•  301
    Three questions about Leplin’s reliabilism
    Philosophical Studies 134 (1): 43-50. 2007.
    This paper raises three critical questions about Jarrett Leplin's version of reliabilism.
  •  289
    On Acting as Judge in One’s Own (Epistemic) Case
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 93 (1): 207-235. 2018.
    We often get reason to doubt the reliability of some of our own reasoning. The rational response to such evidence would seem to depend on how reliable one should estimate that reasoning to be. Independence principles constrain that reliability-assessment, to prevent question-begging reliance on the very reasoning being assessed. But this has consequences some find disturbing: can it be rational for an agent to bracket some of her reasons—which she may, after all, be assessing impeccably? So seve…Read more
  •  288
    Glymour on evidential relevance
    Philosophy of Science 50 (3): 471-481. 1983.
    Glymour's "bootstrap" account of confirmation is designed to provide an analysis of evidential relevance, which has been a serious problem for hypothetico-deductivism. As set out in Theory and Evidence, however, the "bootstrap" condition allows confirmation in clear cases of evidential irrelevance. The difficulties with Glymour's account seem to be due to a basic feature which it shares with hypothetico-deductive accounts, and which may explain why neither can give a satisfactory analysis of evi…Read more
  •  269
    A certain skeptical strategy involves a skeptical hypothesis that closely mirrors the structure of our standard theory of the world; this strategy insulates the skeptical argument from attacks based on standard criteria of theory choice. A standard reply to this strategy is to claim that proffered alternative is just the standard theory expressed in a different notation. But this reply does not succeed, given plausible assumptions about semantics. However, there is an alternative strategy--also …Read more
  •  269
    This paper concentrates on a particular sort of case where it’s plausible that epistemic requirements can conflict: cases where an agent’s higher-order evidence supports doubting her reliability in reacting to her ordinary evidence. Conflicting epistemic requirements can be seen as generating epistemic dilemmas. The paper examines two ways that people have sought to recognize conflicting requirements without allowing them to generate epistemic dilemmas: separating epistemic norms into two differ…Read more
  •  254
    What role, if any, does formal logic play in characterizing epistemically rational belief? Traditionally, belief is seen in a binary way - either one believes a proposition, or one doesn't. Given this picture, it is attractive to impose certain deductive constraints on rational belief: that one's beliefs be logically consistent, and that one believe the logical consequences of one's beliefs. A less popular picture sees belief as a graded phenomenon.
  •  203
    Letters to the Editor
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 68 (5). 1995.
    A letter protesting the publication of a homophobic rant in the Proceedings of the APA.
  •  141
    Epistemic akrasia: No apology required
    Noûs 58 (1): 54-76. 2024.
    It is natural to think that rationality imposes some relationship between what a person believes, and what she believes about what she’s rational to believe. Epistemic akrasia—for example, believing P while believing that P is not rational to believe in your situation—is often seen as intrinsically irrational. This paper argues otherwise. In certain cases, akrasia is intuitively rational. Understanding why akratic beliefs in those case are indeed rational provides a deeper explanation how typica…Read more
  •  141
    The Nature of Rationality (review)
    Noûs 29 (2): 259-274. 1995.
    This is a critical study of Robert Nozick's The Nature of Rationality.
  •  97
    Epistemology of disagreement : the good news
    In Jeremy Fantl, Matthew McGrath & Ernest Sosa (eds.), Contemporary epistemology: an anthology, Wiley. 2019.
    How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.
  •  83
    Does Murphy's Law Apply in Epistemology?: Self-Doubt and Rational Ideals
    In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology: Volume 2, Oxford University Press. 2007.
    Formally inclined epistemologists often theorize about ideally rational agents—agents who exemplify rational ideals, such as probabilistic coherence, that human beings could never fully realize. This approach can be defended against the well-known worry that abstracting from human cognitive imperfections deprives the approach of interest. But a different worry arises when we ask what an ideal agent should believe about her own cognitive perfection (even an agent who is in fact cognitively perfec…Read more
  • Empirical Equivalence and Skeptical Methodology: The Case of the Switched Words
    Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. 1987.
    In this dissertation, I study the strategy of giving semantical replies to skeptical puzzles. I concentrate on a very simple kind of puzzle, which seems to invite--and perhaps even require--semantical responses. ;Skeptical problems of this kind, which I call "switched-words" problems, are based on alternative hypotheses about the world which are structurally very similar to our standard hypotheses; for example, it has been asked how we can justify choosing our standard physical theory over an al…Read more