The No-Miracles Argument (NMA) is often used to support scientific realism.We can formulate this argument as an inference to the best explanation (IBE), but doing so leads to the worry that it is viciously circular. Realists have responded to this accusation of circularity by appealing to reliabilism, an externalist epistemology. In this paper I argue that this retreat fails. Reliabilism suffer...

Epistemic reasons are mental states. They are not propositions or nonmental facts. The discussion proceeds as follows. Section 1 introduces the topic. Section 2 gives two concrete examples of how our topic directly affects the internalism/externalism debate in normative epistemology. Section 3 responds to an argument against the view that reasons are mental states. Section 4 presents two proble...

If an epistemological distinction fails to carve at the epistemological joints, then it is not worthy of serious and protracted discussion. The residual issue of whether the putative distinction is incoherent or merely gerrymandered ought not to strike anyone as especially important. My own externalist commitments – epistemological and semantic -lead me to think that the a priori-a posteriori d...

1. Kylie’s Puzzle On summer afternoons in Canberra, the baking sun reflects off Lake Burley Griffin, and the water shimmers. Up behind the university, in the botanical gardens, a cascading stream of water helps to maintain the humidity of the rainforest gully. These are just a couple of Kylie’s thoughts on the subject of water, her water thoughts. Amongst Kylie’s many other thoughts that involv...

In this paper, I discuss an alternative conception of internalism and externalism for transcendental phenomenology. Recent debates in phenomenology start from familiar notions about content. This, believe, is unhappy match: common philosophical usage are perspectives on representational content; yet deals with intentionality, which not primarily representational. argue that better served by und...

One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based or internalist view, only one’s desires (broadly construed) provide one with reasons to act. On the value-based view, the strongest form of externalism about reasons, reasons are instead provided by the objective evaluative facts, and never by our desires. Lying in betwe...

Epistemic reasons are mental states. They are not propositions or non-mental facts. The discussion proceeds as follows. Section 1 introduces the topic. Section 2 gives two concrete examples of how our topic directly affects the internalism/externalism debate in normative epistemology. Section 3 responds to an argument against the view that reasons are mental states. Section 4 presents two probl...

In defending semantic externalism, philosophers of language have often assumed that there is a straightforward connection between scientific kinds and the natural kinds recognized by ordinary language users.1 For example, the claim that water is H2O assumes that the ordinary language kind water corresponds to a chemical kind, which contains all the molecules with molecular formula H2O as its me...