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320Philosophical Theory and Intuitional EvidenceIn Michael Depaul & William Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, Rowman & Littlefield. 1998.How can intuitions be used to validate or invalidate a philosophical theory? An intuition about a case seems to be a basic evidential source for the truth of that intuition, i.e., for the truth of the claim that a particular example is or isn’t an instance of a philosophically interesting kind, concept, or predicate. A mental‐state type is a basic evidential source only if its tokens reliably indicate the truth of their contents. The best way to account for intuitions being a basic evidential so…Read more
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2Discrimination and Perceptual KnowledgeIn Sven Bernecker & Fred I. Dretske (eds.), Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 86-102. 2000.
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A Causal Theory of KnowingIn Sven Bernecker & Fred I. Dretske (eds.), Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 18-30. 2000.
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461Interpretation psychologizedMind and Language 4 (3): 161-85. 1989.The aim of this paper is to study interpretation, specifically, to work toward an account of interpretation that seems descriptively and explanatorily correct. No account of interpretation can be philosophically helpful, I submit, if it is incompatible with a correct account of what people actually do when they interpret others. My question, then, is: how does the (naive) interpreter arrive at his/her judgments about the mental attitudes of others? Philosophers who have addressed this question h…Read more
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73What Can Psychology Do for Epistemology?: Revisiting Epistemology and CognitionPhilosophical Topics 45 (1): 17-32. 2017.Within the analytic tradition—especially under the influence of Frege’s anti-psychologism—the thought of incorporating empirical psychology into epistemology was definitely out of bounds. This began to change with the advent of “naturalistic” epistemology, in which Epistemology and Cognition played a role. However, there is no settled consensus as to how, exactly, empirical psychology or cognitive science should contribute to the epistemological enterprise. This is the topic to which the present…Read more
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50Metaphysics and Cognitive Science (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2019.This volume illustrates how the methodology of metaphysics can be enriched with the help of cognitive science. Few philosophers nowadays would dispute the relevance of cognitive science to the metaphysics of mind, but this volume mainly concerns the relevance of metaphysics to phenomena that are not themselves mental. The volume is thus a departure from standard analytical metaphysics. Among the issues to which results from cognitive science are brought to bear are the metaphysics of time, of mo…Read more
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30Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of MindreadingOxford University Press. 2006.People are minded creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? And what are the dimensions of our grasp of the mental realm? In this book, Alvin I. Goldman explores these questions with the tools of philosophy, developmental psychology, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He refines an approach called s…Read more
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11Pathways to Knowledge: Private and PublicOxford University Press USA. 2002.Alvin Goldman examines public and private methods or "pathways" to knowledge, arguing for the epistemic legitimacy of private and introspective methods of gaining knowledge, yet acknowledging the equal importance of social and public mechanisms in the quest for truth.
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27Social epistemologyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006.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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The sciences and epistemologyIn Paul K. Moser (ed.), The Oxford handbook of epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 144--176. 2002.
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160Science, publicity, and consciousnessPhilosophy of Science 64 (4): 525-45. 1997.A traditional view is that scientific evidence can be produced only by intersubjective methods that can be used by different investigators and will produce agreement. This intersubjectivity, or publicity, constraint ostensibly excludes introspection. But contemporary cognitive scientists regularly rely on their subjects' introspective reports in many areas, especially in the study of consciousness. So there is a tension between actual scientific practice and the publicity requirement. Which shou…Read more
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269Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of MindreadingOxford University Press USA. 2006.People are minded creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? And what are the dimensions of our grasp of the mental realm? In this book, Alvin I. Goldman explores these questions with the tools of philosophy, developmental psychology, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He refines an approach called s…Read more
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90Can science know when you're conscious?Epistemological Foundations of Consciousness Research. Journal Of Consciousness Studies 7 (5): 3-22. 2000.Consciousness researchers standardly rely on their subjects’ verbal reports to ascertain which conscious states they are in. What justifies this reliance on verbal reports? Does it comport with the third-person approach characteristic of science, or does it ultimately appeal to first-person knowledge of consciousness? If first-person knowledge is required, does this pass scientific muster? Several attempts to rationalize the reliance on verbal reports are considered, beginning with attempts to d…Read more
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49Précis of Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of MindreadingPhilosophical Studies 144 (3): 431-434. 2009.In the second half of the twentieth-century, the traditional problem of other minds was re-focused on special problems with propositional attitudes and how we attribute them to others. How do ordinary people, with no education in scientific psychology, understand and ascribe such complex, unobservable states? In different terminology, how do they go about "interpreting" their peers?
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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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1040Toward a synthesis of reliabilism and evidentialism? Or: evidentialism's troubles, reliabilism's rescue packageIn Trent Dougherty (ed.), Evidentialism and its Discontents, Oxford University Press. pp. 254-280. 2011.For most of their respective existences, reliabilism and evidentialism (that is, process reliabilism and mentalist evidentialism) have been rivals. They are generally viewed as incompatible, even antithetical, theories of justification.1 But a few people are beginning to re-think this notion. Perhaps an ideal theory would be a hybrid of the two, combining the best elements of each theory. Juan Comesana (forthcoming) takes this point of view and constructs a position called “Evidentialist Reliabi…Read more
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119Empathy, Mind, and MoralsProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 66 (3): 17-41. 1992.Early Greek philosophers doubled as natural scientists; that is a common-place. It is equally true, though less often remarked, that numerous historical philosophers doubled as cognitive scientists. They constructed models of mental faculties in much the spirit of modern cognitive science, for which they are widely cited as precursors in the cognitive science literature. Today, of course, there is more emphasis on experiment, and greater division of labor. Philosophers focus on theory, foundatio…Read more
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42Psychology and Philosophical AnalysisProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 89 (1): 195-209. 1989.It is often said that philosophical analysis is an a priori enterprise. Since it prominently features thought experiments designed to elicit the meaning, or semantic properties, of words in one's own language, it seems to be a purely reflective inquiry, requiring no observational or empirical component. I too have sometimes acquiesced in this sort of view. While arguing that certain phases of epistemology require input from psychology and other cognitive sciences, I have granted that the more 'c…Read more
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37Legal evidenceIn Martin P. Golding & William A. Edmundson (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, Blackwell. pp. 163-175. 2004.This chapter contains section titled: Scope of the Topic A Unified Theory: The Search for Truth The Adversary System and the Search for Truth Truth, Reliability, and Bayesianism Applications of Quasi‐objective Bayesianism References Further Reading.
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361Strong and weak justificationPhilosophical Perspectives 2 51-69. 1988.It is common in recent epistemology to distinguish different senses, or conceptions, of epistemic justification. The proposed oppositions include the objective/subjective, internalist/externalist, regulative/nonregulative, resource-relative/resource-independent, personal/verific, and deontological/evaluative conceptions of justification. In some of these cases, writers regard both members of the contrasting pair as legitimate; in other cases only one member. In this paper I want to propose anoth…Read more
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108What Is Democracy (and What Is Its Raison D’Etre)?Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (2): 233-256. 2015.This article aims to say what democracy is or what the predicate ‘democratic’ means, as opposed to saying what is good, right, or desirable about it. The basic idea—by no means a novel one—is that a democratic system is one that features substantial equality of political power. More distinctively it is argued that ‘democratic’ is a relative gradable adjective, the use of which permits different, contextually determined thresholds of democraticness. Thus, a system can be correctly called ‘democra…Read more
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1116Internalism exposedJournal of Philosophy 96 (6): 271-293. 1999.In recent decades, epistemology has witnessed the development and growth of externalist theories of knowledge and justification. Critics of externalism have focused a bright spotlight on this approach and judged it unsuitable for realizing the true and original goals of epistemology. Their own favored approach, internalism, is defended as a preferable approach to the traditional concept of epistemic justification. I shall turn the spotlight toward internalism and its most prominent rationale, re…Read more
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71Replies to Perner and Brandl, Saxe, Vignemont, and CarruthersPhilosophical Studies 144 (3): 477-491. 2009.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |