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378Unification and the Myth of Purely Reductive UnderstandingOrganon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 27 142-168. 2020.In this paper significant challenges are raised with respect to the view that explanation essentially involves unification. These objections are raised specifically with respect to the well-known versions of unificationism developed and defended by Michael Friedman and Philip Kitcher. The objections involve the explanatory regress argument and the concepts of reduction and scientific understanding. Essentially, the contention made here is that these versions of unificationism wrongly assume t…Read more
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376Bealer on the autonomy of philosophical and scientific knowledgeMetaphilosophy 38 (1). 2007.In a series of influential articles, George Bealer argues for the autonomy of philosophical knowledge on the basis that philosophically known truths must be necessary truths. The main point of his argument is that the truths investigated by the sciences are contingent truths to be discovered a posteriori by observation, while the truths of philosophy are necessary truths to be discovered a priori by intuition. The project of assimilating philosophy to the sciences is supposed to be rendered ille…Read more
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360Theories of Violence and the Explanation of Ultra-violent BehaviorIn T. Levin (ed.), Violence: Mercurial Gestalt, . 2008.Theorists in various scientific disciplines offer radically different accounts of the origin of violent behavior in humans, but it is not clear how the study of violence is to be scientifically grounded. This problem is made more complicated because both what sorts of acts constitute violence and what needs to be appealed to in explaining violence differs according to social scientists, biologists, anthropologists and neurophysiologists, and this generates serious problems with respect to even …Read more
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349Deontic Logic, Weakening and Decisions Concerning Disjunctive ObligationsLogos and Episteme 13 (1): 93-102. 2022.This paper introduces two new paradoxes for standard deontic logic (SDL). They are importantly related to, but distinct from Ross' paradox. These two new paradoxes for SDL are the simple weakening paradox and the complex weakening paradox. Both of these paradoxes arise in virtue of the underlaying logic of SDL and are consequences of the fact that SDL incorporates the principle known as weakening. These two paradoxes then show that SDL has counter-intuitive implications related to disjunctive…Read more
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343Epistemic Luck and KnowledgeActa Analytica 37 (1): 1-6. 2022.This is an editorial introduction to a special issue of Acta Analytica on epistemic luck.
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333Idealization, Counterfactuals and the Correspondence PrincipleIn Jerzy Brzezinski, Andrzej Klawiter, Theo A. F. Kuipers, Krzysztof Lastowski, Katarzyna Paprzycka & Piotr Przybysz (eds.), The Courage of Doing Philosophy: Essays Presented to Leszek Nowak, Rodopi. 2008.In a recent revision (chapter 4 of Nowakowa and Nowak 2000) of an older article Leszek Nowak (1992) has attempted to rebut Niiniluoto’s 1990 critical suggestion that proponents of the Poznań idealizational approach to the sciences have committed a rather elementary logical error in the formal machinery that they advocate for use in the analysis of scientific methodology. In this paper I criticize Nowak’s responses to Niiniluoto’s suggestion, and, subsequently, work out some of the consequences …Read more
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327Folk Judgments About Conditional Excluded MiddleIn Andrew Aberdein & Matthew Inglis (eds.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 251-276. 2019.In this chapter we consider three philosophical perspectives (including those of Stalnaker and Lewis) on the question of whether and how the principle of conditional excluded middle should figure in the logic and semantics of counterfactuals. We articulate and defend a third view that is patterned after belief revision theories offered in other areas of logic and philosophy. Unlike Lewis’ view, the belief revision perspective does not reject conditional excluded middle, and unlike Stalnaker’s, i…Read more
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325Safety, Evidence, and Epistemic LuckActa Analytica 37 (1): 121-134. 2022.This paper critically explores Timothy Williamson’s view of evidence, and it does so in light of the problem of epistemic luck. Williamson’s view of evidence is, of course, a crucially important aspect of his novel and influential “knowledge-first” epistemological project. Notoriously, one crucial thesis of this project is that one’s evidence is equivalent to what one knows. This has come to be known as the E = K thesis. This paper specifically addresses Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology…Read more
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322Safety and the Preface ParadoxLogos and Episteme 9 (2): 215-219. 2018.In the preface paradox the posited author is supposed to know both that every sentence in a book is true and that not every sentence in that book is true. But, this result is paradoxically contradictory. The paradoxicality exhibited in such cases arises chiefly out of the recognition that large-scale and difficult tasks like verifying the truth of large sets of sentences typically involve errors even given our best efforts to be epistemically diligent. This paper introduces an argument design…Read more
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319The publicity of belief, epistemic wrongs and moral wrongsSocial Epistemology 20 (1). 2006.It is a commonplace belief that many beliefs, e.g. religious convictions, are a purely private matter, and this is meant in some way to serve as a defense against certain forms of criticism. In this paper it is argued that this thesis is false, and that belief is really often a public matter. This argument, the publicity of belief argument, depends on one of the most compelling and central thesis of Peircean pragmatism. This crucial thesis is that bona fide belief cannot be separated from action…Read more
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317Moorean Sentences and the Norm of AssertionLogos and Episteme 3 (4): 653-658. 2012.In this paper Timothy Williamson’s argument that the knowledge norm of assertion is the best explanation of the unassertability of Morrean sentences is challenged and an alternative account of the norm of assertion is defended.
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312Further Reflections on Quasi-factivism: A Reply to BaumannLogos and Episteme 13 (2): 207-215. 2022.This paper is a response to Baumann's comments on "Can Knowledge Really be Non-fative?" In this paper Baumann's suggestions for how those who deny the factivty of knowledge might deal with the argument from inconsistency and explosion are addressed.
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310Re-formulating The Generalized Correspondence PrinciplePolish Journal of Philosophy 2 (1): 99-115. 2008.This paper presents a more clear formulation of the correspondence principle and explores its justification.
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308Cognitive biases and the predictable perils of the patient‐centric free‐market model of medicineMetaphilosophy 53 (4): 446-456. 2022.This paper addresses the recent rise of the use of alternative medicine in Western countries. It offers a novel explanation of that phenomenon in terms of cognitive and economic factors related to the free-market and patient-centric approach to medicine that is currently in place in those countries, in contrast to some alternative explanations of this phenomenon. Moreover, the paper addresses this troubling trend in terms of the serious harms associated with the use of alternative medical moda…Read more
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303Integrating Abduction and Inference to the Best ExplanationEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 14 (2): 1-18. 2022.Tomis Kapitan’s work on Peirce’s conception of abduction was instrumental for our coming to see how Peircean abduction both relates to and is importantly different from inference to the best explanation (IBE). However, he ultimately concluded that Peirce’s conception of abduction was a muddle. Despite the deeply problematic nature of Peirce’s theory of abduction in these respects, Kapitan’s work on Peircean abduction offers insight into the nature of abductive inquiry that is importantly relevan…Read more
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292Doxastic Voluntarism, Epistemic Deontology and Belief-contravening CommitmentsAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 50 (1): 73-82. 2013.Defenders of doxastic voluntarism accept that we can voluntarily commit ourselves to propositions, including belief-contravening propositions. Thus, defenders of doxastic voluntarism allow that we can choose to believe propositions that are negatively implicated by our evidence. In this paper it is argued that the conjunction of epistemic deontology and doxastic voluntarism as it applies to ordinary cases of belief-contravening propositional commitments is incompatible with evidentialism. In …Read more
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292Not-Exact-Truths, Pragmatic Encroachment, and the Epistemic Norm of Practical ReasoningLogos and Episteme 3 (2): 239-259. 2012.Recently a number of variously motivated epistemologists have argued that knowledge is closely tied to practical matters. On the one hand, radical pragmatic encroachment is the view that facts about whether an agent has knowledge depend on practical factors and this is coupled to the view that there is an important connection between knowledge and action. On the other hand, one can argue for the less radical thesis only that there is an important connection between knowledge and practical reas…Read more
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283Three Problematic Theories of Conditional AcceptanceLogos and Episteme 2 (1): 117-125. 2011.In this paper it is argued that three of the most prominent theories of conditional acceptance face very serious problems. David Lewis' concept of imaging, the Ramsey test and Jonathan Bennett's recent hybrid view all face viscious regresses, or they either employ unanalyzed components or depend upon an implausibly strong version of doxastic voluntarism.
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282The Constitutive A Priori and Epistemic JustificationIn Michael J. Shaffer & Michael Veber (eds.), What Place for the A Priori?, Open Court. pp. 193. 2011.In this paper I argue that Michael Friedman's conception of the contitutive a priori faces two serious problems. These two problems show that the view collapses into a form of conventionalism.
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277Some Recent Existential Appeals to Mathematical ExperiencePrincipia: An International Journal of Epistemology 10 (2). 2006.Some recent work by philosophers of mathematics has been aimed at showing that our knowledge of the existence of at least some mathematical objects and/or sets can be epistemically grounded by appealing to perceptual experience. The sensory capacity that they refer to in doing so is the ability to perceive numbers, mathematical properties and/or sets. The chief defense of this view as it applies to the perception of sets is found in Penelope Maddy’s Realism in Mathematics, but a number of other …Read more
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253An Argument for the Safety Condition on KnowledgeLogos and Episteme 8 (4): 517-520. 2017.This paper introduces a new argument for the safety condition on knowledge. It is based on the contention that the rejection of safety entails the rejection of the factivity condition on knowledge. But, since we should maintain factivity, we should endorse safery.
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249Taste, Gastronomic Expertise and ObjectivityIn Fritz Allhoff & David Monroe (eds.), Food & Philosophy: Eat, Think, and Be Merry, Blackwell. 2007.In this paper I argue that the best explanation of expertise about taste is that such alleged experts are simply more eloquent in describing the taste experiences that they have than are ordinary tasters.
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247Might/Would Duality and The Probabilities of CounterfactualsLogique and Analyse 242 119-124. 2018.In this paper it is shown that Lewis' MWD (might/would duality) and imaging principles lead to wildly implausible probability assignments for would counterfactuals.
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246Max Plank’s Philosophy and Physics: An Introduction to The Philosophy of PhysicsIn Michael Shaffer (ed.), The Philosophy of Physics, Minkowski Press. pp. 1-5. 2019.
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238The Paradox of Epistemic Obligation AvoidedThe Reasoner 16 49-50. 2022.This short paper offers a skeptical solution to Åqvist's paradox of epistemic obligation. The solution is based on the contention that in SDL/KDT logics the externalist features of knowledge, about which we cannot have obligations, are obscured.
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223Reflection, Conditionalization and Indeterminacy about the FutureThe Reasoner 8 65-66. 2014.This paper shows that any view of future contingent claims that treats such claims as having indeterminate truth values or as simply being false implies probabilistic irrationality. This is because such views of the future imply violations of reflection, special reflection and conditionalization.
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217The Epistemic Inadequacy of Ersatzer Possible World SemanticsLogique Et Analyse 53 61-76. 2010.In this paper it is argued that the conjunction of linguistic ersatzism, the ontologically deflationary view that possible worlds are maximal and consistent sets of sentences, and possible world semantics, the view that the meaning of a sentence is the set of possible worlds at which it is true, implies that no actual speaker can effectively use virtually any language to successfully communicate information. This result is based on complexity issues that relate to our finite computational abili…Read more
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211The Ramsey Principle and The Principle of Informational EquilibriumThe Reasoner 5 (3): 37-39. 2011.This paper challenges the soundness of an argument given in support of a Ramseyan analysis of belief defended by Dokic and Engel in their 2001 book.
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211E Does Not Equal KThe Reasoner 7 30-31. 2013.This paper challenges Williamson's "E = K" thesis on the basis of evidential practice. The main point is that most evidence is only approximately true and so cannot be known if knowledge is factive.