Associate Dean for Student Academic Affairs, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Professor, Department of Philosophy and Program in Linguistics, University of California, Riverside
Co-Director, UCR Epistemology and Philosophy of Psychology Workshop
Dean's Office: CHASS Student Academic Affairs, 900 University Avenue, HMNSS 3400, UCR, Riverside CA 92521-0132
Dean's Phone & FAX: (951) 827-3683 | (951) 827-5836
Philosophy Office: Department of Philosophy, 900 University Avenue, HMNSS 1604, UCR, Riverside CA 92521-0201
Philosophy Phone & FAX: (951) 827-5208 | (951) 827-5298
Send me an Email | Schedule an Appointment by Email
Stacie Friend, UCR Epistemology and Philosophy of Psychology Workshop, April 23, 10:00-Noon, Philosophy Seminar Room HMNSS 1604.
Julie Tannenbaum, UC Riverside Philosophy Colloquium May 16, 3:00-5:00 PM.
4th Annual Orange Beach Epistemology Workshop, Alabama, May 21-22.
Workshop on Virtue Ethics and Virtue Epistemology, Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan, May 28-29.
Philosophy Department Colloquium, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan, May 31.
Stanford University Ph.D. in Philosophy 2000
University of Arizona M.A. in Philosophy 1995
University of California, Los Angeles B.A. in Philosophy 1991
Epistemology: Testimonial Knowledge; Testimonial Entitlement; Perceptual Entitlement; Theory of Justification; Radical Skepticism
Philosophy of Psychology: The Nature and Function of Perception; Mental Representation; Evolutionary Psychology
Philosophy of Language & Linguistics: Pragmatics, Speech Acts, and Linguistic Communication; Reference; Language Evolution
Epistemic Justification
I've recently developed what others might call a "proper function reliabilist" account of epistemic warrant, where warrant, and in particular perceptual and testimonial entitlement, consists in the normal functioning of the belief-forming process when the process has forming true beliefs reliably as an etiological function. The account thus connects the epistemology of a belief-forming process with its origin. If it exists because it reliably got things right, then when it works the way it's supposed to, the way it was designed, it results in warranted belief. And this is so even if the process is no longer in normal conditions, and so not reliably promoting true beliefs. My work in epistemology now incorporates a good deal of philosophy of biology. To apply the account to perception, I've worked on empirical and conceptual issues in the philosophy and psychology of perception. And to apply the account to testimony, I've worked on conceptual and empirical issues in the philosophy, psychology, and evolution of linguistic communication. My research continues to become more empirically informed.
Epistemic Justification Oxford Bibliographies Online.
Psychological Capacity and Positive Epistemic Status The New Intuitionism, J. Hernandez, ed. (Continuum Press, 2012).
Intelligent Design and Selective History: Two Sources of Purpose and Plan Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 3 (2011): 67-88.
Does Justification Aim at Truth? Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (2011): 51-72.
Epistemic Entitlement Nous published online January 20 (2011).
Perceptual Entitlement and Basic Beliefs Philosophical Studies 153 (2011): 467-475.
Testimonial Entitlement and the Function of Comprehension Social Epistemology, D. Pritchard, A. Millar, A. Haddock, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2010): 148-174.
Theorizing Justification Knowledge and Skepticism: Contemporary Topics in Philosophy 5 (The MIT Press, 2010): 47-71
The Epistemology of Testimony: Knowledge Transmission
I find testimonial knowledge puzzling. If you see something and know something about it because of your perceptual experience, you know what you do partly because of your experience. Now when you tell me about it, I'm apt to come to know it too. I learn from your say-so. But I don't thereby acquire your perceptual experience. So how does your knowledge get to me? How do I learn from comprehending your testimony? How does testimonial knowledge work? And there are interesting cases of transmission failure. You might know something, honestly tell me so, but nonetheless your knowledge doesn't get to me. Why is that so? And I also think it's possible to learn from someone who doesn't know. You don't have knowledge to transmit, but nonetheless I acquire knowledge I didn't have before. How is that possible?
Can Testimony Generate Knowledge? Philosophica 78 (2006): 105-127.
Conveying Information Synthese 123 (2000): 365-392.
Transferring Knowledge Nous 34 (2000): 131-152.
I also edit the Testimony Area for PhilPapers.
The Epistemology of Testimony: Testimonial Justification
Testimonial warrant is puzzling too. Are we default entitled to take what we comprehend others to assert at face value? Is "testimony" like perception in this respect? Or do we have to build up the reliability of our interlocutors, the same way we might build up a scientific theory, from patient observations and possibly even experiments? Do we need to build up a theoretical explanation for why people say what they do before we can justifiably rely on what we take them to say? My gut tells me we're default entitled. But I know things are more complicated than that.
Testimonial Entitlement and the Function of Comprehension Social Epistemology, D. Pritchard, A. Millar, A. Haddock, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2010): 148-174.
Testimonial Justification: Inferential or Non-Inferential The Philosophical Quarterly 56 (2006): 84-95.
Liberal Fundamentalism and its Rivals The Epistemology of Testimony, J. Lackey and E. Sosa, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2006): 93-115.
Metaphysical Libertarianism and the Epistemology of Testimony American Philosophical Quarterly 41 (2004): 37-50.
The Reliability of Testimony Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2000): 695-708.
I have a long standing interest in radical skepticism, the thesis that we not only do not know, but have no justification for, our beliefs about ordinary mundane matters, including beliefs about the future, the past, the external world, and perhaps even our own minds. To understanding radical skepticism, I took an reverse engineering approach: what theory of justification might arguments for radical skepticism presume?
The Relativist Response to Radical Skepticism The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism, J. Greco, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2008): 392-413.
The Theoretical Diagnosis of Skepticism Synthese 158 (2007): 19-39.
Philosophy of Language
Defending Millianism Mind 108 (1999): 555-561.
Brandom on Singular Terms Philosophical Studies 93 (1999): 247-264.
What is Testimony? The Philosophical Quarterly 47 (1997): 227-232.
"The Reliability of Testimony and Social Norms"
"Intelligent Design Reliabilism"
"Reliably True Outcomes and Epistemically Correct Procedures"
"Perceptual Entitlement and Natural Norms"
"Testimony as Speech Act, Testimony as Source"
"Virtue and Function in Ethics and Epistemology"
Review of Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, Moral Skepticisms (Oxford University Press, 2006) in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (March 2007).
Review of Lars Bo Gunderson, Dispositional Theories of Knowledge (Ashgate Publishers 2003) in Sats: Nordic Journal of Philosophy 6 (2005).
Review of Gabor Forrai, Reference, Truth and Conceptual Schemes: A Defense of Internal Realism (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001) in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (February 2002).