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78The Spectra of Epistemic NormsIn Clayton Littlejohn & John Turri (eds.), Epistemic Norms: New Essays on Action, Belief, and Assertion, Oxford University Press. pp. 201-218. 2013.I argue that there is a wide variety of epistemic norms, distributed along two different spectra. One spectrum runs from the ideal to the practical and concerns the extent to which it is possible to follow the norm given our cognitive and epistemic limitations. The other spectrum runs from thin to thick and concerns the extent to which the norm concerns facts about our beliefs over and above the content of the belief. Many putative epistemic norms, such as truth and various conceptions of justif…Read more
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205A Credibility-Backed Norm for TestimonyEpisteme 20 (1): 73-85. 2023.I propose that testimony is subject to a norm that is backed by a credibility sanction: whenever the norm is violated, it is appropriate for the testifier to lose some credibility for their future testimony. This is one of a family of sanction-based norms, where violation of the norm makes it appropriate to lose some power; in this case, the power to induce belief through testimony. The applicability of the credibility norm to testimony follows from the epistemology of testimony, in that false o…Read more
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25The Exchange of Words: Speech, Testimony, and Intersubjectivity By RichardMoranAnalysis 80 (3): 598-601. 2020._ The Exchange of Words: Speech, Testimony, and Intersubjectivity _ By MoranRichardOxford University Press, 2018. xvi + 234 pp.
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123Testimony: Evidence and ResponsibilityDissertation, University of Pittsburgh. 2003.Testimony is an indispensable way of gaining knowledge and also a voluntary act for which the teller can be held responsible. This dissertation analyzes these two aspects of testimony, the epistemological and the normative. Indeed, it argues that these two aspects cannot be separated: A satisfactory account of testimony's epistemology must allow for testimony's normative status, while an account of testimony's normative status can be derived from testimony's epistemology. ;Epistemologically, the…Read more
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66Accepting TestimonyPhilosophical Quarterly 53 (211). 2003.I defend the acceptance principle for testimony (APT), that hearers are justified in accepting testimony unless they have positive evidence against its reliability, against Elizabeth Fricker's local reductionist view. Local reductionism, the doctrine that hearers need evidence that a particular piece of testimony is reliable if they are to be justified in believing it, must on pain of scepticism be complemented by a principle that grants default justification to some testimony; I argue that (APT…Read more
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149How Causal Probabilities Might Fit into Our Objectively Indeterministic WorldSynthese 149 (1): 1-36. 2006.We suggest a rigorous theory of how objective single-case transition probabilities fit into our world. The theory combines indeterminism and relativity in the “branching space–times” pattern, and relies on the existing theory of causae causantes (originating causes). Its fundamental suggestion is that (at least in simple cases) the probabilities of all transitions can be computed from the basic probabilities attributed individually to their originating causes. The theory explains when and how on…Read more
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123Practical reasoning and the concept of knowledgeIn Duncan Pritchard, Alan Millar & Adrian Haddock (eds.), Epistemic Value, Oxford University Press. pp. 163--182. 2009.Suppose we consider knowledge to be valuable because of the role known propositions play in practical reasoning. This, I argue, does not provide a reason to think that knowledge is valuable in itself. Rather, it provides a reason to think that true belief is valuable from one standpoint, and that justified belief is valuable from another standpoint, and similarly for other epistemic concepts. The value of the concept of knowledge is that it provides an economical way of talking about many episte…Read more
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1Martijn Blaauw, ed., Epistemological Contextualism (review)Philosophy in Review 26 (6): 389-390. 2006.
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179This essay critically examines the Assurance View of testimony as put forth by Angus Ross (1986) and Richard Moran (1999). The Assurance View holds that someone who offers testimony gives the hearer a non-evidential justification for belief by assuming responsibility for the truth of her testimony. I agree that testimonial justification depends on the teller’s assumption of her responsibility for her testimony, but argue that it is nevertheless evidential justification. Testimonial justification…Read more
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356Must we know what we say?Philosophical Review 114 (2): 227-251. 2005.The knowledge account of assertion holds that it is improper to assert that p unless the speaker knows that p. This paper argues against the knowledge account of assertion; there is no general norm that the speaker must know what she asserts. I argue that there are cases in which it can be entirely proper to assert something that you do not know. In addition, it is possible to explain the cases that motivate the knowledge account by postulating a general norm that assertions would be true, combi…Read more
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109Why does justification matter?Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (3). 2005.It has been claimed that justification, conceived traditionally in an internalist fashion, is not an epistemologically important property. I argue for the importance of a conception of justification that is completely dependent on the subject’s experience, using an analogy to advice. The epistemological importance of a property depends on two desiderata: the extent to which it guarantees the epistemic goal of attaining truth and avoiding falsehood, and the extent to which it depends only on the in…Read more
Burlington, Vermont, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |