-
95The social virtues: Two accounts (review)Acta Analytica 24 (4): 237-248. 2009.Social (epistemic) virtues are the virtues bound up with those forms of inquiry involved in social routes to knowledge. A thoroughly individualistic account of the social virtues endorses two claims: (1) we can fully characterize the nature of the social virtues independent of the social factors that are typically in play when these virtues are exemplified, and (2) even when a subject’s route to knowledge is social, the only epistemic virtues that are relevant to her acquisition of knowledge are…Read more
-
126Anti-individualism, conceptual omniscience, and skepticismPhilosophical Studies 116 (1): 53-78. 2003.Given anti-individualism, a subject might have a priori (non-empirical)knowledge that she herself is thinking that p, have complete and exhaustive explicational knowledge of all of the concepts composing the content that p, and yet still need empirical information (e.g. regarding her embedding conditions and history) prior to being in a position to apply her exhaustive conceptual knowledge in a knowledgeable way to the thought that p. This result should be welcomed by anti-individualists: it squ…Read more
-
8Mentalistic explanation and mental causationManuscrito 25 (3): 199-216. 2002.In this paper I present an internal difficulty for the hypothesis that mentalistic explanation is causal explanation. My thesis is that intuitively acceptable mentalistic explanations appear to violate constraints imposed by the mental causation hypothesis
-
114Testimonial knowledge in early childhood, revisitedPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (1). 2008.Many epistemologists agree that even very young children sometimes acquire knowledge through testimony. In this paper I address two challenges facing this view. The first (building on a point made in Lackey (2005)) is the defeater challenge, which is to square the hypothesis that very young children acquire testimonial knowledge with the fact that children (whose cognitive immaturity prevents them from having or appreciating reasons) cannot be said to satisfy the No-Defeaters condition on knowle…Read more
-
156Internalism and externalism in semantics and epistemology (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2007.Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology presents eleven specially written essays exploring these debates in metaphysics and epistemology and ...
-
14Searle vs. Searle on language, speech, and thoughtPragmatics and Cognition 22 (3): 352-372. 2014.Searle’s (1963/1991) account of the communicative intentions in speech acts purports to be an advance over that of Grice (1957), in acknowledging the ineliminable role of the linguistic (usage) rules in enabling the hearer to recognize the speaker’s communicative intentions. In this paper we argue that, given some plausible assumptions about ordinary speech exchanges, Searle’s insight on this score is incompatible with his (1983) commitment to internalism in the philosophy of mind. As a result, …Read more
-
72Epistemic Justification RevisitedJournal of Philosophical Research 41 (9999): 1-16. 2016.In his Beyond Justification, Bill Alston argued that there is no single property picked out by ‘epistemic justification,’ and that instead epistemological theory should investigate the range of epistemic desiderata that beliefs may enjoy (as well as the nature of and interconnections among the various epistemic good-making properties). In this paper I argue that none of his arguments taken singly, nor the collection as a group, gives us a reason to abandon the traditional idea that there is a pr…Read more
-
225Reliabilism in philosophyPhilosophical Studies 142 (1). 2009.The following three propositions appear to be individually defensible but jointly inconsistent: (1) reliability is a necessary condition on epistemic justification; (2) on contested matters in philosophy, my beliefs are not reliably formed; (3) some of these beliefs are epistemically justified. I explore the nature and scope of the problem, examine and reject some candidate solutions, compare the issue with ones arising in discussions about disagreement, and offer a brief assessment of our predi…Read more
-
47Comments on Pritchard’s Epistemological DisjunctivismJournal of Philosophical Research 41 183-191. 2016.Among the many virtues Duncan Pritchard ascribes to his disjunctivist position in Epistemic Disjunctivism, he claims it defeats the skeptic in an attractive fashion. In this paper I argue that his engagement with the skeptic is not entirely successful.
-
98Word-ambiguity, world-switching, and knowledge of content: Reply to BruecknerAnalysis 59 (3): 212-217. 1999.
-
187A Reliabilist Foundationalist CoherentismErkenntnis 77 (2): 187-196. 2012.While Process Reliabilism has long been regarded by many as a version of Foundationalism, this paper argues that there is a version of Process Reliabilism that can also been seen as at least a partial vindication of Coherentism as well. The significance of this result lies in what it tells us both about the prospects for a plausible Process Reliabilism, but also about the old-school debate between Foundationalists and Coherentists.
-
111The relevance of discriminatory knowledge of contentPacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (2): 136-56. 1999.Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 80:2, 136-56 (June 1999)
-
135Anonymous assertionsEpisteme 10 (2): 135-151. 2013.This paper addresses how the anonymity of an assertion affects the epistemological dimension of its production by speakers, and its reception by hearers. After arguing that anonymity does have implications in both respects, I go on to argue that at least some of these implications derive from a warranted diminishment in speakers' and hearers' expectations of one another when there are few mechanisms for enforcing the responsibilities attendant to speech. As a result, I argue, anonymous assertion…Read more
-
40Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (review) (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 40 (1): 128-130. 2002.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 128-130 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy Robert Hanna. Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 2001. Pp. xv + 312. Cloth, $65.00. Robert Hanna's book has an ambitious two-fold agenda. Its historical agenda is to prompt a reassessment of the role Kant played in the foundations…Read more
-
166The dialectical context of Boghossian's memory argumentCanadian Journal of Philosophy 35 (1): 135-48. 2005.Externalism1 is the thesis that some propositional attitudes depend for their individuation on features of the thinker’s (social and/or physical) environment. The doctrine of self-knowledge of thoughts is the thesis that for all thinkers S and occurrent thoughts that p, S has authoritative and non-empirical knowledge of her thought that p. A much-discussed question in the literature is whether these two doctrines are compatible. In this paper I attempt to respond to one argument for an incompati…Read more
-
4Gray Matters: An Introduction to the Philosophy of MindRoutledge. 1997."Gray Matters is a thorough examination of the main topics in recent philosophy of mind. It aims at surveying a broad range of issues, not all of which can be subsumed under one position or one philosopher's theory. In this way, the authors avoid neglecting interesting issues out of allegiance to a given theory of mind." --Book Jacket.
-
1Semantic externalism and epistemic illusionsIn Sanford Goldberg (ed.), Internalism and externalism in semantics and epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 235--252. 2007.
-
151Externalism and Authoritative Knowledge of Content: A New Incompatibilist Strategy (review)Philosophical Studies 100 (1): 51-79. 2000.A typical strategy of those who seek to show that externalism is compatible with authoritative knowledge of content is to show that externalism does nothing to undermine the claim that all thinkers can at any time form correct and justi?ed self-ascriptive judgements concerning their occurrent thoughts. In reaction, most incompat- ibilists have assumed the burden of denying that externalism is compatible with this claim about self-ascription. Here I suggest another way to attack the compatibilist…Read more
-
219Monitoring and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of TestimonyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (3). 2006.One of the central points of contention in the epistemology of testimony concerns the uniqueness (or not) of the justification of beliefs formed through testimony--whether such justification can be accounted for in terms of, or 'reduced to,' other familiar sort of justification, e.g. without relying on any epistemic principles unique to testimony. One influential argument for the reductionist position, found in the work of Elizabeth Fricker, argues by appeal to the need for the hearer to monitor…Read more
-
147Brown on self-knowledge and discriminability1Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (3): 301-314. 2006.In her recent book Anti-Individualism and Knowledge, Jessica Brown has presented a novel answer to the self-knowledge achievement problem facing the proponent of anti-individualism. She argues that her answer is to be preferred to the traditional answer (based on Burge, 1988a). Here I present three objections to the claim that her proposed answer is to be preferred. The significance of these objections lies in what they tell us about the nature of the sort of knowledge that is in dispute. Perhap…Read more
-
77The very idea of computer self-knowledge and self-deceptionMinds and Machines 7 (4): 515-529. 1997.Do computers have beliefs? I argue that anyone who answers in the affirmative holds a view that is incompatible with what I shall call the commonsense approach to the propositional attitudes. My claims shall be two. First,the commonsense view places important constraints on what can be acknowledged as a case of having a belief. Second, computers – at least those for which having a belief would be conceived as having a sentence in a belief box – fail to satisfy some of these constraints. This s…Read more
-
144Anti-Individualism, Content Preservation, and Discursive JustificationNoûs 41 (2): 178-203. 2007.Most explorations of the epistemic implications of Semantic Anti- Individualism (SAI) focus on issues of self-knowledge (first-person au- thority) and/or external-world skepticism. Less explored has been SAIs implications forthe epistemology of reasoning. In this paperI argue that SAI has some nontrivial implications on this score. I bring these out by reflecting on a problem first raised by Boghossian (1992). Whereas Boghos- sians main interest was in establishing the incompatibility of SAI and…Read more
-
136Metaphysical Realism and ThoughtAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2). 2008.In this paper I argue that the implications of semantic externalism (SE) are even more far-reaching than has heretofore been acknowledged. If SE is true, then it is possible that a thinker's mental reality has joints that cannot in principle be discerned by the thinker herself.
-
2Internalism, externalism and the epistemology of linguistic understandingCommunication and Cognition. Monographies 41 (3-4): 191-216. 2008.
-
105Testimony as EvidencePhilosophica 78 (2). 2006.Regarding testimony as evidence fails to predict the sort of epistemic support testimony provides for testimonial belief. As a result, testimony-based belief should not be assimilated into the category of epistemically inferential, evidence-based belief.
-
63Epistemic Justification RevisitedJournal of Philosophical Research 41 (9999): 1-16. 2016.In his Beyond Justification, Bill Alston argued that there is no single property picked out by ‘epistemic justification,’ and that instead epistemological theory should investigate the range of epistemic desiderata that beliefs may enjoy (as well as the nature of and interconnections among the various epistemic good-making properties). In this paper I argue that none of his arguments taken singly, nor the collection as a group, gives us a reason to abandon the traditional idea that there is a pr…Read more
-
51Review of Maria Frapolli (ed.), Esther Romero (ed.), Meaning, Basic Self-Knowledge, and Mind: Essays on Tyler Burge (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (1). 2004.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |