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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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111Human knowledge, animal and reflectivePhilosophical Studies 106 (3). 2001.Stephen Grimm finds me inclined to bifurcate epistemic assessment into higher and lower orders while showing awareness of this only in recent writings. Two untoward consequences allegedly follow: (a) my rejection of Virtue Reliabilism, and (b) my knowledge-based account of the value attaching to our knowledge on the higher level. By contrast, Grimm considers Virtue Reliabilism a perfectly adequate account of knowledge, while the higher epistemic state he believes to be, rather, understanding, wh…Read more
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47Knowledge in context, skepticism in doubt: The virtue of our facultiesPhilosophical Perspectives 2 139-155. 1988.
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ConditionIn Audi Robert (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 149. 1995.
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63Proper Functionalism and Virtue Epistemology (review)In Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 253-270. 1996.Comprehensive and packed, Alvin Plantinga's two-volume treatise defies sum- mary. The first volume, Warrant: Current Views, is a meticulous critical survey of epistemology today. Many current approaches are presented and exhaustively discussed, and a negative verdict is passed on each in turn. This prepares the way for volume two, Warrant and Proper Function, where a positive view is advanced and developed in satisfying detail. The cumulative result is most impressive, and should command attenti…Read more
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225Relevant 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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74Fregean reference defendedPhilosophical Issues 6 91-99. 1995.What is involved in acquiring a russellian proposition (x, φ) as content of an attitude: what does it take for one to acquire such an attitude de re? How do we gain access to x itself so as to be able to have (x, φ) as content of our thought?
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127Reliabilism and Intellectual VirtueIn Guy Axtell (ed.), Knowledge, Belief, and Character: Readings in Virtue Epistemology, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 33-40. 2000.
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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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203A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Volume IOxford University Press. 2007.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.
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122Varieties 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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43Epistemology and primitive truthIn Michael Lynch (ed.), The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, Mit Press. 2001.
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43Abilities, concepts, and externalismIn John Heil & Alfred R. Mele (eds.), Mental Causation, Oxford University Press. 1993.
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52The Relevance of Moore and WittgensteinIn Albert Casullo & Joshua C. Thurow (eds.), The a Priori in Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 186. 2013.
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Offtrack bets against the skepticIn Luper-Foy Steven (ed.), The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and His Critics, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 314. 1987.
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1690Davidson's EpistemologyIn 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
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106Responses to four criticsPhilosophical 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
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2Intuitions and truthIn Patrick Greenough & Michael P. Lynch (eds.), Truth and realism, Oxford University Press. pp. 208--26. 2006.
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5On the propositional relation theory of perceptionGrazer Philosophische Studien 32 (1): 205-208. 1988.
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84The coherence of virtue and the virtue of coherenceSynthese 64 (1). 1985.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
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1Moore's ProofIn Susana Nuccetelli & Gary Seay (eds.), Themes From G. E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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20Chapter seven. Knowledge: Instrumental and TestimonialIn Knowing Full Well, Princeton University Press. pp. 128-139. 2010.
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98Serious philosophy and freedom of spiritJournal of Philosophy 84 (12): 707-726. 1987.I wish to lay out a view of “serious” philosophy, and to consider recent attacks on that view from the side of the “free spirited” philosophy: deconstruction and textualism, hermeneutics, critical theory, and the new pragma-tism. Without defining what all forms of freedom have in common, I shall draw from them a combined critique against seriousness. I will also examine, occasionally and in passing, positive ideas conjured up by the free. But mainly I wish to consider their combined critique of …Read more