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435Knowledge GuaranteedNoûs 47 (3): 602-612. 2011.What is the relationship between saying ‘I know that Q’ and guaranteeing that Q? John Austin, Roderick Chisholm and Wilfrid Sellars all agreed that there is some important connection, but disagreed over what exactly it was. In this paper I discuss each of their accounts and present a new one of my own. Drawing on speech-act theory and recent research on the epistemic norms of speech acts, I suggest that the relationship is this: by saying ‘I know that Q’, you represent yourself as having the aut…Read more
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395Epistemic situationism and cognitive abilityIn Mark Alfano & Abrol Fairweather (eds.), Epistemic Situationism, Oxford University Press. pp. 158-167. 2017.Leading virtue epistemologists defend the view that knowledge must proceed from intellectual virtue and they understand virtues either as refned character traits cultivated by the agent over time through deliberate effort, or as reliable cognitive abilities. Philosophical situationists argue that results from empirical psychology should make us doubt that we have either sort of epistemic virtue, thereby discrediting virtue epistemology’s empirical adequacy. I evaluate this situationist challen…Read more
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186Refutation by eliminationAnalysis 70 (1): 35-39. 2010.This paper refutes two important and influential views in one fell stroke. The first is G.E. Moore’s view that assertions of the form ‘Q but I don’t believe that Q’ are inherently “absurd.” The second is Gareth Evans’s view that justification to assert Q entails justification to assert that you believe Q. Both views run aground the possibility of being justified in accepting eliminativism about belief. A corollary is that a principle recently defended by John Williams is also false, namely, that…Read more
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1638Contingent A Priori KnowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (2): 327-344. 2010.I argue that you can have a priori knowledge of propositions that neither are nor appear necessarily true. You can know a priori contingent propositions that you recognize as such. This overturns a standard view in contemporary epistemology and the traditional view of the a priori, which restrict a priori knowledge to necessary truths, or at least to truths that appear necessary
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1479On the relationship between propositional and doxastic justificationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (2): 312-326. 2010.I argue against the orthodox view of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification. The view under criticism is: if p is propositionally justified for S in virtue of S's having reason R, and S believes p on the basis of R, then S's belief that p is doxastically justified. I then propose and evaluate alternative accounts of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification, and conclude that we should explain propositional justification in terms of doxastic jus…Read more
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740A New And Improved Argument For A Necessary BeingAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (2). 2011.I suggest two improvements to Joshua Rasmussen’s intriguing recent argument that a causally powerful being necessarily exists.
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429Knowledge and the norm of assertion: a simple testSynthese 192 (2): 385-392. 2015.An impressive case has been built for the hypothesis that knowledge is the norm of assertion, otherwise known as the knowledge account of assertion. According to the knowledge account, you should assert something only if you know that it’s true. A wealth of observational data supports the knowledge account, and some recent empirical results lend further, indirect support. But the knowledge account has not yet been tested directly. This paper fills that gap by reporting the results of such a test…Read more
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611Moderate scientism in philosophyIn Jeroen de Ridder, Rik Peels & Rene van Woudenberg (eds.), Scientism: Prospects and Problems, Oxford University Press. 2018.Moderate scientism is the view that empirical science can help answer questions in nonscientific disciplines. In this paper, we evaluate moderate scientism in philosophy. We review several ways that science has contributed to research in epistemology, action theory, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. We also review several ways that science has contributed to our understanding of how philosophers make judgments and decisions. Based on this research, we conclude that the case…Read more
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83InfinitismOxford Bibliographies. 2015.Infinitism, along with foundationalism and coherentism, is a logically possible solution to the epistemic regress problem. But unlike the other two views, infinitism has only been developed and defended as a plausible solution since the late 1990’s. Infinitists grant that although there is an ending point of any actual chain of cited reasons for a belief, no belief (including the last one cited) is fully justified until a reason for it is provided. In addition to differing with foundationalism a…Read more
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2947Is knowledge justified true belief?Synthese 184 (3): 247-259. 2012.Is knowledge justified true belief? Most philosophers believe that the answer is clearly ‘no’, as demonstrated by Gettier cases. But Gettier cases don’t obviously refute the traditional view that knowledge is justified true belief (JTB). There are ways of resisting Gettier cases, at least one of which is partly successful. Nevertheless, when properly understood, Gettier cases point to a flaw in JTB, though it takes some work to appreciate just what it is. The nature of the flaw helps us better u…Read more
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825The truth about lyingCognition 138 (C): 161-168. 2015.The standard view in social science and philosophy is that lying does not require the liar’s assertion to be false, only that the liar believes it to be false. We conducted three experiments to test whether lying requires falsity. Overall, the results suggest that it does. We discuss some implications for social scientists working on social judgments, research on lie detection, and public moral discourse.
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206The Problem of ESEE KnowledgeErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 1 101-127. 2014.Traditionally it has been thought that the moral valence of a proposition is, strictly speaking, irrelevant to whether someone knows that the proposition is true, and thus irrelevant to the truth-value of a knowledge ascription. On this view, it’s no easier to know, for example, that a bad thing will happen than that a good thing will happen (other things being equal). But a series of very surprising recent experiments suggest that this is actually not how we view knowledge. On the contrary, peo…Read more
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296Stumbling in Nozick’s TracksLogos and Episteme 3 (2): 291-293. 2012.Rachael Briggs and Daniel Nolan have recently proposed an improved version of Nozick’s tracking account of knowledge. I show that, despite its virtues, the new proposal suffers from three serious problems.
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130From Virtue Epistemology to Abilism: Theoretical and Empirical DevelopmentsIn Judy Dodge Cummings (ed.), Hillary Clinton, Essential Library. pp. 315-330. 2016.I review several theoretical and empirical developments relevant to assessing contemporary virtue epistemology’s theory of knowledge. What emerges is a leaner theory of knowledge that is more empirically adequate, better captures the ordinary conception of knowledge, and is ripe for cross-fertilization with cognitive science. I call this view abilism. Along the way I identify several topics for future research.
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782Epistemic invariantism and speech act contextualismPhilosophical Review 119 (1): 77-95. 2010.In this essay I show how to reconcile epistemic invariantism with the knowledge account of assertion. My basic proposal is that we can comfortably combine invariantism with the knowledge account of assertion by endorsing contextualism about speech acts. My demonstration takes place against the backdrop of recent contextualist attempts to usurp the knowledge account of assertion, most notably Keith DeRose's influential argument that the knowledge account of assertion spells doom for invariantism …Read more
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10Preempting ParadoxLogos and Episteme 3 (4): 659-662. 2012.Charlie Pelling has recently argued that two leading accounts of the norm of assertion, the truth account and a version of the knowledge account, invite paradoxand so must be false. Pelling’s arguments assume that an isolated utterance of the sentence “This assertion is improper” counts as making an assertion. I argue that this assumption is questionable.
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583Believing For a ReasonErkenntnis 74 (3): 383-397. 2011.This paper explains what it is to believe something for a reason. My thesis is that you believe something for a reason just in case the reason non-deviantly causes your belief. In the course of arguing for my thesis, I present a new argument that reasons are causes, and offer an informative account of causal non-deviance.
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237Mythology of the FactiveLogos and Episteme 2 (1): 141-150. 2011.It’s a cornerstone of epistemology that knowledge requires truth – that is, that knowledge is factive. Allan Hazlett boldly challenges orthodoxy by arguing thatthe ordinary concept of knowledge is not factive. On this basis Hazlett further argues that epistemologists shouldn’t concern themselves with the ordinary concept of knowledge, or knowledge ascriptions and related linguistic phenomena. I argue that either Hazlett is wrong about the ordinary concept of knowledge, or he’s right in a way tha…Read more
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171An infinitist account of doxastic justificationDialectica 63 (2): 209-218. 2009.Any satisfactory epistemology must account for the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Can infinitism account for it? Proposals to date have been unsatisfactory. This paper advances a new infinitist account of the distinction. The discussion proceeds as follows. Section 1 sets the stage. Section 2 presents Peter Klein's account. Section 3 raises a problem for Klein's account and suggests an improvement. Section 4 raises a further challenge. Sections 5 to 7 consider seve…Read more
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411Knowledge Attributions and Behavioral PredictionsCognitive Science 2253-2261. 2017.Recent work has shown that knowledge attributions affect how people think others should behave, more so than belief attributions do. This paper reports two experiments providing evidence that knowledge attributions also affect behavioral predictions more strongly than belief attributions do, and knowledge attributions facilitate faster behavioral predictions than belief attributions do. Thus, knowledge attributions play multiple critical roles in social cognition, guiding judgments about how peo…Read more
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362Vision, 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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409Non-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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461Excuse 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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1125The 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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603Pyrrhonian 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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291Review 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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200Doomed 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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528Practical 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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482A 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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455Knowledge, 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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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 |