•  487
    This paper clarifies and evaluates a premise of William Alston’s argument in Perceiving God. The premise in question: if it is practically rational to engage in a doxastic practice, then it is epistemically rational to suppose that said practice is reliable. I first provide the background needed to understand how this premise fits into Alston’s main argument. I then present Alston’s main argument, and proceed to clarify, criticize, modify, and ultimately reject Alston’s argument for the premise …Read more
  •  245
    Irksome assertions
    Philosophical Studies 166 (1): 123-128. 2013.
    The Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA) says that knowledge is the norm of assertion: you may assert a proposition only if you know that it’s true. The primary support for KAA is an explanatory inference from a broad range of linguistic data. The more data that KAA well explains, the stronger the case for it, and the more difficult it is for the competition to keep pace. In this paper we critically assess a purported new linguistic datum, which, it has been argued, KAA well explains. We argue t…Read more
  •  376
    Knowledge, certainty, and assertion
    Philosophical Psychology 29 (2): 293-299. 2016.
    Researchers have debated whether knowledge or certainty is a better candidate for the norm of assertion. Should you make an assertion only if you know it's true? Or should you make an assertion only if you're certain it's true? If either knowledge or certainty is a better candidate, then this will likely have detectable behavioral consequences. I report an experiment that tests for relevant behavioral consequences. The results support the view that assertability is more closely linked to knowled…Read more
  •  358
    Understanding and the Norm of Explanation
    Philosophia 43 (4): 1171-1175. 2015.
    I propose and defend the hypothesis that understanding is the norm of explanation. On this proposal, an explanation should express understanding. I call this the understanding account of explanation. The understanding account is supported by social and introspective observations. It is also supported by the relationship between knowledge and understanding, on the one hand, and assertion and explanation, on the other.
  •  577
    Assertion is fundamental to our lives as social and cognitive beings. Philosophers have recently built an impressive case that the norm of assertion is factive. That is, you should make an assertion only if it is true. Thus far the case for a factive norm of assertion been based on observational data. This paper adds experimental evidence in favor of a factive norm from six studies. In these studies, an assertion’s truth value dramatically affects whether people think it should be made. Whereas …Read more
  •  230
    The distinctive “should” of assertability
    Philosophical Psychology 30 (4): 481-489. 2017.
    Recent work has assumed that the normativity associated with assertion differs from the normativity of morality, practical rationality, etiquette, and legality. That is, whether an assertion “should” be made is not merely a function of these other familiar sorts of normativity and is especially connected to truth. Some researchers have challenged this assumption of distinctive normativity. In this paper I report two experiments that test the assumption. Participants read a brief story, judged wh…Read more
  • Knowledge
    Oxford Bibliographies Online. 2011.
    This article provides an annotated bibliography on the theory of knowledge.
  •  424
    Evidence of factive norms of belief and decision
    Synthese 192 (12): 4009-4030. 2015.
    According to factive accounts of the norm of belief and decision-making, you should not believe or base decisions on a falsehood. Even when the evidence misleadingly suggests that a false proposition is true, you should not believe it or base decisions on it. Critics claim that factive accounts are counterintuitive and badly mischaracterize our ordinary practice of evaluating beliefs and decisions. This paper reports four experiments that rigorously test the critic’s accusations and the viabilit…Read more
  •  300
    Promises to Keep: Speech Acts and the Value of Reflective Knowledge
    Logos and Episteme 2 (4): 583-590. 2011.
    This paper offers a new account of reflective knowledge’s value, building on recent work on the epistemic norms of speech acts. Reflective knowledge is valuable because it licenses us to make guarantees and promises.
  •  390
  •  14
    Ad Infinitum: New Essays on Epistemological Infinitism (edited book)
    Oxford University Press UK. 2014.
    Infinitism is an ancient view in epistemology about the structure of knowledge and epistemic justification, according to which there are no foundational reasons for belief. The view has never been popular, and is often associated with skepticism, but after languishing for centuries it has recently begun a resurgence. Ad Infinitum presents new work on the topic by leading epistemologists. They shed new light on infinitism's distinctive strengths and weaknesses, and address questions, new and old,…Read more
  •  423
    I respond to John Greco’s argument that all forms of internalism in epistemology are either false or uninteresting. The paper divides into two sections. First, I explain precisely what internalists and externalists in epistemology disagree over. This puts us in a position to assess whether Greco’s argument succeeds. Second, I present Greco’s argument and offer two objections.
  •  279
    You can't get away with murder that easily: A response to Timothy Mulgan
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 13 (4). 2005.
    I respond to an objection against satisficing consequentialism, due to Tim Mulgan.
  •  476
    Does Perceiving Entail Knowing?
    Theoria 76 (3): 197-206. 2010.
    This article accomplishes two closely connected things. First, it refutes an influential view about the relationship between perception and knowledge. In particular, it demonstrates that perceiving does not entail knowing. Second, it leverages that refutation to demonstrate that knowledge is not the most general factive propositional attitude.
  •  575
    Knowledge attributions in iterated fake barn cases
    Analysis 77 (1): 104-115. 2017.
    In a single-iteration fake barn case, the agent correctly identifies an object of interest on the first try, despite the presence of nearby lookalikes that could have mislead her. In a multiple-iteration fake barn case, the agent first encounters several fakes, misidentifies each of them, and then encounters and correctly identifies a genuine item of interest. Prior work has established that people tend to attribute knowledge in single-iteration fake barn cases, but multiple-iteration cases have…Read more
  •  346
    The point of assertion is to transmit knowledge
    Analysis 76 (2): 130-136. 2016.
    Recent work in philosophy and cognitive science shows that knowledge is the norm of our social practice of assertion, in the sense that an assertion should express knowledge. But why should an assertion express knowledge? I hypothesize that an assertion should express knowledge because the point of assertion is to transmit knowledge. I present evidence supporting this hypothesis.
  • Review of John Greco, Achieving Knowledge (review)
    Mind. forthcoming.
    A review of "Achieving Knowledge" by John Greco.
  •  599
    Foundationalism for Modest Infinitists
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (2): 275-283. 2010.
    Infinitists argue that their view outshines foundationalism because infinitism can, whereas foundationalism cannot, explain two of epistemic justification’s crucial features: it comes in degrees and it can be complete. I present four different ways that foundationalists could make sense of those two features of justification, thereby undermining the case for infinitism.
  •  458
    Reid on the priority of natural language
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 214-223. 2011.
    Thomas Reid distinguished between natural and artificial language and argued that natural language has a very specific sort of priority over artificial language. This paper critically interprets Reid's discussion, extracts a Reidian explanatory argument for the priority of natural language, and places Reid's thought in the broad tradition of Cartesian linguistics.
  •  479
    A conspicuous art: putting Gettier to the test
    Philosophers' Imprint 13. 2013.
    Professional philosophers say it’s obvious that a Gettier subject does not know. But experimental philosophers and psychologists have argued that laypeople and non-Westerners view Gettier subjects very differently, based on experiments where laypeople tend to ascribe knowledge to Gettier subjects. I argue that when effectively probed, laypeople and non-Westerners unambiguously agree that Gettier subjects do not know.
  •  192
    The epistemic closure principle says that knowledge is closed under known entailment. The closure principle is deeply implicated in numerous core debates in contemporary epistemology. Closure’s opponents claim that there are good theoretical reasons to abandon it. Closure’s proponents claim that it is a defining feature of ordinary thought and talk and, thus, abandoning it is radically revisionary. But evidence for these claims about ordinary practice has thus far been anecdotal. In this paper, …Read more
  •  273
    Prompting challenges
    Analysis 70 (3): 456-462. 2010.
    I consider a serious objection to the knowledge account of assertion and develop a response. In the process I introduce important new data on prompting assertion, which all theorists working in the area should take note of.
  •  262
    Assertion and Assurance: Some Empirical Evidence
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (1): 214-222. 2015.
    I report three experiments relevant to evaluating Krista Lawlor's theory of assurance, respond to her criticism of the knowledge account of assertion, and propose an alternative theory of assurance.
  •  168
    Liberal Thinking
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3): 515-533. 2013.
    When you think about a particular object, what makes your thought about that object? Roderick Chisholm, Ernest Sosa and Michael McKinsey have defended 'latitudinarian', 'descriptivist', or what I call 'liberal' answers to that question. In this paper I carefully consider the motivation for these liberal views and show how it extends in unanticipated ways to motivate views that are considerably more liberal.
  •  368
    Unreliable Knowledge
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (3): 529-545. 2013.
    There is a virtual consensus in contemporary epistemology that knowledge must be reliably produced. Everyone, it seems, is a reliabilist about knowledge in that sense. I present and defend two arguments that unreliable knowledge is possible. My first argument proceeds from an observation about the nature of achievements, namely, that achievements can proceed from unreliable abilities. My second argument proceeds from an observation about the epistemic efficacy of explanatory inference, namely, t…Read more
  •  30
    Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa (edited book)
    Springer. 2013.
    9 We should not expect any significant difference in the nature of the thoughts expressed by means of them. Now, in the case of anaphoric uses, what typically makes the individual salient is a descriptive characterization available from ...
  •  34
    A review of "Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology".
  •  509
    The Express Knowledge Account of Assertion
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (1): 37-45. 2011.
    Many philosophers favour the simple knowledge account of assertion, which says you may assert something only if you know it. The simple account is true but importantly incomplete. I defend a more informative thesis, namely, that you may assert something only if your assertion expresses knowledge. I call this 'the express knowledge account of assertion', which I argue better handles a wider range of cases while at the same time explaining the simple knowledge account's appeal. §1 introduces some …Read more