•  240
    To explain why we should be structurally rational – or mentally coherent – is notoriously difficult. Some philosophers argue that the normativity of structural rationality can be explained in terms of substantive rationality, which is a matter of correct response to reason. I argue that the psychological phenomena – positive illusions – are counterexamples to the substantivist approach. Substantivists dismiss the relevance of positive illusions because they accept evidentialism that reason for b…Read more
  •  359
    Evidentialists’ Internalist Argument for Pragmatism
    Logos and Episteme 12 (4): 427-436. 2021.
    A popular evidentialist argument against pragmatism is based on reason internalism: the view that a normative reason for one to φ must be able to guide one in normative deliberation whether to φ. In the case of belief, this argument maintains that, when deliberating whether to believe p, one must deliberate whether p is true. Since pragmatic considerations cannot weigh in our deliberation whether p, the argument concludes that pragmatism is false. I argue that evidentialists fail to recognize th…Read more
  •  189
    反思機器人的道德擬人主義
    EurAmerica 50 (2): 179-205. 2020.
    如果機器人的發展要能如科幻想像一般,在沒有人類監督下自動地工作,就必須確定機器人不會做出道德上錯誤的行為。 根據行為主義式的道德主體觀,若就外顯行為來看,機器人在道德上的表現跟人類一般,機器人就可被視為道德主體。從這很自然地引伸出機器人的道德擬人主義:凡適用於人類的道德規則就適用於機器人。我反對道德擬人主義,藉由史特勞森對於人際關係與反應態度的洞見,並以家長主義行為為例,我論述由於機器人缺乏人格性,無法參與人際關係,因此在關於家長主義行為上,機器人應該比人類受到更嚴格的限制。
  •  181
    How to Locate Pain in Mandarin: Reply to Liu and Klein
    National Taiwan University Philosophical Review 61 75-80. 2021.
    Some philosophers argue that pain is an object located in bodily parts because the locative form of pain report is permissible in English. To examine this argument, Liu and Klein recently argue that the linguistic argument cannot work because the locative form is impermissible in Mandarin. They are wrong, however. I demonstrate that the locative form in Mandarin is not only permissible but also common.
  •  613
    According to some philosophers, if moral agency is understood in behaviourist terms, robots could become moral agents that are as good as or even better than humans. Given the behaviourist conception, it is natural to think that there is no interesting moral difference between robots and humans in terms of moral agency (call it the _equivalence thesis_). However, such moral differences exist: based on Strawson’s account of participant reactive attitude and Scanlon’s relational account of blame, …Read more
  •  315
    Gettier cases are scenarios conceived by philosophers to demonstrate that justified true beliefs may not be knowledge. Starmans and Friedman (2020) find that philosophers attribute knowledge in Gettier cases differently from laypeople and non‐philosophy academics, which seems to suggest that philosophers may be indoctrinated to adopt an esoteric concept of knowledge. I argue to the contrary: Their finding at most shows that philosophical reflection is fallible, but nevertheless able to clarify t…Read more
  •  503
    Are There Any Epistemic Consequentialists?
    Episteme 19 (2): 220-230. 2022.
    Selim Berker argues that epistemic consequentialism is pervasive in epistemology and that epistemic consequentialism is structurally flawed. is incorrect, however. I distinguish between epistemic consequentialism and epistemic instrumentalism and argue that most putative consequentialists should be considered instrumentalists. I also identify the structural problem of epistemic consequentialism Berker attempts to pinpoint and show that epistemic instrumentalism does not have the consequentialist…Read more
  •  548
    A virtue-based theory of right action aims to explain deontic moral principles in terms of virtue and vice. For example, it may maintain the following account of moral obligation: It is morally obligatory for an agent A to ϕ in circumstances C if and only if a fully virtuous and relevantly informed person V would characteristically ϕ in C. However, this account faces the so-called supererogation problem. A supererogatory action is an action that is morally praiseworthy but not morally obligatory…Read more
  •  839
    Virtue epistemology argues that knowledge is more valuable than Gettierized belief because knowledge is an achievement, but Gettierized belief is not. The key premise in the achievement argument is that achievement is apt (successful because competent) and Gettierized belief is inapt (successful because lucky). I first argue that the intuition behind the achievement argument is based wrongly on the fact that ‘being successful because lucky’ implicates ‘being not competent enough’. I then offer a…Read more
  •  436
    The Normativity of Doxastic Correctness
    American Philosophical Quarterly 55 (4): 379-388. 2018.
    It is widely maintained that doxastic norms that govern how people should believe can be explained by the truism that belief is governed by the correctness norm: believing p is correct if and only if p. This approach fails because it confuses two kinds of correctness norm: (1) It is correct for S to believe p if and only p; and (2) believing p is correct qua belief if and only if p. Only can (2) be said to be a truism about belief, but it cannot ground doxastic norms.
  •  711
    Naturalism and the Space of Reasons in Mind and World
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 22 (1): 49-62. 2014.
    This paper aims to show that many criticisms of McDowell’s naturalism of second nature are based on what I call ‘the orthodox interpretation’ of McDowell’s naturalism. The orthodox interpretation is, however, a misinterpretation, which results from the fact that the phrase ‘the space of reasons’ is used equivocally by McDowell in Mind and World. Failing to distinguish two senses of ‘the space of reasons’, I argue that the orthodox interpretation renders McDowell’s naturalism inconsistent with Mc…Read more
  •  835
    Virtue epistemology maintains that epistemic normativity is a kind of performance normativity, according to which evaluating a belief is like evaluating a sport or musical performance. I examine this thesis through the objection that a belief cannot be evaluated as a performance because it is not a performance but a state. I argue that virtue epistemology can be defended on the grounds that we often evaluate a performance through evaluating the result of the performance. The upshot of my account…Read more
  •  737
    Kant and McDowell on Skepticism and Disjunctivism
    In Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca & Margit Ruffing (eds.), Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 761-770. 2013.
    This paper is to propose a new form of Kant’s anti-skepticism argument in light of John McDowell’s works on disjunctivism. I first discuss recent debates between McDowell and Crispin Wright on disjunctivism. I argue that Wright wrongly downplays McDowell’s disjunctivism, whose metaphysical claim that our perceptual faculties directly engage in the world has an epistemological implication that should be able to dismiss the skeptic’s imagery as fictitious. However, McDowell does not clearly offer …Read more
  •  177
    Epistemic value and virtue epistemology
    Dissertation, University of Southampton. 2015.
    My contributions to the research on epistemic value can be divided into two parts: first, I pinpoint some causes of the problems about epistemic value which have not previously been identified; and, second, I offer novel accounts of epistemic value which offer better solutions to the problems about epistemic value. First, there are two trends in the literature on epistemic value that are rarely challenged: epistemologists tend to understand epistemic value in terms of intrinsic value from the ep…Read more