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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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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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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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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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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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37A Realistic Theory of Categories: An Essay on OntologyReview of Metaphysics 51 (3): 666-667. 1998.
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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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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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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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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Epistemology |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |