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223Wittgenstein's On Certainty and Contemporary Anti-ScepticismIn D. Moyal-Sharrock & W. H. Brenner (eds.), Investigating On Certainty: Essays on Wittgenstein's Last Work, Palgrave-macmillan. 2005.This paper examines the relevance of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty to the contemporary debate regarding the problem of radical scepticism. In particular, it considers two accounts in the recent literature which have seen in Wittgenstein’s remarks on “hinge propositions” in On Certainty the basis for a primarily epistemological anti-sceptical thesis—viz., the inferential contextualism offered by Michael Williams and the ‘unearned warrant’ thesis defended by Crispin Wright. Both positions are shown …Read more
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120Scepticism and the possibility of knowledgeAnalysis 69 (2): 317-325. 2009.1. Quassim Cassam's subtle book, The Possibility of Knowledge, 1 contains many insights. My goal here is not to attempt to give a sense of all that this book has to offer – which I suspect would be foolhardy in the extreme – but rather to explore one particular central theme of this book that I find especially interesting – viz. the application of the ‘multi-level’ response to ‘how possible?’ questions that Cassam offers to the problem of radical scepticism.2. A central contention of Cassam's bo…Read more
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127The value of knowledgeThe Philosophers' Magazine 16 (26): 54-55. 2004.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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83A Puzzle about WarrantPhilosophical Inquiry 23 (1-2): 59-71. 2001.A puzzle about warranted belief, often attributed to Kripke, has recently come to prominence. This puzzle claims to show that it follows from the possession of a warrant for one's belief in an empirical proposition that one is entitled to dismiss all subsequent evidence against that proposition as misleading. The two main solutions that have been offered to this puzzle in the recent literature - by James Cargile and David Lewis - argue for a revisionist epistemology which, respectively, either d…Read more
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112Radical Scepticism, Epistemological Externalism, and ClosureTheoria 68 (2): 129-161. 2002.A certain interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks in On Certaintyadvanced by such figures as Hilary Putnam, Peter Strawson, Avrum Stroll and Crispin Wrighthas become common currency in the recent literature. In particular, this reading focuses upon the supposed anti-sceptical import of the Wittgensteinian notion of a “hinge” proposition. In this paper it is argued that this interpretation is flawed both on the grounds that there is insufficient textual support for this reading and that, in an…Read more
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233The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (edited book)Routledge. 2010.Epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, is at the core of many of the central debates and issues in philosophy, interrogating the notions of truth, objectivity, trust, belief and perception. _The Routledge Companion to Epistemology_ provides a comprehensive and the up-to-date survey of epistemology, charting its history, providing a thorough account of its key thinkers and movements, and addressing enduring questions and contemporary research in the field. Organized thematically, the _Compani…Read more
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3In defence of modest anti-luck epistemologyIn Kelly Becker & Tim Black (eds.), The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 173--192. 2012.
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724An argument for the inconsistency of content externalism and epistemic internalismPhilosophia 31 (3-4): 345-354. 2004.Whereas a number of recent articles have focussed upon whether the thesis of content externalism is compatible with a certain sort of knowledge that is gained via first-person authority,1 far less attention has been given to the relationship that this thesis bears to the possession of knowledge in general and, in particular, its relation to internalist and externalist epistemologies. Nevertheless, although very few actual arguments have been presented to this end, there does seem to be a shared …Read more
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27Chapter 3. Wittgenstein on the Structure of Rational EvaluationIn Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing, Princeton University Press. pp. 61-88. 2016.
University of St. Andrews
PhD, 2000
Irvine, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |