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114Reasoned Change in LogicIn Scott Stapleford, Kevin McCain & Matthias Steup (eds.), Evidentialism at 40: New Arguments, New Angles, Routledge. forthcoming.By a reasoned change in logic I mean a change in the logic with which you make inferences that is based on your evidence. An argument sourced in recently published material Kripke lectured on in the 1970s, and dubbed the Adoption Problem by Birman (then Padró) in her 2015 dissertation, challenges the possibility of reasoned changes in logic. I explain why evidentialists should be alarmed by this challenge, and then I go on to dispel it. The Adoption Problem rests on a failure to distinguish betw…Read more
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147Perceptually Secured KnowledgeIn Ori Beck & Farid Masrour (eds.), The Relational View of Perception: New Essays, Routledge. forthcoming.Perceptually secured knowledge consists of beliefs that amount to knowledge just because they are based on suitable perceptual states. Relationism about the ground of perceptually secured knowledge is the view that if a perceptual state can make a belief based on it amount to knowledge, then it can do that because it constitutes an appropriate kind of relational state, e.g., a state of perceptual acquaintance. I explore the prospects of both maintaining that some beliefs amount to perceptually s…Read more
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942Epistemic Elitism and Other MindsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research (2): 276-298. 2018.Experiences justify beliefs about our environment. Sometimes the justification is immediate: seeing a red light immediately justifies believing there is a red light. Other times the justification is mediate: seeing a red light justifies believing one should brake in a way that is mediated by background knowledge of traffic signals. How does this distinction map onto the distinction between what is and what isn't part of the content of experience? Epistemic egalitarians think that experiences imm…Read more
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109How perception generates, preserves, and mediates justificationInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (5-6): 559-568. 2018.“The Epistemic Significance of Perceptual Learning” defends the view that perceptual experiences generate justification in virtue of their presentational phenomenology, preserve past justification in virtue of the influence of perceptual learning on them, and thereby allow new beliefs formed on their basis to also be partly based on that past justification. “The Real Epistemic Significance of Perceptual Learning” mounts challenges to these three claims. Here we explore some avenues for respondin…Read more
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276Skepticism Is Wrong for General ReasonsInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 13 (2): 95-104. 2023.According to Michael Bergmann’s “intuitionist particularism,” our position with respect to skeptical arguments is much the same as it was with respect to Zeno’s paradoxes of motion prior to our developing sophisticated theories of the continuum. We observed ourselves move, and that closed the case in favor of the ability to move, even if we had no general theory about that ability. We observe ourselves form justified beliefs, and that closes the case in favor of the ability to form justified bel…Read more
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316Veridical Perceptual SeemingsIn Kevin McCain, Scott Stapleford & Matthias Steup (eds.), Seemings: New Arguments, New Angles, Routledge. 2023.What is the epistemic significance of taking a veridical perceptual experience at face value? To first approximations, the Minimal View says that it is true belief, and the Maximal View says that it is knowledge. I sympathetically explore the prospects of the Maximal View.
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486Inferential SeemingsOxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind. forthcoming.There is a felt difference between following an argument to its conclusion and keeping up with an argument in your judgments while failing to see how its conclusion follows from its premises. In the first case there’s what I’m calling an inferential seeming, in the second case there isn’t. Inferential seemings exhibit a cluster of functional and normative characteristics whose integration in one mental state is puzzling. Several recent accounts of inferring suggest inferential seemings play a si…Read more
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483How to Use Thought ExperimentsIn Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup, John Turri & Blake Roeber (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd edition, Wiley-blackwell. forthcoming.Thought experiments figure prominently in contemporary epistemology. Beyond that humdrum observation, controversy abounds. The aim of this paper is to make progress on two fronts. On the descriptive front, the aim is to illuminate what the practice of using thought experiments involves. On the normative front, the aim is to illuminate what the practice of using thought experiments should involve. Thought experiments result in judgments that are passed on to further philosophical reasoning. What …Read more
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106Forming Impressions: Expertise in Perception and IntuitionOxford University Press. 2020.Perception and intuition are our basic sources of knowledge. They are also capacities we deliberately improve in ways that draw on our knowledge. Elijah Chudnoff explores how this happens, developing an account of the epistemology of expert perception and expert intuition, and a rationalist view of the role of intuition in philosophy.
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16Phenomenal contrast arguments for cognitive phenomenologyEstudios de Filosofía (Universidad de Antioquia) 57. 2018.According to proponents of irreducible cognitive phenomenology some cognitive states put one in phenomenal states for which no wholly sensory states suffice. One of the main approaches to defending the view that there is irreducible cognitive phenomenology is to give a phenomenal contrast argument. In this paper I distinguish three kinds of phenomenal contrast argument: what I call pure--represented by Strawson’s Jack/Jacques argument --hypothetical-- represented by Kriegel’s Zoe argument --and …Read more
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34Phenomenal Contrast Arguments for Cognitive PhenomenologyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (1): 82-104. 2015.According to proponents of irreducible cognitive phenomenology some cognitive states put one in phenomenal states for which no wholly sensory states suffice. One of the main approaches to defending the view that there is irreducible cognitive phenomenology is to give a phenomenal contrast argument. In this paper I distinguish three kinds of phenomenal contrast argument: what I call pure—represented by Strawson's Jack/Jacques argument—hypothetical—represented by Kriegel's Zoe argument—and glossed…Read more
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990Two Kinds of Cognitive ExpertiseNoûs 55 (2): 270-292. 2019.Expertise is traditionally classified into perceptual, cognitive, and motor forms. I argue that the empirical research literature on expertise gives us compelling reasons to reject this traditional classification and accept an alternative. According to the alternative I support there is expertise in forming impressions, which further divides into expertise in forming sensory and intellectual impressions, and there is expertise in performing actions, which further divides into expertise in perfor…Read more
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1025In Search of IntuitionAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (3): 465-480. 2020.What are intuitions? Stereotypical examples may suggest that they are the results of common intellectual reflexes. But some intuitions defy the stereotype: there are hard-won intuitions that take d...
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1048The epistemic significance of perceptual learningInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (5-6): 520-542. 2018.First impressions suggest the following contrast between perception and memory: perception generates new beliefs and reasons, justification, or evidence for those beliefs; memory preserves old beliefs and reasons, justification, or evidence for those beliefs. In this paper, I argue that reflection on perceptual learning gives us reason to adopt an alternative picture on which perception plays both generative and preservative epistemic roles.
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29Argumentos de contraste fenoménico a favor de la fenomenología cognitivaEstudios de Filosofía (Universidad de Antioquia) 57 175-203. 2018.
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908Multisensory Consciousness and SynesthesiaIn Berit Brogaard & Elijah Chudnoff (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Consciousness, Routledge. pp. 322-336. 2020.This chapter distinguishes between two kinds of ordinary multisensory experience that go beyond mere co-consciousness of features (e.g., the experience that results from concurrently hearing a sound in the hallway and seeing the cup on the table). In one case, a sensory experience in one modality creates a perceptual demonstrative to whose referent qualities are attributed in another sensory modality. For example, when you hear someone speak, auditory experience attributes audible qualities to …Read more
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863Against Emotional DogmatismPhilosophical Issues 26 (1): 59-77. 2016.It may seem that when you have an emotional response to a perceived object or event that makes it seem to you that the perceived source of the emotion possesses some evaluative property, then you thereby have prima facie, immediate justification for believing that the object or event possesses the evaluative property. Call this view ‘dogmatism about emotional justification’. We defend a view of the structure of emotional awareness according to which the objects of emotional awareness are derived…Read more
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642Experience and Epistemic Structure: Can Cognitive Penetration Result in Epistemic Downgrade?In Anders Nes & Timothy Hoo Wai Chan (eds.), Inference and Consciousness, Routledge. 2019.Reflection on the possibility of cases in which experience is cognitively penetrated has suggested to many that an experience's etiology can reduce its capacity to provide prima facie justification for believing its content below a baseline. This is epistemic downgrade due to etiology, and its possibility is incompatible with phenomenal conservatism. I develop a view that explains the epistemic deficiency in certain possible cases of cognitive penetration but on which there is no epistemic downg…Read more
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147IntuitionOxford University Press. 2013.Elijah Chudnoff elaborates and defends a view of intuition according to which intuition purports to, and reveals, how matters stand in abstract reality by making us aware of that reality through the intellect. He explores the experience of having an intuition; justification for beliefs that derives from intuition; and contact with abstract reality
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1399Presentational PhenomenologyIn Sofia Miguens & Gerhard Preyer (eds.), Consciousness and Subjectivity, Ontos Verlag. 2012.A blindfolded clairvoyant walks into a room and immediately knows how it is arranged. You walk in and immediately see how it is arranged. Though both of you represent the room as being arranged in the same way, you have different experiences. Your experience doesn’t just represent that the room is arranged a certain way; it also visually presents the very items in the room that make that representation true. Call the felt aspect of your experience made salient by this contrast its presentational…Read more
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1998The Nature of Intuitive JustificationPhilosophical Studies 153 (2). 2011.In this paper I articulate and defend a view that I call phenomenal dogmatism about intuitive justification. It is dogmatic because it includes the thesis: if it intuitively seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. It is phenomenalist because it includes the thesis: intuitions justify us in believing their contents in virtue of their phenomenology—and in particular their presentational phenomenology. I explore the nature of presentational ph…Read more
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3635Intuitive knowledgePhilosophical Studies 162 (2): 359-378. 2013.In this paper I assume that we have some intuitive knowledge—i.e. beliefs that amount to knowledge because they are based on intuitions. The question I take up is this: given that some intuition makes a belief based on it amount to knowledge, in virtue of what does it do so? We can ask a similar question about perception. That is: given that some perception makes a belief based on it amount to knowledge, in virtue of what does it do so? A natural idea about perception is that a perception makes …Read more
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128Cognitive PhenomenologyRoutledge. 2015.Phenomenology is about subjective aspects of the mind, such as the conscious states associated with vision and touch, and the conscious states associated with emotions and moods, such as feelings of elation or sadness. These states have a distinctive first-person ‘feel’ to them, called their phenomenal character. In this respect they are often taken to be radically different from mental states and processes associated with thought. This is the first book to fully question this orthodoxy and exp…Read more
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1164Phenomenal Contrast Arguments for Cognitive PhenomenologyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (2): 82-104. 2015.According to proponents of irreducible cognitive phenomenology some cognitive states put one in phenomenal states for which no wholly sensory states suffice. One of the main approaches to defending the view that there is irreducible cognitive phenomenology is to give a phenomenal contrast argument. In this paper I distinguish three kinds of phenomenal contrast argument: what I call pure—represented by Strawson's Jack/Jacques argument—hypothetical—represented by Kriegel's Zoe argument—and glossed…Read more
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874Intellectual GestaltsIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Phenomenal Intentionality, Oxford University Press. pp. 174. 2013.Phenomenal holism is the thesis that some phenomenal characters can only be instantiated by experiences that are parts of certain wholes. The first aim of this paper is to defend phenomenal holism. I argue, moreover, that there are complex intellectual experiences (intellectual gestalts)—such as experiences of grasping a proof—whose parts instantiate holistic phenomenal characters. Proponents of cognitive phenomenology believe that some phenomenal characters can only be instantiated by experienc…Read more
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1640The Rational Roles of IntuitionIn Anthony Booth & Darrell Rowbottom (eds.), Intuitions, Oxford University Press. 2014.NOTE: this is a substantial revision of a previously uploaded draft. Intuitions are often thought of as inputs to theoretical reasoning. For example, you might form a belief by taking an intuition at face value, or you might take your intuitions as starting points in the method of reflective equilibrium. The aim of this paper is to argue that in addition to these roles intuitions also play action-guiding roles. The argument proceeds by reflection on the transmission of justification through infe…Read more
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43Mathematical Knowledge, edited by Mary Leng, Alexander Paseau, and Michael Potter (review)Mind 118 (471): 846-850. 2009.Review of Mathematical Knowledge eds. Leng, Paseau, and Potter.
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1202What Should a Theory of Knowledge Do?Dialectica 65 (4): 561-579. 2011.The Gettier Problem is the problem of revising the view that knowledge is justified true belief in a way that is immune to Gettier counter-examples. The “Gettier Problem problem”, according to Lycan, is the problem of saying what is misguided about trying to solve the Gettier Problem. In this paper I take up the Gettier Problem problem. I distinguish giving conditions that are necessary and sufficient for knowledge from giving conditions that explain why one knows when one does know. I argue tha…Read more
Coral Gables-Miami, Florida, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Mathematics |