•  32
    Inconsistency: The coherence theorist’s nemesis?
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1): 113-130. 1991.
    The relationship between inconsistency and Lehrerian coherence is scrutinized. Like most coherence theorists of epistemic justification, Lehrer contends that consistency is necessary for coherence. Despite this contention, minimally inconsistent belief-sets prove coherent and rationally acceptable on Lehrer's account of coherence. Lehrer is left with the following dilemma: If consistency is necessary for coherence, then (i) he must revise his account of coherence accordingly and, more importantl…Read more
  •  293
    Currently, there are many advocacy interventions aimed at reducing animal consumption. We report results from a lab (N = 267) and a field experiment (N = 208) exploring whether, and to what extent, some of those educational interventions are effective at shifting attitudes and behavior related to animal consumption. In the lab experiment, participants were randomly assigned to read a philosophical ethics paper, watch an animal advocacy video, read an advocacy pamphlet, or watch a control video. …Read more
  •  290
    Developing an objective measure of knowledge of factory farming
    with Adam Feltz, Jacob N. Caton, Zac Cogley, Silke Feltz, Ramona Ilea, L. Syd M. Johnson, and Tom Offer-Westort
    Philosophical Psychology 37 (2). 2022.
    Knowledge of human uses of animals is an important, but understudied, aspect of how humans treat animals. We developed a measure of one kind of knowledge of human uses of animals – knowledge of factory farming. Studies 1 (N = 270) and 2 (N = 270) tested an initial battery of objective, true or false statements about factory farming using Item Response Theory. Studies 3 (N = 241) and 4 (N = 278) provided evidence that responses to a 10-item Knowledge of Factory Farming Scale predicted a reduction…Read more
  •  49
    Evidence, Epistemic Luck, Reliability, and Knowledge
    Acta Analytica 37 (1): 33-56. 2021.
    In this article, I develop and defend a version of reliabilism – internal reasons reliabilism – that resolves the paradox of epistemic luck, solves the Gettier problem by ruling out veritic luck, is immune to the generality problem, resolves the internalism/externalism controversy, and preserves epistemic closure.
  •  547
    Taking Hunger Seriously
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 4 (1): 29-57. 2004.
    An argument is advanced to show that affluent and moderately affluent people, like you and me, are morally obligated: (O1) To provide modest financial support for famine relief organizations and/or other humanitanan organizations working to reduce the amount of unnecessary suffering and death in the world, and (O2) To refrain from squandering food that could be fed to humans in situations of food scarcity. Unlike other ethical arguments for the obligation to assist the world’s absolutely poor, m…Read more
  •  277
    The Moral Rights of Animals (edited book)
    Lexington. 2016.
    This volume brings together essays by seminal figures and rising stars in the fields of animal ethics and moral theory to analyze and evaluate the moral status of non-human animals, with a special focus on the question of whether or not animals have moral rights. Though wide-ranging in many ways, these fourteen original essays and one reprinted essay direct significant attention to both the main arguments for animal rights and the biggest challenges to animal rights. This volume explores the que…Read more
  •  81
    Suppose that I hold a ticket in a fair lottery and that I believe that my ticket will lose [L] on the basis of its extremely high probability of losing. What is the appropriate epistemic appraisal of me and my belief that L? Am I justified in believing that L? Do I know that L? While there is disagreement among epistemologists over whether or not I am justified in believing that L, there is widespread agreement that I do not know that L. I defend the two-pronged view that I am justified in belie…Read more
  •  73
    What ontological arguments don’t show
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 88 (1): 97-114. 2020.
    Daniel Dombrowski contends that: a number of versions of the ontological argument [OA] are sound; the deity whose existence is most well established by the OA is the deity picked out by Hartshorne’s neoclassical concept of God; skeptics who insist that the OA only shows that “if God exists, then God exists necessarily” are contradicting themselves, and the OA is worth a great deal since it effectively demonstrates the rationality of theism. I argue that theses and are clearly false and offer a p…Read more
  •  50
    In Defense of Pure Reason (review)
    Dialogue 39 (1): 163-166. 2000.
    Laurence Bonjour's In Defense of Pure Reason is must reading for anyone interested in the empiricism/rationalism debate, especially for anyone convinced that empiricism has won the day. In the pellucid prose that is a signature of Bonjour's work, it presents a compelling case for the indispensability of genuine rationalistic a priori justification, while providing a sustained critique of the empiricist alternatives which either restrict a priori justification to analytic propositions or deny the…Read more
  •  60
    Demystifying Animal Rights
    Between the Species 21 (1). 2018.
    According to the mysteriousness objection, moral rights are wholly mysterious, metaphysically suspect entities. Given their unexplained character and dubious metaphysical status, the objection goes, we should be ontologically parsimonious and deny that such entities exist. I defend Tom Regan's rights view from the mysteriousness objection. In particular, I argue that what makes moral rights seem metaphysically mysterious is the mistaken tendency to reify such rights. Once we understand what mora…Read more
  •  20
    Colb and Dorf on Abortion and Animal Rights
    Between the Species 20 (1). 2017.
    In their recent book, Sherry Colb and Michael Dorf defend the following ethical theses: sentience is sufficient for possessing the right not to be harmed and the right not to be killed; killing sentient animals for food is almost always seriously wrong; aborting pre-sentient fetuses raises no moral concerns at all; and aborting sentient fetuses is wrong absent a reason weighty enough to justify killing the fetus. They also discuss strategies and tactics for activists: They oppose the use of grap…Read more
  •  131
    Skeptics try to persuade us of our ignorance with arguments like the following: 1. I don’t know that I am not a handless brain-in-a-vat [BIV]. 2. If I don’t know that I am not a handless BIV, then I don’t know that I have hands. Therefore, 3. I don’t know that I have hands. The BIV argument is valid, its premises are intuitively compelling, and yet, its conclusion strikes us as absurd. Something has to go, but what? Contextualists contend that an adequate solution to the skeptical problem must: …Read more
  • Zebras and Cleverly Disguised Mules
    In Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa & Matthias Steup (eds.), A Companion to Epistemology, Second Edition, Oxford. pp. 788-793. 2010.
  •  2
    Epistemic Luck
    In Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa & Matthias Steup (eds.), A Companion to Epistemology, Second Edition, Blackwell. pp. 336-340. 2010.
  •  108
    The book also contains an extensive bibliography of references and philosophical resources.
  •  19
    Review of Practical Ethics, 3rd Edition by Peter Singer1 (review)
    American Journal of Bioethics 11 (12): 73-75. 2011.
  •  204
    Is epistemic luck compatible with knowledge?
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (2): 59-75. 1992.
  •  6640
    The Immorality of Eating Meat
    Chapter in The Moral Life 856-889. 2000.
    Unlike other ethical arguments for veganism, the argument advanced is not predicated on the wrongness of speciesism, nor does it depend on your believing that all animals are equal or that all animals have a right to life, nor is it predicated on some highly contentious metaethical theory which you reject. Rather, it is predicated on your beliefs. Simply put, the argument shows that even those of you who are steadfastly committed to valuing humans over nonhumans are nevertheless committed to the…Read more
  • The Kiefer Argument
    with Wolfgang L. Gombocz
    In Wolfgang Leopold Gombocz (ed.), Philosophy of Religion, D. Reidel [distributor]. 1984.
  •  86
    As we trace a chain of reasoning backward, it must ultimately do one of four things: (i) end in an unjustified belief, (ii) continue infinitely, (iii) form a circle, or (iv) end in an immediately justified basic belief. This article defends positism—the view that, in certain circumstances, type-(i) chains can justify us in holding their target beliefs. One of the assumptions that generates the epistemic regress problem is: (A) Person S is mediately justified in believing p iff (1) S has a doxast…Read more
  •  370
    A noncontextualist account of contextualist linguistic data
    Acta Analytica 20 (2): 56-79. 2005.
    The paper takes as its starting point the observation that people can be led to retract knowledge claims when presented with previously ignored error possibilities, but offers a noncontextualist explanation of the data. Fallibilist epistemologies are committed to the existence of two kinds of Kp -falsifying contingencies: (i) Non-Ignorable contingencies [NI-contingencies] and (ii) Properly-Ignorable contingencies [PI-contingencies]. For S to know that p, S must be in an epistemic position to rul…Read more
  •  12
    Inconsistency
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1): 113-130. 1991.
    The relationship between inconsistency and Lehrerian coherence is scrutinized. Like most coherence theorists of epistemic justification, Lehrer contends that consistency is necessary for coherence. Despite this contention, minimally inconsistent belief-sets prove coherent and rationally acceptable on Lehrer's account of coherence. Lehrer is left with the following dilemma: If consistency is necessary for coherence, then (i) he must revise his account of coherence accordingly and, more importantl…Read more