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6Filling a Typical Gap in a Regress ArgumentLogique and Analyse 54 (216). 2011.In this paper I fix a typical regress argument, locate a typical gap in the argument, and try to supply a number of gap-filling readings of its first premise.
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101Responsibility for Strategic IgnoranceSynthese 194 (11): 4477-4497. 2017.Strategic ignorance is a widespread phenomenon. In a laboratory setting, many participants avoid learning information about the consequences of their behaviour in order to act egoistically. In real life, many consumers avoid information about their purchases or the working conditions in which they were produced in order to retain their lifestyle. The question is whether agents are blameworthy for such strategically ignorant behaviour. In this paper, I explore quality of will resources, according…Read more
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20De opschorting van het oordeelAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 108 (1): 3-17. 2016.Suspension of Judgment What does it take to suspend one’s judgment? In this introduction to the special issue ‘Scepticism and the suspension of judgment’, I present a conceptual analysis of suspension of judgment (what it is, what it isn’t, and why we might want to do it). Basically I argue that suspension is a mental attitude of neutrality. If you suspend judgment on a certain proposition, you are neutral towards its truth. In addition, I make a few suggestions on how to further analyse this at…Read more
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9Sceptical RationalityAnalytic Philosophy 55 (1): 222-238. 2014.It is widely assumed that it is rational to suspend one’s belief regarding a certain proposition only if one’s evidence is neutral regarding that proposition. In this paper I broaden this condition, and defend, on the basis of an improved ancient argument, that it is rational to suspend one’s belief even if the available evidence is not neutral – or even close to neutral.
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11What Carroll’s Tortoise Actually ProvesEthical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (5): 983-997. 2013.Rationality requires us to have certain propositional attitudes (beliefs, intentions, etc.) given certain other attitudes that we have. Carroll’s Tortoise repeatedly shows up in this discussion. Following up on Brunero (Ethical Theory Moral Pract 8:557–569, 2005), I ask what Carroll-style considerations actually prove. This paper rejects two existing suggestions, and defends a third
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14Metaphysical Explanatory AsymmetriesLogique and Analyse 53 (211): 345-365. 2010.The general view is that metaphysical explanation is asymmetric. For instance, if resemblance facts can be explained by facts about their relata, then, by the asymmetry of explanation, these latter facts cannot in turn be explained by the former. The question however is: is there any reason to hold on to the asymmetry? If so, what does it consist in? In the paper we approach these questions by comparing them to analogous questions that have been investigated for scientific explanations. Three ma…Read more
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15Anti-Positionalism’s RegressAxiomathes 20 (4): 479-493. 2010.This paper is about the Problem of Order, which is basically the problem how to account for both the distinctness of facts like a’s preceding b and b’s preceding a, and the identity of facts like a’s preceding b and b’s succeeding a. It has been shown that the Standard View fails to account for the second part and is therefore to be replaced. One of the contenders is Anti-Positionalism. As has recently been pointed out, however, Anti-Positionalism falls prey to a regress argument which is to pro…Read more
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14Is Justification Dialectical?International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 3 (3): 182-201. 2013.Much of present-day epistemology is divided between internalists and externalists. Different as these views are, they have in common that they strip justification from its dialectical component in order to block the skeptic’s argument from disagreement. That is, they allow that one may have justified beliefs even if one is not able to defend it against challenges and resolve the disagreements about them. Lammenranta (2008, 2011a) recently argued that neither internalism nor externalism convinces…Read more
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57Rules RegressesAGPC 2010 Proceedings 79-92. 2011.Is the content of our thoughts determined by norms such as ‘if I know that p, then I ought to believe that p’? Glüer & Wikforss (2009a) set forth a regress argument for a negative answer. The aim of this paper is to clarify and evaluate this argument. In the first part I show how it (just like an argument from Wittgenstein 1953) can be taken as an instance of an argument schema. In the second part, I evaluate the relevant premises in some detail, and argue that the dialectical situation is sligh…Read more
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4De pyrronistische zaakTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 74 (3): 523-532. 2012.This article critically reviews a new collection on Pyrrhonism edited by Diego Machuca, Pyrrhonism in Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy, which fits within the recent focus on the systematic, philosophical import of Pyrrhonism. In this article I both situate and summarize the problems posed by the authors regarding the Pyrrhonist's position (concerning its coherence, its theoretical motivation, and its practical motivation), and indicate to what extent Pyrrhonists might be able to meet…Read more
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92The Epistemic ConditionIn Philip Robichaud & Jan Willem Wieland (eds.), Responsibility - The Epistemic Condition, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.This introduction provides an overview of the current state of the debate on the epistemic condition of moral responsibility. In sect. 1, we discuss the main concepts ‘ignorance’ and ‘responsibility’. In sect. 2, we ask why agents should inform themselves. In sect. 3, we describe what we take to be the core agreement among main participants in the debate. In sect. 4, we explain how this agreement invites a regress argument with a revisionist implication. In sect. 5, we provide an overview of the…Read more