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29Lying and DeceitIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
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16On the Nature of Faith and Its Relation to Trust and BeliefThe Monist 106 (1): 61-71. 2023.One can have faith in someone, believe in someone and trust someone, and these notions seem closely related. Any account of faith should then address its relation to trust and belief. Like trust, faith can similarly have propositional and relational forms. One can have faith that God is good and faith in God; one can trust that another will do something and trust them to do it. Starting from a comparison between these forms of faith and trust, this paper proposes a philosophical analysis of fait…Read more
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32Losing the rose tinted glasses: neural substrates of unbiased belief updating in depressionFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 8. 2014.
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28What Are We Doing When We Are Training?Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 13 (3-4): 348-362. 2019.ABSTRACTAmateur and professional sportspersons, Bernard Suits proposed, are differentiated by their attitude towards their sport. For the amateur, competition is a game done for its own sake, while...
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29The presumption of assuranceSynthese 199 (3-4): 6391-6406. 2021.According to the Assurance Theory of testimony, in telling an audience something, a speaker offers their assurance that what is told is true, which is something like their guarantee, or promise, of truth. However, speakers also tell lies and say things they do not have the authority to back up. So why does understanding tellings to be a form of assurance explain how tellings can provide a reason for belief? This paper argues that reasons come once it is recognised that tellings are trusted. And …Read more
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485Really Trying or Merely TryingJournal of the Philosophy of Sport 41 (3): 363-380. 2014.We enjoy first-person authority with respect to a certain class of actions: for these actions, we know what we are doing just because we are doing it. This paper first formulates an epistemological principle that captures this authority in terms of trying to act in a way that one has the capacity to act. It then considers a case of effortful action – running a middle distance race – that threatens this principle. And proposes the solution of changing the metaphysics of action: one can keep hold …Read more
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32Collective and extended knowledgePhilosophical Issues 32 (1): 200-213. 2022.Philosophical Issues, EarlyView.
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54Communicating your point of viewEuropean Journal of Philosophy 30 (2): 661-675. 2021.European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 661-675, June 2022.
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44The nature and rationality of conversionEuropean Journal of Philosophy 27 (4): 821-836. 2019.European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.
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42Indirect Communication, Authority, and Proclamation as a Normative PowerGraduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 40 (1): 147-179. 2019.
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18The Philosophy of Trust (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.Trust is central to our social lives. We know by trusting what others tell us. We act on that basis, and on the basis of trust in their promises and implicit commitments. So trust underpins both epistemic and practical cooperation and is key to philosophical debates on the conditions of its possibility. It is difficult to overstate the significance of these issues. On the practical side, discussions of cooperation address what makes society possible—of how it is that life is not a Hobbesian war …Read more
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52Can we agree to disagree?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (2): 282-285. 2008.
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105Giving the Benefit of the DoubtInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 26 (2): 139-155. 2018.Faced with evidence that what a person said is false, we can nevertheless trust them and so believe what they say – choosing to give them the benefit of the doubt. This is particularly notable when the person is a friend, or someone we are close to. Towards such persons, we demonstrate a remarkable epistemic partiality. We can trust, and so believe, our friends even when the balance of the evidence suggests that what they tell us is false. And insofar as belief is possible, it is also possible t…Read more
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134Cooperation and trust in conversational exchangesTheoria 23 (1): 23-34. 2008.A conversation is more than a series of disconnected remarks because it is conducted against a background presumption of cooperation. But what makes it reasonable to presume that one is engaged in a conversation? What makes it reasonable to presume cooperation? This paper considers Grice’s two ways of answering this question and argues for the one he discarded. It does so by means of considering a certain problem and analysis of trust.
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166On Dreaming and Being Lied ToEpisteme 2 (3): 149-159. 2006.As sources of knowledge, perception and testimony are both vulnerable to sceptical arguments. To both arguments a Moorean response is possible: both can be refuted by reference to particular things known by perception and testimony. However, lies and dreams are different possibilities and they are different in a way that undercuts the plausibility of a Moorean response to a scepticism of testimony. The condition placed on testimonial knowledge cannot be trivially satisfied in the way the Moorean…Read more
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90Collective Testimony and Collective KnowledgeErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5. 2018.Testimony is a source of knowledge. On many occasions, the explanation of one’s knowing that p is that a speaker, S, told one that p. Our testimonial sources—the referents of ‘S’—can be other individuals, and they can be collectives; that is, in addition to learning from individuals, we learn things from committees, commissions, councils, clubs, teams, research groups, departments, administrations, churches, states and other social groups. North Korea might make a declaration about its missile p…Read more
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201Understanding knowledge transmissionRatio 19 (2). 2006.We must allow that knowledge can be transmitted. But to allow this is to allow that an individual can know a proposition despite lacking any evidence for it and reaching belief by an unreliable means. So some explanation is required as to how knowledge rather than belief is transmitted. This paper considers two non-individualistic explanations: one in terms of knowledge existing autonomously, the other in terms of it existing as a property of communities. And it attempts to decide what is at iss…Read more
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74Relativism and our warrant for scientific theoriesInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (3). 2004.We depend upon the community for justified belief in scientific theory. This dependence can suggest that our individual belief in scientific theory is justified because the community believes it to be justified. This idea is at the heart of an anti-realist epistemology according to which there are no facts about justification that transcend a community's judgement thereof. Ultimately, knowledge and justified belief are simply social statuses. When conjoined with the lemma that communities can di…Read more
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69Epistemology of TestimonyIn Östman & Verschueren (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics, John Benjamins. 2011.
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472The moral obligations of trustPhilosophical Explorations 17 (3): 332-345. 2014.Moral obligation, Darwall argues, is irreducibly second personal. So too, McMyler argues, is the reason for belief supplied by testimony and which supports trust. In this paper, I follow Darwall in arguing that the testimony is not second personal ?all the way down?. However, I go on to argue, this shows that trust is not fully second personal, which in turn shows that moral obligation is equally not second personal ?all the way down?
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160On the Rationality of our Response to TestimonySynthese 131 (3): 353-370. 2002.The assumption that we largely lack reasons for accepting testimony has dominated its epistemology. Given the further assumption that whatever reasons we do have are insufficient to justify our testimonial beliefs, many conclude that any account of testimonial knowledge must allow credulity to be justified. In this paper I argue that both of these assumptions are false. Our responses to testimony are guided by our background beliefs as to the testimony as a type, the testimonial situation, the t…Read more
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82A Virtue Theory of TestimonyProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 114 (2pt2): 189-211. 2014.This paper aims to outline, evaluate, and ultimately reject a virtue epistemic theory of testimony before proposing a virtue ethical theory. Trust and trustworthiness, it is proposed, are ethical virtues; and from these ethical virtues, epistemic consequences follow
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205What Is Wrong with Lying?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (3): 535-557. 2007.One thing wrong with lying is that it can be manipulative. Understanding why lying can be a form of manipulation involves understanding how our telling someone something can give them a reason to believe it, and understanding this requires seeing both how our telling things can invite trust and how trust can be a reason to believe someone. This paper aims to outline the mechanism by means of which lies can be manipulative and through doing so identify a unique reason for accepting testimony; a r…Read more
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163Review: Jennifer Lackey: Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge (review)Mind 118 (470): 479-485. 2009.
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61Knowledge on TrustOxford University Press. 2011.Paul Faulkner presents a new theory of testimony - the basis of much of what we know. He addresses the questions of what makes it reasonable to accept a piece of testimony, and what warrants belief formed on that basis. He rejects rival theories and argues that testimonial knowledge and testimonially warranted belief are based on trust.
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |