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461Preemptive 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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489Why 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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454How 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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44Egoismus, 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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167Knowledge 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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758Saving 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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474Standard 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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643Progress 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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487New 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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396Platonism 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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Wenn der Determinismus wahr ware... Uber die Möglichkeit von Willensfreiheit in der natiirlichen Welt1In Andreas Bächli & Klaus Petrus (eds.), Monism, Ontos. pp. 9--293. 2003.
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171Reliabilism and the problem of defeatersGrazer Philosophische Studien 79 (1): 65-76. 2009.It is widely assumed that justification is defeasible, e.g. that under certain conditions counterevidence removes prior justification of beliefs. In this paper I will first (sect. 1) explain why this feature of justification poses a prima facie problem for reliabilism. I then will try out different reliabilist strategies to deal with the problem. Among them I will discuss conservative strategies (sect. 2), eliminativist stragies (sect. 3) and revisionist strategies (sect. 4). In the final sectio…Read more
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169Erratum to: Thought experiments and the problem of deviant realizationsPhilosophical Studies 170 (3): 535-536. 2014.Erratum to: Philos Stud DOI 10.1007/s11098-013-0226-3Dear Reader, due to production systems the following changes could not be made to this article:In the paragraph immediately preceding the case description (ford-iii), the sentenceHere we explicitly state that Smith’s inference is based only on his belief that Jones owns a Ford, and that this logical inference provides Smith’s only justification for believing that someone in his office owns a Ford (to make things fully precise, we also add a ti…Read more
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162Bonjour‘s Self-Defeating Argument for CoherentismErkenntnis 50 (2-3): 463-479. 1999.One of the most influential arguments for the coherence theory of empirical justification is BonJours a priori argument from the internalist regress. According to this argument, foundationalism cannot solve the problem of the internalist regress since internalism is incompatible with basic beliefs. Hence, coherentism seems to be the only option. In my article I contend that this argument is doomed to failure. It is either too strong or too weak. Too strong, since even coherentism cannot stop the…Read more
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107Experimental Philosophy and its Critics (edited book)Routledge. 2012.Experimental philosophy is one of the most recent and controversial developments in philosophy. Its basic idea is rather simple: to test philosophical thought experiments and philosophers’ intuitions about them with scientific methods, mostly taken from psychology and the social sciences. The ensuing experimental results, such as the cultural relativity of certain philosophical intuitions, has engaged – and at times infuriated – many more traditionally minded "armchair" philosophers since then. …Read more
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Transcendental Arguments. Problems and Prospects; Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism. Answering the Question of Justification (review)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 56 (2). 2002.
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119Inferential Contextualism, Epistemological Realism and Scepticism: Comments on WilliamsErkenntnis 61 (2-3): 345-352. 2004.In this paper I will discuss Michael Williamss inferential contextualism – a position that must be carefully distinguished from the currently more fashionable attributer contextualism. I will argue that Williamss contextualism is not stable, though it avoids some of the shortcomings of simple inferential contextualism. In particular, his criticism of epistemological realism cannot be supported on the basis of his own account. I will also argue that we need not give up epistemological realism in …Read more
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32Das erkenntnistheoretische RegreßargumentZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 55 (2). 2001.Wenn von dem epistemischen Regreßargument die Rede ist, dann denkt man gewöhnlich an ein Argument für den erkenntnistheoretischen Fundamentalismus: Um einen drohenden Begründungsregreß zu vermeiden, muß man annehmen, daß es sogenannte basale Meinungen gibt, die nicht durch andere Meinungen (oder propositionale Zustände inferentiell gerechtfertigt werden, sondern unmittelbar gerechtfertigt sind. Das fundamentalistische Regreßargument ist jedoch nur eine mögliche Reaktion auf das zugrundeliegende …Read more
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776Doubts about Philosophy? The Alleged Challenge from DisagreementIn Tim Henning & David Schweikard (eds.), Knowledge, Virtue, and Action. Essays on Putting Epistemic Virtues to Work, Routledge. pp. 72-98. 2013.In philosophy, as in many other disciplines and domains, stable disagreement among peers is a widespread and well-known phenomenon. Our intuitions about paradigm cases, e.g. Christensen's Restaurant Case, suggest that in such controversies suspension of judgment is rationally required. This would prima facie suggest a robust suspension of judgment in philosophy. But we are still lacking a deeper theoretical explanation of why and under what conditions suspension is rationally mandatory. In the f…Read more
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37Warum wir Wissen als einen wichtigen Begriff der Erkenntnistheorie betrachten sollten: Eine Antwort auf Ansgar BeckermannZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 56 (1). 2002.
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20Review: Neuere Tendenzen in der Analytischen Erkenntnistheorie (review)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 51 (4). 1997.
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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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106Thought 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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119Introspective 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.