Search results for "Ethics of belief"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Ethics of Beliefs
2017
This paper deals with the concept of positive learning (PL). The main goal is to provide a working definition of PL on which further refinements and extensions can be based. First, I formulate a list of desiderata for a definition of PL: I argue that a working definition of PL should (i) make the involved epistemic norms explicit, (ii) be flexible, and (iii) be empirically tractable. After that, I argue that a working definition of PL should focus on three basic epistemic norms (which I call Evidentialism, Degrees of Plausibility, and Non-Arbitrary Updates). Drawing on work on the ethics of belief and Bayesian inference, I highlight theoretical and empirical challenges that already follow f…
La croyance dans le fumoir : “The Portrait of Mr. WH”, l’éthique de la croyance de William Kingdon Clifford et l’assentiment selon John Henry Newman
2023
Wilde’s story “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” blurs literary genres, asserts the importance of the false and plays with reader expectations. It has generated a substantial exege- sis, perhaps lacking in interest in the multi-faceted debates on belief running through the 1870s-1880s. Wilde takes part in that debate through a text of uncertain status and complex editorial history, contrasting Newmanian assent with W.K. Clifford’s ethics of belief (1877), before asserting the supremacy of desire, thus ruining all assent and epistemically justified belief. To the demanding philosophical-religious theories of Clifford and Newman, Wilde responds with an ambiguous, subversive narrative, intended to com…