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93Is having your computer compromised a personal assault? The ethics of extended cognitionJournal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (4): 542-560. 2016.Philosophy of mind and cognitive science have recently become increasingly receptive to the hypothesis of extended cognition, according to which external artifacts such as our laptops and smartphones can—under appropriate circumstances—feature as material realizers of a person's cognitive processes. We argue that, to the extent that the hypothesis of extended cognition is correct, our legal and ethical theorizing and practice must be updated by broadening our conception of personal assault so as…Read more
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81Epistemic Values: Collected Papers in EpistemologyPhilosophical Review 131 (2): 235-240. 2022.Trinkaus Zagzebski, Linda, Epistemic Values: Collected Papers in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 364 pp.
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413Epistemic value in the subpersonal valeSynthese 198 (10): 9243-9272. 2020.A vexing problem in contemporary epistemology—one with origins in Plato’s Meno—concerns the value of knowledge, and in particular, whether and how the value of knowledge exceeds the value of mere true opinion. The recent literature is deeply divided on the matter of how best to address the problem. One point, however, remains unquestioned: that if a solution is to be found, it will be at the personal level, the level at which states of subjects or agents, as such, appear. We take exception to th…Read more
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1003Extended emotionPhilosophical Psychology 29 (2): 198-217. 2016.Recent thinking within philosophy of mind about the ways cognition can extend has yet to be integrated with philosophical theories of emotion, which give cognition a central role. We carve out new ground at the intersection of these areas and, in doing so, defend what we call the extended emotion thesis: the claim that some emotions can extend beyond skin and skull to parts of the external world
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48Exercising abilitiesSynthese 198 (3): 2495-2509. 2019.According to one prominent view of exercising abilities, a subject, S, counts as exercising an ability to ϕ if and only if S successfully ϕs. Such an ‘exercise-success’ thesis looks initially very plausible for abilities, perhaps even obviously or analytically true. In this paper, however, I will be defending the position that one can in fact exercise an ability to do one thing by doing some entirely distinct thing, and in doing so I’ll highlight various reasons that favor the alternative approa…Read more
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62Archimedean MetanormsTopoi 40 (5): 1075-1085. 2021.One notable line of argument for epistemic relativism appeals to considerations to do with non-neutrality: in certain dialectical contexts—take for instance the famous dispute between Galileo and Cardinal Bellarmine concerning geocentrism—it seems as though a lack of suitably neutral epistemic standards that either side could appeal to in order to resolve their first-order dispute is itself—as Rorty influentially thought—evidence for epistemic relativism. In this essay, my aim is first to presen…Read more
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598Absolutism, Relativism and MetaepistemologyErkenntnis 86 (5): 1139-1159. 2021.This paper is about two topics: metaepistemological absolutism and the epistemic principles governing perceptual warrant. Our aim is to highlight—by taking the debate between dogmatists and conservativists about perceptual warrant as a case study—a surprising and hitherto unnoticed problem with metaepistemological absolutism, at least as it has been influentially defended by Paul Boghossian as the principal metaepistemological contrast point to relativism. What we find is that the metaepistemolo…Read more
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1039Active Externalism and Epistemic InternalismErkenntnis 80 (4): 753-772. 2015.Internalist approaches to epistemic justification are, though controversial, considered a live option in contemporary epistemology. Accordingly, if ‘active’ externalist approaches in the philosophy of mind—e.g. the extended cognition and extended mind theses—are _in principle_ incompatible with internalist approaches to justification in epistemology, then this will be an epistemological strike against, at least the _prima facie_ appeal of, active externalism. It is shown here however that, contr…Read more
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902The basing relation and the impossibility of the debasing demonAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 55 (3): 203. 2018.Descartes’ demon is a deceiver: the demon makes things appear to you other than as they really are. However, as Descartes famously pointed out in the Second Meditation, not all knowledge is imperilled by this kind of deception. You still know you are a thinking thing. Perhaps, though, there is a more virulent demon in epistemic hell, one from which none of our knowledge is safe. Jonathan Schaffer thinks so. The “Debasing Demon” he imagines threatens knowledge not via the truth condition on knowl…Read more
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970Extended Cognition and Propositional MemoryPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (3): 691-714. 2015.The philosophical case for extended cognition is often made with reference to ‘extended-memory cases’ ; though, unfortunately, proponents of the hypothesis of extended cognition as well as their adversaries have failed to appreciate the kinds of epistemological problems extended-memory cases pose for mainstream thinking in the epistemology of memory. It is time to give these problems a closer look. Our plan is as follows: in §1, we argue that an epistemological theory remains compatible with HEC…Read more
Green Bay, Wisconsin, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
20th Century Philosophy |