Marina Bakalova

Whitehead believed that education must give us ideas that are usable in our actual lives. This line of thought is naturally provoked by the significant abundance of inert ideas that people pile up though education. The main reason for that, I claim, is the wrong focus of traditional education. It aims at producing individuals that would deliver high results on exams and tests. I take Whitehead’s claim the education must put emphasis on usable ideas as my starting point. I give a specific interpretation of useable ideas as abilities or functions. This provides a ground for connecting Whiteheadian thought to an already existing educational platform, offered by Nel Noddings. Noddings develops a cognitive theory of education which places cognitive structures (I assume a robust analogy between structures, functions, and abilities) in the center of educational concern. At the end of the paper, I estimate some consequences from adopting the terminology of functions for connecting between human and machine learning.

This paper reveals the importance of learning emotion concepts due to the efficiency of emotional granularity during the categorization of emotions. There are two ways of learning emotion concepts that can contribute to emotional granularity. First, we can learn emotion words. Second, we can learn the implicit content of our emotion concepts, i.e. how emotions feel to us. In order to complete the second task, we need to acquire vivid awareness and vivid memory of the implicit content of our emotion concept. I claim that only after completing the second task can we learn emotion words in a way that is efficient for the categorization of emotions. The problem with that claim is that we do not know how to study the implicit content of our emotions, and how to obtain vivid awareness of it. In this article, I sketch a basic solution to this problem. The article has three parts. In the first part, I outline Lisa Barrett’s Conceptual Act View in order to reveal the functional role of emoti...

This article is inspired by a long-lasting debate with a friend and colleague of mine Anna Ivanova about the role of evidence in a general analysis of knowledge. The article summarizes the key points in the debate between epistemic internalists and epistemic externalists, and highlights some of the major arguments undermining the epistemic internalism, according to which access to evidence is not a necessary condition for knowledge.

In this paper, we propose a theoretical model for implementing recognition of human qualia based on machine learning. Our model draws from the idea of mapping affects onto a multi-dimensional space of sensory stimuli. The idea has background in philosophy and cognitive science but we believe it can make a contribution to the fields of social robotics and social assistive robotics. The paper has two main parts. In the first part, we discuss some defining characteristics of consciousness referred to by contemporary scholars of robotics. We also explain the hard problem of qualia. In the second part, we present our own proposal of how to make qualia recognizable to a robot.

This dissertation attempts to offer an analysis of knowledge. The investigation is centered on a minimal sufficient condition for knowledge, a condition that is also supposed to account for knowledge in its full generality at a basic level (not including levels of epistemic ascent). My starting points are the theories of virtue epistemology developed by Ernest Sosa and John Greco. I defend the view that knowledge is success from intelligent ability (the KSA thesis), including both practical and theoretical abilities. I argue that KSA is a sustainable definition of knowledge. The following elements in my analysis of knowledge are crucial: knowledge is a broad mental state; knowledge is analyzable into internal and external components; knowledge entails credit; knowledge is compatible with various forms of epistemic luck. I consider each one of these points separately. The last chapter examines the application of the view to the problem of perception.

Assuming that music can be expressive, I try to answer the question whether musical expressiveness has epistemic value. The article has six parts. In the first part, I provide examples of what music can express. I suggest that it can express inner states with phenomenal character. In the second part, I build up an argument in favor of the claim that, granted its expressiveness, music can convey conceptual content which is not verbal, and which cannot be expressed verbally. This conclusion is limited to concepts like lyrical, nostalgic, melancholy, joyful, distressful etc. In the third part, I explain what musical expressive content is, in contrast and by analogy to, propositional content. In the fourth part, I apply Mitchell Green’s multispace model of artistic expression to music. I argue that Green’s theory of expression provides a powerful explanation of how a musical sequence can express states with phenomenal character. In the fifth part, I use that model to define adequacy con...

In situations of peer disagreement there are two kinds of factors that matter. These are the factors internal to the discussion, such as evidence exposed and arguments presented by both sides and there are also factors external to the discussion, also called “independent factors”. The external factors include mainly virtues and competences of the participants. There are two main theories about epistemic disagreement, “the steadfast view” and “the conciliationism”, and each of them stresses the importance of one group of these factors over the other. This paper is a defense of the greater epistemic significance of independent factors over internal factors. However, it is not a defense of the conciliationism which takes independent factors to be systematically the ultimate arbiter in situations of peer disagreement. The argument in the paper goes like this. Although the steadfast view receives strong intuitive support from two cases presented by Thomas Kelly: “Right and Wrong” and “Wr...

In his scattered remarks on music, Wittgenstein adopts a rule-based account of musical understanding also known as musical formalism. This is the view that understanding a piece of music does not presuppose matching the musical sequence with one’s own mental states. It entails instead, recognizing the proper use of conventions and theoretical terminology of a given musical system, such as the Western musical system. I argue that Wittgenstein’s musical formalism is misguided. It raises important questions that it has no resources to answer. The opposite view, according to which musical understanding is tightly related to cognitive, emotional or imaginative states of the listener, can answer these questions better. We have to take into account that if Wittgenstein were to witness the cognitive revolution he would most probably have changed his mind concerning scientific potential of psychology and our grasp of the mental realm. In particular, he may have to accept that certain psychol...

Whitehead believed that education must give us ideas that are usable in our actual lives. This line of thought is naturally provoked by the significant abundance of inert ideas that people pile up though education. The main reason for that, I claim, is the wrong focus of traditional education. It aims at producing individuals that would deliver high results on exams and tests. I take Whitehead’s claim the education must put emphasis on usable ideas as my starting point. I give a specific interpretation of useable ideas as abilities or functions. This provides a ground for connecting Whiteheadian thought to an already existing educational platform, offered by Nel Noddings. Noddings develops a cognitive theory of education which places cognitive structures (I assume a robust analogy between structures, functions, and abilities) in the center of educational concern. At the end of the paper, I estimate some consequences from adopting the terminology of functions for connecting between h...

Assuming that music can be expressive, I try to answer the question whether musical expressiveness has epistemic value. The article has six parts. In the first part, I provide examples of what music can express. I suggest that it can express inner states with phenomenal character. In the second part, I build up an argument in favor of the claim that, granted its expressiveness, music can convey conceptual content which is not verbal, and which cannot be expressed verbally. This conclusion is limited to concepts like lyrical, nostalgic, melancholy, joyful, distressful etc. In the third part, I explain what musical expressive content is, in contrast and by analogy to, propositional content. In the fourth part, I apply Mitchell Green's multispace model of artistic expression to music. I argue that Green's theory of expression provides a powerful explanation of how a musical sequence can express states with phenomenal character. In the fifth part, I use that model to define adequacy conditions for musical expressive ascriptions. In the last part, I attempt to explain musical knowledge by combining Green's multi-space model with Sosa-style virtue epistemology.

This article addresses some of the core problems related of realism about art objects. The discussion is limited to the two most general forms of fictional realism: the physical objects hypothesis, and the platonic abstractionism. I contend that while being objects (and not universals), artworks are neither just physical nor they are abstract. In the first part of the article, I outline the most prominent arguments against the physical objects hypothesis without ruling the hypothesis completely out. In the second part of the article, I discuss the two basic paradoxes related to abstractionism about art objects: the paradox of creation and the paradox of standards. The article aims at preparing the ground for a nominalist mixed theory of art objects with both physical and mental components in which the precise kind of ontological dependence of artworks upon concrete objects and events will have the final word.

In situations of peer disagreement there are two kinds of factors that matter. These are the factors internal to the discussion, such as evidence exposed and arguments presented by both sides and there are also factors external to the discussion, also called " independent factors ". The external factors include mainly virtues and competences of the participants. There are two main theories about epistemic disagreement, " the steadfast view " and " the conciliationism " , and each of them stresses the importance of one group of these factors over the other. This paper is a defense of the greater epistemic significance of independent factors over internal factors. However, it is not a defense of the conciliationism which takes independent factors to be systematically the ultimate arbiter in situations of peer disagreement. The argument in the paper goes like this. Although the steadfast view receives strong intuitive support from two cases presented by Thomas Kelly: " Right and Wrong " and " Wrong and Wronger " , I argue that the view is undermined by Timothy Williamson's recent " Very Improbable Knowing " argument. This argument shows that for some basic type of evidence E when S uses it in favor of p, it is very improbable that S knows that S knows that p. Therefore, in situations of peer disagreement, S is unjustified to push her evidence in support of her side. There are arguably some exceptions, e.g. when one claims to have knowledge based on a priori evidence and on holistic evidence, but these are not sufficient to save the day for the steadfast view. In contrast to that, the reflective knowledge of one's first order competences and virtues (i.e. external factors) is not vulnerable by Williamson's argument. One reason for that is because we know about independent factors on the basis of holistic evidence. I claim that our epistemic goal in the face of peer disagreement is to end up on the side that is non-accidentally closer to truth. In accordance with achieving this goal, it is safer to stick to independent factors in resolving peer disagreement situations than to

This dissertation attempts to offer an analysis of knowledge. The investigation is centered on a minimal sufficient condition for knowledge, a condition that is also supposed to account for knowledge in its full generality at a basic level (not including levels of epistemic ascent). My starting points are the theories of virtue epistemology developed by Ernest Sosa and John Greco. I defend the view that knowledge is success from intelligent ability (the KSA thesis), including both practical and theoretical abilities. I argue that KSA is a sustainable definition of knowledge. The following elements in my analysis of knowledge are crucial: knowledge is a broad mental state; knowledge is analyzable into internal and external components; knowledge entails credit; knowledge is compatible with various forms of epistemic luck. I consider each one of these points separately. The last chapter examines the application of the view to the problem of perception.

This dissertation attempts to offer an analysis of knowledge. The investigation is centered on a minimal sufficient condition for knowledge, a condition that is also supposed to account for knowledge in its full generality at a basic level (not including levels of epistemic ascent). My starting points are the theories of virtue epistemology developed by Ernest Sosa and John Greco. I defend the view that knowledge is success from intelligent ability (the KSA thesis), including both practical and theoretical abilities. I argue that KSA is a sustainable definition of knowledge. The following elements in my analysis of knowledge are crucial: knowledge is a broad mental state; knowledge is analyzable into internal and external components; knowledge entails credit; knowledge is compatible with various forms of epistemic luck. I consider each one of these points separately. The last chapter examines the application of the view to the problem of perception.