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116A Critical Introduction to Formal epistemologyBloomsbury. 2015.Formal methods are changing how epistemology is being studied and understood. A Critical Introduction to Formal Epistemology introduces the types of formal theories being used and explains how they are shaping the subject. Beginning with the basics of probability and Bayesianism, it shows how representing degrees of belief using probabilities informs central debates in epistemology. As well as discussing induction, the paradox of confirmation and the main challenges to Bayesianism, this comprehe…Read more
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108Reasons for Belief in ContextEpisteme 1-16. forthcoming.There is currently a lively debate about whether there are practical reasons for belief, epistemic reasons for belief, or both. I will argue that the intuitions on all sides can be fully accounted for by applying an independently motivated contextualist semantics for normative terms. Specifically, normative terms must be relativized to a goal. One possible goal is epistemic, such as believing truly and not believing falsely, while another possible goal is practical, such as satisfying desires, o…Read more
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96No Doomsday Argument without Knowledge of Birth Rank: a Defense of BostromSynthese 144 (1): 91-100. 2005.The Doomsday Argument says we should increase our subjective probability that Doomsday will occur once we take into account how many humans have lived before us. One objection to this conclusion is that we should accept the Self-Indication Assumption (SIA): Given the fact that you exist, you should (other things equal) favor hypotheses according to which many observers exist over hypotheses on which few observers exist. Nick Bostrom argues that we should not accept the SIA, because it can be use…Read more
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93Bayesianism and self-doubtSynthese 199 (1-2): 2225-2243. 2020.How should we respond to evidence when our evidence indicates that we are rationally impaired? I will defend a novel answer based on the analogy between self-doubt and memory loss. To believe that one is now impaired and previously was not is to believe that one’s epistemic position has deteriorated. Memory loss is also a form of epistemic deterioration. I argue that agents who suffer from epistemic deterioration should return to the priors they had at an earlier time. I develop this argument re…Read more
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76How to lose your memory without losing your money: shifty epistemology and Dutch strategiesSynthese 203 (4): 1-15. 2024.An objection to shifty epistemologies such as subject-sensitive invariantism is that it predicts that agents are susceptible to guaranteed losses. Bob Beddor (Analysis, 81, 193–198, 2021) argues that these guaranteed losses are not a symptom of irrationality, on the grounds that forgetful agents are susceptible to guaranteed losses without being irrational. I agree that forgetful agents are susceptible to guaranteed losses without being irrational– but when we investigate why, the analogy with s…Read more
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76What Is Bayesian Confirmation for?International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 31 (3): 229-241. 2017.Peter Brössel and Franz Huber in 2015 argued that the Bayesian concept of confirmation had no use. I will argue that it has both the uses they discussed—it can be used for making claims about how worthy of belief various hypotheses are, and it can be used to measure the epistemic value of experiments. Furthermore, it can be useful in explanations. More generally, I will argue that more coarse-grained concepts can be useful, even when we have more fine-grained concepts available.
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56Can we combine practical and epistemic reason?Analytic Philosophy 65 (1): 53-69. 2023.This paper offers a theory of how epistemic and practical reasons for belief can be combined into all‐things‐considered reason. Unlike alternative theories, it does not involve any sharp cut‐offs or lexical priorities among types of reason. The theory allows that the relative strengths of the practical and epistemic reasons matter, as does the distance between the epistemically rational credence and the practically rational credence. Although there are important differences between the structure…Read more
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51When betting odds and credences come apart : more worries for Dutch book argumentsAnalysis 66 (2). 2011.If an agent believes that the probability of E being true is 1/2, should she accept a bet on E at even odds or better? Yes, but only given certain conditions. This paper is about what those conditions are. In particular, we think that there is a condition that has been overlooked so far in the literature. We discovered it in response to a paper by Hitchcock (2004) in which he argues for the 1/3 answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem. Hitchcock argues that this credence follows from calculating he…Read more
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39Deutsch on the epistemic problem in Everettian Quantum TheoryStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 57 111-114. 2017.I raise some problems for David Deutsch's (2016) attempt to develop a confirmation theory for branching worlds.
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