•  547
    The Import of the Puzzle About Belief
    Philosophical Review 105 (3): 373-402. 1996.
    Relocating Kripke's puzzle about belief, this paper investigates i) in what the puzzle consists, exactly; ii) the method used in its construction; and iii) relations between meaning and rationality. Essential to Kripke's puzzle is a normative notion of contradictory belief. Different positions about the meaning of names yield different views of what constitutes the attribution of contradictory belief; and Kripke's puzzle unwittingly _imports a Millian assumption. Accordingly, the puzzle about be…Read more
  •  494
    The conditional fallacy
    Philosophical Review 115 (3): 273-316. 2006.
    To say that this lump of sugar is soluble is to say that it would dissolve, if submerged anywhere, at any time and in any parcel of water. To say that this sleeper knows French, is to say that if, for example, he is ever addressed in French, or shown any French newspaper, he responds pertinently in French, acts appropriately or translates correctly into his own tongue.
  •  265
    Standard Bearers
    Episteme 14 (3): 329-341. 2017.
    In both ethics and epistemology an important question is whether justification is a fully internal or a partly external matter. In view of analogies between relevant considerations in each area, I recommend distinguishing, as basic and independent subjects of normative status, (i) people and (ii) what they do. Evaluations of subjects, on one hand, and of their beliefs and actions, on the other, are less intimately related than is presupposed. This helps resolve internalism/externalism controvers…Read more
  •  246
    The Counterexample Fallacy
    with D. Bonevac and J. Dever
    Mind 120 (480): 1143-1158. 2011.
    Manley and Wasserman (2008) join the chorus of opposition to the possibility of conditional analysis of dispositions. But that score cannot be settled without more careful attention to the implicit philosophical methodology. Some of the opposition to such an analysis badly overestimates the effect of counterexamples, as if the Gettier example were sufficient to refute the possibility of conjunctive analysis of knowledge. A general objection to a form of analysis must satisfy a number of constrai…Read more
  •  240
    Dubious assertions
    Philosophical Studies 146 (2). 2008.
    The knowledge account of assertion—roughly: one should not assert what one does not know—aspires to identify the norm distinctive of assertion. One main argument given in support of the knowledge account has been the success with which it explains a variety of Moore-paradoxical assertion. But that explanation does not generalize satisfactorily.
  •  222
    The fine line
    Analysis 70 (2): 347-358. 2010.
    (No abstract is available for this citation)
  •  201
    Scepticism about intuition
    Philosophy 81 (4): 633-648. 2006.
    Contemporary philosophy’s antipathy to intuition can come to seem baffling. There is inadequate reason to move away from the intuitively attractive view that we have a faculty of intuition, in many ways akin to our faculties of perception and memory and introspection, that gives us reason for belief, and with it, often enough, gives us knowledge. The purpose here is to consider whether scepticism about intuition is more reasonable than a corresponding scepticism about other epistemic faculties. …Read more
  •  172
    Profligate or abstemious Millianism
    Analysis 73 (1): 51-56. 2013.
    Any developed Millianism is forced to make an arbitrary choice. Some Millian theories are profligate: it suffices for believing that Clark flies that you assent to some way of taking that proposition. But Lois no more believes that Clark flies than she fails to believe that Superman flies. An abstemious Millianism requires for believing that Superman flies that you not refrain from assenting to any way of taking that proposition. Profligate Millianism gives subjects beliefs they do not seem to h…Read more
  •  159
    What is it like to be a group?
    Social Philosophy and Policy 26 (1): 212-226. 2009.
    Consequentialist and Kantian theories differ over the ethical relevance of consequences of actions. I investigate how they might differ too over the relevance of what actions are consequence of. Focusing on the case of group action and collective responsibility, I argue that there's a kind of analog to the problem of aggregating the value of consequencesthat Kantian theories will not confront and consequentialist theories will. The issue provides a useful way to characterize a deep difference be…Read more
  •  149
    Slouching Towards Dualism (review)
    Revue Internationale de Philosophie 55 (216): 257-263. 2001.
    Searle may protest too much his anti-dualism. It may be that what needs reconsideration is not so much the traditional opposition between material and mental as the supposed opposition between property dualism and our contemporary scientific world view. Searle at one points notes that "[w]hen we come to the proposition that reality is physical, we come to what is perhaps the crux of the whole discussion." I agree.
  •  147
    What Does it Matter What it's Like?
    Philosophical Issues 25 (1): 224-242. 2015.
  •  143
    Representing Thoughts and Language
    Dissertation, Princeton University. 1996.
    These three papers, each constituting a chapter, lie at the intersection of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Chapter 1 reviews and reassesses Kripke's puzzle about belief. I argue, contra Kripke, that the puzzle shows Millianism to be inadequate . It must be supplemented with a Fregean theory. But Millianism and Fregeanism need not be opposed. Developing a distinction between mental representation and linguistic representation, I divide the notion of proposition. It is one thing to…Read more
  •  141
    Two Forms of Dualism
    Dialogue 50 (2): 307-313. 2011.
    ABSTRACT: I distinguish two sorts of motivation for dualism. One motivation is driven by the distinctive character of conscious phenomenology. The other is driven by the special character of normativity: Is rationality an even problem than consciousness? There is no dramatic climax in which I show that these two dualist currents have a common source; in fact, I think they are relatively independent
  •  133
    The Philosophy of Language (edited book)
    with Aloysius Martinich
    Oxford University Press USA. 1985.
    What is meaning? How is linguistic communication possible? What is the nature of language? What is the relationship between language and the world? How do metaphors work? The Philosophy of Language, Sixth Edition, is an excellent introduction to such fundamental questions. Incorporating insights from new coeditor David Sosa, the sixth edition collects forty-eight of the most important articles in the field, making it the most up-to-date and comprehensive volume on the subject. Revised to address…Read more
  •  123
    Conditionality is a modal feature (in only the trivial sense, in the case of the material conditional). For φ to be conditioned on ψ is for the appearance of φ and ψ to be connected in some way over some region of modal space.
  •  106
    Getting clear on the concept
    Philosophical Issues 9 317-322. 1998.
  •  86
    A Counter‐Reformation
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (1): 250-255. 2022.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 1, Page 250-255, January 2022.
  •  63
    Perception and reason
    Philosophical Review 110 (4): 635-638. 2001.
    “This book is about the role of conscious perceptual experiences in the acquisition of empirical knowledge”. So begins Bill Brewer’s interesting Perception and Reason, whose introduction usefully sets out the structure of his essay as follows.
  •  55
    Getting acquainted with perception
    Philosophical Issues 7 209-214. 1996.
  •  55
    Analytic philosophy: an anthology (edited book)
    with Aloysius Martinich
    Blackwell. 2001.
    P. Grice and P. F. Strawson. 45. Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man. (Wilfrid Sellars). 46. From The Blue and the Brown Books. (Ludwig Wittgenstein).
  •  54
    Naturalizing the Mind
    Philosophical Review 106 (3): 429. 1997.
    Aware that the representational thesis is more plausible for the attitudinal than for the phenomenal, Dretske courageously focuses on sensory experience, where progress in our philosophical understanding of the mental has lagged. His view, essentially, is that what makes any mental state what it is is not so much what it's like as what it's about.
  •  49
  •  41
    Rigidity
    In Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.
    For an expression to be rigid means that it refers to one and the same thing with respect to any possible situation. But how is this in turn to be understood? An example will help us work through the definition. Take a word like ‘Aristotle.’ That word is a proper name; and proper names are a clear case of a type of word that refers. ‘Aristotle’ refers to a particular person, the last great philosopher of antiquity; in general, a name refers to the thing of which it is the name. To continue worki…Read more
  •  39
    Philosophical Books (Analytic Philosophy) (edited book)
    Wiley-Blackwell. 1972.
    THE PROBLEM OF EVIL by M. B. Ahern.MORALITY AND RELIGION by W. W. Bartley III.ROLES AND VALUES: AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL ETHICS by R. S. Downie.THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE by D. W. Hamlyn.ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by John Hick.THE LOGIC OF EDUCATION by P. H. Hirst and R. S. Peters.METALOGIC: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE METATHEORY OF STANDARD FIRST ORDER LOGIC by Geoffrey Hunter.ETHICAL KNOWLEDGE by J. J. Kupperman.LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN ARISTOTLE by Walter Leszl.MEMORY by Don Locke.JOHN STUAR…Read more