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308The Birth of BeliefJournal of the History of Philosophy 57 (1): 1-32. 2019.did plato and aristotle have anything to say about belief? The answer to this question might seem blindingly obvious: of course they did. Plato distinguishes belief from knowledge in the Meno, Republic, and Theaetetus, and Aristotle does so in the Posterior Analytics. Plato distinguishes belief from perception in the Theaetetus, and Aristotle does so in the De anima. They talk about the distinction between true and false beliefs, and the ways in which belief can mislead and the ways in which it …Read more
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84Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno?Phronesis 64 (4): 392-430. 2019.Plato in the Meno is standardly interpreted as committed to condition innatism: human beings are born with latent innate states of knowledge. Against this view, Gail Fine has argued for prenatalism: human souls possess knowledge in a disembodied state but lose it upon being embodied. We argue against both views and in favor of content innatism: human beings are born with innate cognitive contents that can be, but do not exist innately in the soul as, the contents of states of knowledge. Content …Read more
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1214Epicureans and Stoics on the Rationality of PerceptionWiley: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (1): 58-83. 2023.This paper examines an ancient debate over the rationality of perception. What leads the Stoics to affirm, and the Epicureans to deny, that to form a sense-impression is an activity of reason? The answer, we argue, lies in a disagreement over what is required for epistemic success. For the Stoics, epistemic success consists in believing the right propositions, and only rational states, in virtue of their predicational structure, put us in touch with propositions. Since they identify some sense-i…Read more
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18Summoning Knowledge in Plato’s Republic : Smith, Nicholas D., New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. ix + 205, US$72 (hardback) (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (1): 210-213. 2022.
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14Explanation in the Epistemology of the MenoIn Brad Inwood (ed.), Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy: Volume 48: Summer 2015, Oxford University Press Uk. 2015.At the end of the Meno, the character Socrates claims that true doxa is distinguished from epistēmē by a working out of the explanation. This chapter argues that working out the explanation consists, for Socrates, in seeing how the fact to be explained is grounded in facts about the natures of the relevant fundamental entities of the domain to which it belongs. It reconstructs the resulting conception of epistēmē. Once that reconstruction is complete, it argues that notions of epistemic justific…Read more
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96The Metaphysics of Recollection in Plato’s MenoApeiron 53 (3): 213-233. 2020.Recollection is central to the epistemology of Plato’sMeno. After all, the character Socrates claims that recollection is the process whereby embodied human souls bind down true opinions (doxai) and acquire knowledge (epistêmê). This paper examines the exchange between Socrates and Meno’s slave to determine (1) what steps on the path to acquiring knowledge are part of the process of recollection and (2) what is required for a subject to count as having recollected something. I argue that the key…Read more
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135Skepticism, Belief, and the Criterion of TruthApeiron 46 (3): 327-344. 2013.In this paper I examine, and reject, one of the chief philosophical arguments that purports to show that Pyrrhonian Skepticism is incompatible with possessing any beliefs. That argument, first put forward by Jonathan Barnes and since accepted by many philosophers, focuses on the skeptic's resolute suspension of judgment concerning one philosophical issue, namely whether criteria of truth exist. In short, the argument holds that, because skeptics suspend judgment whether criteria of truth exist, …Read more
Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |