Epistemic Luck and the Extended Mind

Contemporary debates about epistemic luck and its relation to knowledge have traditionally proceeded against a tacit background commitment to cognitive internalism, the thesis that cognitive processes play out inside the head. In particular, safety-based approaches (e.g., Pritchard 2005; 2007; Luper-Foy 1984; Sainsbury 1997; Sosa 1999; Williamson 2000) reveal this commitment by taking for granted a traditional internalist construal of what I call the cognitive fixedness thesis—viz., the thesis that the cognitive process that is being employed in the actual world is always ‘held fixed’ when we go out to nearby possible worlds to assess whether the target belief is lucky in a way that is incompatible with knowledge. However, for those inclined to replace cognitive internalism with the extended mind thesis (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998), a very different, ‘active externalist’ version of the cognitive fixedness thesis becomes the relevant one for the purposes of assessing a belief’s safety. The aim here will be to develop this point in a way that draws out some of the important ramifications it has for how we think about safety, luck and knowledge

New host records of chewing lice (Mallophaga) on birds in Florida 2

This is a continuation of Holt (2004). Methods and sources of specimens are as reported in that paper. Representatives of all records below are deposited in the Florida State Collection of Arthropods and/or the author's collection

The Unlit Path Behind the House by Margo Wheaton

Review of Margo Wheaton\u27s The Unlit Path Behind the House

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency

Examines the current regulatory structures for consumer financial services protection, its limitations, and concerns about the proposal to consolidate consumer protection functions under one agency with research, rule-making, and enforcement authority

Abusive Credit Card Practices and Bankruptcy: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 111th Cong., March 24, 2009 (Statement of Associate Professor Adam J. Levitin, Geo. U. L. Center)

The Marquette decision created a regulatory arbitrage possibility that set off a regulatory race to the bottom. Congress should act to close this loophole. There is a reasonable debate to be had on usury regulations, but that is one that should be held in legislatures, not determined by the Supreme Court\u27s interpretation of a hoary statute. A 1970s interpretation of an 1863 law should not be what determines 21st century consumer credit regulation. Congress should permit the states, the laboratories of democracy, to go further than S.257 if they wish in regulating high-interest-rate consumer credit. This essential consumer protection power should be restored to the states. S.257 offers an important protection to consumers and responsible creditors, eliminates an incentive to game the bankruptcy system, and encourages responsible lending. These protections will help ensure fairer, safer, and sounder consumer credit. Now, more than ever, consumers and creditors need reforms that will create a fair and sustainable credit system. I urge the Congress to pass S.257

The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology

This is a book review of Jason Baehr's 'The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology' (OUP)

Radical Scepticism and the Epistemology of Confusion

The lack of knowledge—as Timothy Williamson (2000) famously maintains—is ignorance. Radical sceptical arguments, at least in the tradition of Descartes, threaten universal ignorance. They do so by attempting to establish that we lack any knowledge, even if we can retain other kinds of epistemic standings, like epistemically justified belief. If understanding is a species of knowledge, then radical sceptical arguments threaten to rob us categorically of knowledge and understanding in one fell swoop by implying universal ignorance. If, however, understanding is not a species of knowledge, then three questions arise: (i) is ignorance the lack of understanding, even if understanding is not a species of knowledge? (ii) If not, what kind of state of intellectual impoverishment best describes a lack of understanding? (iii) What would a radical sceptical argument look like that threatened that kind of intellectual impoverishment, even if not threatening ignorance? This paper answers each of these questions in turn. I conclude by showing how the answers developed to (i-iii) interface in an interesting way with Virtue Perspectivism as an anti-sceptical strategy

Faulkner, Paul, Knowledge on Trust

This is a review of Faulkner, Paul, Knowledge on Trust, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.240, US 55.00 (hardback)