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229How to resolve the pyrrhonian problematic: A lesson from Descartes (review)Philosophical Studies 85 (2-3): 229-249. 1997.A main epistemic problematic, found already in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, presents a threefold choice on how a belief may be justified: either through infinitely regressive reasoning, or through circular reasoning, or through reasoning resting ultimately on some foundation. Aristotle himself apparently takes the foundationalist option when he argues that rational intuition is a foundational source of scientific knowledge. The five modes of Agrippa, which pertain to knowledge generally, aga…Read more
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10Metaphysics: an anthology (edited book)Blackwell. 1999.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. One of the most comprehensive and authoritative metaphysics anthologies available - now updated and expanded Offers the most important contemporary works on the central i…Read more
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69Propositional knowledgePhilosophical Studies 20 (3). 1969.The received definition of knowledge (as true, evident belief) has recently been questioned by Edmund Gettier with an example whose principle is as follows. A proposition, p, is both evident to and accepted by someone S, who sees that its truth entails (would entail) (that either p is true or q is true). This last is thereby made evident to him, and he accepts it, but it happens to be true only because q is true, since p is in fact false. Hence, inasmuch as he has no evidence for the proposition…Read more
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40Symposium papers, comments and an abstract: Neither body nor soul. Then what? And what does it matter?Noûs 22 (1): 87-88. 1988.Are we souls, subjects of consciousness who exist and perdure fundamentally while unextended in space? Recent epistemological arguments for the negative leave me relatively cold; but other arguments are more moving, and we shall take note of them.
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16Berkeley's master strokeIn John Foster & Howard Robinson (eds.), Essays on Berkeley: a tercentennial celebration, Oxford University Press. 1985.
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28RepliesIn Amrei Bahr & Markus Seidel (eds.), Ernest Sosa: Targeting His Philosophy, Springer. pp. 135-146. 2016.For me the two-day workshop was an excellent experience. It was very good to be reminded of all those issues that I had grappled with so intensely in earlier years, and I very much appreciated the opportunity to think about them again and to try to put them in perspective with the stimulus of the critical teams’ focused attention. I am very pleased and grateful for the intense attention and challenge to my views, and for the excellent comments. I will do my best to respond with some helpful disc…Read more
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108Epistemology, realism, and truth: The first philosophical perspectives lecturePhilosophical Perspectives 7 1-16. 1993.Truth centered epistemology puts truth at the center in more ways than one. For one thing, it makes truth a main cognitive goal of inquiry. For another, it explains other main epistemic concepts in terms of truth. Knowledge itself, for example, is explained as belief that meets certain other conditions, among them being true. And a belief is said to be rationally or epistemically justified or apt, which it must be in order to be knowledge, only if it derives from a truth-conducive faculty, an in…Read more
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Skepticism and perceptual knowledgeIn Quentin Smith (ed.), Epistemology: new essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 121. 2008.
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2Knowledge: Instrumental and testimonialIn Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa (eds.), The epistemology of testimony, Oxford University Press. pp. 116--123. 2006.
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115Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in EpistemologyCambridge University Press. 1991.From the back cover: "Ever since Plato, philosophers have faced one central question: What is the scope and nature of human knowledge? In this volume the distinguished philosopher Ernest Sosa has collected his essays on this subject written over a period of twenty-five years. All the major topics of contemporary epistemology are covered: the nature of propositional knowledge, externalism versus internalism, foundationalism versus coherentism, and the problem of the criterion. The resulting book …Read more
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6Are There Two Grades of Knowledge?Supplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 77 (1): 113-130. 2003.
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60Replies 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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995Intuitions: Their nature and epistemic efficacyGrazer Philosophische Studien 74 (1): 51-67. 2007.This paper presents an account of intuitions, and a defense of their epistemic efficacy in general, and more specifically in philosophy, followed by replies in response to various objections.
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104Nature unmirrored, epistemology naturalizedSynthese 55 (1). 1983.A. Knowledge and Justification: The nature of epistemic justification and its supervenience.B. Understanding and Validation: Two projects of epistemology, one to understand justification, the other to promote it.
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1173Dreams 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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3Philosophical Skepticism and Epistemic CircularityIn Keith DeRose & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Skepticism: a contemporary reader, Oxford University Press. 1999.
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213Intuitions and meaning divergencePhilosophical Psychology 23 (4): 419-426. 2010.Survey results are in the first instance utterances, which require interpretation. Moreover, when the results seem to involve disagreement in intuitive responses to a thought experiment, the results are most directly responsive to the scenario as envisaged by the particular subject, where the text of the example can give rise to relevantly different scenarios, depending on how the scenario is shaped by the subjects involved, under the guidance of the text. All of this opens up a defense of intui…Read more
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102The foundations of foundationalismNoûs 14 (4): 547-564. 1980.There is a controversy in contemporary philosophy over the question whether or not knowledge must have a foundation. On one side are the foundationalists, who do accept the metaphor and find the foundation in sensory experience or the like. The coherentists, on the other side, reject the foundations metaphor and consider our body of knowledge a coherent whole floating free of any foundations. This controversy grew rapidly with the rise of idealism many years ago, and it is prominent today not on…Read more