Philosophy
Staff
Duncan Pritchard
Forthcoming Abstracts
NB. This page contains abstracts not only for forthcoming articles, but also for all 2006 articles (some of which will already be out), and all commissioned manuscripts (which may not be fully written yet).
- 'McDowell and the New Evil Genius' (with R. Neta), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming).
ABSTRACT. Many epistemologist--both internalists and externalists--regard the "New Evil Genius Problem" (Lehrer & Cohen 1983) as constituting an important consideration in favour of (one or another version of) epistemological internalism, and as requiring a substantial qualification in (one or another version of) epistemological externalism. According to these epistemologists, for any non-object-dependent proposition p, and for any time t, you cannot be more justified, at t, in believing that p than your recently envatted physical duplicate is. In other words, these epistemologists accept what we call the "New Evil Genius view":
(NEG) The extent to which S is justified at t in believing that p is just the same as the extent to which S's recently envatted duplicate is justified at t in believing that p.
Our epistemological intuitions are supposed to apprise us of the truth of (NEG). (NEG) is widely accepted both by internalist and by externalists. In fact, there have been very few opponents of (NEG). Timothy Williamson (e.g., 2000) rejects (NEG), for reasons that have by now received a great deal of scrutiny. John McDowell also rejects (NEG), but his reasons have not received the scrutiny they deserve. This is in large part because those reasons have not been well understood. We believe that McDowell's challenge to (NEG) is important, worthy of fair assessment, and maybe even correct. In this paper, we explain McDowell’s challenge to (NEG), and also explain how McDowell can address a seemingly fatal objection to his view.
- 'Epistemic Luck and Epistemic Value', Think (forthcoming); to be reprinted in Epistemology (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures), (ed.) A. O’Hear, (Cambridge UP, forthcoming).
ABSTRACT. Sorry, no abstract available at present (watch this space!).
- 'Wittgenstein on Scepticism', The Oxford Handbook to Wittgenstein, (ed.) M. McGinn, (Oxford UP, forthcoming).
ABSTRACT. An overview of Wittgenstein's remarks on scepticism in On Certainty is offered, especially with regard to the notion of a "hinge proposition". Several possible interpretations of the anti-sceptical import of this text are then critically assessed, with each view situated within the contemporary literature on scepticism.
- 'Sensitivity, Safety, and Anti-Luck Epistemology', The Oxford Handbook of Scepticism, (ed.) J. Greco, (Oxford UP, forthcoming).
ABSTRACT. This paper surveys attempts in the recent literature to offer a modal condition on knowledge as a way of resolving the problem of scepticism. In particular, safety-based and sensitivity-based theories of knowledge are considered in detail, along with the anti-sceptical prospects of an explicitly anti-luck epistemology.
- 'How to be a Neo-Moorean', Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology, (ed.) S. Goldberg, (Oxford UP, forthcoming).
ABSTRACT. Much of the recent debate regarding scepticism has focussed on a certain template sceptical argument and a rather restricted set of proposals concerning how one might deal with that argument. Throughout this debate the ‘Moorean’ response to scepticism is often cited as a paradigm example of how one should not respond to the sceptical argument, so conceived. As I argue in this paper, however, there are ways of resurrecting the Moorean response to the sceptic, and I consider the prospects for three such proposals in this regard--a classical epistemic internalist neo-Mooreanism, a classical epistemic externalist neo-Mooreanism, and a non-classical McDowellian epistemic internalist neo-Mooreanism. I claim that a suitably qualified version of neo-Mooreanism would actually sit quite well with the general philosophical motivations behind other key anti-sceptical views and I argue that given this fact neo-Mooreanism is actually at a dialectical advantage relative to other views when it comes to dealing with the sceptical problem as it is typically conceived.
- 'McDowellian Epistemology', New Essays on Disjunctivism, (eds.) A. Haddock & F. Macpherson, (Oxford UP, forthcoming).
ABSTRACT. It is claimed that McDowell's treatment of scepticism offers a potential way of resurrecting the much derided 'Moorean' response to scepticism in a fashion that avoids the problems facing classical internalist and externalist construals of neo-Mooreanism. I here evaluate the prospects for a McDowellian neo-Mooreanism and, in doing so, offer further support for the view.
- 'Anti-Luck Epistemology', Synthese (special issue on Epistemic Luck) (forthcoming).
ABSTRACT. In this paper I aim to do three things. First, to offer an overview of my book, Epistemic Luck (Oxford UP, 2005). Second, to attempt to meet some of the main criticisms that one might level against the main theses that I propose in this work. And finally, third, to sketch some of the ways in which the strategy of anti-luck epistemology can be developed in new directions.
- 'Anti-Realism, Factivity, and Fitch' (with C. Kelp), New Essays on the Paradox of Knowability, (ed.) J. Salerno, (Oxford UP, forthcoming).
ABSTRACT. We offer a novel resolution to Fitch's puzzle, one that proceeds by employing a weakened version of the factivity principle for knowledge. We argue that this weakening of factivity is in the spirit of anti-realism and show that by weakening this principle we are thereby able to motivate the weakening of a second principle which is appealed to in Fitch's puzzle--viz., the principle that knowledge distributes across conjunctions. With these two principles weakened, one can block Fitch-style reasoning.
- 'Virtue Epistemology and Epistemic Luck, Revisited', Metaphilosophy (forthcoming).
ABSTRACT. In this paper I return to an argument that I presented in earlier work to the effect that virtue epistemology is at worse false and at best unmotivated. In the light of recent responses to this argument from such figures as John Greco, Guy Axtell, and Kelly Becker, I here re-state and re-evaluate this argument. In the process the original argument is refined and supplemented in key respects and some of the main charges against it are shown to be unfounded. Nevertheless, I also argue that at least one of the objections to the original argument--due to Kelly Becker--may well be on the right lines, and draw some conclusions in this regard.
- 'Greco on Reliabilism and Epistemic Luck', Philosophical Studies 116 (2006).
ABSTRACT. I outline Greco's response to the Pyrrhonian challenge to epistemic externalist theories of knowledge and offer two points of criticism. I also argue, however, that there is an account of epistemic luck available which can cast some light on the dispute that Greco is concerned with, and which could, in principle at least, be regarded as being in the spirit of the proposal that Greco sets out.
- 'Knowledge, Luck, and Lotteries', New Waves in Epistemology, (eds.) V. F. Hendricks & D. H. Pritchard, (Ashgate, 2006).
ABSTRACT. It is a platitude in epistemology to say that knowledge excludes luck. Indeed, if one can show that an epistemological theory allows ‘lucky’ knowledge, then that usually suffices to warrant one in straightforwardly rejecting the view. Even despite the prevalence of this intuition, however, very few commentators have explored what it means to say that knowledge is incompatible with luck. In particular, no commentator, so far as I am aware, has offered an account of what luck is and on this basis identified what it means for a true belief to be non-lucky. It is just such a view that I propose, however, and I hope to give a flavour of what this strategy involves here. In particular, I have two goals in this paper. The first is to outline the general contours of the position and show how such a view can account for the attraction of adducing a safety condition on knowledge, with all the epistemic benefits that this principle holds. Relatedly, I will also explain how an anti-luck epistemology can assist us in determining the best formulation of this principle. The second goal of the paper is to show anti-luck epistemology in action by highlighting how such a view can deal with the various problems posed by lottery-style examples.
- 'Moral and Epistemic Luck', Metaphilosophy 37 (2006), 1-25.
ABSTRACT. It is argued that the arguments put forward by Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel in their widely influential exchange on the problem of moral luck are marred by a failure to (i) present a coherent understanding of what is involved in the notion of luck, and (ii) adequately distinguish between the problem of moral luck and the analogue problem of epistemic luck, especially that version of the problem that is traditionally presented by the epistemological sceptic. It is further claimed that once one offers a more developed notion of luck and disambiguates the problem of moral luck from the problem of epistemic luck (especially in its sceptical guise), neither of these papers is able to offer unambiguous grounds for thinking that there is a problem of moral luck. Indeed, it is shown that insofar as these papers succeed in making a prima facie case for the existence of epistemic luck, it is only the familiar sceptical variant of this problem that they identify.
- 'Contrastivism, Evidence, and Scepticism', Social Epistemology (special issue on Contrastivism), 20 (2006).
ABSTRACT. I offer a critical treatment of the contrastivist response to the problem of radical scepticism. In particular, I argue that if contrastivism is understood along externalist lines then it is unnecessary; while if it is understood along internalist lines then it is intellectually dissatisfying.