•  35
    The Projectability Challenge to Moral Naturalism
    with Terence Cuneo and Andrew Reisner
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 17 (5): 471-498. 2020.
    The Projectability Challenge states that a metaethical view must explain how ordinary agents can, on the basis of moral experience and reflection, accurately and justifiably apply moral concepts to novel situations. In this paper, we argue for two primary claims. First, paradigm nonnaturalism can satisfactorily answer the projectability challenge. Second, it is unclear whether there is a version of moral naturalism that can satisfactorily answer the challenge. The conclusion we draw is that ther…Read more
  •  34
    True Enough, by Catherine Z. Elgin
    Mind 129 (513): 256-268. 2020.
    True Enough, by ElginCatherine Z. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. Pp. 352.
  •  266
    Trusting Moral Intuitions
    with Terence Cuneo and Russ Shafer‐Landau
    Noûs (4): 956-984. 2020.
    Noûs, EarlyView.
  •  113
    Method in the Service of Progress
    Analytic Philosophy 60 (3): 179-205. 2019.
    Analytic Philosophy, EarlyView.
  •  84
    Review of True Enough, by Catherine Elgin. Reconstructs three pillars of Elgin's view (focused on truth enough, understanding, and holism); summarizes the book's main arguments against veritism and factivism; presents a general recipe for responding to those arguments; raises several objections to the view.
  •  326
    Know-How and Concept Possession
    Philosophical Studies 136 (1). 2007.
    We begin with a puzzle: why do some know-how attributions entail ability attributions while others do not? After rejecting the tempting response that know-how attributions are ambiguous, we argue that a satisfactory answer to the puzzle must acknowledge the connection between know-how and concept possession (specifically, reasonable conceptual mastery, or understanding). This connection appears at first to be grounded solely in the cognitive nature of certain activities. However, we show that, c…Read more
  •  80
    Practical Perception and Intelligent Action
    Philosophical Issues 26 (1): 25-58. 2016.
    Perceiving things to be a certain way may in some cases lead directly to action that is intelligent. This phenomenon has not often been discussed, though it is of broad philosophical interest. It also raises a difficult question: how can perception produce intelligent action? After clarifying the question—which I call the question of “practical perception”—and explaining what is required for an adequate answer, I critically examine two candidate answers drawn from work on related topics: the fir…Read more
  •  117
    Perhaps it is a pity that the Theory of Knowledge and the Theory of Conduct have fallen into separate compartments. (It certainly was not so in Socrates’ time, as his interest in the relation between eidos and technê bears witness.) If we studied them together, perhaps we might have a better understanding of both. H.H. Price, Thinking and Representation..
  •  294
    How philosophers use intuition and 'intuition'
    Philosophical Studies 171 (3): 555-576. 2014.
    Whither the philosophy of intuition?Herman Cappelen’s Philosophy Without Intuitions (PWI) is a novel study in philosophical sociology—or, as Cappelen at one point suggests, “intellectual anthropology” (96).All undated references are to Cappelen (2012). Its target is the thesis that intuition is central, in the descriptive sense that contemporary analytic philosophers rely on intuitions for evidence—or, more generally, positive epistemic status. Cappelen labels the target thesis Centrality.If Cen…Read more
  •  326
    The folk on knowing how
    with Marc A. Moffett and Jennifer C. Wright
    Philosophical Studies 142 (3). 2009.
    It has been claimed that the attempt to analyze know-how in terms of propositional knowledge over-intellectualizes the mind. Exploiting the methods of so-called “experimental philosophy”, we show that the charge of over-intellectualization is baseless. Contra neo-Ryleans, who analyze know-how in terms of ability, the concrete-case judgments of ordinary folk are most consistent with the view that there exists a set of correct necessary and sufficient conditions for know-how that does not invoke a…Read more
  •  96
    A Noetic Theory of Understanding and Intuition as Sense-Maker
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (7-8): 633-668. 2015.
    The notion of a non-sensory mental state or event that plays a prominent role in coming to understand, an epistemic achievement distinct from mere knowledge, featured prominently in historical writings on philosophy, and philosophical methodology. It is, however, completely absent from contemporary discussions of the subject. This paper argues that intuition plays an epistemic role in understanding, including philosophical understanding, and offers an explanation of how intuition manages to play…Read more
  •  194
    Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action (edited book)
    Oxford University Press USA. 2011.
    Knowledge how to do things is a pervasive and central element of everyday life. Yet it raises many difficult questions that must be answered by philosophers and cognitive scientists aspiring to understand human cognition and agency. What is the connection between knowing how and knowing that? Is knowledge how simply a type of ability or disposition to act? Is there an irreducibly practical form of knowledge? What is the role of the intellect in intelligent action? This volume contains fifteen st…Read more
  •  157
    An overview of philosophical work on the distinction between knowledge how and knowledge that, focusing on what it means to say that they are 'distinct', and on what is at stake in the debate between intellectualists and anti-intellectualists about knowledge how.
  •  456
    The Intellectual Given
    Mind 124 (495): 707-760. 2015.
    Intuition is sometimes derided as an abstruse or esoteric phenomenon akin to crystal-ball gazing. Such derision appears to be fuelled primarily by the suggestion, evidently endorsed by traditional rationalists such as Plato and Descartes, that intuition is a kind of direct, immediate apprehension akin to perception. This paper suggests that although the perceptual analogy has often been dismissed as encouraging a theoretically useless metaphor, a quasi-perceptualist view of intuition may enable …Read more
  •  7
    Nonpropositional Intellectualism
    In John Bengson & Marc A. Moffett (eds.), Knowing How, Oxford University Press. pp. 161-195. 2011.
  •  154
    Asymmetries in judgments of responsibility and intentional action
    with Jennifer Cole Wright
    Mind and Language 24 (1): 24-50. 2009.
    Abstract: Recent experimental research on the 'Knobe effect' suggests, somewhat surprisingly, that there is a bi-directional relation between attributions of intentional action and evaluative considerations. We defend a novel account of this phenomenon that exploits two factors: (i) an intuitive asymmetry in judgments of responsibility (e.g. praise/blame) and (ii) the fact that intentionality commonly connects the evaluative status of actions to the responsibility of actors. We present the resul…Read more
  •  227
    Grasping the Third Realm
    Oxford Studies in Epistemology 5. 2015.
    Some things we can know just by thinking about them: for example, that identity is transitive, that Gettier’s Smith does not know that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pockets, that the ratio between two and six holds also between one and three, that it is wrong to wantonly torture innocent sentient beings, and various other things that simply strikeus, intuitively, as true when we consider them. The question is how : how can we know things just by thinking about them?