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156How to defeat belief in the external worldPacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (2). 2006.I defend the view that there is a privileged class of propositions – that there is an external world, among other such 'hinge propositions'– that possess a special epistemic status: justified belief in these propositions is not defeated unless one has sufficient reason to believe their negation. Two arguments are given for this conclusion. Finally, three proposals are offered as morals of the preceding story: first, our justification for hinge propositions must be understood as defeatable, secon…Read more
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808Towards Social Accounts of Testimonial AsymmetriesNoûs 51 (1). 2017.there seems to be some kind of asymmetry, at least in some cases, between moral testimony and non-moral testimony, between aesthetic testimony and non-aesthetic testimony, and between religious testimony and non-religious testimony. In these domains, at least in some cases, we object to deference, and for this reason expect people to form their beliefs on non-testimonial grounds, in a way that we do not object to deference in paradigm cases of testimonial knowledge. Our philosophical puzzle is t…Read more
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162A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True BeliefOxford University Press. 2013.Allan Hazlett challenges the philosophical assumption of the value of true belief. He critiques the view that true belief is better for us than false belief, and the view that truth is "the aim of belief". An alternative picture is provided, on which the fact that some people love truth is all there is to "the value of true belief".
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31Review of Joseph Keim Campbell and Michael O'Rourke, Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Knowledge and Skepticism (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011 (1). 2011.
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1908Authenticity and Self‐KnowledgeDialectica 67 (2): 157-181. 2013.We argue that the value of authenticity does not explain the value of self-knowledge. There are a plurality of species of authenticity; in this paper we consider four species: avoiding pretense (section 2), Frankfurtian wholeheartedness (section 3), existential self-knowledge (section 4), and spontaneity (section 5). Our thesis is that, for each of these species, the value of (that species of) authenticity does not (partially) explain the value of self-knowledge. Moreover, when it comes to spont…Read more
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25Review of S. Soames, _Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 50 (1): 131-136. 2010.
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483Unrealistic FictionsAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1): 33--46. 2011.In this paper, we develop an analysis of unrealistic fiction that captures the everyday sense of ‘unrealistic’. On our view, unrealistic fictions are a species of inconsistent fictions, but fictions for which such inconsistency, given the supporting role we claim played by genre, needn’t be a critical defect. We first consider and reject an analysis of unrealistic fiction as fiction that depicts or describes unlikely events; we then develop our own account and make an initial statement of it: un…Read more
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1079Expressivism and Convention-Relativism about Epistemic DiscourseIn A. Fairweather & O. Flanagan (eds.), Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.Consider the claim that openmindedness is an epistemic virtue, the claim that true belief is epistemically valuable, and the claim that one epistemically ought to cleave to one’s evidence. These are examples of what I’ll call “ epistemic discourse.” In this paper I’ll propose and defend a view called “convention-relativism about epistemic discourse.” In particular, I’ll argue that convention-relativismis superior to its main rival, expressivism about epistemic discourse. Expressivism and convent…Read more
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157The maturation of the Gettier problemPhilosophical Studies 172 (1): 1-6. 2015.Edmund Gettier’s paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” first appeared in an issue of Analysis , dated June of 1963, and although it’s tempting to wax hyperbolic when discussing the paper’s importance and influence, it is fair to say that its impact on contemporary philosophy has been substantial and wide-ranging. Epistemology has benefited from 50 years of sincere and rigorous discussion of issues arising from the paper, and Gettier’s conclusion that knowledge is not justified true belief …Read more
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Review of Brown and Cappelen, Assertion (Oxford University Press) (review)Mind 121 (483): 784-788. 2012.
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