•  90
    In what follows, I’ll discuss several approaches to suspension. As we’ll see, the issue of whether and in what sense(s) suspension is *question-directed* is important to developing an adequate account. I will argue that suspension isn’t question-directed in the way that curiosity, wondering, and inquiry are. The most promising approach, in my view, takes suspension to be an agential matter; it involves the will. As we’ll see, this view makes sense of a lot of familiar facts about suspension, and…Read more
  •  66
    Kornblith on Epistemic Normativity
    In Luis Oliveira & Joshua DiPaolo (eds.), Kornblith and His Critics, Wiley-blackwell. forthcoming.
    Kornblith’s “Epistemic Normativity” is a classic in the now voluminous literature on the source of epistemic normativity. His account is as simple as it is bold: the source is desire, not a desire for true belief, or knowledge, but any set of desires. No matter what desires you have, so long as you are a being of a kind that employs beliefs in cost-benefit analysis, certain sorts of truth-centered epistemic norms will have normative force for you. We can distinguish two questions about epistemic…Read more
  •  48
    Nonsubjectivism About How Things Seem
    In Kevin McCain, Scott Stapleford & Matthias Steup (eds.), Seemings: New Arguments, New Angles, Routledge. 2023.
    We regularly appeal to claims of the form it seems that p in defense of a claim p. When we do so, we typically take it seems that p to be a reason for thinking that p but also a reason that “gets at” a relevant body of facts and its support for p. Other things being equal, we should want to vindicate our ordinary beliefs on this matter. We should want to vindicate the claim that facts about things seeming certain ways can be reasons to think that things are that way while at the same time being …Read more
  •  820
    Radical Knowledge Minimalism
    Logos and Episteme 14 (2): 223-227. 2023.
    We argue that knowledge doesn‘t require any of truth, justification, or belief. This is so for four primary reasons. First, each of the three conditions has been subject to convincing counterexamples. In addition, the resultant account explains the value of knowledge, manifests important theoretical virtues (in particular, simplicity), and avoids commitment to skepticism.
  •  52
    Perceptual Capacities: Questions for Schellenberg
    Analysis 79 (4): 730-739. 2019.
    According to Schellenberg’s capacitism, perception is constituted by employing perceptual capacities to discriminate and single out particulars, including objects, events and property instances. To say that perception is so constituted, for her, is to say that perceptual states have the content, phenomenal character, and evidential force they do in virtue of the fact that they are yielded by employing perceptual capacities.1 1
  •  12
    Scott Soames: Understanding Truth
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2): 410-417. 2002.
  •  139
    Knowing What Things Look Like: A reply to Shieber
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    In ‘Knowing What Things Look Like,’ I argued against the immediacy of visual objectual knowledge, i.e. visual knowledge that a thing is F, for an object category F, such as avocado, tree, desk, etc. Joseph Shieber proposes a challenging dilemma in reply. Either knowing what Fs look like requires having concepts such as looks or it doesn’t. Either way my argument fails. If knowing what Fs look like doesn’t require having such concepts, then he claims we can give an immediacy-friendly anti-intelle…Read more
  • Having false reasons
    with Juan Comesaña
    In Clayton Littlejohn & John Turri (eds.), Epistemic Norms: New Essays on Action, Belief, and Assertion, Oxford University Press. 2013.
  •  25
    A rigorous, authoritative new anthology which brings together some of the most significant contemporary scholarship on the theory of knowledge Carefully-calibrated and judiciously-curated, this strong and contemporary new anthology builds upon Epistemology: An Anthology, Second Edition (Wiley Blackwell, 2008) by drawing a concise and well-balanced selection of higher-level readings from a large, diverse, and evolving body of research. Includes 17 readings that represent a broad and vital part of…Read more
  •  243
    Undercutting Defeat: When it Happens and Some Implications for Epistemology
    In Jessica Brown & Mona Simion (eds.), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat, Oxford University Press. pp. 201-222. 2021.
    Although there is disagreement about the details, John Pollock’s framework for defeat is now part of the received wisdom in analytic epistemology. Recently, however, cracks have appeared in the consensus, particularly on the understanding of undercutting defeat. While not questioning the existence of undercutting defeat, Scott Sturgeon argues that undercutting defeat operates differently from rebutting. Unlike the latter, undercutting defeat, Sturgeon claims, occurs only in conjunction with cert…Read more
  •  332
    A limitation on agency in judgment
    Synthese 200 (2): 1-21. 2022.
    To many, judgment has seemed a locus of cognitive agency, a kind of cognitive mental act. In one minimal sense, judgment is something one does. I consider whether judgment is more robustly agential: is it a kind of action done with an aim? The most attractive version of this sort of position takes judging that p to affirming that p with an alethic aim, an aim such as affirming truly. I argue that such views have unacceptable consequences. Acts done with aims, in general, can be based only indire…Read more
  •  247
    Epistemic Norms for Waiting
    Philosophical Topics 49 (2): 173-201. 2021.
    Although belief formation is sometimes automatic, there are occasions in which we have the power to put it off, to wait on belief-formation. Waiting in this sense seems assessable by epistemic norms. This paper explores what form such norms might take: the nature and their content. A key question is how these norms relate to epistemic norms on belief-formation: could we have cases in which one ought to believe that p but also ought to wait on forming a belief on whether p? Plausibly not. But if …Read more
  •  3
    Arguing for shifty epistemology
    with J. Fantl
    In Jessica Brown & Mikkel Gerken (eds.), Knowledge Ascriptions, Oxford University Press. pp. 55--74. 2012.
    Shifty epistemologists allow that the truth value of “knowledge”-ascriptions can vary not merely because of such differences, but because of factors not traditionally deemed to matter to whether someone knows, like salience of error possibilities and practical stakes. Thus, contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists are both examples. This paper examines two strategies for arguing for shifty epistemology: the argument-from-instances strategy, which attempts to show that the truth-value o…Read more
  •  120
    Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (1): 239-242. 2001.
    Mark Balaguer has written a provocative and original book. The book is as ambitious as a work of philosophy of mathematics could be. It defends both of the dominant views concerning the ontology of mathematics, Platonism and Anti-Platonism, and then closes with an argument that there is no fact of the matter which is right.
  •  1208
    Epistemologists often claim that in addition to belief and disbelief there is a third, neutral, doxastic attitude. Various terms are used: ‘suspending judgment’, ‘withholding’, ‘agnosticism’. It is also common to claim that the factors relevant to the justification of these attitudes are epistemic in the narrow sense of being factors that bear on the strength or weakness of one’s epistemic position with respect to the target proposition. This paper addresses two challenges to such traditionalism…Read more
  •  150
    This chapter addresses concerns that pragmatic encroachers are committed to problematic knowledge variance. It first replies to Charity Anderson and John Hawthorne’s new putative problem cases, which purport to show that pragmatic encroachment is committed to problematic variations in knowledge depending on what choices are available to the potential knower. It argues that the new cases do not provide any new reasons to be concerned about the pragmatic encroacher’s commitment to knowledge-varian…Read more
  •  12
    The Justification of Memory Beliefs: Evidentialism, Reliabilism, Conservatism
    In Brian P. McLaughlin & Hilary Kornblith (eds.), Goldman and His Critics, Blackwell. pp. 69-87. 2016.
    This chapter follows Conee and Feldman in assuming the traditional conception of the mental. Thus, the author takes it that mentalistic evidentialism is inconsistent with process reliabilism. It examines Goldman's critique of evidentialism's account of the justification of memory beliefs and discusses a problem for Goldman's own reliabilist account of memory beliefs. The chapter distinguishes two sorts of epistemic status at issue and not usually clearly separated in these debates, historical ju…Read more
  •  370
    There is pragmatic encroachment on some epistemic status just in case whether a proposition has that status for a subject depends not only on the subject's epistemic position with respect to the proposition, but also on features of the subject's non-epistemic, practical environment. Discussions of pragmatic encroachment usually focus on knowledge. Here we argue that, barring infallibilism, there is pragmatic encroachment on what is arguably a more fundamental epistemic status – the status a prop…Read more
  •  1184
    Evidence, pragmatics, and justification
    Philosophical Review 111 (1): 67-94. 2002.
    Evidentialism is the thesis that epistemic justification for belief supervenes on evidential support. However, we claim there are cases in which, even though two subjects have the same evidential support for a proposition, only one of them is justified. What make the difference are pragmatic factors, factors having to do with our cares and concerns. Our argument against evidentialism is not based on intuitions about particular cases. Rather, we aim to provide a theoretical basis for rejectin…Read more
  •  56
    Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology (edited book)
    with Brian Kim
    Routledge. 2019.
    According to philosophical lore, epistemological orthodoxy is a purist epistemology in which epistemic concepts such as belief, evidence, and knowledge are characterized to be pure and free from practical concerns. In recent years, the debate has focused narrowly on the concept of knowledge and a number of challenges have been posed against the orthodox, purist view of knowledge. While the debate about knowledge is still a lively one, the pragmatic exploration in epistemology has just begun. Thi…Read more
  •  330
    Sosa on epistemic value: a Kantian obstacle
    Synthese 197 (12): 5287-5300. 2018.
    In recent work, Sosa proposes a comprehensive account of epistemic value based on an axiology for attempts. According to this axiology, an attempt is better if it succeeds, better still if it is apt (i.e., succeeds through competence), and best if it is fully apt, (i.e., guided to aptness by apt beliefs that it would be apt). Beliefs are understood as attempts aiming at the truth. Thus, a belief is better if true, better still if apt, and best if fully apt. I raise a Kantian obstacle for Sosa’s …Read more
  •  562
    Having False Reasons
    In Clayton Littlejohn & John Turri (eds.), Epistemic Norms, Oxford University Press. pp. 59-80. 2014.
  •  185
    Two purposes of knowledge-attribution and the contextualism debate
    In David K. Henderson & John Greco (eds.), Epistemic Evaluation, Oxford University Press. 2015.
    In this chapter, we follow Edward Craig?s advice: ask what the concept of knowledge does for us and use our findings as clues about its application conditions. What a concept does for us is a matter of what we can do with it, and what we do with concepts is deploy them in thought and language. So, we will examine the purposes we have in attributing knowledge. This chapter examines two such purposes, agent evaluation and informant-suggestion, and brings the results to bear on an important debate …Read more
  •  138
    Alston on the Epistemic Advantages of the Theory of Appearing
    Journal of Philosophical Research 41 (9999): 53-70. 2016.
    William Alston claimed that epistemic considerations are relevant to theorizing about the metaphysics of perceptual experience. There must be something about the intrinsic nature of a perceptual experience that explains why it is that it justifies one in believing what it does, rather than other propositions. A metaphysical theory of experience that provides the resources for such an explanation is to be preferred over ones that do not. Alston argued that the theory of appearing gains a leg up o…Read more
  •  172
    Scott Soames: Understanding truth (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2). 2002.
    Consider Soames’ Version 1 of the liar paradox.