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Don't trust Fodor's guide in Monte Carlo: Learning concepts by hypothesis testing without circularityMind and Language 38 (2): 355-373. 2023.Fodor argued that learning a concept by hypothesis testing would involve an impossible circularity. I show that Fodor's argument implicitly relies on the assumption that actually φ-ing entails an ability to φ. But this assumption is false in cases of φ-ing by luck, and just such luck is involved in testing hypotheses with the kinds of generative random sampling methods that many cognitive scientists take our minds to use. Concepts thus can be learned by hypothesis testing without circularity, an…Read more
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Learning and Value ChangePhilosophers' Imprint 19 1--22. 2019.Accuracy-first accounts of rational learning attempt to vindicate the intuitive idea that, while rationally-formed belief need not be true, it is nevertheless likely to be true. To this end, they attempt to show that the Bayesian's rational learning norms are a consequence of the rational pursuit of accuracy. Existing accounts fall short of this goal, for they presuppose evidential norms which are not and cannot be vindicated in terms of the single-minded pursuit of accuracy. I propose an alt…Read more
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Don’t Look NowBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (2): 327-350. 2019.
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Minimal Rationality and the Web of QuestionsIn Dirk Kindermann, Peter van Elswyk, Andy Egan & Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini (eds.), Unstructured Content, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.This paper proposes a new account of bounded or minimal doxastic rationality (in the sense of Cherniak 1986), based on the notion that beliefs are answers to questions (à la Yalcin 2018). The core idea is that minimally rational beliefs are linked through thematic connections, rather than entailment relations. Consequently, such beliefs are not deductively closed, but they are closed under parthood (where a part is an entailment that answers a smaller question). And instead of avoiding all incon…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Mathematics |
Formal Epistemology |