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Idealization and Empirical TestingDissertation, University of Miami. 2000.It has been argued that the presence of idealizations in physical theories implies that scientific realism is false. Furthermore, it has also been argued that because physical theories incorporate idealizations scientific theories must be accepted a priori, because the objects, processes, etc. quantified over in such expressions cannot be observed in the actual world. I argue against the former view by showing that scientific realism is compatible with the fact that all theoretical claims depend…Read more
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671Defusing the Miners ParadoxFilosofiska Notiser 5 57-67. 2018.This paper presents a case for the claim that the infamous miners paradox is not a paradox. This contention is based on some important observations about the nature of ignorance with respect to both disjunctions and conditional obligations and their modal features. The gist of the argument is that given the uncertainty about the location of the miners in the story and the nature of obligations, the apparent obligation to block either mine shaft is cancelled.
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808Knowledge of Abstract Objects in Physics and MathematicsActa Analytica 32 (4): 397-409. 2017.In this paper a parallel is drawn between the problem of epistemic access to abstract objects in mathematics and the problem of epistemic access to idealized systems in the physical sciences. On this basis it is argued that some recent and more traditional approaches to solving these problems are problematic.
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595Foley’s Threshold View of Belief and the Safety Condition on KnowledgeMetaphilosophy 49 (4): 589-594. 2018.This paper introduces a new argument against Richard Foley’s threshold view of belief. His view is based on the Lockean Thesis (LT) and the Rational Threshold Thesis (RTT). The argument introduced here shows that the views derived from the LT and the RTT violate the safety condition on knowledge in way that threatens the LT and/or the RTT.
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501Internalism, Evidentialism and Appeals to Expert KnowledgeLogos and Episteme 8 (3): 291-305. 2017.Given the sheer vastness of the totality of contemporary human knowledge and our individual epistemic finitude it is commonplace for those of us who lack knowledge with respect to some proposition(s) to appeal to experts (those who do have knowledge with respect to that proposition(s)) as an epistemic resource. Of course, much ink has been spilled on this issue and so concern here will be very narrowly focused on testimony in the context of epistemological views that incorporate evidentialism a…Read more
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1247Grounding Reichenbach’s Pragmatic Vindication of InductionPolish Journal of Philosophy 11 (1): 43-55. 2017.This paper has three interdependent aims. The first is to make Reichenbach’s views on induction and probabilities clearer, especially as they pertain to his pragmatic justification of induction. The second aim is to show how his view of pragmatic justification arises out of his commitment to extensional empiricism and moots the possibility of a non-pragmatic justification of induction. Finally, and most importantly, a formal decision-theoretic account of Reichenbach’s pragmatic justification …Read more
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303Not-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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698What If Bizet and Verdi Had Been Compatriots?Logos and Episteme 7 (1): 55-73. 2016.Stalnaker argued that conditional excluded middle should be included in the principles that govern counterfactuals on the basis that intuitions support that principle. This is because there are pairs of competing counterfactuals that appear to be equally acceptable. In doing so, he was forced to introduced semantic vagueness into his system of counterfactuals. In this paper it is argued that there is a simpler and purely epistemic explanation of these cases that avoids the need for introduci…Read more
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226The 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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355Idealization, 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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580Bayesian confirmation of theories that incorporate idealizationsPhilosophy of Science 68 (1): 36-52. 2001.Following Nancy Cartwright and others, I suggest that most (if not all) theories incorporate, or depend on, one or more idealizing assumptions. I then argue that such theories ought to be regimented as counterfactuals, the antecedents of which are simplifying assumptions. If this account of the logic form of theories is granted, then a serious problem arises for Bayesians concerning the prior probabilities of theories that have counterfactual form. If no such probabilities can be assigned, th…Read more
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1004The Problem of Necessary and Sufficient Conditions and Conceptual AnalysisMetaphilosophy 46 (4-5): 555-563. 2015.In this article the standard philosophical method involving intuition-driven conceptual analysis is challenged in a new way. This orthodox approach to philosophy takes analysanda to be the specifications of the content of concepts in the form of sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. Here it is argued that there is no adequate account of what necessary and sufficient conditions are. So, the targets of applications of the standard philosophical method so understood are not sufficiently well…Read more
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576“Filling in”, thought experiments and intuitionsEpisteme 14 (2): 255-262. 2017.Recently Timothy Williamson (2007) has argued that characterizations of the standard (i.e. intuition-based) philosophical practice of philosophical analysis are misguided because of the erroneous manner in which this practice has been understood. In doing so he implies that experimental critiques of the reliability of intuition are based on this misunderstanding of philosophical methodology and so have little or no bearing on actual philosophical practice or results. His main point is that the…Read more
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512The Paradox of Knowability and FactivityPolish Journal of Philiosophy 8 (1): 85-91. 2014.This paper shows that the knowability paradox isn’t a paradox because the derivation of the paradox is faulty. This is explained by showing that the K operator employed in generating the paradox is used equivocally and when the equivocation is eliminated the derivation fails.
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318Re-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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526Decision theory, intelligent planning and counterfactualsMinds and Machines 19 (1): 61-92. 2008.The ontology of decision theory has been subject to considerable debate in the past, and discussion of just how we ought to view decision problems has revealed more than one interesting problem, as well as suggested some novel modifications of classical decision theory. In this paper it will be argued that Bayesian, or evidential, decision-theoretic characterizations of decision situations fail to adequately account for knowledge concerning the causal connections between acts, states, and outcom…Read more
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637Approximate Truth, Quasi-Factivity, and EvidenceActa Analytica 30 (3): 249-266. 2015.The main question addressed in this paper is whether some false sentences can constitute evidence for the truth of other propositions. In this paper it is argued that there are good reasons to suspect that at least some false propositions can constitute evidence for the truth of certain other contingent propositions. The paper also introduces a novel condition concerning propositions that constitute evidence that explains a ubiquitous evidential practice and it contains a defense of a particular…Read more
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1Quasi-factive Belief and Knowledge-like StatesLexington Books. forthcoming.This book is addresses a topic that has received little or no attention in orthodox epistemology. Typical epistemological investigation focuses almost exclusively on knowledge, where knowing that something is the case importantly implies that what is believed is strictly true. This condition on knowledge is known as factivity and it is, to be sure, a bit of epistemological orthodoxy. So, if a belief is to qualify as knowledge according to the orthodox view it cannot be false. There is also a…Read more
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64What Place for the A Priori? (edited book)Open Court. 2011.The book gives a diverse and even-handed treatment of the topic without attempting to resolve the matter.
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269Taste, 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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335Moorean 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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385Bealer 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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575A Defeater of the Claim that Belief in God’s Existence is Properly BasicPhilo 7 (1): 57-70. 2004.Some contemporary theologically inclined epistemologists, the reformed epistemologists, have attempted to show that belief in God is rational by appealing directly to a special kind of experience. To strengthen the appeal to this particular, and admittedly peculiar, type of experience these venture to draw a parallel between such experiences and normal perceptual experiences in order to show that, by parity of reasoning, if beliefs formed on the basis of the later are taken to be justified and …Read more
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1225Lakatos’ Quasi-empiricism in the Philosophy of MathematicsPolish Journal of Philosophy 9 (2): 71-80. 2015.Imre Lakatos' views on the philosophy of mathematics are important and they have often been underappreciated. The most obvious lacuna in this respect is the lack of detailed discussion and analysis of his 1976a paper and its implications for the methodology of mathematics, particularly its implications with respect to argumentation and the matter of how truths are established in mathematics. The most important themes that run through his work on the philosophy of mathematics and which culminat…Read more
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307Three 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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1070Some epistemological concerns about dissociative identity disorder and diagnostic practices in psychologyPhilosophical Psychology 18 (1): 1-29. 2005.In this paper we argue that dissociative identity disorder (DID) is best interpreted as a causal model of a (possible) post-traumatic psychological process, as a mechanical model of an abnormal psychological condition. From this perspective we examine and criticize the evidential status of DID, and we demonstrate that there is really no good reason to believe that anyone has ever suffered from DID so understood. This is so because the proponents of DID violate basic methodological principles of …Read more
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310Doxastic 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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568Bursting Bealer’s Bubble: How the Starting Points Argument Begs the Question of Foundationalism Against QuineCanadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (1): 87-106. 2004.In his 1993 article George Bealer offers three separate arguments that are directed against the internal coherence of empiricism, specifically against Quine’s version of empiricism. One of these arguments is the starting points argument (SPA) and it is supposed to show that Quinean empiricism is incoherent. We argue here that this argument is deeply flawed, and we demonstrate how a Quinean may successfully defend his views against Bealer’s SPA. Our defense of Quinean empiricism against the SP…Read more
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210Stanley and the Stakes HypothesisThe Reasoner 11 73-74. 2017.The main examples of pragmatic encroachment presented by Jason Stanley involve the idea that knowledge ascription occurs more readily in cases where stakes are low rather than high. This is the stakes hypothesis. In this paper an example is presented showing that in some cases knowledge ascription is more readily appropriate where stakes are high rather than low.
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453A Thoroughly Modern WagerLogos and Episteme 8 (2): 207-231. 2017.This paper presents a corrected version of Pascal's wager that makes it consonant with modern decision theory. The corrected wager shows that not committing to God's existence is the rational choice.