•  289
    Epistemic luck and the generality problem
    Philosophical Studies 139 (3). 2008.
    Epistemic luck has been the focus of much discussion recently. Perhaps the most general knowledge-precluding type is veritic luck, where a belief is true but might easily have been false. Veritic luck has two sources, and so eliminating it requires two distinct conditions for a theory of knowledge. I argue that, when one sets out those conditions properly, a solution to the generality problem for reliabilism emerges.
  •  222
    Basic Knowledge and Easy Understanding
    Acta Analytica 27 (2): 145-161. 2012.
    Reliabilism is a theory that countenances basic knowledge, that is, knowledge from a reliable source, without requiring that the agent knows the source is reliable. Critics (especially Cohen 2002 ) have argued that such theories generate all-too-easy, intuitively implausible cases of higher-order knowledge based on inference from basic knowledge. For present purposes, the criticism might be recast as claiming that reliabilism implausibly generates cases of understanding from brute, basic knowled…Read more
  •  208
    On the perfectly general nature of instability in meaning holism
    Journal of Philosophy 95 (12): 635-640. 1998.
  •  201
    Margins for error and sensitivity: What Nozick might have said (review)
    Acta Analytica 24 (1): 17-31. 2009.
    Timothy Williamson has provided damaging counterexamples to Robert Nozick’s sensitivity principle. The examples are based on Williamson’s anti-luminosity arguments, and they show how knowledge requires a margin for error that appears to be incompatible with sensitivity. I explain how Nozick can rescue sensitivity from Williamson’s counterexamples by appeal to a specific conception of the methods by which an agent forms a belief. I also defend the proposed conception of methods against Williamson…Read more
  •  139
    Why reliabilism does not permit easy knowledge
    Synthese 190 (17): 3751-3775. 2013.
    Reliabilism furnishes an account of basic knowledge that circumvents the problem of the given. However, reliabilism and other epistemological theories that countenance basic knowledge have been criticized for permitting all-too-easy higher-level knowledge. In this paper, I describe the problem of easy knowledge, look briefly at proposed solutions, and then develop my own. I argue that the easy knowledge problem, as it applies to reliabilism, hinges on a false and too crude understanding of ‘reli…Read more
  •  137
    Contrastivism and lucky questions
    Philosophia 37 (2): 245-260. 2009.
    There’s something deeply right in the idea that knowledge requires an ability to discriminate truth from falsity. Failing to incorporate some version of the discrimination requirement into one’s epistemology generates cases of putative knowledge that are at best problematic. On the other hand, many theories that include a discrimination requirement thereby appear to entail violations of closure. This prima facie tension is resolved nicely in Jonathan Schaffer’s contrastivism, which I describe he…Read more
  •  104
    Understanding Quine's famous `statement'
    Erkenntnis 55 (1): 73-84. 2001.
    I argue that Quine''s famous claim, any statement can be held true come what may, demands an interpretation that implies that the meanings of the expressions in the held-true statement change. The intended interpretation of this claim is not clear from its context, and so it is often misunderstood by philosophers (and is misleadingly taught to their students). I explain Fodor and Lepore''s (1992) view that the above interpretation would render Quine''s assertion entirely trivial and reply, on bo…Read more
  •  96
    Scepticism and Reliable Belief
    Philosophical Review 123 (2): 241-244. 2014.
  •  91
    Reliabilism and safety
    Metaphilosophy 37 (5): 691-704. 2006.
    : Duncan Pritchard has recently highlighted the problem of veritic epistemic luck and claimed that a safety‐based account of knowledge succeeds in eliminating veritic luck where virtue‐based accounts and process reliabilism fail. He then claims that if one accepts a safety‐based account, there is no longer a motivation for retaining a commitment to reliabilism. In this article, I delineate several distinct safety principles, and I argue that those that eliminate veritic luck do so only if at lea…Read more
  •  78
    Jonathan Vogel has recently argued that counterfactual reliabilism cannot account for higher‐level knowledge that one's belief is true, or not false. His particular argument for this claim is straightforward and valid. Interestingly, there is a parallel argument, based on an alternative but plausible reinterpretation of the main premise in Vogel's argument, which squares CR with higher‐level knowledge both that one's belief is true and that one's belief is not false. I argue that, while Vogel's …Read more
  •  72
    The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology (edited book)
    with Tim Black
    Cambridge University Press. 2012.
    The sensitivity principle is a compelling idea in epistemology and is typically characterized as a necessary condition for knowledge. This collection of thirteen new essays constitutes a state-of-the-art discussion of this important principle. Some of the essays build on and strengthen sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge and offer novel defences of those accounts. Others present original objections to sensitivity-based accounts and offer comprehensive analysis and discussion of sensitivity's…Read more
  •  54
    Epistemology Without Certainty or Necessity
    Journal of Philosophical Research 285-319. 2016.
    In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty presents powerful arguments against traditional epistemology, conceived as a quest both for empirical grounds that provide certainty and for necessary truths that provide a conceptual framework within which to couch empirical findings. Rorty finds traditional epistemology in general, and specifically any appeal to representation that might ground knowledge, to be an unmitigated failure. In this paper, I show that Rorty at least considered but…Read more
  •  36
    Modal Epistemology
    with Bin Zhao
    Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy. 2023.
    Modal epistemologies aim to explicate the necessary link between belief and truth that constitutes knowledge. This strain of epistemological theorizing is typically externalist; hence, it does not require that the agent know or understand the nature of the knowledge-constituting link. A central concern of modal epistemology is to articulate conditions on knowing such that no merely lucky true belief counts as knowledge. In the effort to eliminate luck, epistemic principles are often cast modally…Read more
  •  33
    Kuhn's Vindication of Quine and Carnap
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 19 (2). 2002.
  •  32
    Between Probability and Certainty: What Justifies Belief, by Martin Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 213.
  •  32
    Epistemology: New Essays, edited by Quentin Smith
    Mind 119 (474): 526-530. 2010.
    (No abstract is available for this citation)
  •  31
    Knowing and Possessing Knowledge
    American Philosophical Quarterly 41 (1). 2004.
    None
  •  19
  •  19
    Jonathan Vogel has recently argued that counterfactual reliabilism cannot account for higher‐level knowledge that one's belief is true, or not false. His particular argument for this claim is straightforward and valid. Interestingly, there is a parallel argument, based on an alternative but plausible reinterpretation of the main premise in Vogel's argument, which squares CR with higher‐level knowledge both that one's belief is true and that one's belief is not false. I argue that, while Vogel's …Read more
  •  17
    Epistemology modalized
    Routledge. 2007.
    There are three primary aims of the book. The first, set out in the book's introduction, is to explain how two fairly recent developments in philosophy, externalism and modalism, provide the basis for a promising account of knowledge - an account that achieves anti-skeptical results and avoids Gettier-style counterexamples that are based on an agent having warranted beliefs that are merely luckily true. Epistemological externalism is the thesis that not all the factors that make a true belief a …Read more
  •  11
    The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015 (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2019.
    This landmark achievement in philosophical scholarship brings together leading experts from the diverse traditions of Western philosophy in a common quest to illuminate and explain the most important philosophical developments since the Second World War. Focusing particularly on those insights and movements that most profoundly shaped the English-speaking philosophical world, this volume bridges the traditional divide between “analytic” and “Continental” philosophy while also reaching beyond it.…Read more
  •  10
    Sensitivity: Checking into Knowing?
    Acta Analytica 38 (1): 27-43. 2023.
    In this paper, I describe some of the highlights of Melchior’s checking account and then suggest that its explanatory value could be enhanced with a less analyzed concept of checking. This thought inspires a rearguard defense of sensitivity, by no means aiming to rescue it from all its well-known problems, wherein it is suggested that sensitivity fares better as a necessary condition for knowledge when all the bells and whistles with which it has been adorned over the years are stripped away. Fi…Read more
  •  1
    Meaning Holism: An Articulation and Defense
    Dissertation, University of California, San Diego. 1999.
    Meaning holism says that the meaning of an expression depends on all of its inferential connections. This dissertation defends this view from the objections that its grounds are infirm and that any theory of meaning holism faces insuperable difficulties. I argue that there are indeed compelling Quinean grounds for holism . I explicate the debate between Quine and Carnap over the status of analyticity, concluding that Quine is right to deny the distinction between inferences that are constitutive…Read more
  •  1
    Epistemology Modalized
    Routledge. 2007.
    This book sets out first to explain how two fairly recent developments in philosophy, externalism and modalism, provide the basis for a promising account of knowledge, and then works through the different modalized epistemologies extant in the literature, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the author proposes the theory that knowledge is reliably formed, sensitive true belief, and defends the theory against objections
  • Cambridge Companion to History of Philosophy 1945-2015 (edited book)
    with Iain Thompson
    Cambridge University Press. 2019.
  • Epistemology modalized
    In Heather Dyke (ed.), Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy, Routledge. 2008.
  • The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1946-2015 (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2019.