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50The Gettier Non-ProblemLogos and Episteme 1 (1): 85-107. 2010.This paper highlights an aspect of Gettier situations, one standardly not accorded interpretive significance. A remark of Gettier’s suggests its potential importance. And once that aspect’s contribution is made explicit, an argument unfolds for the conclusion that it is fairly simple to have knowledge within Gettier situations. Indeed, that argument dissolves the traditional Gettier problem.
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148Knowledge Can Be LuckyIn Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Blackwell. pp. 164. 2013.
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89So-far incompatibilism and the so-far consequence argumentGrazer Philosophische Studien 73 (1): 163-178. 2006.The consequence argument is at the core of contemporary incompatibilism about causal determinism and freedom of action. Yet Helen Beebee and Alfred Mele have shown how, on a Humean conception of laws of nature, the consequence argument is unsound. Nonetheless, this paper describés how, by generalising their main idea, we may restore the essential point and force (whatever that might turn out to be) of the consequence argument. A modified incompatibilist argument — which will be called the so-far…Read more
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118How to Know: A Practicalist Conception of Knowledge (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2011.Some key aspects of contemporary epistemology deserve to be challenged, and _How to Know_ does just that. This book argues that several long-standing presumptions at the heart of the standard analytic conception of knowledge are false, and defends an alternative, a practicalist conception of knowledge. Presents a philosophically original conception of knowledge, at odds with some central tenets of analytic epistemology Offers a dissolution of epistemology’s infamous Gettier problem — explaining …Read more
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29Review of Mitchell green, John N. Williams (eds.), Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (8). 2007.
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130Epistemic ResponsibilityThe Monist 85 (3): 398-414. 2002.Might epistemic justification be, to some substantive extent, a function of epistemic responsibility—a belief's being formed, or its being maintained, in an epistemically responsible way? I will call any analysis of epistemic justification endorsing that kind of idea epistemic responsibilism—or, for short, responsibilism. Many epistemic internalists are responsibilists, because they think that what makes a belief justified is its being appropriately related to one's good evidence for it, and bec…Read more
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71Not actually Hume's problem: On induction and knowing-howPhilosophy 83 (4): 459-481. 2008.Philosophers talk routinely of 'Hume's problem of induction'. But the usual accompanying exegesis is mistaken in a way that has led epistemologists to conceive of 'Hume's problem' in needlessly narrow terms. They have overlooked a way of articulating the conceptual problem, along with a potential way of solving it. Indeed, they have overlooked Hume's own way. In explaining this, I will supplement Hume's insights by adapting Ryle's thinking on knowledge-how and knowledge-that. We will also see wh…Read more
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246Knowing-that, knowing-how, and knowing philosophicallyGrazer Philosophische Studien 77 (1): 307-324. 2008.This paper outlines how we may understand knowing-that as a kind of knowing-how-to, and thereby as an ability. (Contrast this form of analysis with the more commonly attempted reduction, of knowing-how-to to knowing-that.) The sort of ability in question has much potential complexity. In general, questioning can, but need not, be part of this complexity. However, questioning is always an element in the complexity that is philosophical knowing. The paper comments on the nature of this particular …Read more
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162The Significance of Fallibilism Within Gettier’s Challenge: A Case StudyPhilosophia 40 (3): 539-547. 2012.Taking his conceptual cue from Ernest Sosa, John Turri has offered a putative conceptual solution to the Gettier problem: Knowledge is cognitively adept belief, and no Gettiered belief is cognitively adept. At the core of such adeptness is a relation of manifestation. Yet to require that relation within knowing is to reach for what amounts to an infallibilist conception of knowledge. And this clashes with the spirit behind the fallibilism articulated by Gettier when stating his challenge. So, Tu…Read more
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97The extended knowerPhilosophical Explorations 15 (2). 2012.Might there be extended cognition and thereby extended minds? Rightly, that possibility is being investigated at present by philosophers of mind. Should epistemologists share that spirit, by inquiring into the possibility of extended knowing and thereby of extended knowers? Indeed so, I argue. The key to this shift of emphasis will be an epistemologically improved understanding of the implications of epistemic externalism
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487Knowledge and Knowing: Ability and ManifestationIn Tolksdorf Stephan (ed.), Conceptions of Knowledge, De Gruyter. pp. 1. 2011.
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32Self-Knowledge: Beginning Philosophy Right Here and NowBroadview Press. 2007._Self-Knowledge_ introduces philosophical ideas about knowledge and the self. The book takes the form of a personal meditation: it is one person’s attempt to reflect philosophically upon vital aspects of his existence. It shows how profound philosophy can swiftly emerge from intense private reflection upon the details of one’s life and, thus, will help the reader take the first steps toward philosophical self-understanding. Along the way, readers will encounter moments of puzzlement, then clarit…Read more
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50Ginet on A Priori Knowledge: Skills and GradesVeritas – Revista de Filosofia da Pucrs 54 (2): 32-40. 2009.2. Ginet envisages a person’s fully understanding ‘what the sentence p says’ – which is the person’s fully understanding ‘what is said by one who utters p in normal circumstances in order to assert that p’ (p. 3). The understanding involved is direcError: Illegal entry in bfchar block in ToUnicode CMapted at meaning. It is one’s ‘understanding the parts and the structure of the sentence’ (ibid.). In the next section, I say more about the details of such understanding. First, though, here is how …Read more
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48Re: Brains in a vatDialectica 54 (4). 2000.The hypothesis that we are brains in a vat is one which we believe to be false. Could it possibly be true, however? Metaphysical realists accept that our believing it to be false does not entail its falsity. They also accept that if –as brains in a vat –we were to say or think “We are brains in a vat”, then we would be correct. Ever the claimed foe of the metaphysical realist, though, Hilary Putnam argues that the brains‐in‐a‐vat hypothesis cannot be true, in particular that if we were brains in…Read more
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4Yes, but How Do You Know?: Introducing Philosophy Through Sceptical IdeasBroadview Press. 2009._Yes, But How Do You Know?_ is an invitation to think philosophically through the use of sceptical ideas. Hetherington challenges our complacency and asks us to reconsider what we think we know. How much can we discover about our surroundings? What sort of beings are we? Can we trust our own reasoning? Is science all it is cracked up to be? Can we acquire knowledge of God? Are even the contents of our own minds transparent? In inviting, lucid prose, Hetherington addresses these questions and mor…Read more
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86Sceptical possibilities? No worriesSynthese 168 (1). 2009.This paper undermines a paradigmatic form of sceptical reasoning. It does this by describing, and then dialectically dissolving, the sceptical-independence presumption, upon which that form of sceptical reasoning relies.
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25Review of Nicholas Rescher, Philosophical Dialectics: An Essay on Metaphilosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (7). 2006.
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88FallibilismInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2005.Fallibilism is the epistemological thesis that no belief (theory, view, thesis, and so on) can ever be rationally supported or justified in a conclusive way. Always, there remains a possible doubt as to the truth of the belief. Fallibilism applies that assessment even to science’s best-entrenched claims and to people’s best-loved commonsense views. Some epistemologists have taken fallibilism to imply skepticism, according to which none of those claims or views are ever well justified or knowledg…Read more
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Interest
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Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
M&E, Misc |
Philosophy, Introductions and Anthologies |