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5Autonomy and the Birth of AuthenticityauthenticityIn Angus Kennedy & James Panton (eds.), From Self to Selfie: A Critique of Contemporary Forms of Alienation, Springer Verlag. pp. 105-128. 2019.Authenticity has become one of the defining ideals of the modern world. It is the quality we are meant to demand in that which we consume; a value to be opposed to all that is ‘fake’ or ‘phoney’ or ‘artificial’. Above all, it is what an individual is meant to aspire to be: true to one’s self, self-actualising and self-expressing. Authenticity today has an almost ethical force. It underpins identity politics, legitimises transgenderism and informs the ubiquitous demand for often legal recognition…Read more
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14Autonomy and the Birth of authenticityIn Angus Kennedy & James Panton (eds.), From Self to Selfie: A Critique of Contemporary Forms of Alienation, Springer Verlag. pp. 105-128. 2019.Authenticity has become one of the defining ideals of the modern world. It is the quality we are meant to demand in that which we consume; a value to be opposed to all that is ‘fake’ or ‘phoney’ or ‘artificial’. Above all, it is what an individual is meant to aspire to be: true to one’s self, self-actualising and self-expressing. Authenticity today has an almost ethical force. It underpins identity politics, legitimises transgenderism and informs the ubiquitous demand for often legal recognition…Read more
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Anti-luck epistemologyIn Ian M. Church & Robert J. Hartman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Luck, Routledge. 2019.
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65A Kierkegaardian Anti-Luck EpistemologyActa Analytica 37 (1): 85-97. 2021.We can address the issue of epistemic luck, the possibility that the world interferes with the activity of believing so as to keep that activity from achieving its aim, by rethinking the aim of that activity. So, if we give up truth, for example, as the aim of belief, and if we embrace a different aim—the aim of believing as my ideal self would have me believe—we can eliminate the possibility of luck and leave the world no room to interfere in the affairs of the activity of believing. All this w…Read more
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30The Structure of Thoreau’s Epistemology, with Continual Reference to DescartesInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1-20. forthcoming.We can find in Henry David Thoreau’s work a response to Cartesian skepticism. Thoreau takes this skepticism to get its start in us only when we are not attuned to the world, that is, only when we lose sight of our being integrated with the world in the way we quite naturally are. Thoreau posits for human beings a natural and unshakeable integration with the world. This develops into an attunement with the world, making us ready to engage with the world as mature epistemic agents. Yet even if we …Read more
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307Avoiding the dogmatic commitments of contextualismGrazer Philosophische Studien 69 (1): 165-182. 2005.Epistemological contextualists maintain that the truth-conditions of sentences of the form 'S knows that P' vary according to the context in which they're uttered, where this variation is due to the semantics of 'knows'. Among the linguistic data that have been offered in support of contextualism are several everyday cases. We argue that these cases fail to support contextualism and that they instead support epistemological invariantism—the thesis that the truth-conditions of 'S knows that P' do…Read more
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307In Defense of SensitivitySynthese 154 (1): 53-71. 2007.The sensitivity condition on knowledge says that one knows that P only if one would not believe that P if P were false. Difficulties for this condition are now well documented. Keith DeRose has recently suggested a revised sensitivity condition that is designed to avoid some of these difficulties. We argue, however, that there are decisive objections to DeRose’s revised condition. Yet rather than simply abandoning his proposed condition, we uncover a rationale for its adoption, a rationale which…Read more
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196Sensitivity Meets Explanation: An Improved Counterfactual Condition on KnowledgeIn Kelly Becker & Tim Black (eds.), The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 26-40. 2012.
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26Action and Luck in the Kierkegaardian Ethical Project in advanceInternational Philosophical Quarterly. 2018.To see the ethical as a space that is immune to luck, it seems that we must see it as a space that is utterly inner, locked away inside the cabinet of consciousness. If, on the other hand, we wish to see the space of the ethical as extending into the world, it seems that we must see it as being vulnerable to luck. Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms steer us through this dilemma by extending the space of the ethical into the world while also inoculating it against luck. For Kierkegaard, an action is …Read more
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Bouwsma's Notes on Wittgenstein's Philosophy, 1965-1975, J. L. Craft and Ronald Hustwit, editors. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1996 (review)Reason Papers 24 131-138. 1999.
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97True religion in Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural ReligionBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (2): 244-264. 2017.Many think that the aim of Hume’s Dialogues is simply to discredit the design argument for the existence of an intelligent designer. We think instead that the Dialogues provides a model of true religion. We argue that, for Hume, the truly religious person: believes that an intelligent designer created and imposed order on the universe; grounds this belief in an irregular argument rooted in a certain kind of experience, for example, in the experience of anatomizing complex natural systems such as…Read more
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65Hume's Epistemic Naturalism in the TreatiseHume Studies 37 (2): 211-242. 2011.We can understand epistemic naturalism as the view that there are cases in which we are justified in holding a belief and cases in which we are not so justified, and that we can distinguish cases of one sort from cases of the other with reference to non-normative facts about the mechanisms that produce them. By my lights, Hume is an epistemic naturalist of this sort, and I propose in this paper a novel and detailed account of his epistemic naturalism. On my account, which I call the determinacy …Read more
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181A Moorean response to brain-in-a-vat scepticismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (2). 2002.This Article does not have an abstract
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289Solving the problem of easy knowledgePhilosophical Quarterly 58 (233): 597-617. 2008.Stewart Cohen argues that several epistemological theories fall victim to the problem of easy knowledge: they allow us to know far too easily that certain sceptical hypotheses are false and that how things seem is a reliable indicator of how they are. This problem is a result of the theories' interaction with an epistemic closure principle. Cohen suggests that the theories should be modified. I argue that attempts to solve the problem should focus on closure instead; a new and plausible epistemi…Read more
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Contextualism and Skepticism About the External WorldDissertation, The University of Nebraska - Lincoln. 2001.Contextualist responses to skepticism about the external world are inadequate, and we should prefer an invariantist response to skepticism. There are two kinds of contextualism---anti-theoretical and theoretical. Anti-theoretical contextualists argue that the principles on which skepticism depends are absent from our ordinary epistemic ways of thinking. So anti-theoretical contextualists conclude that the burden of proof is on the skeptic. But some argue that the principles on which skepticism d…Read more
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24What We Can Learn from the Skeptical PuzzleIris. European Journal of Philosophy and Public Debate 1 (2): 439-447. 2009.There is reason to think that a familiar and frequently used epistemic closure principle is false. Given this, the relevant instance of that principle should be removed from a familiar skeptical argument, and replaced with an instance of a more plausible epistemic closure principle. Once this has been done, however, we see that even if the resulting skeptical argument is unsound, we need deny neither closure nor the claim that we know the things we ordinarily take ourselves to know. Nothing that…Read more
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19Relevant Alternatives and the Shifting Standards of KnowledgeSouthwest Philosophy Review 18 (1): 23-32. 2002.
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125Classic invariantism, relevance and warranted assertability manœvresPhilosophical Quarterly 55 (219). 2005.Jessica Brown effectively contends that Keith DeRose’s latest argument for contextualism fails to rule out contextualism’s chief rival, namely, classic invariantism. Still, even if her position has not been ruled out, the classic invariantist must offer considerations in favor of her position if she is to convince us that it is superior to contextualism. Brown defends classic invariantism with a warranted assertability maneuver that utilizes a linguistic pragmatic principle of relevance. I argue…Read more
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32The distinction between coherence and constancy in Hume's Treatise I.iv.2British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (1): 1-25. 2007.In the Treatise, Book I, Part iv, Section 2, Hume seeks to explain what causes us to believe that objects continue to exist even when they are not perceived. He argues that we won't be able to prov...
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220Review of John McDowell, Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2011.
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61The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2012.The sensitivity principle is a compelling idea in epistemology and is typically characterized as a necessary condition for knowledge. This collection of thirteen new essays constitutes a state-of-the-art discussion of this important principle. Some of the essays build on and strengthen sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge and offer novel defences of those accounts. Others present original objections to sensitivity-based accounts and offer comprehensive analysis and discussion of sensitivity's…Read more
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107The relevant alternatives theory and missed cluesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (1). 2003.According to the relevant alternatives theory of knowledge (RA), I know that p only if my evidence eliminates all relevant alternatives to p . Jonathan Schaffer has recently argued that David Lewis's version of RA, which is perhaps the most detailed version yet provided, cannot account for our failure to know in cases involving missed clues, that is, cases in which we see but fail to appreciate decisive evidence. I argue, however, that Lewis's version of RA survives exposure to missed clue cases…Read more
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163Defending a sensitive neo-Moorean invariantismIn Vincent Hendricks (ed.), New Waves in Epistemology, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 8--27. 2007.I defend a sensitive neo-Moorean invariantism, an epistemological account with the following characteristic features: (a) it reserves a place for a sensitivity condition on knowledge, according to which, very roughly, S’s belief that p counts as knowledge only if S wouldn’t believe that p if p were false; (b) it maintains that the standards for knowledge are comparatively low; and (c) it maintains that the standards for knowledge are invariant (i.e., that they vary neither with the linguistic co…Read more
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28Review of Patrick Greenough, Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Williamson on Knowledge (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (7). 2010.
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134A warranted-assertability defense of a Moorean response to skepticismActa Analytica 23 (3): 187-205. 2008.According to a Moorean response to skepticism, the standards for knowledge are invariantly comparatively low, and we can know across contexts all that we ordinarily take ourselves to know. It is incumbent upon the Moorean to defend his position by explaining how, in contexts in which S seems to lack knowledge, S can nevertheless have knowledge. The explanation proposed here relies on a warranted-assertability maneuver: Because we are warranted in asserting that S doesn’t know that p, it can seem…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Søren Kierkegaard |
Hume: Epistemology |
Hume: Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Søren Kierkegaard |
Hume: Epistemology |
Hume: Philosophy of Religion |