•  84
    Reflections on reflective knowledge
    Philosophical Studies 153 (1). 2011.
    In his volume reflective knowledge, Ernest Sosa offers an account of knowledge, an argument against internalist foundationalism, and a solution to the problem of easy knowledge. This paper offers challenges to Sosa on each of those three things
  •  72
    In defense of disjunctivism
    In Fiona Macpherson & Adrian Haddock (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 311--29. 2008.
    Right now, I see a computer in front of me. Now, according to current philosophical orthodoxy, I could have the very same perceptual experience that I’m having right now even if I were not seeing a computer in front of me. Indeed, such orthodoxy tells us, I could have the very same experience that I’m having right now even if I were not seeing anything at all in front of me, but simply suffering from a hallucination. More generally, someone can have the very same perceptual experience no matter …Read more
  •  72
    Perceptual evidence and the capacity view
    Philosophical Studies 173 (4): 907-914. 2016.
    Susanna Schellenberg defends what she calls a "capacity view" concerning perceptual evidence. In this paper, I raise six challenges to Schellenberg's argument
  •  70
    Capacitism and the transparency of evidence
    Mind and Language 37 (2): 219-226. 2022.
    Susanna Schellenberg develops a unified account—“capacitism”—of perceptual content, phenomenology, and epistemic force. In this paper, I raise questions about her arguments for a capacitist account of evidential force, and then challenge her claim that such an account, even if correct, demands that our evidence be less than fully transparent to us.
  •  68
    Review of Knowledge and Practical Interests (review)
    Philosophical Review 121 (2): 298-301. 2012.
  •  68
    6. Easy Knowledge, Transmission Failure, and Empiricism
    Oxford Studies in Epistemology 4 166. 2013.
  •  62
    Mature Human Knowledge as a Standing in the Space of Reasons
    Philosophical Topics 37 (1): 115-132. 2009.
    This quoted passage makes a negative claim – a claim about what we are not doing when we characterize an episode or state as that of knowing – and it also makes a positive claim – a claim about what we are doing when we characterize an episode or state as that of knowing. Although McDowell has not endorsed the negative claim, he has repeatedly and explicitly endorsed the positive claim, i.e., that “in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing… we are placing it in the logical space…Read more
  •  61
    How cheap can you get?
    Philosophical Issues 18 (1): 130-142. 2008.
    According to a contextualist account of knowledge ascriptions, it’s possible for both Skeptic’s assertion of “Moore doesn’t know (at a particular time t0) that he has hands” and Normal’s simultaneous assertion of “Moore does know (at t0) that he has hands” to be true, so long as these assertions are issued in different contexts. That’s because the truth-conditions of such knowledge ascriptions (or denials) are fixed partly by features of the context in which those ascriptions (or denials) are is…Read more
  •  60
    Rationality, Success, and Luck
    Acta Analytica 37 (1): 57-71. 2021.
    Rationality, whatever exactly it demands of us, promotes success, whatever exactly that is. Some philosophers interpret that slogan as something that can provide them with a way of reductively explaining the demands of rationality by appeal to some independently intelligible notion of success: being rational, they might say, is just having whatever property it is that promotes success. Other philosophers may interpret the same slogan as something that can provide them with a way of reductively e…Read more
  •  59
    The Case Against Purity (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2): 456-464. 2012.
  •  53
    Naturalism in Question
    Philosophical Review 116 (4): 657-663. 2007.
  •  50
    How Holy is the Disjunctivist Grail?
    Journal of Philosophical Research 41 193-200. 2016.
  •  46
    Access Internalism and the Guidance Deontological Conception of Justification
    American Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2): 155-168. 2016.
    Historically, prominent proponents of the guidance deontological conception of epistemic justification have thought that the guidance deontological conception entails access internalism. Alvin Goldman has argued that this is not so, and that there is no good argument from the guidance deontological conception of justification to access internalism. This paper refutes Goldman's argument. If the guidance deontological conception of epistemic justification is correct, then so is access internalism.
  •  43
    From Inputs to Beliefs
    Analysis 82 (4): 707-716. 2022.
    What you believe is typically responsive to what you perceive, what you recall, what inferences you’ve made and various other factors. Let’s use the term ‘input.
  •  42
    Coherence and Deontology
    Philosophical Perspectives 29 (1): 284-304. 2015.
  •  40
    Contextualism and the Problem of the External World
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (1): 1-31. 2003.
    A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs a…Read more
  •  39
    Epistemology: Critical Concepts in Philosophy (edited book)
    Routledge. 2012.
    For those working in Epistemology dizzying questions such as the following arise: - When are beliefs rational, or justified? - How should we update our beliefs in the light of new evidence? - Is it possible to gain knowledge, or justification? - How do we know what we know, and why do we care about whether--and what--others know? - How can the exploration of pre-Socratic philosophical questions about knowledge assist with the design of twenty-first-century computer interfaces? Addressing the nee…Read more
  •  39
    Review of Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (10). 2004.
  •  38
    Empiricism about Experience (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (2): 482-489. 2009.
    According to Gupta, there is a difficulty facing any attempt to answer this question. The difficulty has to do with the following phenomenon. The impact that any particular experience has on what the experiencing subject is entitled to believe will depend upon the concepts, conceptions, and beliefs – in short, upon the view – that the experiencing subject is entitled to hold when she has that experience.1 But what view she was entitled to hold when she had that experience depends in turn upon wh…Read more
  •  35
    What Evidence Do You Have?
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (1): 89-119. 2008.
    Your evidence constrains your rational degrees of confidence both locally and globally. On the one hand, particular bits of evidence can boost or diminish your rational degree of confidence in various hypotheses, relative to your background information. On the other hand, epistemic rationality requires that, for any hypothesis h, your confidence in h is proportional to the support that h receives from your total evidence. Why is it that your evidence has these two epistemic powers? I argue that …Read more
  •  32
  •  30
    Anti‐intellectualism and the Knowledge‐Action Principle
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (1): 180-187. 2007.
  •  29
    Stroud and Moore on Skepticism
    Southwest Philosophy Review 13 (1): 83-89. 1997.
  •  28
    Expression and the Inner
    Philosophical Review 117 (2): 310-313. 2008.
  •  28
    Skepticism, Abductivism, and the Explanatory Gap
    Philosophical Issues 14 (1): 296-325. 2004.
  •  26
    Skepticism, Contextualism, and Semantic Self‐Knowledge
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2): 396-411. 2003.
    Stephen Schiffer has argued that contextualist solutions to skepticism rest on an implausible “error theory” concerning our own semantic intentions. Similar arguments have recently been offered also by Thomas Hofweber and Patrick Rysiew. I attempt to show how contextualists can rebut these arguments. The kind of self‐knowledge that contextualists are committed to denying us is not a kind of self‐knowledge that we need, nor is it a kind of self‐knowledge that we can plausibly be thought to posses…Read more
  •  24
    Arguing About Knowledge (edited book)
    with Duncan Pritchard
    Routledge. 2008.
    What is knowledge? What are the sources of knowledge? What is the value of knowledge? What can we know? _Arguing About Knowledge_ offers a fresh and engaging perspective on the theory of knowledge. This comprehensive and imaginative selection of readings examines the subject in an unorthodox and entertaining manner whilst covering the fundamentals of the theory of knowledge. It includes classic and contemporary pieces from the most influential philosophers from Descartes, Russell, Quine and G.E.…Read more