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300Knowledge-How, Ability, and Linguistic VarianceEpisteme 1-23. forthcoming.In this paper, we present results of cross-linguistic studies of Japanese and English knowing how constructions that show radical differences in knowledge-how attributions with large effect sizes. The results suggest that the relevant ability is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge-how captured by Japanese constructions. We shall argue that such data will open up a gap between otherwise indistinguishable two conceptions of the very topic of knowledge-how, or the debate between intellec…Read more
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1873Nothing at Stake in KnowledgeNoûs 53 (1): 224-247. 2019.In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some …Read more
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165For Whom Does Determinism Undermine Moral Responsibility? Surveying the Conditions for Free Will Across CulturesFrontiers in Psychology 10. 2019.Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and…Read more
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18Experimental Philosophy and Ordinary Language PhilosophyIn David Bordonaba-Plou (ed.), Experimental Philosophy of Language: Perspectives, Methods, and Prospects, Springer Verlag. pp. 31-56. 2023.This chapter tries to elucidate the complex relationship between ordinary language philosophyordinary language philosophy (OLP) and experimental philosophy (X-Phi) from the perspective of the contrast between the positive and the negative programs of X-Phi. I will first show the relevance of language to the various fields of contemporary philosophy, through what I call the Argument from Cross-Linguistic Diversity and the Argument from Intra-Linguistic Variance, together with empirical data. This…Read more
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80A simple linguistic approach to the Knobe effect, or the Knobe effect without any vignettePhilosophical Studies 175 (7): 1613-1630. 2018.In this paper we will propose a simple linguistic approach to the Knobe effect, or the moral asymmetry of intention attribution in general, which is just to ask the felicity judgments on the relevant sentences without any vignette at all. Through this approach we were in fact able to reproduce the Knobe effects in different languages, with large effect sizes. We shall defend the significance of this simple approach by arguing that our approach and its results not only tell interesting facts abou…Read more
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165The Gettier Intuition from South America to AsiaJournal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 34 (3): 517-541. 2017.This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to engage in “…Read more
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10Knowledge-How Attribution in English and JapaneseIn Karyn L. Lai (ed.), Knowers and Knowledge in East-West Philosophy: Epistemology Extended, Springer Nature. pp. 63-90. 2021.This chapter presents two cross-linguistic studies of knowledge-how attributions that compare English and Japanese speakers. The first study investigates the felicity judgements of ordinary people about knowledge-how sentences, where we find a large difference in judgements about the sentences in which a person lacks an ability to perform a certain action but is nevertheless attributed the relevant knowledge of how to perform that action. The second study investigates the frequency of the natura…Read more
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14This paper examines ordinary people’s responses to Jennifer Lackey’s Chicago Visitor case. In particular it examines responses regarding the case from participants with Taiwanese backgrounds and US backgrounds. The Chicago Visitor case is one of the most influential cases in epistemology in recent years and plays a significant role in a number of debates in epistemology. First, the case is used to suggest that the Credit View is mistaken. Second, the case seems to pose a problem for a virtue epi…Read more
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25A prolegomenon to the empirical cross‐linguistic study of truthTheoria 88 (6): 1248-1273. 2022.In this paper, we propose and justify the cross‐linguistic study of the concept of truth through empirical studies of truth predicates, with results of such studies. We first conceptually explore the possibility of cross‐linguistic disagreement about truth purely due to linguistic norms governing truth predicates, which may imply a kind of pluralism about the concept of truth. We then consider the conditions under which we would be justified in inferring this sort of pluralism from the fact of s…Read more
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223The Argument from Accidental Truth against DeflationismInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.In this paper, we present what we call the argument from accidental truth, according to which some instances of deflationist schemata, even those carefully reformulated and adjusted by Field and Horwich to accommodate the truth of utterances, are falsified due to accidental truths. Since the folk concept of truth allows for accidental truths, the deflationary theory of truth will face a serious problem. In particular, it follows that the deflationist schema fails to capture the proper extension …Read more
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“Know” and Its Japanese Counterparts, Shitte-iru and Wakatte-iruIn Masaharu Mizumoto, Stephen P. Stich & Eric S. McCready (eds.), Epistemology for the Rest of the World, Oxford University Press. pp. 77-122. 2018.
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15Ethno-Epistemology: New Directions for Global Epistemology (edited book)Routledge. 2020.This volume features new perspectives on the implications of cross-linguistic and cultural diversity for epistemology. It brings together philosophers, linguists, and scholars working on knowledge traditions to advance work in epistemology that moves beyond the Anglophone sphere. The first group of chapters provide evidence of cross-linguistic or cultural diversity relevant to epistemology and discuss its possible implications. These essays defend epistemic pluralism based on Sanskrit data as a …Read more
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284De Pulchritudine non est Disputandum? A cross‐cultural investigation of the alleged intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgmentMind and Language 34 (3): 317-338. 2019.Since at least Hume and Kant, philosophers working on the nature of aesthetic judgment have generally agreed that common sense does not treat aesthetic judgments in the same way as typical expressions of subjective preferences—rather, it endows them with intersubjective validity, the property of being right or wrong regardless of disagreement. Moreover, this apparent intersubjective validity has been taken to constitute one of the main explananda for philosophical accounts of aesthetic judgment.…Read more
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34One More Twist ~ Knowledge How and AbilityEpisteme 1-9. forthcoming.According to Bengson et al.’s Salchow case, Irina is a novice skater who has a mistaken belief about what amounts to a Salchow, but also has a neurological abnormality which, unknowingly to her, affects both her movement and her sense of it. As a result of this twist, she always ends up succeeding in jumping the Salchow whenever she tries. This story was presented as a counterexample to a variant of anti-intellectualism, and as Bengson and colleagues expected, the vast majority of participants i…Read more
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3609The Ship of Theseus PuzzleIn Tania Lombrozo, Joshua Knobe & Shaun Nichols (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy Volume 3, Oxford University Press. pp. 158-174. 2020.Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-t…Read more
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38Epistemology for the rest of the world (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.Today the use of English is dominant, and even epistemologists in the " use English, using " But why, and to what extent can this be justified? As the first volume ever to be dedicated solely to this topic, the papers collected here will contribute to this important topic and in epistemology in general.
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20External Critiques of Experimental Philosophy: ForewordAnnals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 23 19-19. 2015.
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87Behavioral Circumscription and the Folk Psychology of Belief: A Study in Ethno-MentalizingThought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (3): 193-203. 2017.Is behavioral integration a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from over 5,000 people across 26 samples, spanning 22 countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we argue that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely asserts that p, nonlinguistic behavioral evidence is disregard…Read more
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7Ethno-Epistemology: New Directions for Global Epistemology (edited book)Routledge. 2020.This volume features new perspectives on the implications of cross-linguistic and cultural diversity for epistemology. It brings together philosophers, linguists, and scholars working on knowledge traditions to advance work in epistemology that moves beyond the Anglophone sphere. The first group of chapters provide evidence of cross-linguistic or cultural diversity relevant to epistemology and discuss its possible implications. These essays defend epistemic pluralism based on Sanskrit data as a …Read more
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48Manifesto (Epistemology for the Rest of the World)In Masaharu Mizumoto, Stephen P. Stich & Eric S. McCready (eds.), Epistemology for the Rest of the World, Oxford University Press. 2018.Since the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, Anglophone epistemologists have devoted a great deal of attention to the English word ‘know’ and to English sentences used to attribute knowledge. Even today, many epistemologists, including contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists are concerned with the truth conditions of “S knows that p,” or the proposition it expresses. In all of this literature, the method of cases is used, where a situation is described in English, and then philos…Read more
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2“Know” and Japanese Counterparts; “Shitte-iru” and “Wakatte-iru”In Masaharu Mizumoto, Stephen P. Stich & Eric S. McCready (eds.), Epistemology for the Rest of the World, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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45Revisiting the Blinking Qualia ArgumentKagaku Tetsugaku 43 (1): 45-59. 2010.The Blinking Qualia Argument is the argument presented in Mizumoto (2006), which is to establish that zombies are impossible a priori. In this paper I will defend the argument from the actual and possible criticisms. Since such criticisms mainly focus on the premise “If qualia blinks, the subject can notice the blinking qualia,” I will give arguments to specifically defend that premise. This will bring into light the critic’s misunderstandings on the argument, and more generally, typical misunde…Read more
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31The Mind's Room Project: A Model Case of Interdisciplinary CooperationAnnals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 14 (1): 59-72. 2005.
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15A Simple Nonmonotonic Logic as a Model of Belief ChangeAnnals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 25-52. 2003.
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50From Information to Fact: A Theory of Belief ChangeAnnals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 11 (2): 87-106. 2003.
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17Bennett on Modus PonensAnnals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 18 11-28. 2009.
Nomi, Ishikawa, Japan
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |