The Measure of Knowledge | download
.pdf
forthcoming in Noûs
Abstract: What is it to know more? By what metric should the quantity of one's knowledge be measured? I start by examining and arguing against a very natural approach to the measure of knowledge, one on which how much is a matter of how many. I then turn to the quasi-spatial notion of counterfactual distance and show how a model that appeals to distance avoids the problems that plague appeals to cardinality. But such a model faces fatal problems of its own. Reflection on what the distance model gets right and where it goes wrong motivates a third approach, which appeals not to cardinality, nor to counterfactual distance, but to similarity. I close the paper by advocating this model and briefly discussing some of its significance for epistemic normativity. In particular, I argue that the 'trivial truths' objection to the view that truth is the goal of inquiry rests on an unstated, but false, assumption about the measure of knowledge, and suggest that a similarity model preserves truth as the aim of belief in an intuitively satisfying way.
The
Cogito and the Metaphysics of Mind |
download
.pdf
Philosophical Studies, 130:2 August 2006, pp.
247-271
Abstract: This paper demonstrates that there is a cogito-style argument for substance
dualism that has nothing to do with a failure of entailment between the
physical and the phenomenological. The argument is therefore distinct
both from Descarates's argument for dualism in the Sixth Meditation and
from the conceivability arguments pressed by contemporary anti-physicalists.
The upshot of the paper is that we face two bad options: we can either
give up Descartes's epistemological claim, that introspection affords
us absolute certainty of our existence, or accept his metaphysical claim,
that subjects are thinking things logically distinct from bodies.
Since writing this paper, I have come to realize that the problem the
paper generates arises only if we take the temporal character of experience
at face value. That is, if conscious experience is instantiated as it
seems to be, then we face the uncomfortable
dilemma the "Cogito" paper argues we do. However, there is an
alternative way to conceive of how experience is instantiated, which blocks
the argument. This way I develop in a second paper, "The Whence and Whither of Experience".
The Whence and Whither of Experience | draft
available via email
Abstract: It is natural to think that our experiences fill durations. Consider a toothache, or a feeling of intense pleasure, or the sensation you would have if you looked impassively at an expanse of colour. In each case, the experience seems to fill time by being present throughout some period. This is a natural way to think of experience, but it is in deep conflict with the view that physical processes are ultimately responsible for conscious experience. The problem is that physical processes are related to durations in a very different way – not by being wholly present at each instant or sub-duration, but by having temporal parts that are. There is a choice to be made, therefore, between preserving this common way of thinking of experience and preserving the fundamentality of processes. The first option holds fixed the view of experiences as occurring throughout periods and takes this to constrain the category of entity to which they are identical, or upon which they supervene. The second option abandons this common view of experience by taking up a representationalist perspective. But the second option is ultimately the only option, since only it can make sense of the facts of our experience.
|