Accidentally True Beliefs and the Williamsonian Mental State of Knowing

In this paper, I will explore some philosophical implications of Williamson’s thesis that knowing is a state of mind (KSM). Using the fake barn case, I will introduce a way to evaluate Williamson’s KSM thesis and determine whether the Williamsonian mental state of knowing can be plausibly distinguished from certain other similar but epistemologically distinctive states of mind (i.e., accidentally true beliefs). Then, some tentative externalist accounts of the supposed differences between the Williamsonian mental state of knowing and accidentally true beliefs will be critically assessed, implying that the evaluated traditional versions of externalism in semantics and epistemology do not fit well with Williamson’s KSM thesis. Ultimately, I suggest that the extended-mind or extended-knower approach may be more promising, which indicates that active externalism would be called for by Williamson’s KSM thesis.     

Mentalism and Epistemic Transparency

Questions about the transparency of evidence are central to debates between factive and non-factive versions of mentalism about evidence. If all evidence is transparent, then factive mentalism is false, since no factive mental states are transparent. However, Timothy Williamson has argued that transparency is a myth and that no conditions are transparent except trivial ones. This paper responds by drawing a distinction between doxastic and epistemic notions of transparency. Williamson's argument may show that no conditions are doxastically transparent, but it fails to show that no conditions are epistemically transparent. Moreover, this reinstates the argument from the transparency of evidence against factive mentalism.     

A MOTHER'S LOVE: GENDER,ALTRUISM, AND SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION

This article explores the concepts of altruism, spiritual connection, and shamanic healing as practiced by female curanderas in northern Peru. It suggests how coessence rather than transcendence is at the heart of the shamanic journey that both healers and patients embark upon in order to transform suffering. Using ethnographic and case‐study research, it describes how the metaphors of maternal care, shared suffering, and compassionate love are used by female healers in this region to shape their patients’understandings of illness and health as well as to construct their own understandings of the shaman's role in their healing process. The healers studied adopt attitudes of acceptance, empathy, spiritual connection, and altruism as integral to their work and encourage their patients to do the same in order to regain a sense of mastery over their own suffering. Parallels are presented between the model of spiritual connection and healing described here and that described by both scholars of feminist theology and feminist spirituality such as Rosemary Radford Ruether and popular lecturers/authors such as Marianne Williamson.     

Knowing the intuition and knowing the counterfactual

I criticize Timothy Williamson’s characterization of thought experiments on which the central judgments are judgments of contingent counterfactuals. The fragility of these counterfactuals makes them too easily false, and too difficult to know.

Williamson on justification

Timothy Williamson has a marvelously precise account of epistemic justification in terms of knowledge and probability. I argue that the account runs aground on certain cases involving the probability values 0 and 1.     

Williamson on inexact knowledge

Timothy Williamson claims that margin for error principles govern all cases of inexact knowledge. I show that this claim is unfounded: there are cases of inexact knowledge where Williamson’s argument for margin for error principles does not go through. The problematic cases are those where the value of the relevant parameter is fixed across close cases. I explore and reject two responses to my objection, before concluding that Williamson’s account of inexact knowledge is not compelling.

Propositional knowledge and know-how

This paper is roughly in two parts. The first deals with whether know-how is constituted by propositional knowledge, as discussed primarily by Gilbert Ryle (1949) The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (2001). Knowing how. Journal of Philosophy, 98, pp. 411–444 as well as Stephen Hetherington (2006). How to know that knowledge-that is knowledge-how. In S. Hetherington (Ed.) Epistemology futures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The conclusion of this first part is that know-how sometimes does and sometimes does not consist in propositional knowledge. The second part defends an analysis of know-how inspired by Katherine Hawley’ (2003). Success and knowledge-how. American Philosophical Quarterly, 40, pp. 19–31, insightful proposal that know-how requires counterfactual success. I conclude by showing how this analysis helps to explain why know-how sometimes does and sometimes does not consist of propositional knowledge.