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101What is This Thing Called Philosophy? (edited book)Routledge. 2015._What is this thing called Philosophy?_ is the definitive textbook for all who want a thorough introduction to the field. It introduces philosophy using a question-led approach that reflects the discursive nature of the discipline. Edited by Duncan Pritchard, each section is written by a high-profile contributor focusing on a key area of philosophy, and contains three or four question-based chapters offering an accessible point of engagement. The core areas of philosophy covered are: Ethics Poli…Read more
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57Wittgenstein on Faith and Reason: The Influence of NewmanIn Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.), God, Truth, and Other Enigmas, De Gruyter. pp. 197-216. 2015.
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41IntroductionSynthese 158 (3): 273-275. 2007.I introduce the topic of this special issue of Synthese, and give an overview of the articles collected here.
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8Meta-Epistemological Constraints on Anti-Sceptical TheoriesFacta Philosophica 3 (1): 101-26. 2001.
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17Knowledge and ValueIn Peter Adamson (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2012.
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57The Power, and Limitations, of Virtue EpistemologyIn Ruth Groff & John Greco (eds.), Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism, Routledge. pp. 248--269. 2013.
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11CoherentismIn Sven Bernecker & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Routledge Companion to Epistemology, Routledge. 2010.
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134Epistemological disjunctivismOxford University Press. 2012.Epistemological disjunctivism in outline -- Favouring versus discriminating epistemic support -- Radical scepticsim.
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251Zagzebski on RationalityEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6 (4): 39--46. 2014.This paper examines Linda Zagzebski’s account of rationality, as set out in her rich, wide-ranging, and important book, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. We briefly describe the account that she offers and then consider its plausibility. In particular, in the first section we argue that a number of Zagzebski’s claims with regard to rationality require more support than she offers for them. Moreover, in the second section, we contend that far from offering…Read more
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376The 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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82A 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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26Chapter 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.
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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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713An 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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103Greco on knowledge: Virtues, contexts, achievementsPhilosophical Quarterly 58 (232). 2008.I discuss John Greco's paper 'What's Wrong with Contextualism?', in which he outlines a theory of knowledge which is virtue-theoretic while also being allied to a form of attributor contextualism about 'knows'.
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1162Putnam on Brains-in-Vats and Radical SkepticismIn Sanford Goldberg (ed.), Putnam on Brains in Vats, Cambridge University Press. 2016.
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303Wittgenstein and the groundlessness of our believingSynthese 189 (2): 255-272. 2012.In his final notebooks, published as On Certainty , Wittgenstein offers a distinctive conception of the nature of reasons. Central to this conception is the idea that at the heart of our rational practices are essentially arational commitments. This proposal marks a powerful challenge to the standard picture of the structure of reasons. In particular, it has been thought that this account might offer us a resolution of the traditional scepticism/anti-scepticism debate. It is argued, however, tha…Read more
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46Chapter 2. Radical Skepticism and UnderdeterminationIn Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing, Princeton University Press. pp. 29-60. 2016.
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220Seeing it for oneself: Perceptual knowledge, understanding, and intellectual autonomyEpisteme 13 (1): 29-42. 2016.The idea of is explored. It is claimed that there is something epistemically important about acquiring one's knowledge first-hand via active perception rather than second-hand via testimony. Moreover, it is claimed that this kind of active perceptual seeing it for oneself is importantly related to the kind of understanding that is acquired when one possesses a correct and appropriately detailed explanation of how cause and effect are related. In both cases we have a kind of seeing it for oneself…Read more
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45Epistemically useful false beliefsPhilosophical Explorations 20 (sup1): 4-20. 2017.Our interest is in the possibility of there being a philosophically interesting set of useful false beliefs where the utility in question is specifically epistemic. As we will see, it is hard to delineate plausible candidates in this regard, though several are promising at first blush. We begin with the kind of strictly false claims that are said to be often involved in good scientific practice, such as through the use of idealisations and fictions. The problem is that it is difficult to see tha…Read more
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228Moral and epistemic luckMetaphilosophy 37 (1). 2005.It is maintained that the arguments put forward by Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel in their widely influential exchange on the problem of moral luck are marred by a failure to (i) present a coherent understanding of what is involved in the notion of luck, and (ii) adequately distinguish between the problem of moral luck and the analogue problem of epistemic luck, especially that version of the problem that is traditionally presented by the epistemological sceptic. It is further claimed that on…Read more
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137McKinsey paradoxes, radical skepticism, and the transmission of knowledge across known entailmentsSynthese 130 (2): 279-302. 2002.A great deal of discussion in the recent literature has been devoted to the so-called 'McKinsey' paradox which purports to show that semantic externalism is incompatible with the sort of authoritative knowledge that we take ourselves to have of our own thought contents. In this paper I examine one influential epistemological response to this paradox which is due to Crispin Wright and Martin Davies. I argue that it fails to meet the challenge posed by McKinsey but that, if it is set within an ext…Read more
University of St. Andrews
PhD, 2000
Irvine, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |