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67Norm-reasons and evidentialismAnalysis 79 (2): 202-206. 2019.It has been argued by Clayton Littlejohn that cases of insufficient evidence provide an argument against evidentialism. He distinguishes between evidential reasons and norm-reasons, but this distinction can be accepted by evidentialists, as we argue. Furthermore, evidentialists can acknowledge the existence of norm-reasons stemming from an epistemic norm, like the norm that one should not believe a proposition if one has only insufficient evidence for it. An alternative interpretation of evident…Read more
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17Rational Belief, Reflection, and Undercutting DefeatGrazer Philosophische Studien 100 (3): 354-373. 2023.Philosophers disagree about the role of reflection for rationality, understood as the capacity to (properly) respond to genuine, normative reasons. Here, ‘reflection’ means the capacity for self-conscious normative meta-cognition. This article develops and rejects a novel argument – the argument from undercutting defeaters – in favor of the ‘one-level view’ that holds that having the concept of a belief (and of a reason) is necessary for responding to reasons. It will be argued that the ‘two-lev…Read more
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18In Defense of Evidential Minimalism: Varieties of CriticizabilityEpisteme 1-6. forthcoming.This paper will critically engage with Daniel Buckley's argument against “evidential minimalism” (EM), i.e., the claim that necessarily, bits of evidence (are or) provide epistemic reasons for belief. Buckley argues that in some cases, a subject has strong evidence that p (and fulfills further minimal conditions), does not believe p, but nevertheless is not epistemically criticizable and has no epistemic reason to believe p. I will defend EM by pointing out that Buckley's argument trades on an a…Read more
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1Realismus, Robuste Wahrheit Und Kognitive NötigungIn Martin Grajner & Adolf Rami (eds.), Wahrheit, Bedeutung, Existenz, Ontos. pp. 41-56. 2010.
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71Seeing oneself through the eyes of others. Beckermann on self-consciousnessPhilosophia Naturalis 50 (1): 25-43. 2013.Ansgar Beckermann's account of self-consciousness can be seen as an attempt to locate the origin of self-conscious states in social cognition. It is assumed that in order to acquire self-consciousness, a cognitive system has to 'see itself through the eyes of the others'. This account, however, is doomed to failure, for principled reasons. It cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of the special, identification-free reference of first-person thoughts and, thus, fails to explain crucial featur…Read more
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413In defence of metaphysical analyticityRatio 21 (3): 300-313. 2008.According to the so-called metaphysical conception of analyticity, analytic truths are true in virtue of meaning (or content) alone and independently of (extralinguistic) facts. Quine and Boghossian have tried to present a conclusive argument against the metaphysical conception of analyticity. In effect, they tried to show that the metaphysical conception inevitably leads into a highly implausible view about the truthmakers of analytic truths. We would like to show that their argument fails, sin…Read more
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113The Structuring Causes of Behavior: Has Dretske Saved Mental Causation?Acta Analytica 29 (3): 267-284. 2014.Fred Dretske’s account of mental causation, developed in Explaining Behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches in the field. According to Dretske, meaning facts, construed historically as facts about the indicator functions of internal states, are the structuring causes of behavior. In this article, we argue that Dretske’s view is untenable: On closer examination, the real structuring causes of behavior turn out …Read more
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65Explaining Free Will by Rational AbilitiesEthical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (2): 283-297. 2022.In this paper I present an account of the rational abilities that make our decisions free. Following the lead of new dispositionalists, a leeway account of free decisions is developed, and the rational abilities that ground our abilities to decide otherwise are described in detail. A main result will be that the best account of the relevant rational abilities makes them two-way abilities: abilities to decide to do or not to do x in accordance with one’s apparent reasons. Dispositionalism about r…Read more
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27Knowledge norms of belief and belief formation: When the time is ripe to actualize one's epistemic potentialRatio 34 (4): 277-285. 2021.Ratio, Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 277-285, December 2021.
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35Is Evidence Normative?Philosophia 49 (2): 667-684. 2020.This paper defends the view that in a certain sense evidence is normative. Neither a bit of evidence nor the fact that it is evidence for a certain proposition is a normative fact, but it is still the case that evidence provides normative reason for belief. An argument for the main thesis will be presented. It will rely on evidentialist norms of belief and a Broomean conception of normative reasons. Two important objections will be discussed, one from A. Steglich-Petersen on whether having evide…Read more
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28Two Norms of Intention: a Vindication of Williamson’s Knowledge-Action AnalogyActa Analytica 36 (4): 1-10. 2021.According to an important analogy between knowledge and action, as proposed by Timothy Williamson, intention aims at action just as belief aims at knowledge. This paper investigates the analogy and discusses three difficulties that it has to face. The key is to distinguish between two different norms of intention and to see that the knowledge-action analogy is concerned with one of them only, namely, the realization norm: one ought to intentionally act if one intends to act in a certain way. A m…Read more
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53Is Evidence Normative?Philosophia 49 (2): 1-18. 2020.This paper defends the view that in a certain sense evidence is normative. Neither a bit of evidence nor the fact that it is evidence for a certain proposition is a normative fact, but it is still the case that evidence provides normative reason for belief. An argument for the main thesis will be presented. It will rely on evidentialist norms of belief and a Broomean conception of normative reasons. Two important objections will be discussed, one from A. Steglich-Petersen on whether having evide…Read more
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22Could robots be phenomenally conscious?Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17 (3): 579-590. 2018.In a recent book (Tye 2017), Michael Tye argues that we have reason to attribute phenomenal consciousness to functionally similar robots like commander Data of Star Trek. He relies on a kind of inference to the best explanation – ‘Newton’s Rule’, as he calls it. I will argue that Tye’s liberal view of consciousness attribution fails for two reasons. First, it leads into an inconsistency in consciousness attributions. Second, and even more importantly, it fails because ceteris is not paribus. The…Read more
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30Discussion Note on The Rationality of PerceptionGrazer Philosophische Studien 96 (2): 265-272. 2019.In The Rationality of Perception, Susanna Siegel defends the claim that beliefs can influence our perceptions. Faulty beliefs make our experiences irrational. This explains why the biases some people hold are so tenacious. The authors point out weaknesses in Siegel’s argument.
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38How to know one’s experiences transparentlyPhilosophical Studies 176 (5): 1305-1324. 2019.I would like to propose a demonstrative transparency model of our immediate, introspective self-knowledge of experiences. It is a model entirely in line with transparency. It rests on three elements: mental demonstration, the capacity to apply concepts to what is given in experience, and ordinary inference. The model avoids inner sense, acquaintance, and any special kind of normativity or rationality. The crucial and new ingredient is mental demonstration. By mental demonstration we can refer in…Read more
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11Evolution and EthicsCroatian Journal of Philosophy 18 (3): 417-432. 2018.This paper is concerned with the reconstruction of a core argument that can be extracted from Street’s ‘Darwinian Dilemma’ and that is intended to ‘debunk’ moral realism by appeal to evolution. The argument, which is best taken to have the form of an undermining defeater argument, fails, I argue. A simple, first formulation is rejected as a non sequitur, due to not distinguishing between the evolutionary process that influences moral attitudes and the cognitive system generating moral attitudes.…Read more
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19E = K and Non-Epistemic PerceptionLogos and Episteme 9 (3): 307-331. 2018.Quite plausibly, epistemic justification and rationality is tied to possession of evidence. According to Williamson, one’s evidence is what one knows. This is not compatible with non-epistemic perception, however, since non-epistemic perception does not require belief in what one perceives and, thus, does not require knowledge of the evidence – and, standardly, knowledge does require belief. If one non-epistemically perceives a piece of evidence, this can be sufficient for possessing it as evide…Read more
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39Could robots be phenomenally conscious?Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17 (3): 1-12. 2017.In a recent book, Michael Tye argues that we have reason to attribute phenomenal consciousness to functionally similar robots like commander Data of Star Trek. He relies on a kind of inference to the best explanation – ‘Newton’s Rule’, as he calls it. I will argue that Tye’s liberal view of consciousness attribution fails for two reasons. First, it leads into an inconsistency in consciousness attributions. Second, and even more importantly, it fails because ceteris is not paribus. The big, categ…Read more
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52How to know one’s experiences transparentlyPhilosophical Studies 1-20. 2018.I would like to propose a demonstrative transparency model of our immediate, introspective self-knowledge of experiences. It is a model entirely in line with transparency. It rests on three elements: mental demonstration, the capacity to apply concepts to what is given in experience, and ordinary inference. The model avoids inner sense, acquaintance, and any special kind of normativity or rationality. The crucial and new ingredient is mental demonstration. By mental demonstration we can refer in…Read more
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59Epistemic Means and Ends: In Defense of Some Sartwellian InsightsSynthese 146 (3): 357-369. 2005.The question of what means-and-ends structure our epistemic endeavors have is an important issue in recent epistemology, and is fundamental for understanding epistemic matters in principle. Crispin Sartwell has proposed arguments for the view that knowledge is our only ultimate goal, and justification is no part of it. An important argument is his instrumentality argument which is concerned with the conditions under which something could belong to our ultimate epistemic goal. Recently, this argu…Read more
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139Introspective Self-Knowledge of Experience and EvidenceErkenntnis 71 (1): 19-34. 2009.The paper attempts to give an account of the introspective self-knowledge of our own experiences which is in line with representationalism about phenomenal consciousness and the transparency of experience. A two-step model is presented. First, a demonstrative thought of the form ‚I am experiencing this’ is formed which refers to what one experiences, by means of attention. Plausibly, this thought is knowledge, since safe. Second, a non-demonstrative thought of the form ‚I am experiencing a pain’…Read more
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85Why Epistemic Contextualism Does Not Provide an Adequate Account of Knowledge: Comments on BarkeErkenntnis 61 (2-3): 375-382. 2004.According to Antonia Barkes version of contextualism, epistemic contextualism, a context is defined by a method and its associated assumptions. The subject has to make the assumption that the method is adequate or reliable and that good working conditions hold in order to arrive at knowledge by employing the method. I will criticize Barkes claim that epistemic contextualism can provide a more satisfactory explanation or motivation for context shifts than conversational contextualism (in particul…Read more
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42Temporally localised facts and the problem of intrinsic changeRatio 18 (1). 2005.Hugh Mellor has proposed what appears to be a new solution to the problem of intrinsic change (Mellor 1998). Assuming endurantism and a B‐theoretic, nonpresentist view of time, facts are supposed to have only enduring things and atemporal properties (or relations) as constituents, but no times. The having of properties and relations is not relativised to times. Instead, the whole of a fact is conceived of as temporally localised. It will be argued that this interesting and novel proposal does no…Read more
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121Truthmaking, recombination, and facts ontologyPhilosophical Studies 128 (2): 409-440. 2006.The idea of truthmakers is important for doing serious metaphysics, since a truthmaker principle can give us important guidance in finding out what we would like to include into our ontology. Recently, David Lewis has argued against Armstrong’s argument that a plausible truthmaker principle requires us to accept facts. I would like to take a close look at the argument. I will argue in detail that the Humean principle of recombination on which Lewis relies is not plausible (independently of the i…Read more
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125Causal powers, realization, and mental causationErkenntnis 67 (2). 2007.Sydney Shoemaker has attempted to save mental causation by a new account of realization. As Brian McLaughlin argues convincingly, the account has to face two major problems. First, realization does not guarantee entailment. So even if mental properties are realized by physical properties, they need not be entailed by them. This is the first, rather general metaphysical problem. A second problem, which relates more directly to mental causation is that Shoemaker must appeal to some kind of proport…Read more