Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology
Philosophy of Mind
Areas of Interest
Epistemology
Philosophy of Mind
  •  302
  •  156
    In this paper, I argue that what underlies internalism about justification is a rationalist conception of justification, not a deontological conception of justification, and I argue for the plausibility of this rationalist conception of justification. The rationalist conception of justification is the view that a justified belief is a belief that is held in a rational way; since we exercise our rationality through conscious deliberation, the rationalist conception holds that a belief is justifie…Read more
  •  144
    Why pains are mental objects
    Journal of Philosophy 92 (6): 303-13. 1995.
  •  143
    Externalism, self-knowledge, and inner observation
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (1): 42-61. 2002.
    There is a continuing debate as to whether externalism about mental content is compatible with certain commonly accepted views about the nature of self-knowledge. Both sides to this debate seem to agree that externalism is _not compatible with the traditional view that self-knowledge is acquired by means of observation. In this paper, I argue that externalism is compatible with this traditional view of self-knowledge, and that, in fact, we have good reason to believe that the self-knowledge at i…Read more
  •  139
    The intuitive case for naïve realism
    Philosophical Explorations 20 (1): 106-122. 2017.
    Naïve realism, the view that perceptual experiences are irreducible relations between subjects and external objects, has intuitive appeal, but this intuitive appeal is sometimes thought to be undermined by the possibility of certain kinds of hallucinations. In this paper, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism, and explain why this intuitive case is not undermined by the possibility of such hallucinations. Specifically, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism as arguing that the o…Read more
  •  139
    The theory of appearing defended
    Philosophical Studies 87 (1): 33-59. 1997.
  •  128
    Experiences, thoughts, and qualia
    Philosophical Studies 99 (3): 269-295. 2000.
  •  127
    Why I believe in an external world
    Metaphilosophy 37 (5): 652-672. 2006.
    I claim in this article that if my experience is such that it seems to me that there is an external object before me, then I have reason to believe that there is an external object before me. The sceptic argues that since my having the experience is compatible both with there being and with there not being an external object before me, I have no reason to believe that the former possibility obtains and not the latter. I respond that the sceptic has ignored a relevant difference between the two p…Read more
  •  114
    Why Intentionalism Cannot Explain Phenomenal Character
    Erkenntnis 85 (2): 375-389. 2020.
    I argue that intentionalist theories of perceptual experience are unable to explain the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. I begin by describing what is involved in explaining phenomenal character, and why it is a task of philosophical theories of perceptual experience to explain it. I argue that reductionist versions of intentionalism are unable to explain the phenomenal character of perceptual experience because they mischaracterize its nature; in particular, they fail to recognize…Read more
  •  109
    A Defense of McDowell’s Response to the Sceptic
    Acta Analytica 29 (1): 43-59. 2014.
    Crispin Wright argues that John McDowell’s use of disjunctivism to respond to the sceptic misses the point of the sceptic’s argument, for disjunctivism is a thesis about the differing metaphysical natures of veridical and nonveridical experiences, whereas the sceptic’s point is that our beliefs are unjustified because veridical and nonveridical experiences can be phenomenally indistinguishable. In this paper, I argue that McDowell is responsive to the sceptic’s focus on phenomenology, for the po…Read more
  •  98
    Strategy for dualists
    Metaphilosophy 32 (4): 395-418. 2001.
    Dualists need to change their argumentative strategies if they wish to make a plausible case for dualism. In particular, dualists should not merely react and respond to physicalist views and arguments; they need to develop their own positive agenda. But neither should they focus their energies on constructing a priori arguments for dualism. Rather, dualists should acknowledge that what supports their view that consciousness exists and is a nonphysical phenomenon is observation, not argumentation…Read more
  •  98
    In this book, Harold Langsam argues that consciousness is intelligible -- that there are substantive facts about consciousness that can be known a priori -- and that it is the intelligibility of consciousness that is the source of its ...
  •  89
    Nietzsche and value creation: subjectivism, self-expression, and strength
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (1): 100-113. 2018.
    For Nietzsche, the creation of value is of such great importance because it is the only means by which value can come to exist in the world. In this paper, I examine Nietzsche’s views about how value is created. For Nietzsche, value is created through valuing, and in section ‘Valuing’, I provide a Nietzschean account of valuing. Specifically, I argue that those who share Nietzsche’s view that there are no objective values can value things by representing them to have relative value. In section ‘…Read more
  •  88
    Why colours do look like dispositions
    Philosophical Quarterly 50 (198): 68-75. 2000.
  •  79
    A Defense of Restricted Phenomenal Conservatism
    Philosophical Papers 42 (3). 2013.
    In this paper, I criticize Michael Huemer's phenomenal conservatism, the theory of justification according to which if it seems to S that p, then in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that p. Specifically, I argue that beliefs and hunches provide counterexamples to phenomenal conservatism. I then defend a version of restricted phenomenal conservatism, the view that some but not all appearances confer prima facie justification on their prop…Read more
  •  77
    Mental Reality
    Philosophical Review 105 (1): 99. 1996.
    Materialism does not function in philosophy simply as a popular metaphysical thesis about the nature of the world; it is also often put forward as a solution to some alleged problem involving the relation between mind and body. Galen Strawson is a professed materialist, but it is a defining theme of his book that materialism, as presently understood, cannot serve in this latter function: not only does it not solve the mind-body problem, it exacerbates it. Not that Strawson’s purpose is to offer …Read more
  •  67
    Kant's compatibilism and his two conceptions of truth
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2). 2000.
    In this paper, I explain how Kant's views can be reconciled, and I argue that the relevance of transcendental idealism here is that it shows that determinism is known to be true, not in accordance with the familiar correspondence notion of truth, but only in accordance with a weaker notion of truth, Kant's empirical notion of truth, which is a kind of coherence notion of truth. (edited)
  •  60
    Consciousness, experience, and justification
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (1): 1-28. 2002.
    I think it is important to try to make sense of these thoughts concerning the justificatory role of experiences, for I suspect that we are losing the ability to see why philosophers have traditionally been attracted to such thoughts. Coherentism and reliabilism, perhaps the two most currently popular theories of epistemic justification, appear simply to reject the idea that experiences can justify beliefs. Thus according to coherentism, the view that ‘a belief is justified by its coherence with …Read more
  •  50
    Real materialism and other essays * by Galen Strawson
    Analysis 69 (4): 779-781. 2009.
    A perennial criticism of analytic philosophy is that it fails to engage with our deepest and most basic human concerns, and has thereby rendered itself irrelevant to the larger culture. In my own thinking about philosophy, I am inclined to dismiss this criticism; after all, different philosophers will find different issues to be interesting and important and will philosophize accordingly; surely it is not the philosopher's job to indulge a corrupted culture by anticipating what it will judge to …Read more
  •  43
    Why Pains are Mental Objects
    Journal of Philosophy 92 (6): 303. 1995.
  •  42
    McDowell’s infallibilism and the nature of knowledge
    Synthese 198 (10): 9787-9801. 2020.
    According to John McDowell’s version of disjunctivism, a perceptual experience has both a property that it shares with a subjectively indistinguishable illusory experience as well as a property that it does not share with a subjectively indistinguishable illusory experience. McDowell is also an infallibilist about justification; accordingly, he holds that a perceptual experience justifies a belief in virtue of the latter property. In this paper, I defend McDowell against an argument that purport…Read more
  •  33
    Taking Skepticism Seriously
    Erkenntnis 1-19. forthcoming.
    Responses to skeptical arguments need to be serious: they need to explain not only why some premise of the argument is false, but also why the premise is plausible, despite being false. Moorean responses to skeptical arguments are inadequate because they are not serious: they do not explain the plausibility of false skeptical premises. Skeptical arguments presuppose the truth of the following two claims: the requirements for epistemic justification are internalist, and these internalist requirem…Read more
  •  27
    Two kinds of a priori justification
    Synthese 201 (3): 1-19. 2023.
    John Bengson holds that an intellectual seeming is sufficient for a priori justification, whereas Elijah Chudnoff disagrees and holds that a priori justification also requires an intuitive awareness of the abstract entities that are the subject matter of the proposition to be justified. I distinguish between substantive and non-substantive a priori claims about the world, and argue that Chudnoff is correct about the justification required for the former kind of claim, and Bengson is correct abou…Read more
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