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467Preemptive Authority: The Challenge From Outrageous Expert JudgmentsEpisteme 18 (3): 407-427. 2021.Typically, expert judgments are regarded by laypeople as highly trustworthy. However, expert assertions that strike the layperson as obviously false or outrageous, seem to give one a perfect reason to dispute that this judgment manifests expertise. In this paper, I will defend four claims. First, I will deliver an argument in support of the preemption view on expert judgments according to which we should not rationally use our own domain-specific reasons in the face of expert testimony. Second, …Read more
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498Why Disagreement-Based Skepticism cannot Escape the Challenge of Self-DefeatEpisteme 1-18. 2019.Global meta-philosophical skepticism (i.e. completely unrestricted skepticism about philosophy) based upon disagreement faces the problem of self-defeat since it undercuts its motivating conciliatory principle. However, the skeptic may easily escape this threat by adopting a more modest kind of skepticism, that will be called “extensive meta-philosophical skepticism”, i.e., the view that most of our philosophical beliefs are unjustified, except our beliefs in epistemically fundamental principles…Read more
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457How to respond rationally to peer disagreement: The preemption viewPhilosophical Issues 29 (1): 129-142. 2019.In this paper, I argue that the two most common views of how to respond rationally to peer disagreement–the Total Evidence View (TEV) and the Equal Weight View (EWV)–are both inadequate for substantial reasons. TEV does not issue the correct intuitive verdicts about a number of hypothetical cases of peer disagreement. The same is true for EWV. In addition, EWV does not give any explanation of what is rationally required of agents on the basis of sufficiently general epistemic principles. I will …Read more
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51Justification and the Truth-Connection, by Clayton Littlejohn: Cambridge: Routledge, 2012, pp. vii + 269, $42.95 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (3): 622-624. 2015.
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45Egoismus, Altruismus und die Furcht vor dem eigenen Tod. Ein Beitrag zur analytischen ExistenzphilosophieZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 72 (4): 465-491. 2018.In this paper I will argue that Bernard William’s theory of frustrated desires is superior to Tom Nagel's theory of deprivation in explaining when and why death is harmful to oneself. The model of frustrated desires will then be applied contrastively to the altruist and the egoist. Contrary to what one might expect, death is not a misfortune only to the egoist. The truth is more nuanced. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference between what death means to the altruist and what it means to…Read more
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272Epistemic authority: preemption through source sensitive defeatSynthese 197 (9): 4109-4130. 2020.Modern societies are characterized by a division of epistemic labor between laypeople and epistemic authorities. Authorities are often far more competent than laypeople and can thus, ideally, inform their beliefs. But how should laypeople rationally respond to an authority’s beliefs if they already have beliefs and reasons of their own concerning some subject matter? According to the standard view, the beliefs of epistemic authorities are just further, albeit weighty, pieces of evidence. In cont…Read more
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168Knowledge from ForgettingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research (3): 525-540. 2017.This paper provides a novel argument for granting memory the status of a generative source of justification and knowledge. Memory can produce justified output beliefs and knowledge on the basis of unjustified input beliefs alone. The key to understanding how memory can generate justification and knowledge, memory generativism, is to bear in mind that memory frequently omits part of the stored information. The proposed argument depends on a broadly reliabilist approach to justification.
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15Analytische Einführung in Die ErkenntnistheorieWalter de Gruyter. 2008.Diese Analytische Einführung behandelt die wichtigsten Grundfragen und -probleme der Erkenntnistheorie und enthält eine ausführliche Darstellung von Positionen und Argumenten aus der gegenwärtigen Diskussion. Sie richtet sich an Studierende der Philosophie und anderer Fachgebiete, bietet aber auch für philosophische Kenner eine gewinnbringende kritische Orientierung. Für die zweite Auflage wurde der Text vollständig überarbeitet, um die jüngsten Entwicklungen im Themenfeld zu berücksichtigen. Am…Read more
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769Saving safety from counterexamplesSynthese 197 (12): 5161-5185. 2018.In this paper I will offer a comprehensive defense of the safety account of knowledge against counterexamples that have been recently put forward. In Sect. 2, I will discuss different versions of safety, arguing that a specific variant of method-relativized safety is the most plausible. I will then use this specific version of safety to respond to counterexamples in the recent literature. In Sect. 3, I will address alleged examples of safe beliefs that still constitute Gettier cases. In Sect. 4,…Read more
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480Standard Analytic Epistemology typically relies on conceptual analysis of folk epistemic terms such as ‘knowledge’ or ‘justification’. A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspective on this method leads to the worry that there might not be universally shared epistemic concepts, and that different languages might use folk notions that have different extensions. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that our epistemic common-sense terms pick out what is epistemically most significant or valua…Read more
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655Progress and Historical Reflection in PhilosophyIn Marcel van Ackeren (ed.), Philosophy and the Historical Perspective, Oxford University Press. pp. 51-68. 2018.What is the epistemic significance of reflecting on a discipline’s past for making progress in that discipline? I assume that the answer to this question negatively correlates with that discipline’s degree of progress over time. If and only if a science is progressive, then what people think or argue in that discipline ceases to be up-to-date. In this paper, I will distinguish different dimensions of disciplinary progress and consequently argue that veritic progress, i.e. collective convergence …Read more
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490New Lessons From Old Demons: The Case For ReliabilismIn Sanford C. Goldberg (ed.), The Brain in a Vat, Cambridge University Press. pp. 90-110. 2015.
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413Platonism and the Apriori in Thought ExperimentsIn Michael T. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige & James Robert Brown (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments, Routledge. 2018.
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29Gibt es ein subjektives Fundament unseres Wissens?Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 50 (3). 1996.
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23Counterexamples to Epistemic Externalism RevisitedIn Richard Schantz (ed.), The Externalist Challenge, De Gruyter. pp. 2--65. 2004.
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193Introduction: Experimental Philosophy and Its Critics, Parts 1 and 2Philosophical Psychology 23 (3): 283-292. 2010.In this brief introduction, we would first like to explain how these two special issues of Philosophical Psychology ( 23.3 and 23.4 ) actually came about. In addition, we will provide an outline of their overall structure and shortly summarize the featured papers
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107Thought Experiments and the Problem of Deviant RealizationsPhilosophical Studies 170 (3): 525-533. 2014.Descriptions of Gettier cases can be interpreted in ways that are incompatible with the standard judgment that they are cases of justified true belief without knowledge. Timothy Williamson claims that this problem cannot be avoided by adding further stipulations to the case descriptions. To the contrary, we argue that there is a fairly simple way to amend the Ford case, a standard description of a Gettier case, in such a manner that all deviant interpretations are ruled out. This removes one maj…Read more
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122Introspective Self-Knowledge and Reasoning: An Externalist GuideErkenntnis 71 (1): 89-105. 2009.According to the received view, externalist grounds or reasons need not be introspectively accessible. Roughly speaking, from an externalist point of view, a belief will be epistemically justified, iff it is based upon facts that make its truth objectively highly likely. This condition can be satisfied, even if the epistemic agent does not have actual or potential awareness of the justifying facts. No inner perspective on the belief-forming mechanism and its truth-ratio is needed for a belief to…Read more
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22Die Grenzen des erkenntnistheoretischen KontextualismusDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 51 (6): 993. 2003.
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3Defeasibility TheoryIn Sven Bernecker & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 156-166. 2011.This is a survey article about epistemic defeaters: what is defeated, how defeaters work, different kinds of defeaters, indefeasibility and how defeaters fit into epistemic internalism and externalism.
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16XVI. Deutscher Kongreß für Philosophie. "Neue Realitäten: Herausforderung der Philosophie" 20.-24. September 1993 an der TU Berlin (review)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 48 (2). 1994.
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192Some hope for intuitions: A reply to WeinbergPhilosophical Psychology 23 (4): 481-509. 2010.In a recent paper Weinberg (2007) claims that there is an essential mark of trustworthiness which typical sources of evidence as perception or memory have, but philosophical intuitions lack, namely that we are able to detect and correct errors produced by these “hopeful” sources. In my paper I will argue that being a hopeful source isn't necessary for providing us with evidence. I then will show that, given some plausible background assumptions, intuitions at least come close to being hopeful, i…Read more
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Geert-lueke Lueken: Inkommensurabilität AlS problem rationalen argumentierens (review)Philosophische Rundschau 40 (4): 325. 1993.
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13Die Bedingungen des Verstehens als Bedingungen der Gegenstände des VerstehensIn Julian Nida-Rümelin & Georg Meggle (eds.), Analyomen 2, Volume I: Logic, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, De Gruyter. pp. 232-245. 1997.
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263The nature of rational intuitions and a fresh look at the explanationist objectionGrazer Philosophische Studien 74 (1): 69-87. 2007.In the first part of this paper I will characterize the specific nature of rational intuition. It will be claimed that rational intuition is an evidential state with modal content that has an a priori source. This claim will be defended against several objections. The second part of the paper deals with the so-called explanationist objection against rational intuition as a justifying source. According to the best reading of this objection, intuition cannot justify any judgment since there is no …Read more
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2Erkenntnistheorie. Positionen zwischen Tradition und Gegenwart (edited book)mentis. 2001.Wie sieht die korrekte Struktur der Rechtfertigung menschlichen Wissens aus? Welches sind ihre legitimen Quellen? Wie groß ist der Umfang unserer gerechtfertigten Meinungen? Von der normativen Erkenntnistheorie erhoffen wir uns Antworten auf diese und ähnliche Fragen. Allzu oft wird dabei übersehen, daß die Antworten ganz entscheidend davon abhängen, was wir unter 'Rechtfertigung' verstehen. Mit den Beiträgen einer internationalen Autorenschaft möchte das Buch durch die Konfrontation der traditi…Read more
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Begründungsstrategien. Ein Weg durch die analytische Erkenntnistheorie (review)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 53 (2). 1999.
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Xvi. Deutscher Kongreß Für Philosophie. "neue Realitäten - Herausforderungen Der Philosophie"Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 48 (2): 292-299. 1994.
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54Transcendental Arguments and RealismIn Hans-Johann Glock (ed.), Strawson and Kant, Oxford University Press. pp. 205--218. 2003.