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308Small Stakes Give You the Blues: The Skeptical Costs of Pragmatic EncroachmentManuscrito: Revista Internacional de Filosofía. forthcoming.According to the fallibilist, it is possible for us to know things when our evidence doesn't entail that our beliefs are correct. Even if there is some chance that we're mistaken about p, we might still know that p is true. Fallibilists will tell you that an important virtue of their view is that infallibilism leads to skepticism. In this paper, we'll see that fallibilist impurism has considerable skeptical consequences of its own. We've missed this because we've focused our attention on the h…Read more
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296No Evidence is FalseActa Analytica 28 (2): 145-159. 2013.If evidence is propositional, is one’s evidence limited to true propositions or might false propositions constitute evidence? In this paper, I consider three recent attempts to show that there can be ‘false evidence,’ and argue that each of these attempts fails. The evidence for the thesis that evidence consists of truths is much stronger than the evidence offered in support of the theoretical assumptions that people have relied on to argue against this thesis. While I shall not defend the view …Read more
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269A review of Susanne Mantel's book, Determined by Reasons (Routledge)
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239Knowledge and PrizesIn Artūrs Logins & Jacques-Henri Vollet (eds.), Putting Knowledge to Work: New Directions for Knowledge-First Epistemology, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.We examine two leading theories of rational belief, the Lockean view and the explanationist view. The first is appealing because it fits with some independently plausible claims about the ways that rational persons pursue their aims. The second is appealing because it seems to account for intuitions that cause trouble for the Lockean view. While fitting the intuitive data is desirable, we are troubled that the explanationist view seems to clash with our theoretical beliefs about what rationality…Read more
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216Concessive Knowledge Attributions and FallibilismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (3): 603-619. 2011.Lewis thought concessive knowledge attributions (e.g., ‘I know that Harry is a zebra, but it might be that he’s just a cleverly disguised mule’) caused serious trouble for fallibilists. As he saw it, CKAs are overt statements of the fallibilist view and they are contradictory. Dougherty and Rysiew have argued that CKAs are pragmatically defective rather than semantically defective. Stanley thinks that their pragmatic response to Lewis fails, but the fallibilist cause is not lost because Lewis wa…Read more
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210Does 'Ought' Still Imply 'Can'?Philosophia 40 (4): 821-828. 2012.According to ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (OIC), your obligation can never be to do what you cannot do. In a recent attack on OIC, Graham has argued that intuitions about justified intervention can help us determine whether the agent whose actions we use force to prevent would have acted permissibly or not. These intuitions, he suggests, cause trouble for the idea that you can be obligated to refrain from doing what you can refrain from doing. I offer a defense of OIC and explain how non-consequentiali…Read more
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209Reasons and belief's justificationIn Andrew Reisner & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Reasons for Belief, Cambridge University Press. 2011.There has been a considerable amount of debate about the norms of belief, but little discussion to date about what the reasons associated with these norms demand from us. By working out an account of what reasons demand, we can better understand the nature of justification
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201The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence (edited book)Routledge. 2024.Evidence is one of the most fundamental notions in the field of epistemology and is emerging as a major topic across academic disciplines. The practice of every academic discipline consists largely in providing evidence for key theses and The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Philosophy of Evidence, the first collection of its kind, is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject. Comprising over forty chapters by a team of international …Read more
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196From E = K to scepticism?Philosophical Quarterly 58 (233): 679-684. 2008.In a recent article Dylan Dodd has argued that anyone who holds that all knowledge is evidence must concede that we know next to nothing about die external world. The argument is intended to show that any infallibilist account of knowledge is committed to scepticism, and that anyone who identifies our evidence with the propositions we know is committed to infallibilism. I shall offer some reasons for thinking Dodd's argument is unsound, and explain where his argument goes wrong
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185Are There Counterexamples to the Consistency Principle?Episteme 20 (4): 852-869. 2023.Must rational thinkers have consistent sets of beliefs? I shall argue that it can be rational for a thinker to believe a set of propositions known to be inconsistent. If this is right, an important test for a theory of rational belief is that it allows for the right kinds of inconsistency. One problem we face in trying to resolve disagreements about putative rational requirements is that parties to the disagreement might be working with different conceptions of the relevant attitudes. My aim is …Read more
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179Knowing the facts, alternative and otherwiseIn Rodrigo Borges & Ian Schnee (eds.), Illuminating Errors: New Essays on Knowledge from Non-Knowledge, Routledge. 2023.While we often assume that we can only know what is so, it's clear that we often speak as if we know things that aren't strictly speaking true. What should we make of this? Some would argue that we should take this talk as evidence that it's possible to know things that are strictly speaking false when, say, false representations are adequate for our purposes. I shall argue that it would be better on the whole to say (a) that knowledge ascriptions might be false but felicitous when the ascriptio…Read more
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154Justification and the Truth-ConnectionCambridge University Press. 2012.The internalism-externalism debate is one of the oldest debates in epistemology. Internalists assert that the justification of our beliefs can only depend on facts internal to us, while externalists insist that justification can depend on additional, for example environmental, factors. Clayton Littlejohn proposes and defends a new strategy for resolving this debate. Focussing on the connections between practical and theoretical reason, he explores the question of whether the priority of the good…Read more
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149This is EpistemologyWiley. 2013.We have written an introduction to epistemology that is accessible, engaging, and up to date. (We hope.) Introduction Chapter 1: The Regress Problem Chapter 2: Perception Chapter 3: The Apriori Chapter 4: Inference Chapter 5: On Knowing the Truth Chapter 6: Memory Chapter 7: Testimony Chapter 8: Kinds of Knowledge Chapter 9: Internalism vs. Externalism Chapter 10: The Ethics of Belief Chapter 11: Skepticism
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140This is Epistemology: An IntroductionWiley-Blackwell. 2021.What is knowledge? Why is it valuable? How much of it do we have, and what ways of thinking are good ways to use to get more of it? These are just a few questions that are asked in epistemology, roughly, the philosophical theory of knowledge. This is Epistemology is a comprehensive introduction to the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and scope of human knowledge. Exploring both classic debates and contemporary issues in epistemology, this rigorous yet accessible textbook provides reade…Read more
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130The New Evil Demon ProblemInternet Encyclopedia of PhilosophyAn overview of the new evil demon problem.
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122Lotteries, Probabilities, and PermissionsLogos and Episteme 3 (3): 509-14. 2012.Thomas Kroedel argues that we can solve a version of the lottery paradox if we identify justified beliefs with permissible beliefs. Since permissions do not agglomerate, we might grant that someone could justifiably believe any ticket in a large and fair lottery is a loser without being permitted to believe that all the tickets will lose. I shall argue that Kroedel’s solution fails. While permissions do not agglomerate, we would have too many permissions if we characterized justified belief as s…Read more
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107Know Your Rights: On Warranted Assertion and TruthErkenntnis 79 (6): 1355-1365. 2014.A standard objection to the suggestion that the fundamental norm of assertion is the truth norm (i.e., one must not assert p unless p) is that this norm cannot explain why warrant requires knowledge-level evidence. In a recent paper, Whiting has defended the truth-first approach to the norms of assertion by appeal to a distinction between the warrant there is to assert and the warrant one has to assert. I shall argue that this latest defensive strategy is unsuccessful
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103Absolutism and its LimitsJournal of Moral Philosophy 21 (1-2): 170-189. 2023.Many philosophers think that given the choice between saving the life of an innocent person and averting any number of minor ailments or inconveniences, it would be better to save the life. How, then, should one compare the risk of an innocent person’s life to such minor ailments and inconveniences? If lives are infinitely more important than insignificant factors then any risk cannot be outweighed, and that is untenable. An alternative approach seems more promising: let the values of such insig…Read more
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91Review of Jeremy Fantl, Matt McGrath, Knowledge in an Uncertain World (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (5). 2010.
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89Knowledge, Reasons, and Errors about Error TheoryIn Christos Kyriacou & Robin McKenna (eds.), Metaepistemology: Realism & Antirealism, Palgrave Macmillan. 2018.According to moral error theorists, moral claims necessarily represent categorically or robustly normative facts. But since there are no such facts, moral thought and discourse are systematically mistaken. One widely discussed objection to the moral error theory is that it cannot be true because it leads to an epistemic error theory. We argue that this objection is mistaken. Objectors may be right that the epistemic error theory is untenable. We also agree with epistemic realists that our episte…Read more
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70Living with uncertaintyPhilosophical Books 50 (4): 235-247. 2009.A review of Michael Zimmerman's wonderful book, _Living with Uncertainty_. Among other things, I argue that there might be something wrong with combining possibilism and perspectivism.
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55Small Stakes Give You the Blues: The Skeptical Costs of Pragmatic EncroachmentManuscrito 40 (4): 31-38. 2017.ABSTRACT According to the fallibilist, it is possible for us to know things when our evidence doesn't entail that our beliefs are correct. Even if there is some chance that we're mistaken about p, we might still know that p is true. Fallibilists will tell you that an important virtue of their view is that infallibilism leads to skepticism. In this paper, we'll see that fallibilist impurism has considerable skeptical consequences of its own. We've missed this because we've focused our attention o…Read more
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50Kiesewetter, Benjamin. The Normativity of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 344. $65.00Ethics 129 (1): 127-132. 2018.
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39Epistemic Norms: New Essays on Action, Belief, and Assertion (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2013.Epistemic norms play an increasingly important role in current debates in epistemology and beyond. In this volume a team of established and emerging scholars presents new work on the key debates. They consider what epistemic requirements constrain appropriate belief, assertion, and action, and explore the interconnections between these standards.
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38Review of Paul Boghossian, Content and Justification: Philosophical Papers (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (5). 2009.
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