Andrew D. Cling

Do Prophylactics Prevent Inflation? Post-identification Feedback and the Effectiveness of Procedures to Protect Against Confidence-inflation in Earwitnesses

After viewing or hearing a recorded simulated crime, participants were asked to identify the offender’s voice from a target-absent audio lineup. After making their voice identification, some participants were either given confirming feedback or no feedback. The feedback manipulation in experiment 1 led to higher ratings of participants’ identification certainty, as well as higher ratings on retrospective confidence reports, in both the immediate and delay groups. Earwitnesses who were asked about their identification certainty prior to the feedback manipulation (experiment 2) did not demonstrate the typical confidence-inflation associated with confirming feedback if they were questioned about the witnessing experience immediately; however, the effects returned after a week-long retention interval. The implications for the differential forgetting and internal-cues hypotheses are discussed.

The Trouble with Infinitism

One way to solve the epistemic regress problem would be to show that we can acquire justification by means of an infinite regress. This is infinitism. This view has not been popular, but Peter Klein has developed a sophisticated version of infinitism according to which all justified beliefs depend upon an infinite regress of reasons. Kleins argument for infinitism is unpersuasive, but he successfully responds to the most compelling extant objections to the view. A key component of his position is his claim that an infinite regress is necessary, but not sufficient, for justified belief. This enables infinitism to avoid a number of otherwise compelling objections. However, it commits infinitism to the existence of an additional feature of reasons that is necessary and, together with the regress condition, sufficient for justified belief. The trouble with infinitism is that any such condition could account for the connection between justification and truth only by undermining the rationale for the regress condition itself.

Posing the problem of the criterion

LA. tente dapporter une solution logique au probleme epistemique dun critere pour la connaissance, ceci etant un cercle vicieux sceptique: pour avoir un bon critere il faut avoir de bonnes opinions, et vice-versa. LA. presente la position de Chisholm face a cet argument

Justification-affording Circular Arguments

An argument whose conclusion C isessential evidence for one of its premises canprovide its target audience with justificationfor believing C. This is possible becausewe can enhance our justification for believinga proposition C by integrating it into anexplanatory network of beliefs for which C itself provides essential evidence. I arguefor this in light of relevant features ofdoxastic circularity, epistemic circularity,and explanatory inferences. Finally, I confirmmy argument with an example and respond toobjections.

Harmless Naturalism: The Limits of Science and the Nature of Philosophy

Does science have all the answers? The view that it does is known as scientific naturalism or scientism, and is now commonly advanced under the label naturalized epistemology. Scientism holds that the only legitimate claims about the world are those that can be tested by the methods of the natural sciences. Robert Almeder argues that scientism is rationally indefensible, but that there is a rationally defensible form of naturalism - harmless naturalism - which does not reduce philosophical explanations to scientific ones. This book begins by refuting the arguments for the most radical form of scientism, the Replacement Thesis, which derives from Quine. Almeder goes on to refute the Transformational Thesis, an allegedly distinct form of naturalized epistemology offered by Alvin Goldman and others. Finally, there is an examination of harmless naturalism, a position which holds that there are some questions about the world whose answers are not to be sought in natural science.

The Psychology of Eyewitness Identification

1. 27 Years. 2. Theoretical Approaches to Eyewitness Identification. 3. Estimator Variables. 4. System Variables. 5. Indicia of Reliability. 6. Field Studies of Eyewitness Identification. 7. Expert Testimony. 8. Conclusions and Thoughts. 9. Philosophical Afterword: Memory and Reasonable Belief.

Epistemic Levels and the Problem of the Criterion

lA. rejette la reponse au probleme sceptique du critere de verite qui consiste a montrer que la connaissance ne requiert pas la connaissance dun critere de connaissance. Examinant les differentes versions de largument dominateur, dune part, et largument de la connaissance de la connaissance, dautre part, lA. montre que des auteurs comme R. Chisholm et J. Van Cleve confondent le probleme du critere avec largument sceptique des principes epistemiques

The empirical virtues of beliefs

Abstract Meeting the eliminativist challenge to folk psychology requires showing that beliefs have explanatory virtues unlikely to be duplicated by non‐cognitive accounts of behavior. The explanatory power of beliefs is rooted in their intentionality. That beliefs have a distinctive kind of intentionality is shown by the distinctive intensionality of the sentences which report them. Contrary to Fodor, the fundamental explanatory virtues of beliefs are not to be found in their capacity to make causally inactive properties relevant to the explanation of behavior. Rather, the distinctive intentionality of beliefs provides the best explanation of the fact that fully intelligent behavior displays a selectivity of response to properties of the perceptual environment.

Love's Logic Lost: The Couplet of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116

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