•  364
    Fallibilism, epistemic possibility, and concessive knowledge attributions
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (1): 123-132. 2008.
    If knowing requires believing on the basis of evidence that entails what’s believed, we have hardly any knowledge at all. Hence the near-universal acceptance of fallibilism in epistemology: if it's true that "we are all fallibilists now" (Siegel 1997: 164), that's because denying that one can know on the basis of non-entailing evidence1is, it seems, not an option if we're to preserve the very strong appearance that we do know many things (Cohen 1988: 91). Hence the significance of concessive kno…Read more
  •  178
    Motivating the relevant alternatives approach
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (2): 259-279. 2006.
    But it’s not the mere fact that the RA theorist needs an account of ‘ruling out’ and ‘relevance’ that has tended to lead people to regard the RA approach with suspicion. In itself, this simply means that the RA theorist has some further work to do; and what theorist doesn’t? No; the principal source of scepticism regarding the ability of the RA theorist to come up with a complete and satisfactory account of knowing stems, rather, from an unhappiness with the specific elaborations of the core RA …Read more
  •  171
    Epistemic Contextualism
    The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2007.
    Epistemic contextualism is a recent and hotly debated position. In its dominant form, EC is the view that the proposition expressed by a given knowledge sentence depends upon the context in which it is uttered. What makes this view interesting and controversial is that ‘context’ here refers, not to certain features of the putative subject of knowledge or his/her objective situation, but rather to features of the knowledge attributor' psychology and/or conversational-practical situation. As a res…Read more
  •  157
    Recently, Dylan Dodd (this Journal ) has tried to clear up what he takes to be some of the many confusions surrounding concessive knowledge attributions (CKAs)—i.e., utterances of the form “S knows that p , but it’s possible that q ” (where q entails not- p ) (Rysiew, Noûs 35(4): 477–514, 2001). Here, we respond to the criticisms Dodd offers of the account of the semantics and the sometime-infelicity of CKAs we have given (Dougherty and Rysiew, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78(1): 121…Read more
  •  153
    Rationality disputes – psychology and epistemology
    Philosophy Compass 3 (6): 1153-1176. 2008.
    This paper reviews the largely psychological literature surrounding apparent failures of human rationality (sometimes referred to as 'the Rationality Wars') and locates it with respect to concepts and issues within more traditional epistemological inquiry. The goal is to bridge the gap between these two large and typically disconnected literatures – concerning rationality and the psychology of human reasoning, on the one hand, and epistemological theories of justified or rational belief, on the …Read more
  •  122
    Reid and epistemic naturalism
    Philosophical Quarterly 52 (209). 2002.
    Central to the contemporary dispute over 'naturalizing epistemology' is the question of the continuity of epistemology with science, i.e., how far purely descriptive, psychological matters can or should inform the traditional evaluative epistemological enterprise. Thus all parties tend to agree that the distinction between psychology and epistemology corresponds to a firm fact/value distinction. This is something Reid denies with respect to the first principles of common sense: while insisting o…Read more
  •  110
    Testimony is an indispensable source of information. Yet, contrary to ‘literalism’, speakers rarely mean just what they say; and even when they do, that itself is something the hearer needs to realize. So, understanding instances of testimony requires more than merely reading others' messages off of the words they utter. Further, a very familiar and theoretically well-entrenched approach to how we arrive at such understanding serves to emphasize, not merely how deeply committed we are to testimo…Read more
  •  106
    Epistemic scorekeeping
    In Jessica Brown & Mikkel Gerken (eds.), Knowledge Ascriptions, Oxford University Press. 2012.
  •  94
    Experience First
    In Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Blackwell. pp. 2. 2013.
  •  87
    To accept ‘pragmatic encroachment’ is to take the view that whether you are in a position to know is in part a function of practical stakes. This position strikes many as not just unorthodox but extremely implausible. According to Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath (F&M), however, the best account of the prima facie oddity of certain utterances incorporates just such a pragmatist maneuver. In reaching this conclusion, F&M begin with Trent Dougherty and Patrick Rysiew’s (D&R’s) theory as the best o…Read more
  •  77
  •  76
    Contesting contextualism
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 69 (1): 51-70. 2005.
    According to Keith DeRose, the invariantist's attempt to account for the data which inspire contextualism fares no better, in the end, than the "desperate and lame" maneuvers of "the crazed theory of 'bachelor'", whereby S's being unmarried is not among the truth conditions of 'S is a bachelor', but merely an implicature generated by an assertion thereof. Here, I outline the invariantist account I have previously proposed. I then argue that the prospects for sophisticated invariantism — either a…Read more
  •  69
    Book Review: Assurance: An Austinian View of Knowledge and Knowledge Claims, written by Krista Lawlor (review)
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (1). 2016.
    _ Source: _Page Count 7
  •  65
    13. Is Knowledge a Non-Composite Mental State?
    Oxford Studies in Epistemology 4 333-343. 2013.
  •  64
    Veritism, Values, Epistemic Norms
    Philosophical Topics 45 (1): 181-203. 2017.
    This paper considers Hilary Kornblith’s suggestion that epistemic norms have a practical basis—that their normative force stems from the fact that observing them helps us to achieve our various goals. This view, I’ll argue, provides a plausible account of why epistemic norms and appraisals have a claim on us. But it does not explain, and is not meant to explain, why true belief has the status of fundamental epistemic good. An answer to that question may come from familiar semantico-conceptual an…Read more
  •  55
  •  52
    Reidian Evidence
    Journal of Scottish Philosophy 3 (2): 107-121. 2005.
  •  40
    Conventional Wisdom
    Analysis 60 (1): 74-83. 2000.
  •  40
    'Encouragement in Darwin'?
    Facta Philosophica 4 (2): 271-286. 2002.
  •  36
    Thomas Reid’s Theory of Perception (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (4). 2008.
    Thanks in no small part to the recognition afforded it by such established figures as William Alston, Keith Lehrer, Alvin Plantinga, and others, Thomas Reid’s philosophy is, at long last, getting the serious attention that it deserves. Ryan Nichols is among the generation of younger scholars who are making Reid’s work a focus of their research, and he has written an excellent book examining Reid’s views on perception.Previous treatments have been either in articles or part of a larger discussion…Read more
  •  35
    Reid's First Principle #7
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 167-182. 2011.
    By Reid's own account, ‘That the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious’, has a special place among the First Principles of Contingent Truths. Some have found that claim puzzling, but it is not. Contrary to what's usually assumed, certain FPs preceding FP#7 do not already assert the better part of what FP#7 explicitly states. FP#7 is needed because there is nothing epistemological in the FPs that precede it; and its special place among the FPs is a straig…Read more
  •  33
    Judgment and Practice in Reid and Wittgenstein
    European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 9 (2). 2017.
    This paper considers the views of two figures whose work falls on either side of the heyday of American pragmatism, Thomas Reid (1710-96) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). The broad similarities between Reid’s and (the later) Wittgenstein’s views, and in particular their epistemological views, has been well documented. Here, I argue that such similarities extend to the relation in their work between common sense and the presence of elements in their thought that can be considered pragmatist i…Read more
  •  31
    Testimony, simulation, and the limits of inductivism
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (2). 2000.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  30
    Introduction
    Episteme 1 (3): 163-168. 2005.