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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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34Blindspotting and Choice Variations of the Prediction ParadoxAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 23 (4). 1986.
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49Modal Bloopers: Why Believable Impossibilities Are NecessaryAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 33 (3). 1996.
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34Precisification by Means of Vague PredicatesNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 29 (2): 267-275. 1988.
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110Thought experiments and the epistemology of lawsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1): 15-44. 1992.The aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments help us learn about laws. After providing examples of this kind of nomic illumination in the first section, I canvass explanations of our modal knowledge and opt for an evolutionary account. The basic application is that the laws of nature have led us to develop rough and ready intuitions of physical possibility which are then exploited by thought experimenters to reveal some of the very laws responsible for those intuitions. The good news…Read more
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69Pseudo-problems: how analytic philosophy gets doneRoutledge. 1993.In the twentieth century, philosophers tackled many of the philosophical problems of previous generations by dissolving them--attacking them as linguistic illusions and showing that the problems, when closely inspected, were not problems at all. Roy A. Sorensen takes the most important and interesting examples from one hundred years of analytic philosophy to consolidate a different theory of dissolution. Pseudo-Problems offers a fascinating alternative history of twentieth century analytic philo…Read more
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344Thought experimentsOxford University Press. 1992.Sorensen presents a general theory of thought experiments: what they are, how they work, what are their virtues and vices. On Sorensen's view, philosophy differs from science in degree, but not in kind. For this reason, he claims, it is possible to understand philosophical thought experiments by concentrating on their resemblance to scientific relatives. Lessons learned about scientific experimentation carry over to thought experiment, and vice versa. Sorensen also assesses the hazards and pseud…Read more
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440BlindspotsOxford University Press. 1988.Sorensen here offers a unified solution to a large family of philosophical puzzles and paradoxes through a study of "blindspots": consistent propositions that cannot be rationally accepted by certain individuals even though they might by true.
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70The metaphysics of precision and scientific languagePhilosophical Perspectives 11 349-374. 1997.
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30Fame as the forgotten philosopher: Meditations on the headstone of Adam FergusonPhilosophy 77 (1): 109-114. 2002.An ill-informed reading of Adam Ferguson 's epitaph has given me an idea for securing posthumous recognition. Consider philosophers in the year 2201 who read my epitaph: ‘Here lies Roy Sorensen who will be long remembered for his paradoxes’. If these future scholars remember me, then well and good. If they do not remember me, my epitaph will appear to be rendered false by their failure to recall me. Suppose the poignancy of this self-defeat leads my epitaph to be widely repeated. I thereby acqui…Read more
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41Mirror imagery and biological selectionBiology and Philosophy 17 (3): 409-422. 2002.Lake Tanganiyka has lefty and righty cichlid fish that show there can be natural selection for a trait over its mirror image counterpart.This raises the question Can there be biological selection of a whole organism over its mirror image counterpart? That is, could the fitness of a fish be altered by simply changing it into its own enantaniomorph? My answer is no. I present Flatlander thought experiment to demonstrate that mirror imagecounterparts are duplicates because they only differ in how t…Read more
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329The egg came before the chickenMind 101 (403): 541-2. 1992.Vagueness theorists tend to think that evolutionary theory dissolves the riddle "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". After all, 'chicken' is vague. The idea is that Charles Darwin demonstrated that the chicken was preceded by borderline chickens and so it is simply indeterminate as to where the pre-chickens end and the chickens begin.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophical Traditions |