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174Disagreement and the value of self-trustPhilosophical Studies 172 (9): 2315-2339. 2015.Controversy over the epistemology of disagreement endures because there is an unnoticed factor at work: the intrinsic value we give to self-trust. Even if there are many instances of disagreement where, from a strictly epistemic or rational point of view, we ought to suspend belief, there are other values at work that influence our all-things considered judgments about what we ought to believe. Hence those who would give equal-weight to both sides in many cases of disagreement may be right, from…Read more
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49Therapeutic Reflections on Our Bipolar History of PerceptionAnalytic Philosophy 57 (4): 253-284. 2016.The long history of theorizing about perception divides into two quite distinct and irreconcilable camps, one that takes sensory experience to show us external reality just as it is, and one that takes such experience to reveal our own mind. I argue that we should reject both sides of this debate, and admit that the phenomenal character of experience, as such, reveals little about the nature of the external world and even less about the mind.
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10The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy 2 Volume Paperback Set (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2014.The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy comprises over fifty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period. Starting in the late eighth century, with the renewal of learning some centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, a sequence of chapters takes the reader through developments in many and varied fields, including logic and language, natural philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and theology. Close attention is paid to the context of medieval philosophy, with d…Read more
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20LanguageReview of Metaphysics 49 (3): 650-651. 1996.If ever a case is to be made that ancient philosophy is just an early species of analytic philosophy, this is the volume to do it. Everson has assembled eleven essays, mostly by Oxford scholars, that range widely over ancient theories of language from Parmenides to Augustine. Some of the essays will prove more useful to advanced scholars, others to students and nonspecialists. The quality of the essays, in every case, is extremely high.
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24Review of Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (12). 2003.
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63Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic BeliefPhilosophical Review 107 (4): 624. 1998.In August of 1989, as an eighteen-year-old atheist spending his last night at home before setting off cross-country for college, I had the one and only mystical experience of my life to date. Rather than grapple with expressing the content of that experience, let me quote from part of the record Blaise Pascal made of his own mystical experience, one that seems to have been similar in many respects to my own.
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4Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Volume 4 (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2016.Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best scholarly research in this flourishing field. The series covers all aspects of medieval philosophy, including the Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew traditions, and runs from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. It publishes new work by leading scholars in the field, and combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness. The papers will address a wide range of topics, from political philosophy to ethics, and logic to metaphysics. O…Read more
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122The event of colorPhilosophical Studies 142 (3). 2009.When objects are illuminated, the light they reflect does not simply bounce off their surface. Rather, that light is entirely reabsorbed and then reemitted, as the result of a complex microphysical event near the surface of the object. If we are to be physicalists regarding color, then we should analyze colors in terms of that event, just as we analyze heat in terms of molecular motion, and sound in terms of vibrations. On this account, colors are not standing properties of objects, but events, …Read more
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35Science and CertaintyIn The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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156Medieval Social Epistemology: Scientia for Mere MortalsEpisteme 7 (1): 23-41. 2010.Medieval epistemology begins as ideal theory: when is one ideally situated with regard to one's grasp of the way things are? Taking as their starting point Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, scholastic authors conceive of the goal of cognitive inquiry as the achievement of scientia, a systematic body of beliefs, grasped as certain, and grounded in demonstrative reasons that show the reason why things are so. Obviously, however, there is not much we know in this way. The very strictness of this ide…Read more
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73Snatching Hope from the Jaws of Epistemic DefeatJournal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (2): 257--275. 2015.Reflection on the history of skepticism shows that philosophers have often conjoined as a single doctrine various theses that are best kept apart. Some of these theses are incredible – literally almost impossible to accept – whereas others seem quite plausible, and even verging on the platitudinous. Mixing them together, one arrives at a view – skepticism – that is as a whole indefensible. My aim is to pull these different elements apart, and to focus on one particular strand of skepticism that …Read more
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19Id Quo CognoscimusIn Petra Simo Kärkkäinen Knuuttila (ed.), Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, . pp. 131--149. 2008.
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121Philosophy of mind and human natureIn Brian Davies & Eleonore Stump (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Aquinas, Oxford University Press. 2011.A theory of human nature must consider from the start whether it sees human beings in fundamentally biological terms, as animals like other animals, or else in fundamentally supernatural terms, as creatures of God who are like God in some special way, and so importantly unlike other animals. Many of the perennial philosophical disputes have proved so intractable in part because their adherents divide along these lines. The friends of materialism, seeing human beings as just a particularly comple…Read more
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9Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Volume 1 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2013.Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best new scholarly work on philosophy from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. OSMP combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness, and will be an essential resource for anyone working in the area
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37A Realistic Theory of Categories: An Essay on OntologyReview of Metaphysics 51 (3): 666-667. 1998.
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79Veiled DisagreementJournal of Philosophy 111 (11): 608-630. 2014.A theory of how rationally to respond to disagreement requires a clear account of how to measure comparative reliability. Such an account faces a Generality Problem analogous to the well-known problem that besets reliabilist theories of knowledge. But whereas the problem for reliabilism has proved recalcitrant, I show that a solution in the case of disagreement is available. That solution is to measure reliability in the most fine-grained way possible, in light of all the circumstances of the pr…Read more
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138On existing all at onceIn C. Tapp (ed.), God, Eternity, and Time, Ashgate. 2011.It is important to distinguish between two ways in which God might be timelessly eternal: eternality as being wholly outside of time, versus the sort of timelessness that consists in lacking temporal parts, and so existing “all at once.” A prominent but neglected historical tradition, most clearly evident in Anselm, advocates putting God in time, but in an all-at-once sort of way that makes God immune to temporal change. This is an intrinsically plausible conception of divine eternality, which a…Read more
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6The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2010.The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy comprises over fifty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period. Starting in the late eighth century, with the renewal of learning some centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, a sequence of chapters takes the reader through developments in many and varied fields, including logic and language, natural philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and theology. Close attention is paid to the context of medieval philosophy, with d…Read more
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9Life’s Form (review)Philosophical Review 111 (2): 308-310. 2002.Perhaps the most lively area of historical research in philosophy today concerns the scholastic antecedents of modern philosophy. As studies of modern philosophy have become more historically rigorous, over the past twenty years, they have become increasingly concerned with understanding the antecedents to figures such as Descartes and Locke. Of course, inasmuch as these authors were notoriously and proudly ignorant of scholastic thought, it is not to be expected that a better understanding of m…Read more
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9Review of John Cottingham, Peter Hacker (eds.), Mind, Method, and Morality: Essays in Honour of Anthony Kenny (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (6). 2010.
Boulder, Colorado, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Epistemology |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |