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401Sensitivity, safety, and anti-luck epistemologyIn John Greco (ed.), The Oxford handbook of skepticism, Oxford University Press. 2008.This paper surveys attempts in the recent literature to offer a modal condition on knowledge as a way of resolving the problem of scepticism. In particular, safety-based and sensitivity-based theories of knowledge are considered in detail, along with the anti-sceptical prospects of an explicitly anti-luck epistemology.
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199Epistemic Virtue and the Epistemology of EducationJournal of Philosophy of Education 47 (2): 236-247. 2013.A certain conception of the relevance of virtue epistemology to the philosophy of education is set out. On this conception, while the epistemic goal of education might initially be promoting the pupil's cognitive success, it should ultimately move on to the development of the pupil's cognitive agency. A continuum of cognitive agency is described, on which it is ultimately cognitive achievement, and thus understanding, which is the epistemic goal of education. This is contrasted with a view on wh…Read more
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18MOOCS, by Jonathan Haber (review)Teaching Philosophy 38 (4): 455-458. 2015.No abstract available.
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75Knowledge or just a lucky guess?The Philosophers' Magazine 55 (55): 66-71. 2011.Our judgements about luck – and about related things, like risk – are for the most part sensitive to what is happening in close possible worlds rather than probabilities.
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171Scepticism and dreamingPhilosophia 28 (1-4): 373-390. 2001.In a recent, and influential, article, Crispin Wright maintains that a familiar form of scepticismwhich finds its core expression in Descartes’ dreaming argumentcan be defused (or, to use Wright’s own parlance, “imploded”), by showing how it employs self-defeating reasoning. I offer two fundamental reasons for rejecting Wright’s ‘implosion’ of scepticism. On the one hand, I argue that, even by Wright’s own lights, it is unclear whether there is a sceptical argument to implode in the first plac…Read more
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54Are Economic Decisions Rational? Path Dependence, Lock-In, and ‘Hinge’ PropositionsPhilosophy of Management 2 (3): 29-40. 2002.According to neo-classical economic theory, free markets should eventually settle at the most efficient equilibrium. Critics of the view have claimed, however, that even if the idealised conditions demanded by the theory were met (such that the markets in question were completely fee) one would still not find those markets settling at the optimally efficient equilibrium because of the path dependent' nature of economic decision-making. Essentially, the claim is that economic decision-making is a…Read more
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64Epistemic AxiologyIn Pedro Schmechtig & Martin Grajner (eds.), Epistemic Reasons, Norms, and Goals, De Gruyter. pp. 407-422. 2016.
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16IndexIn Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing, Princeton University Press. pp. 237-239. 2016.
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8AcknowledgmentsIn Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing, Princeton University Press. 2016.
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133Wright contra McDowell on perceptual knowledge and scepticismSynthese 171 (3). 2009.One of the key debates in contemporary epistemology is that between Crispin Wright and John McDowell on the topic of radical scepticism. Whereas both of them endorse a form of epistemic internalism, the very different internalist conceptions of perceptual knowledge that they offer lead them to draw radically different conclusions when it comes to the sceptical problem. The aim of this paper is to maintain that McDowell's view, at least when suitably supplemented with further argumentation (argum…Read more
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Contrastivism, scepticism, and evidenceIn Alan Millar Adrian Haddock & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Social Epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 22--305. 2008.
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262Virtue Epistemology and Epistemic Twin EarthEuropean Journal of Philosophy 22 (3): 335-357. 2011.A popular form of virtue epistemology—defended by such figures as Ernest Sosa, Linda Zagzebski and John Greco—holds that knowledge can be exclusively understood in virtue-theoretic terms. In particular, it holds that there isn't any need for an additional epistemic condition to deal with the problem posed by knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. It is argued that the sustainability of such a proposal is called into question by the possibility of epistemic twin earth cases. In particular, it is a…Read more
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263The Value of KnowledgeThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 16 (1): 86-103. 2009.The value of knowledge has always been a central topic within epistemology. Going all the way back to Plato’s Meno, philosophers have asked, why is knowledge more valuable than mere true belief? Interest in this question has grown in recent years, with theorists proposing a range of answers. But some reject the premise of the question and claim that the value of knowledge is ‘swamped’ by the value of true belief. And others argue that statuses other than knowledge, such as justification or under…Read more
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37Chapter 4. Hinge CommitmentsIn Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing, Princeton University Press. pp. 89-120. 2016.
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62Review: Beyond 'Justification': Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation (review)Mind 115 (458): 387-389. 2006.
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450McDowellian neo-mooreanismIn Fiona Macpherson & Adrian Haddock (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 283--310. 2006.It is claimed that McDowell’s treatment of scepticism offers a potential way of resurrecting the much derided ‘Moorean’ response to scepticism in a fashion that avoids the problems facing classical internalist and externalist construals of neo-Mooreanism. I here evaluate the prospects for a McDowellian neo-Mooreanism and, in doing so, offer further support for the view
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61Closure and contextAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (2). 2000.This Article does not have an abstract
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172Scepticism, epistemic luck, and epistemic angstAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2). 2005.A commonly expressed worry in the contemporary literature on the problem of epistemological scepticism is that there is something deeply intellectually unsatisfying about the dominant anti-sceptical theories. In this paper I outline the main approaches to scepticism and argue that they each fail to capture what is essential to the sceptical challenge because they fail to fully understand the role that the problem of epistemic luck plays in that challenge. I further argue that scepticism is best …Read more
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103Engel on pragmatic encroachment and epistemic valueSynthese 194 (5): 1477-1486. 2017.I discuss Engel’s critique of pragmatic encroachment in epistemology and his related discussion of epistemic value. While I am sympathetic to Engel’s remarks on the former, I think he makes a crucial misstep when he relates this discussion to the latter topic. The goal of this paper is to offer a better articulation of the relationship between these two epistemological issues, with the ultimate goal of lending further support to Engel’s scepticism about pragmatic encroachment in epistemology. As…Read more
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16Extended Epistemology (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.One of the most important research programmes in contemporary cognitive science is that of extended cognition, whereby features of a subject's cognitive environment can in certain conditions become constituent parts of the cognitive process itself. The aim of this volume is to explore the epistemological ramifications of this idea.... The first part of the volume explores foundational issues with regard to an extended epistemology, including from a critical perspective. The second part of the vo…Read more
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146Anti-luck virtue epistemology and epistemic defeatSynthese 195 (7): 3065-3077. 2018.This paper explores how a certain theory of knowledge—known as anti-luck virtue epistemology—can account for, and in the process shed light on, the notion of an epistemic defeater. To this end, an overview of the motivations for anti-luck virtue epistemology is offered, along with a taxonomy of different kinds of epistemic defeater. It is then shown how anti-luck virtue epistemology can explain: why certain kinds of putative epistemic defeater are not bona fide; how certain kinds of epistemic de…Read more
University of St. Andrews
PhD, 2000
Irvine, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |