Richard Fumerton

Induction and Reasoning to the Best Explanation

In this paper I want to cast doubt on the claim that there is a legitimate process of reasoning to the best explanation which can serve as an alternative to either straightforward inductive reasoning or a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning. I shall argue a) that paradigmatic cases of acceptable arguments to the best explanation must be considered enthymemes and b) that when the suppressed premises are made explicit we have all of the premises we need to present either a straightforward inductive argument or an argument employing both induction and deduction.

Epistemic Internalism, Philosophical Assurance and the Skeptical Predicament

It is a particular pleasure to contribute this paper to a volume honoring Al Plantinga. I have always viewed his work as a model of how to do philosophy and I have learned a great deal from him over the years. It is as a result of philosophical conversation with both Plantinga and his former student Michael Bergmann that I have come to the (always painful) conclusion that I need to revise some of the things that I have said in print. This paper is an attempt to do just that. In Metaepistemology and Skepticism (1996), I implied that the fact that externalists, to be consistent, should allow “track record” arguments in support of their belief that they have first-level justification is a kind of reductio of their position. I said the following:

Skepticism and Reasoning to the Best Explanation

In this paper I want to evaluate the extent to which reasoning to the best explanation provides a source of justification that will defeat traditional skeptical arguments. Unfortunately, however, so much of contemporary epistemology takes place in the shadow of certain metaepistemological debates over the nature of justified belief. The approach one should take to traditional skepticism, for example, depends very much on where one stands on the now famous internalism/externalism controversy. It is also impossible to adequately assess the plausibility of reasoning to the best explanation as a response to the skeptic without a more general discussion of the logic of reasoning to the best explanation. In 1, I shall discuss one version of the internalism/externalism controversy and assess its implications for the place of reasoning to the best explanation as a bulwark in the defense of commonsense against skepticism. In short, I will argue that unless one embraces

Sosa's Epistemology

Although he has published a great many interesting pieces on a great many philosophical topics, I shall be primarily concerned in these remarks with Sosas epistemology, in particular his account of the epistemic concepts of knowledge and justification. One of the virtues of Sosas virtue-based account of epistemic concepts is that he avoids unnecessary polarization. To a very large extent his approach represents an attempt to reconcile the important insights of reliabilism, traditional foundationalism, and the coherence theory of justification. The product is an extremely sophisticated and complicated view that has evolved through a number of different articles (most of which are contained in a collection of his essays, Knowledge in Perspective1). It is a view that is by no means easy to summarize, but I shall nevertheless try to highlight what I take to be some of the most fundamental features of Sosas approach to analyzing epistemic concepts. One of the key conceptual building blocks of epistemic concepts, for Sosa, is the concept of an intellectual virtue. At least most of

Humeanizing Kant's Aesthetics

never confident that I understand Kant. As a kind of interpretive tool, when I read Kant I always ask myself a) what Hume would have thought about the subject matter under discussion, and b) how Hume would have tried to explain Kants views had they been his own. In these few brief comments I want to try to understand a certain part of Kants aesthetics by asking myself in what ways it differs from the corresponding part of Hume.

Cartesian epistemology and infallible justification

In this paper I examine contemporary accounts of noninferential justification in light of what I take to be the Cartesian project of building epistemology on foundations made secure by the impossibility of error. I argue that familiar abstract arguments for foundationalism, by themselves, don’t seem to motivate Cartesianism. But I further argue that there is one version of foundationalism that is more closely linked to the way in which Descartes sought ideal knowledge.