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25Religiöse Erfahrung und epistemische ZirkularitätDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 53 (2). 2005.
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757Looking into meta-emotionsSynthese 192 (3): 787-811. 2015.There are many psychic mechanisms by which people engage with their selves. We argue that an important yet hitherto neglected one is self-appraisal via meta-emotions. We discuss the intentional structure of meta-emotions and explore the phenomenology of a variety of examples. We then present a pilot study providing preliminary evidence that some facial displays may indicate the presence of meta-emotions. We conclude by arguing that meta-emotions have an important role to play in higher-order the…Read more
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498Affective ignoranceErkenntnis 71 (1). 2009.According to one of the most influential views in the philosophy of self-knowledge each person enjoys some special cognitive access to his or her own current mental states and episodes. This view faces two fundamental tasks. First, it must elucidate the general conceptual structure of apparent asymmetries between beliefs about one’s own mind and beliefs about other minds. Second, it must demarcate the mental territory for which first-person-special-access claims can plausibly be maintained. Trad…Read more
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271Contextualist approaches to epistemology: Problems and prospectsErkenntnis 61 (2-3). 2004.In this paper we survey some main arguments for and against epistemological contextualism. We distinguish and discuss various kinds of contextualism, such as attributer contextualism (the most influential version of which is semantic, conversational, or radical contextualism); indexicalism; proto-contextualism; Wittgensteinian contextualism; subject, inferential, or issue contextualism; epistemic contextualism; and virtue contextualism. Starting with a sketch of Dretske's Relevant Alternatives T…Read more
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437Epistemic Authority, Preemptive Reasons, and UnderstandingEpisteme 13 (2): 167-185. 2016.One of the key tenets of Linda Zagzebski’s book " Epistemic Authority" is the Preemption Thesis. It says that, when an agent learns that an epistemic authority believes that p, the rational response for her is to adopt that belief and to replace all of her previous reasons relevant to whether p by the reason that the authority believes that p. I argue that such a “Hobbesian approach” to epistemic authority yields problematic results. This becomes especially virulent when we apply Preemption to c…Read more
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715Warrant, defeaters, and the epistemic basis of religious beliefIn Michael G. Parker and Thomas M. Schmidt (ed.), Scientific explanation and religious belief, Mohr Siebeck. pp. 81-98. 2005.I critically examine two features of Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology. (i) If basic theistic beliefs are threatened by defeaters (of various kinds) and thus must be defended by higher-order defeaters in order to remain rational and warranted, are they still “properly basic”? (ii) Does Plantinga’s overall account offer an argument that basic theistic beliefs actually are warranted? I answer both questions in the negative.
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489Reliability and Future True Belief: Reply to Olsson and JönssonTheoria 77 (3): 223-237. 2011.In “Process Reliabilism and the Value Problem” I argue that Erik Olsson and Alvin Goldman's conditional probability solution to the value problem in epistemology is unsuccessful and that it makes significant internalist concessions. In “Kinds of Learning and the Likelihood of Future True Beliefs” Olsson and Martin Jönsson try to show that my argument does “not in the end reduce the plausibility” of Olsson and Goldman's account. Here I argue that, while Olsson and Jönsson clarify and amend the co…Read more
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10Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreement. Papers of the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, 2011 (edited book)The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. 2007.This volume collects papers that were presented at the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium 2011 in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria. They focus on five key debates in contemporary epistemology: Does the term "to know" vary its meaning according to features of the contexts in which it is uttered? What role may "epistemic virtues" play in our cognitive activities? What is the surplus value of having knowledge instead of mere true belief? What is the structure and significance of testimon…Read more
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Unconscious emotions-Black holes in the Cartesian theatre?Consciousness and Cognition 9 (2): 54-54. 2000.
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923Molinism and Theological CompatibilismEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (1): 71-92. 2013.In a series of recent papers John Martin Fischer argues that the Molinist solution to the problem of reconciling divine omniscience with human freedom does not offer such a solution at all. Instead, he maintains, Molina simply presupposes theological compatibilism. However, Fischer construes the problem in terms of sempiternalist omniscience, whereas classical Molinism adopts atemporalism. I argue that, moreover, an atemporalist reformulation of Fischer’s argument designed to show that Molinis…Read more
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806I discuss two accounts of rational religious faith that have recently been proposed by Peter Rohs and Volker Gerhardt, respectively, and critically explore the relations between (i) faith and knowledge and (ii) faith and hope. I argue that, if faith essentially involves some form of eschatological hope, then a theory of rational faith will have to include an analysis of rational hope.
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260Skepticism, Information, and Closure: Dretske’s Theory of KnowledgeErkenntnis 61 (2-3). 2004.According to Fred Dretske's externalist theory of knowledge a subject knows that p if and only if she believes that p and this belief is caused or causally sustained by the information that p. Another famous feature of Dretske's epistemology is his denial that knowledge is closed under known entailment. I argue that, given Dretske's construal of information, he is in fact committed to the view that both information and knowledge are closed under known entailment. Hence, if it is true that, as Dr…Read more
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1Molina on foreknowledge and transfer of necessitiesIn Christian Tapp and Edmund Runggaldier (ed.), God, eternity, and time, Ashgate. pp. 81-96. 2011.
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67Contextualisms in Epistemology (edited book)Springer. 2005.Contextualism has become one of the leading paradigms in contemporary epistemology. According to this view, there is no context-independent standard of knowledge, and as a result, all knowledge ascriptions are context-sensitive. Contextualists contend that their account of this analysis allows us to resolve some major epistemological problems such as skeptical paradoxes and the lottery paradox, and that it helps us explain various other linguistic data about knowledge ascriptions. The apparent e…Read more
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408Fischer's Fate With FatalismEuropean Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 9 (4): 25-38. 2017.John Martin Fischer’s core project in Our Fate (2016) is to develop and defend Pike-style arguments for theological incompatibilism, i. e., for the view that divine omniscience is incompatible with human free will. Against Ockhamist attacks on such arguments, Fischer maintains that divine forebeliefs constitute so-called hard facts about the times at which they occur, or at least facts with hard ‘kernel elements’. I reconstruct Fischer’s argument and outline its structural analogies with an argu…Read more
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50Why to believe weakly in weak knowledge: Goldman on knowledge as mere true beliefGrazer Philosophische Studien 79 (1): 19-40. 2009.In a series of influential papers and in his groundbreaking book Knowledge in a Social World Alvin Goldman argues that sometimes “know” just means “believe truly” (Goldman 1999; 2001; 2002b; Goldman & Olsson 2009). I argue that Goldman's (and Olsson's) case for “weak knowledge”, as well as a similar argument put forth by John Hawthorne, are unsuccessful. However, I also believe that Goldman does put his finger on an interesting and important phenomenon. He alerts us to the fact that sometimes we…Read more
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62Reformierte ErkenntnistheorieZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 55 (4). 2001.Wann ist es rational, etwas zu glauben? Wann ist ein Glaube gerechtfertigt, vernünftig, intellektuell akzeptabel? Was gilt es zu beachten, um ein Netz von Überzeugungen aus möglichst vielen wahren und möglichst wenig falschen Annahmen zu flechten? Um diese Fragen geht es in Theorien epistemischer Rechtfertigung. Ein Ansatz, der auf diesem Gebiet in jüngerer Zeit viel von sich Reden gemacht hat, ist die von Philosophen wie William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, allen voran jedoch von Alvin Planti…Read more
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132Epistemic deontology, doxastic voluntarism, and the principle of alternate possibilitiesIn Winfried Löffler and Paul Weingartner (ed.), Knowledge and Belief, Öbv. pp. 217-227. 2004.