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56Moore's problem with iterated beliefPhilosophical Quarterly 50 (198): 28-43. 2000.Positive thinkers love Watty Piper's The little engine that could. The story features a train laden with toys for deserving children on the other side of the mountain. After the locomotive breaks down, a sequence of snooty locomotives come up the track. Each engine refuses to pull the train up the mountain. They are followed by a weary old locomotive that declines, saying "I cannot. I cannot. I cannot." But then a bright blue engine comes up the track. He manages to chug over the mountain by ave…Read more
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55Seizing the opportunity to apply what they had learned, the students declared a cheating competition. Outspoken participants (future lawyers, politicians, and captains of industry) bragged about their ruses. But to their chagrin, an ethics student prevailed.
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55Permission to CheatAnalysis 67 (3). 2007.Seizing the opportunity to apply what they had learned, the students declared a cheating competition. Outspoken participants (future lawyers, politicians, and captains of industry) bragged about their ruses. But to their chagrin, an ethics student prevailed
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53The Vagueness of KnowledgeCanadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (4). 1987.This paper is intended to show how epistemologists can profit from the study of ways in which 'know' is vague. Topics include the kk thesis, Incorrigibility of sense data, A resemblance between infinity and vagueness, Common knowledge, Naive holism, Question-Begging, Epistemic universalizability, The prediction paradox, The completability of epistemology, And harman's social knowledge cases
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52When my son Maxwell was a toddler, he did not believe he was ever an infant. This skepticism became manifest when he started identifying himself in photographs. Maxwell was accurate with photographs that were taken after age six months. But he dismissed earlier pictures as photographs of "BABIES".
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52Problems with electoral evaluations of expert opinionsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35 (1): 47-53. 1984.An electoral evaluation of a set of expert opinions proceeds by treating the experts as voters. Although this method allows us to formalise our naive views about how to take expert advice, the formalisations are plagued by paradoxes which parallel those found in literature on social aggregation devices. This parallel suggests that our naive views about taking expert advice are in as much need of revision as our naive views about deriving group preferences from individual preferences. * I am inde…Read more
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51Para‐reflectionsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 54 (1): 93-101. 2003.A para-reflection is a privational phenomenon that is often mistaken for a reflection. You have seen them as the ‘reflection’ of your pupil in the mirror. Your iris reflects light in the standard way but your pupil absorbs all but a negligible amount of light (as do other dark things such as coal and black velvet). Para-reflections work by contrast. Since they are parasitic on their host reflections, para-reflections are relational and dependent in a way that reflections are not. Nevertheless, p…Read more
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51Philosophy for the EyeThe Philosophers' Magazine 42 (42): 31-39. 2008.The tower of language overshadows a cluster of smaller towers. These are the towers corresponding to the sensory systems. Tallest among this group is the tower of vision, “the master sense”.
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50Vagueness: An Investigation into Natural Languages and the Sorites ParadoxPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (2): 483-486. 1994.
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50Parsimony for Empty SpaceAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (2): 215-230. 2014.Ockham's razor is popularly phrased as a prohibition against multiplying entities beyond necessity. This prohibition should extend to the receptacle for these entities. To state my thesis more positively and precisely, both qualitative and quantitative parsimony apply to space, time, and possibility. All other things equal, we ought to prefer a hypothesis that postulates less space. Smaller is better. Admittedly, scientists are ambivalent about economizing on the void. They praise simplicity. Ye…Read more
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49Modal Bloopers: Why Believable Impossibilities Are NecessaryAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 33 (3). 1996.
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49Zande SoritesErkenntnis (S7): 1-14. 2013.When Bertrand Russell alerted Gottlob Frege to an inconsistency in his Grundgesetze, Frege relinquished deep commitments. When Edward Evans-Pritchard alerted the Azande to an inconsistency in their beliefs about witchcraft inheritance, they did not revise their beliefs. Nor did they engage in the defensive maneuvers depicted in Plato’s dialogues. Evans-Pritchard characterized their indifference to contradiction as irrational. My historical thesis is that the ensuing anthropological debate mirror…Read more
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46Formal problems about knowledgeIn Paul K. Moser (ed.), The Oxford handbook of epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 539. 2002.In ”Formal Problems about Knowledge,” Roy Sorensen examines epistemological issues that have logical aspects. He uses Fitch's proof for unknowables and the surprise test paradox to illustrate the hopes of the modal logicians who developed epistemic logic, and he considers the epistemology of proof with the help of the knower paradox. One solution to this paradox is that knowledge is not closed under deduction. Sorensen reviews the broader history of this maneuver along with the relevant alternat…Read more
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46This report is also a consolidated response to three memoranda. The legal division requested an historical review as patent support. Engineering has solicited input on product development. Thirdly, I am responding to a plea from the Personnel Department. Their headhunters have asked for more specific advice on how to recruit skeptics.
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44Self-strengthening empathyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1): 75-98. 1998.Stepping into the other guy's shoes works best when you resemble him. After all, the procedure is to use yourself as a model: in goes hypothetical beliefs and desires, out comes hypothetical actions and revised beliefs and desires. If you are structurally analogous to the empathee, then accurate inputs generate accurate outputs-just as with any other simulation. The greater the degree of isomorphism, the more dependable and precise the results. This sensitivity to degrees of resemblance suggests…Read more
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44An empathic theory of circularityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (4). 1999.This Article does not have an abstract
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43Smartfounding: Four Grades of Resistance to Thought ExperimentsTopoi 38 (4): 791-800. 2019.Smartfounding is the opposite of “dumbfounding” introduced by Jonathan Haidt’s research on disgust. Dumbfounders have general competence at thought experiment. However, they are flustered by thought experiments that support repugnant conclusions. Instead of following the supposition wherever it leads, they avoid unsettling implications by adding extraneous information or ignoring stipulated conditions. The dumbfounded commit performance errors, often seeming to regress to the answers of people w…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophical Traditions |