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62Proper 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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61Duncan Pritchard: Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our BelievingJournal of Philosophy 114 (10): 563-569. 2017.
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59Professor Malcolm on “Scientific Materialism and the Identity Theory”Dialogue 3 (4): 422-423. 1965.
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59Causation (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1993.This volume presents a selection of the most influential recent discussions of the crucial metaphysical question: What is it for one event to cause another? The subject of causation bears on many topics, such as time, explanation, mental states, the laws of nature, and the philosophy of science. Contributors include J.L Mackie, Michael Scriven, Jaegwon Kim, G.E.M. Anscombe, G.H. von Wright, C.J. Ducasse, Wesley C. Salmon, David Lewis, Paul Horwich, Jonathan Bennett, Ernest Sosa, and Michael Tool…Read more
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58II_— _Ernest Sosa: Knowledge, Animal and Reflective: A Reply to Michael WilliamsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 77 (1): 113-130. 2003.I give an exposition and critical discussion of Sellars’s Myth of the Given, and especially of its epistemic side. In later writings Sellars takes a pragmatist turn in his epistemology. This is explored and compared with his earlier critique of givenist mythology. In response to Michael Williams, it is argued that these issues are importantly independent of philosophy of language or mind, and that my own take on them does not commit me to any absurd radical foundationalism on language or mind. M…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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58Replies 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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58Causation and conditionals (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1975.Mackie, J. L. Causes and conditions.--Taylor, R. The metaphysics of causation.--Scriven, M. Defects of the necessary condition analysis of causation.--Kim, J. Causes and events: Mackie on causation.--Anscombe, G. E. M. Causality and determination.--Davidson, D. Causal relations.--Wright, G. H. von. On the logic and epistemology of the causal relation.--Ducasse, C. J. On the nature and the observability of the causal relation.--Sellars, W. S. Counterfactuals.--Chisholm, R. M. Law statements and c…Read more
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56On our knowledge of matters of factMind 83 (331): 388-405. 1974.The traditional conception of knowledge as justified true belief has collapsed under weighty objections. Some of these are well known; but others, though equally weighty and puzzling, have attracted comparatively little attention, and still demand careful study. Only through such study can we approach correct understanding of propositional knowledge.
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56Virtue perspectivism: A response to Foley and FumertonPhilosophical Issues 5 29-50. 1994.I am grateful to both Richards, Foley and Fumerton, for the time and attention that they have given to my work. I have certainly learned from their excellent comments, just as I expected. Given the constraints, however, I must be selective in my response. First of all, I will aim to present my view of human knowledge in a broader context. Against this background I will then respond to several of the points they have made.
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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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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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50John Greco’s The Transmission of KnowledgeSynthese 200 (4): 1-11. 2022.Review of John Greco's The Transmission of Knowledge This paper responds to the Lackey objection to virtue epistemology. Its response is one that can be used to defend Greco's virtue epistemology as well as the author's own virtue epistemology.
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48A Companion to Metaphysics (review)Philosophical Review 105 (3): 418. 1996.This volume is an encyclopedia, with entries on philosophers, issues, views, and concepts in metaphysics, pretty broadly construed. I must admit that I was at first dubious about the value of such a book, particularly with the Encyclopedia of Philosophy being updated, and the new Routledge Encyclopedia coming out. But the Companion has a number of virtues that make it a useful resource for both students and professional philosophers.
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47Knowledge in context, skepticism in doubt: The virtue of our facultiesPhilosophical Perspectives 2 139-155. 1988.
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45On “Knowledge To” and Wang YangmingDao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 22 (2): 187-192. 2023.Drawing on insights of W ang Yangming 王陽明, Yong H uang proposes an account of a phenomenon that has in recent times suffered neglect. This neglect has been relieved only by the idea of a “besire,” a mental attitude that combines features of both beliefs and desires. I accept the insightfully discerned phenomenon, but offer a different account of its nature and importance. The phenomenon is real, though, and different from the familiar phenomena of knowledge that and knowledge how.
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45The status of becoming: What is happening now?Journal of Philosophy 76 (1): 26-42. 1979.What is the ontological status of temporal becoming, of the present, or the now? We shall consider in turn four answers to this question: (i) the objective-property doctrine, (ii) the thought-reflexive analysis, (iii) the tensed-exemplification view, and (iv) the form-of-thought account.
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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.
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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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43Knowledge, Reflection, and ActionCroatian Journal of Philosophy 15 (3): 253-265. 2015.Our main topic is epistemic agency, which can be either free or unfree. This aligns with a distinction between two sorts of knowledge, the reflective and the animal. We first take up the nature and significance of these two sorts of knowledge, starting with the refl ective. In a second section we then consider the nature of suspension and how that relates suspension to higher orders of meta-belief. Finally, we consider a distinction in epistemology between animal competence and refl ective justi…Read more