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128Making Manifest: The Role of Exemplification in the Sciences and the ArtsPrincipia: An International Journal of Epistemology 15 (3): 399-413. 2011.Exemplification is the relation of an example to whatever it is an example of. Goodman maintains that exemplification is a symptom of the aesthetic: although not a necessary condition, it is an indicator that symbol is functioning aesthetically. I argue that exemplification is as important in science as it is in art. It is the vehicle by which experiments make aspects of nature manifest. I suggest that the difference between exemplars in the arts and the sciences lies in the way they exemplify. …Read more
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33Take If from Me: The Epistemological Status of TestimonyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2): 291-308. 2002.Testimony consists in imparting information without supplying evidence or argument to back one's claims. To what extent does testimony convey epistemic warrant? C. J. A. Coady argues, on Davidsonian grounds, that (1) most testimony is true, hence (2) most testimony supplies warrant sufficient for knowledge. I appeal to Grice's maxims to undermine Coady's argument and to show that the matter is more complicated and context‐sensitive than is standardly rocognized. Informative exchanges take place …Read more
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139Interpretation and understandingErkenntnis 52 (2): 175-183. 2000.To understand a term or other symbol, I argue that it is generally neither necessary nor sufficient to assign it a unique determinate reference. Independent of and prior to investigation, it is frequently indeterminate not only whether a sentence is true, but also what its truth conditions are. Nelson Goodman's discussions of likeness of meaning are deployed to explain how this can be so.
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18Ejemplos elocuentesEnrahonar: Quaderns de Filosofía 49 69-89. 2012.Se considera que la ciencia es el espejo de la naturaleza, mientras que el arte imita la vida. De ser así, las representaciones en ambas disciplinas deberían asemejarse a sus objetos. En contra de tales teorías miméticas, argumento que la ejemplificación y no la simple semejanza es crucial. Explico en qué consiste la ejemplificación: una relación referencial de un ejemplar con alguna de sus características. Puesto que la ejemplificación es selectiva, un ejemplar puede diferir de su referente en …Read more
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74Review of Henk W. de regt, Sabina leonelli, Kai eigner (eds.), Scientific Understanding: Philosophical Perspectives (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (1). 2010.
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45Considered JudgementMind 109 (434): 334-337. 2000.Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbi…Read more
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5Persistent DisagreementIn Richard Feldman & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Disagreement, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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583Understanding and the factsPhilosophical Studies 132 (1). 2007.If understanding is factive, the propositions that express an understanding are true. I argue that a factive conception of understanding is unduly restrictive. It neither reflects our practices in ascribing understanding nor does justice to contemporary science. For science uses idealizations and models that do not mirror the facts. Strictly speaking, they are false. By appeal to exemplification, I devise a more generous, flexible conception of understanding that accommodates science, reflects o…Read more
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17Nelson Goodman 1906-1998Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 72 (5). 1999.
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27Touchstones of History: Anscombe, Hume, and Julius CaesarLogos and Episteme 1 (1): 39-57. 2010.In “Hume and Julius Caesar,” G.E.M. Anscombe argues that some historical claims, such as “Julius Caesar was assassinated,” serve as touchstones for historical knowledge. Only Cartesian doubt can call them into question. I examine her reasons for thinking that the discipline of history must be grounded in claims that it is powerless to discredit. I argue that she is right to recognize that some historical claims are harder to dislodge than others, but wrong to contend that any are invulnerable to…Read more
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686Keeping things in perspective (review)Philosophical Studies 150 (3). 2010.Scientific realism holds that scientific representations are utterly objective. They describe the way the world is, independent of any point of view. In Scientific Representation, van Fraassen argues otherwise. If science is to afford an understanding of nature, it must be grounded in evidence. Since evidence is perspectivai, science cannot vindicate its claims using only utterly objective representations. For science to do its epistemic job, it must involve perspectivai representations. I expli…Read more
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668True enoughPhilosophical Issues 14 (1). 2004.Truth is standardly considered a requirement on epistemic acceptability. But science and philosophy deploy models, idealizations and thought experiments that prescind from truth to achieve other cognitive ends. I argue that such felicitous falsehoods function as cognitively useful fictions. They are cognitively useful because they exemplify and afford epistemic access to features they share with the relevant facts. They are falsehoods in that they diverge from the facts. Nonetheless, they are tr…Read more
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44Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences by Nelson Goodman and Catherine Z. Elgin (review)Journal of Philosophy 87 (12): 711-716. 1990.
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348Fiction as Thought ExperimentPerspectives on Science 22 (2): 221-241. 2014.Jonathan Bennett (1974) maintains that Huckleberry Finn’s deliberations about whether to return Jim to slavery afford insight into the tension between sympathy and moral judgment; Miranda Fricker (2007) argues that the trial scene in To Kill a Mockingbird affords insight into the nature of testimonial injustice. Neither claims merely that the works prompt an attentive reader to think something new or to change her mind. Rather, they consider the reader cognitively better off for her encounters w…Read more
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98Denying a dualism: Goodman's repudiation of the analytic/synthetic distinctionMidwest Studies in Philosophy 28 (1). 2004.
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130Reorienting aesthetics, reconceiving cognitionJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58 (3): 219-225. 2000.
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37Word giving, word takingIn David Wood & José Medina (eds.), Truth: Engagements Across Philosophical Traditions, Blackwell. pp. 271--287. 2005.
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117Nominalism, realism and objectivitySynthese 196 (2): 519-534. 2019.I argue that constructive nominalism is preferable to scientific realism. Rather than reflecting without distortion the way the mind-independent world is, theories refract. They provide an understanding of the world as modulated by a particular theory. Truth is defined within a theoretical framework rather than outside of it. This does not undermine objectivity, for an assertion contains a reference to the framework in terms of which its truth is claimed.
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317The legacy of Nelson GoodmanPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (3): 679-690. 2001.Nelson Goodman was one of the soaring figures of twentieth century philosophy. His work radically reshaped the subject, forcing fundamental reconceptions of philosophy’s problems, ends, and means. Goodman not only contributed to diverse fields, from philosophy of language to aesthetics, from philosophy of science to mereology, his works cut across these and other fields, revealing shared features and connecting links that narrowly focused philosophers overlook. That the author of The Structure o…Read more
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25Israel Scheffler, Beyond the Letter: A Philosophical Inquiry into Ambiguity, Vagueness and Metaphor in Language (review)American Journal of Semiotics 1 (4). 1982.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Aesthetics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |