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19On the “content” and “relevance” of information-theoretic epistemologyBehavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (1): 79-81. 1983.
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50Moral Relativism, Cognitivism and Defeasible RulesSocial 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
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19Vincent A. Tomas 1916-1995Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 69 (5). 1996.
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11Essays 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
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Consciousness of the Self and the PresentIn James Tomberlin (ed.), Agent, Language and the Structure of the World, Hackett Publishing Company. pp. 131-47. 1983.
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12External realism and philosophy in transitionJournal 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
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78Situations against virtues : the situationist attack on virtue theoryIn Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (ed.), Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice, Cambridge University Press. pp. 274--290. 2009.
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190Metaphysics: 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.
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971For the Love of Truth?In Linda Zagzebski & Abrol Fairweather (eds.), Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 49-62. 2000.Rational beings pursue and value truth . Intellectual conduct is to be judged, accordingly, by how well it aids our pursuit of that ideal. I ask whether these platitudes mean, and whether they are true.
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97Reflective knowledgeOxford University Press. 2009.The second part of the book presents an alternative beyond the historical positions of Part I, one that defends a virtue epistemology combined with epistemic ...
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7Philosophical Issues, Action TheoryWiley-Blackwell. 2012.This is a collection of papers on action theory, very broadly conceived. It contains cutting-edge work by some of the most important contributors in the field
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42Testimony and coherenceIn A. Chakrabarti & B. K. Matilal (eds.), Knowing From Words, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 59--67. 1994.
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233Knowledge and Intellectual VirtueThe Monist 68 (2): 226-245. 1985.An intellectual virtue is a quality bound to help maximize one’s surplus of truth over error; or so let us assume for now, though a more just conception may include as desiderata also generality, coherence, and explanatory power, unless the value of these is itself explained as derivative from the character of their contribution precisely to one’s surplus of truth over error. This last is an issue I mention in order to lay it aside. Here we assume only a teleological conception of intellectual v…Read more
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224Relevant alternatives, contextualism includedPhilosophical Studies 119 (1-2): 35-65. 2004.Since this paper is for a conference on “Contextualism in Epistemology and Beyond,” I have opted to sketch a retrospective of contextualism in epistemology, including highlights of the “relevant alternatives” approach, given how relevantism and contextualism have developed in tandem. We focus on externalist forms of contextualism, bypassing internalist forms such as Cohen 1988 and Lewis 1996, but much of our discussion will be applicable to contextualism generally. Internalist contextualism is h…Read more
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58A Virtue Epistemology: Volume I: Apt Belief and Reflective KnowledgeOxford University Press UK. 2007.A Virtue Epistemology presents a new approach to some of the oldest and most gripping problems of philosophy, those of knowledge and scepticism. Ernest Sosa argues for two levels of knowledge, the animal and the reflective, each viewed as a distinctive human accomplishment. By adopting a kind of virtue epistemology in line with the tradition found in Aristotle, Aquinas, Reid, and especially Descartes, he presents an account of knowledge which can be used to shed light on different varieties of s…Read more
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99Surviving mattersNoûs 24 (2): 297-322. 1990.Life may turn sour and, in extremis, not worth living. On occasion it may be best, moreover, to lay down one's life for a greater cause. None of this is any news, debatable though it may remain, in general or case by case. Now comes the news that life does not matter in the way we had thought. No resurgence of existentialism, nor tidings from some ancient religion or some new cult, the news derives from the most sober and probing philosophical argument (the extraor- dinary Parfit, 1984, Part III…Read more
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17Experience and the Objects of Perception (review)Review of Metaphysics 39 (1): 142-144. 1985.This study aims primarily at an account of sensory experience and perception uncommitted to objectual sense data or sense impressions. In the end it does make room for sense impressions, but only as entities somehow abstracted from phenomenological attention to sense experience. The "phenomenological standpoint" is attained by imagining "that a transparent screen has been placed at right angles about three feet from your eyes between you and all the objects before you," and by imagining further …Read more
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121Varieties of CausationGrazer 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
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852A defense of the use of intuitions in philosophyIn Michael Bishop & Dominic Murphy (eds.), Stich and His Critics, Blackwell. pp. 101--112. 2009.
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44De re belief, action explanations, and the essential indexicalIn Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Diana Raffman & Nicholas Asher (eds.), Modality, morality, and belief: essays in honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, Cambridge University Press. pp. 235--249. 1995.