•  1882
    Religious exclusivism unlimited: JEROEN DE RIDDER
    Religious Studies 47 (4): 449-463. 2011.
    Like David Silver before them, Erik Baldwin and Michael Thune argue that the facts of religious pluralism present an insurmountable challenge to the rationality of basic exclusive religious belief as construed by Reformed Epistemology. I will show that their argument is unsuccessful. First, their claim that the facts of religious pluralism make it necessary for the religious exclusivist to support her exclusive beliefs with significant reasons is one that the reformed epistemologist has the reso…Read more
  •  1563
    The Point of Political Belief
    In Michael Hannon & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology, Routledge. 2021.
    An intuitive and widely accepted view is that (a) beliefs aim at truth, (b) many citizens have stable and meaningful political beliefs, and (c) citizens choose to support political candidates or parties on the basis of their political beliefs. We argue that all three claims are false. First, we argue that political beliefs often differ from ordinary world-modelling beliefs because they do not aim at truth. Second, we draw on empirical evidence from political science and psychology to argue that …Read more
  •  787
    Mechanistic artefact explanation
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37 (1): 81-96. 2006.
    One thing about technical artefacts that needs to be explained is how their physical make-up, or structure, enables them to fulfil the behaviour associated with their function, or, more colloquially, how they work. In this paper I develop an account of such explanations based on the familiar notion of mechanistic explanation. To accomplish this, I outline two explanatory strategies that provide two different types of insight into an artefact’s functioning, and show how human action inevitably pl…Read more
  •  506
    The (Alleged) Inherent Normativity of Technological Explanations
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 10 (1): 79-94. 2006.
    Technical artifacts have the capacity to fulfill their function in virtue of their physicochemical make-up. An explanation that purports to explicate this relation between artifact function and structure can be called a technological explanation. It might be argued, and Peter Kroes has in fact done so, that there issomething peculiar about technological explanations in that they are intrinsically normative in some sense. Since the notion of artifact function is a normative one (if an artifact ha…Read more
  •  251
    Epistemology socialized Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9579-4 Authors Jeroen de Ridder, Faculty of Philosophy, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796
  •  245
    I argue that scientific knowledge is collective knowledge, in a sense to be specified and defended. I first consider some existing proposals for construing collective knowledge and argue that they are unsatisfactory, at least for scientific knowledge as we encounter it in actual scientific practice. Then I introduce an alternative conception of collective knowledge, on which knowledge is collective if there is a strong form of mutual epistemic dependence among scientists, which makes it so that …Read more
  •  102
    This handbook provides an overview of key ideas, questions, and puzzles in political epistemology. It is divided into seven sections: (1) Politics and Truth: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives; (2) Political Disagreement and Polarization; (3) Fake News, Propaganda, Misinformation; (4) Ignorance and Irrationality in Politics; (5) Epistemic Virtues and Vices in Politics; (6) Democracy and Epistemology; (7) Trust, Expertise, and Doubt.
  •  100
    Science and Scientism in Popular Science Writing
    Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 3 (12). 2014.
    If one is to believe recent popular scientific accounts of developments in physics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, most of the perennial philosophical questions have been wrested from the hands of philosophers by now, only to be resolved (or sometimes dissolved) by contemporary science. To mention but a few examples of issues that science has now allegedly dealt with: the origin and destiny of the universe, the origin of human life, the soul, free will, morality, and religion. My …Read more
  •  99
    Why Only Externalists Can Be Steadfast
    Erkenntnis 79 (S1): 185-199. 2014.
    What is the rational response to disagreement with an epistemic peer? Some say the steadfast response of holding on to your own belief can be rational; others argue that some degree of conciliation is always rationally required. I argue that only an epistemological externalist about rationality—someone who holds that the rationality of a belief is partly constituted by factors outside a subject’s cognitive perspective—can defend the steadfast view. Or at least that this is so in the kinds of ide…Read more
  •  97
    Unsafe Assertions
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (4): 1-5. 2012.
    John Turri has recently provided two problem cases for the knowledge account of assertion (KAA) to argue for the express knowledge account of assertion (EKAA). We defend KAA by explaining away the intuitions about the problem cases and by showing that our explanation is theoretically superior to EKAA
  •  80
    We present a Reformed view on the relation between Christianity and non-Christian religions. We then explore what this view entails for the question whether Christians and non-Christian religious believers refer to, believe in, and worship the same God. We first analyze the concepts of worship, belief-in, and reference, as well as their interrelations. We then argue that adherents of the Abrahamic religions plausibly refer to the same God, whereas adherents of non-Abrahamic religions do not refe…Read more
  •  73
    Social Virtue Epistemology (edited book)
    Routledge. 2022.
    Explores the place of intellectual virtues and vices in a social world. Chapters are divided into four sections: Foundational Issues; Individual Virtues; Collective Virtues; and Methods and Measurements.
  •  54
    Design Hypotheses Behave Like Skeptical Hypotheses
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 7 (2): 69-90. 2017.
    _ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 2, pp 69 - 90 It is often claimed that, as a result of scientific progress, we now _know_ that the natural world displays no design. Although we have no interest in defending design hypotheses, we will argue that establishing claims to the effect that we know the denials of design hypotheses is more difficult than it seems. We do so by issuing two skeptical challenges to design-deniers. The first challenge draws inspiration from radical skepticism and shows how design …Read more
  •  48
    Against Quasi-Fideism
    Faith and Philosophy 36 (2): 223-243. 2019.
    Duncan Pritchard has recently ventured to carve out a novel position in the epistemology of religious belief called quasi-fideism. Its core is an application of ideas from Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology to religious belief. Among its many advertised benefits are that it can do justice to two seemingly conflicting ideas about religious belief, to wit: that it is, at least at some level, a matter of ungrounded faith, but also that it can be epistemically rationally grounded. In this paper, I a…Read more
  •  38
    Group belief reconceived
    Synthese 200 (2): 1-21. 2022.
    An influential account or group belief analyzes it as a form of joint commitment by group members. In spite of its popularity, the account faces daunting objections. I consider and reply to two of them. The first, due to Jennifer Lackey, is that the joint commitment account fails as an account of group belief since it cannot distinguish group beliefs from group lies and bullshit. The second is that the joint commitment account fails because it makes group belief voluntary, whereas genuine belief…Read more
  •  38
    Empirical evidence shows that secrecy in science has increased over the past decades, partly as a result of the commercialization of science. There is a good prima facie case against secrecy in science. It is part of the traditional ethos of science that it is a collective and open truth-seeking endeavor. In this paper, I will investigate whether secrecy in science can ever be epistemically justified. To answer this question, I first distinguish between different sorts of secrecy. Next, I propos…Read more
  •  37
    Design discourse and the cognitive science of design
    Philosophia Reformata 79 (1): 37-53. 2014.
    Much of Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies will contain few surprises for those who have been following his work over the past decades. This —I hasten to add — is nothing against the book. The fact alone that his ideas on various topics, which have appeared scattered throughout the literature, are now actualized, applied to the debate about the conflict between science and religion, and organized into an overarching argument with a single focus makes this book worthwhile. Moreover,…Read more
  •  30
    Veel wetenschappers, filosofen en theologen zijn van mening dat God nooit opgevoerd mag worden als verklaring voor een verschijnsel. Eén argument dat ze hiervoor aandragen is dat het op de een of andere manier in de aard van wetenschap zit dat God er geen rol in kan spelen. In dit artikel ga ik in op een specifieke versie van dit argument. Ik vraag me af of de aard van wetenschappelijke verklaringen uitsluit dat God als verklaringsgrond wordt genoemd. Om die vraag te beantwoorden ga ik na of de …Read more
  •  26
    Against Quasi-Fideism
    Faith and Philosophy 36 (2): 223-243. 2019.
    Duncan Pritchard has recently ventured to carve out a novel position in the epistemology of religious belief called quasi-fideism. Its core is an application of ideas from Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology to religious belief. Among its many advertised benefits are that it can do justice to two seemingly conflicting ideas about religious belief, to wit: (a) that it is, at least at some level, a matter of ungrounded faith, but also (b) that it can be epistemically rationally grounded. In this pa…Read more
  •  26
    The (Alleged) Inherent Normativity of Technological Explanations
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 10 (1): 79-94. 2006.
    Technical artifacts have the capacity to fulfill their function in virtue of their physicochemical make-up. An explanation that purports to explicate this relation between artifact function and structure can be called a technological explanation. It might be argued, and Peter Kroes has in fact done so, that there issomething peculiar about technological explanations in that they are intrinsically normative in some sense. Since the notion of artifact function is a normative one an explanation of …Read more
  •  25
    Scientism: The New Orthodoxy (review)
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (1): 93-95. 2016.
  •  24
    Philosophers of science have by and large neglected technology. In this book, I have tried to do something about this lacuna by analyzing a few aspects of technical artifacts from a philosophical angle. The project was part of the research program "The Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts" based at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Technical artifacts are both plain physical objects and objects that have been purposefully made for a purpose; which is to say they have a physical st…Read more
  •  23
    How to trust a scientist
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 93 11-20. 2022.
  •  21
    Wetenschap en sciëntisme in de populaire wetenschap
    Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 107 (3): 233-250. 2015.
    Science and Scientism in Popular Science Writing If one is to believe recent popular scientific accounts of developments in physics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, most of the perennial philosophical questions have been wrested from the hands of philosophers by now, only to be resolved (or sometimes dissolved) by contemporary science. To mention but a few examples of issues that science has now allegedly dealt with: the origin and destiny of the universe, the origin of human life,…Read more
  •  20
    Common sense philosophy holds that widely and deeply held beliefs are justified in the absence of defeaters. While this tradition has always had its philosophical detractors who have defended various forms of skepticism or have sought to develop rival epistemological views, recent advances in several scientific disciplines claim to have debunked the reliability of the faculties that produce our common sense beliefs. At the same time, however, it seems reasonable that we cannot do without common …Read more
  •  20
    The Unassertability of Contextualism
    Quaestiones Disputatae 8 (2): 68-86. 2018.
  •  18
    'Barking up the wrong tree': rationaliteit in de religieuze beslisboom
    Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 104 (2): 112. 2012.
  •  17
    Online Illusions of Understanding
    Social Epistemology. forthcoming.
    ABSTRACT Understanding is a demanding epistemic state. It involves not just knowledge that things are thus and so, but grasping the reasons why and seeing how things hang together. Understanding, then, typically requires inquiry. Many of our inquiries are conducted online nowadays, with the help of search engines, forums, and social media platforms. In this paper, I explore the idea that online inquiry easily leads to what I will call online illusions of understanding. Both the structure of onli…Read more