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96Non‐conceptual knowledgePhilosophical Issues 24 (1): 184-208. 2014.The paper is an investigation into the prospects of an epistemology of non-conceptual knowledge. According to the orthodox view, knowledge requires concepts and belief. I present several arguments to the effect that there is non-conceptual, non-doxastic knowledge, the obvious candidate for such knowledge being non-conceptual perception. Non-conceptual perception seems to be allowed for by cognitive scientists and it exhibits the central role features of knowledge—it plays the knowledge role: it …Read more
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24Plato’s Meno problem is the problem of why knowledge is better than true belief which is not knowledge. The paper studies the account of this surplus value of knowledge that recent reliabilist virtue epistemologists like John Greco and Ernest Sosa have proposed: knowledge is true belief from epistemic virtue. I reconstruct the master argument which subsumes the epistemic case under the general case of success from virtue. Five accounts of virtue are presented and discussed critically. The result…Read more
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83Can there be a state which is both a belief and a desire? More exactly, a state which is a belief that p and a desire that q, where p and q may be the same proposition or a different one? Such a state would be a ‘besire’. So a first question is the general question whether besires are possible. Normative attitudes would be good candidates for besires. For example, if Sandra has the normative attitude that it would be best for her to leave the country, this seems to be a propositional state of he…Read more
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79Ever since the works of Alfred Tarski and Frank Ramsey, two views on truth have seemed very attractive to many people. On the one hand, the correspondence theory of truth seemed to be quite promising, mostly, perhaps, for its ability to accomodate a realistic attitude towards truth. On the other hand, a minimalist conception seemed appropriate since it made things so simple and unmysterious. So even though there are many more theories of truth around - the identity theory, the prosentential theo…Read more
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27Die Rolle des Wissens und des Wissensbegriffs in der ErkenntnistheorieZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 56 (1). 2002.
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80Wahrheit und Wissen. Einige Überlegungen zur epistemischen NormativitätZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 61 (2). 2007.Eine der neueren Herausforderungen in der Erkenntnistheorie, die die Frage nach der Struktur epistemischer Werte aufwirft, stellt die so genannte Mehrwert-Intuition dar: Wissen scheint mehr Wert zu haben als bloß wahre Meinung. Ein Wahrheitsmonist vertritt die Auffassung, dass wahre Meinung der einzige intrinsische epistemische Wert ist. Es soll gezeigt werden, dass und wie sich im Rahmen des Wahrheitsmonismus die Mehrwert-Intuition einfangen lässt. Wir können, wie Frege, BonJour, Beckermann und…Read more
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Teil 1. Kriterien des primär Seienden. Substance and identity / Jonathan Lowe. Substanz und Unabhängigkeit / Benjamin Schnieder. Substrate, Substanzen und Individualiẗat (review)In Käthe Trettin (ed.), Substanz: Neue Überlegungen Zu Einer Klassischen Kategorie des Seienden, Vittorio Klostermann. 2005.
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11According to a classical causal account of perception, to perceive that object x is F is to fulfill the following conditions: (i) one has an experience as of x's being F, (ii) x is F, and (iii) one's experience of x's being F depends causally on x's being F. This is the core of Grice's causal theory of perception, and it is initially quite plausible (Grice 1961).
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76Gettier For JustificationEpisteme 11 (3): 305-318. 2014.I will present a problem for any externalist evidentialism that allows for accidental possession of evidence. There are Gettier cases for justification. I will describe two such cases – cases involving veridical hallucination. An analysis of the cases is given, along the lines of virtue epistemology . The cases show that certain externalist evidentialist accounts of justification do not provide sufficient conditions. The reason lies in the fact that one can be luckily in possession of evidence, …Read more
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41The reference of de re representationsGrazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1): 83-101. 2001.Full understanding ofrepresentation requires both an accountofrepresentational content and of reference. Fred Dretske has proposed a powerful theory of representational content, the teleological theory of indicator functions. And he has indicated that he thinks an informational account of reference is basically correct. According to this account, reference is determined by a certain informational relation, the relation of carrying primary information about an object. However, a closer examinatio…Read more
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33Recently, some philosophers have claimed that consciousness has an important epistemological role to play in the introspective self-ascription of one’s own mental states. This is the thesis of the epistemological role of consciousness for introspective self-knowledge. I will criticize BonJour’s account of the role of consciousness for introspection. He does not provide any reason for believing that conscious states are epistemically better off than non-conscious states. Then I will sketch a repr…Read more
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Die Rolle von Wissen in der Erkenntnistheorie - Ein Kommentar zu Ansgar BeckermannZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 56 (1). 2002.
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88Three kinds of reliabilismPhilosophical Explorations 16 (1). 2013.I distinguish between three kinds of reliabilism for epistemic justification, namely, pure reliabilism, evidential reliabilism, and reasons reliabilism, and I argue for reasons reliabilism. Pure reliabilism and evidential reliabilism are plagued, most importantly, by the generality problem, and they cannot deal adequately with defeater phenomena. One can avoid these problems only by jettisoning the idea of process reliability. The truth connection ? which is essential for any kind of reliabilism…Read more
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35In this presentation, I argue for a conception of rational capacities that makes us epistemic agents without essential reference or appeal to self-consciousness/self-knowledge, contrary to McDowell, Moran, and others. At the same time, his conception of rational capacities as powers at the personal level saves our epistemic agency against worries that Hilary Kornblith has put forward
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61An alternative to endurantism and perdurantism: Doing without occupantsIn Benedikt Schick, Edmund Runggaldier & Ludger Honnefelder (eds.), Unity and Time in Metaphysics, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 134. 2009.
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166Intuitions, concepts, and imaginationPhilosophical Psychology 23 (4): 529-546. 2010.Recently, a new movement of philosophers, called 'experimental philosophy', has suggested that the philosophers' favored armchair is in flames. In order to assess some of their claims, it is helpful to provide a theoretical background against which we can discuss whether certain facts are, or could be, evidence for or against a certain view about how philosophical intuitions work and how good they are. In this paper, I will be mostly concerned with providing such a theoretical background, and I …Read more
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Consciousness Revisited. Materialism Without Phenomenal Concepts (review)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 65 (1). 2011.