School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications

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    The Twofold Objectivity of Truth
    Sankey, H (Warsaw University, 2023)
    Truth about matters of fact is objective. This is not just because truth is objective. It is also because facts are objective. An objective fact makes an assertion of that fact true. The objectivity of the fact adds a further element of objectivity to the objective truth of the assertion. True assertions of fact are true because truth is objective and because the facts that make them true are objective. True assertions of fact are objective twice over. Their objectivity is twofold. Or, at least, that is the point I seek to establish here.
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    The Objectivity of Science
    Sankey, H (University of Tabriz, 2023-12-01)
    The idea that science is objective, or able to achieve objectivity, is in large part responsible for the role that science plays within society. But what is objectivity? The idea of objectivity is ambiguous. This paper distinguishes between three basic forms of objectivity. The first form of objectivity is ontological objectivity: the world as it is in itself does not depend upon what we think about it; it is independent of human thought, language, conceptual activity or experience. The second form of objectivity is the objectivity of truth: truth does not depend upon what we believe or justifiably believe; truth depends upon the way reality itself is. The third form of objectivity is epistemic objectivity: this form of objectivity resides in the scientific method which ensures that subjective factors are excluded, and only epistemically relevant factors play a role in scientific inquiry. The paper considers two problems that arise for the notion of epistemic objectivity: the theory-dependence of observation and the variability of the methods of science. It is argued that the use of shared standard procedures ensures the objectivity of observation despite theory-dependence. It is argued that the variability of methods need not lead to an epistemic relativism about science. The paper concludes with the realist suggestion that the best explanation of the success of the sciences is that the methods employed in the sciences are highly reliable truth-conducive tools of inquiry. The objectivity of the methods of the sciences leads to the objective truth about the objective world.
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    Having a Hunch
    Sankey, H (“Gh Zane” Institute for Economic and Social Research, The Romanian Academy, 2023)
    It has recently been argued that when one conducts an inquiry into some question one ought to suspend belief with respect to that question. But what about hunches? In this short note, a hunch about the cause of a phenomenon is described. The hunch plays a role in the inquiry into the cause of the phenomenon. It appears that the hunch constitutes a belief that need not be suspended during the inquiry even though belief about the precise cause of the phenomenon is suspended.
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    Truth about Artifacts
    Sankey, H (Academia Romana, Filiala Iasi, Institutul de Cercetari Economice si Sociale Gheorghe Zane, 2023)
    Truth in a correspondence sense is objective in two ways. It is objective because the relation of correspondence is objective and because the facts to which truths correspond are objective. Truth about artifacts is problematic because artifacts are intentionally designed to perform certain functions, and so are not entirely mind independent. Against this, it is argued in this paper that truth about artifacts is perfectly objective despite the role played by intention and purpose in the production of artifacts.
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    The Objective Status of Subjective Facts
    Sankey, H (WALTER DE GRUYTER GMBH, 2023-09-26)
    Abstract Some facts are objective. Some facts are subjective. Subjective facts are personal facts about individuals. It is the purpose of this short note to suggest that subjective facts are in fact objective facts about us. This applies not just to facts involving relations to entities that are independent of us, but to our tastes. It is an objective fact about us that we have the tastes that we do though there may be no objective matter of fact that our tastes reflect or fail to reflect.
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    Kuhn, Coherentism and Perception
    Sankey, H ; Giri, L ; Melogno, P ; Miguel, H (Springer, 2023)
    The paper takes off from the suggestion of Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen that Kuhn’s account of science may be understood in coherentist terms. There are coherentist themes in Kuhn’s philosophy of science. But one crucial element is lacking. Kuhn does not deny the existence of basic beliefs which have a non-doxastic source of justification. Nor does he assert that epistemic justification only derives from inferential relationships between non-basic beliefs. Despite this, the coherentist interpretation is promising and I develop it further in this paper. I raise the question of whether Kuhn’s account of science can deal with the input objection to coherentism. I argue that the role played by problems in Kuhn’s theory of science ensures that there is input from the external world into scientists’ belief-systems. I follow Hoyningen-Huene in pointing to the causal role played by the external world in determining perceptual states. I next turn to the question of whether Kuhn’s rejection of foundationalism implies coherentism. I argue that Kuhn’s rejection of the one-to-one relation between object and experience is compatible with a foundationalist account of justification. Nor does Kuhn’s rejection of the given entail the same coherentist implications as Sellars’ critique of the myth of the given.
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    Robert Nola as I remember him
    Sankey, H (Springer, 2023-03-01)
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    On Mr Truetemp's Lack of Virtue
    Sankey, H (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brasil, 2022)
    Keith Lehrer’s case of Mr Truetemp, whose reliably formed true beliefs about the temperature are the result of a tempucomp implanted in his head, is designed as a counter-example to process reliabilism. In this short note, the example is explored from the point of view of the two main forms of virtue epistemology. It is suggested that Truetemp’s reliably formed true beliefs about the temperature fail to be virtuously formed in either the sense of the virtue reliabilist or the virtue responsibilist. Hence, virtue epistemology is able to handle the case of Mr Truetemp.
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    Objective Facts
    Sankey, H (De Gruyter, 2022-04-27)
    This is a brief exploration of the notion of an objective fact. The form of objectivity at issue is distinct from epistemic objectivity or objectivity about truth. It is an ontological form of objectivity. Objective facts may obtain whether or not we know, believe or are aware of them. They depend upon objects, for example, on the properties that objects have or the relationships into which objects enter. Setting scepticism to one side, there is a perfectly mundane sense in which we may come to have knowledge or fail to have knowledge of such facts. We must perceive objective facts from a perspective, but this does not enter into the facts. Nor does the fact that we must describe facts using language mean that facts are language-dependent.