•  130
    Lotteries And Contexts
    Erkenntnis 61 (2): 415-428. 2004.
    There are many ordinary propositions we think we know. Almost every ordinary proposition entails some "lottery proposition" which we think we do not know but to which we assign a high probability of being true (for instance: “I will never be a multi-millionaire” entails “I will not win this lottery”). How is this possible - given that some closure principle is true? This problem, also known as “the Lottery puzzle”, has recently provoked a lot of discussion. In this paper I discuss one of the mos…Read more
  •  277
    Zwei Seiten der Kantschen Begründung von Eigentum und Staat
    Kant Studien 85 (2): 147-159. 1994.
    Abstract. Kant's political philosophy in general is characterized by two aspects which sometimes compete with each other and sometimes supplement each other: an individualist element on the one hand and a social or "communitarian" element on the other hand. This paper deals with Kant's theory of private property. It attempts to show something that is usually overlooked in the secondary literature: that Kant has two, not just one argument for property. One is based on his theory of freedom and ex…Read more
  • Molyneux's Questions
    In Ralph Schumacher (ed.), Perception and Reality: From Descartes to the Present, Mentis. pp. 168-187. 2004.
    More than 300 years ago, William Molyneux raised an important and puzzling question which still creates a lot of controversy. What is known as “Molyneux’s question“ was made famous by John Locke’s quote of Molyneux in the second edition of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a Cube, and a Sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and t’other, which is the…Read more
  •  1
    Ist der Begriff des Wissens inkohärent?
    Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 55 (4). 2001.
    This is a response to Ansgar Beckermann's argument to the effect that the concept of knowledge is incoherent and should thus be given up.
  •  583
    The possibility of knowledge attributions across contexts (where attributor and subject find themselves in different epistemic contexts) can create serious problems for certain views of knowledge. Amongst such views is subject—sensitive invariantism—the view that knowledge is determined not only by epistemic factors (belief, truth, evidence, etc.) but also by non—epistemic factors (practical interests, etc.). I argue that subject—sensitive invariantism either runs into a contradiction or has to …Read more
  •  397
    Epistemic contrastivism is the view that knowledge is a ternary relation between a person, a proposition and a set of contrast propositions. This view is in tension with widely shared accounts of practical reasoning: be it the claim that knowledge of the premises is necessary for acceptable practical reasoning based on them or sufficient for the acceptability of the use of the premises in practical reasoning, or be it the claim that there is a looser connection between knowledge and practical re…Read more
  •  23
    ¿ Se puede saber lo que se quiere?
    Ideas Y Valores 44 (96-97): 3-22. 1995.
    Can one come to know what one wants? In some very simple cases, the answer has to be positive but in some other cases the answer is not so clear. The answer depends on what kind of self-knowledge one is taking about. This article also aims at elucidating the notion of knowledge of one's own desires.
  •  1247
    Defending the One Percent? Poor Arguments for the Rich?
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy XXI 21 106-112. 2014.
    This is a reply to and critique of Gregory Mankiw's recent paper "Defending the One Percent".
  • Der Denker als Seiltänzer. Ludwig Wittgenstein über Religion, Mystik und Ethik (review)
    Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 57 (1). 2003.
  •  29
    Problems for Sinnott-Armstrong's moral contrastivism
    Philosophical Quarterly 58 (232). 2008.
    In his recent book Moral Skepticisms Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues in great detail for contrastivism with respect to justified moral belief and moral knowledge. I raise three questions concerning this view. First, how would Sinnott-Armstrong account for constraints on admissible contrast classes? Secondly, how would he deal with notorious problems concerning relevant reference classes? Finally, how can he account for basic features of moral agency? It turns out that the last problem is the mos…Read more