Hilary Kornblith

The metaphysics of irreducibility

ConclusionWe do not believe that the reasons which have been offered of late for rejecting non-reductive materialism should be accepted. The reasons for which reductive accounts were largely abandoned remain good ones, and non-reductive materialism remains the most satisfying and sensible account of the relationship among the special sciences.

Naturalism and intuitions

In an important series of papers (Goldman 1992a; 1992b; 2005; this volume; Goldman and Pust 1998), Alvin Goldman has sought to defend the philosophical practice of constructing theories on the basis of appeals to intuition. Th is philosophical method is certainly not lacking for adherents; indeed, George Bealer (1993) refers to it as the “standard justifi catory procedure” in philosophy. More than this, the practice of appealing to intuitions is not some unexamined aspect of philosophical practice: quite the contrary, this particular feature of philosophical methodology has recently been the focus of a good deal of attention1, with quite a number of philosophers off ering detailed defenses for their preferred method of theory construction. Many of these philosophers, however, are deeply opposed to naturalism, and their defense of the method of appeals to intuition is a crucial component of their anti-naturalistic worldview. Goldman stands out in this company as a committed methodological naturalist, someone who has regularly argued for the relevance of empirical work to philosophical theory construction. And this, of course, raises a question about the relationship between naturalism and the method of appealing to intuitions: to what extent are these truly compatible?

How internal can you get

This paper examines Laurence BonJours defense of internalism inThe Structure of Empirical Knowledge with an eye toward better understanding the issues which separate internalists from externalists. It is argued that BonJours Doxastic Presumption cannot play the role which is required of it to make his internalism work. It is further argued that BonJours internalism, and, indeed, all other internalisms, are motivated by a Cartesian view of an agents access to her own mental states. This Caretsian view is argued to be untenable, and, accordingly, so is internalism.

Some social features of cognition

This paper describes and assesses a number of dispositions which are instrumental in allowing us to take on the opinions of others unselfconsciously. It is argued that these dispositions are in fact reliable in the environments in which they tend to come into play. In addition, it is argued that agents are, by their own lights, justified in the beliefs they arrive at as a result of these processes. Finally, these processes are argued to provide a basis for rejecting the claim that fixation of belief is radically holistic.

The Unattainability of Coherence

Coherence theorists of justification hold that an agent should accept beliefs which cohere with those he already holds and reject beliefs which fail to cohere with those he already holds. The processes of belief acquisition and rejection must therefore be sensitive to coherence and incoherence. Some theorists believe that this sensitivity should operate at a conscious level: if an agent is to be justified in his belief, he must hold it in virtue of recognizing that it coheres with his other beliefs. Other theorists hold that it is sufficient for justification that an agent’s beliefs be acquired in virtue of the fact of their coherence with the agent’s other beliefs; the agent need not be aware of this fact for his beliefs to be justified. In either case, an ideal of belief acquisition is proposed which crucially depends on determinations of coherence: in one case these determinations are made by the agent, whilee in the other these determinations are made by subconsciously operating processes of belief acquisition. I do not believe that such determinations can be made. The ideal of processes of belief acquisition which are sensitive to coherence is unattainable, whether this sensitivity is supposed to reside in the agent himself or in his processes of belief acquisition.

The Impurity of Reason

Laurence BonJours «In Defense of Pure Reason» presents a powerful attack on radical empiricism and a bold defense of the a priori. This paper defends radical empiricism against BonJours attack and argues that his preferred account of the a priori is subject to numerous difficulties.

Epistemology: Classic problems and contemporary responses

Book Information Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses. By Laurence BonJour. Rowman and Littlefield. Lanham MD. 2002. Pp. viii + 289. Hardback, US

The Theory of Epistemic Rationality

75. Paperback, US

Knowledge and Its Place in Nature

23.95.