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Selective disregardIn Chiara Ambrosio & Julia Sánchez-Dorado (eds.), Abstraction in science and art: philosophical perspectives, Routledge. 2024.
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Impartiality and legal reasoningIn Amalia Amaya & Maksymilian Del Mar (eds.), Virtue, Emotion and Imagination in Law and Legal Reasoning, Hart Publishing. 2020.
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5Understanding’s TethersIn Christoph Jäger & Winfried Löffler (eds.), Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreement. Papers of the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, 2011, The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 131-146. 2007.
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8Word Giving, Word TakingIn José Medina & David Wood (eds.), Truth, Blackwell. 2005-01-01.This chapter contains section titled: Suggested Reading.
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58Worldmaker: Nelson Goodman 1906–1998Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 31 (1): 1-18. 2000.
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2Take It from MePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2): 291-308. 2002.Testimony consists in imparting information without supplying evidence or argument to back one’s claims. To what extent does testimony convey epistemic warrant? C. J. A. Coady argues, on Davidsonian grounds, that (1) most testimony is true, hence (2) most testimony supplies warrant sufficient for knowledge. I appeal to Grice’s maxims to undermine Coady’s argument and to show that the matter is more complicated and context-sensitive than is standardly recognized. Informative exchanges take place …Read more
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Epistemic gatekeepers : the role of aesthetic factors in scienceIn Milena Ivanova & Steven French (eds.), The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding, Routledge. 2020.
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Understanding as an educational objectiveIn Randall R. Curren (ed.), Handbook of philosophy of education, Routledge. 2023.
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1Understanding as an educational objectiveIn Randall R. Curren (ed.), Handbook of philosophy of education, Routledge. 2023.
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43Beyond the Information Given: Teaching, Testimony, and the Advancement of UnderstandingPhilosophical Topics 49 (2): 17-34. 2021.Teaching is not testimony. Although both convey information, they have different uptake requirements. Testimony aims to impart information and typically succeeds if the recipient believes that informationon account of having been told by a reliable informant. Teaching aims to equip learners to go beyond the information given—to leverage that information to broaden, deepen, and critique their current understanding of a topic. Teaching fails if the recipients believe the information only because i…Read more
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61Models as Felicitous FalsehoodsPrincipia: An International Journal of Epistemology 26 (1): 7-23. 2022.I argue that models enable us to understand reality in ways that we would be unable to do if we restricted ourselves to the unvarnished truth. The point is not just that the features that a model skirts can permissibly be neglected. They ought to be neglected. Too much information occludes patterns that figure in an understanding of the phenomena. The regularities a model reveals are real and informative. But many of them show up only under idealizing assumptions.
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155Disagreement in philosophySynthese 200 (1): 1-16. 2022.Recent philosophical discussions construe disagreement as epistemically unsettling. On learning that a peer disagrees, it is said, you should suspend judgment, lower your credence, or dismiss your peer’s conviction as somehow flawed, even if you can neither identify the flaw nor explain why you think she is the party in error. Philosophers do none of these things. A distinctive feature of philosophy as currently practiced is that, although we marshal the strongest arguments we can devise, we do …Read more
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136The Function of KnowledgeAnalysis 81 (1): 100-107. 2021.Human beings are epistemically interdependent. Much of what we know and much of what we need to know we glean from others. Being a gregarious bunch, we are prone to venturing opinions whether they are warranted or not. This makes information transfer a tricky business. What we want from others is not just information, but reliable information. When we seek information, we are in the position of enquirers not examiners. We ask someone whether p because we do not ourselves already know whether p. …Read more
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21Richard Foley's Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3): 724-734. 2004.
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28Considered JudgmentPrinceton University Press. 1999.Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbi…Read more
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79The Mark of a Good InformantActa Analytica 35 (3): 319-331. 2020.Edward Craig and Michael Hannon agree that the function of knowledge is to enable us to identify informants whose word we can safely take. This requires that knowers display a publicly recognizable mark. Although this might suffice for information transfer, I argue that the position that emerges promotes testimonial injustice, since the mark of a good informant need not be shared by all who are privy to the facts we seek. I suggest a way the problem might be alleviated.
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42D. M. Armstrong. A combinatorial theory of possibility. Cambridge studies in philosophy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge etc. 1989, xiii + 156 pp. - Brian Skyrms. Tractarian nominalism. Therein, pp. 145–152. , pp. 199–206.) (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 56 (1): 352-355. 1991.
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Epistemically Useful FalsehoodsIn Cherie Braden, Rodrigo Borges & Branden Fitelson (eds.), Themes From Klein, Springer Verlag. 2019.
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Reference and Meaning: A Tractarian Analysis of Incommensurable Representational SystemsDissertation, Brandeis University. 1975.
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46Philosophie de la danse (edited book)Aesthetica, Presses Universitaires de Rennes. 2010.En posant avec clarté des questions de philosophie de l’esprit, d’ontologie et d’épistémologie, ce livre témoigne à la fois de l’intérêt réel de la danse comme objet philosophique et du rôle unique que peut jouer la philosophie dans une meilleure compréhension de cet art. Qu’est-ce que danser ? Que nous apprend le mouvement dansé sur la nature humaine et la relation entre le corps et l’esprit ? À quelles conditions une œuvre est-elle correctement interprétée par les danseurs et bien identifiée p…Read more
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108Can Belief Be Justified Through Coherence Alone?In Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Blackwell. pp. 244-273. 2013.
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13[Book review] considered judgment (review)In Stephen Everson (ed.), Ethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 108--4. 1998.
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109Lawlikeness and the end of sciencePhilosophy of Science 47 (1): 56-68. 1980.Although our theories are not precisely true, scientific realists contend that we should admit their objects into our ontology. One justification--offered by Sellars and Putnam--is that current theories belong to series that converge to ideally adequate theories. I consider the way the commitment to convergence reflects on the interpretation of lawlike claims. I argue that the distinction between lawlike and accidental generalizations depends on our cognitive interests and reflects our commitmen…Read more
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Aesthetics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |