Science benefits from substantial cognitive diversity because cognitive diversity promotes scientific progress toward greater accuracy. Without diversity of goals, beliefs, and methods, science would neither generate novel discoveries nor certify representations with its present effectiveness. The revolution in geosciences is a principal case study.The role of cognitive diversity in discovery is explored with attention to computational results. Discovery and certification are inseparable. Moreover, diverse scientific groups agree convergently, and their agreements manifest an explanatory defense akin to the explanatory defense of realism. Scientists accept representations as a matter of their instrumental success in individual scientific research. Because scientists are diverse, this standard of acceptance means that widespread acceptance involves widespread instrumental success. This success is best explained through the accuracy of topics of agreement.The pessimistic induction is addressed; it fails to undermine the explanatory defense because past scientific successes don't resemble present ones in their degree of instrumental success; to make this point, instrumental success of representations of caloric and of oxygen are compared.Cognitive diversity challenges the methodological uniformity of scientific practice. Science lacks uniform methods and aims, and it ought to. It is argued that there is no sound basis for thinking that science aims. Moreover, the growth of science itself is not the growth of knowledge. Scientific communities rather than individual scientists are the main certifiers of scientific results. Hence, since knowledge requires a certifying belief formation process but the process relevant to science is not realized individually, science does not progress toward knowledge. The epistemology of science is socialized, but remains broadly realist because, even without a method of inquiry, science develops accurate representations of unobservable nature.

The central thesis of this dissertation is that it is not possible to determine the nature of epistemic justification apart from psychological investigation. Two sub-theses provide the primary support for this claim. The first sub-thesis is that no account of epistemic justification is correct which requires for the possession of justified beliefs a psychological capacity which humans do not have. A different way of stating this view is that the correct account of epistemic justification must be psychologically realistic. The second sub-thesis is that it is not possible to determine whether an account of epistemic justification is psychologically realistic apart from psychological investigation. In sum, there is a meta-theoretical constraint of psychological realism on accounts of epistemic justification which requires appeal to psychological investigation in its employment. After defending these proposals, I illustrate how the constraint of psychological realism has been and can be used both to test candidate accounts of epistemic justification and to guide the construction of such an account which is intuitive and psychologically realistic. These two kinds of applications of the constraint can involve either scientific or non-scientific psychological investigation. I give examples from current epistemological literature of critical employments of the constraint which appeal to both of these kinds of psychological investigation. Finally, in illustrating the role of the constraint of psychological realism in guiding the construction of an account of epistemic justification, I consider both reliabilist views and a variety of positions which feature the notion of cognitive design. I suggest that this latter approach holds out promise for yielding an account of epistemic justification which is both psychologically realistic and intuitive.

In my dissertation I argue that prominent descriptivist metaethical views face a serious semantic problem. According to standard descriptivism, moral thought and discourse purports to describe some ontology of moral properties and/or relations: e.g., the term `good' purports to refer to some property or cluster of properties. Central to any such theory, then, is the recognition of certain items of ontology which, should they actually exist, would count as the referents of moral terms and concepts. And since one commonly accepted feature of moral thought and discourse is a supervenience constraint, descriptivists hold that any ontology suitable for morality would have to supervene upon non-moral ontology. But this lands descriptivists with the task of providing a semantic account capable of relating this ontology to moral terms and concepts. That is, they must explain why it is that certain items of ontology and not others would count as the referents of moral terms and concepts, in a way that is consistent with the supervenience constraint. I argue that this important explanatory task cannot be carried out. And because the problem generalizes from metaethics to all normativity, we are left with good reason to pursue alternatives to descriptivist accounts of normative semantics.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Den svenska förskolan har en väl etablerad skapandetradition. Mot bakgrunden av att skapande tycks ske på förskolor i stort sätt varje dag anser vi att det är av intresse att studera fenomenet. Syftet med denna studie är att studera yngre barns tillblivelser vid skapandeaktiviteter och på vilket sätt vuxnas förhållningssätt ingår i dessa processer. Studien har genomförts med deltagande-strukturerade observationer och med agentiell realism som teoretiskt perspektiv. Ett ändamål för studien har varit att pröva posthumanistiska teorier på förskolepedagogiska situationer. Studien har landat i en slutsats där materialiteter och vuxnas förhållningssätt har betydelse för yngre barns tillblivelse och att det materiella och det ontologiska ofrånkomligt är sammanflätade.