•  20
    Review of Thomas Kelly: Bias: A Philosophical Study (review)
    Ethics 134 (3): 416-420. 2024.
  •  3
    Theory of mind deficits in language delayed deaf subjects?
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 4. 2023.
    Recent studies claim to show that language delayed deaf subjects typically display longlingering deficits in Theory of Mind (ToM) development, despite suffering no known deficits in other cognitive domains. These claims are supported by experimental evidence indicating that such subjects fare poorly on False Belief (FB) tasks. This paper turns a critical eye on these claims. In particular, I argue that the reported results raise important questions about the status of FB tasks as evidence, and a…Read more
  •  20
    Responses to critics
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    The concept of a ‘generic’ (or ‘generic generalization,’ ‘generic judgment’ etc.) figures centrally in my account of prejudice, via the concept of a stereotype: I argue that prejudiced beliefs are...
  •  22
    Precis of prejudice: a study in non-ideal epistemology
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    1. The book is designed to fulfill two purposes: first and foremost, it offers a sustained inquiry into the epistemology of prejudice, paying special attention to its psychological provenance, the...
  •  26
    Prejudice: A Study in Non-Ideal Epistemology
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    Prejudiced beliefs may certainly seem like defective beliefs. But in what sense are they defective? Many will be false and harmful, but philosophers have further argued that prejudiced belief is defective also in the sense that it could only arise from distinctive kinds of epistemic irrationality: we could acquire or retain our prejudiced beliefs only by violating our epistemic responsibilities. It is also assumed that we are only morally responsible for the harms that prejudiced beliefs cause b…Read more
  •  102
    Belief polarization is widely seen to threaten havoc on our shared political lives. It is often assumed that BP is the product of epistemically irrational behaviors at the individual level. After distinguishing between BP as it occurs in intra-group and inter-group settings, this paper argues that neither process necessarily reflects individual epistemic irrationality. It is true that these processes can work in tandem to produce so-called “echo chambers.” But while echo chambers are often probl…Read more
  •  52
    The Problem of Peer Demotion, Revisited and Resolved
    Analytic Philosophy 62 (2): 125-140. 2021.
    In any domain of inductive reasoning, we must take care to distinguish between (i) which hypothesis my evidence supports, and (ii) the level of confidence I should have in the hypothesis, given my evidence. This distinction can help resolve the problem of peer demotion, a central point of contention in the epistemology of peer disagreement. It is true that disagreement does not provide evidence that I am right and you are wrong. But it need not, in order to lead to peer demotion: instead, signif…Read more
  •  54
    This paper aims to show that the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA) leads to trouble in certain dialectical contexts. Suppose a person knows that p but does not know that she knows that p. She asserts p in compliance with the KNA. Her interlocutor responds: “but do you know that p?” It will be shown that the KNA blocks the original asserter from providing any good response to this perfectly natural follow-up question, effectively forcing her to retract p from the conversational scoreboard. This f…Read more
  •  213
    Evidential Preemption
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (3): 515-530. 2021.
    As a general rule, whenever a hearer is justified in forming the belief that p on the basis of a speaker’s testimony, she will also be justified in assuming that the speaker has formed her belief appropriately in light of a relevantly large and representative sample of the evidence that bears on p. In simpler terms, a justification for taking someone’s testimony entails a justification for trusting her assessment of the evidence. This introduces the possibility of what I will call “evidential pr…Read more
  •  113
    Doxastic Morality
    Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 155-172. 2018.
    Beliefs can cause moral wrongs, no doubt, but can they also constitute moral wrongs in their own right? This paper offers some grounds to be skeptical of the idea that there are moral norms which operate directly on belief, independently of any epistemic norms also operating on belief. The resultant skepticism is moderate in the following sense: it holds that the motivations underlying the doxastic morality approach should not be dismissed lightly; they are genuine insights and serve to bring to…Read more
  •  78
    Straight Thinking in Warped Environments
    Analysis 78 (3): 489-500. 2018.
    Part of a symposium on *The Rationality of Perception* by Susanna Siegel (2017 Oxford University Press)
  •  36
    This paper aims to provide an empirically informed sketch of how our perceptual capacities can interact with cognitive processes to give rise to new perceptual attributives. In section 1, I present ongoing debates about the reach of perception and direct focus toward arguments offered in recent work by Tyler Burge and Ned Block. In section 2, I draw on empirical evidence relating to language processing to argue against the claim that we have no acquired, culture-specific, high-level perceptual a…Read more
  • Review of Tyler Burge, Cognition through Understanding (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2014.
  •  175
    Semantic minimalism and the “miracle of communication”
    Philosophical Studies 165 (3): 957-973. 2013.
    According to semantic minimalism, context-invariant minimal semantic propositions play an essential role in linguistic communication. This claim is key to minimalists’ argument against semantic contextualism: if there were no such minimal semantic propositions, and semantic content varied widely with shifts in context, then it would be “miraculous” if communication were ever to occur. This paper offers a critical examination of the minimalist account of communication, focusing on a series of exa…Read more
  •  42
    Deranging the Mental Lexicon
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (1): 33-55. 2016.
    This paper offers a defense of Davidson’s conclusion in ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’, focusing on the psychology and epistemology of language. Drawing on empirical studies in language acquisition and sociolinguistics, I problematize the traditional idealizing assumption that a person’s mental lexicon consists of two distinct parts—a dictionary, comprising her knowledge of word meanings proper, and an encyclopedia, comprising her wider knowledge of worldly affairs. I argue that the breakdown …Read more
  •  543
    The Ethics of War: Classical and Contemporary Readings (edited book)
    with Gregory M. Reichberg and Henrik Syse
    Blackwell. 2006.
    The Ethics of War is an indispensable collection of essays addressing issues both timely and age-old about the nature and ethics of war. Features essays by great thinkers from ancient times through to the present day, among them Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, Russell, and Walzer Examines timely questions such as: When is recourse to arms morally justifiable? What moral constraints should apply to military conduct? How can a lasting peace be achieved? Will appeal to a broa…Read more
  •  145
    Leibniz on Determinism and Divine Foreknowledge
    Studia Leibnitiana 37 (1): 83-98. 2005.
    Nach Michael J. Murrays Aufsatz „Leibniz on Divine Foreknowledge of Future Contingents and Human Freedom" ist Leibniz nicht als Kompatibilist zu verstehen. Die göttliche Vorhersehung beruhe nicht darauf, dass menschliche Handlungen mechanischen Gesetzen von Ursache und Wirkung (causa efficiens) gehorchen, sondern auf den für diese Handlungen spezifischen geistigen Gesetzen (causa finalis, moralische Gesetze, etc.). In diesem Aufsatz argumentiere ich, dass Murray die Tragweite des Grundsatzes vom…Read more
  •  79
    The Ethics of War. Part II: Contemporary Authors and Issues
    with Gregory M. Reichberg and Henrik Syse
    Philosophy Compass 7 (5): 328-347. 2012.
    This paper surveys the most important recent debates within the ethics of war. Sections 2 and 3 examine the principles governing the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the principles governing conduct in war (jus in bello). In Section 4, we turn to the moral guidelines governing the ending and aftermath of war (jus post bellum). Finally, in Section 5 we look at recent debates on whether the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello can be evaluated independently of each other.
  •  98
    Human Security and Liberal Peace
    with J. Peter Burgess
    Public Reason 1 (1): 91-104. 2009.
    This paper addresses a recent wave of criticisms of liberal peacebuilding operations. We decompose the critics’ argument into two steps, one which offers a diagnosis of what goes wrong when things go wrong in peacebuilding operations, and a second, which argues on the basis of the first step that there is some deep principled flaw in the very idea of liberal peacebuilding. We show that the criticism launched in the argument’s first step is valid and important, but that the second step by no mean…Read more
  •  706
    A Role for Coercive Force in the Theory of Global Justice?
    In Thom Brooks (ed.), New Waves in Gobal Justice, Palgrave-macmillan. forthcoming.
    The first wave of philosophical work on global justice focused largely on the distribution of economic resources, and on the development or reformation of institutions relevant thereto. More recently, however, the horizon has broadened significantly, to also include a concern with the global spread of the right to live under reasonable legal institutions and representative forms of government (cf. “a human right to democracy”). Thus, while the first wave was focused primarily on international (…Read more
  •  80
    This paper responds to recent criticism from Alejandro Agafonow. In section I, I argue that the dilemma that Agafonow points to – while real – is in no way unique to liberal peacebuilding. Rather, it arises with respect to any foreign involvement in post-conflict reconstruction. I argue further that Agafonow’s proposal for handling this dilemma suffers from several shortcomings: first, it provides no sense of the magnitude and severity of the “oppressive practices” that peacebuilders should be w…Read more
  •  31
    Davidson’s Derangement Revisited: Guest Editors’ Introduction
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (1): 1-5. 2016.
  •  53
    The Ethics of War. Part I: Historical Trends1
    with Gregory Reichberg and Henrik Syse
    Philosophy Compass 7 (5): 316-327. 2012.
    This article surveys the major historical developments in Western philosophical reflection on war. Section 2 outlines early development in Greek and Roman thought, up to and including Augustine. Section 3 details the systematization of Just War theory in Aquinas and his successors, especially Vitoria, Sua´rez, and Grotius. Section 4 examines the emergence of Perpetual Peace theory after Hobbes, focusing in particular on Rousseau and Kant. Finally, Section 5 outlines the central points of content…Read more
  •  53
    Philosophers are often beholden to a picture of language as a largely static, well-defined structure which is handed over from generation to generation by an arduous process of learning: language, on this view, is something that we are given, and that we can make use of, but which we play no significant role in creating ourselves. This picture is often maintained in conjunction with the idea that several distinctively human cognitive capacities could only develop via the language acquisition pro…Read more
  •  53
    Collective Responsibility for Unjust Wars
    POLITICS 32 (2): 100-108. 2012.
    This article argues against Anna Stilz's recent attempt to solve the problem of citizens' collective responsibility in democratic states. I show that her solution could only apply to state actions that are (in legal terminology) unjustified but excusable. Stilz's marquee case – the 2003 invasion of Iraq – does not, I will argue, fit this bill; nor, in all likelihood, does any other case in recorded history. Thus, this article concludes, we may allow that Stilz's argument offers a theoretically c…Read more
  •  109
    Review of Tyler Burge, Origins of Objectivity (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011 (2). 2011.
  •  42
    Liberty, Statehood and Sovereignty: Walzer on Mill on Non-intervention
    Journal of Military Ethics 2 (1): 46-62. 2003.
    The purpose of this paper is to critically assess Michael Walzer's use of John Stuart Mill's text 'A Few Words on Non-Intervention' in his seminal work Just and Unjust Wars. Although point by point, I think Walzer's reading of Mill is largely sound, I will argue that the specific narrative into which Walzer orders these points places a highly tendentious spin on the original text. More precisely, Walzer's way of articulating the negative aspects of Mill's argument--the general presumption agains…Read more
  •  764
    Lexical norms, language comprehension, and the epistemology of testimony
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (3-4): 324-342. 2014.
    It has recently been argued that public linguistic norms are implicated in the epistemology of testimony by way of underwriting the reliability of language comprehension. This paper argues that linguistic normativity, as such, makes no explanatory contribution to the epistemology of testimony, but instead emerges naturally out of a collective effort to maintain language as a reliable medium for the dissemination of knowledge. Consequently, the epistemologies of testimony and language comprehensi…Read more