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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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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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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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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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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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31Knowledge 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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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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86Aspects of Knowing: Epistemological Essays (edited book)Elsevier Science. 2006.AcknowledgementsContributors1. Introduction: The art of precise epistemology Stephen HetheringtonPart A. Epistemology as scientific?2.
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 |