Presumption and the Practices of Tentative Cognition

Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
Preface......Page 13
Presumption and the Practices of Tentative Cognition......Page 17
1 What Presumption Is All About......Page 19
2 Presumptions as Procedural Resources......Page 25
3 Presumption beyond the Law......Page 27
1 Introduction......Page 31
2 Burden of Proof and of Reply......Page 33
3 The Weight of a Burden......Page 35
4 Cognitive Rationality and Burden of Proof......Page 37
5 Presumption and Skepticism......Page 41
1 Cognitive Fundamentals......Page 45
2 Some Aspects of Cognitive Presumption......Page 49
3 Principles of Presumption......Page 51
4 Defeasibility and the Role of Presumption......Page 53
5 Presumptive Truth......Page 54
6 Presumption and Plausibility......Page 57
7 Presumption and Probability......Page 60
1 The Purposiveness of Presumption......Page 63
2 Justifying Presumptions......Page 66
3 The Question of Validity......Page 70
4 How to Assess Success......Page 73
5 The Import of Experience: Avoiding Circularity......Page 75
6 Cultural Evolution as a Teleological Process: Rational Selection......Page 77
1 Presumptions in Rational Inquiry......Page 82
2 Presumption and the Diallelus......Page 84
3 Presumption and the Contrast between Foundationalism and Coherentism......Page 87
4 Coherentism and the Evidential Grounding of Claims to Truth......Page 88
1 Default Inference......Page 94
2 Facing the Prospect of Error......Page 97
3 Induction as Default Reasoning......Page 98
4 Default Reasoning as Nonmonotonic......Page 100
5 Some Comforting Considerations......Page 102
1 The Advantages of Cooperation......Page 106
2 Building up Trust: An Economic Approach......Page 109
3 The Rationale of Epistemic Trust......Page 111
4 Trustful Interaction as a General Benefit......Page 114
5 The Presumptive Credibility of Common Sense......Page 115
6 The Matter of Risk......Page 118
7 The Presumptive Credibility of Experts......Page 119
1 Communicative Presumption......Page 122
2 Truth Conditions and Use Conditions......Page 124
3 Communication and the Presumption of Normalcy......Page 129
4 Truthful Communication as a General Benefit Enterprise......Page 136
5 Rational Economy as the Crux......Page 139
1 Presumptions in Science......Page 142
2 Induction and Cognitive Economy: The Economic Rationale
of Simplicity Preference......Page 144
3 Trans-Scientific Presumption......Page 149
4 Presumption and the Judgment of Elites......Page 151
1 Specificity Prioritization......Page 156
2 The Rationale of Specificity Prioritization......Page 158
3 A Curious Inversion: The Case of Counterfactuals......Page 160
4 Natural versus Unnatural Counterfactuals......Page 163
5 The Key Lesson......Page 167
6 Conclusion......Page 168
1 Introduction......Page 170
2 Effectively Zero Probabilities......Page 171
3 How Small Is Small Enough?......Page 173
4 Why Accept a Threshold of “Effective Zerohood”?......Page 175
5 The Question of Validation......Page 179
6 Overcoming a Problem......Page 180
7 Conclusion......Page 182
Conclusion......Page 184
Bibliography......Page 189
Index of Names......Page 197