•  100
    Wittgensteinian : Looking at the World From the Viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy (edited book)
    with A. C. Grayling, Shyam Wuppuluri, Christopher Norris, Nikolay Milkov, Oskari Kuusela, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Beth Savickey, Jonathan Beale, Annalisa Coliva, Jakub Mácha, David R. Cerbone, Paul Horwich, Michael Nedo, Gregory Landini, Pascal Zambito, Yoshihiro Maruyama, Chon Tejedor, Susan G. Sterrett, Carlo Penco, Susan Edwards-Mckie, Lars Hertzberg, Edward Witherspoon, Michel ter Hark, Paul F. Snowdon, Rupert Read, Nana Last, Ilse Somavilla, and Freeman Dyson
    Springer Verlag. 2019.
    “Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philos…Read more
  •  1786
    Varieties of externalism
    Philosophical Issues 24 (1): 63-109. 2014.
    Our aim is to provide a topography of the relevant philosophical terrain with regard to the possible ways in which knowledge can be conceived of as extended. We begin by charting the different types of internalist and externalist proposals within epistemology, and we critically examine the different formulations of the epistemic internalism/externalism debate they lead to. Next, we turn to the internalism/externalism distinction within philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In light of the ab…Read more
  •  2843
    Knowledge‐How and Epistemic Luck
    Noûs 49 (3): 440-453. 2013.
    Reductive intellectualists hold that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. For this thesis to hold water, it is obviously important that knowledge-how and knowledge-that have the same epistemic properties. In particular, knowledge-how ought to be compatible with epistemic luck to the same extent as knowledge-that. It is argued, contra reductive intellectualism, that knowledge-how is compatible with a species of epistemic luck which is not compatible with knowledge-that, and thus it is claim…Read more
  •  127
    Epistemic virtues and virtue epistemology
    Philosophical Studies 130 (1): 1--8. 2006.
    This paper introduces the articles in this volume, and offers an overview of each piece.
  •  137
    Epistemological contextualism: Problems and prospects
    Philosophical Quarterly 55 (219): 161-171. 2005.
    Epistemological contextualism has become one of the most important and widely discussed new proposals in the theory of knowledge. This special issue contributes to the debate by bringing together some of the main participants to provide a state-of-the-art discussion of the proposal. Here we offer a brief overview of the contextualist position, describe some of the main lines of criticism that have been levelled against the view, and present a summary of each of the contributions to this collecti…Read more
  •  123
    If a subject has a true belief, and she has good evidence for it, and there’s no evidence against it, why should it matter if she doesn’t believe on the basis of the good available evidence? After all, properly based beliefs are no likelier to be true than their corresponding improperly based beliefs, as long as the subject possesses the same good evidence in both cases. And yet it clearly does matter. The aim of this paper is to explain why, and in the process delineate a species of epistemic l…Read more
  •  20
    This paper explores the thesis that the overarching goal of education is to cultivate virtuous intellectual character. It is shown how finally valuing the truth is central to this theory on account of how such valuing is pivotal to intellectual virtues. This feature of the proposal might be thought to be problematic for a number of reasons. For example, it could be argued that truth is not valuable, that insisting on valuing the truth in educational contexts could be politically dubious, or that…Read more
  • Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2011.
  •  52
    Quasi-fideism and epistemic relativism
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Quasi-fideism accounts for the rationality of religious belief by embracing the idea that a subject’s most fundamental religious commitments are essentially arational. It departs from standard forms of fideism, however, by contending that this feature of religious commitment does not set it apart from belief in general. Indeed, the quasi-fideist maintains, in keeping with the Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology that underlies the view, that it is in the nature of belief in general (i.e. religious…Read more
  • Epistemic luck, safety, and assertion
    In Clayton Littlejohn & John Turri (eds.), Epistemic Norms: New Essays on Action, Belief, and Assertion, Oxford University Press. 2013.
  •  9
    Epistemology
    Palgrave-Macmillan. 2016.
    This advanced textbook, now in its second edition, provides an accessible overview of some of the main issues in contemporary epistemology. Written by an expert in the field, it covers such key topics as virtue epistemology, anti-luck epistemology, epistemological disjunctivism, epistemic value, understanding, radical scepticism, and contextualism. This book is ideal as a set text for an advanced undergraduate or postgraduate course in epistemology, and will also be of general interest to resear…Read more
  • Epistemic situationism, epistemic dependence, and the epistemology of education
    In Mark Alfano & Abrol Fairweather (eds.), Epistemic Situationism, Oxford University Press. 2017.
  • Analysing the concept of knowledge
    In Markos Valaris & Stephen Hetherington (eds.), Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2018.
  • Anti-risk virtue epistemology
    In Christoph Kelp & John Greco (eds.), Virtue Theoretic Epistemology: New Methods and Approaches, Cambridge University Press. 2020.
  • Wittgensteinian epistemology, epistemic vertigo, and Pyrrhonian skepticism
    In Justin Vlasits & Katja Maria Vogt (eds.), Epistemology after Sextus Empiricus, Oxford University Press. 2020.
  •  1
    Extended entitlement
    In Peter Graham & Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (eds.), Epistemic Entitlement, Oxford University Press. 2020.
  • Epistemic vertigo
    In Berit Brogaard & Dimitria Electra Gatzia (eds.), The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence: Being of Two Minds, Routledge. 2020.
  • Good News, Bad News, Fake News
    In Sven Bernecker, Amy K. Flowerree & Thomas Grundmann (eds.), The Epistemology of Fake News, Oxford University Press. 2021.
  •  59
    Ignorance and inquiry
    American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2): 111-124. 2021.
    It is argued that the two main accounts of ignorance in the contemporary literature—in the terms of the lack of knowledge and the lack of true belief—are lacking in key respects. A new way of thinking about ignorance is offered that can accommodate the motivations for both of the standard views, but which in the process also avoids the problems that afflict these proposals. In short, this new account of ignorance incorporates the idea that ignorance essentially involves not just the absence of a…Read more
  •  22
    Virtuous Arguing With Conviction and Humility
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1-14. forthcoming.
    Can one enter into an argument with one’s intellectual equals in good faith if one regards the matter in hand as already settled? Adopting such an attitude looks very much like taking a dogmatic stance, in that one is closing one’s mind to counterarguments in advance. Dogmatism is, of course, an intellectual vice. Moreover, such dogmatism seems morally problematic, in that one is failing to treat one’s adversary with due respect. While there is clearly something correct about this line of thinki…Read more
  •  35
    We investigate the explanatory role of epistemic virtue in accounting for the success of science as a social institution that is characterized by predominantly epistemic ends. Several structural explanations of the epistemic success of science that commonly rule out virtue attributions to scientists are explored in reference to a case of collective epistemic vice; namely, the credibility crisis in the social and behavioral sciences. These accounts underline the social structure of science as the…Read more
  •  160
    Virtue Responsibilism, Mindware, and Education
    In Mark Alfano, Colin Klein & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), Social Virtue Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 42-44. 2022.
    Response to Steven Bland’s ‘Interactionism, Debiasing, and the Division of Epistemic Labour’ (in Social Virtue Epistemology, (eds.) M. Alfano, C. Klein & J. de Ridder). Biased cognition is an obvious source of epistemic vice, but there is some controversy about whether cognitive biases generate reliabilist or responsibilist epistemic vices. Bland’s argument, in a nutshell, is that since the development of cognitive biases is due to the interplay of internal psychological processes and external …Read more
  •  130
    Response to Commentaries by Alessandra Tanesini and Lani Watson
    In Mark Alfano, Colin Klein & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), Social Virtue Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 609-612. 2022.
    The insightful commentaries to our contribution "Education as the Social Cultivation of Intellectual Virtue" (in 'Social Virtue Epistemology', (eds.) M. Alfano, C. Klein & J. de Ridder, Routledge 2022) offered by Alessandra Tanesini and Lani Watson highlight some important aspects of the work that philosophers, education theorists, and educators should carry out to strengthen the theoretical and practical advantages of the educational approach we have proposed. This commentary briefly addresses …Read more
  •  681
    Education as The Social Cultivation of Intellectual Virtue
    In Mark Alfano, Colin Klein & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), Social Virtue Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 583-601. 2022.
    The recent literature has seen a burgeoning discussion of the idea that the overarching epistemic goal of education is the cultivation of the intellectual virtues. Moreover, there have been attempts to put this idea into practice, with virtue-led educational interventions in schools, universities, and even prisons. This paper explores the question of whether—and, if so, to what degree—such intellectual virtue-based approaches to education are essentially social. The focus in this regard is on th…Read more
  •  46
    Ignorance and Normativity
    Philosophical Topics 49 (2): 225-243. 2021.
    In the contemporary epistemological literature, ignorance is normally understood as the absence of an epistemic standing, usually either knowledge or true belief. It is argued here that this way of thinking about ignorance misses a crucial ingredient, which is the normative aspect of ignorance. In particular, to be ignorant is not merely to lack the target epistemic standing, but also entails that this is an epistemic standing that one ought to have. I explore the motivations for this claim, and…Read more