•  1255
    Trivial Truths and the Aim of Inquiry
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (3): 552-559. 2012.
    A pervasive and influential argument appeals to trivial truths to demonstrate that the aim of inquiry is not the acquisition of truth. But the argument fails, for it neglects to distinguish between the complexity of the sentence used to express a truth and the complexity of the truth expressed by a sentence.
  •  825
    Truth and epistemic value
    European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3): 1057-1068. 2018.
    The notion of more truth, or of more truth and less falsehood, is central to epistemology. Yet, I argue, we have no idea what this consists in, as the most natural or obvious thing to say—that more truth is a matter of a greater number of truths, and less falsehood is a matter of a lesser number of falsehoods—is ultimately implausible. The issue is important not merely because the notion of more truth and less falsehood is central to epistemology, but because an implicit, false picture of what t…Read more
  •  822
    The Measure of Knowledge
    Noûs 47 (3): 577-601. 2012.
    What is it to know more? By what metric should the quantity of one's knowledge be measured? I start by examining and arguing against a very natural approach to the measure of knowledge, one on which how much is a matter of how many. I then turn to the quasi-spatial notion of counterfactual distance and show how a model that appeals to distance avoids the problems that plague appeals to cardinality. But such a model faces fatal problems of its own. Reflection on what the distance model gets right…Read more
  •  463
    The Whence and Whither of Experience
    Erkenntnis 84 (5): 1119-1138. 2019.
    Consider a toothache, or a feeling of intense pleasure, or the sensation you would have if you looked impassively at an expanse of colour. In each case, the experience can easily be thought to fill time by being present throughout a period. This way of thinking of conscious experience is natural enough, but it is in deep conflict with the view that physical processes are ultimately responsible for experience. The problem is that physical processes are related to durations in a very different way…Read more
  •  402
    The Proper Work of the Intellect
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (1): 22-40. 2019.
    There is a familiar teleological picture of epistemic normativity on which it is grounded in the goal or good of belief, which is taken in turn to be the acquisition of truth and the avoidance of error. This traditional picture has faced numerous challenges, but one of the most interesting of these is an argument that rests on the nearly universally accepted view that this truth goal, as it is known, is at heart two distinct goals that are in tension with one another. This paper will look more …Read more
  •  174
    Atoms and Knowledge
    In Ugo Zilioli (ed.), Atomism in Philosophy: A History from Antiquity to the Present, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 331-341. 2020.
  •  148
    The cogito and the metaphysics of mind
    Philosophical Studies 130 (2): 247-71. 2006.
    That there is an epistemological difference between the mental and the physical is well- known. Introspection readily generates knowledge of one’s own conscious experience, but fails to yield evidence for the existence of anything physical. Conversely, empirical investigation delivers knowledge of physical properties, but neither finds nor requires us to posit conscious experience. In recent decades, a series of neo-Cartesian arguments have emerged that rest on this epistemological difference an…Read more
  • Perspectivalism About Knowledge and Error
    In Michela Massimi (ed.), Knowledge From a Human Point of View, Springer Verlag. 2019.