-
670Defusing 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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
500Internalism, 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
-
1241Grounding 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
-
1248A logical hole in the chinese roomMinds and Machines 19 (2): 229-235. 2009.Searle’s Chinese Room Argument (CRA) has been the object of great interest in the philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and cognitive science since its initial presentation in ‘Minds, Brains and Programs’ in 1980. It is by no means an overstatement to assert that it has been a main focus of attention for philosophers and computer scientists of many stripes. It is then especially interesting to note that relatively little has been said about the detailed logic of the argument, whatever sign…Read more
-
258Might/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.
-
228The 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.
-
295The 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.
-
456Epistemic Paradox and the Logic of AcceptanceJournal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 25 337-353. 2013.Paradoxes have played an important role both in philosophy and in mathematics and paradox resolution is an important topic in both fields. Paradox resolution is deeply important because if such resolution cannot be achieved, we are threatened with the charge of debilitating irrationality. This is supposed to be the case for the following reason. Paradoxes consist of jointly contradictory sets of statements that are individually plausible or believable. These facts about paradoxes then give r…Read more
-
453Bayesianism, convergence and social epistemologyEpisteme 5 (2). 2008.Following the standard practice in sociology, cultural anthropology and history, sociologists, historians of science and some philosophers of science define scientific communities as groups with shared beliefs, values and practices. In this paper it is argued that in real cases the beliefs of the members of such communities often vary significantly in important ways. This has rather dire implications for the convergence defense against the charge of the excessive subjectivity of subjective Bayes…Read more
-
200In this paper I argue that Tyler Burge's non-reductive view of testiomonial knowledge cannot adeqautrely discriminate between fallacious ad vericumdium appeals to expet testimony and legitimate appeals to authority.
-
217E 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.
-
339The 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
-
233Reflection, 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.
-
191Coherence, Justification, and the AGM Theory of Belief RevisionIn Yves Bouchard (ed.), Perspectives on Coherentism, Editions Du Scribe. pp. 139--160. 2002.In a recent article, Peter Gärdenfors (1992) has suggested that the AGM (Alchourrón, Gärdenfors, and Makinson) theory of belief revision can be given an epistemic basis by interpreting the revision postulates of that theory in terms of a version of the coherence theory of justification. To accomplish this goal Gärdenfors suggests that the AGM revision postulates concerning the conservative nature of belief revision can be interpreted in terms of a concept of epistemic entrenchment and that ther…Read more
-
210A Paradox for Possible World SemanticsLogique Et Analyse 49 (195): 307-317. 2006.The development of possible worlds semantics for modal claims has led to a more general application of that theory as a complete semantics for various formal and natural languages, and this view is widely held to be an adequate (philosophical) interpretation of the model theory for such languages. We argue here that this view generates a self-referential inconsistency that indicates either the falsity or the incompleteness of PWS.
-
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
-
697What 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
-
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
-
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
-
577Bayesian 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
-
1002The 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
-
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
-
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.
-
317Re-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.
-
522Decision 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
-
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
-
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
-
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.