Epistemic sense

The probabilities of different outcomes can thus be seen as resulting from the causal powers and capacities of the system and their arrangement. This makes probability a function of the nature of the system, not merely a statement of degrees of belief or the frequency with which an outcome occurs. We can account for the observed probability (in a frequency sense) by the interplay of capacities or causal powers, and we can estimate a probability (in the epistemic sense) if we know something about the capacities of the things that may influence the outcome. 

In addition to the phenomenological sense of looks, there is also what is often called its epistemic sense. When we say that an item looks small to an observer, using looks small in this second sense, we mean that the observer s current visual experience provides adequate evidential support for the belief that the object is small. When we have this second sense in mind, we would not be willing to say that a car looks small to an observer if the car is at an appreciable distance from the observer, for when a car is at an appreciable distance from an observer, the observer s visual experience presents pictorial cues that are indicative of distance. Thus, for example, when an object stands at some distance from an observer, the features of the object seem indistinct. In a case of this sort, the observer s experience supports the belief that he/she is seeing a car of normal size, but a car that is... 

We can also use looks in its epistemic sense to talk about appearances of other kinds. Thus, it is quite appropriate to apply looks round to a coin that is tilted away from an observer, and to apply looks tan to a portion of a wall that is poorly illuminated, provided that the observers visual experience attests to this fact about the lighting. 

Instead of assessing risk, I suggest that we should try to assess riskiness in the everyday sense of this term, where it refers to the epistemic possibility of harm, not merely probabilities of identified types of harm. Whereas risk relates to outcomes, riskiness is a property of a thing, situation or activity and is relative to our knowledge about it. I suggest that what are normally termed precautionary approaches are concerned with riskiness, rather than just risk they are concerned with whether, for all we know, there is a possibility of harm, not just with the probabilities of known, specifiable types of harm. 

The correspondence theory of truth in the stipulated sense of the previous chapter is incompatible with this account on two counts. The correspondence theory in the stipulated sense is a Tarskian theory with reference understood as a non-epistemic relation to entities that are mind-independent in the sense of (MR1). The present account considers reference an epistemic relation, since it hinges on justification conditions, which are clearly epistemic. It also fits badly with the idea that the entities words refer to are ontologically independent of the human mind. The disagreement concerns both the nature of the reference relation but also one of the relata. This latter point may be less clear, since the three-step recipe does not say anything about the ontological status of the entities we refer to. So why does it naturally tie in with (IR1) rather than with (MR1) ... 

In the coherence theory of truth consistency has to be taken in the syntactic sense. If it is taken in the semantic sense, it presupposes the concept of truth , which would make the theory circular. The syntactic notion of consistency may be called epistemic because it is linked to procedures. 

The difference between the epistemic model of explanation and the ontic one becomes clear at this point Cause... because, as Philip Kitcher elegantly puts it, is the slogan of the epistemic school. Explanations frequently refer to causes simply because they explain much, but there is no conditio sine qua non (1989). If it turned out that other non-causal regularities were better explanatory vehicles the causal explanation would be dropped. The adherent of the ontic model of explanation, on the other hand, maintains that any valid explanation has to cite causes of the explanandum because explanation owes its only possible sense to a thorough assumption about the ontic constitution of our world. Those who want to capture the validity of explanations in their dependency on causes have to give an answer to the question of what causality consists in. Here, I sketch the two major accounts of causality. 

This recOTistractiOTi of the notion of reduction fulfills a number of interesting desiderata it supports the unity of science as an overall epistemic structure, and can make sense of some actual problematic cases of reduction from the philosophy of chemistry. The limitatimi oti incommensurabihty inherent in this approach also limits the scope of feasible pluralisms in the philosophy of chemistry, and focuses our attentimi instead on a more precise formal characterisation of the resulting epistemic stractures. 

The models we use in our assessments are parts of our backgroimd knowledge, and it does not make sense to quantify uncertainties related to this. Hence we do not use concepts like model imcertainty or parameter uncertainty. The only imcertainty is related to the future outcome and is caused by our lack of knowledge (i.e. epistemic imcertainty). 

Taber, K. S. (Forthcoming). Epistemic relevance and learning chemistry in an academic context The place of chemistry education in supporting the development of scientific curiosity and intellecL In I. Eilks A. Hofstein (Eds.), Relevant chemistry education - from theory to practice. Rotterdam Sense. 

---