•  28
  •  52
    Moral Relativism, Cognitivism and Defeasible Rules
    Social Philosophy and Policy 11 (1): 116-138. 1994.
    Naturalism rejects a sui generis and fundamental realm of the evaluative or normative. Thought and talk about the good and the right must hence be understood without appeal to any such evaluative or normative concepts or properties. In Sections I and II, we see noncognitivism step forward with its account of evaluative and normative language as fundamentally optative or prescriptive. Prescriptivism falls afoul of several problems. Prominent among them below is the “problem of prima facie reasons…Read more
  •  19
    Vincent A. Tomas 1916-1995
    with John Ladd
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 69 (5). 1996.
  •  23
    The Semantics of Imperatives
    American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1). 1967.
  •  12
    Essays on the Philosophy of George Berkeley (edited book)
    D. Reidel. 1986.
    A tercentenary conference of March, 1985, drew to Newport, Rhode Island, nearly all the most distinguished Berkeley scholars now active. The conference was organized by the International Berkeley Society, with the support of several institutions and many people. This volume represents a selection of the lead papers deliv ered at that conference, most now revised. The Cartesian marriage of Mind and Body has proved an uneasy union. Each side has claimed supremacy and usurped the rights of the othe…Read more
  •  12
    External realism and philosophy in transition
    Journal of Social Philosophy 22 (1): 183-186. 1991.
    This paper was written for a panel session, in which I was asked to represent an analytic perspective. On reflection I found that there is no such thing, however, and that what best unifies the analytic traditions is not even a set of questions, much less a set of answers, but only agreement on certain standards of clarity and argumentation, and an interest in dialectic and debate. Certain issues have long dominated the analytic agenda, it is true, and I see no better way to represent an analyti…Read more
  • A Companion to Epitemology (edited book)
    Blackwell. 1992.
  •  193
    Metaphysics: An Anthology, 2nd Edition (edited book)
    Wiley-Blackwell. 2011.
    Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this highly successful textbook continues to represent the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of canonical readings in metaphysics. In addition to updated material from the first edition, it presents entirely new sections on ontology and the metaphysics of material objects.
  •  11
    Knowledge (review)
    Journal of Philosophy 73 (20): 812-821. 1976.
  •  122
    Varieties of Causation
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 11 (1): 93-103. 1980.
    According to nomological accounts of causation causal connections among events or states must be mediated by contingent laws of nature. Three types of causal connection are cited and discussed in opposition to such nomological accounts: (a) material causation (as when a zygote is generated by the union of an ovum and a sperm); (b) consequentialist causation (as when an apple is chromatically colored as a result of being red); (c) inclusive causation (as when a board is on a stump in consequence …Read more
  •  209
    Ernest Sosa presents a new approach to the problems of knowledge and scepticism. He argues for two levels of knowledge, the animal and the reflective, each viewed as a distinctive human accomplishment. Sosa's virtue epistemology illuminates different varieties of scepticism, the nature and status of intuitions, and epistemic normativity.
  •  236
    On the nature and objects of knowledge
    Philosophical Review 81 (3): 364-371. 1972.
  •  2
    Intuitions and truth
    In Patrick Greenough & Michael Patrick Lynch (eds.), Truth and realism, Oxford University Press. pp. 208--26. 2006.
  •  53
    The Relevance of Moore and Wittgenstein
    In Albert Casullo & Joshua C. Thurow (eds.), The a Priori in Philosophy, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 186. 2013.
  •  1719
    Davidson's Epistemology
    In Kirk Ludwig (ed.), Contemporary Philosophy in Focus: Donald Davidson, Cambridge University Press. 2003.
    Davidson’s epistemology, like Kant’s, features a transcendental argument as its centerpiece. Both philosophers reject any priority, whether epistemological or conceptual, of the subjective over the objective, attempting thus to solve the problem of the external world. For Davidson, three varieties of knowledge are coordinate—knowledge of the self, of other minds, and of the external world. None has priority. Despite the epistemologically coordinate status of the mind and the world, however, the …Read more
  •  107
    Responses to four critics
    Philosophical Studies 166 (3): 625-636. 2013.
    This alleged disagreement is only verbal, however, given my anti-intellectualist conception of a suitably broad category of ‘‘belief.’’ Although this broad conception figures large in my earlier writings, it figures not at all in the book under discussion, which helps explain H&H’s reaction. Here now is how I make the relevant distinctions and try to clarify what reflective knowledge amounts to, and how it comes in degrees
  •  4
    Q & A
    The Philosophers' Magazine 54 115-116. 2011.
  •  84
    Polyfacetic epistemology would answer the skeptic, provide how-to-think manuals, explain how we know, and more. To some it is the project of assuring oneself, of validating one's knowledge or supposed knowledge, turning it into real and assured knowledge, thus defeating the skeptic. To others it is a set of rules or instructions, a guide to the perplexed, a manual for conducting the intellect. To others yet it is a meta-discipline, but one whose purpose is not nearly so much guidance as understa…Read more
  •  5
    On the propositional relation theory of perception
    with J. -H. Ha
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 32 (1): 205-208. 1988.
  •  1
  •  29
    Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles
    Journal of Philosophy 94 (8): 410. 1997.