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175Objectual understanding, factivity and beliefIn Martin Grajner & Pedro Schmechtig (eds.), Epistemic Reasons, Norms and Goals, De Gruyter. 2016.Should we regard Jennifer Lackey’s ‘Creationist Teacher’ as understanding evolution, even though she does not, given her religious convictions, believe its central claims? We think this question raises a range of important and unexplored questions about the relationship between understanding, factivity and belief. Our aim will be to diagnose this case in a principled way, and in doing so, to make some progress toward appreciating what objectual understanding—i.e., understanding a subject matter …Read more
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860Knowledge‐How and Epistemic LuckNoûs 49 (3): 440-453. 2013.Reductive intellectualists hold that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. For this thesis to hold water, it is obviously important that knowledge-how and knowledge-that have the same epistemic properties. In particular, knowledge-how ought to be compatible with epistemic luck to the same extent as knowledge-that. It is argued, contra reductive intellectualism, that knowledge-how is compatible with a species of epistemic luck which is not compatible with knowledge-that, and thus it is claim…Read more
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132Not Knowing a Cat is a Cat: Analyticity and Knowledge AscriptionsReview of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (4): 817-834. 2016.It is a natural assumption in mainstream epistemological theory that ascriptions of knowledge of a proposition p track strength of epistemic position vis-à-vis p. It is equally natural to assume that the strength of one’s epistemic position is maximally high in cases where p concerns a simple analytic truth. For instance, it seems reasonable to suppose that one’s epistemic position vis-à-vis “a cat is a cat” is harder to improve than one’s position vis-à-vis “a cat is on the mat”, and consequent…Read more
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59Intelligence, wellbeing and procreative beneficenceJournal of Applied Philosophy 30 (2): 122-135. 2013.If Savulescu's controversial principle of Procreative Beneficence is correct, then an important implication is that couples should employ genetic tests for non-disease traits in selecting which child to bring into existence. Both defenders as well as some critics of this normative entailment of PB have typically accepted the comparatively less controversial claim about non-disease traits: that there are non-disease traits such that testing and selecting for them would in fact contribute to bring…Read more
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1185Is epistemic expressivism incompatible with inquiry?Philosophical Studies 159 (3): 323-339. 2012.Expressivist views of an area of discourse encourage us to ask not about the nature of the relevant kinds of values but rather about the nature of the relevant kind of evaluations. Their answer to the latter question typically claims some interesting disanalogy between those kinds of evaluations and descriptions of the world. It does so in hope of providing traction against naturalism-inspired ontological and epistemological worries threatening more ‘realist’ positions. This is a familiar positi…Read more
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88Kvanvig on Pointless Truths and the Cognitive IdealActa Analytica 26 (3): 285-293. 2011.Jonathan Kvanvig has recently attempted to reconcile the problem of (apparently) pointless truths with the claim that the value of truth is unrestricted—that truth is always and everywhere valuable. In this paper, I critically evaluate Kvanvig’s argument and show it to be defective at a crucial juncture. I propose my own alternative strategy for generating Kvanvig’s result—an alternative that parts ways with Kvanvig’s own conception of the cognitively ideal
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30In a recent and provocative paper, Matthew Fisher, Mariel Goddu and Frank Keil (2015) have argued, on the basis of experimental evidence, that ‘searching the internet leads people to conflate information that can be found online with knowledge “in the head”’ (2015, 675), specifically, by inclining us to conflate mere access to information for personal knowledge (2015, 674). This chapter has three central aims. First, we briefly detail Fisher et al.’s results and show how, on the basis of recent …Read more
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12Grounding the phallus? Unconscious meaning as purely paradigmatic semiosisSemiotica 2003 (146). 2003.
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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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999Extended 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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61Archimedean 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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1027Active 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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409What is it to base a belief on reasons? Existing attempts to give an account of the basing relation encounter a dilemma: either one appeals to some kind of neutral process that does not adequately reflect the way basing is a content‐sensitive first‐personal activity, or one appeals to linking or bridge principles that over‐intellectualize and threaten regress. We explain why this dilemma arises, and diagnose the commitments that are key obstacles to providing a satisfactory account. We explain w…Read more
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2Sosa on knowledge, judgment and guessingSynthese 197 (12): 5117-5136. 2016.In Chapter 3 of Judgment and Agency, Sosa (Judgment and Agency, 2015) explicates the concept of a fully apt performance. In the course of doing so, he draws from illustrative examples of practical performances and applies lessons drawn to the case of cognitive performances, and in particular, to the cognitive performance of judging. Sosa’s examples in the practical sphere are rich and instructive. But there is, I will argue, an interesting disanalogy between the practical and cognitive examples …Read more
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13Intellectual autonomy, epistemic dependence and cognitive enhancementSynthese 197 (7): 2937-2961. 2020.Intellectual autonomy has long been identified as an epistemic virtue, one that has been championed influentially by (among others) Kant, Hume and Emerson. Manifesting intellectual autonomy, at least, in a virtuous way, does not require that we form our beliefs in cognitive isolation. Rather, as Roberts and Wood (Intellectual virtues: an essay in regulative epistemology, OUP Oxford, Oxford, pp. 259–260, 2007) note, intellectually virtuous autonomy involves reliance and outsourcing (e.g., on othe…Read more
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87Intentional action and knowledge-centered theories of controlPhilosophical Studies 180 (3): 957-977. 2023.Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we wish to explore in t…Read more
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68Simion and Kelp on trustworthy AIAsian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1): 1-8. 2023.AbstractSimion and Kelp offer a prima facie very promising account of trustworthy AI. One benefit of the account is that it elegantly explains trustworthiness in the case of cancer diagnostic AIs, which involve the acquisition by the AI of a representational etiological function. In this brief note, I offer some reasons to think that their account cannot be extended — at least not straightforwardly — beyond such cases (i.e., to cases of AIs with non-representational etiological functions) withou…Read more
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27A key project in mainstream epistemology investigates the sense in which beliefs are vulnerable to knowledge-undermining luck and/or risk. This chapter will explore a related but largely overlooked question of how and to what extent our grasping connections between propositions is vulnerable to understanding- undermining luck and risk. The result will be a better view of how our attempts to understand the world are vulnerable when they are, and how to better mitigate against such vulnerabilities…Read more
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Epistemic situationism, epistemic dependence, and the epistemology of educationIn Mark Alfano & Abrol Fairweather (eds.), Epistemic Situationism, Oxford University Press. 2017.
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1Epistemic relativism and the naturalistic fallacyIn Neil Sinclair (ed.), The Naturalistic Fallacy, Cambridge University Press. 2018.
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1Extended entitlementIn Peter Graham & Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (eds.), Epistemic Entitlement, Oxford University Press. 2020.
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16Group Peer DisagreementRatio 29 (1): 11-28. 2014.A popular view in mainstream social epistemology maintains that, in the face of a revealed peer disagreement over p, neither party should remain just as confident vis‐a‐vis p as she initially was. This ‘conciliatory’ insight has been defended with regard to individual epistemic peers. However, to the extent that (non‐summativist) groups are candidates for group knowledge and beliefs, we should expect groups (no less than individuals) to be in the market for disagreements. The aim here will be to…Read more
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877Intentional Action and Knowledge-Centred Theories of ControlPhilosophical Studies 1-21. 2022.Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we wish to explore in t…Read more
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38On some intracranialist dogmas in epistemologyAsian Journal of Philosophy 1 (2): 1-21. 2022.Research questions in mainstream epistemology often take for granted a cognitive internalist picture of the mind. Perhaps this is unsurprising given the seemingly safe presumptions that knowledge entails belief and that the kind of belief that knowledge entails supervenes exclusively on brainbound cognition. It will be argued here that the most plausible version of the entailment thesis holds just that knowledge entails dispositional belief. However, regardless of whether occurrent belief superv…Read more
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405Epistemic normativity is not independent of our goalsIn Blake Roeber, Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd edition, Wiley-blackwell. 2024.No abstract available.
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University of GlasgowProfessor
Glasgow, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
PhilPapers Editorships
Epistemic Luck |