Reddish Green: A Challenge for Modal Claims About Phenomenal Structure1

We discuss two modal claims about the phenomenal structure of color experiences: (i) violet experiences are necessarily experiences of a color that is for the subject on that occasion phenomenally composed of red and blue (the modal claim about violet) and (ii) no subject can possibly have an experience of a color that is for it then phenomenally composed of red and green (the modal claim about reddish green). The modal claim about reddish green is undermined by empirical results. We discuss whether these empirical results cast doubt on the other modal claims as well. We argue that this not the case. Our argument is based on the thesis that the best argument for the modal claim about violet is quite different from the best argument for the modal claim about reddish green. To argue for this disanalogy we propose a reconstruction of the best available justification for both claims.     

Intelligence Tests and Social Policy

Snyderman, M., & Herrnstein, R.J. (1983). Intelligence tests and the Immigration Act of 1924. American Psychologist, 38, 986–995.     

Justified vs. Warranted Perceptual Belief: Resisting Disjunctivism

In this paper I argue that McDowell's brand of disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge is ill-motivated. First, I present a reconstruction of one main motivation for disjunctivism, in the form of an argument that theories that posit a "highest common factor" between veridical and non-veridical experiences must be wrong. Then I show that the argument owes its plausibility to a failure to distinguish between justification and warrant (where "warrant" is understood as whatever has to be added to true belief to yield knowledge).     

WHAT LOTTERY PROBLEM FOR RELIABILISM?

It can often be heard in the hallways, and occasionally read in print, that reliabilism runs into special trouble regarding lottery cases. My main aim in this paper is to argue that this is not so. Nevertheless, lottery cases do force us to pay close attention to the relation between justification and probability.