Abstracts of

Publications and Works in Progress

 

"Philosophy Sabotages Knowledge", a work in progress

Many of the best philosophers endorse purely philosophical error theories, theories that do not have much empirical support and reject large swaths of our most commonsensical beliefs. Often enough those of us who are philosophers of average abilities know full well that we are no experts on the topics in question even though we think all the admittedly superior philosophers are wrong. I argue that in this situation either (a) the average philosopher's true commonsensical beliefs don't amount to knowledge, or (b) a large portion of philosophy is bunk even though its arguments are no worse than those in non-bunk areas of philosophy, and knowledge is not an epistemically impressive state. In sum: we can conclude that either novel kinds of radical skepticism are contingently true or in a real sense we know that knowledge isn't impressive and large portions of philosophy are bunk despite being argumentatively and evidentially as good as or superior to other areas of philosophy.

 

"An Utterly Brilliant Yet Failed Solution to the Liar Paradox", a work in progress

There is a certain approach to the semantic paradoxes that is highly intuitive and for that reason alone never seems to go away. Roughly put, it's the idea that the paradoxical sentences just don't really have any truth conditions at all, no matter how grammatically sound and meaningful they are. There is a great deal to recommend this under appreciated approach. Unfortunately, it suffers from two major problems: it lacks an explanation of how certain type-identical sentence tokens can differ in truth-value, and it fails to deal with certain paradoxical sentences of the liar family.

 

"The Relation of Existence to Time", a work in progress

When pondering the relation of existence to time one often finds oneself with intriguing intuitions expressed with slogans such as 'Only the present really exists', 'Present entities are more real than past or future entities', 'There is an objective ontological difference separating present from both past and future entities', and 'The future is yet to be; the past is no more'. When we express these presentist intuitions, we don't seem to be saying, in a straightforward way, that past objects such as a recently popped soap bubble are merely no longer present. That's obvious and virtually no one disputes it. Instead, we seem to be voicing some philosophically important claim regarding how existence and time are related. However, these slogans only vaguely suggest some kind of presentist view; they do not, by themselves, adequately express it.

As currently understood, the debate over presentism is a monstrosity. On the one hand we have a collection of ambiguous and thorny intuitions about the relation of existence to time. On the other hand we have a plethora of widely divergent presentist theses, with confusing relations to one another and to the intuitions as well.

In this essay I work on three tasks. First, I attempt to tease out what philosophical theses basic presentist intuitions suggest. Second, I try to determine how one particularly important kind of presentism fares against two primary objections: the recently popular Cross-Temporal Relations objection (sometimes called the "Grounding objection" or "Truthmaker objection") and the objection based on Relativity theory (more specifically, the Special Theory of Relativity). Finally, I motivate and articulate a new theory that claims that relativized temporal presence is the fundamental temporal but not ontological notion, in a sense to be explicated, and yet not fully objective, in another sense to be explicated.

 

"Discovering Disagreeing Epistemic Peers and Superiors", a work in progress

What should you do when you discover that someone firmly disagrees with you on some claim? Suppose you know that someone has seen all your evidence and you have seen all hers. Suppose further that you know that both of you have evaluated that common body of evidence for about the same length of time. You also know that she is about as clever, thorough, and open-minded as you are, both generally and with respect to the issues at hand. You know that you have about the same relevant biases. At this point, before you find out her opinion on some claim P relevant to the topic, you fully admit that you cannot think of any epistemic advantage you have over her when it comes to the topic in question; you admit that she is just as likely to get P's truth-value right as you are (whether or not you are right about that will not matter). Let us say that under these conditions she is your recognized epistemic peer with regard to P (I will relax some of these conditions below). And then after learning all this about her you find out that she thinks P is false, whereas you had already concluded to yourself that P is true.

Here is an even more compelling case: I initially believe P but then learn about Smith. I fully admit that she is an outright genius and knows much, much more than I do about the issues relevant to P. I know that she has all my evidence if not much more. I also know that she is smarter than I am and has thought about and investigated P much more than I have. I know full well that when it comes to the topics germane to P she is not my peer but significantly exceeds me. Prior to finding out her opinion on P, I would have insisted that she is much more likely than I am to get P's truth-value right (again, it will not matter to my arguments whether this judgment is correct). Let us say that under these conditions she is my recognized epistemic superior with regard to P. Then I find out that she firmly believes ~P.

In both of the situations described above, it appears that some principle along the following lines applies: when confronted with disagreement by one's recognized epistemic peers or, especially, superiors over a particular held belief, the confidence with which one holds that belief should, by rights, be reduced if not abandoned. Richard Feldman, Adam Elga, and David Christensen have argued along these lines. I agree with them that some principle like that one has to be true, but I do not think they have landed on the correct principle yet. I will first argue that there is an interesting variety of kinds of counterexamples; I will then articulate and defend an ambitious principle meant to answer the question 'Under what conditions am I epistemically blameless/blameworthy in retaining my belief after I have discovered recognized peers or superiors who disagree with me?'

 

"The Reflective Epistemic Renegade," forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Philosophers often find themselves in disagreement with contemporary philosophers they know full well to be their epistemic superiors on the topics relevant to the disagreement. This looks epistemically irresponsible. I offer a detailed investigation of this problem of the reflective epistemic renegade. I argue that although in some cases the renegade is not epistemically blameworthy, and the renegade situation is significantly less common than most would think, in a troublesome number of cases in which the situation arises the renegade is blameworthy in her disagreement with recognized epistemic superiors. I also offer some thoughts on what it would mean for philosophical practice for us to refrain from being renegades. Finally, I show how a new kind of radical skepticism emerges from modest theses regarding the renegade.

 

"Disagreement," in Duncan Pritchard and Sven Bernecker, eds., Routledge Companion to Epistemology, 2009.

This is an introduction to the topic of the epistemology of disagreement. My main goal in the article is to simply motivate and articulate the primary philosophical questions to be pursued on this topic.

 

"Spirituality, Expertise, and Philosophers," in Jon Kvanvig, ed., Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, 2008.

We all know that there are a great many excellent contemporary philosophy professors who are theists. It would be very surprising if none of them had epistemically upstanding theistic beliefs. But what exactly makes their pro-theistic beliefs epistemically upstanding? In virtue of what combinations of epistemic items-arguments, experiences, belief formation facts, even the absences of certain facts-do their pro-theistic beliefs end up epistemically blameless? Some philosophers hold that there are spiritual experiences that serve to make our pro-theistic beliefs epistemically upstanding.

In this essay I assume, on behalf of these philosophers, that many of us have spiritual experiences that initially provide us with various kinds of high-grade theistic knowledge (so among other things I'm also assuming the truth of theism). Even so, many of us are aware that there have been studies of spiritual experience by people with many years of experience in various meditation traditions. A significant number of these meditation experts hold, on the basis of their years of experience and teaching of mediation practices, that mystical experiences that seem to be of God are illusory. In this essay I assume that this expert opinion is mistaken and then explore the epistemological consequences of the typical theist's awareness of this contrary expert opinion. I argue that such awareness sabotages one's theistic knowledge derived from mystical experiences.

 

"Live Skeptical Hypotheses," in John Greco, ed., Oxford Handbook of Skepticism, 2008.

This essay is a summary of the basic points of the 2005 Noûs article and the 2005 OUP book.

 

"Externalism, Physicalism, Statues, and Hunks," Philosophical Studies, 133 (2007), 199-232.

Content externalism is the dominant view in the philosophy of mind. Content essentialism, the thesis that thought tokens have their contents essentially, is also popular. And many externalists are supporters of such essentialism. However, endorsing the conjunction of those views either (i) commits one to a counterintuitive view of the underlying physical nature of thought tokens or (ii) commits one to a slightly different but still counterintuitive view of the relation of thought tokens to physical tokens as well as a rejection of realist physicalism for thought particulars. In this essay I reveal the problem and articulate and adjudicate among the possible solutions. I will end up rejecting content essentialism.

 

"The New Leibniz's Law Arguments for Pluralism" Mind, 115 (2006), 1007-1022.

For years philosophers argued for the existence of distinct yet materially coincident things by appealing to modal and temporal properties. For instance, the statue was made on Monday and could not survive being flattened; the lump of clay was made months before and can survive flattening. Such arguments have been thoroughly examined. Kit Fine has proposed a new set of arguments on roughly the same lines. I offer a critical evaluation of what I take to be his central arguments.

 

"When a Skeptical Hypothesis is Live," Noûs, 39 (2005), 559-95.

I argue for a set of restricted skeptical results: roughly put, we don’t know that fire engines are red, we don’t know that we sometimes have pains in our lower backs, we don’t know that John Rawls was kind, and we don’t even know that we believe any of those truths. However, people unfamiliar with philosophy and cognitive science do know all those things.

The skeptical argument is traditional in form: here’s a skeptical hypothesis; you can’t epistemically neutralize it, you have to be able to neutralize it to know P; so you don’t know P. But the skeptical hypotheses I plug into it are “real, live” scientific-philosophical hypotheses often thought to be actually true, unlike any of the outrageous traditional skeptical hypotheses (e.g., ‘You’re a brain in a vat’). So I call the resulting skepticism Live Skepticism. Notably, the Live Skeptic’s argument goes through even if we adopt the clever anti-skeptical fixes thought up in recent years such as reliabilism, relevant alternatives theory, contextualism, and the rejection of epistemic closure. Furthermore, the scope of Live Skepticism is bizarre: although we don’t know the simple facts noted above, many of us do know that there are black holes and other amazing facts.

 

Scepticism Comes Alive, Oxford University Press, 2005.

This is the thorough presentation of the theory and supporting arguments sketched in the 2005 Noûs article. Here is the preface & chapter 1.

 

"A Test for Theories of Belief Ascription," Analysis, 62 (2002), 116-25, revised after publication.

Two popular approaches to belief ascription are Millianism and Contextualism. The former approach is inconsistent with the existence of ordinary Frege cases, such as Lois believing that Superman flies while failing to believe that Clark Kent flies. The Millian holds that the only truth-conditionally relevant aspect of a proper name is its referent or extension. The latter approach, as I will define it for the purposes of this essay, includes all theories according to which ascriptions of the form ‘S believes that a is F’ and ‘S believes that b is F’, where ‘a’ and ‘b’ are coreferential proper names, may, depending on the context, differ in truth-value even though in those very contexts each ascription relates the same believer to the very same proposition. What the two theories have in common is the claim that names are Millian, so the two belief sentences relate the same proposition to S. What separates the two theories is what they say about belief contexts.

The primary reason Millianism and Contextualism draw the most attention is the common opinion that they are the least bad approaches to belief ascription. Everything else, Fregeanism in particular, is so loaded with apparently insurmountable problems that most philosophers have given up digging in those mines. This may be a pretty good reason for focusing on Millianism and Contextualism; after all, what else are we to do when puzzling about belief ascription? But it’s clear that the historical facts don’t justify believing the disjunction of Millianism and Contextualism. All we have justification for is our research choice.

In this essay I present a proof of that disjunction. More accurately, I prove that either names are Millian, so the two belief sentences relate the same proposition to S, or our intuitions regarding belief ascriptions are hopelessly inaccurate. If it’s the latter option that’s correct, then philosophers should simply stop working on belief ascription entirely, as their reliance on such intuitions is enormous. Thus, we have the final conclusion: if you want to work on belief ascription at all, then you simply must be a Millian about names and many general terms.

 

"Disquotation and Substitutivity," Mind, 109 (2000), 519-25.

Millianism is reasonable; that is, it is reasonable to think that all there is to the semantic value of a proper name is its referent. But Millianism appears to be undermined by the falsehood of Substitutivity, the principle that interchanging coreferential proper names in an intentional context cannot change the truth value of the resulting belief report. Mary might be perfectly rational in assenting to 'Twain was a great writer' as well as 'Clemens was not a great writer'. Her confusion does not seem to preclude her from assenting to those sentences in a normal, understanding manner. That is, Assent-for-Mary is true: Mary can knowingly assent to 'Twain was a great writer' and 'Clemens was not a great writer'. By Disquotation-the rough principle that if in ordinary circumstances one assents to "P", then one believes that P-Mary believes that Twain was a great writer and she believes that it's not the case that Clemens was a great writer. If Substitutivity were true, then since 'Mary believes that Twain was a great writer' is true, 'Mary believes that Clemens was a great writer' would have to be true too. But then Mary would amount to a refutation of the plausible principle Consistency that, roughly put, no rational adult can have occurrently held and reflectively considered and compared contradictory beliefs. Since Disquotation, Assent-for-Mary, and Consistency are true, Substitutivity has to go.

With regard to this historically and justifiably persuasive line of reasoning, Kripke's (1979) arguments using his belief puzzle about Peter and Paderewski can be best construed as having three primary conclusions: (1) The conjunction of Assent-for-Mary, Disquotation, and Consistency is false (since they lead to a contradiction in the Paderewski story). (2) If that conjunction is false, then the traditional anti-Millian argument summarized above cannot be tinkered with to become compelling and retain its anti-Substitutivity (and anti-Millian) conclusion. (3) If that conjunction is false, then since it is so intuitive, we have a deep philosophical puzzle about belief.

Joseph Moore (1999) agrees with (1) but rejects (2). His rejection of (2), the most important part of his article, is based on his belief that even though plausible interpretations of Disquotation are false-so (1) is true-there is a way to alter the traditional anti-Millian argument so that it remains compelling without using Disquotation. I attempt to refute both his claims.

 

"Defending the Defense," Mind, 108 (1999), 563-6.

This is a reply to Peter Graham's 1999 Mind criticism of my 1998 Mind article "Defending Millian Theories".

 

"Defending Millian Theories," Mind, 107 (1998), 703-27. Reprinted in The General Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, Victor Sanchez Valencia, ed., Ashgate Publishers, 2002.

In this article I offer a three-pronged defense of Millian theories, all of which share the rough idea that all there is to a proper name is its referent, so it has no additional sense. I first give what I believe to be the first correct analysis of Kripke's puzzle and its anti-Fregean lessons. The main lesson is that the Fregean's arguments against Millianism and for the existence of semantically relevant senses (that is, individuative elements of propositions or belief contents that are sensitive to our varying personal conceptions of the referents of those elements) are viciously circular. Thus, the Fregean must give new arguments for her central claims. Second, I offer an original, positive argument for the Millian idea that the thoughts that Cicero was bald and that Tully was bald are identical. Incredibly, the argument appeals to nothing but highly intuitive, pre-theoretical principles regarding folk psychological usage-traditionally the source of Fregean intuitions. Third, I examine one of the most important recent papers on Kripke's puzzle, that by David Sosa (1996). Sosa claims to have found a way to turn the tables on Kripke's puzzle by using it to argue against Millian theories. I argue that Sosa's argument on behalf of the Fregean is question-begging. I conclude that Millian theories can be seriously defended without any use of theoretical constructs such as guises or Russellian propositions, and Fregeans need to start over arguing for their theory's central claims.

 

"On the Explanatory Deficiencies of Linguistic Content," Philosophical Studies, 93 (1999), 45-75.

The Burge-Putnam thought experiments have generated the thesis that beliefs are not fixed by the constitution of the body. However, many philosophers have thought that if this is true then there must be another content-like property. Even if the contents of our attitudes such as the one in 'believes that aluminum is a light metal', do not supervene on our physical makeups, nevertheless people who are physical duplicates must be the same when it comes to evaluating their rationality and explaining their actions. I argue that the considerations motivating this view are best handled with just the ordinary 'that'-clause contents.

 

"Contradictory Belief and Epistemic Closure Principles," Mind and Language, 14 (1999), 203-26.

Kripke's puzzle has puts pressure on the intuitive idea that one can believe that Superman can fly without believing that Clark Kent can fly. If this idea is wrong then many theories of belief and belief ascription are built from faulty data. I argue that part of the proper analysis of Kripke's puzzle refutes the closure principles that show up in many important arguments in epistemology, e.g., if S is rational and knows that P and that P entails Q, then if she considers these two beliefs and Q, then she is in a position to know that Q.

 

"Arguing for Frege’s Fundamental Principle," Mind and Language, 13 (1998), 341-6.

Saul Kripke's puzzle about belief demonstrates the lack of soundness of the traditional argument for the Fregean fundamental principle that the sentences 'S believes that a is F' and 'S believes that b is F' can differ in truth value even if a = b. This principle is a crucial premise in the traditional Fregean argument for the existence of semantically relevant senses, individuative elements of beliefs that are sensitive to our varying conceptions of what the beliefs are about. Joseph Owens (1995) has offered a new argument for this fundamental principle, one that is not subject to Kripke's criticisms. I argue that even though Owens' argument avoids Kripke's criticisms, it has other flaws.

 

"The Twin-Earth Thought Experiments," a guided tour entry in A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind, a publication of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rome, III, 1998.

This is a long "companion" article on most aspects of the Twin-Earth thought experiments devised by Tyler Burge and Hilary Putnam.

 

"Plato's Response to the Third Man Argument in the Paradoxical Exercise of the Parmenides," Ancient Philosophy, 16 (1996), 47-64.

The long second part of the Parmenides includes many fantastic, apparently contradiction-ridden statements. The problem of formulating a convincing interpretation of the dialogue that makes sense of these statements has proven so difficult that it has simply been ignored by most commentators on the third man argument (or arguments) found in the first part of the dialogue. This by itself may be a serious defect of these analyses of the third man argument given by these scholars. For Plato made it clear (135d) that he thought the truth regarding the problems of the first part of the dialogue—such as that of the third man—is to be found by undertaking the intellectual ‘exercise’ demonstrated by Parmenides in the second part of the dialogue. And it is also clear that after writing the Parmenides Plato continued to endorse a theory of Forms. Thus, he must have thought that the problems brought up in the first part of the dialogue were to be treated utilizing the considerations from the second—treated in such a way that the problems do not rule out a theory of Forms continuous with that presented in the earlier dialogues.

Despite the best efforts of the ablest scholars, most of the arguments in the latter part of the dialogue have appeared to be incomprehensible. Constance Meinwald (1991) has offered a new and perhaps revolutionary interpretation of the dialogue that takes Plato at his word in interpreting his stance toward the problems raised in the first few pages of the dialogue. Meinwald claims it is probable that all the apparent contradictions in the Parmenidean dialectic are just that, merely apparent. Furthermore, both in that book and in ‘Goodbye to the Third Man’ (1992) she offers a new solution to the problem of the third man as one of the centerpieces of her interpretation of the dialogue. She also claims that Plato implicitly endorsed it.

I will first show that if her interpretation of the Parmenides is accurate, then there are two kinds of Forms for which her solution to the third man problem fails, those that have species and those for which there hold a certain sort of true self-predications—in her scheme, pros ta alla self-predications. (On her interpretation the Forms Being, Rest, Eternality, and the One, for example, satisfy this latter condition.)

Two possibilities should be kept in mind: (a) Meinwald’s interpretation may be the first accurate and thorough exposition of the Parmenides but Plato’s response in that dialogue to the third man argument may be flawed in ways unrecognized by Plato, or (b) Plato indicated some other way of dealing with these special flaws. I will offer reasons to think that option (b) is the correct one. I argue that if Meinwald’s interpretation is accurate, then right in the Parmenides Plato solved the problem of the third man in the manner suggested independently by some scholars in this century.