•  34
    Hume variations
    Philosophical Books 46 (3): 246-253. 2005.
    Review of Fodor, "Hume Variations".
  •  1057
    Molyneux's Question and the Berkeleian Answer
    In Jean Paul Margot & Mauricio Zuluaga (eds.), Jean Paul Margot & Mauricio Zuluaga (eds.), Perspectivas de la Modernidad. Siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII, Colección Artes Y Humanidades. pp. 217-234. 2011.
    Amongst those who answered Molyneux’s question in the negative or at least not in the positive, George Berkeley is of particular interest because he argued for a very radical position. Most of his contribution to the discussion can be found in his Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. I will give an exposition of his view (2) and then move on to a critical discussion of this kind of view, - what one could call the “Berkeleian view” (3). I think that the problems of what has become a standard neg…Read more
  •  72
    I Know. Modal Epistemology and Scepticism
    Philosophical Quarterly 64 (257): 640-644. 2014.
    Review of Freitag, "I know".
  •  77
    In Baumann (American Philosophical Quarterly 42: 71–79, 2005) I argued that reflections on a variation of the Monty Hall problem throws a very general skeptical light on the idea of single-case probabilities. Levy (Synthese, forthcoming, 2007) puts forward some interesting objections which I answer here.
  • This discusses and proposes a solution to the factivity problem for contextualism
  •  89
    Empiricism, stances, and the problem of voluntarism
    Synthese 178 (1): 27-36. 2011.
    Voluntarism about beliefs is the view that persons can be free to choose their beliefs for non-epistemic (truth-related) reasons (cf. Williams 1973). One problem for belief voluntarism is that it can lead to Moore-paradoxality. The person might believe that a.) there are also good epistemic reasons for her belief, or that b.) there are no epistemic reasons one way or the other, or that c.) there are good epistemic reasons against her belief. If the person is aware of the fact that she chose her…Read more
  •  138
    Persons, Human Beings, and Respect
    Polish Journal of Philosophy 1 (2): 5-17. 2007.
    Human dignity seems very important to us. At the same time, the concept ‘human dignity’ is extrordinarily elusive. A good way to approach the questions “What is it?” and “Why is it important?” is to raise another question first: In virtue of what do human beings have dignity? Speciesism - the idea that human beings have a particular dignity because they are humans - does not seem very convincing. A better answer says that human beings have dignity because and insofar as they are persons. I discu…Read more
  •  4
    Erkenntnistheorie
    Metzler. 2002.
    An introduction to epistemology with a focus on different accounts of knowledge, scepticism, belief, truth, rationality and justification, the sources of knowledge.
  •  42
    Davidson on Sharing a Language and Correct Language-Use
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 52 (1): 137-160. 1996.
    Donald Davidson has argued against a thesis that is widely shared in the philosophy of language, e.g., by Wittgenstein, Dummett and Kripke: the thesis that successful communication requires that speaker and hearer share a common language. Davidson's arguments, however, are not convincing. Moreover, Davidson's own positive account of communication poses a serious problem: it cannot offer criteria for the correct use of a language, especially in the case of a language that only one speaker speaks.…Read more
  •  852
    Nozick's defense of closure
    In Kelly Becker & Tim Black (eds.), The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 11--27. 2012.
    This paper argues against common views that at least in many cases Robert Nozick is not forced to deny common closure principles. More importantly, Nozick does not – despite first (and second) appearances and despite his own words – deny closure. On the contrary, he is defending a more sophisticated and complex principle of closure. This principle does remarkably well though it is not without problems. It is surprising how rarely Nozick’s principle of closure has been discussed. He should be see…Read more
  • A Contradiction for Contextualism?
    In Franck Lihoreau & Manuel Rebuschi (eds.), Epistemology, Context, and Formalism, Springer Verlag. pp. 49-57. 2014.
    This discusses a problem for epistemic contextualism having to do with the possibility of evaluating knowledge attributions made in other contexts.
  •  28
    Begrenzte Erkenntnisse?
    Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 58 (3): 483-489. 2010.
    This is a crtiical discussion of Gabriel's "An den Grenzen der Erkenntnistheorie".