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436Affective Consciousness and Moral StatusOxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind. forthcoming.Which beings have moral status? This paper argues that moral status requires some capacity for affective consciousness. David Chalmers rejects this view on the grounds that it denies moral status to Vulcans – namely, conscious creatures with no capacity for affective consciousness. On his more inclusive view, all conscious beings have moral status. Although we agree that consciousness is required for moral status, we disagree about how to explain this. I argue that we cannot explain why unconsci…Read more
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220Inference Without the Taking ConditionIn Kevin McCain, Scott Stapleford & Matthias Steup (eds.), Seemings: New Arguments, New Angles, Routledge. pp. 130-146. 2023.What is involved in making an inference? This chapter argues against what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition: "Inferring necessarily involves the thinker taking his premises to support his conclusion and drawing his conclusion because of that fact" (2014: 5). I won’t argue that the Taking Condition is incoherent: that nothing can coherently play the role that takings are supposed to play in inference. Instead, I’ll argue that it cannot plausibly explain all the inferential knowledge that…Read more
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471The Unity of Evidence and CoherenceIn Nick Hughes (ed.), Essays on Epistemic Dilemmas, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
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425Belief as a Feeling of ConvictionIn Eric Schwitzgebel & Jonathan Jong (eds.), The Nature of Belief, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.This chapter defends the thesis that feeling conviction is sufficient for belief: if you feel conviction that p, then you believe that p. I begin with a neutral characterization of belief in terms of its normative profile: belief is a state that is subject to certain distinctive norms of rationality. The main argument of the chapter is that feelings of conviction are beliefs because they are subject to the same norms of rationality that govern our beliefs. Functionalists often deny that feelings…Read more
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31The epistemic role of consciousnessPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (3): 778-780. 2023.
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34Replies to Feldman, Greco, and MalmgrenPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (3): 804-821. 2023.
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Why justification mattersIn David K. Henderson & John Greco (eds.), Epistemic Evaluation: Purposeful Epistemology, Oxford University Press Uk. 2015.
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527The Problem of Morally Repugnant BeliefsIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Meta-Ethics, volume 18, Oxford University Press. pp. 218-241. 2023.What is the connection between justification and truth in moral epistemology? The primary goal of this paper is to argue that you cannot have justified false beliefs about your own moral obligations. The secondary goal is to explain why not. Some epistemologists embrace a global truth-connection in epistemology, according to which epistemic justification is always factive. In contrast, I endorse a local truth-connection in moral epistemology, which says that epistemic justification is factive wh…Read more
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19Replies to criticsAsian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1): 1-15. 2022.I reply to my critics in this symposium on my book, The Epistemic Role of Consciousness.
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39DefendingThe Epistemic Role of Consciousness: Replies to Byrne, Gertler and KornblithAnalysis 81 (4): 803-816. 2022.
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20Themes from The Epistemic Role of ConsciousnessAsian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1): 1-3. 2022.In The Epistemic Role of Consciousness, I argue that phenomenal consciousness plays an indispensable role in explaining our knowledge and justified beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. Without phenomenal consciousness, we cannot know anything at all. The book develops a systematic theory of epistemic justification that applies to knowledge of every kind. In this brief summary, however, I will focus on the epistemology of perception, since that is the main topic addressed by the comme…Read more
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806Delusions and madmen: against rationality constraints on beliefSynthese 200 (3): 1-30. 2022.According to the Rationality Constraint, our concept of belief imposes limits on how much irrationality is compatible with having beliefs at all. We argue that empirical evidence of human irrationality from the psychology of reasoning and the psychopathology of delusion undermines only the most demanding versions of the Rationality Constraint, which require perfect rationality as a condition for having beliefs. The empirical evidence poses no threat to more relaxed versions of the Rationality Co…Read more
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662The Epistemic Function of Higher-Order EvidenceIn Paul Silva & Luis R. G. Oliveira (eds.), Propositional and Doxastic Justification: New Essays on their Nature and Significance, Routledge. pp. 97-120. 2022.This chapter provides a critical overview of several influential proposals about the epistemic function of higher-order evidence. I start by criticizing accounts of higher-order evidence that appeal to evidential defeat (§1), epistemic conflicts (§2), and unreasonable knowledge (§3). Next, I propose an alternative account that appeals to a combination of improper basing (§4) and non-ideal rationality (§5). Finally, I conclude by summarizing my reasons for preferring this account of higher-order …Read more
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1515Moral Knowledge By DeductionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (3): 537-563. 2022.How is moral knowledge possible? This paper defends the anti-Humean thesis that we can acquire moral knowledge by deduction from wholly non-moral premises. According to Hume’s Law, as it has become known, we cannot deduce an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, since it is “altogether inconceivable how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it” (Hume, 1739, 3.1.1). This paper explores the prospects for a deductive theory of moral knowledge that rejects Hume’s Law.
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602Moore's Paradox and the Accessibility of JustificationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2): 273-300. 2011.This paper argues that justification is accessible in the sense that one has justification to believe a proposition if and only if one has higher-order justification to believe that one has justification to believe that proposition. I argue that the accessibility of justification is required for explaining what is wrong with believing Moorean conjunctions of the form, ‘p and I do not have justification to believe that p.’
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210The Epistemic Role of ConsciousnessOxford University Press. 2019.What is the role of consciousness in our mental lives? Declan Smithies argues here that consciousness is essential to explaining how we can acquire knowledge and justified belief about ourselves and the world around us. On this view, unconscious beings cannot form justified beliefs and so they cannot know anything at all. Consciousness is the ultimate basis of all knowledge and epistemic justification.
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900On the Global Ambitions of Phenomenal ConservatismAnalytic Philosophy 60 (3): 206-244. 2019.What is the role of phenomenal consciousness in grounding epistemic justification? This paper explores the prospects for a global version of phenomenal conservatism inspired by the work of Michael Huemer, according to which all epistemic justification is grounded in phenomenal seemings. I’m interested in this view because of its global ambitions: it seeks to explain all epistemic justification in terms of a single epistemic principle, which says that you have epistemic justification to believe w…Read more
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101Discussion of James Pryor's “The Merits of Incoherence”Analytic Philosophy 59 (1): 142-148. 2018.
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136Discussion of Susanna Siegel's “Can perceptual experiences be rational?”Analytic Philosophy 59 (1): 175-190. 2018.
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1690Affective Experience, Desire, and Reasons for ActionAnalytic Philosophy 60 (1): 27-54. 2019.What is the role of affective experience in explaining how our desires provide us with reasons for action? When we desire that p, we are thereby disposed to feel attracted to the prospect that p, or to feel averse to the prospect that not-p. In this paper, we argue that affective experiences – including feelings of attraction and aversion – provide us with reasons for action in virtue of their phenomenal character. Moreover, we argue that desires provide us with reasons for action only insofar a…Read more
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2451Ideal rationality and logical omniscienceSynthese 192 (9): 2769-2793. 2015.Does rationality require logical omniscience? Our best formal theories of rationality imply that it does, but our ordinary evaluations of rationality seem to suggest otherwise. This paper aims to resolve the tension by arguing that our ordinary evaluations of rationality are not only consistent with the thesis that rationality requires logical omniscience, but also provide a compelling rationale for accepting this thesis in the first place. This paper also defends an account of apriori justifica…Read more
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541The Normative Role of KnowledgeNoûs 46 (2): 265-288. 2011.What is the normative role of knowledge? I argue that knowledge plays an important role as a norm of assertion and action, which is explained and unified by its more fundamental role as a norm of belief. Moreover, I propose a distinctive account of what this normative role consists in. I argue that knowledge is the aim of belief, which sets a normative standard of correctness and a corresponding normative standard of justification. According to my proposal, it is correct to believe, assert and a…Read more
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2214Mentalism and Epistemic TransparencyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (4): 723-741. 2012.Questions about the transparency of evidence are central to debates between factive and non-factive versions of mentalism about evidence. If all evidence is transparent, then factive mentalism is false, since no factive mental states are transparent. However, Timothy Williamson has argued that transparency is a myth and that no conditions are transparent except trivial ones. This paper responds by drawing a distinction between doxastic and epistemic notions of transparency. Williamson's argument…Read more
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1260The Phenomenal Basis of Epistemic JustificationIn Jesper Kallestrup & Mark Sprevak (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mind, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 98-124. 2014.In this chapter, I argue for the thesis that phenomenal consciousness is the basis of epistemic justification. More precisely, I argue for the thesis of phenomenal mentalism, according to which epistemic facts about which doxastic attitudes one has justification to hold are determined by non-epistemic facts about one’s phenomenally individuated mental states. I begin by providing intuitive motivations for phenomenal mentalism and then proceed to sketch a more theoretical line of argument accordi…Read more
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1074Access Internalism and the Extended MindIn Joseph Adam Carter, Andy Clark, Jesper Kallestrup, Orestis Palermos & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Extended Epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 17-41. 2018.The main goal of this chapter is to argue that accessibilism in epistemology is incompatible with vehicle externalism in philosophy of mind. As we shall see, however, there are strong arguments for both of these positions. On the one hand, there is a compelling argument for vehicle externalism: the parity argument from Clark and Chalmers 1998. On the other hand, there is a compelling argument for accessibilism: the Moorean argument from Smithies 2012. If accessibilism is incompatible with vehicl…Read more
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87Teaching and Learning Guide for Cognitive PhenomenologyPhilosophy Compass 8 (10): 999-1002. 2013.This is a teaching and learning guide that accompanies "The Nature of Cognitive Phenomenology" and "The Significance of Cognitive Phenomenology".
Columbus, Ohio, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |