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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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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
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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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136Concessive knowledge-attributions: fallibilism and gradualismSynthese 190 (14): 2835-2851. 2013.Any knowledge-fallibilist needs to solve the conceptual problem posed by concessive knowledge-attributions (such as ‘I know that p, but possibly not-p’). These seem to challenge the coherence of knowledge-fallibilism. This paper defuses that challenge via a gradualist refinement of what Fantl and McGrath (2009) call weak epistemic fallibilism
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53Not Actually Hume's Problem: On Induction and Knowing-HowPhilosophy 83 (4): 459. 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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12Knowledge that works: A tale of two conceptual modelsIn Aspects of Knowing, Elsevier Science. pp. 219--240. 2006.
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83Understanding Fallible Warrant and Fallible Knowledge: Three ProposalsPacific Philosophical Quarterly 97 (2): 270-282. 2015.One of contemporary epistemology's more important conceptual challenges is that of understanding the nature of fallibility. Part of why this matters is that it would contribute to our understanding the natures of fallible warrant and fallible knowledge. This article evaluates two candidates – and describes a shared form of failing. Each is concealedly infallibilist. This failing is all-too-representative of the difficulty of doing justice to the notion of fallibility within the notions of fallib…Read more
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33Knowledge and the Gettier ProblemCambridge University Press. 2016.Edmund Gettier's 1963 verdict about what knowledge is not has become an item of philosophical orthodoxy, accepted by philosophers as a genuine epistemological result. It assures us that - contrary to what Plato and later philosophers have thought - knowledge is not merely a true belief well supported by epistemic justification. But that orthodoxy has generated the Gettier problem - epistemology's continuing struggle to understand how to accommodate Gettier's apparent result within an improved co…Read more
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37Transient global amnesia and Kantian perceptionThink 13 (38): 69-72. 2014.Kant's monumental Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) begins with his account of perception. Look around you. An experience is the result. You seem to see a chair and a person, say even perhaps of its content – are coming to you from the world, according to Kant. What else is involved?
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270Gettier problemsInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2005.Gettier problems or cases are named in honor of the American philosopher Edmund Gettier, who discovered them in 1963. They function as challenges to the philosophical tradition of defining knowledge of a proposition as justified true belief in that proposition. The problems are actual or possible situations in which someone has a belief that is both true and well supported by evidence, yet which — according to almost all epistemologists — fails to be knowledge. Gettier’s original article had a d…Read more
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11Re: Brains in a VatDialectica 54 (4): 307-312. 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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86Aspects of Knowing: Epistemological Essays (edited book)Elsevier Science. 2006.AcknowledgementsContributors1. Introduction: The art of precise epistemology Stephen HetheringtonPart A. Epistemology as scientific?2.
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42Metaphysics and Epistemology: A Guided Anthology (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2013._Metaphysics and Epistemology: A Guided Anthology_ presents a comprehensive introductory overview of key themes, thinkers, and texts in metaphysics and epistemology. Presents a wide-ranging collection of carefully excerpted readings on metaphysics and epistemology Blends classic and contemporary works to reveal the historical development and present directions in the fields of metaphysics and epistemology Provides succinct, insightful commentary to introduce the essence of each selection at the …Read more
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67Review: Justification Without Awareness: A Defense of Epistemic Externalism (review)Mind 116 (464): 1088-1092. 2007.
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43Technological Knowledge-That As Knowledge-How: a CommentPhilosophy and Technology 28 (4): 567-572. 2015.Norström has argued that contemporary epistemological debates about the conceptual relations between knowledge-that and knowledge-how need to be supplemented by a concept of technological knowledge—with this being a further kind of knowledge. But this paper argues that Norström has not shown why technological knowledge-that is so distinctive because Norström has not shown that such knowledge cannot be reduced conceptually to a form of knowledge-how. The paper thus applies practicalism to the cas…Read more
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16The Cartesian dreaming argument for external-world skepticismIn Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2011.
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135Fallibilism and Knowing That One Is Not DreamingCanadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (1). 2002.Of course, if infallibilism about such knowledge is true, then it is true that one can never know that one is not dreaming. But, of course, if infallibilism is true, then there is also no special difficulty posed for one’s having knowledge in general by one’s not knowing in particular that one is not dreaming: one would know either nothing or next to nothing anyway, regardless of one’s not knowing in particular that one is not dreaming. Yet epistemologists have generally regarded the challenge o…Read more
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8Review of Nicholas Rescher, Ideas in Process: A Study on the Development of Philosophical Concepts (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (8). 2009.
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39Photosinthesis: How deceptive images imperil knowledge: Hetherington PhotosinthesisThink 4 (10): 99-107. 2005.An epistemological investigation into photography
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 |