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17Extended Epistemology (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.One of the most important research programmes in contemporary cognitive science is that of extended cognition, whereby features of a subject's cognitive environment can in certain conditions become constituent parts of the cognitive process itself. The aim of this volume is to explore the epistemological ramifications of this idea.... The first part of the volume explores foundational issues with regard to an extended epistemology, including from a critical perspective. The second part of the vo…Read more
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123The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology. By Jason Baehr. (Oxford UP, 2011. Pp. viii + 235. Price £35.00.)Philosophical Quarterly 63 (250): 184-187. 2013.This is a book review of Jason Baehr's 'The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology'.
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671Kornblith versus Sosa on grades of knowledgeSynthese 196 (12): 4989-5007. 2019.In a series of works Sosa (in: Knowledge in perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991; A virtue epistemology: apt belief and reflective knowledge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; Reflective knowledge: apt belief and reflective knowledge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009; ‘How Competence Matters in Epistemology’, Philos Perspect 24(1):465–475, 2010; Knowing full well, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011; Judgment and agency, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015…Read more
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24Radical Skepticism, Closure, and Robust KnowledgeJournal of Philosophical Research 36 115-133. 2011.The Neo-Moorean response to the radical skeptical challenge boldly maintains that we can know we’re not the victims of radical skeptical hypotheses; accordingly, our everyday knowledge that would otherwise be threatened by our inability to rule out such hypotheses stands unthreatened. Given the leverage such an approach has against the skeptic from the very start, the Neo-Moorean line is an especially popular one; as we shall see, though, it faces several commonly overlooked problems. An initial…Read more
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642On behalf of controversial view agnosticismEuropean Journal of Philosophy 26 (4): 1358-1370. 2018.Controversial view agnosticism is the thesis that we are rationally obligated to withhold judgment about a large portion of our beliefs in controversial subject areas, such as philosophy, religion, morality and politics. Given that one’s social identity is in no small part a function of one’s positive commitments in controversial areas, CVA has unsurprisingly been regarded as objectionably ‘spineless.’ That said, CVA seems like an unavoidable consequence of a prominent view in the epistemology o…Read more
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950Knowledge and the value of cognitive abilitySynthese 190 (17): 3715-3729. 2013.We challenge a line of thinking at the fore of recent work on epistemic value: the line (suggested by Kvanvig in The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, 2003 and others) that if the value of knowledge is “swamped” by the value of mere true belief, then we have good reason to doubt its theoretical importance in epistemology. We offer a value-driven argument for the theoretical importance of knowledge—one that stands even if the value of knowledge is “swamped” by the value of true…Read more
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1264Extended Cognition and Propositional MemoryPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (3): 691-714. 2015.The philosophical case for extended cognition is often made with reference to ‘extended-memory cases’ ; though, unfortunately, proponents of the hypothesis of extended cognition as well as their adversaries have failed to appreciate the kinds of epistemological problems extended-memory cases pose for mainstream thinking in the epistemology of memory. It is time to give these problems a closer look. Our plan is as follows: in §1, we argue that an epistemological theory remains compatible with HEC…Read more
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201Belief without credenceSynthese 193 (8): 2323-2351. 2016.One of the deepest ideological divides in contemporary epistemology concerns the relative importance of belief versus credence. A prominent consideration in favor of credence-based epistemology is the ease with which it appears to account for rational action. In contrast, cases with risky payoff structures threaten to break the link between rational belief and rational action. This threat poses a challenge to traditional epistemology, which maintains the theoretical prominence of belief. The cor…Read more
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35A Note on Assertion, Relativism and Future ContingentsLogos and Episteme 3 (1): 139-144. 2012.I argue that John MacFarlane's attempt to reconcile his proposed truthrelativist account of future contingents with a plausible account of assertion is self-defeating. Specifically, a paradoxical result of MacFarlane's view is that assertions of future contingents are impermissible for anyone who already accepts MacFarlane's own truth-relativist account of future contingents.
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19The Moral Psychology of Pride (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield. 2017.This book demonstrates pride's unique profile in philosophical theory as both an emotion and an element of human virtue, and includes a range of represented perspectives: psychology; philosophy; sociology; and anthropology.
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57Metaepistemology and RelativismPalgrave Macmillan. 2016.Is knowledge relative? Many academics across the humanities say that it is. However those who work in mainstream epistemology generally consider that it is not. Metaepistemology and Relativism questions whether the kind of anti-relativistic background that underlies typical projects in mainstream epistemology can on closer inspection be vindicated.
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421Epistemic Luck and the Extended MindIn Ian M. Church (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Theories of Luck, Routledge. 2017.Contemporary debates about epistemic luck and its relation to knowledge have traditionally proceeded against a tacit background commitment to cognitive internalism, the thesis that cognitive processes play out inside the head. In particular, safety-based approaches (e.g., Pritchard 2005; 2007; Luper-Foy 1984; Sainsbury 1997; Sosa 1999; Williamson 2000) reveal this commitment by taking for granted a traditional internalist construal of what I call the cognitive fixedness thesis—viz., the thesis t…Read more
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913Extended cognition and epistemic luckSynthese 190 (18): 4201-4214. 2013.When extended cognition is extended into mainstream epistemology, an awkward tension arises when considering cases of environmental epistemic luck. Surprisingly, it is not at all clear how the mainstream verdict that agents lack knowledge in cases of environmental luck can be reconciled with principles central to extended cognition
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183Perceptual knowledge and relevant alternativesPhilosophical Studies 173 (4): 969-990. 2016.A very natural view about perceptual knowledge is articulated, one on which perceptual knowledge is closely related to perceptual discrimination, and which fits well with a relevant alternatives account of knowledge. It is shown that this kind of proposal faces a problem, and various options for resolving this difficulty are explored. In light of this discussion, a two-tiered relevant alternatives account of perceptual knowledge is offered which avoids the closure problem. It is further shown ho…Read more
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640Googled AssertionPhilosophical Psychology 30 (4): 490-501. 2017.Recent work in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2010a; Clark 2010b; Palermos 2014) can help to explain why certain kinds of assertions—made on the basis of information stored in our gadgets rather than in biological memory—are properly criticisable in light of misleading implicatures, while others are not.
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169Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.'Knowledge-First' constitutes what is widely regarded as one of the most significant innovations in contemporary epistemology in the past 25 years. Knowledge-first epistemology is the idea that knowledge per se should not be analysed in terms of its constituent parts (e.g., justification, belief), but rather that these and other notions should be analysed in terms of the concept of knowledge. This volume features a substantive introduction and 13 original essays from leading and up-and-coming ph…Read more
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861Epistemic Internalism, Content Externalism and the Subjective/Objective Justification DistinctionAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 53 (3): 231-244. 2016.Two arguments against the compatibility of epistemic internalism and content externalism are considered. Both arguments are shown to fail, because they equivocate on the concept of justification involved in their premises. To spell out the involved equivocation, a distinction between subjective and objective justification is introduced, which can also be independently motivated on the basis of a wide range of thought experiments to be found in the mainstream literature on epistemology. The subje…Read more
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764Sosa on Knowledge, Judgment and GuessingSynthese 1-20. 2018.In Chapter 3 of Judgment and Agency, Ernest Sosa (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 cog- nitive 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 he relies on…Read more
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1027Knowledge: Value on the CheapAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (2): 249-263. 2013.ABSTRACT: We argue that the so-called ‘Primary’ and ‘Secondary’ Value Problems for knowledge are more easily solved than is widely appreciated. Pritchard, for instance, has suggested that only virtue-theoretic accounts have any hopes of adequately addressing these problems. By contrast, we argue that accounts of knowledge that are sensitive to the Gettier problem are able to overcome these challenges. To first approximation, the Primary Value Problem is a problem of understanding how the propert…Read more
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874Against swampingAnalysis 72 (4): 690-699. 2012.The Swamping Argument – highlighted by Kvanvig (2003; 2010) – purports to show that the epistemic value of truth will always swamp the epistemic value of any non-factive epistemic properties (e.g. justification) so that these properties can never add any epistemic value to an already-true belief. Consequently (and counter-intuitively), knowledge is never more epistemically valuable than mere true belief. We show that the Swamping Argument fails. Parity of reasoning yields the disastrous conclusi…Read more
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1799Openmindedness and truthCanadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (2): 207-224. 2014.While openmindedness is often cited as a paradigmatic example of an intellectual virtue, the connection between openmindedness and truth is tenuous. Several strategies for reconciling this tension are considered, and each is shown to fail; it is thus claimed that openmindedness, when intellectually virtuous, bears no interesting essential connection to truth. In the final section, the implication of this result is assessed in the wider context of debates about epistemic value
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474Introduction [to Logos & Episteme, Special Issue: Intellectual Humility]Logos and Episteme 7 (7). 2016.While it is widely regarded that intellectual humility is among the intellectual virtues, there is as of yet little consensus on the matter of what possessing and exercising intellectual humility consists in, and how it should be best understood as advancing our epistemic goals. For example, does intellectual humility involve an underestimation of one’s intellectual abilities, or rather, does it require an accurate conception? Is intellectual humility a fundamentally interpersonal/social virtue…Read more
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703Virtuous InsightfulnessEpisteme 14 (4). 2017.Insight often strikes us blind; when we aren’t expecting it, we suddenly see a connection that previously eluded us—a kind of ‘Aha!’ experience. People with a propensity to such experiences are regarded as insightful, and insightfulness is a paradigmatic intellectual virtue. What’s not clear, however, is just what it is in virtue of which being such that these experiences tend to happen to one renders one intellectually virtuous. This paper draws from both virtue epistemology as well as empirica…Read more
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940On the Epistemology of the Precautionary PrincipleErkenntnis 80 (1): 1-13. 2015.In this paper we present two distinctly epistemological puzzles that arise for one who aspires to defend some plausible version of the precautionary principle. The first puzzle involves an application of contextualism in epistemology; and the second puzzle concerns the task of defending a plausible version of the precautionary principle that would not be invalidated by de minimis
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1221Epistemological Implications of RelativismIn Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism, Routledge. pp. 292-301. 2017.Relativists about knowledge ascriptions think that whether a particular use of a knowledge-ascribing sentence, e.g., “Keith knows that the bank is open” is true depends on the epistemic standards at play in the assessor’s context—viz., the context in which the knowledge ascription is being as- sessed for truth or falsity. Given that the very same knowledge-ascription can be assessed for truth or falsity from indefinitely many perspectives, relativism has a striking consequence. When I ascribe kn…Read more
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1054Relativism, knowledge and understandingEpisteme 11 (1): 35-52. 2014.The arguments for and against a truth-relativist semantics for propositional knowledge attributions (KTR) have been debated almost exclusively in the philosophy of language. But what implications would this semantic thesis have in epistemology? This question has been largely unexplored. The aim of this paper is to establish and critique several ramifications of KTR in mainstream epistemology. The first section of the paper develops, over a series of arguments, the claim that MacFarlane's (2005, …Read more
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1781(Anti)-Anti-Intellectualism and the Sufficiency ThesisPacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (S1): 374-397. 2017.Anti-intellectualists about knowledge-how insist that, when an agent S knows how to φ, it is in virtue of some ability, rather than in virtue of any propositional attitudes, S has. Recently, a popular strategy for attacking the anti-intellectualist position proceeds by appealing to cases where an agent is claimed to possess a reliable ability to φ while nonetheless intuitively lacking knowledge-how to φ. John Bengson & Marc Moffett (2009; 2011a; 2011b) and Carlotta Pavese (2015a; 2015b) have emb…Read more
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18MOOCS, by Jonathan Haber (review)Teaching Philosophy 38 (4): 455-458. 2015.No abstract available.
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45Faulkner, Paul, Knowledge on Trust: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. x + 216, £35.00Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (2): 409-413. 2013.This is a review of Faulkner, Paul, Knowledge on Trust, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.240, US 55.00.
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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 |