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3RationalityIn E. E. Smith & D. N. Osherson (eds.), Invitation to Cognitive Science, Mit Press. 1995.
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95What is distinctive about my views in epistemology? One thing is that my concern with epistemology is a concern with methodology. Furthermore, I reject psychologism about logic and reject the idea that deductive rules like modus ponens are in any way rules of inference. I accept a kind of methodological conservatism and reject methodological theories that appeal to special foundations, analytic truth, or a priori justification. Although I believe that there are significant practical aspects of t…Read more
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26Précis of Reliable Reasoning: Induction and Statistical Learning TheoryAbstracta 5 (S3): 5-9. 2009.
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35Statistical Learning Theory (e.g., Hastie et al., 2001; Vapnik, 1998, 2000, 2006) is the basic theory behind contemporary machine learning and data-mining. We suggest that the theory provides an excellent framework for philosophical thinking about inductive inference.
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Practical Aspects of Theoretical RationalityIn Alfred R. Mele & Piers Rawling (eds.), The Oxford handbook of rationality, Oxford University Press. 2004.
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51Hawthorne discusses (without endorsing) the following instance of our (T1) , “One knows that one is seeing a desk by taking for granted, but without knowing, that one is not a brain in a vat” (510). We believe that this is a commonsensical way of describing an ordinary situation. Intuitively, one knows one is seeing a desk. Intuitively one is normally justified in taking it for granted that one is not a brain in a vat, but one does not know one isn’t a brain in a vat.
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261No Character or PersonalityBusiness Ethics Quarterly 13 (1): 87-94. 2003.Solomon argues that, although recent research in social psychology has important implications for business ethics, it does not undermine an approach that stresses virtue ethics. However, he underestimates the empirical threat to virtue ethics, and his a priori claim that empirical research cannot overturn our ordinary moral psychology is overstated. His appeal to seemingly obvious differences in character traits between people simply illustrates the fundamental attribution error. His suggestion …Read more
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113Reflections on knowledge and its limitsPhilosophical Review 111 (3): 417-428. 2002.Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits is the most important philosophical discussion of knowledge in many years. It sets the agenda for epistemology for the next decade and beyond.
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143Knowledge and assumptionsPhilosophical Studies 156 (1): 131-140. 2011.When epistemologists talk about knowledge, the discussions traditionally include only a small class of other epistemic notions: belief, justification, probability, truth. In this paper, we propose that epistemologists should include an additional epistemic notion into the mix, namely the notion of assuming or taking for granted.
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241Guilt-free moralityOxford Studies in Metaethics 4 203-14. 2009.Here are some of the ways in which some philosophers and psychologists have taken the emotion of guilt to be essential to morality. One relatively central idea is that guilt feelings are warranted if an agent knows that he or she has acted morally wrongly. It might be said that in such a case the agent has a strong reason to feel guilt, that the agent ought to have guilt feelings, that the agent is justified in having guilt feelings and unjustified in not having guilt feelings. It might be said …Read more
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99Moral Philosophy and LinguisticsThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 1 107-115. 1999.Any acceptable account of moral epistemology must accord with the following points. (1) Different people acquire seemingly very different moralities. (2) All normal people acquire a moral sense, whether or not they are given explicit moral instruction. Language resembles morality in these ways. There is considerable evidence from linguistics for linguistic universals. This suggests that (3) despite the first point, there are moral universals. If so, it might be possible to develop a moral episte…Read more
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64Rationality in AgreementSocial Philosophy and Policy 5 (2): 1. 1988.Gauthier's title is potentially misleading. The phrase “morals by agreement” suggests a social contract theory of morality according to which basic moral principles arise out of an actual or hypothetical agreement. John Rawls defends a hypothetical agreement version, arguing that the basic principles of justice are those that would be agreed to in an initial position of fair equality. I myself defend an actual agreement version, arguing that the moral principles that apply to a person derive fro…Read more
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Lx8i^^ g? Jn view~In Steven Luper (ed.), Essential Knowledge: Readings in Epistemology, Longman. pp. 167. 2003.
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1Problems with Probabilistic SemanticsIn Alex Orenstein & Rafael Stern (eds.), Developments in Semantics, Haven. pp. 243-237. 1983.
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47Doubts about conceptual analysisIn Murray Michael & John O'Leary-Hawthorne (eds.), Philosophy in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in the Study of Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 43--48. 1994.
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495ThoughtPrinceton University Press. 1973.Thoughts and other mental states are defined by their role in a functional system. Since it is easier to determine when we have knowledge than when reasoning has occurred, Gilbert Harman attempts to answer the latter question by seeing what assumptions about reasoning would best account for when we have knowledge and when not. He describes induction as inference to the best explanation, or more precisely as a modification of beliefs that seeks to minimize change and maximize explanatory coherenc…Read more
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97Justice and Moral BargainingSocial Philosophy and Policy 1 (1): 114. 1983.INTRODUCTION In my view, justice is entirely conventional; indeed, all of morality consists in conventions that are the result of continual tacit bargaining and adjustment. This is not to say social arrangements are just whenever they are in accordance with the principles of justice accepted in that society. We can use our own principles of justice in judging the institutions of another society, and we can appeal to some principles we accept in order to criticize other principles we accept. To u…Read more
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11Part I: Foundations of reasoningIn Jonathan Eric Adler & Lance J. Rips (eds.), Reasoning: Studies of Human Inference and its Foundations, Cambridge University Press. pp. 35. 2008.
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33Skepticism and foundationsIn Luper Steven (ed.), The Skeptics: Contemporary Essays, Ashgate Press. pp. 1--11. 2003.
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