University of Oxford
Faculty of Philosophy
DPhil, 1995
St Andrews, FIfe, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  •  70
    Group motivation
    Noûs 56 (2): 494-510. 2022.
    In this paper I discuss a key issue for group moral responsibility, namely whether we can make sense of a group acting for one reason rather than another. The notion of acting for one reason rather than another is central to standard accounts of individual agency and responsibility; and also determines whether an individual is blameworthy or praiseworthy for an action. Thus if we model group responsibility on individual responsibility, we need to be able to make sense of a group acting for one r…Read more
  •  140
    Epistemically blameworthy belief
    Philosophical Studies 177 (12): 3595-3614. 2020.
    When subjects violate epistemic standards or norms, we sometimes judge them blameworthy rather than blameless. For instance, we might judge a subject blameworthy for dogmatically continuing to believe a claim even after receiving evidence which undermines it. Indeed, the idea that one may be blameworthy for belief is appealed to throughout the contemporary epistemic literature. In some cases, a subject seems blameworthy for believing as she does even though it seems prima facie implausible that …Read more
  •  109
    Blame and wrongdoing
    Episteme 14 (3): 275-296. 2017.
    The idea that one can blamelessly violate a norm is central to ethics and epistemology. The paper examines the prospects for an account of blameless norm violation applicable both to norms governing action and norms governing belief. In doing so, I remain neutral on just what are the norms governing action and belief. I examine three leading suggestions for understanding blameless violation of a norm which is not overridden by another norm: doxastic accounts; epistemic accounts; and appeal to ex…Read more
  •  96
    Group belief and direction of fit
    Philosophical Studies 180 (10): 3161-3178. 2023.
    We standardly attribute beliefs to both individuals and organised groups, such as governments, corporations and universities. Just as we might say that an individual believes something, for instance that oil prices are rising, so we might say that a government or corporation does. If groups are to genuinely have beliefs, then they need states with the characteristic features of beliefs. One feature standardly taken to characterise beliefs is their mind to world direction of fit: they should fit …Read more
  •  5
    Group Excuse from Blameless Ignorance
    Philosophical Topics 49 (2): 1-16. 2021.
    We routinely treat groups, such as governments and corporations, as agents with beliefs and aims who are morally responsible for their actions. For instance, we might blame the government for its response to the coronavirus pandemic. If groups are morally responsible agents, then it’s plausible that they can have an excuse for wrongdoing from ignorance in just the way individuals can. For instance, a government might attempt to excuse its performance in the coronavirus pandemic by saying that it…Read more
  •  43
    Group evidence
    Philosophical Issues 32 (1): 164-179. 2022.
    Philosophical Issues, EarlyView.
  •  12
    Lackey on group justified belief and evidence
    Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2): 1-7. 2023.
    In this paper, I examine one central strand of Lackey’s The Epistemology of Groups, namely her account of group justified belief and the puzzle cases she uses to develop it. Her puzzle cases involve a group of museum guards most of whom justifiably believe a certain claim but do so on different bases. Consideration of these cases leads her to hold that a group justifiably believes p if and only if (1) a significant proportion of its operative members (a) justifiably believe p on (b) bases that a…Read more
  • Externalism and the Fregean tradition
    In Alex Barber (ed.), Epistemology of language, Oxford University Press. 2003.
  •  34
    Fallibilism: Evidence and Knowledge
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Fallibilists claim that one can know a proposition on the basis of evidence that supports it even if the evidence doesn't guarantee its truth. Jessica Brown offers a compelling defence of this view against infallibilists, who claim that it is contradictory to claim to know and yet to admit the possibility of error.
  •  1
    Anti-Individualism and Knowledge
    Philosophical Quarterly 55 (221): 677-679. 2005.
  • Lowe, EJ-Subjects of Experience
    Philosophical Books 39 56-57. 1998.
  •  183
    Contextualism about Evidential Support
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (2): 329-354. 2015.
    In this paper, I examine a contextualist thesis that has been little discussed in comparison with contextualism about knowledge, namely contextualism about evidential support. This seems surprising since, prima facie, evidential support statements seem shifty in a way parallel to knowledge ascriptions. I examine but reject the suggestion that contrastivism about evidential support is motivated by arguments analogous to those used to motivate contrastivism about knowledge including sceptical clos…Read more
  •  33
    Words, Concepts and Epistemology
    In Jessica Brown & Mikkel Gerken (eds.), Knowledge Ascriptions, Oxford University Press. pp. 31. 2012.
  •  217
    Assertion: New Philosophical Essays (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2011.
    Assertion is a fundamental feature of language. This volume will be the place to look for anyone interested in current work on the topic.
  •  406
    Thought Experiments, Intuitions and Philosophical Evidence
    Dialectica 65 (4): 493-516. 2011.
    What is the nature of the evidence provided by thought experiments in philosophy? For instance, what evidence is provided by the Gettier thought experiment against the JTB theory of knowledge? According to one view, it provides as evidence only a certain psychological proposition, e.g. that it seems to one that the subject in the Gettier case lacks knowledge. On an alternative, nonpsychological view, the Gettier thought experiment provides as evidence the nonpsychological proposition that the su…Read more
  •  305
    The knowledge Norm for assertion
    Philosophical Issues 18 (1): 89-103. 2008.
    No Abstract
  •  16
    VI-Reliabilism, Knowledge, and Mental Content
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2): 115-135. 2000.
  •  1
    Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge
    In Ansgar Beckermann & Brian P. McLaughlin (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 767--780. 2009.
  • Davies and Wright have recently diagnosed the felt inadequacy of Moore’s response to the sceptic in terms of a failure of transmission of warrant. They argue that warrant fails to transmit across the following key inference: I have hands, if I have hands then I am not a BIV, so I am not a BIV, on the grounds that this inference cannot be used to rationally overcome doubt about its conclusion, and cannot strengthen one’s epistemic position with respect to the conclusion. Here, for the sake of arg…Read more
  •  285
    Knowledge and Assertion
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (3): 549-566. 2010.
  •  128
    Intuitions, evidence and hopefulness
    Synthese 190 (12): 2021-2046. 2013.
    Experimental philosophers have recently conducted surveys of folk judgements about a range of phenomena of interest to philosophy including knowledge, reference, and free will. Some experimental philosophers take these results to undermine the philosophical practice of appealing to intuitions as evidence. I consider several different replies to the suggestion that these results undermine philosophical appeal to intuition, both piecemeal replies which raise concerns about particular surveys, and …Read more
  •  324
    Infallibilism, evidence and pragmatics
    Analysis 73 (4): 626-635. 2013.
    According to one contemporary formulation of infallibilism, probability 1 infallibilism, if a subject knows that p, then the probability of p on her evidence is 1. To avoid an implausible scepticism about knowledge, probability 1 infallibilism needs to allow that, in a wide range of cases, a proposition can be evidence for itself. However, such infallibilism needs to explain why it is typically infelicitous to cite p as evidence for p itself. I argue that probability 1 infallibilism has no expla…Read more
  •  101
  •  184
    Critical reasoning, understanding and self-knowledge
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (3): 659-676. 2000.
    Following Burge, many anti-individualists suppose that a subject can possess a concept even if she incompletely understands it. While agreeing that this is possible, I argue that there is a limit on the extent to which a subject can incompletely understand the set of concepts she thinks with. This limit derives from our conception of our ability to reflectively evaluate our own thoughts or, as Burge puts it, our ability to engage in critical reasoning. The paper extends Burge’s own work on criti…Read more
  •  193
    Boghossian on externalism and privileged access
    Analysis 59 (1): 52-59. 1999.
    Boghossian has argued that Putnam's externalism is incompatible with privileged access, i.e., the claim that a subject can have nonempirical knowledge of her thought contents ('What the externalist can know a priori', PAS 1997). Boghossian's argument assumes that Oscar can know a priori that (1) 'water' aims to name a natural kind; and (2) 'water' expresses an atomic concept. However, I show that if Burge's externalism is correct, then these assumptions may well be false. This leaves Boghossian …Read more
  •  125
    Adapt or die: The death of invariantism&quest
    Philosophical Quarterly 55 (219): 263-285. 2005.
    Contextualists support their view by appeal to cases which show that whether an attribution of knowledge seems correct depends on attributor factors. Contextualists conclude that the truth-conditions of knowledge attributions depend on the attributor's context. Invariantists respond that these cases show only that the warranted assertability-conditions of knowledge attributions depend on the attributor's context. I examine DeRose's recent argument against the possibility of such an invariantist …Read more