•  91
    Wittgenstein on Faith and Reason: The Influence of Newman
    In Miroslaw Szatkowski (ed.), God, Truth, and other Enigmas, De Gruyter. pp. 197-216. 2015.
  •  79
    Introduction
    Synthese 158 (3): 273-275. 2007.
    I introduce the topic of this special issue of Synthese, and give an overview of the articles collected here.
  •  31
    Coherentism
    In Sven Bernecker & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, Routledge. 2013.
  •  238
    Epistemological disjunctivism
    Oxford University Press. 2012.
    Epistemological disjunctivism in outline -- Favouring versus discriminating epistemic support -- Radical scepticsim.
  •  716
    Zagzebski on Rationality
    with Shane Ryan
    European 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
  •  207
    The articles in this special issue were selected from the 2010Epistemeconference, “Cognitive Ecology: The Role of the Concept of Knowledge in Our Social Cognitive Ecology”, which took place at the University of Edinburgh in June 2010. The overarching purpose of the conference was to explore our epistemic concepts – and the concept of knowledge in particular – from the perspective offered by a social cognitive ecology.
  •  140
    A Puzzle about Warrant
    Philosophical 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
  •  407
    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
  •  136
    Epistemological Disjunctivism in advance
    Journal of Philosophical Research. forthcoming.
  •  672
    The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (edited book)
    Routledge. 2013.
    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
  •  3
    Knowledge
    In John Shand (ed.), Central Issues of Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.
  •  816
    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
  •  416
    Recent work on epistemic value
    American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2). 2007.
    Recent discussion in epistemology has seen a huge growth in interest in the topic of epistemic value. In this paper I describe the background to this new movement in epistemology and critically survey the contemporary literature on this topic.
  •  392
    Defusing epistemic relativism
    Synthese 166 (2): 397-412. 2009.
    This paper explores the question of whether there is an interesting form of specifically epistemic relativism available, a position which can lend support to claims of a broadly relativistic nature but which is not committed to relativism about truth. It is argued that the most plausible rendering of such a view turns out not to be the radical thesis that it is often represented as being
  •  45
    Announcements
    Intellectual History Review 21 (2): 253-255. 2011.
  •  96
    Cognitive Responsibility and the Epistemic Virtues
    In Jaegwon Kim, Jeremy Fantl & Matthew Mcgrath (eds.), Epistemology: An Anthology, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 2--462. 2000.
    I argue that the notion of reflective epistemic luck raises important questions about the centrality to epistemology of a conception of justification that demands that one is able to take cognitive responsibility for one’s beliefs. I take a critical look at some of the recent ‘virtue epistemologies’ that have been put forward in the recent literature which define knowledge in terms of the epistemic virtues and cognitive faculties. More specifically, I contrast broadly externalist construals of t…Read more
  •  191
    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
  •  329
    Moral and epistemic luck
    Metaphilosophy 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
  •  264
    The value of knowledge
    The 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
  •  229
    Wittgenstein on Scepticism
    In Oskari Kuusela & Marie McGinn (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, Oxford University Press. 2011.
    An overview of Wittgenstein’s remarks on scepticism in On Certainty is offered, especially with regard to the notion of a “hinge proposition”. Several possible interpretations of the anti-sceptical import of this text are then critically assessed, with each view situated within the contemporary literature on scepticism.
  •  118
    Bearing witness
    The Philosophers' Magazine 32 (32): 80-82. 2005.
  •  106
    Think lucky
    The Philosophers' Magazine 30 82-84. 2005.