Outlines a debate over the ontology of reasons, and what broader epistemic import it threatens to have. Then examines linguistic evidence that's commonly taken to support the ontologies which take reasons to be propositions or facts. I argue that this linguistic evidence is less straightforward than is commonly assumed.
Discusses some difficulties with expressing dogmatism in the standard probabilistic framework; and develops a framework which is expressively more adequate.
(Drafts of this paper were also circulated as "Externalism about Content and McKinsey-style Reasoning")
Michael McKinsey formulated an argument that raises a puzzle about the relation between externalism about content and our introspective awareness of content. The puzzle goes like this: it seems like I can know the contents of my thoughts by introspection alone; but philosophical reflection tells me that the contents of those thoughts are externalist, and so I couldn't have the thoughts unless my environment were a certain way. Hence, it looks like I can conclude, on the basis of introspection and philosophical reflection alone, that my environment is a certain way. Wright and Davies have each tried to defuse this puzzle by appealing to their notion of "transmission-failure." I do not think those attempts work. I defend a more straightforward solution to the puzzle, which says that we can't have the kind of justification that McKinsey's argument requires for all the premises simultaneously. Diagnosing this puzzle teaches us valuable lessons about a priori justification, introspection, and externalism about content.
Elaborates and corrects some things I said in Hyper-Reliability and Apriority.
I argue that beliefs that are true whenever held---like I exist, I am thinking about myself, and (in a object-dependent framework) Jack=Jack---needn't on that account be a priori. It does however seem possible to remove the existential commitment from the last example, to get a belief that is knowable a priori. I discuss some difficulties concerning how to do that.
This is an electronic version of an article published in Philosophical Issues. Complete citation information for the final version of the paper, as published in the print edition of Philosophical Issues, is available on the Blackwell Synergy online delivery service, accessible via the journal's website at www.blackwellpublishing.com/journals/nous or http://www.blackwell-synergy.com.
Argues that Moore's argument is better than it's commonly regarded. Moore genuinely can acquire more justification to believe there's an external world by reasoning in the way he demonstrates. His argument's weaknesses are all persuasive or dialectical. I explain why we should expect justificatory power and dialectical effectiveness to come apart in that way.
I'm leaving an older 2001 version Is Moore's Argument an Example of Transmission-Failure? on-line, too, since some people have referred to it.
I consider beliefs that are claimed to be a priori in virtue of (i) their indexical character--beliefs like "I am here now", or in virtue of (ii) their self-verifying character--beliefs like "I exist" and "I am now thinking about myself." I argue that none of these beliefs really are a priori.
An improved and more recent treatment of some of this material is in Hyper-Reliability and Apriority, above.
Explore what constraints one needs to satisfy to have de re thoughts about O. I argue that any experiential episode conferring the ability to have such thoughts must, as a constitutive matter, give you some a posteriori justification about O. This will make trouble for Kripke's and Evans' idea that reference-fixing is a way to acquire a priori justification. What's alleged to be a priori reference-fixing justification is usually just a posteriori justification that was constitutively involved in your acquiring the relevant de re thoughts. But that's an argument for a later paper.
Articulates a notion of immediate or "non-inferential" justification, cites some apparent examples of it, and then examines at length a familiar coherentist argument against the possibility of such justification. That argument was traditionally employed against "the Given Theory"; but it threatens to have much broader scope. It is driven by a principle I call the "Premise Principle," which says that a belief in P cannot be justified except by other representational states whose contents are premises that inferentially support P. One can accept that Principle and still be a foundationalist, but many foundationalists will want to reject it. I argue that the Premise Principle is unmotivated.
This paper concerns the descriptive stereotypes that we associate with words like "water" and "Bob Dylan," and the epistemic status of those stereotypes. Frank Jackson and David Chalmers advocate a "two-dimensionalist" theory of content, which builds on some of the things Kripke said in Naming and Necessity about how we should "explain away" modal illusions, like the illusion that water might not have been H2O. Two-dimensionalists claim that our words have two kinds of intensions, a "primary" or "epistemic" intension and a "secondary" or "metaphysical" intension. The "epistemic" intension of a word does the most theoretical work. It can be thought of as a set of properties that all competent speakers associate with the word that fixes the word's reference, and that accounts for the word's cognitive significance. For instance, the epistemic intension of "water" might include the properties of being a clear drinkable liquid predominant in our lakes and rivers. These are properties that we and our counterparts on Twin Earth both associate with "water," even if we're referring to H2O and they're referring to XYZ. Alex Byrne and I rehearse Kripke's familiar arguments from ignorance and error, which make it prima facie unlikely that speakers associate informative and uniquely identifying properties with their words. We then examine and criticize some of Chalmers' responses to these arguments.
reprinted in Philosophers Explore the Matrix, ed. by Christopher Grau (OUP, forthcoming 2005)
Written for an introductory audience. Discusses our belief in an objective world beyond our own experiences, and whether we really care about how the world is objectively.
Surveys recent work in epistemology, much of which also bears on the epistemology of perception. Examines: (i) contextualism about knowledge-attributions, (ii) modest forms of foundationalism, including the kind of view I advocate about perception, and (iii) the internalism/externalism debate in epistemology, and its connections to the ethics of belief.
The internalism/externalism debate is intimately connected with the epistemology of perception; so it's a topic I want to spend more time on. I am a kind of internalist (as I explain in the article, different philosophers mean different things by "internalism" and "externalism"). Much of my thinking about the internalism/externalism debate is tied up with issues about the ethics of belief, and the role of probability in epistemology. Those are also topics I'll be exploring in later research.
Reprinted in The Philosopher's Annual 23 (2001)
I develop a notion of being antecedently justified in believing something, and argue that the best forms of skeptical argument need to appeal to this notion. Those arguments will insist that, in order to be justified in believing Here is a hand on the basis of your perceptual experiences, you need to be antecedently justified in believing that you're not being deceived by a demon, that you're not a brain in a vat, and so on. I then argue for an epistemology of perception that rejects those skeptical principles. On my view, simply having certain experiences is enough to give you prima facie justification for believing Here is a hand. You don't need to believe you have those experiences, or have evidence that they are reliable, or that there is no deceiving demon, or anything else of that sort. So long as you lack defeating evidence, merely having the experiences you do is enough to make you justified in believing Here is a hand.
Examines a notion that Shoemaker uses to characterize a way in which the justification we get from introspection is epistemologically special. I argue that the phenomenon Shoemaker points to comes in two main varieties that we need to distinguish. I also assess a debate between Shoemaker and Evans about whether first-person memory-based beliefs have the special epistemological status Shoemaker describes.
I plan eventually to extend the work I've done here into a larger project that maps the differences between introspective justification, perceptual justification, and a priori justification.