Dennis Whitcomb

Online Papers

Currently in progress (email me for a draft):

“Knowledge, virtue, and truth.” This paper argues for a new account of the normative relationships between knowledge, truth, justification, and epistemic virtue. Along the way it addresses a variety of standard epistemological issues including the credit theory of knowledge and the swamping argument against reliabilism.

“Wisdom in mind and action.” This paper surveys the extant accounts of the nature of wisdom, finds them all wanting, and constructs and argues for a new account.

“The problem of epistemic significance.” Some truths are better to know than others – indeed better from a purely epistemic point of view to know than others. For instance, it is better epistemically to know deep scientific or metaphysical truths, than to know how many grains of sand are on the nearest beach. How could this be so? What property of some knowledge as opposed to other knowledge could make the former better epistemically than the latter? Call that property, whatever it is, epistemic significance. This paper argues for a particular view of what epistemic significance amounts to.

Not currently in progress:

Curiosity was framed (forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research). This paper explores the nature of curiosity from an epistemological point of view. First it motivates this exploration by explaining why epistemologists do and should care about what curiosity is. Then it surveys the relevant literature and develops a particular approach.

Williamson on justification (Philosophical Studies 138/2: 161-168). Timothy Williamson has a marvelously precise account epistemic justification in terms of knowledge and probability.  This paper argues that that account runs aground on the notion of conditional probability.

Factivity without safety (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89/1: 143-149). I summarize Timothy Williamson’s theory of knowledge, construct some counterexamples to it, and try to diagnose the problem in virtue of which those counterexamples arise.  Then I consider possible responses.  It turns out that only one of those responses is tenable, and that that response renders Williamson’s theory a continuous piece of, rather than a radical paradigmatic break from, recent mainstream work in the theory of knowledge.

Wisdom bibliography. Recent philosophy features remarkably little work on the nature of wisdom. The following is a bibliography of that work, or at least the important-seeming parts of it that I’ve managed to uncover.  I’ve also included some work from the history of philosophy, and from a few neighboring fields.  Suggested additions would be very appreciated.