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164Social 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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1544Discrimination and perceptual knowledgeJournal of Philosophy 73 (November): 771-791. 1976.This paper presents a partial analysis of perceptual knowledge, an analysis that will, I hope, lay a foundation for a general theory of knowing. Like an earlier theory I proposed, the envisaged theory would seek to explicate the concept of knowledge by reference to the causal processes that produce (or sustain) belief. Unlike the earlier theory, however, it would abandon the requirement that a knower's belief that p be causally connected with the fact, or state of affairs, that p.
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1855What 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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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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30CommentSocial Epistemology 7 (3). 1993.The paper by Susan Feigenbaum and David Levy, 'The market for (ir)reproducible econometrics', has several meritorious features. It offers an interesting model of how econometric researchers might decide whether to replicate a previously published article and how journal editors might decide whether to publish such a replication study. It offers data about error rates involved in original studies and about the willingness of original researchers to submit their data to potential replicators. Fina…Read more
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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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276Internalism, Externalism, and the Architecture of JustificationJournal of Philosophy 106 (6): 309-338. 2009.
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123Reliabilism 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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105An economic model of scientific activity and truth acquisitionPhilosophical Studies 63 (1): 31-55. 1991.Economic forms of analysis have penetrated to many disciplines in the last 30 years: political science, sociology, law, social and political philosophy, and so forth. We wish to extend the economic paradigm to certain problems in epistemology and the philosophy of science. Scientific agents, and scholarly inquirers generally, act in some ways like vendors, trying to "sell" their findings, theories, analyses, or arguments to an audience of prospective "buyers". The analogy with the marketplace is…Read more
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15The Psychology of Folk PsychologyIn 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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156Foundations 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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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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90Epistemology 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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73Social 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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18Simulation and the evolution of mindreadingIn António Zilhão (ed.), Evolution, rationality, and cognition: a cognitive science for the twenty-first century, Routledge. pp. 148-161. 2005.
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235Mirroring, 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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279Reliabilism, veritism, and epistemic consequentialismEpisteme 12 (2): 131-143. 2015.According to Selim Berker the prevalence of consequentialism in contemporary epistemology rivals its prevalence in contemporary ethics. Similarly, and more to the point, Berker finds epistemic consequentialism, epitomized by process reliabilism, to be as misguided and problematic as ethical consequentialism. This paper shows how Berker misconstrues process reliabilism and fails to pinpoint any new or substantial defects in it.
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173Cognitive Science and MetaphysicsJournal of Philosophy 84 (10): 537-544. 1987.I want to explore the possible connections between cognitive science and metaphysics. Of course, on one philosophical taxonomy, metaphysics includes the philosophy of mind. So all contributions that cognitive science might make to philosophy of mind would equally be contributions to metaphysics. But I shall bracket that portion of metaphysics.
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146Why Citizens Should Vote: A Causal Responsibility ApproachSocial Philosophy and Policy 16 (2): 201-217. 1999.Why should a citizen vote? There are two ways to interpret this question: in a prudential sense, and in a moral sense. Under the first interpretation, the question asks why—or under what circumstances—it is in a citizen's self-interest to vote. Under the second interpretation, it asks what moral reasons citizens have for voting. I shall mainly try to answer the moral version of the question, but my answer may also, in some circumstances, bear on the prudential question. Before proceeding to my o…Read more
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52Joint Ventures: Mindreading, Mirroring, and Embodied CognitionOxford University Press. 2013.This collection of essays by Alvin Goldman explores an array of topics in the philosophy of cognitive science, ranging from embodied cognition to the metaphysics of actions and events.
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49Reply to commentators (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (1). 2002.I am most appreciative of the careful and incisive commentaries on KSW that Professors Kitcher, Talbott, and Copp have produced. They have pressed me to think more deeply about a number of issues of importance to social epistemology. Since their commentaries focus on completely different topics, I shall reply to them independently.
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265A Program for “Naturalizing” Metaphysics, with Application to the Ontology of EventsThe Monist 90 (3): 457-479. 2007.I wish to advance a certain program for doing metaphysics, a program in which cognitive science would play an important role.1 This proposed ingredient is absent from most contemporary metaphysics. There are one or two local parts of metaphysics where a role for cognitive science is commonly accepted, but I advocate a wider range of application. I begin by laying out the general program and its rationale, with selected illustrations. Then I explore in some detail a single application: the ontolo…Read more
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171The relation between epistemology and psychologySynthese 64 (1): 29-68. 1985.In the wake of Frege's attack on psychologism and the subsequent influence of Logical Positivism, psychological considerations in philosophy came to be viewed with suspicion. Philosophical questions, especially epistemological ones, were viewed as 'logical' questions, and logic was sharply separated from psychology. Various efforts have been made of late to reconnect epistemology with psychology. But there is little agreement about how such connections should be made, and doubts about the place …Read more
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6Imagination and Simulation in Audience Responses to FictionIn Shaun Nichols (ed.), The Architecture of the Imagination: New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 41-56. 2006.This chapter considers how imagination generates emotion. ‘Supposition-imagination’ (S-imagination) is distinguished from ‘enactment-imagination’ (E-imagination). The former kind of imagination involves entertaining or supposing various hypothetical scenarios; with the latter kind of imagination, one tries to create a kind of facsimile of a mental state. Thus, one might try to create a perception-like state as in visual imagination or motoric imagination. It is argued that this much richer form …Read more
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69Action, causation, and unityNoûs 13 (2): 261-270. 1979."Contingent Identity in Human Action and Philosophical Method", Castañeda's study of _A Theory of Human Action_, covers a great deal of territory and contains many diverse criticisms. In the space allotted here I cannot do justice to the range of Castañeda's detailed and careful discussion. Instead of replying to his critique point by point, let me use it as an occasion to explore a few selected topics which he broaches.
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40The Bodily Formats Approach to Embodied CognitionIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind, Routledge. pp. 91-108. 2013.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |