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118Toward a theory of social powerPhilosophical Studies 23 (4): 221-268. 1972.The concept of power has long played a significant role in political thought, and recent decades have witnessed many attempts to analyze power and provide criteria for its measurement. In spite of this impressive literature, however, our understanding of power remains inadequate. Specifically, no fully comprehensive conceptual framework exists within which questions about power can be formulated precisely and dealt with systematically. In the absence of such a framework it is difficult to invest…Read more
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Précis and update of Epistemology and cognitionIn Marjorie Clay & Keith Lehrer (eds.), Knowledge and Skepticism, Westview Press. pp. 69-88. 1989.Epistemics as a whole would have a larger scope, encompassing secondary as well as primary individual epistemology and social epistemology in addition. There are a variety of terms of intellectual evaluation, many of interest to epistemology. The ones most commonly used in the discipline are ‘justified’ and ‘rational.’ Another central term of intellectual appraisal, which oddly has received only scant attention in the field, is ‘intelligent.’ Epistemology should be concerned with this range of i…Read more
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169Simulationist Models of Face-based Emotion RecognitionCognition 94 (3): 193-213. 2005.Recent studies of emotion mindreading reveal that for three emotions, fear, disgust, and anger, deficits in face-based recognition are paired with deficits in the production of the same emotion. What type of mindreading process would explain this pattern of paired deficits? The simulation approach and the theorizing approach are examined to determine their compatibility with the existing evidence. We conclude that the simulation approach offers the best explanation of the data. What computationa…Read more
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430Epistemology and cognitionHarvard University Press. 1986.Against the traditional view, Alvin Goldman argues that logic, probability theory, and linguistic analysis cannot by themselves delineate principles of rationality or justified belief. The mind's operations must be taken into account.
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2175What is Justified Belief?In George Pappas (ed.), Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology, D. Reidel. pp. 1-25. 1979.The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of justified belief. What I have in mind is an explanatory theory, one that explains in a general way why certain beliefs are counted as justified and others as unjustified. Unlike some traditional approaches, I do not try to prescribe standards for justification that differ from, or improve upon, our ordinary standards. I merely try to explicate the ordinary standards, which are, I believe, quite different from those of many classical, e. g., ‘Cartesi…Read more
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163Social epistemologyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2001.Social epistemology is the study of the social dimensions of knowledge or information. There is little consensus, however, on what the term "knowledge" comprehends, what is the scope of the "social", or what the style or purpose of the study should be. According to some writers, social epistemology should retain the same general mission as classical epistemology, revamped in the recognition that classical epistemology was too individualistic. According to other writers, social epistemology shoul…Read more
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22Desire, intention, and the simulation theoryIn Bertram F. Malle, Louis J. Moses & Dare A. Baldwin (eds.), Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition, Mit Press. pp. 207-225. 2001.
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97The social epistemology of bloggingIn M. J. van den Joven & J. Weckert (eds.), Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 111-122. 2008.
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723Internalism, Externalism, and the Architecture of JustificationJournal of Philosophy 106 (6): 309-338. 2009.
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49Replies to reviews of Knowledge in a Social WorldSocial Epistemology 14 (4): 317-333. 2000.The order I shall discuss these reviews is roughly the order of the chapters on which they centre. Some commentaries, of course, address material from more than one chapter, but I usually take either the first or the principal chapter they write about as my guide.
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63Commentary on Jack Lyons’s Perception and Basic BeliefsPhilosophical Studies 153 (3): 457-466. 2011.This book deserves kudos. It presents one of the more novel versions of reliabilism to appear in recent years. The style is fast-paced and energetic, with no sacrifice in philosophical precision. It applies original interpretations of perceptual science to central issues in traditional epistemology, and should thereby earn itself a prominent place in the naturalistic epistemology literature. Finally, the book is more comprehensive than its title suggests. It illuminates a great many issues of tr…Read more
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155Foundations of social epistemicsSynthese 73 (1). 1987.A conception of social epistemology is articulated with links to studies of science and opinion in such disciplines as history, sociology, and political science. The conception is evaluative, though, rather than purely descriptive. Three types of evaluative approaches are examined but rejected: relativism, consensualism, and expertism. A fourth, truth-linked, approach to intellectual evaluation is then advocated: social procedures should be appraised by their propensity to foster true belief. St…Read more
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124Reliabilism and Contemporary Epistemology: EssaysOxford University Press. 2012.This is a collection of chapters by the leading proponent of process reliabilism, explaining its relation to rival and/or neighboring theories including evidentialism, other forms of reliabilism, and virtue epistemology. It addresses other prominent themes in contemporary epistemology, such as the internalism/externalism debate, the epistemological upshots of experimental challenges to intuitional methodology, the source of epistemic value, and social epistemology. The Introduction addresses lat…Read more
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15The Psychology of Folk PsychologyIn Alvin Goldman (ed.), Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Mit Press. pp. 347-380. 1993.The central mission of cognitive science is to reveal the real nature of the mind, however familiar or foreign that nature may be to naive preconceptions. The existence of naive conceptions is also important, however. Prescientific thought and language contain concepts of the mental, and these concepts deserve attention from cognitive science. Just as scientific psychology studies folk physics (McCloskey 1983, Hayes 1985), viz., the common understanding (or misunderstanding) of physical phenomen…Read more
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88Epistemology and the Psychology of BeliefThe Monist 61 (4): 525-535. 1978.Epistemology has always been concerned with mental states, especially doxastic states such as belief, suspension of judgment, and the like. A significant part of epistemology is the attempt to evaluate, appraise, or criticize alternative procedures for the formation of belief and other doxastic attitudes. In addressing itself to doxastic states, epistemology has usually employed our everyday mental concepts and language. Occasionally it has tried to systematize or precise these mental categories…Read more
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108Perceptual objectsSynthese 35 (3): 257-284. 1977.What are the conceptually necessary and sufficient conditions for a person, or organism, to perceive a given object? More precisely, what is the nature of our ordinary thought about perception that gives rise to our willingness or unwillingness to say that S perceives O? Some form of causal theory of perception is now, I think, widely accepted. Such a theory maintains that it is part of our concept of perception that S perceives O only if O causes a percept, or perceptual state, of S. I accept t…Read more
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120Argumentation and Interpersonal JustificationArgumentation 11 (2): 155-164. 1997.There are distinct but legitimate notions of both personal justification and interpersonal justification. Interpersonal justification is definable in terms of personal justification. A connection is established between good argumentation and interpersonal justification
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16Simulation theory and cognitive neuroscienceIn Dominic Murphy & Michael A. Bishop (eds.), Stich and His Critics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 137-151. 2009.
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18Simulation and the evolution of mindreadingIn Antonio Zilhao (ed.), Evolution, Rationality, and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century, Routledge. pp. 148-161. 2005.
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370Mirroring, simulating and mindreadingMind and Language 24 (2): 235-252. 2009.Pierre Jacob (2008) raises several problems for the alleged link between mirroring and mindreading. This response argues that the best mirroring-mindreading thesis would claim that mirror processes cause, rather than constitute, selected acts of mindreading. Second, the best current evidence for mirror-based mindreading is not found in the motoric domain but in the domains of emotion and sensation, where the evidence (ignored by Jacob) is substantial. Finally, simulation theory should distinguis…Read more
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273Social Epistemology, Theory of Evidence, and Intelligent Design: Deciding What to TeachSouthern Journal of Philosophy 44 (S1): 1-22. 2006.Social epistemology is the normative theory of socioepistemic practices. Teaching is a socioepistemic practice, so educational practices belong on the agenda of social epistemology. A current question is whether intelligent design should be taught in biology classes. This paper focuses on the argument from “fairness” or “equal time.” The principal aim of education is knowledge transmission, but evidence renders it doubtful that giving intelligent design equal time would promote knowledge transmi…Read more
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120Ethics and cognitive scienceEthics 103 (2): 337-360. 1993.Findings and theories in cognitive science have been increasingly important in many areas of philosophy, especially philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. The time is ripe to examine its potential applications to moral theory as well. This article does not aspire to a comprehensive treatment of the subject. It merely aims to illustrate the ways in which research in cognitive science can bear on the concerns of moral philosophers. For present purposes the label 'cognitive s…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |