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341Vision, knowledge, and assertionConsciousness and Cognition 41 41-49. 2016.I report two experiments studying the relationship among explicit judgments about what people see, know, and should assert. When an object of interest was surrounded by visibly similar items, it diminished people’s willingness to judge that an agent sees, knows, and should tell others that it is present. This supports the claim, made by many philosophers, that inhabiting a misleading environment intuitively decreases our willingness to attribute perception and knowledge. However, contrary to str…Read more
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373Non-psychological weakness of will: self-control, stereotypes, and consequencesSynthese 191 (16): 3935-3954. 2014.Prior work on weakness of will has assumed that it is a thoroughly psychological phenomenon. At least, it has assumed that ordinary attributions of weakness of will are purely psychological attributions, keyed to the violation of practical commitments by the weak-willed agent. Debate has recently focused on which sort of practical commitment, intention or normative judgment, is more central to the ordinary concept of weakness of will. We report five experiments that significantly advance our und…Read more
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1044The ontology of epistemic reasonsNoûs 43 (3): 490-512. 2009.Epistemic reasons are mental states. They are not propositions or non-mental facts. The discussion proceeds as follows. Section 1 introduces the topic. Section 2 gives two concrete examples of how our topic directly affects the internalism/externalism debate in normative epistemology. Section 3 responds to an argument against the view that reasons are mental states. Section 4 presents two problems for the view that reasons are propositions. Section 5 presents two problems for the view that reaso…Read more
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556Pyrrhonian Skepticism Meets Speech-Act TheoryInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 2 (2): 83-98. 2012.This paper applies speech-act theory to craft a new response to Pyrrhonian skepticism and diagnose its appeal. Carefully distinguishing between different levels of language-use and noting their interrelations can help us identify a subtle mistake in a key Pyrrhonian argument
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422Excuse validation: a study in rule-breakingPhilosophical Studies 172 (3): 615-634. 2015.Can judging that an agent blamelessly broke a rule lead us to claim, paradoxically, that no rule was broken at all? Surprisingly, it can. Across seven experiments, we document and explain the phenomenon of excuse validation. We found when an agent blamelessly breaks a rule, it significantly distorts people’s description of the agent’s conduct. Roughly half of people deny that a rule was broken. The results suggest that people engage in excuse validation in order to avoid indirectly blaming other…Read more
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274Review of Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (3). 2011.A review of "Intellectual virtues: an essay in regulative epistemology" by Robert Roberts and Jay Wood.
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180Doomed to fail: the sad epistemological fateIn Miroslaw Szatkowski (ed.), Ontological proofs today, Ontos Verlag. pp. 413-422. 2012.For beings like us, no ontological argument can possibly succeed. They are doomed to fail. The point of an ontological argument is to enable nonempirical knowledge of its conclusion, namely, that God exists. But no ontological argument could possibly enable us to know its conclusion nonempirically, and so must fail in that sense
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513Practical and epistemic justification in alston’s "Perceiving God"Faith and Philosophy 25 (3). 2008.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
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449A New Paradigm for Epistemology From Reliabilism to AbilismErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3. 2016.Contemporary philosophers nearly unanimously endorse knowledge reliabilism, the view that knowledge must be reliably produced. Leading reliabilists have suggested that reliabilism draws support from patterns in ordinary judgments and intuitions about knowledge, luck, reliability, and counterfactuals. That is, they have suggested a proto-reliabilist hypothesis about “commonsense” or “folk” epistemology. This paper reports nine experimental studies (N = 1262) that test the proto-reliabilist hypoth…Read more
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416Knowledge, certainty, and assertionPhilosophical 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
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269Irksome assertionsPhilosophical 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
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24Critical Notice of Robert C Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (3): 793-797. 2011.
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389Understanding and the Norm of ExplanationPhilosophia 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.
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618The test of truth: An experimental investigation of the norm of assertionCognition 129 (2): 279-291. 2013.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
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253The distinctive “should” of assertabilityPhilosophical 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
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KnowledgeOxford Bibliographies Online. 2011.This article provides an annotated bibliography on the theory of knowledge.
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452Evidence of factive norms of belief and decisionSynthese 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
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324Promises to Keep: Speech Acts and the Value of Reflective KnowledgeLogos 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.
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452Bi-Level Virtue EpistemologyIn Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa, Springer. pp. 147--164. 2013.A critical explanation of Ernest Sosa's bi-level virtue epistemology.
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University of WaterlooDepartment of PhilosophyCanada Research Chair In Philosophy and Cognitive Science
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Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
3 more
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Moral Psychology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Experimental Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Other Academic Areas |