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245Externalism, self-knowledge, and skepticismPhilosophical Review 103 (1): 107-37. 1994.Psychological externalism is the thesis that the contents of many of a person's propositional mental states are determined in part by relations he bears to his natural and social environment. This thesis has recently been thrust into prominence in the philosophy of mind by a series of thought experiments due to Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge. Externalism is a metaphysical thesis, but in this work I investigate its implications for the epistemology of the mental. I am primarily concerned with the …Read more
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326The view from nowhen: The Mctaggart-Dummett argument for the unreality of timePhilosophia 38 (2): 297-312. 2010.Years ago, Michael Dummett defended McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time, arguing that it cannot be dismissed as guilty of an “indexical fallacy.” Recently, E. J. Lowe has disputed Dummett’s claims for the cogency of the argument. I offer an elaboration and defense of Dummett’s interpretation of the argument (though not of its soundness). I bring to bear some work on tense from the philosophy of language, and some recent work on the concept of the past as it occurs in memory, in an eff…Read more
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44Memory and knowledge of contentIn Susana Nuccetelli (ed.), New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge, Mit Press. 2003.
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108A natural history of beliefPacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (4): 324-345. 1999.Contemporary philosophy of mind is dominated by a conception of our propositional attitude concepts as comprising a proto-scientific causal-explanatory theory of behavior. This conception has given rise to a spate of recent worries about the prospects for “naturalizing” the theory. In this paper I return to the roots of the “theory-theory” of the attitudes in Wilfrid Sellars’s classic “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” I present an alternative to the theory-theory’s account of belief in th…Read more
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1156The basis of first-person authorityPhilosophical Topics 28 (2): 69-99. 2000.This paper develops an account of the distinctive epistemic authority of avowals of propositional attitude, focusing on the case of belief. It is argued that such avowals are expressive of the very mental states they self-ascribe. This confers upon them a limited self-warranting status, and renders them immune to an important class of errors to which paradigm empirical (e.g., perceptual) judgments are liable.
Santa Barbara, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |