-
490What we talk about when we talk about epistemic justificationInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (7-8): 867-888. 2016.Stewart Cohen argues that much contemporary epistemological theorizing is hampered by the fact that ‘epistemic justification’ is a term of art and one that is never given any serious explication in a non-tendentious, theory-neutral way. He suggests that epistemologists are therefore better off theorizing in terms of rationality, rather than in terms of ‘epistemic justification’. Against this, I argue that even if the term ‘epistemic justification’ is not broadly known, the concept it picks out i…Read more
-
133Representational analyticityMind and Language 20 (4). 2005.The traditional understanding of analyticity in terms of concept containment is revisited, but with a concept explicitly understood as a certain kind of mental representation and containment being read correspondingly literally. The resulting conception of analyticity avoids much of the vagueness associated with attempts to explicate analyticity in terms of synonymy by moving the locus of discussion from the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. The account provided here illustrates …Read more
-
202Evidence, experience, and externalismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (3). 2008.The Sellarsian dilemma is a famous argument that attempts to show that nondoxastic experiential states cannot confer justification on basic beliefs. The usual conclusion of the Sellarsian dilemma is a coherentist epistemology, and the usual response to the dilemma is to find it quite unconvincing. By distinguishing between two importantly different justification relations (evidential and nonevidential), I hope to show that the Sellarsian dilemma, or something like it, does offer a powerful argum…Read more
-
1310Should Reliabilists Be Worried About Demon Worlds?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (1): 1-40. 2012.The New Evil Demon Problem is supposed to show that straightforward versions of reliabilism are false: reliability is not necessary for justification after all. I argue that it does no such thing. The reliabilist can count a number of beliefs as justified even in demon worlds, others as unjustified but having positive epistemic status nonetheless. The remaining beliefs---primarily perceptual beliefs---are not, on further reflection, intuitively justified after all. The reliabilist is right to co…Read more
-
50The epistemological import of morphological contentPhilosophical Studies 169 (3): 537-547. 2014.Morphological content (MC) is content that is implicit in the standing structure of the cognitive system. Henderson and Horgan claim that MC plays a distinctive epistemological role unrecognized by traditional epistemic theories. I consider the possibilities that MC plays this role either in central cognition or in peripheral modules. I argue that the peripheral MC does not play an interesting epistemological role and that the central MC is already recognized by traditional theories
-
72Lesion studies, spared performance, and cognitive systemsCortex 39 (1): 145-7. 2003.A short discussion piece arguing that the neuropsychological phenomenon of double dissociations is most revealing of underlying cognitive architecture because of the capacities that are spared, more than the capacities that are lost.
-
1759Circularity, reliability, and the cognitive penetrability of perceptionPhilosophical Issues 21 (1): 289-311. 2011.Is perception cognitively penetrable, and what are the epistemological consequences if it is? I address the latter of these two questions, partly by reference to recent work by Athanassios Raftopoulos and Susanna Seigel. Against the usual, circularity, readings of cognitive penetrability, I argue that cognitive penetration can be epistemically virtuous, when---and only when---it increases the reliability of perception.
-
648Perception and Intuition of Evaluative PropertiesIn Anna Bergqvist & Robert Cowan (eds.), Evaluative Perception, Oxford University Press. 2018.Outside of philosophy, ‘intuition’ means something like ‘knowing without knowing how you know’. Intuition in this broad sense is an important epistemological category. I distinguish intuition from perception and perception from perceptual experience, in order to discuss the distinctive psychological and epistemological status of evaluative property attributions. Although it is doubtful that we perceptually experience many evaluative properties and also somewhat unlikely that we perceive many eva…Read more
-
735The Disunity of Perception: An IntroductionPacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (4): 443-445. 2015.
-
30Review of Athanassios Raftopoulos, Cognition and Perception: How Do Psychology and Neural Science Inform Philosophy? (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (1). 2010.
-
76Empiricism, Perceptual Knowledge, Normativity, and Realism: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars, by Willem A. deVries (ed) (review)Mind 122 (485): 274-278. 2013.
-
462Unconscious EvidencePhilosophical Issues 26 (1): 243-262. 2016.Can beliefs that are not consciously formulated serve as part of an agent's evidence for other beliefs? A common view says no, any belief that is psychologically immediate is also epistemically immediate. I argue that some unconscious beliefs can serve as evidence, but other unconscious beliefs cannot. Person-level beliefs can serve as evidence, but subpersonal beliefs cannot. I try to clarify the nature of the personal/subpersonal distinction and to show how my proposal illuminates various epis…Read more
-
393Epistemological Problems of PerceptionStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016.An introductory overview of the main issues in the epistemology of perception.
-
111Testimony, induction and folk psychologyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (2). 1997.An influential argument for anti-reductionism about testimony, due to CAJ Coady, fails, because it assumes that an inductive global defense of testimony would proceed along effectively behaviorist lines. If we take seriously our wealth of non-testimonially justified folk psychological beliefs, the prospects for inductivism and reductionism look much better.
-
180Perception and Basic Beliefs: Zombies, Modules and the Problem of the External WorldOxford University Press. 2009.This book offers solutions to two persistent and I believe closely related problems in epistemology. The first problem is that of drawing a principled distinction between perception and inference: what is the difference between seeing that something is the case and merely believing it on the basis of what we do see? The second problem is that of specifying which beliefs are epistemologically basic (i.e., directly, or noninferentially, justified) and which are not. I argue that what makes a belie…Read more
-
71Carving the mind at its (not necessarily modular) jointsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (2): 277-302. 2001.The cognitive neuropsychological understanding of a cognitive system is roughly that of a ‘mental organ’, which is independent of other systems, specializes in some cognitive task, and exhibits a certain kind of internal cohesiveness. This is all quite vague, and I try to make it more precise. A more precise understanding of cognitive systems will make it possible to articulate in some detail an alternative to the Fodorian doctrine of modularity (since not all cognitive systems are modules), but…Read more
-
460Scepticism and Reliable Belief, written by José L. Zalabardo (review)International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (4): 412-417. 2016._ Source: _Page Count 6
-
838Response to criticsPhilosophical Studies 153 (3): 477-488. 2011.Response to Horgan, Goldman, and Graham. Part of a book symposium on my _Perception and Basic Beliefs_.
-
701General Rules and the Justification of Probable Belief in Hume’s TreatiseHume Studies 27 (2): 247-278. 2001.An examination of the role played by general rules in Hume's positive (nonskeptical) epistemology. General rules for Hume are roughly just general beliefs. The difference between justified and unjustified belief is a matter of the influence of good versus bad general rules, the good general rules being the "extensive" and "constant" ones.
-
295Clades, Capgras, and Perceptual KindsPhilosophical Topics 33 (1): 185-206. 2005.I defend a moderate (neither extremely conservative nor extremely liberal) view about the contents of perception. I develop an account of perceptual kinds as perceptual similarity classes, which are convex regions in similarity space. Different perceivers will enjoy different perceptual kinds. I argue that for any property P, a perceptual state of O can represent something as P only if P is coextensive with some perceptual kind for O. 'Dog' and 'chair' will be perceptual kinds for most normal pe…Read more
Glasgow, Glasgow City, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |