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Existence Is Evidence of ImmortalityNoûs 55 (1): 128-151. 2021.
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Why abortion is immoralJournal of Philosophy 86 (4): 183-202. 1989.
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Reference and definite descriptionsPhilosophical Review 75 (3): 281-304. 1966.Definite descriptions, I shall argue, have two possible functions. 1] They are used to refer to what a speaker wishes to talk about, but they are also used quite differently. Moreover, a definite description occurring in one and the same sentence may, on different occasions of its use, function in either way. The failure to deal with this duality of function obscures the genuine referring use of definite descriptions. The best known theories of definite descriptions, those of Russell and Strawso…Read more
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On DenotingMind 14 (56): 479-493. 1905.By a `denoting phrase' I mean a phrase such as any one of the following: a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present King of England, the present King of France, the center of mass of the solar system at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth. Thus a phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form. We may distinguish three cases: (1) A phrase may be denoting, and yet not denote anything; e.g.,…Read more
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Nothing at Stake in KnowledgeNoûs 53 (1): 224-247. 2019.In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some …Read more
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Solving the skeptical problemPhilosophical Review 104 (1): 1-52. 1995.
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Personal identityPhilosophical Review 80 (January): 3-27. 1971.
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The body problemNoûs 33 (2): 183-200. 1999.
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Can we solve the mind-body problem?Mind 98 (July): 349-66. 1989.
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Verbal DisputesPhilosophical Review 120 (4): 515-566. 2011.The philosophical interest of verbal disputes is twofold. First, they play a key role in philosophical method. Many philosophical disagreements are at least partly verbal, and almost every philosophical dispute has been diagnosed as verbal at some point. Here we can see the diagnosis of verbal disputes as a tool for philosophical progress. Second, they are interesting as a subject matter for first-order philosophy. Reflection on the existence and nature of verbal disputes can reveal something ab…Read more
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Pragmatic SkepticismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2): 434-453. 2021.
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Epistemology NormalizedPhilosophical Review 132 (1): 89-145. 2023.We offer a general framework for theorizing about the structure of knowledge and belief in terms of the comparative normality of situations compatible with one’s evidence. The guiding idea is that, if a possibility is sufficiently less normal than one’s actual situation, then one can know that that possibility does not obtain. This explains how people can have inductive knowledge that goes beyond what is strictly entailed by their evidence. We motivate the framework by showing how it illuminates…Read more
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If Nothing MattersNoûs 51 (2): 327-353. 2017.The possibility that nothing really matters can cause much anxiety, but what would it mean for that to be true? Since it couldn’t be bad that nothing matters, fearing nihilism makes little sense. However, the consequences of belief in nihilism will be far more dramatic than often thought. Many metaethicists assume that even if nothing matters, we should, and would, go on more or less as before. But if nihilism is true in an unqualified way, it can’t be the case that we should go on as before. An…Read more
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Two concepts of rulesPhilosophical Review 64 (1): 3-32. 1955.
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Questions in ActionJournal of Philosophy 119 (3): 113-143. 2022.Choices confront us with questions. How we act depends on our answers to those questions. So the way our beliefs guide our choices is not just a function of their informational content, but also depends systematically on the questions those beliefs address. This paper gives a precise account of the interplay between choices, questions and beliefs, and harnesses this account to obtain a principled approach to the problem of deduction. The result is a novel theory of belief-guided action that expl…Read more
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When Does Evidence Suffice for Conviction?Mind 127 (508): 1193-1218. 2018.There is something puzzling about statistical evidence. One place this manifests is in the law, where courts are reluctant to base affirmative verdicts on evidence that is purely statistical, in spite of the fact that it is perfectly capable of meeting the standards of proof enshrined in legal doctrine. After surveying some proposed explanations for this, I shall outline a new approach – one that makes use of a notion of normalcy that is distinct from the idea of statistical frequency. The pu…Read more
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Rehabilitating Statistical EvidencePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (1): 3-23. 2019.Recently, the practice of deciding legal cases on purely statistical evidence has been widely criticised. Many feel uncomfortable with finding someone guilty on the basis of bare probabilities, even though the chance of error might be stupendously small. This is an important issue: with the rise of DNA profiling, courts are increasingly faced with purely statistical evidence. A prominent line of argument—endorsed by Blome-Tillmann 2017; Smith 2018; and Littlejohn 2018—rejects the use of such evi…Read more
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From Paradigm-Based Explanation to Pragmatic GenealogyMind 129 (515): 683-714. 2020.Why would philosophers interested in the points or functions of our conceptual practices bother with genealogical explanations if they can focus directly on paradigmatic examples of the practices we now have?? To answer this question, I compare the method of pragmatic genealogy advocated by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker—a method whose singular combination of fictionalising and historicising has met with suspicion—with the simpler method of paradigm-based explanation. Fricke…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Skepticism |
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |