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177Projectivism without errorIn Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the World, Oxford University Press. pp. 68. 2010.I argue that a theory according to which some of the content of perception is self-locating gives us the resources to cash out the central thought behind projectivism, without having to go in for an error theory about the projected qualities. I first survey some of the phenomena that might motivate what I take to be the central projectivist thought, and then look at some ways of cashing out just what it would amount to for the thought to be correct. I make some objections to some of the standa…Read more
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331Comments on Gendler’s, “the epistemic costs of implicit bias”Philosophical Studies 156 (1): 65-79. 2011.
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619Some counterexamples to causal decision theoryPhilosophical Review 116 (1): 93-114. 2007.Many philosophers (myself included) have been converted to causal decision theory by something like the following line of argument: Evidential decision theory endorses irrational courses of action in a range of examples, and endorses “an irrational policy of managing the news”. These are fatal problems for evidential decision theory. Causal decision theory delivers the right results in the troublesome examples, and does not endorse this kind of irrational news-managing. So we should give up evid…Read more
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480I Can’t Believe I’m StupidPhilosophical Perspectives 19 (1). 2005.It is bad news to find out that one's cognitive or perceptual faculties are defective. Furthermore, it’s not always transparent how one ought to revise one's beliefs in light of such news. Two sorts of news should be distinguished. On the one hand, there is news that a faculty is unreliable -- that it doesn't track the truth particularly well. On the other hand, there is news that a faculty is anti-reliable -- that it tends to go positively wrong. These two sorts of news call for extremely diffe…Read more
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853Wanting things you don't want: The case for an imaginative analogue of desirePhilosophers' Imprint 7 1-17. 2007.You’re imagining, in the course of a different game of make-believe, that you’re a bank robber. You don’t believe that you’re a bank robber. You are moved to point your finger, gun-wise, at the person pretending to be the bank teller and say, “Stick ‘em up! This is a robbery!”
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294Second-Order Predication and the Metaphysics of PropertiesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1): 48-66. 2004.Problems about the accidental properties of properties motivate us--force us, I think--not to identify properties with the sets of their instances. If we identify them instead with functions from worlds to extensions, we get a theory of properties that is neutral with respect to disputes over counterpart theory, and we avoid a problem for Lewis's theory of events. Similar problems about the temporary properties of properties motivate us--though this time they probably don't force us--to give up …Read more
APA Eastern Division
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Meta-Ethics |
Epistemology |
Decision Theory |