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45Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2015.Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. The chapters in this volume explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti- representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the r…Read more
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34Meaning Without Representation: Expression, Truth, Normativity, and Naturalism (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2015.Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. Leading thinkers in the field explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti-representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the …Read more
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100Expressivism, Pragmatism and RepresentationalismCambridge University Press. 2013.Pragmatists have traditionally been enemies of representationalism but friends of naturalism, when naturalism is understood to pertain to human subjects, in the sense of Hume and Nietzsche. In this volume Huw Price presents his distinctive version of this traditional combination, as delivered in his René Descartes Lectures at Tilburg University in 2008. Price contrasts his view with other contemporary forms of philosophical naturalism, comparing it with other pragmatist and neo-pragmatist views …Read more
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2Mythology of the Given: Sosa, Sellars, and the Task of EpistemologyIn John Greco (ed.), Ernest Sosa and His Critics, Blackwell. 2004.
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18Groundless Belief: An Essay on the Possibility of Epistemology - Second EditionPrinceton University Press. 1999.Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Williams launches an all-out attack on what he calls "phenomenalism," the idea that our knowledge of the world rests on a perceptual or experiential foundation. The point of this wider-than-normal usage of the term "phenomenalism," according to which even some forms of direct realism deserve to be called phenomenalistic, is to call attention to important continuities of thought between theories often thought to be competitors. Williams's target is…Read more
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6Science and Sensibility: McDowell and Sellars on Perceptual ExperienceIn Jakob Lindgaard (ed.), John McDowell, Blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction McDowell Sellars and McDowell: Convergence Sellars and McDowell: Divergence Above the Line …and Below It Philosophy and Modern Science Notes References.
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131The Agrippan Problem, Then and NowInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 5 (2): 80-106. 2015.
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49Still UnnaturalJournal of Philosophical Research 22 29-39. 1997.Professor Vogel claims that my responses to scepticism leave the traditional problems standing. I argue in reply that he fails to take sufficiently seriously the diagnostic character of my enterprise. My aim is not to offer direct refutations of sceptical arguments, taking such arguments at face value, but to undermine their plausibility by revealing their dependence on unacknowledged and contentious theoretical presuppositions. Professor Rorty is much more sympathetic to my approach but thinks …Read more
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249Science and Sensibility: McDowell and Sellars on Perceptual ExperienceEuropean Journal of Philosophy 14 (2): 302-325. 2006.
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99Knowledge, Reasons, and Causes: Sellars and SkepticismIn James Conant & Andrea Kern (eds.), Varieties of Skepticism: Essays After Kant, Wittgenstein, and Cavell, De Gruyter. pp. 59-80. 2014.
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49I—Michael Williams: Mythology of the Given: Sosa, Sellars and the Task of EpistemologyAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 77 (1): 91-112. 2003.
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24Induction and Justification: An Investigation of Cartesian Procedure in the Theory of Knowledge (review)Philosophical Review 87 (3): 442-445. 1978.
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39Hume's Criterion of SignificanceCanadian Journal of Philosophy 15 (2). 1985.IThere are various ways of being a sceptic. Most obviously, perhaps, versions of scepticism can differ with respect to scope. Scepticism can be universal; it can be directed against beliefs belonging to certain broad kinds, say beliefs having to do with the external world; or it can be quite focussed, as in the case of religious scepticism. But there is also the question of force. Some philosophers treat scepticism as a purely theoretical affair, defining it as the thesis that knowledge is impos…Read more
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88Fogelin's neo-pyrrhonismInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 7 (2). 1999.Robert Fogelin agrees that arguments for Cartesian sceptism carry a heavy burden of theoretical commitment, for they take for granted, explicitly or implicitly, the foundationalist's idea that experimental knowledge is in some fully general way 'epistemologically prior' to knowledge of the world. He thinks, however, that there is a much more direct and commonsensical route to scepticism. Ordinary knowledge-claims are accepted on the basis of justificatory procedures that fall far short of elimin…Read more
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121Are there two grades of knowledge?Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 77 (1). 2003.[Michael Williams] A response to Sosa's criticisms of Sellars's account of the relation between knowledge and experience, noting that Sellars excludes merely animal knowledge, and hopes to bypass epistemology by an adequate philosophy of mind and language. /// [Ernest Sosa] I give an exposition and critical discussion of Sellars's Myth of the Given, and especially of its epistemic side. In later writings Sellars takes a pragmatist turn in his epistemology. This is explored and compared with his …Read more
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1Wittgenstein's refutation of idealismIn Denis McManus (ed.), Wittgenstein and Scepticism, Routledge. 2004.
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4The tortoise and the serpent : Sellars on the structure of empirical knowledgeIn Willem A. DeVries (ed.), Empiricism, Perceptual Knowledge, Normativity, and Realism: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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100Scepticism without TheoryReview of Metaphysics 41 (3). 1988.PYRRHONIAN SCEPTICISM, as presented in the writings of Sextus Empiricus, differs in various ways from the forms of scepticism that continue to be of such central concern to modern philosophers. Two differences stand out immediately. One is Pyrrhonism's practical orientation. For Sextus, scepticism is a way of life in which suspension of judgment leads to the peace of mind the sceptic identifies with happiness. The other is the puzzling failure on the part of the Pyrrhonists, along with all other…Read more
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314Skepticism, Evidence and Entitlement1Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (1): 36-71. 2011.
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16Of the sceptical traditionIn Richard Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, Cambridge University Press. pp. 288. 2010.
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82Knowledge without “Experience”International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1-24. forthcoming.Genia Schönbaumsfeld argues that Cartesian skepticism is an illusion induced by the “Cartesian Picture” of perceptual knowledge, in which knowledge of the “external world” depends on an inference from how things subjectively seem to one to how they actually are. To show its incoherence, she draws on the work of John McDowell, which she sees as elaborating a central theme from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. I argue that Cartesian skepticism is not an illusion, as Schönbaumsfeld understands ‘illusio…Read more
Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |