Publications
Here you can find publication outputs from the project team, including journal articles and book chapters, as well as works in progress.
Fratantonio, G. "Can Epistemic Paternalistic Practices Make us Better Epistemic Agents?"
Abstract: According to many epistemologists, knowledge requires justification and justification requires one to appropriately believe on the basis of one’s supporting evidence (cf Conee and Feldman 2004). However, complying with this evidentialist norm is not always so easy. This paper investigates the prospects of using epistemic paternalistic techniques [EP] to help students mitigate or eradicate what I call “evidential vices” or “vices or rationality”: a subset of epistemic vices referring to the various ways in which agents fail to be ideal evidentialist agents. After considering and rejecting traditional veritist-based EP, I consider EP practices motivated by Gnosticism, but I ultimately find these unsatisfying as well. Finally, I consider weak epistemic paternalistic strategies, e.g., epistemic nudging, and provide some reasons for optimism.
Carter, J.A. "On Some Intracranialist Dogmas in Epistemology". Forthcoming in Asian Journal of Philosophy.
Research questions in mainstream epistemology often take for granted a cognitive internalist picture of the mind. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the seemingly safe presumptions that (i) knowledge entails belief (viz., the entailment thesis); and that (ii) the kind of belief that knowledge entails supervenes exclusively on brainbound cognition. It will be argued here that (contra orthodoxy) the most plausible version of the entailment thesis holds just that knowledge entails dispositional belief. However, regardless of whether occurrent belief supervenes only as the cognitive internalist permits, we should reject the idea that dispositional belief supervenes only in cognitive internalist-friendly ways. These observations, taken together, reveal two things: first, that a cognitive internalist picture of the mind is much more dispensable in epistemology than has been assumed; and second, that pursuing questions in extended epistemology needn’t involve any radical departure from the commitments of more traditional epistemological projects.
Thorpe, J. "Scepticism and Self-Scepticism". Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies.
A general trend in recent philosophical and empirical work aims to undermine vari- ous traditional claims regarding the distinctive nature of self-knowledge. So far, however, this work has not seriously threatened the Cartesian claim that (at least some) self-knowledge is immune to the sort of sceptical problem that seems to af- flict our knowledge of the external world. In this paper I carry this trend further by arguing that the Cartesian claim is false. This is done by showing that a familiar sceptical argument that targets my knowledge of the external world can be adapted to target my belief that I exist, along with any of my self-knowledge that I know entails my own existence. Thus, my self-knowledge and my knowledge of the ex- ternal world are subject to the same sort of sceptical problem.
Fratantonio, G. "Can Epistemic Paternalistic Practices Make us Better Epistemic Agents?"
Abstract: According to many epistemologists, knowledge requires justification and justification requires one to appropriately believe on the basis of one’s supporting evidence (cf Conee and Feldman 2004). However, complying with this evidentialist norm is not always so easy. This paper investigates the prospects of using epistemic paternalistic techniques [EP] to help students mitigate or eradicate what I call “evidential vices” or “vices or rationality”: a subset of epistemic vices referring to the various ways in which agents fail to be ideal evidentialist agents. After considering and rejecting traditional veritist-based EP, I consider EP practices motivated by Gnosticism, but I ultimately find these unsatisfying as well. Finally, I consider weak epistemic paternalistic strategies, e.g., epistemic nudging, and provide some reasons for optimism.
Carter, J.A. "On Some Intracranialist Dogmas in Epistemology". Forthcoming in Asian Journal of Philosophy.
Research questions in mainstream epistemology often take for granted a cognitive internalist picture of the mind. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the seemingly safe presumptions that (i) knowledge entails belief (viz., the entailment thesis); and that (ii) the kind of belief that knowledge entails supervenes exclusively on brainbound cognition. It will be argued here that (contra orthodoxy) the most plausible version of the entailment thesis holds just that knowledge entails dispositional belief. However, regardless of whether occurrent belief supervenes only as the cognitive internalist permits, we should reject the idea that dispositional belief supervenes only in cognitive internalist-friendly ways. These observations, taken together, reveal two things: first, that a cognitive internalist picture of the mind is much more dispensable in epistemology than has been assumed; and second, that pursuing questions in extended epistemology needn’t involve any radical departure from the commitments of more traditional epistemological projects.