•  104
    Der Dialog im Buch Hiob: Perspektiven für einen gelingenden religiösen Dialog
    In Andreas Koritensky, Margit Wasmaier-Sailer & Veronika Weidner (eds.), Epistemische Verantwortung im Dialog, Herder Verlag. forthcoming.
  •  121
    Disagreement and Religious Practice
    In Maria Baghramian, Adam Carter & Richard Rowland (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Disagreement, Routledge. forthcoming.
  •  1
    Functions and Prototypes
    In Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic & Susan Stuart (eds.), Computation, Information, Cognition: The Nexus and the Liminal, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2007.
  •  131
    Die Rationalität religiöser Überzeugungen
    In Georg Gasser, Ludwig Jaskolla & Thomas Schärtl (eds.), Handbuch zur Analytischen Theologie, Aschendorff. 2017.
  •  118
    Evidentialismus
    In Martin Grajner & Guido Melchior (eds.), Handbuch Erkenntnistheorie, Metzler. pp. 178-186. 2019.
  •  127
    Religious Disagreement
    In Jonathan Fuqua, John Greco & Tyler McNabb (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Religious Epistemology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 208-223. 2023.
    Religious disagreement describes the fact that religious and secular beliefs exhibit massive variety, and cannot all be perfectly accurate. It yields a problem and an opportunity. The problem is that, especially given the apparent epistemic parity of many who hold other beliefs, you cannot suppose that your beliefs are accurate. This arguably puts pressure on you to weaken or abandon your beliefs. Responses include denying the parity of those who disa- gree, or denying that religious disagreemen…Read more
  •  93
    Epistemic phariseeism
    Religious Studies 59 (3): 515-532. 2023.
    A prominent view in religious epistemology, which I call divine-help epistemology, says that people of faith are epistemically gifted by God, whereas non-believers are subject to the noetic effects of a fallen world. This view aims to show how religious beliefs for people of faith can be epistemically justified. But I argue that it makes such people prone to a cluster of epistemic vices that I call epistemic phariseeism. Divine-help epistemology is especially apt to promote these vices because i…Read more
  •  1
    Counterfactual-Peer Disagreement
    In Christoph Jäger & Winfried Löffler (eds.), Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreement. Papers of the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, 2011, The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 329-342. 2007.
  •  195
    I argue that faith is a type of trust. It is also part of a relationship in which both parties are called on to be faithful, where faithfulness is a type of trustworthiness. What distinguishes faith relationships from trust relationships is that both parties value the faith relationship intrinsically. I discuss how faith on this account can, and cannot, be rational when it goes beyond a person’s evidence. It turns out that faith has the same rationality conditions as trust, differing from it onl…Read more
  •  40
    ABSTRACT Is it good to form positive beliefs about those you have faith in, such as God or a religious community? Doxastic partialists say that it is. Some hold that it is good, from the viewpoint of faith, to form positive beliefs about the object of your faith even when your evidence favours negative ones. Others try to maintain respect for evidence by appealing to a highly permissive epistemology. I argue against both forms of doxastic partiality, on the grounds that they foster an epistemica…Read more
  •  23
    The Doxastic Norms of Faith: Reply to Commentators
    Australasian Philosophical Review 5 (1): 104-115. 2021.
    This paper responds to comments on the paper "True Faith: Against Doxastic Partiality about Faith (in God and Religious Communities) and in Defense of Evidentialism" (Australasian Philosophical Review). I begin with some clarifications on faith and its normativity (section 1). I then zero in on doxastic normativity (section 2), where an ideological rift emerges between evidentialism and partialist critiques (section 3). I then discuss evidentialist reason and its relationship to objectivity (sec…Read more
  •  259
    If you love someone, is it good to believe better of her than epistemic norms allow? The partiality view says that it is: love, on this view, issues norms of belief that clash with epistemic norms. The partiality view is supposedly supported by an analogy between beliefs and actions, by the phenomenology of love, and by the idea that love commits us to the loved one’s good character. I argue that the partiality view is false, and defend what I call the epistemic view. On the epistemic view, love…Read more
  •  136
    The Loyalty of Religious Disagreement
    In Matthew A. Benton & Jonathan L. Kvanvig (eds.), Religious Disagreement and Pluralism, Oxford University Press. pp. 238-270. 2021.
    Religious disagreement, like disagreement in science, stands to deliver important epistemic benefits. But religious communities tend to frown on it. A salient reason is that, whereas scientists should be neutral toward the topics they discuss, religious believers should be loyal to God; and religious disagreement, they argue, is disloyal. For it often involves discussion with people who believe more negatively about God than you do, putting you at risk of forming negative beliefs yourself. And f…Read more
  •  207
    Intellectual Humility and Epistemic Trust
    In Mark Alfano, Michael Patrick Lynch & Alessandra Tanesini (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Humility, Routledge. 2021.
    Intellectual humility has something important in common with trust: both, independently, help secure knowledge. But they also do so in tandem, and this chapter discusses how. Intellectual humility is a virtue of a person’s cognitive character; this means that it disposes her to perceive and think in certain ways that help promote knowledge. Trust is a form of cooperation, in which one person depends on another (or on herself) for some end, in a way that is governed by certain norms. Epistemic tr…Read more
  •  327
    Epistemic Self-Trust: It's Personal
    Episteme 1-16. forthcoming.
    What is epistemic self-trust? There is a tension in the way in which prominent accounts answer this question. Many construe epistemic trust in oneself as no more than reliance on our sub-personal cognitive faculties. Yet many accounts – often the same ones – construe epistemic trust in others as a normatively laden attitude directed at persons whom we expect to care about our epistemic needs. Is epistemic self-trust really so different from epistemic trust in others? I argue that it is not. We c…Read more
  •  340
    Bodily Systems and the Modular Structure of the Human Body
    with Barry Smith and Igor Papakin
    Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence 2780) 9 86-90. 2003.
    Medical science conceives the human body as a system comprised of many subsystems at a variety of levels. At the highest level are bodily systems proper, such as the endocrine system, which are central to our understanding of human anatomy, and play a key role in diagnosis and in dynamic modeling as well as in medical pedagogy and computer visualization. But there is no explicit definition of what a bodily system is; such informality is acceptable in documentation created for human beings, but f…Read more
  •  47
    Digital whiplash: The case of digital surveillance
    Human Affairs 30 (4): 559-569. 2020.
    Digital technology is rapidly transforming human life. But our cognition is honed for an analog world. I call this the problem of digital whiplash: that the digital transformation of society, like a vehicle whose sudden acceleration injures its occupants, is too fast to be safe. I focus on the unprecedented phenomenon of digital surveillance, which I argue poses a long-term threat to human autonomy that our cognition is ill-suited to recognize or respond to. Human cognition is embodied and conte…Read more
  •  151
    Wir leben in einem Zeitalter der religiösen Vielfalt. Es gibt viele unterschiedliche und scheinbar inkompatible religiöse und säkulare Glaubensformen, die einander mit einer erstaunlichen Intensität und Geschwindigkeit dank Globalisierung und sozialen Medien begegnen. Damit wächst die Einsicht, dass das eigene Überzeugungssystem nicht mehr einfach als gegeben und plausibel anzunehmen ist. Aufgrund dieser neuen Entwicklungen haben sich in den letzten Jahren intensive philosophische Diskussionen e…Read more
  •  188
    Some religious communities argue that public policy is best decided by their own members, on the grounds that collaborating with those reasoning from secular or “worldly” perspectives will only foment error about how society should be run. But I argue that epistemology instead recommends fostering disagreement among a plurality of religious and secular worldviews. Inter-worldview disagreement over public policy can challenge our unquestioned assumptions, deliver evidence we would likely have mis…Read more
  •  901
    I give an overview of the trust literature and then of six central issues concerning epistemic trust. The survey of trust zeroes in on the kinds of expectations that trust involves, trust’s characteristic psychology, and what makes trust rational. The discussion of epistemic trust focuses on its role in testimony, the epistemic goods that we trust for, the significance of epistemic trust in contrast to reliance, what makes epistemic trust rational, and epistemic self-trust.
  •  643
    Where there is trust, there is also vulnerability, and vulnerability can be exploited. Epistemic trust is no exception. This chapter maps the phenomenon of the exploitation of epistemic trust. I start with a discussion of how trust in general can be exploited; a key observation is that trust incurs vulnerabilities not just for the party doing the trusting, but also for the trustee (after all, trust can be burdensome), so either party can exploit the other. I apply these considerations to epistem…Read more
  •  1263
    Introduction: What is Ontology for?
    In Katherine Munn & Barry Smith (eds.), Applied Ontology: An Introduction, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 7-19. 2008.
  •  347
    Quality Control for Terms and Definitions in Ontologies and Taxonomies
    with Jacob Köhler, Alexander Rüegg, Andre Skusa, and Barry Smith
    BMC Bioinformatics 7 (212): 1-12. 2006.
    Background: Ontologies and taxonomies are among the most important computational resources for molecular biology and bioinformatics. A series of recent papers has shown that the Gene Ontology (GO), the most prominent taxonomic resource in these fields, is marked by flaws of certain characteristic types, which flow from a failure to address basic ontological principles. As yet, no methods have been proposed which would allow ontology curators to pinpoint flawed terms or definitions in ontologies …Read more
  •  3316
    Applied Ontology: An Introduction (edited book)
    ontos. 2008.
    Ontology is the philosophical discipline which aims to understand how things in the world are divided into categories and how these categories are related together. This is exactly what information scientists aim for in creating structured, automated representations, called 'ontologies,' for managing information in fields such as science, government, industry, and healthcare. Currently, these systems are designed in a variety of different ways, so they cannot share data with one another. They ar…Read more
  •  311
    Functional anatomy: A taxonomic proposal
    with Ingvar Johansson, Barry Smith, Nikoloz Tsikolia, Kathleen Elsner, Dominikus Ernst, and Dirk Siebert
    Acta Biotheoretica 53 (3): 153-166. 2005.
    It is argued that medical science requires a classificatory system that (a) puts functions in the taxonomic center and (b) does justice ontologically to the difference between the processes which are the realizations of functions and the objects which are their bearers. We propose formulae for constructing such a system and describe some of its benefits. The arguments are general enough to be of interest to all the life sciences.
  •  82
    Trust in Epistemology (edited book)
    Taylor & Francis. 2020.
    Trust is fundamental to epistemology. It features as theoretical bedrock in a broad cross-section of areas including social epistemology, the epistemology of self-trust, feminist epistemology, and the philosophy of science. Yet epistemology has seen little systematic conversation with the rich literature on trust itself. This volume aims to promote and shape this conversation. It encourages epistemologists of all stripes to dig deeper into the fundamental epistemic roles played by trust, and it …Read more
  •  669
    The epistemic benefits of religious disagreement
    Religious Studies 56 (3): 390-408. 2020.
    Scientific researchers welcome disagreement as a way of furthering epistemic aims. Religious communities, by contrast, tend to regard it as a potential threat to their beliefs. But I argue that religious disagreement can help achieve religious epistemic aims. I do not argue this by comparing science and religion, however. For scientific hypotheses are ideally held with a scholarly neutrality, and my aim is to persuade those who arecommittedto religious beliefs that religious disagreement can be …Read more