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375From the indirect confirmation of theories to theory unificationKriterion - Journal of Philosophy 18 (1): 10-14. 2004.Theory unification is a central aim of scientific investigation. In this paper, I lay down the sketch of a Bayesian analysis of the virtue of unification that entails that the unification of a theory has direct implications for the confirmation of the theory’s logical consequences and for its prior probability. This shows that scientists do have epistemic, and not just pragmatic, reasons to prefer unified theories to non-unified ones.
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105Epistemic transmission and interaction (introduction to the special issue)Synthese 190 (13): 2477-2479. 2013.
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725Logical Pluralism is Compatible with Monism about Metaphysical ModalityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (2): 275-284. 2009.Beall and Restall 2000; 2001; 2006 advocate a comprehensive pluralist approach to logic, which they call Logical Pluralism, according to which there is not one true logic but many equally acceptable logical systems. They maintain that Logical Pluralism is compatible with monism about metaphysical modality, according to which there is just one correct logic of metaphysical modality. Wyatt 2004 contends that Logical Pluralism is incompatible with monism about metaphysical modality. We first sugges…Read more
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1140Wright, Okasha and Chandler on transmission failureSynthese 184 (3): 217-234. 2012.Crispin Wright has given an explanation of how a first time warrant can fall short of transmitting across a known entailment. Formal epistemologists have struggled to turn Wright’s informal explanation into cogent Bayesian reasoning. In this paper, I analyse two Bayesian models of Wright’s account respectively proposed by Samir Okasha and Jake Chandler. I argue that both formalizations are unsatisfactory for different reasons, and I lay down a third Bayesian model that appears to me to capture t…Read more
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1656In defence of dogmatismPhilosophical Studies 172 (1): 261-282. 2015.According to Jim Pryor’s dogmatism, when you have an experience with content p, you often have prima facie justification for believing p that doesn’t rest on your independent justification for believing any proposition. Although dogmatism has an intuitive appeal and seems to have an antisceptical bite, it has been targeted by various objections. This paper principally aims to answer the objections by Roger White according to which dogmatism is inconsistent with the Bayesian account of how eviden…Read more
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65In this paper, I show that Lewis' definition of coherence and Fitelson's and Shogenji's measures of coherence are unacceptable because they entail the absurdity that any set of beliefs in general is coherent and not coherent at the same time. This devastating result is obtained if a simple and plausible principle of stability for coherence is accepted.
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940Antirealism and the Conditional Fallacy: The Semantic ApproachJournal of Philosophical Logic 43 (4): 761-783. 2014.The expression conditional fallacy identifies a family of arguments deemed to entail odd and false consequences for notions defined in terms of counterfactuals. The antirealist notion of truth is typically defined in terms of what a rational enquirer or a community of rational enquirers would believe if they were suitably informed. This notion is deemed to entail, via the conditional fallacy, odd and false propositions, for example that there necessarily exists a rational enquirer. If these cons…Read more
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26Sulla convergenza della verità nel realismo internoIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 13 (3): 595-618. 2000.
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1265Inferential seemings and the problem of reflective awarenessCanadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (2): 253-271. 2019.Phenomenal conservatism (PC) is the internalist view that non-inferential justification rests on appearances. PC’s advocates have recently argued that seemings are also required to explain inferential justification. The most general and developed view to this effect is Huemer (2016)’s theory of inferential seemings (ToIS). Moretti (2018) has shown that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness, which makes PC open to sceptical challenges. In this paper I argue that ToIS is afflicted …Read more
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620Dummett and the problem of the vanishing pastLinguistic and Philosophical Investigations 7 37-47. 2008.Dummett has recently presented his most mature and sophisticated version of justificationism, i.e. the view that meaning and truth are to be analysed in terms of justifiability. In this paper, I argue that this conception does not resolve a difficulty that also affected Dummett’s earlier version of justificationism: the problem that large tracts of the past continuously vanish as their traces in the present dissipate. Since Dummett’s justificationism is essentially based on the assumption that t…Read more
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154The tacking by disjunction paradox: Bayesianism versus hypothetico-deductivismErkenntnis 64 (1): 115-138. 2006.Hypothetico-deductivists have struggled to develop qualitative confirmation theories not raising the so-called tacking by disjunction paradox. In this paper, I analyze the difficulties yielded by the paradox and I argue that the hypothetico-deductivist solutions given by Gemes (1998) and Kuipers (2000) are questionable because they do not fit such analysis. I then show that the paradox yields no difficulty for the Bayesian who appeals to the Total Evidence Condition. I finally argue that the sam…Read more
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579The ontological status of minimal entitiesPhilosophical Studies 141 (1). 2008.Minimal entities are, roughly, those that fall under notions defined by only deflationary principles. In this paper I provide an accurate characterization of two types of minimal entities: minimal properties and minimal facts. This characterization is inspired by both Schiffer's notion of a pleonastic entity and Horwich's notion of minimal truth. I argue that we are committed to the existence of minimal properties and minimal facts according to a deflationary notion of existence, and that the ap…Read more
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495On coherent sets and the transmission of confirmationPhilosophy of Science 72 (3): 403-424. 2005.In this paper, we identify a new and mathematically well-defined sense in which the coherence of a set of hypotheses can be truth-conducive. Our focus is not, as usual, on the probability but on the confirmation of a coherent set and its members. We show that, if evidence confirms a hypothesis, confirmation is “transmitted” to any hypotheses that are sufficiently coherent with the former hypothesis, according to some appropriate probabilistic coherence measure such as Olsson’s or Fitelson’s meas…Read more
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139Grimes on the tacking by disjunction problemDisputatio 1 (17): 16-20. 2004.In this paper, I focus on the so-called "tacking by disjunction problem". Namely, the problem to the effect that, if a hypothesis H is confirmed by a statement E, H is confirmed by the disjunction E v F, for whatever statement F. I show that the attempt to settle this difficulty made by Grimes 1990, in a paper apparently forgotten by today methodologists, is irremediably faulty.
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764Brogaard and Salerno on antirealism and the conditional fallacyPhilosophical Studies 140 (2). 2008.Brogaard and Salerno (2005, Nous, 39, 123–139) have argued that antirealism resting on a counterfactual analysis of truth is flawed because it commits a conditional fallacy by entailing the absurdity that there is necessarily an epistemic agent. Brogaard and Salerno's argument relies on a formal proof built upon the criticism of two parallel proofs given by Plantinga (1982, "Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association", 56, 47–70) and Rea (2000, "Nous," 34, 291–301). If t…Read more
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282Why the converse consequence condition cannot be acceptedAnalysis 63 (4). 2003.Three confirmation principles discussed by Hempel are the Converse Consequence Condition, the Special Consequence Condition and the Entailment Condition. Le Morvan (1999) has argued that, when the choice among confirmation principles is just about them, it is the Converse Consequence Condition that must be rejected. In this paper, I make this argument definitive. In doing that, I will provide an indisputable proof that the simple conjunction of the Converse Consequence Condition and the Entailme…Read more
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34For a bayesian account of indirect confirmationDialectica 56 (2). 2002.[NOTE: I WROTE THIS PAPER BEFORE STARTING MY PhD. SO DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH.] Laudan and Leplin have argued that empirically equivalent theories can elude underdetermination by resorting to indirect confirmation. Moreover, they have provided a qualitative account of indirect confirmation that Okasha has shown to be incoherent. In this paper, I develop Kukla's recent contention that indirect confirmation is grounded in the probability calculus. I provide a Bayesian rule to calculate the probabilit…Read more
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235Ways in which coherence is confirmation conduciveSynthese 157 (3). 2007.Recent works in epistemology show that the claim that coherence is truth conducive – in the sense that, given suitable ceteris paribus conditions, more coherent sets of statements are always more probable – is dubious and possibly false. From this, it does not follows that coherence is a useless notion in epistemology and philosophy of science. Dietrich and Moretti (Philosophy of science 72(3): 403–424, 2005) have proposed a formal of account of how coherence is confirmation conducive—that is, o…Read more
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413Probabilistic measures of coherence and the problem of belief individuationSynthese 154 (1). 2007.Coherentism in epistemology has long suffered from lack of formal and quantitative explication of the notion of coherence. One might hope that probabilistic accounts of coherence such as those proposed by Lewis, Shogenji, Olsson, Fitelson, and Bovens and Hartmann will finally help solve this problem. This paper shows, however, that those accounts have a serious common problem: the problem of belief individuation. The coherence degree that each of the accounts assigns to an information set (or th…Read more
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338On creeping minimalism and the nature of minimal entitiesIn Heather Dyke (ed.), From Truth to Reality (Routledge), . 2009.The general tendency or attitude that Dreier 2004 calls creeping minimalism is ramping up in contemporary analytic philosophy. Those who entertain this attitude will take for granted a framework of deflationary or minimal notions – principally semantical1 and ontological – by means of which to analyse problems in different philosophical fields – e.g. theory of truth, metaethics, philosophy of language, the debate on realism and antirealism, etc. Let us call sweeping minimalist the philosopher af…Read more
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108Introduction (to the special issue on ontological commitment)Philosophical Studies 141 (1): 1-5. 2008.No abstract
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83A thick realist consequence of Wright's minimalismPacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (1). 2007.According to Wrights minimalism, a notion of truth neutral with respect to realism and antirealism can be built out of the notion of warranted assertibility and a set of a priori platitudes among which the Equivalence Schema has a prominent role. Wright believes that the debate about realism and antirealism will be properly and fruitfully developed if both parties accept the conceptual framework of minimalism. In this paper, I show that this conceptual framework commits the minimalist to the rea…Read more
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1020Entitlement, epistemic risk and scepticismEpisteme 18 (4): 576-586. 2021.Crispin Wright maintains that the architecture of perceptual justification is such that we can acquire justification for our perceptual beliefs only if we have antecedent justification for ruling out any sceptical alternative. Wright contends that this principle doesn’t elicit scepticism, for we are non-evidentially entitled to accept the negation of any sceptical alternative. Sebastiano Moruzzi has challenged Wright’s contention by arguing that since our non-evidential entitlements don’t remove…Read more
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412Mizrahi’s argument against phenomenal conservatismThe Reasoner 7 (12): 137-139. 2013.I show that Mizrahi’s argument against Phenomenal Conservatism is fallacious.
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732Reason and Explanation: A Defense of Explanatory Coherentism. BY TED POSTON (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. 208. Price £ 60.) (review)Philosophical Quarterly 67 (266): 204-206. 2017.
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710Global Scepticism, Underdetermination and Metaphysical PossibilityErkenntnis 79 (2): 381-403. 2014.I focus on a key argument for global external world scepticism resting on the underdetermination thesis: the argument according to which we cannot know any proposition about our physical environment because sense evidence for it equally justifies some sceptical alternative (e.g. the Cartesian demon conjecture). I contend that the underdetermination argument can go through only if the controversial thesis that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility is true. I a…Read more
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1100When warrant transmits and when it doesn’t: towards a general frameworkSynthese 190 (13): 2481-2503. 2013.In this paper we focus on transmission and failure of transmission of warrant. We identify three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for transmission of warrant, and we show that their satisfaction grounds a number of interesting epistemic phenomena that have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. We then scrutinise Wright’s analysis of transmission failure and improve on extant readings of it. Nonetheless, we present a Bayesian counterexample that shows that W…Read more
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825Phenomenal Conservatism and Bergmann’s DilemmaErkenntnis 80 (6): 1271-1290. 2015.In this paper we argue that Michael Huemer’s phenomenal conservatism—the internalist view according to which our beliefs are prima facie justified if based on how things seems or appears to us to be—doesn’t fall afoul of Michael Bergmann’s dilemma for epistemological internalism. We start by showing that the thought experiment that Bergmann adduces to conclude that is vulnerable to his dilemma misses its target. After that, we distinguish between two ways in which a mental state can contribute t…Read more
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1269Chris Tucker (ed.), Seemings and Justification: New Essays on Dogmatism and Phenomenal Conservatism, NY: OUP (2013) (review)Philosophical Quarterly 64 (255): 364-366. 2014.
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University of AberdeenReader
APA Central Division
Aberdeen, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Philosophy of Education |
Social Ontology |
Areas of Interest
Critical Theory |
Government and Democracy |