•  311
    No Double-Halfer Embarrassment: A Reply to Titelbaum
    Analytic Philosophy 64 (3): 346-354. 2023.
    “Double-halfers” think that throughout the Sleeping Beauty Scenario, Beauty ought to maintain a credence of 1/2 in the proposition that the fair coin toss governing the experimental protocol comes up heads. Titelbaum (2012) introduces a novel variation on the standard scenario, one involving an additional coin toss, and claims that the double-halfer is committed to the absurd and embarrassing result that Beauty’s credence in an indexical proposition concerning the outcome of a future fair coin …Read more
  •  466
    Dutch Books and Logical Form
    Philosophy of Science 88 (5): 961-970. 2021.
    Dutch Book Arguments (DBAs) have been invoked to support various requirements of rationality. Some are plausible: probabilism and conditionalization. Others are less so: credal transparency and reflection. Anna Mahtani has argued for a new understanding of DBAs which, she claims, allow us to keep the DBAs for probabilism (and perhaps conditionalization) and reject the DBAs for credal transparency and reflection. I argue that Mahtani’s new account fails as (a) it does not support highly plau…Read more
  •  467
    A Conflict between Indexical Credal Transparency and Relevance Confirmation
    Philosophy of Science 88 (3): 385-397. 2021.
    According to the probabilistic relevance account of confirmation, E confirms H relative to background knowledge K just in case P(H/K&E) > P(H/K). This requires an inequality between the rational degree of belief in H determined relative to two bodies of total knowledge which are such that one (K&E) includes the other (K) as a proper part. In this paper, I argue that it is quite plausible that there are no two possible bodies of total knowledge for ideally rational agents meeting this requireme…Read more
  •  456
    Review of A Priori Justification (review)
    Mind 114 (453): 124-128. 2005.
    A review of Albert Casullo's "A Priori Justification" (Oxford University Press).
  •  80
    Philosophical Appeals to Intuitions
    The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2017.
    Intuitions are, according to many philosophers, treated as a primary source of evidence in much distinctively philosophical inquiry. While some contest this claim, if it is true, then the intellectual respectability of such inquiry depends on whether intuitions are properly suited to serve as evidence. Almost all agree that intuitions are mental states with propositional content. Some philosophers take intuitions to be beliefs of some kind. Others reject the claim that intuitions are beliefs. Th…Read more
  •  1258
    Probabilistic arguments for multiple universes
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (3). 2007.
    In this paper, we discuss three probabilistic arguments for the existence of multiple universes. First, we provide an analysis of total evidence and use that analysis to defend Roger White's "this universe" objection to a standard fine-tuning argument for multiple universes. Second, we explain why Rodney Holder's recent cosmological argument for multiple universes is unconvincing. Third, we develop a "Cartesian argument" for multiple universes. While this argument is not open to the objections p…Read more
  •  168
    On explaining knowledge of necessity
    Dialectica 58 (1). 2004.
    Moderate rationalists maintain that our rational intuitions provide us with prima facie justification for believing various necessary propositions. Such a claim is often criticized on the grounds that our having reliable rational intuitions about domains in which the truths are necessary is inexplicable in some epistemically objectionable sense. In this paper, I defend moderate rationalism against such criticism. I argue that if the reliability of our rational intuitions is taken to be contingen…Read more
  •  103
    Stich and Ravenscroft (1994) distinguish between internal and external accounts of folk psychology and argue that this distinction makes a significant difference to the debate over eliminative materialism. I argue that their views about the implications of the internal/external distinction for the debate over eliminativism are mistaken. First, I demonstrate that the first of their two external versions of folk psychology is either not a possible target of eliminativist critique, or not a ta…Read more
  •  175
    Hitchcock advances a diachronic Dutch Book argument (DDB) for a 1/3 answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem. Bradley and Leitgeb argue that Hitchcock’s DDB argument fails. We demonstrate the following: (a) Bradley and Leitgeb’s criticism of Hitchcock is unconvincing; (b) nonetheless, there are serious reasons to worry about the success of Hitchcock’s argument; (c) however, it is possible to construct a new DDB for 1/3 about which such worries cannot be raised.
  •  62
    Hilary Kornblith (1993) has recently offered a reliabilist defense of the use of the Law of Small Numbers in inductive inference. In this paper I argue that Kornblith's defense of this inferential rule fails for a number of reasons. First, I argue that the sort of inferences that Kornblith seeks to justify are not really inductive inferences based on small samples. Instead, they are knowledge-based deductive inferences. Second, I address Kornblith's attempt to find support in the work of Dorrit …Read more
  •  276
    Though most of analytic philosophy is based upon intuitions, some philosophers are beginning to question whether intuitions are an appropriate basis for philosophical theory. This paper responds to the arguments of some contemporary philosophers who hold that intuitions should not be treated as evidence for anything other than our contingent psychological constitution. It begins with a demonstration that skeptical arguments by Gilbert Harman and Alvin Goldman are variations on an argument with t…Read more
  •  155
    Empirical Evidence for Rationalism?
    In Darrell Rowbottom & Anthony Booth (eds.), Intuitions, Oxford University Press. 2014.
    Moderate rationalism is the view a person's having a rational intuition that p prima facie justifies them in believing that p. It has recently been argued that moderate rationalism requires empirical support and, furthermore, that suitable empirical support would suffice to convince empiricists to abandon their opposition to rationalism. According to one argument, the causal requirement argument, empirical evidence is necessary in order to justify the claim that any actual token belief is base…Read more
  •  193
    Terence Horgan defends the thirder position on the Sleeping Beauty problem, claiming that Beauty can, upon awakening during the experiment, engage in “synchronic Bayesian updating” on her knowledge that she is awake now in order to justify a 1/3 credence in heads. In a previous paper, I objected that epistemic probabilities are equivalent to rational degrees of belief given a possible epistemic situation and so the probability of Beauty’s indexical knowledge that she is awake now is necessarily …Read more
  •  192
    Horgan on sleeping beauty
    Synthese 160 (1). 2008.
    With the notable exception of David Lewis, most of those writing on the Sleeping Beauty problem have argued that 1/3 is the correct answer. Terence Horgan has provided the clearest account of why, contrary to Lewis, Beauty has evidence against the proposition that the coin comes up heads when she awakens on Monday. In this paper, I argue that Horgan’s proposal fails because it neglects important facts about epistemic probability.
  •  316
    How can intuitions be used to validate or invalidate a philosophical theory? An intuition about a case seems to be a basic evidential source for the truth of that intuition, i.e., for the truth of the claim that a particular example is or isn’t an instance of a philosophically interesting kind, concept, or predicate. A mental‐state type is a basic evidential source only if its tokens reliably indicate the truth of their contents. The best way to account for intuitions being a basic evidential so…Read more
  •  109
    Kitcher on tradition-independent a priori warrant
    Philosophical Quarterly 52 (208): 373-376. 2002.
    In his most recent treatment of a priori knowledge, Philip Kitcher argues against what he takes to be the widespread view that our knowledge and warranted belief is 'tradition-independent'. Furthermore, he argues that defeasible conceptions of a priori warrant entail that it is not tradition-independent, a conclusion which he thinks is contrary to what most epistemologists hold. I argue that knowledge is not widely believed to be tradition-independent, and that, while warrant is widely believed …Read more
  •  306
    Conditionalization and Essentially Indexical Credence
    Journal of Philosophy 109 (4): 295-315. 2012.
    One can have no prior credence whatsoever (not even zero) in a temporally indexical claim. This fact saves the principle of conditionalization from potential counterexample and undermines the Elga and Arntzenius/Dorr arguments for the thirder position and Lewis' argument for the halfer position on the Sleeping Beauty Problem, thereby supporting the double-halfer position.
  •  123
    Skepticism, Reason and Reidianism
    In Albert Casullo & Joshua Thurow (eds.), The A Priori in Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 205. 2013.
    The traditional problems of epistemology have often been thought to be properly solved only by the provision of an argument, with premises justified by rational intuition and introspection, for the probable truth of our beliefs in the problematic domains. Following the lead of Thomas Reid, a sizable number of contemporary epistemologists, including many proponents of so-called "Reformed epistemology" regarding religious belief, reject as arbitrary the preferential treatment of reason and intros…Read more
  •  37
    Two kinds of representational functionalism: Defusing the combinatorial explosion
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2): 392-393. 1995.
    Alvin Goldman (1993) presents three arguments against the psychological plausibility of representational functionalism (RF) as a theory of how subjects self-ascribe mental predicates. Goldman appears to construe RF as an account of attitude type self-ascription. His “combinatorial explosion” argument, however, proves devastating only to an implausible construal of RF as an account of attitude content self-ascription.
  •  404
    Intuition
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2017.
    This entry addresses the nature and epistemological role of intuition by considering the following questions: (1) What are intuitions?, (2) What roles do they serve in philosophical (and other “armchair”) inquiry?, (3) Ought they serve such roles?, (4) What are the implications of the empirical investigation of intuitions for their proper roles?, and (5) What is the content of intuitions prompted by the consideration of hypothetical cases?
  •  196
    Sleeping Beauty and direct inference
    Analysis 71 (2): 290-293. 2011.
    One argument for the thirder position on the Sleeping Beauty problem rests on direct inference from objective probabilities. In this paper, I consider a particularly clear version of this argument by John Pollock and his colleagues (The Oscar Seminar 2008). I argue that such a direct inference is defeated by the fact that Beauty has an equally good reason to conclude on the basis of direct inference that the probability of heads is 1/2. Hence, neither thirders nor halfers can find direct supp…Read more
  •  100
    Natural selection and the traits of individual organisms
    Biology and Philosophy 19 (5): 765-779. 2004.
    I have recently argued that origin essentialism regarding individual organisms entails that natural selection does not explain why individual organisms have the traits that they do. This paper defends this and related theses against Mohan Matthen's recent objections.
  •  106
    Critical Notice of Hilary Kornblith's On Reflection
    Episteme 11 (1): 53-61. 2014.
    Hilary Kornblith's On Reflection is a sustained and detailed criticism of philosophical appeals to reflection. Kornblith argues, on both conceptual and empirical grounds, that a large number of appeals to reflective belief and desire in philosophical theorizing about knowledge and justification, reasoning, free will and normativity are deeply flawed. In this paper, I discuss Kornblith's arguments, finding some quite compelling and some wanting. Moreover, I argue that an important ambiguity about…Read more
  •  1230
    Cartesian Knowledge and Confirmation
    Journal of Philosophy 104 (6): 269-289. 2007.
    Bayesian conceptions of evidence have been invoked in recent arguments regarding the existence of God, the hypothesis of multiple physical universes, and the Doomsday Argument. Philosophers writing on these topics often claim that, given a Bayesian account of evidence, our existence or something entailed by our existence (perhaps in conjunction with some background knowledge or assumption) may serve as evidence for each of us. In this paper, I argue that this widespread view is mistaken. The …Read more
  •  204
    Warrant and analysis
    Analysis 60 (1). 2000.
    Alvin Plantinga theorizes about an epistemic property he calls "warrant," defined as that which makes the difference "between knowledge and mere true belief." I show that, given this account, Plantinga can have no justification for claiming that a false belief is warranted nor for claiming that warrant comes in degrees.
  •  370
    Intuitions as evidence
    Garland. 2000.
    This book is concerned with the role of intuitions in the justification of philosophical theory. The author begins by demonstrating how contemporary philosophers, whether engaged in case-driven analysis or seeking reflective equilibrium, rely on intuitions as evidence for their theories. The author then provides an account of the nature of philosophical intuitions and distinguishes them from other psychological states. Finally, the author defends the use of intuitions as evidence by demonstratin…Read more
  •  155
    Natural Selection Explanation and Origin Essentialism
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (2): 201-220. 2001.
    Does natural selection explain why individual organisms have the traits that they do? According to "the Negative View," natural selection does not explain why any individual organism has the traits that it does. According to "the Positive View," natural selection at least sometimes does explain why an individual organism has the traits that it does. In this paper, I argue that recent arguments for the Positive View fail in virtue of running afoul of the doctrine of origin essentialism and I d…Read more
  •  111
    Horgan and Mahtani (Erkenntnis 78: 333–351, 2013) present a new argument for the 1/3 answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem resting on a principle for updating probabilities which they call “generalized conditionalization.” They allege that this new argument is immune to two attacks which have been recently leveled at other arguments for thirdism. I argue that their new argument rests on a probability distribution which is (a) no more justified than an alternative distribution favoring a differen…Read more