Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Lewis thought concessive knowledge attributions (e.g., 'I know that Harry is a zebra, but it might be that he's just a cleverly disguised mule') caused serioustrouble for fallibilists. As he saw it, CKAs are overt statements of the fallibilist view and they are contradictory. Dougherty and Rysiew have argued that CKAsare pragmatically defective rather than semantically defective. Stanley thinks that their pragmatic response to Lewis fails, but the fallibilist cause is not lost because Lewis was wrong about the commitments of fallibilism. There are problems with Dougherty and Rysiew's response to Stanley and there are problems with Stanley's response to Lewis. I'll offer a defense of fallibilism of my own and show that fallibilisms needn't worry about CKAs.

In Chapter 1 of Evidence and Evolution, Sober (2008) defends a Likelihodist account of favoring. The main tenet of Likelihoodism is the so-called Law of Likelihood. In this note, I explain why the Law of Likelihood fails to undergird an adequate explication of favoring.

This response to Sober's (2008) Evidence and Evolution draws out and criticizes some consequences of his analysis because of its reliance on a likehhoodframework for adjucating the dispute between (Intelligent Design) creationism and evolution. In particular, Sober's analysis does not allow it to be formally claimed that evolutionary theory better explains living phenomena than Intelligent Design and makes irrelevant the contribution of the theory of evolution by natural selection to assessments of the status of the argument from design. Finally, a rudimentary alternative framework for theory confirmation is presented here which avoids these conclusions by rejecting likelihoodism and deploying multiple criteria to the problem of scientific theory choice.

This paper introduces a modal epistemology that centers on inference to the best explanation (i.e. abduction). In introducing this abduction-centered modal epistemology, the paper has two main goals. First, it seeks to provide reasons for pursuing an abduction-centered modal epistemology by showing that this epistemology aids a popular stance on the mind-body problem and allows an appealing approach to modality. Second, the paper seeks to show that an abduction-centered modal epistemology can work by showing that abduction can estabhsh claims about necessity/possibility (i.e. modal claims)—where 'necessity' and 'possibility' denote metaphysical necessity and possibility, ways things may or may not have been given how they actually are.

I argue that you can have a priori knowledge of propositions that neither are nor appear necessarily true. You can know a priori contingent propositions that yourecognize as such. This overturns a standard view in contemporary epistemology and the traditional view of the a priori, which restrict a priori knowledge to necessary truths, or at least to truths that appear necessary.

I develop a Russellian representationalist account of size experience that draws importantly from contemporary vision science research on size perception. Thecore view is that size is experienced in 'body-scaled' units. So, an object might, say, be experienced as two eye-level units high. The view is sharpened in response to Thompson's (forthcoming) Doubled Earth example. This example is presented by Thompson as part of an argument for a Fregean view of size experience. But I argue that the Russellian view I develop handles the Doubled Earth example in a natural and illuminating way, thereby avoiding the need to posit irreducible experiential 'modes of presentation'. I also address a kind of neo-Fregean 'reference-fixing' view of size experience, that shares features with the Russellian view developed. I give reasons for favoring the latter. Finally, I argue that Peacocke's claim that spatial experience is 'unit free' is not persuasive.