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694Are Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Self-Debunking?Philosophia 44 (4): 1351-1366. 2016.I argue that, at least on the assumption that if there are epistemic facts they are irreducible, the evolutionary debunking maneuver is prima facie self-debunking because it seems to debunk a certain class of facts, namely, epistemic facts that prima facie it needs to rely on in order to launch its debunking arguments. I then appeal to two recent reconstructions of the evolutionary debunking maneuver (Kahane (2011), Griffiths and Wilkins (2015)) and find them wanting. Along the way I set aside t…Read more
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648MetaepistemologyInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016.An Introduction to basic metaepistemological debates and positions.
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602Review of John MacFarlane. (2014). Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and its Applications. Oxford, Oxford University Press (review)Dialectica. forthcoming.
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535Expressivism, question substitution and evolutionary debunkingPhilosophical Psychology 30 (8): 1019-1042. 2017.Expressivism is a blossoming meta-semantic framework sometimes relying on what Carter and Chrisman call “the core expressivist maneuver.” That is, instead of asking about the nature of a certain kind of value, we should be asking about the nature of the value judgment in question. According to expressivists, this question substitution opens theoretical space for the elegant, economical, and explanatorily powerful expressivist treatment of the relevant domain. I argue, however, that experimental …Read more
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504Evolutionary debunking: the Milvian Bridge destabilizedSynthese 196 (7): 2695-2713. 2019.Recent literature has paid attention to a demarcation problem for evolutionary debunking arguments. This is the problem of asking in virtue of what regulative metaepistemic norm evolutionary considerations either render a belief justified, or debunk it as unjustified. I examine the so-called ‘Milvian Bridge principle’ A new science of religion, Routledge, New York, 2012; Sloan, McKenny, Eggelson Darwin in the 21st century: nature, humanity, and God, University Press, Notre Dame, 2015)), which of…Read more
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436Ought to Believe, Evidential Understanding and the Pursuit of WisdomIn Pedro Schmechtig & Martin Grajner (eds.), Epistemic Reasons, Norms and Goals, De Gruyter. pp. 383-406. 2016.It is almost an epistemological platitude that the goal of inquiry is to pursue truth-acquisition and falsity-avoidance. But further reflection on this dual goal of inquiry reveals that the two (sub)goals are in tension because they are inversely proportionate: the more we satisfy the one (sub)goal the less we satisfy the other and vice versa. I elaborate the inverse proportionality point in some detail and bring out its puzzling implications about the normative question of what one ought to bel…Read more
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419From Moral Fixed Points to Epistemic Fixed PointsIn Christos Kyriacou & Robin McKenna (eds.), Metaepistemology: Realism & Antirealism, Palgrave Macmillan. 2018.Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014) argued that there are moral conceptual truths that are substantive in content, what they called ‘moral fixed points’. I argue that insofar as we have some reason to postulate moral fixed points, we have equal reason to postulate epistemic fixed points (e.g. the factivity condition). To this effect, I show that the two basic reasons Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014) offer in support of moral fixed points naturally carry over to epistemic fixed points. In particular, ep…Read more
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411Tolstoy's Implicit Moral Theory: An Interpretation and AppraisalRussian Literature. forthcoming.I sketch an interpretation of Tolstoy’s implicit moral theory on the basis of his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I suggest that Tolstoy is a theistic moral realist who believes that God’s will identifies the mind-independent truths of morality. He also thinks that, roughly, it suffices to heed natural moral emotions (like love and compassion) to know the right thing to do, that is, God’s will. In appraisal of Tolstoy’s interesting and original theory that I dub ‘theistic populist …Read more
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387Bifurcated Sceptical Invariantism: Between Gettier Cases and Saving Epistemic AppearancesJournal of Philosophical Research 42 27-44. 2017.I present an argument for a sophisticated version of sceptical invariantism that has so far gone unnoticed: Bifurcated Sceptical Invariantism (BSI). I argue that it can, on the one hand, (dis)solve the Gettier problem, address the dogmatism paradox and, on the other hand, show some due respect to the Moorean methodological incentive of ‘saving epistemic appearances’. A fortiori, BSI promises to reap some other important explanatory fruit that I go on to adduce (e.g. account for concessive knowle…Read more
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344Defending the Moral/Epistemic ParityIn C. McHugh J. Way & D. Whiting (eds.), Metaepistemology, . forthcoming.
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235Evolutionary Ruminations on 'the Value of Knowledge Intuition'In J. Hvorecky T. Hribek (ed.), Knowledge, Value, Evolution, College Publications. pp. 141-155. 2011.
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102Moral Fixed Points and Conceptual Deficiency: Reply to Ingram (2015)Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 2017 (3): 1-9. 2017.No abstract.
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95Habits-Expressivism About Epistemic JustificationPhilosophical Papers 41 (2). 2012.Abstract Although expressivist theories have been applied to many normative discourses (moral, rationality, knowledge, etc.), the normative discourse of epistemic justification has been somewhat neglected by expressivists. In this paper, I aspire to both remedy this unfortunate situation and introduce a novel version of expressivist theory: Habits-Expressivism. To pave the way for habits-expressivism, I turn to Allan Gibbard's (1990, 2003, 2008) seminal work on expressivism. I first examine Gibb…Read more
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86Moral Fixed Points, Rationality and the ‘Why Be Moral?’ QuestionErkenntnis 86 (3): 647-664. 2019.Cuneo and Shafer-Landau have argued that there are moral conceptual truths that are substantive and non-vacuous in content, what they called ‘moral fixed points’. If the moral proposition ‘torturing kids for fun is pro tanto wrong’ is such a conceptual truth, it is because the essence of ‘wrong’ necessarily satisfies and applies to the substantive content of ‘torturing kids for fun’. In critique, Killoren :165–173, 2016) has revisited the old skeptical ‘why be moral?’ question and argued that th…Read more
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77MetaepistemologyInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016.Metaepistemology Metaepistemology is, roughly, the branch of epistemology that asks questions about first-order epistemological questions. It inquires into fundamental aspects of epistemic theorizing like metaphysics, epistemology, semantics, agency, psychology, responsibility, reasons for belief, and beyond. So, if as traditionally conceived, epistemology is the theory of knowledge, metaepistemology is the theory of the theory of knowledge. … Continue reading Metaepistemology →
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76How Not to Solve the Wrong Kind of Reasons ProblemJournal of Value Inquiry 47 (1-2): 101-110. 2013.Ulrike Heuer (2011) has recently revisited ‘the wrong kind of reasons’ (WKR) problem for buckpassing accounts of value. She suggests that, insofar we want to avoid the problem, we have to abandon orthodox buckpassing accounts that incorporate a fitting attitude analysis of value. Instead, she proposes that we could do with a novel buckpassing account couched in terms of reasons for action. The aim of this paper is to show that the problem both remains in its original form, that is, in relation t…Read more
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73Assertion and Practical Reasoning, Fallibilism and Pragmatic SkepticismActa Analytica 35 (4): 543-561. 2020.Skeptical invariantism does not account for the intuitive connections between knowledge, assertion, and practical reasoning and this constitutes a significant problem for the position because it does not save corresponding epistemic appearances (cf. Hawthorne (2004:131-5)). Moreover, it is an attraction of fallibilist over infallibilist-skeptical views that they can easily account for the epistemic appearances about the connections between knowledge, assertion, and practical reasoning (cf. Willi…Read more
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72Metaepistemology: Realism & Antirealism (edited book)Palgrave Macmillan. 2018.This book contains twelve chapters by leading and up-and-coming philosophers on metaepistemology, that is, on the nature, existence and authority of epistemic facts. One of the central divides in metaepistemology is between epistemic realists and epistemic anti-realists. Epistemic realists think that epistemic facts exist independently of human judgements and practices, and that they have authority over our judgements and practices. Epistemic anti-realists think that, if epistemic facts exist at…Read more
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51Critical Discussion of David Velleman, Foundations for Moral Relativism, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2013. Pp. x +109. Price: £12.95 (review)Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (1): 209-214. 2015.Foundations for Moral Relativism consists of five self-standing, though loosely related, essays on the nature of agency and its metaethical foundations. The essays do not aspire to offer any grand theory of agency or metaethics, but only to lay out some of the foundations for such theories. These foundations portray how agency in general is constructed in the social context of a community, how moral agency in particular is constructed in the social context of a community, and how a derivative re…Read more
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43Metaepistemology Oxford Bibliographies OnlineOxford Bibliographies Online 0-0. 2016.A survey of basic metaepistemological positions and debates.
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35Good Guys, Bad Guys: How to Reliably Tell Virtue from SchmirtueAnalysis 82 (4): 775-786. 2022.Matti Eklund’s fascinating and wide-ranging Choosing Normative Concepts is an excellent contribution to metaethical debates (and beyond).1 Eklund’s professed di.
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35Plato, Necessity and Cartesian ScepticismPhilosophical Inquiry 37 (1-2): 121-137. 2013.While contemporary epistemologists consider Cartesian scepticism as a menacing problematic, it seems that Plato scarcely had any Cartesian doubts about knowledge of the extemal world. In this paper I ask why Plato had this cavalier attitude towards Cartesian scepticism. A quick first explanation is that Plato never conceived the challenge of Cartesian scepticism or at least, if he did, he missed the potential threat to empirical knowledge that such a challenge poses. I argue against this explana…Read more
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34Varieties of Skeptical Invariantism I & IIPhilosophy Compass 16 (10). 2021.I review proposed skepticisms in recent literature (or skeptical invariantisms, if we understand skepticism semantically), contrast their basic commitments and highlight some of their comparative theoretical attractions and problems. To help set the scene for the discussion, I start with Unger’s (1975) modern classic of global skepticism about knowledge (and justification). I then distinguish three extant categories of skepticism in the recent literature: two non‐traditional and one more traditi…Read more
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32John MacFarlane, Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and its Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, 362 pp., £30 , ISBN 9780199682751 (review)Dialectica 71 (2): 322-332. 2017.
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29Skeptical Invariantism Reconsidered (edited book)Routledge. 2021.This collection of original essays explores the topic of skeptical invariantism in theory of knowledge. It eschews historical perspectives and focuses on this traditionally underexplored, semantic characterization of skepticism. The book provides a carefully structured, state-of-the-art overview of skeptical invariantism and offers up new questions and avenues for future research. It treats this semantic form of skepticism as a serious position rather than assuming that skepticism is false and a…Read more
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29Evolutionary DebunkingLogos and Episteme 10 (2): 175-182. 2019.Recent literature has paid considerable attention to evolutionary debunking arguments. But the cogency of evolutionary debunking arguments is compromised by a problem for such arguments that has been somewhat overlooked, namely, what we may call ‘the demarcation problem.’ This is the problem of asking in virtue of what regulative metaepistemic norm evolutionary considerations either render a belief justified, or debunk it as unjustified. In this paper, I present and explain why in the absence of…Read more
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27Richard Rowland, The Normative and the EvaluativeJournal of Moral Philosophy 19 (1): 82-84. 2022.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Meta-Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |