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68Epistemology and primitive truthIn Michael P. Lynch (ed.), The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, Mit Press. 2001.
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137Reflective Knowledge: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Volume IIOxford University Press. 2011.Reflective Knowledge draws together ground-breaking work in epistemology by Ernest Sosa. He argues for a reflective virtue epistemology based on virtuous circularity, shows how this idea may be found explicitly or just below the surface in such illustrious predecessors as Descartes and Moore, and defends the view against its rivals.
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345Knowledge 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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1287Dreams and philosophyProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 79 (2). 2005.That conception is orthodox in today’s common sense and also historically. Presupposed by Plato, Augustine, and Descartes, it underlies familiar skeptical paradoxes. Similar orthodoxy is also found in our developing science of sleep and dreaming.[2] Despite such confluence.
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301Metaphysics: An Anthology (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 1999.This anthology, intended to accompany _A Companion to Metaphysics_ (Blackwell, 1995), brings together over 60 selections which represent the best and most important works in metaphysics during this century. The selections are grouped under ten major metaphysical problems and each section is preceded by an introduction by the editors.
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35Natural theology and naturalist atheology: Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalismIn Deane-Peter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga, Cambridge University Press. 2007.
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214Surviving 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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172Classical analysisJournal of Philosophy 80 (11): 695-710. 1983.The first paragraph of the article reads: "Classical analysis is concerned neither with cataloguing usage nor with intellectual therapy (except of course by aiming to satisfy curiosity and remove puzzlement). Of recent sorts of analysis, it's the attempt to find the "logical structure of the world" or the "logical form" of various facts that chiefly claims our attention. But philosophers in every period have been absorbed by such analysis. Think of the Greek search for real definitions. Or think…Read more
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How Are Experiments Relevant to Intuitions?In Joshua Knobe & Shaun Nichols (eds.), Experimental Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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119Replies to Richard Fumerton, John Greco, and Michael WilliamsInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1 (2): 138-149. 2011.This is my response to three commentators—Richard Fumerton, John Greco, and Michael Williams—for a symposium on my book, Reflective Knowledge
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17Minimal IntuitionIn Michael R. DePaul & William Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 257-269. 1998.
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3A Virtue EpistemologyPhilosophical Studies 143 (3): 427-440. 2009.In my remarks, I discuss Sosa's attempt to deal with the sceptical threat posed by dreaming. Sosa explores two replies to the problem of dreaming scepticism. First, he argues that, on the imagination model of dreaming, dreaming does not threaten the safety of our beliefs. Second, he argues that knowledge does not require safety, but a weaker condition which is not threatened by dreaming skepticism. I raise questions about both elements of his reply.
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159The truth of modest realismPhilosophical Issues 3 177-195. 1993.True, the believing could not in those cir- cumstances be there the object of belief being there. accept a notion of correspondence or reference according to which a word or a brain state of ours can refer to some external or or independent (This no more forces
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Philosophical Issues, Philosophy of Language (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2007.Some of the most distinguished active contributors to the field join together for a collection of their most recent work. Brings together important new papers by many of the most distinguished philosophers of language Takes up some of the central issues in the field in recent years Includes some of the best cutting-edge work in philosophy of language
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7Knowledge: instrumental and testimonialIn Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa (eds.), The epistemology of testimony, Oxford University Press. pp. 116--123. 2006.
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126The essentials of personsDialectica 53 (3-4): 227-41. 1999.This paper tries to clarify the nature of philosophical questions as to the ontological nature of things, especially persons. It considers implications of an Aristotelian account, which leads to an ontology that makes subjects and other things epistemologically remote. This makes the account doubtfully reconcilable with the special epistemic relation that each of us has to oneself, via for example the cogito.
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154Davidson's thinking causesIn Pascal Engel (ed.), Mental causation, Oxford University Press. 1995.
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415Rational intuition: Bealer on its nature and epistemic statusPhilosophical Studies 81 (2-3): 151--162. 1996.A discussion of George Bealer's conception and defense of rational intuition as a basis of philosophical knowledge, under three main heads: a) the phenomenology of intellectual intuition; b) the status of such intuition as a basic source of evidence, and the explanation of what gives it that status; and c) the defense of intuition against those who would reject it and exclude it on principle from the set of valid sources of evidence.
