•  793
    What Is Wrong With Agnostic Belief?
    In Agnosticism: Explorations in Philosophy and Religious Thought, . 2020.
  •  530
    Justification As A Loaded Notion
    Synthese 198 (5): 4897-4916. 2019.
    The problem of skepticism is often understood as a paradox: a valid argument with plausible premises whose conclusion is that we lack justification for perceptual beliefs. Typically, this conclusion is deemed unacceptable, so a theory is offered that posits conditions for justification on which some premise is false. The theory defended here is more general, and explains why the paradox arises in the first place. Like Strawson’s (Introduction to logical theory, Wiley, New York, 1952) “ordinary …Read more
  •  259
    Hawthorne on the Deeply Contingent A Priori1
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (1): 174-183. 2010.
  •  188
    In this essay I defend a solution to a skeptical paradox. The paradox I focus on concerns epistemic justification (rather than knowledge), and skeptical scenarios that entail that most of our ordinary beliefs about the external world are false. This familiar skeptical paradox hinges on a “closure” principle. The solution is to restrict closure, despite its first appearing as a fully general principle, so that it can no longer give rise to the paradox. This has some extra advantages. First, it su…Read more
  •  174
    An old problem for the new rationalism
    Synthese 183 (2): 175-185. 2011.
    A well known skeptical paradox rests on the claim that we lack warrant to believe that we are not brains in a vat. The argument for that claim is the apparent impossibility of any evidence or argument that we are not BIVs. Many contemporary philosophers resist this argument by insisting that we have a sort of warrant for believing that we are not BIVs that does not require having any evidence or argument. I call this view ‘New Rationalism’. I argue that New Rationalists are committed to there be…Read more
  •  174
    Veridicalism and Scepticism
    Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.
    According to veridicalism, your beliefs about the existence of ordinary objects are typically true, and can constitute knowledge, even if you are in some global sceptical scenario. Even if you are a victim of Descartes’ demon, you can still know that there are tables, for example. Accordingly, even if you don’t know whether you are in some such scenario, you still know that there are tables. This refutes the standard sceptical argument. But does it solve the sceptical problem posed by that argum…Read more
  •  145
    Mere faith and entitlement
    Synthese 189 (2): 297-315. 2012.
    The scandal to philosophy and human reason, wrote Kant, is that we must take the existence of material objects on mere faith . In contrast, the skeptical paradox that has scandalized recent philosophy is not formulated in terms of faith, but rather in terms of justification, warrant, and entitlement. I argue that most contemporary approaches to the paradox (both dogmatist/liberal and default/conservative) do not address the traditional problem that scandalized Kant, and that the status of having…Read more
  •  144
    What’s Wrong with the Online Echo Chamber: A Motivated Reasoning Account
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 37 (4): 578-593. 2020.
    In this ‘age of information’, some worry that we get our news from online ‘echo chambers’, news feeds on our social media accounts that contain information from like‐minded sources. Filtering our information in this way seems prima facie problematic from an epistemic perspective. I vindicate this intuition by offering an explanation of what is wrong with online echo chambers that appeals to a particular kind of motivated reasoning, or bias due to one’s interests. This sort of bias affects, not w…Read more
  •  133
    In Defense of Secular Belief
    Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 4. 2012.
  •  119
    Excuses for Hume's Skepticism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (2): 264-306. 2015.
  •  119
    How irrelevant influences bias belief
    with Dion Scott-Kakures
    Philosophical Perspectives 29 (1): 7-39. 2015.
  •  113
    No Closure On Skepticism
    with Anthony Brueckner and Christopher Buford
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (4): 439-447. 2011.
    This article is a response to an important objection that Sherrilyn Roush has made to the standard closure-based argument for skepticism, an argument that has been studied over the past couple of decades. If Roush's objection is on the mark, then this would be a quite significant finding. We argue that her objection fails
  •  106
    Closure Reconsidered
    Philosophers' Imprint 12. 2012.
    Most solutions to the skeptical paradox about justified belief assume closure for justification, since the rejection of closure is widely regarded as a non-starter. I argue that the rejection of closure is not a non-starter, and that its problems are no greater than the problems associated with the more standard anti-skeptical strategies. I do this by sketching a simple version of the unpopular strategy and rebutting the three best objections to it. The general upshot for theories of justificati…Read more
  •  79
    On an Irrelevant Regress
    Theoria 82 (1): 81-88. 2015.
    In a recent article, Wilson argues that Cartesian Scepticism leads to a vicious regress that can only be stopped by rejecting Cartesian Scepticism. If she is right, Wilson has solved one of philosophy's enduring problems. However, her regress is irrelevant to Cartesian Scepticism. This is evident once the proposition that we should have doubts, the person who has doubts, and the person who thinks that we should have doubts are carefully distinguished
  •  43
    Unicorn agnosticism
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (8): 818-829. 2021.
    ABSTRACT Atheists and agnostics have a vexed relationship. Atheists often regard agnostics as timid, or perhaps as disguised apologists. Agnostics often regard atheists as dogmatic hypocrites: they proclaim something on insufficient evidence, while accusing theists of this. This dynamic is familiar from the academic and popular literature. Here, I consider a more radical conflict between the two, based on Kripkean semantics for empty terms applied to atheism. Sorensen : 373–388) christened the K…Read more
  •  41
    On What Does Rationality Hinge?
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 7 (4): 246-257. 2017.
    _ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 4, pp 246 - 257 The two main components of Coliva’s view are Moderatism and Extended Rationality. According to Moderatism, a belief about specific material objects is perceptually justified iff, absent defeaters, one has the appropriate course of experience and it is assumed that there is an external world. I grant Moderatism and instead focus on Extended Rationality, according to which it is epistemically rational to believe evidentially warranted propositions and to …Read more
  •  34
    The Nature and Limits of Skeptical Criticism
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 9 (3): 183-205. 2019.
    Is there something wrong with the way we form beliefs about our surroundings? Most people assume not. But there is a character, the skeptic, who disagrees. What, exactly, is this skeptic claiming, and why should this concern us? We are, after all, just humans doing what humans do: forming beliefs on the basis of our faculties. In what sense could this be wrong, and how could it matter if it is? By considering the way in which the notions of vice and criticism can express these questions, we can …Read more
  •  33
    What can preemption do?
    with Chigozie Obiegbu
    Analytic Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Evidential Preemption occurs when a speaker asserts something of the form “Others will tell you Q, but I say P,” where P and Q are incompatible in some salient way. Typically, the aim of this maneuver is to get the audience to accept P despite contrary testimony of others, who might otherwise be trusted on the matter. Phenomena such as echo chambers, conspiracy theories, and other political speech of interest to epistemologists today, all commonly involve evidential preemption, so the question a…Read more
  •  20
    Pascal's birds: Signs and significance in nature
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (1): 3-20. 2024.
    I address a puzzle in Pascal's Pensées. While Pascal emphasized that God is hidden, he also seemed to think that signs of God are everywhere in nature. How does he reconcile these two claims? I offer a novel solution which emphasizes the role of love and what I call “second-personal” significance, and which results in a distinctively Pascalian account of religious experience of nature. By distinguishing implication from various senses of ‘proof’, I explain why, though deeply significant, such ex…Read more
  •  16
    Review of: Bryan Frances. An Agnostic Defends God: How Science and Philosophy Support Agnosticism (review)
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (4): 318-324. 2023.
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  •  13
    An Agnostic Defends God: How Science and Philosophy Support Agnosticism by Bryan Frances
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (4): 315-320. 2022.
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  •  7
    Justification as a loaded notion
    Synthese 198 (5): 4897-4916. 2019.
    The problem of skepticism is often understood as a paradox: a valid argument with plausible premises whose conclusion is that we lack justification for perceptual beliefs. Typically, this conclusion is deemed unacceptable, so a theory is offered that posits conditions for justification on which some premise is false. The theory defended here is more general, and explains why the paradox arises in the first place. Like Strawson’s (Introduction to logical theory, Wiley, New York, 1952) “ordinary l…Read more
  •  3
    Introduction
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 47 5-6. 2023.