• The Instability of Skepticism
    Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. 1997.
    According to "skepticism about the external world", one cannot know whether there are any things that have these two characteristics: they exist, or occur, at, or come from, some place, and they might have existed even had no one been conscious of them. In attempting to show that one cannot know whether or not there are any such things, the skeptic appeals to the alleged fact that one cannot rule out various possibilities, e.g., the possibility that one is dreaming. But, if one cannot rule out t…Read more
  •  21
    Should we swap internal foundations for virtues?
    Critica 42 (125): 63-76. 2010.
    Internalist foundationalism was popular through much of the history of Western epistemology, but has been subjected to intense critical scrutiny in the last century. Ernest Sosa's new book presents some novel and seemingly powerful arguments against internalist foundationalism. After laying out these arguments, I attempt to rebut them. I argue that Sosa does not, after all, give us good reason for abandoning internalist foundationalism. El fundacionismo internista ha sido muy popular a lo largo …Read more
  •  59
    The Case Against Purity (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2): 456-464. 2012.
  •  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
  •  156
    S knows that P
    Noûs 36 (4). 2002.
    Rieber 1998 proposes an account of "S knows that p" that generates a contextualist solution to Closure. In this paper, I’ll argue that Rieber’s account of "S knows that p" is subject to fatal objections, but we can modify it to achieve an adequate account of "S knows that p" that generates a unified contextualist solution to all four puzzles. This is a feat that should matter to those philosophers who have proposed contextualist solutions to Closure: all of them have motivated their contextualis…Read more
  •  29
    Stroud and Moore on Skepticism
    Southwest Philosophy Review 13 (1): 83-89. 1997.
  •  102
    Skepticism, contextualism, and semantic self-knowledge
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2). 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
  •  6
    Reply to Gallimore
    Philosophical Studies 134 (1). 2007.
  •  28
    Skepticism, Abductivism, and the Explanatory Gap
    Philosophical Issues 14 (1): 296-325. 2004.
  •  39
    Review of Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (10). 2004.
  •  256
    Perceptual evidence and the new dogmatism
    Philosophical Studies 119 (1-2): 199-214. 2004.
    What is the epistemological value of perceptual experience? In his recently influential paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”1, James Pryor develops a seemingly plausible answer to this question. Pryor’s answer comprises the following three theses: (F) “Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible – there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs.” (517) (PK) “This justification that you get merely…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
  •  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
  •  244
    My topic in this paper is a particular species of epistemic justification – a species that, following Roderick Firth, I call “propositional justification.”1 Propositional justification is a relation between a person and a proposition. I will say that for S to bear the propositional justification relation to p is for S to be “justified in believing” that p. What is propositional justification? What is it for S to be justified in believing that p? Here’s my answer.
  •  197
    Liberalism and Conservatism in the Epistemology of Perceptual Belief
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4): 685-705. 2010.
    Liberals claim that some perceptual experiences give us immediate justification for certain perceptual beliefs. Conservatives claim that the justification that perceptual experiences give us for those perceptual beliefs is mediated by our background beliefs. In his recent paper ?Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic?, Nico Silins successfully argues for a non-Moorean version of Liberalism. But Silins's defence of non-Moorean Liberalism leaves us with a puzzle: why is it tha…Read more
  •  211
    McDowell and the new evil genius
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2). 2007.
    (NEG) is widely accepted both by internalist and by externalists. In fact, there have been very few opponents of (NEG). Timothy Williamson (e.g., 2000) rejects (NEG), for reasons that have by now received a great deal of scrutiny.2 John McDowell also rejects (NEG), but his reasons have not received the scrutiny they deserve. This is in large part because those reasons have not been well understood. We believe that McDowell’s challenge to (NEG) is important, worthy of fair assessment, and maybe e…Read more
  •  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
  • Introduction to part six
    with Duncan Pritchard
    In Duncan Pritchard & Ram Neta (eds.), Arguing About Knowledge, Routledge. pp. 211. 2008.
  •  68
    Review of Knowledge and Practical Interests (review)
    Philosophical Review 121 (2): 298-301. 2012.
  •  112
    Knowing from the Armchair that Our Intuitions Are Reliable
    The Monist 95 (2): 329-351. 2012.
    In recent years, a growing body of experimental literature has called into question the reliability of our intuitions about hypothetical cases, and thereby called into question the use of intuitions in philosophy. In this paper, I critically assess one prominent example of this challenge, namely, Swain, Alexander, and Weinberg’s recent study of order effects on the Truetemp intuition. I argue that the very data that Swain,Alexander, and Weinberg find do not undermine, but instead support, the re…Read more
  •  9
    How to naturalize epistemology
    In Vincent Hendricks (ed.), New Waves in Epistemology, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 324--353. 2007.
    Since the publication of W.V. Quine’s “Epistemology Naturalized”1, a growing number of self-described “naturalist” epistemologists have come to hold a particular view of what epistemology can and ought to be. In order to articulate this naturalist view, let me begin by describing the epistemological work that the naturalist tends to criticize – a motley that I will refer to collectively as “non-naturalist epistemology”. I will describe this motley in terms that are designed to capture the natura…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
  •  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
  •  32
  •  366
    In defense of epistemic relativism
    Episteme 4 (1): 30-48. 2007.
    In Fear of Knowledge, Paul Boghossian argues against various forms of epistemic relativism. In this paper, I criticize Boghossian’s arguments against a particular variety of relativism. I then argue in favor of a thesis that is very similar to this variety of relativism
  •  50
    How Holy is the Disjunctivist Grail?
    Journal of Philosophical Research 41 193-200. 2016.