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292A defense of reductionism about testimonial justification of beliefsNoûs 40 (2). 2006.This paper defends reductionism about testimonial justification of beliefs against two influential arguments. One is the empirical argument to the effect that the reductionist justification of our trust in testimony is either circular since it relies on testimonial evidence or else there is scarce evidence in support of our trust in testimony. The other is the transcendental argument to the effect that trust in testimony is a prerequisite for the very existence of testimonial evidence since with…Read more
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114The problem of the criterion in rule-followingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (3): 501-525. 2000.This paper addresses the issue of rule-following in the context of the problem of the criterion. It presents a line of reasoning which concludes we do not know what rule we follow, but which develops independently of the problem of extrapolation that plays a major role in many recent discussions of rule-following. The basis of the argument is the normativity of rules, but the problem is also distinct from the issue of the gap between facts and values in axiology. The paper further points out tha…Read more
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94Internalism and Externalism in Meliorative EpistemologyErkenntnis 76 (1): 59-72. 2012.This paper addresses the meta-epistemological dispute over the basis of epistemic evaluation from the standpoint of meliorative epistemology. Meliorative epistemology aims at guiding our epistemic practice to better results, and it comprises two levels of epistemic evaluation. At the social level (meliorative social epistemology) appropriate experts conduct evaluation for the community, so that epistemic evaluation is externalist since each epistemic subject in the community need not have access…Read more
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19Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (1): 292-296. 2008.
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49The Role of Coherence of Evidence in the Non-Dynamic Model of ConfirmationErkenntnis 63 (3): 317-333. 2005.This paper examines the role of coherence of evidence in what I call the non-dynamic model of confirmation. It appears that other things being equal, a higher degree of coherence among pieces of evidence raises to a higher degree the probability of the proposition they support. I argue against this view on the basis of three related observations. First, we should be able to assess the impact of coherence on any hypothesis of interest the evidence supports. Second, the impact of coherence among t…Read more
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67Mediated ConfirmationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (3): 847-874. 2017.ABSTRACT This article aims to achieve two things: to identify the conditions for transitivity in probabilistic support in various settings, and to uncover the components and structure of the mediated probabilistic relation. It is shown that when the probabilistic relation between the two propositions, x and z, is mediated by multiple layers of partitions of propositions, the impact x has on z consists of the purely indirect impact, the purely bypass impact, and the mixed impact. It is also shown…Read more
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22The Problem of Rule‐Following in Compositional SemanticsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 33 (1): 97-107. 2010.
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54Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, Justification (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (1): 292-296. 2008.Erik Olsson’s Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification is an important contribution to the growing literature on Bayesian coherentism. The book applies the formal theory of probability to issues of coherence in two contexts. One is the philosophical debate over radical skepticism, and the other is common sense and scientific reasoning. As the title of the book suggests, Olsson’s view about coherence is negative on both accounts. With regard to radical skepticism, Olsson states th…Read more
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128Why does coherence appear truth-conducive?Synthese 157 (3). 2007.This paper aims to reconcile (i) the intuitively plausible view that a higher degree of coherence among independent pieces of evidence makes the hypothesis they support more probable, and (ii) the negative results in Bayesian epistemology to the effect that there is no probabilistic measure of coherence such that a higher degree of coherence among independent pieces of evidence makes the hypothesis they support more probable. I consider a simple model in which the negative result appears in a st…Read more