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3184The Function of PerceptionIn Abrol Fairweather (ed.), Virtue Scientia: Bridges between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, Synthese Library. pp. 13-31. 2014.What is the biological function of perception? I hold perception, especially visual perception in humans, has the biological function of accurately representing the environment. Tyler Burge argues this cannot be so in Origins of Objectivity (Oxford, 2010), for accuracy is a semantical relationship and not, as such, a practical matter. Burge also provides a supporting example. I rebut the argument and the example. Accuracy is sometimes also a practical matter if accuracy partly explains how perce…Read more
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1263Does Justification Aim at Truth?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (1): 51-72. 2011.Does epistemic justification aim at truth? The vast majority of epistemologists instinctively answer 'Yes'; it's the textbook response. Joseph Cruz and John Pollock surprisingly say no. In 'The Chimerical Appeal of Epistemic Externalism' they argue that justification bears no interesting connection to truth; justification does not even aim at truth. 'Truth is not a very interesting part of our best understanding' of justification (C&P 2004, 137); it has no 'connection to the truth.' A 'truth-aim…Read more
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1108Testimonial Entitlement and the Function of ComprehensionIn Duncan Pritchard, Alan Millar & Adrian Haddock (eds.), Social Epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 148--174. 2010.This paper argues for the general proper functionalist view that epistemic warrant consists in the normal functioning of the belief-forming process when the process has forming true beliefs reliably as an etiological function. Such a process is reliable in normal conditions when functioning normally. This paper applies this view to so-called testimony-based beliefs. It argues that when a hearer forms a comprehension-based belief that P (a belief based on taking another to have asserted that P) t…Read more
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1098Epistemic Normativity and Social NormsIn David K. Henderson & John Greco (eds.), Epistemic Evaluation: Purposeful Epistemology, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 247-273. 2015.
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1085Intelligent Design and Selective History: Two Sources of Purpose and PlanIn Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion Volume 3, Oxford University Press. pp. 67-88. 2011.Alvin Plantinga argues by counterexample that no naturalistic account of functions is possible--God is then the only source for natural functions. This paper replies to Plantinga's examples and arguments. Plantinga misunderstands naturalistic accounts. Plantinga's mistakes flow from his assimilation of functional notions in general to functions from intentional design in particular.
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1030Testimony as Speech Act, Testimony as SourceIn Chienkuo Mi, Ernest Sosa & Michael Slote (eds.), Moral and Intellectual Virtues in Western and Chinese Philosophy: The Turn toward Virtue, Routledge. pp. 121-144. 2015.
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1004Can Testimony Generate Knowledge?Philosophica 78 (2): 105-127. 2006.Jennifer Lackey ('Testimonial Knowledge and Transmission' The Philosophical Quarterly 1999) and Peter Graham ('Conveying Information, Synthese 2000, 'Transferring Knowledge' Nous 2000) offered counterexamples to show that a hearer can acquire knowledge that P from a speaker who asserts that P, but the speaker does not know that P. These examples suggest testimony can generate knowledge. The showpiece of Lackey's examples is the Schoolteacher case. This paper shows that Lackey's case does not und…Read more
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852Metaphysical libertarianism and the epistemology of testimonyAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 41 (1): 37-50. 2004.Reductionism about testimony holds that testimonial warrant or entitlement is just a species of inductive warrant. Anti-Reductionism holds that it is different from inductive but analogous to perceptual or memorial warrant. Perception receives much of its positive epistemic status from being reliably truthconducive in normal conditions. One reason to reject the epistemic analogy is that testimony involves agency – it goes through the will of the speaker – but perception does not. A speaker might…Read more
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834Warrant, Functions, HistoryIn Abrol Fairweather & Owen Flanagan (eds.), Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue, Cambridge University Press. pp. 15-35. 2014.Epistemic warrant consists in the normal functioning of the belief-forming process when the process has forming true beliefs reliably as an etiological function. Evolution by natural selection is the most familiar source of etiological functions. . What then of learning? What then of Swampman? Though functions require history, natural selection is not the only source. Self-repair and trial-and-error learning are both sources. Warrant requires history, but not necessarily that much.
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701Theorizing justificationIn Joseph Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Harvey Silverstein (eds.), Knowledge and Skepticism, Mit Press. pp. 45-72. 2010.The standard taxonomy of theories of epistemic justification generates four positions from the Foundationalism v. Coherentism and Internalism v. Externalism disputes. I develop a new taxonomy driven by two other distinctions: Fundamentalism v. Non-Fundamentalism and Actual-Result v. Proper-Aim conceptions of epistemic justification. Actual-Result theorists hold that a belief is justified only if, as an actual matter of fact, it is held or formed in a way that makes it more likely than not to be …Read more
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654Assertions, Handicaps, and Social NormsEpisteme 17 (3): 349-363. 2020.How should we undertand the role of norms—especially epistemic norms—governing assertive speech acts? Mitchell Green (2009) has argued that these norms play the role of handicaps in the technical sense from the animal signals literature. As handicaps, they then play a large role in explaining the reliability—and so the stability (the continued prevalence)—of assertive speech acts. But though norms of assertion conceived of as social norms do indeed play this stabilizing role, these norms are bes…Read more
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652The Function of Assertion and Social NormsIn Sanford C. Goldberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Assertion, Oxford University Press. pp. 727-748. 2018.A proper function of an entity is a beneficial effect that helps explain the persistence of the entity. Proper functions thereby arise through feedback mechanisms with beneficial effects as inputs and persistence as outputs. We continue to make assertions because they benefit speakers by benefiting speakers. Hearers benefit from true information. Speakers benefit by influencing hearer belief. If hearers do not benefit, they will not form beliefs in response to assertions. Speakers can then o…Read more
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617Liberal Fundamentalism and Its RivalsIn Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa (eds.), The Epistemology of Testimony, Oxford University Press. pp. 93-115. 2006.When is a testimony-based belief justified? According to so-called "Anti-Reductionism," the principle that a hearer is prima facie justified to take what another tells them at face value is true. I call this position "Liberal Foundationalism." I call it "liberal" for it is more liberal than "Moderate Foundationalism" that holds that perception-based beliefs are prima facie justified but testimony-based beliefs are not. Liberal Foundationalism has two interpretations: the principle is a contingen…Read more
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578Epistemic EntitlementNoûs 46 (3): 449-482. 2012.What is the best account of process reliabilism about epistemic justification, especially epistemic entitlement? I argue that entitlement consists in the normal functioning (proper operation) of the belief-forming process when the process has forming true beliefs reliably as an etiological function. Etiological functions involve consequence explanation: a belief-forming process has forming true beliefs reliably as a function just in case forming-true beliefs reliably partly explains the persiste…Read more
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567Recent Work on Epistemic EntitlementAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2): 193-214. 2020.We review the "Entitlement" projects of Tyler Burge and Crispin Wright in light of recent work from and surrounding both philosophers. Our review dispels three misunderstandings. First, Burge and Wright are not involved in a common “entitlement” project. Second, though for both Wright and Burge entitlement is the new notion, “entitlement” is not some altogether third topic not clearly connected to the nature of knowledge or the encounter with skepticism. Third, entitlement vs. justification does…Read more
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506What is Epistemic Entitlement? Reliable Competence, Reasons, Inference, AccessIn John Greco & Christoph Kelp (eds.), Virtue-Theoretic Epistemology: New Methods and Approaches, Cambridge University Press. pp. 93-123. 2020.Tyler Burge first introduced his distinction between epistemic entitlement and epistemic justification in ‘Content Preservation’ in 1993. He has since deployed the distinction in over twenty papers, changing his formulation around 2009. His distinction and its basis, however, is not well understood in the literature. This chapter distinguishes two uses of ‘entitlement’ in Burge, and then focuses on his distinction between justification and entitlement, two forms of warrant, where warrants consis…Read more
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452Proper Functionalism and the Organizational Theory of FunctionsIn Luis R. G. Oliveira (ed.), Externalism about Knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 249-276. 2023.Proper functionalism explicates epistemic warrant in terms of the function and normal functioning of the belief-forming process. There are two standard substantive views of the sources of functions in the literature in epistemology: God (intelligent design) or Mother Nature (evolution by natural selection). Both appear to confront the Swampman objection: couldn’t there be a mind with warranted beliefs neither designed by God nor the product of evolution by natural selection? Is there another sub…Read more
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450Russell’s Logical Construction of the External WorldIn Diego E. Machuca & Baron Reed (eds.), Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 454-466. 2018.
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448Sincerity and the Reliability of Testimony: Burge on the A Priori Basis of Testimonial EntitlementIn Andreas Stokke & Eliot Michaelson (eds.), Lying: Language, Knowledge, Ethics, and Politics, Oxford University Press. pp. 85-112. 2018.According to the Acceptance Principle, a person is entitled to accept a proposition that is presented as true (asserted) and that is intelligible to him or her, unless there are stronger reasons not to. Burge assumes this Principle and then argues that it has an apriori justification, basis or rationale. This paper expounds Burge's teleological reliability framework and the details of his a priori justification for the Principle. It then raises three significant doubts.
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443Social Knowledge and Social NormsIn Markos Valaris & Stephen Hetherington (eds.), Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy, Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 111-138. 2018.Social knowledge, for the most part, is knowledge through testimony. This essay is an overview of the epistemology of testimony. The essay separates knowledge from justification, characterizes testimony as a source of belief, explains why testimony is a source of knowledge, canvasses arguments for anti-reductionism and for reductionism in the reductionism vs. anti-reductionism debate, addresses counterexamples to knowledge transmission, defends a safe basis account of testimonial knowledge, and …Read more
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435Epistemic Norms as Social NormsIn M. Fricker, N. J. L. L. Pedersen, D. Henderson & P. J. Graham (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 425-436. 2019.This chapter examines how epistemic norms could be social norms, with a reliance on work on the philosophy and social science of social norms from Bicchieri (on the one hand) and Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin and Southwood (on the other hand). We explain how the social ontology of social norms can help explain the rationality of epistemic cooperation, and how one might begin to model epistemic games.
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402Epistemic Evaluations: Consequences, Costs and BenefitsSocial Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4 (4): 7-13. 2015.
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375The Structure of Defeat: Pollock's Evidentialism, Lackey's Framework, and Prospects for ReliabilismIn Jessica Brown & Mona Simion (eds.), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat, Oxford University Press. 2021.Epistemic defeat is standardly understood in either evidentialist or responsibilist terms. The seminal treatment of defeat is an evidentialist one, due to John Pollock, who famously distinguishes between undercutting and rebutting defeaters. More recently, an orthogonal distinction due to Jennifer Lackey has become widely endorsed, between so-called doxastic (or psychological) and normative defeaters. We think that neither doxastic nor normative defeaters, as Lackey understands them, exist. Both…Read more
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332Critical Review of Richard Moran, The Exchange of Words (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2. 2020.This is a critical review of Moran's assurance view of testimony.
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332Against Inferential Reliabilism: Making Origins Matter MorePhilosophical Analysis 15 87-122. 2014.Reliability theories of epistemic justification face three main objections: the generality problem, the demon-world (or brain-in-a-vat) counterexample, and the clairvoyant-powers counterexample. In Perception and Basic Beliefs(Oxford 2009), Jack Lyons defends reliabilism at length against the clairvoyant powers case. He argues that the problem arises due to a laxity about the category of basic beliefs, and the difference between inferential and non-inferential justification. Lyons argues reliabi…Read more
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330Counterexamples to Testimonial TransmissionIn M. Fricker, N. J. L. L. Pedersen, D. Henderson & P. J. Graham (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 61-77. 2019.Commonsense holds that testimony transfers knowledge from a speaker to the hearer. If the speaker has knowledge, then the hearer acquires it. Call that sufficiency. And a hearer acquires knowledge only if the speaker has it to transfer. Call that necessity. This article reviews counterexamples--and some replies to those counterexamples--to both claims.
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316The New Evil Demon Problem at 40Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. forthcoming.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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308Why Should Warrant Persist in Demon Worlds?In Peter Graham & Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (eds.), Epistemic Entitlement, Oxford University Press. pp. 179-202. 2020.In 'Perceptual Entitlement' (PPR 2003), Tyler Burge argues that on his teleological reliabilist account of perceptual warrant, warrant will persist in non-normal conditions, even radical skeptical scenarios like demon worlds. This paper explains why Burge's explanation falls short. But if we distinguish two grades of warrant, we can explain, in proper functionalist, teleological reliabilist terms, why warrant should persist in demon worlds. A normally functioning belief-forming process confers w…Read more
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303Against Actual-World Reliabilism: Epistemically Correct Procedures and Reliably True OutcomesIn Miguel Ángel Fernández Vargas (ed.), Performance Epistemology: Foundations and Applications, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.
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Teleology and Function |
Epistemology of Testimony |
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