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110False AuthoritiesActa Analytica. forthcoming.An epistemic agent A is a false epistemic authority for others iff they falsely believe A to be in a position to help them accomplish their epistemic ends. A major divide exists between what I call "epistemic quacks", who falsely believe themselves to be relevantly competent, and "epistemic charlatans", i.e., false authorities who believe or even know that they are incompetent. Both types of false authority do not cover what Lackey (2021) calls "predatory experts": experts who systematically mis…Read more
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1333Religious experience and the probability of theism: comments on SwinburneReligious Studies 53 (3): 353-370. 2017.I discuss Richard Swinburne’s account of religious experience in his probabilistic case for theism. I argue, pace Swinburne, that even if cosmological considerations render theism not too improbable, religious experience does not render it more probable than not.
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Der Wert des WissensIn Martin Grajner & Guido Melchior (eds.), Handbuch Erkenntnistheorie, Metzler. pp. 102-109. 2019.Die traditionelle Erkenntnistheorie beschäftigte sich vor allem mit drei großen Fragen. (i) Was ist Wissen? (ii) Ist Wissen möglich und in welchen Bereichen und in welchem Umfang können wir es, wenn überhaupt, erwerben? (iii) Was sind die Quellen des Wissens, und spielen womöglich einige von ihnen (etwa Wahrnehmung oder Introspektion) eine besondere Rolle für die Fundierung epistemischer Systeme? Neben der Einbeziehung sozialer Wissensquellen in die Behandlung von Frage (iii) ist in den letzten …Read more
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Epistemology: Contexts, Values and Disagreement. Proceedings of the 34. International Wittgenstein Symposium. (edited book)Druckwerker. 2012.
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11Scientia Media and Freedom to Do OtherwiseIn Christian Kanzian, Winfried Löffler & Josef Quitterer (eds.), The Ways Things Are: Studies in Ontology, Ontos. pp. 241-262. 2011.
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541The social fabric of understanding: equilibrium, authority, and epistemic empathySynthese 199 (1-2): 1185-1205. 2020.We discuss the social-epistemic aspects of Catherine Elgin’s theory of reflective equilibrium and understanding and argue that it yields an argument for the view that a crucial social-epistemic function of epistemic authorities is to foster understanding in their communities. We explore the competences that enable epistemic authorities to fulfil this role and argue that among them is an epistemic virtue we call “epistemic empathy”.
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213Falsche AutoritätenIn Rico Hauswald & Pedro Schmechtig (eds.), Wissensproduktion und Wissenstransfer unter erschwerten Bedingungen. Der Einfluss der Corona-Krise auf die Erzeugung und Vermittlung von Wissen im öffentlichen Diskurs, Alber. pp. 219-243. 2022.
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617Epistemic AuthorityIn Jennifer Lackey & Aidan McGlynn (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Social Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2024.This handbook article gives a critical overview of recent discussions of epistemic authority. It favors an account that brings into balance the dictates of rational deference with the ideals of intellectual self-governance. A plausible starting point is the conjecture that neither should rational deference to authorities collapse into total epistemic submission, nor the ideal of mature intellectual self-governance be conflated with (illusions of) epistemic autarky.
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397Molina und das Problem des theologischen DeterminismusIn Louis de Molina, Göttlicher Plan und menschliche Freiheit, lat.-deutsch,, Felix Meiner Verlag. pp. 13-178. 2018.Der Download enthält die penultimative Fassung (noch unter dem vorläufigen Titel "Molina über Vorsehung und Freiheit"). Diese ausführliche Einleitung zu dem Band "Luis de Molina: Göttlicher Plan und menschliche Freiheit", hg. und übersetzt von C. Jäger, H. Kraml und G. Leibold, Hamburg: Meiner 2018, rekonstruiert auf 165 S. Molinas berühmte Theorie der Willensfreiheit und die Frage ihrer Vereinbarkeit mit göttlichem Vorherwissen und göttlicher Vorsehung. Sie zeichnet wesentliche Stationen de…Read more
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27Symposium zu: Geert Keil: Willensfreiheit : Determinismus und verantwortung: Was Kann Das konsequenzargument?Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 57 (1). 2009.
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36Fischer’s Fate with FatalismEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9 (4): 25-38. 2017.John Martin Fischer’s core project in Our Fate is to develop and defend Pike-style arguments for theological incompatibilism, i. e., for the view that divine omniscience is incompatible with human free will. Against Ockhamist attacks on such arguments, Fischer maintains that divine forebeliefs constitute so-called hard facts about the times at which they occur, or at least facts with hard ‘kernel elements’. I reconstruct Fischer’s argument and outline its structural analogies with an argument fo…Read more
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34Privileged Access and RepressionIn Verena Mayer & Sabine A. Döring (eds.), Die Moralität der Gefühle, De Gruyter. pp. 59-80. 2002.
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647Wittgenstein über Gewissheit und religiösen GlaubenIn Florian Uhl and Artur R. Boelderl (ed.), Die Sprachen der Religion, . pp. 221-256. 2003.
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496Prolegomena zu einer philosophischen Theorie der Meta-EmotionenIn Barbara Merker (ed.), Leben mit Gefühlen, Mentis. pp. 113-137. 2009.
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122Determinismus und Verantwortung: Was kann das Konsequenzargument?Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 57 (1): 119-131. 2009.In his recent book Willensfreiheit Geert Keil defends a version of libertarianism. Yet he criticizes a flagship argument for incompatibilism. Van Inwagen's consequence argument, Keil thinks, relies on an irrelevant premise when it claims that agents have no choice about the remote past. I argue that Keil's charge rests on a misunderstanding. I then sketch why discussions of the consequence argument should focus on the question whether or not a certain version of rule Beta is valid
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46Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreements (Proceedings of the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium) (edited book)Ontos Verlag. 2012.The present volume collects papers that were presented at the 34th International Wittgenstein Symposium “Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreement” 2011 in Kirchberg. Contributors include: P. Baumann, A. Beckermann, E. Brendel, J. Bromand, G. Brun, M. David, W. Davis, C. Elgin, E. Fischer, W. Freitag, S. Goldberg, J. Greco, E. Harcourt, A. Kemmerling, M. Kober, D. Koppelberg, A. Koritensky, H. Kornblith, M. Kusch, M. Lee, N. Miscevic, K. Munn, B. Niederbacher, E. J. Olsson, C. Piller, R. Raaa…Read more
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90Kunst und Erkenntnis (Art and Knowledge) (edited book)mentis. 2005.Dient Kunst der Erkenntnis? Vermittelt sie Einsichten oder Wissen? Und wenn ja: auf welche Weise? Sind ästhetische Urteile wahr oder falsch? Beruht unsere Wertschätzung von Kunst auf ihren kognitiven Funktionen? Zu diesen Fragen, die zu den klassischen Themen der Kunstphilosophie gehören, beziehen zehn Philosophen aus dem deutschen Sprachraum in Originalbeiträgen Position. Der Band dokumentiert den gegenwärtigen Stand der Kontroversen zwischen kognitivistischen und nichtkognitivistischen Theorie…Read more
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23Religiöse Erfahrung und epistemische ZirkularitätDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 53 (2). 2005.
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740Looking into meta-emotionsSynthese 192 (3): 787-811. 2015.There are many psychic mechanisms by which people engage with their selves. We argue that an important yet hitherto neglected one is self-appraisal via meta-emotions. We discuss the intentional structure of meta-emotions and explore the phenomenology of a variety of examples. We then present a pilot study providing preliminary evidence that some facial displays may indicate the presence of meta-emotions. We conclude by arguing that meta-emotions have an important role to play in higher-order the…Read more
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481Affective ignoranceErkenntnis 71 (1). 2009.According to one of the most influential views in the philosophy of self-knowledge each person enjoys some special cognitive access to his or her own current mental states and episodes. This view faces two fundamental tasks. First, it must elucidate the general conceptual structure of apparent asymmetries between beliefs about one’s own mind and beliefs about other minds. Second, it must demarcate the mental territory for which first-person-special-access claims can plausibly be maintained. Trad…Read more
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263Contextualist approaches to epistemology: Problems and prospectsErkenntnis 61 (2-3). 2004.In this paper we survey some main arguments for and against epistemological contextualism. We distinguish and discuss various kinds of contextualism, such as attributer contextualism (the most influential version of which is semantic, conversational, or radical contextualism); indexicalism; proto-contextualism; Wittgensteinian contextualism; subject, inferential, or issue contextualism; epistemic contextualism; and virtue contextualism. Starting with a sketch of Dretske's Relevant Alternatives T…Read more
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707Warrant, defeaters, and the epistemic basis of religious beliefIn Michael G. Parker and Thomas M. Schmidt (ed.), Scientific explanation and religious belief, Mohr Siebeck. pp. 81-98. 2005.I critically examine two features of Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology. (i) If basic theistic beliefs are threatened by defeaters (of various kinds) and thus must be defended by higher-order defeaters in order to remain rational and warranted, are they still “properly basic”? (ii) Does Plantinga’s overall account offer an argument that basic theistic beliefs actually are warranted? I answer both questions in the negative.
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436Epistemic Authority, Preemptive Reasons, and UnderstandingEpisteme 13 (2): 167-185. 2016.One of the key tenets of Linda Zagzebski’s book " Epistemic Authority" is the Preemption Thesis. It says that, when an agent learns that an epistemic authority believes that p, the rational response for her is to adopt that belief and to replace all of her previous reasons relevant to whether p by the reason that the authority believes that p. I argue that such a “Hobbesian approach” to epistemic authority yields problematic results. This becomes especially virulent when we apply Preemption to c…Read more
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474Reliability and Future True Belief: Reply to Olsson and JönssonTheoria 77 (3): 223-237. 2011.In “Process Reliabilism and the Value Problem” I argue that Erik Olsson and Alvin Goldman's conditional probability solution to the value problem in epistemology is unsuccessful and that it makes significant internalist concessions. In “Kinds of Learning and the Likelihood of Future True Beliefs” Olsson and Martin Jönsson try to show that my argument does “not in the end reduce the plausibility” of Olsson and Goldman's account. Here I argue that, while Olsson and Jönsson clarify and amend the co…Read more
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10Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreement. Papers of the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, 2011 (edited book)The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. 2007.This volume collects papers that were presented at the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium 2011 in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria. They focus on five key debates in contemporary epistemology: Does the term "to know" vary its meaning according to features of the contexts in which it is uttered? What role may "epistemic virtues" play in our cognitive activities? What is the surplus value of having knowledge instead of mere true belief? What is the structure and significance of testimon…Read more
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Unconscious emotions-Black holes in the Cartesian theatre?Consciousness and Cognition 9 (2): 54-54. 2000.
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895Molinism and Theological CompatibilismEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (1): 71-92. 2013.In a series of recent papers John Martin Fischer argues that the Molinist solution to the problem of reconciling divine omniscience with human freedom does not offer such a solution at all. Instead, he maintains, Molina simply presupposes theological compatibilism. However, Fischer construes the problem in terms of sempiternalist omniscience, whereas classical Molinism adopts atemporalism. I argue that, moreover, an atemporalist reformulation of Fischer’s argument designed to show that Molinis…Read more
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255Skepticism, Information, and Closure: Dretske’s Theory of KnowledgeErkenntnis 61 (2-3). 2004.According to Fred Dretske's externalist theory of knowledge a subject knows that p if and only if she believes that p and this belief is caused or causally sustained by the information that p. Another famous feature of Dretske's epistemology is his denial that knowledge is closed under known entailment. I argue that, given Dretske's construal of information, he is in fact committed to the view that both information and knowledge are closed under known entailment. Hence, if it is true that, as Dr…Read more