<p> This project seeks to understand the relationship between discursive practices and the conceptions of nature, heroism, and masculinity found in Victorian and modern Imperial British culture. It does this by tracing two interwoven stories that materialized in the North and South Poles. The first being concerned with how polar landscape was perceived and created as Sublime by the discursive practices of explorers, authors, artists, and the press. The second being concerned with how polar discourse was used and influenced by British imperial rhetoric. In such a context, there was an opportunity for the British Empire to create a space that reclaimed and &ldquo;proved&rdquo; the unchanging presence of mid-Victorian Britishness. Even in its decline, the Empire was able to push forth the idea that modernism, war, and flux would not hold sway over the British spirit itself. Relying on expedition narratives, literary publications, paintings, and press coverage, this work highlights the importance (and fluidity) of intellectual concepts and their influence over the way that space was imagined by the British. Ultimately, the project seeks to lend insight into the significant connection between polar discourse and World War I discourse, showing how the mythological way of imagining the poles became a catalyst for imagining indescribable spaces of horror during the most destructive war in European history.</p>

Virtue epistemology is epistemological evaluation that gives ‘intellectual virtue’ a primary consideration in its analysis. This thesis is about how two types of virtue epistemology are related to each other, and how when taken broadly as a whole, virtue epistemology has theoretical and practical benefits for epistemic and epistemological evaluation. I begin by way of a quick historical review, and define epistemology as the study of good or bad ways of grasping reality. Part One is then devoted to describing the ‘virtue’ part of virtue epistemology. I posit a broad view of virtue: that human excellences come in the form of cognitive faculties and character traits. What binds them is a meta-epistemological commitment that epistemological analysis should focus on the whole of the person, which includes how the person relates to the environment, other persons, and importantly the values of the whole person. In Part Two, I take a closer look of how the various conceptions of intellectual virtue are different, specifically with an examination of epistemic value. In Part Three, I take up an objection levelled by the Epistemic Anti-Realist that is a call for concern for intellectual virtues, and epistemological evaluation on the whole. / Graduate

The first aim is to present the correct interpretation of Thomas Reid’s (1710-96) social epistemology. The second is to use Reid’s insights on these matters to help make some progress on a related contemporary philosophical problem. In the first chapter, I present and argue for an original interpretation of Reid’s account of the social operations. In the second, I do the same with respect to Reid’s account of testimony (a particular species of social operation) and its epistemology. In the third, I discuss a contemporary debate between epistemic individualists and epistemic socialists. I point out that the theorists engaged in that debate assume that epistemic individualism and epistemic socialism are inconsistent positions. I then consider the debate from Reid’s perspective, and, in doing so, show how the two positions might be reconciled. / Graduate / a.l.v.crosby@gmail.com

<p> In this study of Christian spirituality, I examine the dynamics of shame within post-Holocaust biblical hermeneutics and demonstrate how hospitality might function as an alternative hermeneutic. Shame can serve two hermeneutical functions for those biblical scholars who strive to interpret the bible without perpetuating Christian anti-Judaism or supersessionism. First, shame can be transformative. As a biblical scholar encounters a biblical text with anti-Jewish potential, the experience of shame for this potential allows a biblical scholar a means by which the biblical text can be appropriated. Through this experience of shame, the biblical scholar's identity as a post- Holocaust Christian is reinforced and, therefore, transformed. Second, the biblical scholar who experiences shame for a biblical text's anti-Jewish potential might recast this shame through practices of interpretive shaming. These practices stigmatize the biblical text, general readers, and Christianity for their complicity in perpetuating Christian anti-Judaism. Practices of stigmatizing shaming can be problematic because, through the process of shaming, the text, its readers, and Christianity are deemed to be flawed without hope for reform.</p><p> One way to end this cycle of shaming is to develop interpretive practices that transignify shame. Through such practices, a biblical scholar might still experience shame for a biblical text's anti-Jewish potential, but this shame is not recast. One option for the transignification of shame is through the use of interpretive practices of hospitality. These interpretive practices encourage a post-Holocaust biblical interpreter to approach a biblical text's anti-Jewish potential with a spirit of openness while still setting limits for acceptable interpretation. In order to demonstrate this hermeneutic of hospitality, I use the interpretive practices of hospitality to provide a post-Holocaust interpretation of Rublev's <i>Trinity</i> icon and Genesis 18:1-15.</p>

I examine some logical and epistemological problems arising in quantum theory. Two historical episodes are considered in detail: Planck's adoption of the quantum hypothesis and Heisenberg's discovery of matrix mechanics. The former episode is, I argue, more compa tLbLe with logical empiricist views of scientific progress than it is with more recent and currently influential philosophies. My examination of the latter concerns the influences - epistemological as well as.sci~ntific- which may have affected the manner in which Heisenberg chose to present. his discoveries; these considerations a~low me to rebut ... the suggestion that Heisenberg's practice was incompatible with his professed views and to counter the claim that this episode provided unwarranted support to formalistic ideas concerning scientific explanation. The connexions between Bohr's principle of complementarity and logical empiricist views concerning language change in science are explored, and I argue that the transition from classical to quantum mechanics· can be seen as involving a shift in the meanings of "position" and "momentum" so that these terms obtain unambiguous empirical meanings from the viewpoint of quantum· theory. Discussing the relevance of quantum mechanics to logic I contend that, although classical logic may be retained, empirical considerations may make it advisable to adopt a non-classical logic for quantum theory. An analysis of Bell' s inequality.:is a prelude to some speculations concerning the interpretation of quantum theory. I examine the possibility of interpreting the formalism as descriptive not of an external world but of the expectati.ons of subjects. The final chapter explores the relevance of physics to questions concerning human freedom. Classical physics, I argue, did not have the devastating implications for personal autonomy that it was often assumed to have; quantum physics does not explain . human freedom but, under certain assumptions, it does show how it is possible.

Several philosophers have used the framework of means/ends reasoning to explain the methodological choices made by scientists and mathematicians (see, e.g., Goldman 1999, Levi 1962, Maddy 1997). In particular, they have tried to identify the epistemic objectives of scientists and mathematicians that will explain these choices. In this paper, the framework of means/ends reasoning is used to study an important methodological choice made by mathematicians. Namely, mathematicians will only use deductive proofs to establish the truth of mathematical claims. In this paper, I argue that none of the epistemic objectives of mathematicians that are currently on the table provide a satisfactory explanation of this rejection of probabilistic proofs.

This paper discusses and analyzes the conceptual basis for classification work in the 21st century; it provides an account of classification that lays out the boundaries within which classification operate. The methodological and practical effects of the boundaries are discussed. The main point of the paper is to demonstrate that classifications are bound by particular contexts and conceptual frameworks.

This is a presentation (21 slides) for a panel on for a panel on Philosophy and information science: The basics Philosophy and information science: The basics at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, Austin, Texas, November 6, 2006. The main reason that people seek information is in order to acquire knowledge. For example, people want to acquire true beliefs about the world, acquire justified beliefs, avoid false beliefs, and gain understanding and wisdom. Epistemology is the study of what knowledge is and of how people acquire knowledge. Thus, work in epistemology can help us to clarify the goals that we have when we seek information. In this talk, I discuss how such work can guide us as we make important decisions about the use and control of information (e.g., decisions about intellectual property laws, collection management policies, techniques for evaluating information on the Internet).

In order to guide the decisions of real people who want to bring about good epistemic outcomes for themselves and others, we need to understand our epistemic values. In Knowledge in a Social World, Alvin Goldman has proposed an epistemic value theory that allows us to say whether one outcome is epistemically better than another. However, it has been suggested that Goldmanâ s theory is not really an epistemic value theory at all because whether one outcome is epistemically better than another partly depends on our non-epistemic interests. In this paper, I argue that an epistemic value theory that serves the purposes of social epistemology must incorporate non-epistemic interests in much the way that Goldmanâ s theory does. In fact, I argue that Goldmanâ s theory does not go far enough in this direction. In particular, the epistemic value of having a particular true belief should actually be weighted by how interested we are in the topic.

In his latest book, Knowledge in a Social World, Alvin Goldman claims to have established that if a reasoner starts with accurate estimates of the reliability of new evidence and conditionalizes on this evidence, then this reasoner is objectively likely to end up closer to the truth. In this paper, I argue that Goldmanâ s result is not nearly as philosophically significant as he would have us believe. First, accurately estimating the reliability of evidenceâ in the sense that Goldman requiresâ is not quite as easy as it might sound. Second, being objectively likely to end up closer to the truthâ in the sense that Goldman establishesâ is not quite as valuable as it might sound.