I’m working on a paper about epistemic possibility, and I need some help. Can someone tell me what epistemic possibility is? (This is a trick question.) To show why this is puzzling, here is a ‘problem case’: S, a person … Continue reading
Somewhere between the second and third editions of Theory of Knowledge, Chisholm changed his account of the epistemic goal, from believing the truth and avoiding the false to believing rationally and not believing the irrational. I never could quite see … Continue reading
In an earlier post, I quote Williamson’s argument why ‘wrong’ is not a contextual term: In cases of decision-making, one context is distinguished above all others: that of the agent at the moment of action. The primary question is whether … Continue reading
Some of the recent discussion of the Gettier problem has suggested that we simply abandon the intuitions that Gettier cases are not cases of knowledge. The plausibility of doing so depends on how obvious it is, regarding a particular case, … Continue reading
Here’s a problematic line of thought about the main competitors in confirmation theory and Bayesianism in particular, arising from Branden Fitelson’s nice paper here. Consider the following theories of confirmation. First, the law of likelihood preferred by likelihoodists such as … Continue reading
I’ve been reading some of Branden Fitelson’s bayesian papers recently, (one in particular on the issues between likelihoodists and bayesians is fantastic), and came across a review by him, Stephens, and Sober of Dembski’s book on design theories (F/S/S, for … Continue reading
Just a quick note on spam here. I’ve put in place a filter that stops spam, and sometimes when you comment (as happened to Keith this morning), your comment gets queued as spam that I have to approve before it … Continue reading
In an earlier post, I quoted the following passage in which Williamson defends anti-contextualism about the concept of what is right or wrong: In cases of decision-making, one context is distinguished above all others: that of the agent at the … Continue reading
Here’s a rather lighter issue than the recent posts, suitable for (some of our) weekend activities, an interesting epistemic issue in ordinary life: cases in which one disagrees with sports officials. I’ll use a baseball example, one where the umpire … Continue reading
Here, in “Knowledge, Context and the Agent’s Point of View,” Timothy Williamson defends a view surprisingly akin to Foley’s view. Williamson defends the view as a response to contextualism, and begins by using the notion of an action being wrong, … Continue reading