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687Why Study History? On Its Epistemic Benefits and Its Relation to the SciencesPhilosophy 92 (3): 399-420. 2017.I try to return the focus of the philosophy of history to the nature of understanding, with a particular emphasis on Louis Mink’s project of exploring how historical understanding compares to the understanding we find in the natural sciences. On the whole, I come to a conclusion that Mink almost certainly would not have liked: that the understanding offered by history has a very similar epistemic profile to the understanding offered by the sciences, a similarity that stems from the fact that bo…Read more
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551The Value of UnderstandingPhilosophy Compass 7 (2): 103-117. 2012.Over the last several years a number of leading philosophers – including Catherine Elgin, Linda Zagzebski, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Duncan Pritchard – have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the contemporary focus on knowledge in epistemology and have attempted to “recover” the notion of understanding. According to some of these philosophers, in fact, understanding deserves not just to be recovered, but to supplant knowledge as the focus of epistemological inquiry. This entry considers some of th…Read more
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173How Understanding People Differs from Understanding the Natural WorldPhilosophical Issues 26 (1): 209-225. 2016.
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145Cardinal Newman, Reformed Epistemologist?American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 75 (4): 497-522. 2001.Despite the recent claims of some prominent Catholic philosophers, I argue that Cardinal Newman's writings are in fact largely compatible with the contemporary movement in the philosophy of religion known as Reformed Epistemology, and in particular with the work of Alvin Plantinga. I first show how the thought of both Newman and Plantinga was molded in response to the "evidentialist" claims of John Locke. I then examine the details of Newman's response, especially as seen in his Essay in Aid of …Read more
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267What Is Interesting?Logos and Episteme 2 (4): 515-542. 2011.In this paper I consider what it is that makes certain topics or questions epistemically interesting. Getting clear about this issue, I argue, is not only interesting in its own right, but also helps to shed light on increasingly important and perplexing questions in the epistemological literature: e.g., questions concerning how to think about ‘the epistemic point of view,’ as well as questions concerning what is most worthy of our intellectual attention and why.
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62Review of Duncan Pritchard, Alan Millar, Adrian Haddock, The Nature and Value of Knowledge: Three Investigations (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011 (2). 2011.
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1428Epistemic NormativityIn Adrian Haddock, Alan Millar & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Epistemic value, Oxford University Press. pp. 243-264. 2009.In this article, from the 2009 Oxford University Press collection Epistemic Value, I criticize existing accounts of epistemic normativity by Alston, Goldman, and Sosa, and then offer a new view.
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757"Understanding and Transparency"In Stephen Grimm Christoph Baumberger & Sabine Ammon (eds.), Explaining Understanding: New Perspectives from Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, Routledge. 2017.I explore the extent to which the epistemic state of understanding is transparent to the one who understands. Against several contemporary epistemologists, I argue that it is not transparent in the way that many have claimed, drawing on results from developmental psychology, animal cognition, and other fields.
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2071UnderstandingIn D. Pritchard S. Berneker (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, Routledge. 2011.This entry offers a critical overview of the contemporary literature on understanding, especially in epistemology and the philosophy of science.
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763Is understanding a species of knowledge?British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (3): 515-535. 2006.Among philosophers of science there seems to be a general consensus that understanding represents a species of knowledge, but virtually every major epistemologist who has thought seriously about understanding has come to deny this claim. Against this prevailing tide in epistemology, I argue that understanding is, in fact, a species of knowledge: just like knowledge, for example, understanding is not transparent and can be Gettiered. I then consider how the psychological act of "grasping" that se…Read more
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68Easy cases and value incommensurabilityRatio 20 (1). 2007.Several critics have denied value incommensurability – or the claim, roughly, that there is no common measure in terms of which values can be weighed – on the basis of what we might call the argument from easy cases. Although the argument from easy cases is quite popular, what is much less often discussed is what exactly the argument entails – in other words, what sort of further commitments the argument generates. Suppose we grant that easy cases point to the existence of a common measure. How …Read more
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365Wisdom in TheologyIn William and Frederick Abraham and Aquino (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology, . forthcoming.
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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Philosophy of Religion |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Philosophy of Religion |
Ludwig Wittgenstein |
PhilPapers Editorships
Understanding |
Wisdom |