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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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2153What 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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62Commentary 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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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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722Internalism, Externalism, and the Architecture of JustificationJournal of Philosophy 106 (6): 309-338. 2009.
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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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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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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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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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106Perceptual 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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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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119Ethics 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
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17Simulation 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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369Mirroring, 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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274Reliabilism, 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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89Chisholm's theory of actionPhilosophia 7 (3-4): 583-596. 1978.In any generation there are relatively few people who make major original contributions to even a single area of philosophy. But the man whose work is the topic of this conference has made such contributions not only in a single field, but in several. This morning and afternoon we have devoted our attention to Chisholm's epistemology, the breadth and significance of which is evident. Equally deserving of our attention, however, are his contributions to the theory of action and metaphysics, and w…Read more
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356Why 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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51Joint 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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59Reply 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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170The 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, Clarendon Press. 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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34Power, time, and costPhilosophical Studies 26 (3-4): 263-270. 1974.David Braybrooke makes two criticisms of my theory of social power, one that deals with the time of power and one that concerns the relation between power and cost. In his first criticism he points out that, according to my analysis, Richard Nixon had the power, in 1940, to nominate Burger for Chief Justice in 1970, and a certain twelve-year old boy may today have the power to hit the first home run of the 1990 season. Braybrooke finds these consequences of the theory unacceptable. These agents …Read more
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79An Epistemological Approach to ArgumentationInformal Logic 23 (1): 51-63. 2003.The evaluation of arguments and argumentation is best understood epistemologically. Epistemic circularity is not formally defective but it may be epistemologically objectionable. Sorenson's doubts about the syntactic approach to circularity are endorsed with qualifications. One explanation of an argument's goodness is its ability to produce justified belief in its conclusion by means of justified belief in its premises, but matters are not so simple for interpersonal argumentation. Even when an …Read more
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39The Bodily Formats Approach to Embodied CognitionIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind, Routledge. pp. 91-108. 2014.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |