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48Is Everything Revisable?Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 4. 2017.Over the decades, the claim that everything is revisable (defended by Quine and others) has played an important role in Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Some time ago, Katz (1988) argued that this claim is paradoxical. This paper does not discuss this objection but rather argues that the claim of universal revisability allows for two different readings but in each case leads to a contradiction and is false.
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Hegel. Erinnerung, Wahrnehmung, Wissen (review)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 56 (2). 2002.
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26Defending the One Percent?The Harvard Review of Philosophy 21 106-112. 2014.This paper discusses and criticizes Greg Mankiw's recent defense of "the one percent".
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22Coercion and the Varieties of Free ActionIdeas Y Valores 52 (122): 31-49. 2003.Are we free? What does "freedom" mean here? In the following, I shall only focus with freedom of action. My main thesis is that there is not just one basic type of free action but more. Philosophers, however, tend to assume that there is just one way to act freely. Hence, a more detailed analysis of free action is being called for. I will distinguish between different kinds of free action and discuss the relations between them. The analysis of different types of coercion will lead to a different…Read more
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115Is Knowledge Safe?American Philosophical Quarterly 45 (1). 2008.One of the most interesting accounts of knowledge which have been recently proposed is the safety account of knowledge. According to it, one only knows that p if one's true belief that p could not have easily been false: S believes that p ==> p (where "==>" stands for the subjunctive conditional). This paper presents a counter-example and discusses attempts to fix the problem. It turns out that there is a deeper underlying problem which does not allow for a solution that would help the safety th…Read more
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24Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood, by Simon EvnineMind 118 (471): 823-827. 2009.Review of Evnine, "Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood".
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104WAMs: Why Worry?Philosophical Papers 40 (2). 2011.Abstract One of the most popular objections against epistemic contextualism is the so-called ?warranted assertability? objection. The objection is based on the possibility of a ?warranted assertability manoeuvre?, also known as a WAM. I argue here that WAMs are of very limited scope and importance. An important class of cases cannot be dealt with by WAMs. No analogue of WAMs is available for these cases. One should thus not take WAMs too seriously in the debate about epistemic contextualism.
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124Counting on numbersAnalysis 69 (3): 446-448. 2009.1. Here is a very simple game. You come up with a number and I come up with a number. If I come up with the higher number, I win; otherwise you win. You go first. Call this ‘The Very Simple Game’. Few would play it if they had to go first and many if they are guaranteed to go second.2. Here is another one. You come up with a number n and I come up with a number m. If m times 1/ n > 1, then I win; if not, then you win. You go first. Call this ‘Still The Very Simple Game’. Since I win just in case…Read more
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505Philosophy Upside Down?Metaphilosophy 44 (5): 579-588. 2013.Philip Kitcher recently argued for a reconstruction in philosophy. According to him, the contemporary mainstream of philosophy has deteriorated into something that is of relevance only to a few specialists who communicate with each other in a language nobody else understands. Kitcher proposes to reconstruct philosophy along two axes: a knowledge axis and a value axis. The present article discusses Kitcher's diagnosis as well as his proposal of a therapy. It argues that there are problems with bo…Read more
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81Lotteries And ContextsErkenntnis 61 (2): 415-428. 2004.There are many ordinary propositions we think we know. Almost every ordinary proposition entails some "lottery proposition" which we think we do not know but to which we assign a high probability of being true (for instance: “I will never be a multi-millionaire” entails “I will not win this lottery”). How is this possible - given that some closure principle is true? This problem, also known as “the Lottery puzzle”, has recently provoked a lot of discussion. In this paper I discuss one of the mos…Read more
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34Gerhard Ernst: Das problem Des wissens, paderborn: Mentis 2002Grazer Philosophische Studien 68 (1): 221-223. 2005.Review of Ernst, "Das Problem des Wissens".
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17To thine own self be untrue : against the cable guy paradoxLogique Et Analyse 204 355-363. 2007.In a recent paper, Hájek presents the following alleged paradox. You are certain that a cable guy will visit you tomorrow between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. but you have no further information about when. And you agree to a bet on whether he will come in the morning interval. At first you have no reason to prefer one possibility rather than the other. But you then realise that if you bet on the morning interval, there will certainly be a future time at which you will assign higher probability to an after…Read more
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1461Epistemic closureIn Sven Bernecker & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 597--608. 2010.This article gives an overview over different principles of epistemic closure, their attractions and their problems.
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104The case for contexualismAnalysis 70 (1): 149-160. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation).
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82A Puzzle About Responsibility: A Problem and its Contextualist SolutionErkenntnis 74 (2): 207-224. 2011.This paper presents a puzzle about moral responsibility. The problem is based upon the indeterminacy of relevant reference classes as applied to action. After discussing and rejecting a very tempting response I propose moral contextualism instead, that is, the idea that the truth value of judgments of the form S is morally responsible for x depends on and varies with the context of the attributor who makes that judgment. Even if this reply should not do all the expected work it is a first step.
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170On ReflectionPhilosophical Quarterly 64 (256): 510-512. 2014.Review of Kornblith, "On Reflection".
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94Justification and the Truth-Connection By Clayton Littlejohn (review)Analysis 74 (4): 731-733. 2014.Review of Littlejohn, "Justification and the Truth Connection".
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91Empiricism, stances, and the problem of voluntarismSynthese 178 (1): 27-36. 2011.Voluntarism about beliefs is the view that persons can be free to choose their beliefs for non-epistemic (truth-related) reasons (cf. Williams 1973). One problem for belief voluntarism is that it can lead to Moore-paradoxality. The person might believe that a.) there are also good epistemic reasons for her belief, or that b.) there are no epistemic reasons one way or the other, or that c.) there are good epistemic reasons against her belief. If the person is aware of the fact that she chose her…Read more
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93Contrastivism Rather than Something Else? On the Limits of Epistemic ContrastivismErkenntnis 69 (2): 189-200. 2008.One of the most recent trends in epistemology is contrastivism. It can be characterized as the thesis that knowledge is a ternary relation between a subject, a proposition known and a contrast proposition. According to contrastivism, knowledge attributions have the form “S knows that p, rather than q”. In this paper I raise several problems for contrastivism: it lacks plausibility for many cases of knowledge, is too relaxed concerning the third relatum, and overlooks a further relativity of the …Read more
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859Nozick's defense of closureIn Kelly Becker & Tim Black (eds.), The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 11--27. 2012.This paper argues against common views that at least in many cases Robert Nozick is not forced to deny common closure principles. More importantly, Nozick does not – despite first (and second) appearances and despite his own words – deny closure. On the contrary, he is defending a more sophisticated and complex principle of closure. This principle does remarkably well though it is not without problems. It is surprising how rarely Nozick’s principle of closure has been discussed. He should be see…Read more
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42Information, Closure, And Knowledge: On Jäger’s Objection To DretskeErkenntnis 64 (3): 403-408. 2006.Christoph Jäger (2004) argues that Dretske's information theory of knowledge raises a serious problem for his denial of closure of knowledge under known entailment: Information is closed under known entailment (even under entailment simpliciter); given that Dretske explains the concept of knowledge in terms of "information", it is hard to stick with his denial of closure for knowledge. Thus, one of the two basic claims of Dretske would have to go. Since giving up the denial of closure would comm…Read more
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83Epistemic Contextualism: A DefenseOxford University Press UK. 2016.Peter Baumann develops and defends a distinctive version of epistemic contextualism, the view that the truth conditions or the meaning of knowledge attributions of the form "S knows that p" can vary with the context of the attributor. The first part of the book examines arguments for contextualism and develops Baumann's version. It begins by dealing with the argument from cases and ordinary usage, and then addresses "theoretical" arguments, from reliability and from luck. The second part of the …Read more
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97Three Doors, Two Players, and Single-Case ProbabilitiesAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 42 (1). 2005.The well known Monty Hall-problem has a clear solution if one deals with a long enough series of individual games. However, the situation is different if one switches to probabilities in a single case. This paper presents an argument for Monty Hall situations with two players (not just one, as is usual). It leads to a quite general conclusion: One cannot apply probabilistic considerations (for or against any of the strategies) to isolated single cases. If one does that, one cannot but violate a …Read more
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28Begrenzte Erkenntnisse?Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 58 (3): 483-489. 2010.This is a crtiical discussion of Gabriel's "An den Grenzen der Erkenntnistheorie".
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52On the Subtleties of Reidian Pragmatism: A Reply to MagnusJournal of Scottish Philosophy 2 (1): 73-77. 2004.In this paper I respond to P.D. Magnus’ critique of an earlier paper of mine on Thomas Reid’s theory of common sense. In the earlier paper (The Scottish Pragmatist? The Dilemma of Common Sense and the Pragmatist Way Out, Reid Studies 2, 1999, 47-57) I argued that Reid faces a dilemma between dogmatism and scepticism but that there are also hints in his work towards a pragmatist way out of the problem. P.D. Magnus, in a response to this paper (Reid’s Dilemma and the Uses of Pragmatism, Journal of…Read more
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56Knowledge, Assertion, and InferenceActa Analytica 29 (4): 487-490. 2014.This paper argues that three plausible principles are mutually inconsistent: One ought to assert only what one knows; If it is proper to assert some proposition q, then it is, barring special and not very common circumstances, proper to assert any proposition p from which q has been competently inferred; and Some propositions are both properly assertible and known by competent inference from propositions which one does not know. Each pair of two principles constitutes an argument against the rem…Read more
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104Experiencing things together: What is the problem?Erkenntnis 66 (1-2). 2007.Suppose someone hears a loud noise and at the same time sees a yellow flash. It seems hard to deny that the person can experience loudness and yellowness together. However, since loudness is experienced by the auditory sense whereas yellowness is experienced by the visual sense it also seems hard to explain how.
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108Theory Choice and the Intransitivity of 'Is a Better Theory Than'Philosophy of Science 72 (1): 231-240. 2005.There is a very plausible principle of the transitivity of justifying reasons. It says that if "p" is better justified than "q" (all things considered) and "q" better than "r", then "p" is better justified than "r" (all things considered). There is a corresponding principle of rational theory choice. Call one theory "a better theory than" another theory if all criteria of theory choice considered (explanatory power, simplicity, empirical adequacy, etc.), the first theory meets the criteria bette…Read more
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Ludwig Maximilians Universität, MünchenFaculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Study of ReligionUndergraduate
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Mathematics |