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41Knowledge 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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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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70Review: Justification Without Awareness: A Defense of Epistemic Externalism (review)Mind 116 (464): 1088-1092. 2007.
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91Aspects 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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32Metaphysics 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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45Technological 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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Introduction: epistemological progressIn Stephen Cade Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology futures, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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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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140Fallibilism 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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11Photosinthesis: How deceptive images imperil knowledge: Hetherington PhotosinthesisThink 4 (10): 99-107. 2005.An epistemological investigation into photography
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175Where is the Harm in Dying Prematurely? An Epicurean AnswerThe Journal of Ethics 17 (1-2): 79-97. 2013.Philosophers have said less than is needed about the nature of premature death, and about the badness or otherwise of that death for the one who dies. In this paper, premature death’s nature is clarified in Epicurean terms. And an accompanying argument denies that we need to think of such a death as bad in itself for the one who dies. Premature death’s nature is conceived of as a death that arrives before ataraxia does. (Ataraxia’s nature is also clarified. It is a pervasive inner peace that is …Read more
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131Abnormality and Gettier situations: An explanatory proposalRatio 24 (2): 176-191. 2011.Analytic epistemologists reach regularly for favoured ‘intuitions’. And the anti-luck intuition (as Duncan Pritchard calls it) is possibly one of the best-entrenched epistemological intuitions at present, seemingly guiding standard reactions to Gettier situations. But why is that intuition true (if it is)? This paper argues that the anti-luck intuition (like the ability intuition) rests upon something even more deeply explanatory – the normality intuition. And to recognise this is to understand …Read more
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169The Gettier-illusion: Gettier-partialism and infallibilismSynthese 188 (2): 217-230. 2012.Could the standard interpretation of Gettier cases reflect a fundamental confusion? Indeed so. How well can epistemologists argue for the truth of that standard interpretation? Not so well. A methodological mistake is allowing them not to notice how they are simply (and inappropriately) being infallibilists when regarding Gettiered beliefs as failing to be knowledge. There is no Gettier problem that we have not merely created for ourselves by unwittingly being infallibilists about knowledge
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50Knowledge’s Boundary ProblemSynthese 150 (1): 41-56. 2006.Where is the justificatory boundary between a true belief's not being knowledge and its being knowledge? Even if we put to one side the Gettier problem, this remains a fundamental epistemological question, concerning as it does the matter of whether we can provide some significant defence of the usual epistemological assumption that a belief is knowledge only if it is well justified. But can that question be answered non-arbitrarily? BonJour believes that it cannot be -- and that epistemology sh…Read more
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24Review of Keith Hossack, The Metaphysics of Knowledge (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (5). 2008.
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123Elusive epistemological justificationSynthese 174 (3). 2010.What does it take for some epistemological thinking to be epistemically justified? Indeed, is that outcome even possible? This paper argues that it is not possible: no epistemological thinking can ever be epistemically justified. A vicious infinite regress of epistemological reflection is the price that would have to be paid for having some such justification. Clearly, that price would be too high.
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26Alternate Possibilities and Avoidable Moral ResponsibilityAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 40 (3). 2003.
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88The redundancy problem: From knowledge-infallibilism to knowledge-minimalismSynthese 195 (11): 4683-4702. 2018.Among the epistemological ideas commonly associated with the Descartes of the Meditations, at any rate, is a knowledge-infallibilism. Such an idea was seemingly a vital element in Descartes’s search for truth within that investigative setting: only a true belief gained infallibly could be knowledge, as the Meditations conceived of this. Contemporary epistemologists are less likely than Descartes was to advocate our ever seeking knowledge-infallibility, if only because most are doubtful as to its…Read more
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63Knowing (How It Is) That P: Degrees and Qualities of KnowledgeVeritas – Revista de Filosofia da Pucrs 50 (4): 129-152. 2005.Pode o conhecimento de uma dada verdade admitir gradações? Sim, de fato, segundo o gradualismo deste artigo. O artigo introduz o conceito do saber-como que p – isto é, o conceito de saber como é que p. Saber-como que p é claramente gradual – admitindo gradações, dado que se pode saber mais ou menos como é que p. E a vinculação que este artigo faz entre sabercomo que p e saber que p revela que este último tipo de conhecimento também é gradual (mesmo que disfarçadamente). A teoria dos criadores-de…Read more
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65The Cogito: Indubitability without Knowledge?Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 13 (1): 85-92. 2009.How should we understand both the nature, and the epistemic potential, of Descartes’s Cogito? Peter Slezak’s interpretation of the Cogito’s nature sees it strictly as a selfreferential kind of denial: Descartes cannot doubt that he is doubting. And what epistemic implications flow from this interpretation of the Cogito? We find that there is a consequent lack of knowledge being described by Descartes: on Cartesian grounds, indubitability is incompatible with knowing. Even as the Cogito halts dou…Read more
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