The following are brief summaries of some of the papers I have written. The quality of these papers varies quite a bit. Occasionally, I revisit the issues raised in these papers and revise their contents. The month and year listed next to a paper title indicates the date of the last revision of that paper that I can recall making. If you would like to read any of the papers whose abstracts appear below, please e-mail me (see my index or cv for the address) and I will send you my most recent version of the requested papers. I welcome any helpful criticism.
Minimal Truth and Expressivist Quasi-Realism (December 2001)
I discuss Simon Blackburn's expressivist view of normative evaluations (expressivism) in combination with his minimalist view of truth (minimalism). In the first section, I consider and reject an argument that expressivism and minimalism are not compatible. In the second section, I discuss the notion that truth is a gappy predicate of sentences and suggest that this puts pressure on the expressivist to reject minimalism. In the third section, there is a rather fuzzy discussion of the effect that minimalism has on a distinction between descriptive and non-descriptive expressions, a distinction built into the expressivism. In the conclusion, I gesture towards an unresolved problem for expressivism.
Prediction and The Strong Advantage Thesis (January 2002)
Philosophers of science frequently ascribe special epistemic significance to successful predictions. In his Inference to the Best Explanation, Peter Lipton makes a case for what he calls the "Strong Advantage" thesis (SA): "[A] successful prediction tends to provide more reason to believe a theory than the same datum would have provided for the same theory, if that datum had been accommodated instead" (Lipton, 1991, 134). I argue that SA is inconsistent with Lipton's own example of "twin scientists." An examination of Lipton's argument in the light of Bayesian considerations regarding the relation of theory and evidence clarifies the intuitions that lead us, mistakenly, to endorse SA [A version of this paper was presented at the Sixth Annual Graduate Student Philosophy Conference at Brown University on February 17, 2002.]
Aristotle on Nature: On the Soul and Functionalism (June 2003)
In the last 35 years, various forms of functionalism have come to form a very strong intellectual current within philosophy of mind scholarship. A central thesis of functionalism is that those activities that define mental life are "compositionally plastic": i.e., a mind (or mental state) is instantiated in any system whose structure of input/output relations is qualitatively identical to that of the human central nervous system. In "Philosophy and Our Mental Life," Hilary Putnam took stock of functionalist analyses of the mental and cited Aristotle’s hylomorphism with respect to the soul (psuchē) as amenable to functionalist interpretation (Nussbaum and Putnam). In the wake of Putnam’s remarks, we have a fairly large number of responses, some supportive and some less so.
I focus on Aristotle's On the Soul, with some glances at the Physics and Metaphysics. Doing so, I think a few interpretive and philosophical questions may be answered. What is the significance of Aristotle’s so-called "homonymy principle" and does it make a functionalist reading of his psychology impossible? What is the relation between form and function, in their technical senses? How does the account of rational soul fit together with the account of perceptive soul? As a consequence of surveying these issues, I conclude that Aristotle is not putting forth an account that can be squared with the commitments of functionalism in On the Soul.
Schellenberg's Argument from Divine Hiddenness (May 2004)
In this paper, I discuss and criticize the following argument for atheism, which I attribute to J. L. Schellenberg:
1. If God exists, then God is perfectly loving.
2. If God is perfectly loving, then, for every human H, God seeks a personal relationship with H.
3. For every H, if God seeks a personal relationship with H, then: for every time t, either (i) there is a personal relationship between God and H at t, or (ii) H is culpably incapable of a relationship with God at t.
4. For every H, and every t, if there is a personal relationship between God and H at t, then H believes (at t) that God exists.
5. If God exists, then: for every H, and every t, either (i) H believes (at t) that God exists, or (ii) H is culpably incapable of a relationship with God at t.
6. There is an H and a t such that H is inculpably incapable of a relationship with God at t and H does not believe (at t) that God exists.
7. God does not exist.
I try to cast doubt on premises (2), (3), (4) and (6), paying special attention to premise (3). Among other things, I borrow a proposal from Daniel Howard-Snyder regarding a rationale for denying (3).
Reid on the Immediacy of Perception (May 2004)
In this paper, I explain and offer some defense for Thomas Reid’s theory of sense perception. The explanation will have two parts. In the first section, I focus on Reid’s account of perception as it appears in An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense and Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. In the second section, I focus on Reid’s account of sensation as signifying or suggesting to the mind external qualities of bodies. Having explained these two aspects of Reid’s theory and attempting to unify them, I consider two puzzles for his view, each of which threatens to show that Reid’s insistence on the immediacy of perception is incompatible with his theory of sensations as signs. In the first of these sections, I consider an objection to the epistemic immediacy of perception. In the second of these sections, I consider an objection to the intentional immediacy of perception. I attempt to answer both of these objections in a manner consistent with a plausible reading of Reid’s theory.
Is There a Justification of Deduction? (February 2005)
This paper is perhaps unusually difficult to summarize. I do a very poor job of clarifying the issues regarding a so-called "justification of deduction." In particular, I tried to clarify what is the desired "justification" and what it is that is supposed to be justified. The paper does not seem to be a total loss, so it takes its place among the others listed here.
The Consequence Argument and Rule Beta (November 2005)
Peter van Inwagen, in "The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism" (1975) as well as in the third chapter of An Essay on Free Will (1983), offers an argument to show that determinism and free will are incompatible. He summarizes his now famous consequence argument (CA) as follows:
"If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what went on before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us" (56).
In (1983), van Inwagen presents three arguments as distinct formulations of CA. Since the three differ with respect to their vocabulary and structure, discussion of CA seems to have fragmented into sub-debates concerning the merits of the three individual formulations. The third formulation of CA has received quite a bit of attention and criticism. Although it is hard to ignore the other formulations, I focus my own discussion of CA by joining the debate over the third formulation.
The third argument invokes a rule of inference (rule b) that has been controverted, modified in response to apparent refutation and controverted even more. Although there are lots of difficulties attending the details of the logic of ability, I think that CA constitutes a cogent argument for the incompatibility of determinism and free will. However, there are lots of puzzling issues in the neighborhood. In this paper, I trace some of the discussion of b, including a modified versions (due to modifications in the interpretation of its parts), and its role in CA. I will propose a certain version of b that satisfies the following three conditions: (i) it is supported by ordinary ways of explaining inability, (ii) it is valid and (iii) it can be adopted into a sound formulation of CA.
A Critical Look at Mark Kaplan's Decision Theory as Philosophy (December 2005)
In Decision Theory as Philosophy, Mark Kaplan reissues a number of perennial questions within decision theory and epistemology, particularly regarding the relevance of decision theory to epistemology and the scope of an epistemology informed by a "modest" Bayesian decision theory. Much of Kaplan’s book represents a challenge to what he calls the "Orthodox" Bayesian theory of decision and evidence. His arguments turn positive in the fourth chapter, in which he argues for the "Assertion View" of belief – an attempted reconciliation of the categorical notion of belief (as distinct from disbelief) with that of confidence, which comes in degrees. The approach to epistemology manifest in Decision Theory, while commendable in some respects, suffers fundamentally from its methodological commitment to the primacy of preference principles over and above distinctively epistemic principles. But to express this last misgiving is just to doubt whether decision theory has much of its own to contribute to epistemology.
I have divided this critique of Kaplan’s version of subjective Bayesian epistemology into three sections. In the first, I defend what Kaplan avows as his "a priorist" approach to describing rational constraints on belief against epistemological naturalism. In the second section, I uncover some problems (or perhaps, ambivalence) in Kaplan’s discussion of diachronic constraints on confidence-assignments. Indeed, we will see that, despite Kaplan’s rejection of them, diachronic constraints are deducible from his decision theory, leaving the reader to wonder all the more at Kaplan’s thoughts on "Better Evidence" (pp. 75-85). Finally, in the third section, I attack the Assertion View of belief. Towards this end, I show that the Assertion view does not have the advantage over all other accounts of belief – vis à vis the paradoxes of the lottery and preface – as Kaplan thinks it does. Following this, I show that the Assertion View cannot mitigate its strangeness by serving as a guard against the skeptical anti-realist argument of Bas van Fraassen. [A version of this paper was published in Fall-Winter 2003 issue of Philo.]
Noninferential Justification and Internalism (December 2005)
Michael Bergmann has offered what he claims is a powerful objection to all internalist accounts of justification, specially targeting the internalist accounts of justification given by Paul Moser, Laurence BonJour and Richard Fumerton. His objection, inspired by Sellars, poses a sort of dilemma with four premises, which I reformulate in the first section of this paper. Although the objection is supposed to apply to internalist accounts of justification, in general, it is especially relevant to the internalist analysis of noninferential justification. In this paper, I describe some internalist accounts of noninferential justification. I will evaluate these theories in light of the objection and related considerations.
In the first section, I examine premises (I) through (III) of Bergmann's argument. I object to premise (I) on the grounds that it misclassifies the mentalist account of justification (defended by Earl Conee and Richard Feldman) as an externalist theory. I think that his underlying reason for the misclassification may have some bearing on the plausibility of premises (IV) and (V). I do not try to cast doubt on (II), but it does require some explaining, especially since BonJour’s account could be construed as a denial of (II). I think BonJour is better understood as not denying (II) but claiming that the required awareness is nonconceptual. With respect to premise (III), I quibble with Bergmann’s hasty characterization of conceptual awareness as being the sort of thing that, like belief, requires justification to play a role in justifying beliefs.
In the second section of the paper, I will focus my attention on premises (IV) and (V), making use of some interesting arguments given by Ernest Sosa to explain the significance of what Bergmann dubs the "Subject’s Perspective" objection. That is, my attempted defense of an internalist account of noninferential justification will assume that (I), (II) and (III) are true since it is my primary intention to apply this objection to the accounts of noninferential justification offered by BonJour, Fumerton and Timothy McGrew. I attempt to show that a nonconceptual awareness theory of noninferential justification (e.g., an acquaintance theory) can withstand Bergmann’s objection. Finally, I discuss what appear to be drawbacks to the surviving general internalist account of noninferential justification. [I would very much like to edit this paper.]
Nonmonotonic Consequence: Qualitative and Probabilistic Approaches (January 2006)
Following the lead of some philosophers and computer scientists, I explore extensions of the notions of proof and consequence (or, redefinitions of the terms "proof" and "consequence") in order to characterize those arguments that appear in the domain of empirical science and ordinary life. After all, some of these arguments, though they are not "deductively valid" in a classical semantic or proof-theoretic sense, seem reasonable. I use the terms "reasonable proof" and "reasonable consequence" to denote an extended notion of proof and consequence. I discuss and criticize a qualitative approach to defining "reasonable consequence" proposed by Sarit Krauss, Daniel Lehmann and Menachem Magidor in their paper "Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Preferential Models and Cumulative Logics." These criticisms suggests a better approach to defining "reasonable consequence," which is explained as depending on probabilistic relations. In the concluding remarks, I offer (without solution) some puzzles which seem to indicate limits on the formal representation of reasonable consequence.
A Priori Evidence (January 2006)
I propose an extension of evidentialism in accounting for a priori justification. I distinguish (having) evidence and the relation of support holding between evidence and propositions. I consider and criticize the accounts of a priori evidence offered by George Bealer and Laurence BonJour. I offer a third view of a priori evidence, which I take to be an improvement on Bealer and BonJour's views, according to which having a priori evidence consists in a subject's being conscious of, or acquainted with, some facts. A few objections are all-too-briefly considered.
Knowledge-Closure and Evidential Defeaters (December 2007)
In this paper, our main purpose is to understand and evaluate two objections to a very plausible epistemic closure principle – viz., (CLOSURE)
(CLOSURE) For any subject S and propositions P and Q and time t, if S knows (P and P entails Q) at t and believes Q at t solely on the basis of a correct deduction from that bit of knowledge, then S knows Q at t.
Regarding the first objection, I argue that possibilities in which a subject has some evidence that appears to rebut or undercut a proposition he has deduced from what he knows do not pose a threat to (CLOSURE). Regarding the second objection, by contrast, I conclude that there are possibilities in which a subject has some evidence that bears on the evidential status of the deduced proposition and that at least one such possibility appears to show (CLOSURE) is false.