•  349
    In defence of virtue epistemology
    Synthese 179 (3): 409-433. 2011.
    In a number of recent papers Duncan Pritchard argues that virtue epistemology's central ability condition—one knows that p if and only if one has attained cognitive success (true belief) because of the exercise of intellectual ability—is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. This paper discusses and dismisses a number of responses to Pritchard's objections and develops a new way of defending virtue epistemology against them.
  •  283
    Theory of inquiry
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (2): 359-384. 2020.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
  •  269
    Understanding phenomena
    Synthese 192 (12): 3799-3816. 2015.
    The literature on the nature of understanding can be divided into two broad camps. Explanationists believe that it is knowledge of explanations that is key to understanding. In contrast, their manipulationist rivals maintain that understanding essentially involves an ability to manipulate certain representations. The aim of this paper is to provide a novel knowledge based account of understanding. More specifically, it proposes an account of maximal understanding of a given phenomenon in terms o…Read more
  •  198
    What’s the Point of “Knowledge” Anyway?
    Episteme 8 (1): 53-66. 2011.
    status: published.
  •  193
    Justified Belief: Knowledge First‐Style
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (1): 79-100. 2016.
    Recent knowledge first epistemology features a number of different accounts of justified belief, including a knowledge first reductionism according to which to believe justifiably is to know Sutton, Littlejohn, Williamson, a knowledge first version of accessibilism Millar and a knowledge first version of mentalism Bird. This paper offers a knowledge first version of virtue epistemology and argues that it is preferable to its knowledge first epistemological rivals: only knowledge first virtue epi…Read more
  •  184
    Pritchard and Vaesen have recently argued that robust virtue epistemology does not square with the extended cognition thesis that has enjoyed an increasing degree of popularity in recent philosophy of mind. This paper shows that their arguments fail. The relevant cases of extended cognition pose no new problem for robust virtue epistemology. It is shown that Pritchard’s and Vaesen’s cases can be dealt with in familiar ways by a number of virtue theories of knowledge.
  •  183
    Norms of Belief
    Philosophical Issues 26 (1): 374-392. 2016.
    When in the business of offering an account of the epistemic normativity of belief, one is faced with the following dilemma: strongly externalist norms fail to account for the intuition of justification in radical deception scenarios, while milder norms are incapable to explain what is epistemically wrong with false beliefs. This paper has two main aims; we first look at one way out of the dilemma, defended by Timothy Williamson and Clayton Littlejohn, and argue that it fails. Second, we identif…Read more
  •  175
    Two for the Knowledge Goal of Inquiry
    American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (3): 227-32. 2014.
    Suppose you ask yourself whether your father's record collection includes a certain recording of The Trout and venture to find out. At that time, you embark on an inquiry into whether your father owns the relevant recording. Your inquiry is a project with a specific goal: finding out whether your father owns the recording. This fact about your inquiry generalizes: inquiry is a goal-directed enterprise. A specific inquiry can be individuated by the question it aims to answer and by who aims to an…Read more
  •  163
    Conceptual Innovation, Function First
    Noûs 54 (4): 985-1002. 2019.
    Can we engineer conceptual change? While a positive answer to this question would be exciting news for philosophy, there has been a growing number of pessimistic voices in the literature. This paper resists this trend. Its central aim is to argue not only that conceptual engineering is possible but also that it is not even distinctively hard. In order to achieve this, we will develop a novel approach to conceptual engineering that has two key components. First, it proposes a reorientation of the…Read more
  •  159
    Knowledge and Safety
    Journal of Philosophical Research 34 21-31. 2009.
    This paper raises a problem for so-called safety-based conceptions of knowledge: It is argued that none of the versions of the safety condition that can be found in the literature succeeds in identifying a necessary condition on knowledge. Furthermore, reason is provided to believe that the argument generalizes at least in the sense that there can be no version of the safety condition that does justice to the considerations motivating a safety condition whilst, at the same time, being requisite …Read more
  •  158
    Criticism and Blame in Action and Assertion
    Journal of Philosophy 114 (2): 76-93. 2017.
    In this paper, we develop a general normative framework for criticisability, blamelessness and blameworthiness in action. We then turn to the debate on norms of assertion. We show that an application of this framework enables champions of the so-called knowledge rule of assertion to offer a theoretically motivated response to a number of putative counterexamples in terms of blamelessness. Finally, we argue that, on closer inspection, the putative counterexamples serve to confirm the knowledge ru…Read more
  •  153
    Classical Invariantism and the Puzzle of Fallibilism
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (2): 221-244. 2008.
    This paper revisits a puzzle that arises for theories of knowledge according to which one can know on the basis of merely inductive grounds. No matter how strong such theories require inductive grounds to be if a belief based on them is to qualify as knowledge, there are certain beliefs that are based on even stronger inductive grounds, while, intuitively, they do not qualify as knowledge. This paper discusses what is often regardedas the most promising classical invariantist solution to the puz…Read more
  •  152
    Assertion: A Function First Account
    Noûs 52 (2): 411-442. 2018.
    This paper aims to develop a novel account of the normativity of assertion. Its core thesis is that assertion has an etiological epistemic function, viz. to generate knowledge in hearers. In conjunction with a general account of etiological functions and their normative import, it is argued that an assertion is epistemically good if and only if it has the disposition to generate knowledge in hearers. In addition, reason is provided to believe that it makes sense to regulate the practice of asser…Read more
  •  151
    Inquiry, knowledge and understanding
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 7): 1583-1593. 2018.
    This paper connects two important debates in epistemology—to wit, on the goal of inquiry and on the nature of understanding—and offers a unified knowledge-based account of both.
  •  138
    Epistemic Frankfurt Cases Revisited
    American Philosophical Quarterly 53 (1): 27-37. 2016.
    In Kelp, it is argued that there are epistemic Frankfurt cases that serve to show that knowledge does not require safety from error. In this paper, these Frankfurt cases are revisited. It is first argued that a recent response to the earlier argument by Duncan Pritchard remains unsatisfactory. Then it is shown that Frankfurt cases impact a much wider range of accounts. Specifically, it is argued in some detail that, in conjunction with the infamous Fake Barn cases, they generate a problem for th…Read more
  •  137
    Proper bootstrapping
    Synthese 190 (1): 171-185. 2013.
    According to a much discussed argument, reliabilism is defective for making knowledge too easy to come by. In a recent paper, Weisberg aims to show that this argument relies on a type of reasoning that is rejectable on independent grounds. We argue that the blanket rejection that Weisberg recommends of this type of reasoning is both unwarranted and unwelcome. Drawing on an older discussion in the philosophy of science, we show that placing some relatively modest restrictions on the said type of …Read more
  •  136
    Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology
    In Adam Carter, Emma Gordon & Benjamin Jarvis (eds.), Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind, Oxford University Press. 2017.
    No abstract available.
  •  135
    Second-Order Knowledge
    In D. Pritchard & S. Bernecker (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, Routledge. 2010.
    No abstract available.
  •  135
    Lotteries and justification
    Synthese 194 (4): 1233-1244. 2017.
    The lottery paradox shows that the following three individually highly plausible theses are jointly incompatible: highly probable propositions are justifiably believable, justified believability is closed under conjunction introduction, known contradictions are not justifiably believable. This paper argues that a satisfactory solution to the lottery paradox must reject as versions of the paradox can be generated without appeal to either or and proposes a new solution to the paradox in terms of a…Read more
  •  134
    A Practical Explication of the Knowledge Rule of Informative Speech Acts
    European Journal of Philosophy 21 (3): 367-383. 2013.
    This paper defends the knowledge rule of informative speech acts. It is argued that Edward Craig's insightful practical explication of the concept of knowledge can be extended to motivate the knowledge rule. A number of problem cases for the knowledge rule are addressed and accommodated.
  •  131
    Knowledge: The Safe-Apt View
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (2): 265-278. 2013.
    According to virtue epistemology, knowledge involves cognitive success that is due to cognitive competence. This paper explores the prospects of a virtue theory of knowledge that, so far, has no takers in the literature. It combines features from a couple of different virtue theories: like Pritchard's [forthcoming; et al. 2010] view, it qualifies as what I call an ‘impure’ version of virtue epistemology, according to which the competence condition is supplemented by an additional condition; like…Read more
  •  131
    Inquiry And The Transmission Of Knowledge
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2): 298-310. 2018.
    No abstract available.
  •  128
    Much recent discussion in social epistemology has focussed on the question of whether peers can rationally sustain a disagreement. A growing number of social epistemologists hold that the answer is negative. We point to considerations from the history of science that favor rather the opposite answer. However, we also explain how the other position can appear intuitively attractive.
  •  119
    Not Without Justification
    Dialectica 65 (4): 581-595. 2011.
    status: published.
  •  116
    Commodious knowledge
    Synthese 194 (5): 1487-1502. 2017.
    This paper offers a novel account of the value of knowledge. The account is novel insofar as it advocates a shift in focus from the value of individual items of knowledge to the value of the commodity of knowledge. It is argued that the commodity of knowledge is valuable in at least two ways: in a wide range of areas, knowledge is our way of being in cognitive contact with the world and for us the good life is a life rich enough in knowledge.
  •  108
    How to Be A Reliabilist
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2): 346-374. 2016.
    In this paper, I aim to develop a novel virtue reliabilist account of justified belief, which incorporates insights from both process reliabilism and extant versions of virtue reliabilism. Like extant virtue reliabilist accounts of justi- fied belief, the proposed view takes it that justified belief is a kind of competent performance and that competent performances require reliable agent abilities. However, unlike extant versions of virtue reliabilism, the view takes abilities to essentially inv…Read more
  •  108
    A problem for contrastivist accounts of knowledge
    Philosophical Studies 152 (2): 287-292. 2011.
    This paper raises a problem for contrastivist accounts of knowledge. It is argued that contrastivism fails to succeed in providing a modest solution to the sceptical paradox—i.e. one according to which we have knowledge of a wide range of ordinary empirical propositions whilst failing to know the various anti-sceptical hypotheses entailed by them—whilst, at the same time, retaining a contrastivist version of the closure principle for knowledge.
  •  108
    Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge – Jennifer Lackey
    Philosophical Quarterly 59 (237): 748-750. 2009.
    No Abstract