work

[Note: This page is under construction. Some titles are being altered to thwart attempts to determine the identity of work under review.]

Published Work

Does Conceivability Entail Possibility? (pdf)
The Reasoner 1 (5)
Not obviously.

From E = K to Scepticism? (pdf)
The Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming)
According to Williamson, your evidence consists of all and only what you know (‘E = K’). An implication of E = K is that if you know p, the evidential probability of p on your evidence is 1. So, if Williamson is right, a necessary condition on knowing p is that the evidential probability of p on your evidence is 1. This suggests that Williamson is committed to a kind of infallibilism and that he ought to be a sceptic. I argue that E = K carries with it no untoward sceptical implications. Not all forms of infallibilism engender scepticism.

The Externalist’s Demon (pdf)
Canadian Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming)
Intuitions about systematic deception are thought to motivate an internalist conception of epistemic justification on which the justification of our beliefs cannot turn on anything outside the head. I shall explain why these intuitions are perfectly compatible with even radical forms of externalism. Those who argue to the contrary are arguing from a set of assumptions about the logic of justification ascription we have no good reason to accept and very good reason to reject. On the standard view, an assertion to the effect that someone is justified in believing a claim logically entails that there is sufficient justification for belief in that claim. This is a mistake. It is a mistake if we think of justifications as defenses. Among the costs of adopting such a view is that it prevents us from making sense of the distinction between excuses and justifications. Modifying that view and drawing a distinction between the justification ascriptions that express our evaluative judgments concerning believers and the justification ascriptions that express our evaluative judgments concerning beliefs allows us to see how internalists and externalists are each right in their own way.

‘Ought’, ‘Can’, and Practical Reasons (pdf)
American Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming)
Some have argued that the ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle can be derived from some relatively uncontroversial claims about reasons for action. If you ought to do something, there is a reason for you to do it. There can be reason for you to perform an action only if the action is a potential actions of yours. An action can be a potential action of yours only if you can perform that very action. Hence, it cannot be that you ought to do what you cannot do. Focusing on cases of conflicting prima facie duties, I argue that reasons do not behave in the way they must for the argument to work. Moreover, I argue that if we think of reasons as ‘favorers’, we never should have thought that reasons are reasons only for potential actions as considerations can count in favor of something even if it is not a potential action of ours.

Unpublished Work

It’s the End of the World as We Know It (pdf)

The Myth of the False, Justified Belief (Short) (pdf)
This is the paper I’ll be presenting at the Eastern Division Meetings of the APA come December.

Axionable Intelligence (pdf)
When is it proper epistemically to act from the belief that p is true? Some say you oughtn’t act from p unless you know p. Others say there is nothing wrong with acting from that which you are justified in believing. I shall explain why neither account is right. Rather than think of axionable intelligence in terms of knowledge or propositions you are justified in believing, I shall argue that if there is a general characterization of axionable intelligence, it is proper to act on the belief that p iff that belief faithfully and faultlessly represents the world.

The Coherence of Inversion (pdf)
Is it behaviorally undetectable spectrum inversion possible? I do not know. I do think that recent attempts to demonstrate its incoherence have failed. When we see why, we can see how to reconcile inversion with physicalist, functionalist, and representationalist assumptions about perceptual consciousness. [I’ll present a version of this at the upcoming APA in Chicago. Don’t miss it!]

Evidence and Armchair Access (pdf)
It seems that externalism about evidence comes into conflict with an independently motivated claim about the kind of access we have to our evidence. It seems that I’m far less prone to making mistakes about the evidence I have for believing contingent propositions about the external world than I am to making mistakes about the evidence I have for such propositions. If I can access my evidence from my armchair, it seems I cannot know from the armchair that externalism about evidence is true. In this paper, I shall argue that the principle of armchair access is itself unmotivated and that externalism about evidence is compatible with more modest and more plausible claims about the kind of access we have to our evidence. I shall also explain why externalism about evidence is compatible with internalism about epistemic rationality.

Evidentialism’s Undoing (pdf)
According to the Evidentialist, the facts that determine whether a belief is justified strongly supervene on facts about an individual’s evidence. If anything has earned the right to be called the ‘default view’ of epistemic justification, this is the view. In spite of its popularity, the view cannot be right. We can distinguish two versions of Evidentialism. We shall see that the argument from error shows that the first version of Evidentialism is incoherent. We shall see that the argument from accidentality shows that the second version of Evidentialism clashes with intuition. The Evidentialist is wedded to a certain account of what normative reasons must do in establishing the deontic status of a belief and this account is untenable. Fixing that account, we arrive at the proper analysis of justified belief. I won’t ruin the surprise and tell you what it is until the end.

Factivity (pdf)
There are false beliefs, there are justified beliefs, and never the two shall meet.

Moore’s Paradox and the Norms of Belief (pdf)
(R&R at the Australasian Journal of Philosophy)
Although it is possible that Custer died at Little Big Horn without my having known it, it seems contradictory to assert that Custer died at Little Big Horn and assert that I do not know that this is so. It also seems absurd to believe what this assertion seems to express. The apparent contradiction associated with Moorean absurd assertions and thoughts is often explained in terms of an individual’s consciously contravening the fundamental norm(s) of theoretical reason. Working from the assumption that this approach is the correct one for solving Moore’s Paradox, I argue that the fundamental norm of belief is a truth norm. The fundamental norm of belief is not the knowledge norm. If I am right and the knowledge account is open to objection and unmotivated and we ought to think of belief as a state governed by the truth norm, I can offer an account of justified belief. On the account defended here, a belief is justified iff it faithfully and faultlessly represents how things are.