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239Mirroring, mindreading, and simulationIn Jaime A. Pineda (ed.), Mirror Neuron Systems: The Role of Mirroring Processes in Social Cognition, Humana Press. pp. 311-330. 2009.What is the connection between mirror processes and mindreading? The paper begins with definitions of mindreading and of mirroring processes. It then advances four theses: (T1) mirroring processes in themselves do not constitute mindreading; (T2) some types of mindreading (“low-level” mindreading) are based on mirroring processes; (T3) not all types of mindreading are based on mirroring (“high-level” mindreading); and (T4) simulation-based mindreading includes but is broader than mirroring-based…Read more
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157Recursive tracking versus process reliabilismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (1): 223-230. 2009.Sherrilyn Roush’s Tracking Truth (2005) is an impressive, precision-crafted work. Although it sets out to rehabilitate the epistemological theory of Robert Nozick’s "Philosophical Explanations" (1981), its departures from Nozick’s line are extensive and original enough that it should be regarded as a distinct form of epistemological externalism. Roush’s mission is to develop an externalism that averts the problems and counterexamples encountered not only by Nozick’s theory but by other varieties…Read more
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41Can science know when you're conscious? Epistemological foundations of consciousness researchJournal 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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132Veritistic Social EpistemologyThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 5 107-114. 2000.Epistemology needs a social branch to complement its traditional, ‘individualist’ branch. Like its individualist sister, social epistemology would be an evaluative enterprise. It would assess (actual and possible) social practices in terms of their propensities to promote or inhibit knowledge, where knowledge is understood in the sense of true belief. Social epistemology should examine the practices of many types of players, as well as technological and institutional structures: speakers, hearer…Read more
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27Is less knowledge better than more?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (5): 751-752. 2000.When a distinction is drawn between “total” knowledge and “problem-specific” knowledge, it is seen that successful users of the recognition heuristic have more problem-specific knowledge than people unable to exploit this heuristic. So it is not ignorance that makes them smart, but knowledge.
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190A priori warrant and naturalistic epistemology: The seventh Philosophical Perspectives lecturePhilosophical Perspectives 13 1-28. 1999.Epistemology has recently witnessed a number of efforts to rehabilitate rationalism, to defend the existence and importance of a priori knowledge or warrant construed as the product of rational insight or apprehension (Bealer 1987; Bigelow 1992; BonJour 1992, 1998; Burge 1998; Butchvarov 1970; Katz 1998; Plantinga 1993). This effort has sometimes been coupled with an attack on naturalistic epistemology, especially in BonJour 1994 and Katz 1998. Such coupling is not surprising, because naturalist…Read more
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1The Need for Social EpistemologyIn Brian Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy, Clarendon Press. pp. 182-207. 2004.
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24Reply to BraybrookePhilosophical Studies 30 (4): 273-275. 1976.A few comments may help set the record straight on the issues Braybrooke raises (or reraises). First, I concede that my treatment of the relation between resources and opportunity costs was inaccurate. Braybrooke is correct in saying that opportunity costs may rise while resources are also rising. By itself, however, this does not resolve the question of whether power is inversely related to opportunity cost. It may still be true that one's power goes down when opportunity cost rises, even if on…Read more
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1850A causal theory of knowingJournal of Philosophy 64 (12): 357-372. 1967.Since Edmund L. Gettier reminded us recently of a certain important inadequacy of the traditional analysis of "S knows that p," several attempts have been made to correct that analysis. In this paper I shall offer still another analysis (or a sketch of an analysis) of "S knows that p," one which will avert Gettier's problem. My concern will be with knowledge of empirical propositions only, since I think that the traditional analysis is adequate for knowledge of nonempirical truths.
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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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256Epistemic Paternalism: Communication Control in Law and SocietyJournal of Philosophy 88 (3): 113-131. 1991.
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57Psychological, Social, and Epistemic Factors in the Theory of SciencePSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994 277-286. 1994.This article blends psychological and social factors in the explanation of science, and defends the compatibility of a psychosocial picture with an epistemic picture. It examines three variants of the 'political' approach to interpersonal persuasion advocated by Latour and others. In each case an 'epistemic' or mixed account is more promising and empirically better supported. Psychological research on motivated reasoning shows the epistemic limits of interest-driven belief. Against social constr…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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |