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Articles 1 - 30 of 33
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Causal Indicator Analysis Of Knowledge, Steven Luper
The Causal Indicator Analysis Of Knowledge, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
In this paper I want to describe and motivate an approach to knowledge that I call the Causal Indicator Analysis. My strategy will be to sketch (in Part I) the main features of an adequate account of knowledge, then use my sketch (in Part II) to reveal some of the faults of some of the main anal- yses defended today. I will be particularly interested in discussing the work of Fred Dretske, whose views have significantly influenced my own. With these tasks behind me, I will offer my own account in Part III, and argue that it has the features …
Persimals, Steven Luper
Persimals, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
What sort of thing, fundamentally, are you and I? For convenience, I use the term persimal to refer to the kind of thing we are, whatever that kind turns out to be. Accordingly, the question is, what are persimals? One possible answer is that persimalhood consists in being a human animal, but many theorists, including Derek Parfit and Jeff McMahan, not to mention John Locke, reject this idea in favor of a radically different view, according to which persimalhood consists in having certain sorts of mental or psychological features. In this essay, I try to show that the animalist approach …
Past Desires And The Dead, Steven Luper
Past Desires And The Dead, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
I examine an argument that appears to take us from Parfit’s [Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1984)] thesis that we have no reason to fulfil desires we no longer care about to the conclusion that the effect of posthumous events on our desires is a matter of indifference (the post-mortem thesis). I suspect that many of Parfit’s readers, including Vorobej [Philosophical Studies 90 (1998) 305], think that he is committed to (something like) this reasoning, and that Parfit must therefore give up the post-mortem thesis. However, as it turns out, the argument is subtly equivocal and does not commit …
The Absurdity Of Life, Steven Luper
Retroactive Harms And Wrongs, Steven Luper
Retroactive Harms And Wrongs, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
According to t he immunity thesis, nothing that happens after we a re dead harms or benefits us . It seems defensible on the following basis : 1. If harmed (benefitted) by something , we incur the harm (benefit) at some time. 2. So if harmed (benefitted) by a postmortem event, we incur the harm (benefit) while alive or at some other time . 3. But if we incur the harm (benefit) while alive , backwards causation occurs. 4. And if we incur the harm (benefit) at any other time, we incur it at a time when we do not …
Dretske On Knowledge Closure, Steven Luper
The Knower, Inside And Out, Steven Luper
The Knower, Inside And Out, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
Adherents of the epistemological position called internalism typically believe that the view they oppose, called externalism, is such a new and radical departure from the established way of seeing knowledge that its implications are uninteresting. Perhaps itis relatively novel, but the approach to knowledge with the greatest antiquity is the one that equates it withcertainty, and while this conception is amenable to the demands of the internalist, it is also a non-starter in the opinion of almost all contemporary epistemologists since obviously it directly implies that we know nothing about the world. Perhaps skepticism is correct, but there are conceptions …
Epistemic Relativism, Steven Luper
Restorative Rigging And The Safe Indication Account, Steven Luper
Restorative Rigging And The Safe Indication Account, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
Typical Gettieresque scenarios involve a subject, S, using a method, M, of believing something, p, where, normally, M is a reliable indicator of the truth of p, yet, in S’s circumstances, M is not reliable: M is deleteriously rigged. A different sort of scenario involves rigging that restores the reliability of a method M that is deleteriously rigged: M is restoratively rigged. Some theorists criticize (among others) the safe indication account of knowledge defended by Luper, Sosa, and Williamson on the grounds that it treats such cases as knowledge. But other theorists also criticize the safe indication account because it …
Epistemic Closure Principle, Steven Luper
What Skeptics Don't Know Refutes Them, Steven Luper
What Skeptics Don't Know Refutes Them, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
No abstract provided.
The Anatomy Of Aggression, Steven Luper
Natural Resources, Gadgets, And Artificial Life, Steven Luper
Natural Resources, Gadgets, And Artificial Life, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
I classify different sorts of natural resources and suggest how these resources may be acquired. I also argue that inventions, whether gadgets or artificial life forms, should not be privately owned. Gadgets and life-forms are not created (although the term 'invention' suggests otherwise); they are discov-ered, and hence have much in common with more familiar natural resources such as sunlight that ought not to be privately owned. Nonetheless, inventors of gadgets, like discoverers of certain more familiar resources, sometimes should be granted exclusive but temporary control over their inventions as an incentive for making unknown items widely accessible
Doxastic Skepticism, Steven Luper
Doxastic Skepticism, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
In “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,” Donald Davidson offers a n attempt to refute skepticism, a n attempt that is an expansion of the dense argument in part 1 of “The Method of Truth in Metaphysics” for the claim that “massive error about the world is simply unintelligible.”’ To help in his attack, he presses into service tightly interrelated theories about belief and meaning. In particular, he relies on the claim that ideal interpreters, who are fully informed and charitable, must attribute t o a speaker what are by their lights largely true beliefs. I argue that this …
Justice And Natural Resources, Steven Luper
Justice And Natural Resources, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
Justice entitles everyone in the world, including future generations, to an equitable share of the benefits of the world's natural resources. I argue that even though both Rawls and his libertarian critics seem hostile to it, this resource equity principle, suitably clarified, is a major part of an adequate strict compliance theory of global justice whether or not we take a libertarian or a Rawlsian approach. I offer a defence of the resource equity principle from both points of view.
Competing For The Good Life, Steven Luper
Annihilation, Steven Luper
Indiscernability Skepticism, Steven Luper
Death, Steven Luper
The Easy Argument, Steven Luper
The Easy Argument, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
Suppose Ted is in an ordinary house in good viewing conditions and believes red, his table is red, entirely because he sees his table and its color; he also believes not-white, it is false that his table is white and illuminated by a red light, because not-white is entailed by red. The following three claims about this table case clash, but each seems plausible: 1. Ted’s epistemic position is strong enough for him to know red. 2. Ted cannot know not-white on the basis of red. 3. The epistemic closure principle, suitably restricted, is true. Stewart Cohen has called this …
Adaptation, Steven Luper
The Reliabilist Theory Of Rational Belief, Steven Luper
The Reliabilist Theory Of Rational Belief, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
No abstract provided.
Exhausting Life, Steven Luper
Exhausting Life, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
Can we render death harmless to us by perfecting life, as the ancient Epicureans and Stoics seemed to think? It might seem so, for after we perfect life—assuming we can—persisting would not make life any better. Dying earlier rather than later would shorten life, but a longer perfect life is no better than a shorter perfect life, so dying would take nothing of value from us. However, after sketching what perfecting life might entail, I will argue that it is not a desirable approach to invulnerability after all.
False Negatives, Steven Luper
False Negatives, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
In Philosophical Explanations, Robert Nozick suggested that knowing that some proposition, p, is true is a matter of being “sensitive” to p’s truth-value. It requires that one’s belief state concerning p vary appropriately with the truth-value of p as the latter shifts in relevant possible worlds. Nozick fleshed out this sketchy view with a specific analysis of what sensitivity entails. Famously, he drew upon this analysis in order to explain how common-sense knowledge claims, such as my claim to know I have hands, are true, even though we do not know that skeptical hypotheses are false. His explanation hinged on …
Mortal Harm, Steven Luper
Mortal Harm, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
The harm thesis says that death may harm the individual who dies. The posthumous harm thesis says that posthumous events may harm those who die. Epicurus rejects both theses, claiming that there is no subject who is harmed, no clear harm which is received, and no clear time when any harm is received. Feldman rescues the harm thesis with solutions to Epicurus' three puzzles based on his own version of the deprivation account of harm. But many critics, among them Lamont, Grey, Feit and Bradley, have rejected Feldman's solution to the timing puzzle, offering their own solutions in its place. …
Posthumous Harm, Steven Luper
Belief And Rationality, Curtis Brown, Steven Luper
Naturalized Epistemology, Curtis Brown, Steven Luper
Naturalized Epistemology, Curtis Brown, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
No abstract provided.
"Life's Meaning", Steven Luper
"Life's Meaning", Steven Luper
Steven Luper
Your life has meaning just if, and to the extent that, you achieve the aims that you devote it to freely and competently. You adopt your goals and achieve them more or less through your own efforts, so meaning is something you bestow upon your own life. These achievements are the meaning of your life. In this essay I develop this view, discuss how life’s meaning is related to its purpose and to an individual’s welfare and identity, and examine reasoning that suggests that life is absurd and show how it can be resisted.
The Philosophy Of Death, Steven Luper