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8The effort to be neutralSouthern Journal of Philosophy. 2024.My aim in this article is to elucidate the nature of a form of intellectual and practical neutrality that is not covered by existing accounts of suspension of judgment. After rejecting some inadequate characterizations of this attitude of neutrality, I provide a positive characterization of it: it is a successful effort to resist certain tendencies that are part of the dispositional profile of the doxastic state one is in on a given issue. I conclude by saying a few words about the reasons for w…Read more
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63The paradox of tragedy, or why (almost) all emotions can be enjoyedAmerican Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.We regularly intentionally expose ourselves to fictions we take to be likely to elicit in us emotions we generally find unpleasant when prompted by actual states of affairs. This is the so-called “paradox of tragedy”. We contribute to solving the paradox of tragedy by denying that, when fiction-directed, most of these emotions are in themselves unpleasant. We first provide strong evidence that these emotions, such as fear, sadness, or pity, are often enjoyed when fiction-directed. We then advanc…Read more
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12An epistemic distinction among essences, its metaphysical ground, and the role of philosophySynthese 203 (179): 1-16. 2024.Uniformism is the view that one and the same epistemology should apply for all modal knowledge. I argue that, whether or not all modal knowledge can be accounted for in terms of knowledge of essences, uniformism about knowledge of essences is untenable. I do this by showing that, while some essences are empirically discoverable, others are not. I then argue that the uniquely realisable–non-uniquely realisable distinction is a better metaphysical candidate for grounding this epistemic difference …Read more
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Avons-nous des obligations épistémiques ?In Jean-Marie Chevalier Benoit Gaultier (ed.), Connaître. Questions d’épistémologie contemporaine, Ithaque. pp. 351-369. 2014.
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Désaccords philosophiques, défi de l’intégration et investigation conceptuelleIn Claudine Tiercelin (ed.), _La reconstruction de la raison_, Editions Du Collège De France. 2013.
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Bourdieu, la nature de l’activité intellectuelle et ce que la sociologie peut apporter à la philosophieIn Louis Pinto (ed.), La construction d'objet en sociologie, Éditions Du Croquant. pp. 215-243. 2021.
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3Finir le travail épistémologique à coups de métaphysique?In Jean-Marie Chevalier & Benoit Gaultier (eds.), La connaissance et ses raisons, Collège De France. 2016.
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Le pragmatisme et les concepts de la perception : l’iconicité en actionIntellectica 60 181-202. 2013.
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1Qu'est-ce que le pragmatisme?Librarie philosophique J. Vrin. 2016.Le pragmatisme semble etre devenu la chose du monde la mieux partagee. A la fois revolution philosophique et rehabilitation du sens commun, il est en tout cas difficile aujourd'hui de se declarer anti-pragmatiste sans apparaitre vouloir defendre une forme depassee de ratiocination scolastique. Cet etat de fait necessite qu'une reponse claire soit apportee a la question Qu'est-ce que le pragmatisme?. La these qui se trouve defendue dans cet ouvrage est que le coeur, a la fois historique et concep…Read more
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2Responsibility for Doxastic Strength Grounds Responsibility for BeliefIn Sebastian Schmidt & Gerhard Ernst (eds.), The Ethics of Belief and Beyond: Understanding Mental Normativity, Routledge. pp. 71-85. 2020.How is it possible for deontic evaluations of beliefs to be appropriate if we do not have voluntary control over our beliefs? Gaultier argues that we should reject the claim that we can have indirect control over beliefs in virtue of the basic voluntary control we have over our actions. We have another kind of indirect control over beliefs: we can demonstrate doxastic strength or, on the contrary, doxastic weakness when forming our beliefs. That is, we can resist or, on the contrary, fail …Read more
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31God and the GirlPhilosophia 49 (3): 999-1005. 2020.Imagine you are an agnostic who wants to maximise your chances of getting the right answer to the question whether God exists. I show that theism and atheism are not on an epistemic par with one another because, under certain possible epistemically neutral conditions, the rational thing for you to do from a purely epistemic point of view would be to bet on the atheist’s judgement that God doesn’t exist rather than on the theist’s judgement that God does exist.
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34On Peirce's Claim that Belief Should Be Banished from ScienceTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 52 (3): 390. 2016.Charles S. Peirce holds some views about science and inquiry whose exact significance and ratio essendi are notoriously hard to grasp. One of these is particularly intriguing, namely, his frequently inferring from the intuitive ideas that science consists “in diligent inquiry into truth for truth’s sake”, and that the greatest threat to science is to “block the way of inquiry”, the conclusions that “belief […] has no place in science” and that the “scientific man”, when inquiring, has only “prov…Read more
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42On the alleged normative significance of a platitudeRatio 32 (1): 42-52. 2018.It seems to be a platitude that the belief that p is correct iff it is true that p. And the claim that truth is the correct‐making feature of belief seems to be just another way of expressing this platitude. It is often thought that this indicates that truth constitutes a normative standard or criterion of correctness for belief because it seems to follow from this platitude that having a false belief is believing wrongly, and having a true belief is believing rightly or correctly. In this paper…Read more
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46When is epistemic dependence disvaluable?Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (3): 178-187. 2021.There clearly seems to be something problematic with certain forms of epistemic dependence. However, it has proved surprisingly difficult to articulate what this problem is exactly. My aim in this paper is to make clear when it is problematic to rely on others or on artefacts and technologies that are external to us for the acquisition and maintenance of our beliefs, and why. In order to do so, I focus on the neuromedia thought experiment. After having rejected different ways in which one might …Read more
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54On the Nature (and Irrationality) of Non-religious FaithErkenntnis. forthcoming.My main aim in this paper is to contribute to the elucidation of the nature of non-religious faith. I start by summarising several well-known arguments that belief is neither necessary nor sufficient for faith. I then try to identify the nature of the positive cognitive attitude towards p that is involved in having faith that p. After dismissing some candidates for the role, I explore the idea that faith and hope are similar attitudes. On this basis, I then advance a new characterisation of fait…Read more
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51A Neglected Ramseyan View of Truth, Belief, and InquiryJournal of Philosophy 114 (7): 366-380. 2017.For F. P. Ramsey, “there is no separate problem of truth,” but, rather, substantive problems about the nature of belief and judgment and the place and function of truth in these propositional attitudes. In this paper, I expound and defend an important but largely overlooked aspect of Ramsey’s view of belief and inquiry: his thesis that truth does not intervene at all in one’s ordinary beliefs, nor in one’s ordinarily inquiring into—in the sense of wondering, or reflecting on—whether or not somet…Read more
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12Comment comprendre un être dépourvu de langage?Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 119 (3): 353-369. 2023.Répondre à la question de savoir comment comprendre un être dépourvu de langage implique de savoir quels types d’attitudes intentionnelles, et avec quels contenus, il est possible de lui attribuer. On examinera ici trois réponses « différentialistes » à cette dernière question, d’après lesquelles une différence de catégorie ou de nature sépare, s’agissant de ces attitudes et de leurs contenus, les êtres pourvus de langage, tels les humains, et ceux qui en sont dépourvus, tels les animaux. On dis…Read more
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21The Iconicity of Thought and its Moving Pictures: Following the Sinuosities of Peirce's PathTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 53 (3): 374. 2017.When one tries to determine what the iconic dimension of thought consists in for Peirce and what its range is, one might have the impression that his remarks on this matter are inconsistent. For instance, on the one hand he writes the following: Remember it is by icons only that we really reason, and abstract statements are valueless in reasoning except so far as they aid us to construct diagrams. The sectaries of the opinion I am combating seem, on the contrary, to suppose that reasoning is per…Read more
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69Achievements, Safety and Environmental Epistemic LuckDialectica 68 (4): 477-497. 2014.Theories of knowledge as credit for true belief, or as cognitive achievement, have to face the following objection: in the famous Barn façades case, it seems that the truth of Barney's belief that he is in front of a barn is to be explained by the correct functioning of his cognitive capacities, although we are reluctant to say that he knows he is in front of a barn. Duncan Pritchard concludes from this that a safety clause, irreducible to the conditions a true belief must satisfy in order to be…Read more
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71Epistemic Value: The Insufficiency of TruthAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 54 (3): 303-316. 2017.We are naturally inclined to judge that it is better to know that p than to merely truly believe that p. How to account for this intuition? In this paper, I examine Williamson, Goldman and Olsson, and Pritchard's answers, and agree with Pritchard that it cannot be consistently claimed that knowledge is epistemically superior to mere true belief, and that truth is the only finally valuable epistemic good. Contrary to Pritchard, I argue that the latter claim is deeply mistaken. I do so by showing …Read more
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27Epistemic Purism and Doxastic PuritanismProceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 37 9-13. 2018.The pragmatist epistemologist is supposed to defend the idea that there is no pure epistemic activity and, thereby, that the way we form our beliefs does not have to be assessed according to aims, or norms that rest on the illusory denial of the pragmatic encroachment of any inquiry. According to the pragmatist, the kind of epistemic purism that is widely endorsed in contemporary epistemology has in fact no other raison d’être than the doxastic puritanism that appears in W. K. Clifford’s ethical…Read more
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105Skills, procedural knowledge, and knowledge-howSynthese 194 (12): 4959-4981. 2017.My main intention in this article is to settle the question whether having the ability to \ is, as Ryleans think, necessary for knowing how to \, and to determine the kind of role played by procedural knowledge in knowing how to \ and in acquiring and possessing the ability to \. I shall argue, in a seemingly anti-Rylean fashion, that when it comes to know-hows that are ordinarily categorised as physical skills, or—to be, for the moment, philosophically neutral—as enabling one to possess such sk…Read more
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13Connaître: Questions d’épistémologie contemporaine (edited book)Editions d'Ithaque. 2014.Qu'est-ce que la connaissance? Que pouvons-nous connaître? Et comment connaissons-nous? Ces questions philosophiques classiques relèvent de l'épistémologie, qui excède largement l'histoire philosophique des sciences à laquelle elle se trouve trop souvent réduite. Attentif aux enseignements des sciences de la cognition comme aux exigences normatives de la connaissance, le présent volume introduit aux questions les plus débattues de l'épistémologie contemporaine de façon nouvelle et accessible. Se…Read more
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19Peirce et les deux paquets de cartes : les probabilités peuvent-elles être le guide de la vie?Cahiers Philosophiques 3 (3): 67-90. 2017.Grâce à une célèbre expérience de pensée impliquant un choix à effectuer entre deux paquets de cartes, Peirce estime avoir avancé un argument concluant en faveur de la thèse de l’enracinement social de la logique. Puisque cet argument repose sur une conception fréquentiste des probabilités, il va s’agir d’interroger cette conception et de se demander s’il est possible de défendre l’idée qu’il est rationnel pour un individu de fonder ses actions sur des estimations de probabilités sans avoir à en…Read more
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602An Argument Against the Possibility of Gettiered BeliefsLogos and Episteme 5 (3). 2014.In this paper, I propose a new argument against Gettier’s counterexamples to the thesis that knowledge is justified true belief. I claim that if there is no doxastic voluntarism, and if it is admitted that one has formed the belief that p at t1 if, at t0, one would be surprised to learn or discover that not–p, it can be plausibly argued that Gettiered beliefs simply cannot be formed.
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3La connaissance et ses raisons (edited book)Collège de France. 2016.Les textes réunis dans ce volume traitent de questions particulièrement discutées de l’épistémologie contemporaine, entendue comme élucidation philosophique de la nature de la connaissance, de sa valeur et de ses modalités, ainsi que de la justification et des modalités de la croyance. Une clarification des notions de raison et de justification permet notamment d’affronter de manière renouvelée les défis du scepticisme. L’épistémologie y est ainsi présentée dans toute son extension, de l’analyse…Read more
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39Thought Experiments and Knowledge of Metaphysical ModalityGrazer Philosophische Studien 93 (4): 525-547. 2016.According to Timothy Williamson, philosophy is not a mere conceptual investigation and does not involve a specific cognitive ability, different in nature from those involved in acquiring scientific or ordinary knowledge of the world. The author holds that Williamson does not succeed in explaining how it is possible for us to acquire, through thought experiments, the type of knowledge that, according to him, philosophy predominantly aims to acquire—namely, knowledge of metaphysical modality. More…Read more
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16I outline and criticise the received interpretation of the controversy between Clifford and James over the ethics of belief. I defend Clifford’s view by arguing that his maxim ‘that it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’ should be understood as stating that any belief that results from the corruption of one’s judgement by one’s desires is wrong. I indicate what follows about religious beliefs in particular.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Metaphysics |
Metaphilosophy |
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Meta-Ethics |