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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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557The Logic of MysticismEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (2): 109--123. 2015.I argue that mystical experience essentially involves two aspects: an element of direct encounter with God, and an element of union with God. The framework I use to make sense of is taken largely from William Alston’s magisterial book Perceiving God. While I believe Alston’s view is correct in many essentials, the main problem with the account is that it divorces the idea of encountering or perceiving God from the idea of being united with God. What I argue, on the contrary, is that because our …Read more
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181Ernest Sosa, knowledge, and understandingPhilosophical Studies 106 (3): 171--191. 2001.This paper offers and analysis of Ernest Sosa's Virtue Perspectivism. Although Sosa has been credited with fathering the influential contemporary movement known as Virtue Epistemology, I argue that Sosa imprudently abandons the reliabilist-based insights of Virtue Epistemology in favor of a reflection-based, "perspectival"' view. Sosa's mixed allegiance to reliabilist-based and reflection-based views of knowledge, in fact, leads to an unwelcome tension in his thought which can be relieved by rec…Read more
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209Getting it rightPhilosophical Studies 166 (2): 329-347. 2013.Truth monism is the idea that only true beliefs are of fundamental epistemic value. The present paper considers three objections to truth monism, and argues that, while the truth monist has plausible responses to the first two objections, the third objection suggests that truth monism should be reformulated. On this reformulation, which we refer to as accuracy monism, the fundamental epistemic goal is accuracy, where accuracy is a matter of “getting it right.” The idea then developed is that acc…Read more
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485The Value of ReflectionIn Miguel Ángel Fernández Vargas (ed.), Performance Epistemology: Foundations and Applications, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.
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155Epistemic Goals and Epistemic ValuesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (3): 725-744. 2008.No
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990Knowledge, Practical Interests, and Rising TidesIn John Greco & David Henderson (eds.), Epistemic Evaluation: Point and Purpose in Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2015.Defenders of pragmatic encroachment in epistemology (or what I call practicalism) need to address two main problems. First, the view seems to imply, absurdly, that knowledge can come and go quite easily—in particular, that it might come and go along with our variable practical interests. We can call this the stability problem. Second, there seems to be no fully satisfying way of explaining whose practical interests matter. We can call this the “whose stakes?” problem. I argue that both probl…Read more
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64Review Essay on Jonathan Kvanvig’s The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2): 498-514. 2007.
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217Explaining Understanding: New Perspectives From Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (edited book)Routledge. 2016.What does it mean to understand something? What types of understanding can be distinguished? Is understanding always provided by explanations? And how is it related to knowledge? Such questions have attracted considerable interest in epistemology recently. These discussions, however, have not yet engaged insights about explanations and theories developed in philosophy of science. Conversely, philosophers of science have debated the nature of explanations and theories, while dismissing understand…Read more
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167Review essay on Jonathan Kvanvig's the value of knowledge and the pursuit of understandingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2). 2007.
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1204WisdomAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (1): 1-16. 2015.What is it that makes someone wise, or one person wiser than another? I argue that wisdom consists in knowledge of how to live well, and that this knowledge of how to live well is constituted by various further kinds of knowledge. One concern for this view is that knowledge is not needed for wisdom but rather some state short of knowledge, such as having rational or justified beliefs about various topics. Another concern is that the emphasis on knowing how to live well fails to do justice to the…Read more
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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 |