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14Epistemology and the Diet RevolutionIn Murray Michael & John O'Leary-Hawthorne (eds.), Philosophy in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in the Study of Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 203--214. 1994.
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3'The Internal CritiqueIn Dov M. Gabbay (ed.), Handbook of the logic of argument and inference: the turn towards the practical, Elsevier. pp. 171--186. 2002.
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30How do people reason about the what follows from certain assumptions? How do they think about implications between statements. According to one theory, people try to use a small number of mental rules of inference to construct an argument for or proof of a relevant conclusion from the assumptions (e.g., Rips 1994). According to a competing theory, people construct one or more mental models of the situation described in the assumptions and try to determine what conclusion fits with the model or mo…Read more
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64Statistical 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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38Logic and probability theory versus canons of rationalityBehavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (2): 251-251. 1983.
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367Practical reasoningIn Alfred R. Mele (ed.), The philosophy of action, Oxford University Press. pp. 431--63. 1997.
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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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1Pragmatism and reasons for beliefIn Christopher B. Kulp (ed.), Realism/Antirealism and Epistemology, Rowman & Littlefield. 1997.
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139Intending, intention, intent, intentional action, and acting intentionally: Comments on Knobe and BurraJournal of Cognition and Culture 6 (1-2): 269-276. 2006.There has been considerable controversy about whether this last entailment always holds. Ordinary subjects may judge that (4) and (5) are appropriate in cases in which none of (1)-(3) are—cases in which Jack’s breaking the base is a foreseen but undesired consequence of Jack’s intentionally doing something else. It is currently debated what the best explanation of such ordinary reactions might be. It is also debated what to make of the fact that ordinary judgments using the adjective intentional…Read more
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Category mistakes in metaphysics and epistemologyIn James Tomberlin (ed.), Language and Mind, Blackwell. 2003.
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3The toxin puzzleIn Jules L. Coleman & Christopher W. Morris (eds.), Rational Commitment and Social Justice: Essays for Gregory Kavka, Cambridge University Press. pp. 84--89. 1998.
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21New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (review)Journal of Philosophy 98 (5): 265-269. 2001.
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28This is indeed a fallacy, if the relevant sort of consistency is logical consistency. However, the expression “is consistent with” is often used by scientists to mean something much stronger, something like confirms or even strongly confirms.
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I have been supposing that for the theory of reasoning, explicit belief is an all-or-nothing matter, I have assumed that, as far as principles of reasoning are concerned, one either believes something explicitly or one does not; in other words an appropriate "representation" is either in one's "memory" or not. The principles of reasoning are principles for modifying such all-or-nothing representations. This is not to deny that in some ways belief is a matter of degree. For one thing implicit bel…Read more
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112Reflections 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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65Explaining Value: And Other Essays in Moral PhilosophyOxford University Press UK. 2000.Explaining Value is a selection of the best of Gilbert Harman's shorter writings in moral philosophy. The thirteen essays are divided into four sections, which focus in turn on moral relativism, values and valuing, character traits and virtue ethics, and ways of explaining aspects of morality. Harman's distinctive approach to moral philosophy has provoked much interest; this volume offers a fascinating conspectus of his most important work in the area.
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81The Nonexistence of Character TraitsProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2): 223-226. 2000.
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4204Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution ErrorProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1999): 315-331. 1999.Ordinary moral thought often commits what social psychologists call 'the fundamental attribution error '. This is the error of ignoring situational factors and overconfidently assuming that distinctive behaviour or patterns of behaviour are due to an agent's distinctive character traits. In fact, there is no evidence that people have character traits in the relevant sense. Since attribution of character traits leads to much evil, we should try to educate ourselves and others to stop doing it.
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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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494ThoughtPrinceton 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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