-can be used to generate versions of the best known and most challenging skeptical problems. In his brilliantly groundbreaking book Knowledge and Its Limits, Timothy Williamson presents a theory of knowledge and evidence which he clearly intends to provide a response to skepticism in its most important forms. After laying out EPH skepticism and reviewing possible ways of responding to it, I show how elements of Williamson's theory motivate a hitherto unexplored way of responding to EPH-generated skeptical arguments. Then I offer reasons to doubt the correctness of Williamson's response.

This document provides comprehensive guidance for magistrates in Tanzania on the admissibility and evaluation of electronic evidence, focusing on its weight and reliability. Electronic evidence, recognized under Section 3(1)(d) of the Evidence Act, includes data stored electronically, such as CCTV footage or phone recordings. The legal framework, including the Evidence Act, Electronic Transactions Act, and relevant case law, outlines the procedural and substantive requirements for admitting such evidence.

Key considerations for admissibility include reliability, integrity, originator identification, and compliance with procedural requirements. Magistrates must verify system functionality, ensure certification of copies, and establish a clear chain of custody. The document emphasizes evaluating evidential weight based on authenticity, relevance, and materiality, with specific guidance for handling CCTV footage and phone recordings.

Case law, such as Onesmo Nangole vs. Dr. Steven Lemomo Kiruswa, highlights principles for treating electronic evidence as documentary exhibits, ensuring integrity and reliability. Practical steps for handling objections and managing exhibits, as outlined in the Exhibits Management Guidelines (2020), are also provided. Recommendations include engaging expert witnesses when necessary and maintaining proper documentation of proceedings.

The document underscores the need for procedural consistency, fairness, and adherence to legal standards to enhance judicial efficiency in handling electronic evidence in Tanzanian courts.

Epistemologists have widely accepted that truth, justification, and belief are necessary conditions for knowledge. This article challenges the necessity of the two components, "belief" and "justification," in the definition of knowledge. It argues that belief is distinct from knowledge; belief is an act of will, whereas knowledge is acquired automatically. One may possess knowledge without actively willing to believe it, and conversely, one may will to believe something without actually knowing it. Additionally, justification should be seen as a method of validating knowledge, not a fundamental part of its definition. Therefore, knowledge without justification remains knowledge, even though its truth cannot be proven. Building on this perspective, the proposed definition of knowledge shifts to "awareness or recognition of facts." According to this definition, the Gettier problem and the lottery paradox find alternative solutions.

Epistemologists have widely accepted that truth, justification, and belief are necessary conditions for knowledge. This article challenges the necessity of the two components, “belief” and “justification”, in the definition of knowledge. It argues that belief is distinct from knowledge; belief is an act of will, whereas knowledge is acquired automatically. One may possess knowledge without being actively willing to believe it, and conversely, one may will to believe something without actually knowing it. Additionally, justification should be seen as a method of validating knowledge, not a fundamental part of its definition. Therefore, knowledge without justification remains knowledge, even though its truth cannot be proven. Building on this perspective, the proposed definition of knowledge shifts to “awareness or recognition of facts.” According to this definition, the Gettier problem and the lottery paradox find alternative solutions.

This article is part of Religious Studies’ new initiative to publish a series of interviews with distin- guished philosophers of religion. Each interview explores the personal and academic background of the interviewee and discusses their core philosophical views. The aim is to inspire students and scholars and to provide an overview of some of the most important works developed by contempo- rary philosophers of religion. In the first interview, Max Baker-Hytch interviews Richard Swinburne, covering such topics as his upbringing, his days as a student in Oxford in the 1950s, and his views on natural theology, the problem of evil, and the mind-body problem.

Da dove viene un fatto non ancora noto? Come accade che sia possibile pensarlo? Se la possibilità di ogni nuova associazione riposa sul già noto, come può venire riconosciuta una configurazione che non lo è ancora? Domande di questo genere derivano dal pragmatismo peirciano. In particolare, nell’affrontare il rapporto tra l’identità del riconoscimento e il suo attuarsi come interpretazione sempre differente, verrà trattato il pensiero di Charles S. Peirce secondo lo staglio del filosofo Carlo Sini. Per uscire dalla contraddizione di una regola differente da se stessa, diventa necessario distinguere fra tre categorie differenti di interpretante. La regola, intesa come novità associativa, si risolve nell’interpretare secondo plausibilità. In secondo luogo, l’induzione configura un oggetto noto su base probabilistica, nella scommessa di poterlo riconoscere concretamente. Infine, può avere luogo la regola deduttiva, come certezza pienamente positiva dell’identico.

When an empirical prediction E of hypothesis H is observed to be true, such observation is said to confirm, i.e., support (although not prove) the truth of the hypothesis. But why? What justifies the claim that such evidence supports the hypothesis? The widely accepted answer is that it is justified by induction. More specifically, it is commonly held that the following argument: (1) If H then E; (2) E; (3) Therefore, (probably) H—here referred to as ‘hypothetico-deductive con-firmation argument’—is inductively strong. Yet this argument looks nothing like an inductive generalisation, i.e., it doesn’t seem inductive in the term's traditional, enumerative sense. If anything, it has the form of the fallacy of affirming the consequent. This paper aims to solve this puzzle. True, in recent decades, ‘in-duction’ has been sometimes used more broadly to encompass any non-deductive, i.e., ampliative, argument. Applying Bayesian confirmation theory has famously demonstrated that hypothetico-deductive confirmation is indeed inductive in this broader, ampliative sense. Nonetheless, it will be argued here that, despite appearance, hypothetico-deductive confirmation can also be recast as a strong enumerative induction. Hence, by being enumeratively inductive, the scientific method of hypothetico-deductive confirmation is justified through this traditional, more restrictive type of induction rather than merely by ampliative induction.

At the end of his life Ernst Schröder (1841-1902) regarded the formulation of a general theory of operations as his "very own field of research." Already in his Lehrbuch der Arithmetik und Algebra (1873) and especially in Über die formalen Elemente der absoluten Algebra (1874) he had made the first steps towards establishing a "formal" or, in its final stage, an "absolute algebra" proceeding from the assumption that there are operations which allow to connect two objects of a given domain (not restricted to mathematical objects) to a third, which belongs also to the domain. By this means Schroder tried to go beyond the narrow boundaries of traditional arithmetic, and to embrace also non-commutative numbers like quaternions. Through Robert Grassmann's Formenlehre (1872), Schröder discovered the analogy between arithmetical and logical connectives, but already late in 1874 he went further: he then treated formal logic and arithmetic as two different models of formal algebra. His subsequent research was devoted to the analysis of logic as such a model. Schröder considered his proof that the "second subsumption of the distributive law" was not provable in the identical calculus without negation as one of the main results of his Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik (vol. I, 1890). As a conclusion from this proof, he distinguished between a "really logical calculus" (of groups, algorithms etc.) without complete distributivity, and the identical calculus which had to contain a special postulate to provide the problematic second subsumption. When Schröder studied Peirce's algebra of relatives in the beginning 1890s, the focal point of his research returned to his early program of an absolute algebra. The logic of relatives with its relative operations following the laws of the absolute algebra seemed to provide the language for applying the intended general theory of operations to all fields of mathematics and, beyond this, to all fields of knowledge containing formal structures. In this modified conception Schröder regarded arithmetic as part of a "general logic".

Sosa's influential work on virtue epistemology includes an intriguing proposal about background commitments, which he in turn relates to the Wittgensteinian notion of a hinge commitment. A critique is offered of Sosa's proposal, particularly with regard to how he aims to apply it to the problem of radical scepticism. In light of this critique, an alternative conception of hinge commitments is offered that enables them to play a very different role in our treatment of radical scepticism.

Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature centrally aims to systematically order our most basic ontological and natural-scientific concepts and principles (§§246Z, 247Z, 249 & Z), beginning with the most abstract, undifferentiated and universal (space and time, §§254–7), and developing finely differentiated and integrated stages (§249) up to the most complex: the organic life of animal species (§§367–76). Hegel classifies his philosophy of nature as ‘rational physics’: physical theory highlighting the conceptual foundations and basic principles of physics and how these can explain and comprehend particular physical phenomena. Newton identified the genre of his Principia as ‘rational mechanics’ (a proper part of rational physics); rational physics remains a serious discipline today, with professional journals and recent textbooks to show for it. Hegel’s study of gravitational theory was central to developing his ‘dialectic’ from a destructive set of sceptical equipollence arguments to counter contemporaneous physics and astronomy, into a constructive set of philosophical principles based on gravity exhibiting the essential interrelatedness of physical bodies. In life sciences and anthropology, Hegel sought to avoid both substance dualism and eliminative reductionism by developing a sophisticated and subtle emergentism. ‘Emergence’ refers to properties or behaviour of a complex system which are not aggregative functions of the properties or behaviour of the individual parts or materials of that system. Emergentism thus highlights structures and functions, opposing eliminative reductionism, though not (necessarily) materialism. Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is fascinating in its own right and also illuminates the character of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole, because as Henry Harris noted, ‘the Baconian applied science of this world is the solid foundation upon which Hegel’s ladder of spiritual experience rests’.

Con su Modelo de la Plausibilidad Relativa, Ronald Allen y Michael Pardo pretenden dar cuenta del razonamiento probatorio judicial. Como destacaré, la propuesta adolece de una ambivalencia metodológica. Con ella se pretende explicar cómo sucede en los hechos el fenómeno de interés y, al mismo tiempo, guiar la conducta de quienes lo llevan a cabo, de acuerdo con lo que mandan ciertas normas jurídicas. El precio que paga a cambio es elevado. Entre otros problemas, esto dificulta comprender la naturaleza de las aserciones que componen el modelo y favorece las confusiones en el debate académico a su alrededor. Luego de descartar su interpretación como una teoría empírica, aquí propondré entenderlo como un arquetipo, lo cual clarifica sus criterios de corrección y lo sitúa en una mejor posición para afrontar algunas críticas significativas que ha recibido. En mi definición, un modelo arquetípico de razonamiento probatorio judicial es discurso que representa este fenómeno en su versión ideal según ciertas máximas, tomando a la realidad en parte como faro y en parte como límite.

The language of the basic logic of proofs extends the usual propositional language by forming sentences of the sort x is a proof of F for any sentence F . In this paper a complete axiomatization for the basic logic of proofs in Heyting Arithmetic HA was found.

RESUMO: Um dos objetivos primordiais da Perícia Criminal é estabelecer o diagnóstico da causa jurídica da morte na busca de determinar as hipóteses de homicídio, suicídio ou acidente. Na confirmação deste diagnóstico diferencial, além de conhecimento científico, minimamente da Criminalística e da Medicina Legal, o perito deverá utilizar toda a sua experiência e atenção a fim de perceber detalhes que passariam despercebidos por não experts. Deve deter-se não apenas no exame do local do fato, mas também estudar a necroscopia, os exames complementares e os elementos de informação coligidos pela investigação, a fim de subsidiar-se de todos os detalhes disponíveis para sua conclusão técnica. O presente artigo se debruçou sobre o estudo de casos de mortes suspeitas mediante emprego de projetis de arma de fogo, todas noticiadas inicialmente como suicídio. Neste tipo de local, na hipótese de um suicídio forjado, a perícia se torna muito complexa, em geral não sendo possível realizar o diagnóstico com base em um único vestígio, o que muitas vezes culmina, após a coleta de todos os elementos de informação disponíveis durante o inquérito ou o processo, na necessidade de se proceder à reprodução simulada dos fatos. Excetuando-se vestígios que indiquem luta ou movimentação violenta no local, os vestígios mais relevantes para esse diagnóstico são o posicionamento do cadáver, as lesões, carta de suicídio, a arma de fogo, o projetil, resíduos de disparo de arma de fogo nas mãos do cadáver, distância do tiro e as manchas de sangue. ABSTRACT: One of the primary objectives of Criminal Forensics is to establish the diagnosis of the legal cause of death in order to determine the chances of homicide, suicide, or accident. In confirming this differential diagnosis, in addition to scientific knowledge, minimally of Criminalistics and Legal Medicine, the expert must use all his experience and attention in order to perceive details that would go unnoticed by non-experts. It should focus not only on the examination of the site of the fact but also study the necroscopy, the complementary exams, and the elements of information collected by the investigation, in order to subsidize all the details available for its technical conclusion. The present article focused on the study of cases of suspicious deaths through the use of firearm projectiles, all initially reported as suicide. In this type of location, in the event of a faked suicide, the investigation becomes very complex; in general, it is not possible to make a diagnosis based on a single trace, which often culminates, after collecting all the available information during the investigation or the process, in the need to proceed with the simulated reproduction of the facts. With the exception of traces that indicate struggle or violent movement at the scene, the most relevant traces for this diagnosis are the positioning of the corpse, injuries, suicide letter, firearm, projectile, gunshot residue in the hands of the corpse, distance of the shot, and the bloodstains.

A quantitative approach to truth is both linguistically more accurate and normatively more useful. While Bayesianism is subject-focused, addressing the agent’s epistemic status, I argue here that there is something in the objects of doxastic attitudes that prompts for a graded approach to truth. The point is not a metaphysical one, but rather a pragmatic one, focused on how agents represent objects to themselves and communicate them to others. This paper explains how a graded conception of truth is empirically closer to humans’ actual attitudes towards truth, and outlines the normative opportunities offered by non-binary truth.

How are justified belief and rational belief related? Some philosophers think that justified belief and rational belief come to the same thing. Others take it that justification is a matter of how well a particular belief is supported by the evidence, while rational belief is a matter of how well a belief coheres with a person's other beliefs. In this paper, I defend the view that justification is a dimension of rationality, a view that can make sense of both of these conflicting accounts. When it modifies belief, 'rational' is a multidimensional adjective, as there are multiple dimensions along which a belief can be rational. I will argue that one of these dimensions is justification, an account that can not only explain why philosophers give diverging theories of the relationship between justified belief and rational belief, but can also reveal why rational belief and justified belief are closely related despite being distinct.

This essay aims to investigate the paradoxical architecture of ideal structures in the thought of Robert Musil and Nicolai Hartmann. In opposition to the primacy of the concept of function established by Ernst Mach and the Neo-Kantian school, it is emphasized how Musil and Hartmann shared the need to reintroduce the concept of causality into their epistemological reflection. In this regard, the modal declination of the concept of causality emerges. Following Musil, causality implies the symmetrical opening of a set of equiprobable cases. According to Hartmann, the investigation of causality must justify the univocal and necessary correlation between cause and its singular effect. The paradoxical character of ideal structures thus emerges in the context of a reflection regarding the concept of possibility, which in Musil is declined through the use of statistical method, whereas according to Hartmann it takes on the sense of irrevocable determinism.

It is a utilitarian rationality that one must have spent the whole wealth on the winning lottery ticket because it maximizes welfare. Obviously, it strikes everyone as an unreasonable recommendation because, given the integrity of the lottery system, we never knew before the drawing what the winning lottery ticket is. The orthodox decision theory, the expected utility theory, has an alternative rationality that maximizes only expected utility, with a corresponding better guidance for action in our daily life filled with uncertainties. In this Thesis, I investigate reasonableness through distinguishing it from rationality. I first present a case of the claustrophobic, bringing out his reasonableness even given his irrationality – his irrational fear of confined area. Although it is an issue in ethics, I then borrow from epistemology to discuss context, especially in what alternatives to a decision are relevant to it. Afterwards, I discuss safety, which entails immunity from error, and interact it with context through the margin for error. This brings out what risk is, in contrast to luck, which I discuss next. Given some competence, the success of an act leaves a residue of luck inversely proportional to one’s competence. Lastly, I will discuss responsibility, in interaction with justification in unfavourable situation. These four Chapters include famous cases from epistemology, the case of the cleverly painted mule, the bank case, the case of fake barn, and the new evil demon. Competence minimizes luck whereas safety minimizes risk, and the present externalist rationality entails justification with success: the degree of justification is determined by how much it contributes to success. Since we shall not always know before an act that it would have outputted the outcome of success, some act is irrational though reasonable. The present treatise thus informs any theory of decision under uncertainty in a philosophical way.

Formal modal logic is mostly mathematical in its methods, regardless of area of application. This Handbook presents a wide variety of mathematical techniques developed over decades of studying the intricate details of modal logic. Also included among relatively recent general purpose sources on the mathematics of modal logic are monographs [57, 75, 99, 114, 153] and a survey paper [115]. For that matter, the applications of mathematics in modal logic are overwhelming, while those in the dual category, the uses of modal logic in ...

you are upset'' and can be used to convey different types of modality depending on contextual factors. When used epistemically, these expressions mark the necessity or possibility of an underlying or prejacent proposition relative to a body of evidence or knowledge. Consider, for example, the following exchange between three colleagues who are having lunch in the office break room:

The ways in which Wittgenstein was directly influenced by William James (by his early psychological work as well his later philosophy) have been thoroughly explored and charted by Russell B. Goodman. In particular, Goodman has drawn attention to the pragmatist resonances of the Wittgensteinian notion of hinge propositions as developed and articulated in the posthumously edited and published work, On Certainty. This paper attempts to extend Goodman’s observation, moving beyond his focus on James (specifically, James’s Pragmatism) as his pragmatist reference point. It aims to articulate the affinity between Wittgenstein’s thought on the topic of certainty and that of the neglected pragmatist thinker, George Santayana. The paper draws on Duncan Pritchard’s recent reading of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in order to articulate the concept of certainty involved in the notion of hinge propositions. It identifies two important and related points of affinity between this Wittgensteinian line ...

In a novel attempt to solve the problem of bootstrapping, Jose L. Zalabardo defends this principle: (WR) A belief source is a knowledge source only if the proposition that the source is reliable has warrant for the subject. 1 If WR is rejected, then the door is left open to bootstrapping. This is a highly suspect form of inference that can be represented as follows. Suppose that I am asked whether the fuel gauge in my Aston Martin is reliable. I have never checked up on the gauge's reliability. For example, I am unaware of the fact that whenever the gauge has read '1/2 F', my valet has pumped 8 gallons worth of gas into my car's 16 gallon tank. Suppose further that I have no background beliefs regarding the general reliability of Aston Martins' fuel gauges. I answer the query about

Si veda al proposito dell'invenzione del bordo l'interessante riflessione matematico-filosofica di G. Longo (2016). Per il passaggio dall'oralità alla scrittura si veda il classico di Ong (1982) e per i dibattiti sull'invenzione della stampa Lowry (1979). Per il passaggio ai mezzi di comunicazione di massa, si vedano le osservazioni altrettanto classiche di McLuhan sul villaggio globale (McLuhan 1964).

According to the innovative account of the structure of rational evaluation offered by Wittgenstein in his final notebooks, published as On Certainty, our rational practices necessarily presuppose arational hinge commitments. These are everyday, apparently mundane, commitments that we are optimally certain of, but which in virtue of the 'hinge' role that they play in our rational practices cannot themselves enjoy rational support. Granted that there are such hinge commitments, what is the nature of the propositional attitude in play? Many commentators have described this propositional attitude as a kind of trusting, on account of how our hinge commitments are effectively a groundless kind of presupposition. In contrast, I want to push back against this way of thinking about hinge commitments and argue instead that it is crucial to our understanding of Wittgenstein's proposal especially in terms of its implications for radical scepticism to realize that hinge commitments are not presuppositions and that the hinge propositional attitude is not one of trusting.

In *Night Thoughts* (1983), H.S. Harris exhibits how deeply Hegel had imbibed naturalism in Jena. In *Guida al De orbitis planetarum di Hegel* (1995) and related research, C. Ferrini exhibits how Hegel began his careful studies of Newton and natural philosophy even earlier, no later than Hegel's stay in Tschug. Paul Ziche's excellent annotated edition of C.F. von Pfleiderer's 1804 lectures on physics, *Physik. Naturlehre nach Klügel*, shows what and how much Hegel would have extended his knowledge in Tübingen, where Pfleiderer taught. Ziche's edition enables us to recognize how fundamental a role Hegel’s views on nature and science play, not only in his philosophy of nature, but in his *Logic* and the *Phenomenology*. Hegel scholars cannot afford to neglect these fundamental aspects of Hegel's views, texts and issues.

(Wide) pro-theism is the view that the world is better overall if theism is true. (Wide) anti-theism is the view that our world would be better overall if atheism is true. Arguments for pro-theism and anti-theism typically make use of traditional theism (the view that an omni-God exists) and generic atheism (the view that an omni-God doesn't exist). In my view, when the debate between pro-theists and anti-theists makes use of traditional theism and generic atheism, pro-theism clearly comes out on top. In this paper, I consider whether this result (i.e. pro-theism's advantage over anti-theism) changes if we bring axiarchism into the mix: I compare axiarchistic theism and axiarchistic atheism. General axiarchism is the view that the world exists because it is good that it exists, and extreme axiarchism is the view that the world exists because it is the best possible world. When we take general axiarchistic theism and general axiarchistic atheism as our worldviews for comparison, I argue that there is no significant change with respect to anti-theism and pro-theism: neither position is able to capture goods that are traditionally associated with the other position, and so pro-theism still wins out. However, if we instead compare extreme axiarchistic atheism with extreme axiarchistic theism there is a significant change: while the case for pro-theism remains the same (because, I argue, it is not able to capture any of the goods of anti-theism), the case for anti-theism is greatly strengthened, because it is able to capture nearly all of the goods of pro-theism (e.g. the good of an afterlife, of cosmic justice, of there being no gratuitous evil). In other words, given extreme axiarchism, atheistic worlds can (and will) house goods that are traditionally associated with theistic worlds (e.g. those listed prior). This means that, given extreme axiarchism, pro-theists can't appeal to those goods as favoring their position: they obtain whether our world is atheistic or theistic. Thus, they don't favor pro-theism over anti-theism; the case for anti-theism has been strengthened. (Alternatively, we may say that the case for pro-theism has been weakened.) Ultimately, there is one good that extreme axiarchistic atheism does not enable anti-theism to capture-namely, God's intrinsic unlimited goodness-and I argue that this shows that there is still a gap between pro-theism and anti-theism; while the gap has been substantially narrowed, it has not been eliminated. Thus, I suggest that the best route forward for anti-theists is to cast doubt on the view that God's intrinsic goodness is unlimited.