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51Interpretation and Explanation in the Human SciencesState University of New York Press. 1993.Refutes the methodological separatists who hold that the logic of explanation and testing in the human sciences is fundamentally different than in the natural sciences, and develops complementary accounts for interpretation and explanation, ...
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49Evidentially embedded epistemic entitlementSynthese 197 (11): 4907-4926. 2020.Some hold that beliefs arising out of certain sources such as perceptual experience enjoy a kind of entitlement—as one is entitled to believe what is thereby presented as true, at least unless further evidence undermines that entitlement. This is commonly understood to require that default epistemic entitlement is a non-evidential kind of epistemic warrant. Our project here is to challenge this common, non-evidential, conception of epistemic entitlement. We will argue that although there are ind…Read more
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45Transglobal ReliabilismCroatian Journal of Philosophy 6 (2): 171-195. 2006.We here propose an account of what it is for an agent to be objectively justified in holding some belief. We present in outline this approach, which we call transglobal reliabilism, and we discuss how it is motivated by various thought experiments. While transglobal reliabilism is an externalist epistemology, we think that it accommodates traditional internalist concerns and objections in a uniquely natural and respectful way.
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44Review of Martin Kusch, Knowledge by Agreement: The Programme of Communitarian Epistemology (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (1). 2003.
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44The Role and Limitations of Rationalizing Explanation in the Social SciencesCanadian Journal of Philosophy 19 (2). 1989.
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43Norms, invariance, and explanatory relevancePhilosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (3): 324-338. 2005.Descriptions of social norms can be explanatory. The erotetic approach to explanation provides a useful framework. I describe one very broad kind of explanation-seeking why-question, a genus that is common to the special sciences, and argue that descriptions of norms can serve as an answer to such why-questions. I draw upon Woodwards recent discussion of the explanatory role of generalizations with a significant degree of invariance. Descriptions of norms provide what is, in effect, a generaliz…Read more
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42Simulation theory versus theory theory: A difference without a difference in explanationsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 34 (S1): 65-93. 1996.
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40One naturalized epistemological argument against coherentist accounts of empirical knowledgeErkenntnis 43 (2). 1995.The argument I present here is an example of the manner in which naturalizing epistemology can help address fairly traditional epistemological issues. I develop one argument against coherentist epistemologies of empirical knowledge. In doing so, I draw on BonJour (1985), for that account seems to me to indicate the direction in which any plausible coherentist account would need to be developed, at least insofar as such accounts are to conceive of justification in terms of an agent (minimally) po…Read more
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37Epistemic Evaluation: Purposeful Epistemology (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2015.Epistemic Evaluation aims to explore and apply a particular methodology in epistemology. The methodology is to consider the point or purpose of our epistemic evaluations, and to pursue epistemological theory in light of such matters. Call this purposeful epistemology. The idea is that considerations about the point and purpose of epistemic evaluation might fruitfully constrain epistemological theory and yield insights for epistemological reflection. Several contributions to this volume explicitl…Read more
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32Abductive Inference, Explicable and Anomalous Disagreement, and Epistemic ResourcesRes Philosophica 93 (3): 567-584. 2016.Disagreement affords humans as members of epistemic communities important opportunities for refining or improving their epistemic situations with respect to many of their beliefs. To get such epistemic gains, one needs to explore and gauge one’s own epistemic situation and the epistemic situations of others. Accordingly, a fitting response to disagreement regarding some matter, p, typically will turn on the resolution of two strongly interrelated questions: (1) whether p, and (2) why one’s inter…Read more
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30Epistemic Virtues and Cognitive DispositionsIn Horgan Terry & Henderson David (eds.), Debating Dispositions: Issues in Metaphysics, Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 296-319. 2009.
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29The Supervenient Causal Efficacy of Chromatically Illuminated Conscious ExperienceProtoSociology 39 169-203. 2022.In our work we have drawn attention to an aspect of conscious experience that we have labeled chromatic illumination, which consists of conscious appreciation of a large body of background information, and of the holistic relevance of this information to a cognitive task that is being consciously undertaken, without that information being represented by any conscious, occurrent, intentional mental state. We have also characterized the prototypical causal role of chromatic-illumination features o…Read more
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29Relies to our criticsPhilosophical Studies 169 (3): 549-564. 2014.We respond to the central concerns raised by our commentators to our book, The Epistemological Spectrum. Casullo believes that our account of what we term “low-grade a priori” justification provides important clarification of a kind of philosophical reflection. However he objects to calling such reflection a priori. We explain what we think is at stake. Along the way, we comment on his idea of that there may be an epistemic payoff to making a distinction between assumptions and presumptions. In …Read more
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29Simulation Theory Versus Theory Theory: A Difference Without A Difference in ExplanationsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 34 (S1): 65-93. 1996.
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27A critical perspective on a critical perspective on social scienceMetascience 24 (3): 457-461. 2015.Yoshida considers two broad understandings of how social scientists can and should “describe and explain other cultures or their aspects under concepts of rationality” . In the one corner is a family of approaches that Yoshida finds deeply flawed: cultural interpretivist approaches. Five authors representative of this family are given fine chapter length examinations: Winch, Taylor, Geertz, Sahlins, and Obeyesekere. In the other corner is Yoshida’s favored approach: critical rationalism. This ap…Read more
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25Neurath’s Boat Will Take You Where You Want to Go: On Naturalized Epistemology and HistoricismJournal of the Philosophy of History 6 (3): 389-414. 2012.Naturalized epistemology is not a recent invention, nor is it a philosophical invention. Rather, it is a cognitive phenomena that is pervasive and desirable in the way of human epistemic engagement with their world. It is a matter of the way that one’s cognitive processes can be modulated by information gotten from those same or wider cognitive processes. Such modulational control enhances the reliability of one’s cognitive processes in many ways ‐ and judgments about objective epistemic justifi…Read more
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25Philosophy of Science AssociationIn Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper & J. D. Trout (eds.), The Philosophy of Science, Mit Press. pp. 58--4. 1991.
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24Epistemic Competence And Contextualist Epistemology: Why Contextualism Is Not Just The Poor Person's CoherentismJournal of Philosophy 91 (12): 627-649. 1994.
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23What does it take to be a true believer?In Christina E. Erneling & David Martel Johnson (eds.), Mind As a Scientific Object: Between Brain and Culture, Oxford University Press. pp. 211. 2004.Eliminative materialism, as William Lycan (this volume) tells us, is materialism plus the claim that no creature has ever had a belief, desire, intention, hope, wish, or other “folk-psychological” state. Some contemporary philosophers claim that eliminative materialism is very likely true. They sketch certain potential scenarios, for the way theory might develop in cognitive science and neuroscience, that they claim are fairly likely; and they maintain that if such.
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22Chromatic IlluminationProtoSociology 38 35-58. 2021.We argue that introspection reveals a ubiquitous aspect of conscious experience that hitherto has been largely unappreciated in philosophy of mind and in cognitive science: conscious appreciation of a large body of background information, and of the holistic relevance of this information to a cognitive task that is being consciously undertaken, without that information being represented by any conscious, occurrent, intentional mental state. We call this phenomenon chromatic illumination. We begi…Read more
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21Rationalizing Explanation, Normative Principles, and Descriptive GeneralizationsBehavior and Philosophy 19 (1). 1991.
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21IntroductionAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 54 (4): 317-322. 2017.The papers in this issue all concern the normative standards by which we do or should regulate our joint epistemic lives in communities. Plausibly, reflection on how we should regulate ourselves—what one should insist on in one's own practice and that of one's epistemic partners—takes some cues from reflection on what we do insist on. The reverse is plausibly also the case. These papers also, more or less explicitly, suggest that our epistemic sensibilities themselves reflect the demands of epis…Read more
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19Epistemic Rationality, Epistemic Motivation, and Interpretive CharityProtoSociology 8 4-29. 1996.On what has become the received view of the principle of charity, it is a fundamental methodological constraint on interpretation that we find peoples’ intentional states patterned in ways that are characterized by norms of rationality. This recommended use of normative principles of rationality to inform intentional description is epistemically unmotivated. To say that the received view lacks epistemic motivation is to say that to interpret as it recommends would be epistemically irresponsible …Read more
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17Conceptually Grounded Necessary TruthsIn Albert Casullo & Joshua C. Thurow (eds.), The a Priori in Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 111. 2013.
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15On the Testability of Psychological GeneralizationsPhilosophy of Science 58 (4): 586-606. 1991.Rosenberg argues that intentional generalizations in the human sciences cannot be law-like because they are not amenable to significant empirical refinement. This irrefinability is said to result from the principle that supposedly controls in intentional explanation also serving as the standard for successful interpretation. The only credible evidence bearing on such a principle would then need conform to it. I argue that psychological generalizations are refinable and can be nomic. I show how e…Read more
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12Accounting for Macro-Level CausationSynthese 101 (2): 129-156. 1994.By a macro-level feature, I understand any feature that supervenes on, and is thus realized in, lower-level features. Recent discussions by Kim have suggested that such features cannot be causally relevant insofar as they are not classically reducible to lower-level features. This seems to render macro-level features causally irrelevant. I defend the causal relevance of some such features. Such features have been thought causally relevant in many examples that have underpinned philosophical work…Read more
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University of Nebraska, LincolnDepartment of PhilosophyRobert R. Chambers Distinguished Professorship of Philosophy and the Moral Sciences
Lincoln, Nebraska, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Philosophy of Physical Science |