We all know that being reasonable is important in daily life. Beyond daily life, major political and ethical theorists give central place to reasonableness in their accounts of just and moral behaviour. In the law, at least in the Anglo-American setting, reasonableness is the standard for a wide range of behaviour, from administrative decisions to torts. But what is it to be reasonable? In answer, I provide a genealogical account of reasonableness. The functional perspective afforded by a genealogical account has (...) numerous payoffs, explaining important features of reasonableness, and enabling us to respond to worries about vagueness or subjectivity in the meaning of ‘reasonable’. (shrink)

Recent social psychology is skeptical about self-knowledge. Philosophers, on the other hand, have produced a new account of the source of the authority of self-ascriptions. On this account, it is not descriptive accuracy but authorship which funds the authority of one's self-ascriptions. The resulting view seems to ensure that self-ascriptions are authoritative, despite evidence of one's fallibility. However, a new wave of psychological studies presents a powerful challenge to the authorship account. This research suggests that one can author one's attitudes, (...) but one's self- ascriptions may lack authority. I present this new challenge from social psychology and use it to argue that first-person authority is agential authority: one's self-ascriptions are authoritative, in part anyway, because they are reliable expressions of those attitudes that govern further choices and behavior. (shrink)

(2014). Exploring the Stability of Belief: Resiliency and Temptation. Inquiry: Vol. 57, The Nature of Belief, pp. 1-27. doi: 10.1080/0020174X.2014.858414.

Ruth Millikan has long argued that the phenomenon of confused thought requires us to abandon certain traditional programmes for mental semantics. On the one hand she argues that confused thought involves confused concepts, and on the other that Fregean senses, or modes of presentation, cannot be useful in theorizing about minds capable of confused thinking. I argue that while we might accept that concepts can be confused, we have no reason to abandon modes of presentation. Making sense of confused thought (...) requires recognizing modes of presentation. (shrink)

The point of knowledge is to answer our need for information that will let us successfully navigate our world. So says Edward Craig in Knowledge and the State of Nature. This claim may sound anodyne, but according to Craig, it is crucial we keep this fact uppermost in our minds as we theorize about knowledge. Craig argues that our concept of knowledge begins its life by answering our need to mark out those who have the information we seek. A priori (...) analysis may not reveal the application conditions of our concept of knowledge, but reflection on its function can. (shrink)

What is an assurance? What do we do when we claim to know? Krista Lawlor offers an original account based on the work of J. L. Austin. She addresses challenges to contextualist semantic theories; resolves closure-based skeptical paradoxes; and helps us tread the line between acknowledging our fallibility and skepticism.

Lawlor-Krista_Files-indexicals-and-descriptivism.

Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia (1962) generates wildly different reactions among philosophers. Interpreting Austin on perception starts with a reading of this text, and this in turn requires reading into the lectures key ideas from Austin’s work on natural language and the theory of knowledge. The lectures paint a methodological agenda, and a sketch of some first-order philosophy, done the way Austin thinks it should be done. Crucially, Austin calls for philosophers to bring a deeper understanding of natural language meaning to (...) bear as they do their tasks. In consequence Austin’s lectures provide a fascinating start—but only a start—on a number of key questions in the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

Knowing one’s past thoughts and attitudes is a vital sort of self-knowledge. In the absence of memorial impressions to serve as evidence, we face a pressing question of how such self-knowledge is possible. Recently, philosophers of mind have argued that self-knowledge of past attitudes supervenes on rationality. I examine two kinds of argument for this supervenience claim, one from cognitive dynamics, and one from practical rationality, and reject both. I present an alternative account, on which knowledge of past attitudes is (...) inferential knowledge, and depends upon contingent facts of one’s rationality and consistency. Failures of self-knowledge are better explained by the inferential account. (shrink)

This book defends a novel theory of singular concepts, emphasizing the pragmatic requirements of singular concept possession and arguing that these requirements must be understood to institute traditions and policies of thought.

Knowing what one believes sometimes takes effort—it sometimes involves seeking to know one’s beliefs as causes. And when one gains self-knowledge of one’s belief this way—that is, through causal self-interpretation—one engages in a characteristically human kind of psychological liberation. By investigating the nature of causal self-interpretation, I discover some surprising features of this liberty. And in doing so, I counter a trend in recent philosophical theories, of discounting the value of self-knowledge in projects of human liberation.

My reply to Ferrero is divided into three parts: a recap of my argument and claim, a response to Ferrero's central criticism, and, finally, a question about his attempted defense of the authorship account.

People often become confused, mistaking one thing for another, or taking two things to be the same. How should we assign semantic values to confused statements? Recently, philosophers have taken a pessimistic view of confusion, arguing that understanding confused belief demands significant departure from our normal interpretive practice. I argue for optimism. Our semantic treatment of confusion can be a lot like our semantic treatment of empty names. Surprisingly, perhaps, the resulting semantics lets us keep in place more of our (...) everyday interpretive practices in the face of confused belief. (shrink)

Epistemic closure, the idea that knowledge is closed under known implication, plays a central role in current discussions of skepticism and the semantics of knowledge reports. Contextualists in particular rely heavily on the truth of epistemic closure in staking out their distinctive response to the so-called "skeptical paradox." I argue that contextualists should re-think their commitment to closure. Closure principles strong enough to force the skeptical paradox on us are too strong, and closure principles weak enough to express unobjectionable epistemic (...) principles are too weak to generate the skeptical paradox. I briefly consider how the contextualist might live without (strong) closure. (shrink)

G. E. Moore famously noted that saying 'I went to the movies, but I don't believe it' is absurd, while saying 'I went to the movies, but he doesn't believe it' is not in the least absurd. The problem is to explain this fact without supposing that the semantic contribution of 'believes' changes across first-person and third-person uses, and without making the absurdity out to be merely pragmatic. We offer a new solution to the paradox. Our solution is that the (...) truth conditions of any moorean utterance contradict its accuracy conditions. Thus we diagnose a contradiction in how the moorean utterance represents things as being; so we can do justice to the intuition that a Moore-paradoxical utterance is in some way senseless, even if we know what proposition it expresses. (shrink)

The notion of relevance plays a role in many accounts of knowledge and knowledge ascription. Although use of the notion is well-motivated, theorists struggle to codify relevance. A reasonable person standard of relevance addresses this codification problem, and provides an objective and flexible standard of relevance; however, treating relevance as reasonableness seems to allow practical factors to determine whether one has knowledge or not—so-called “pragmatic encroachment.” I argue that a fuller understanding of reasonableness and of the role of practical factors (...) in the acquisition of knowledge lets us avoid pragmatic encroachment. (shrink)

Tyler Burge defends the idea that memory preserves beliefswith their justifications, so that memory's role in inferenceadds no new justificatory demands. Against Burge's view,Christensen and Kornblith argue that memory is reconstructiveand so introduces an element of a posteriori justificationinto every inference. I argue that Burge is right,memory does preserve content, but to defend this viewwe need to specify a preservative mechanism. Toward thatend, I develop the idea that there is something worthcalling anaphoric thinking, which preserves content inBurge's sense of ``content (...) preservation.'' I providea model on which anaphoric thought is a fundamentalfeature of cognitive architecture, consequentlyrejecting the idea that there are mental pronounsin a Language of Thought. Since preservativememory is a matter of anaphoric thinking, thereare limits on the analogy of memory and testimony. (shrink)

What role does ‘ordinary language philosophy’ play in the defense of common sense beliefs? J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein each give central place to ordinary language in their responses to skeptical challenges to common sense beliefs. But Austin and Wittgenstein do not always respond to such challenges in the same way, and their working methods are different. In this paper, I compare Austin’s and Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophical positions, and show that they share many metaphilosophical commitments. I then examine Austin and Wittgenstein’s (...) respective takes on the problem of other minds and the problem of our knowledge of the external world. Interestingly, we find Wittgenstein employing methods more frequently associated Austin and vice versa. Moreover, we find that a variety of defenses of common sense beliefs are compatible with ‘ordinary language philosophy.’. (shrink)

Imagine you are looking at a cat and make the following inference: That cat sneezed; That cat is missing an ear; thus There exists a sneezing cat missing an ear. Such an inference is valid only if there is no equivocation on the term “that cat.” If “that cat” in refers to Puss, but in refers to Midnight, then the inference is invalid. This much is elementary. Now imagine that Puss is the cat in front of you when you think, (...) but that a nefarious semanticist quickly substitutes similar-looking Midnight for Puss, so that when you think, the cat in front of you is Midnight, though you believe it is Puss. If it is true that the switch changes the meaning of the term “that cat” from Puss to Midnight, then your inference is invalid although this fact is hidden from you. Two questions are then raised. Do we ever really know that our inferences are valid, given the uncertainty of apparent coreference? And, is it ever reasonable to think that our inferences are valid, given this uncertainty? Lawlor’s answers are “no” and “yes,” respectively. (shrink)

I acquired many intellectual debts while writing What’s the Point of Knowledge?, but I am especially indebted to my three symposiasts. David Henderson’s work helped me to appreciate the value of thinking about the point of epistemic evaluation; Catherine Elgin’s writings prompted me to investigate the purpose of the concept of understanding; and Krista Lawlor’s 2013 book revealed important connections between three of my primary epistemological interests: the role of epistemic evaluation, the semantics of knowledge claims and the (...) work of J.L. Austin. It is therefore an honour to have such personally influential scholars engage with my work. Their thoughtful, generous and philosophically rich comments have provided yet another opportunity to clarify my thinking and develop some ideas further. (shrink)

G. E. Moore famously observed that to assert ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I do not believe that I did’ would be ‘absurd’. Moore calls it a ‘paradox’ that this absurdity persists despite the fact that what I say about myself might be true. Krista Lawlor and John Perry have proposed an explanation of the absurdity that confines itself to semantic notions while eschewing pragmatic ones. We argue that this explanation faces four objections. We give (...) a better explanation of the absurdity both in assertion and in belief that avoids our four objections. (shrink)

My responses to seven critical reviews of my book *Mental Files* published in a special issue of the journal Disputatio, edited by F. Salis. The reviewers are: Keith Hall, David Papineau, Annalisa Coliva and Delia Belleri, Peter Pagin, Thea Goodsell, Krista Lawlor and Manuel Garcia-Carpintero.

I report three experiments relevant to evaluating Krista Lawlor's theory of assurance, respond to her criticism of the knowledge account of assertion, and propose an alternative theory of assurance.

I acquired many intellectual debts while writing What’s the Point of Knowledge?, but I am especially indebted to my three symposiasts. David Henderson’s work helped me to appreciate the value of thinking about the point of epistemic evaluation; Catherine Elgin’s writings prompted me to investigate the purpose of the concept of understanding; and Krista Lawlor’s 2013 book revealed important connections between three of my primary epistemological interests: the role of epistemic evaluation, the semantics of knowledge claims and the (...) work of J.L. Austin. It is therefore an honour to have such personally influential scholars engage with my work. Their thoughtful, generous and philosophically rich comments have provided yet another opportunity to clarify my thinking and develop some ideas further. (shrink)

According to inferentialism about self-knowledge of desire, the basic way in which we come to know what we want is through inference. In this paper, I argue that in a wide range of cases of knowing one’s desire, inference is insufficient. In particular, I look at two inferentialist models, one proposed by Krista Lawlor and the other by Alex Byrne and look at the challenges that they face in securing safe self-ascriptions. In response to these difficulties, I argue (...) that we can explain how inferentially based self-ascriptions can be safe when we consider the agent’s role in sustaining their desires through attending and elaborating on the content of desire through imagination. (shrink)

Shame is most frequently defined as the emotion we feel when we fail to live up to standards, norms, or ideals. I argue that this definition is flawed because it cannot explain some of the most paradigmatic features of shame. Agents often respond to shame with violence, but if shame is the painful feeling of failing to live up to an ideal, this response is unintelligible. I offer a new account of shame that can explain the link between shame and (...) violence. On my view, shame arises out of a tension between our identity and our self-conception: those things about which we feel shame are part of our identities, but they are not part of our self-conception. I conclude by arguing that this account of shame is a valuable moral emotion. (shrink)

Drawing on a career-long exploration of 1960s French philosophy, Leonard Lawlor seeks a solution to 'the problem of the worst violence'. The worst violence is the reaction of total apocalypse without remainder; it is the reaction of complete negation and death; it is nihilism. Lawlor argues that it is not just transcendental violence that must be minimised: all violence must itself be reduced to its lowest level. He offers new ways of speaking to best achieve the least violence, (...) which he creatively appropriates from Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze and Guattari as 'speaking-freely', 'speaking-distantly' and 'speaking-in-tongues'. (shrink)

Negative emotions like anger, spite, contempt, and envy are widely seen as obstacles to a good life. They are like the weeds in a garden that need to be pulled up before they choke out the nice plants. This book argues that bad feelings aren't the weeds; they are the worms. Many people are squeamish about them and would prefer to pretend they aren't there, but the presence of worms mean the garden it thriving. I draw on insights from the (...) history of philosophy to show what we've gotten wrong about bad feelings and to see how we can live better with them. The first half of the book argues that there is nothing wrong with negative emotions and that their bad reputation is undeserved. Philosophers have long argued that our emotions are part of how we value things and bad feelings are not different. Negative emotions are expressions of self-love-not egoism or selfishness, but the felt attachment to ourselves and our lives. We feel negative emotions because our lives matter to us. The second half of the book takes a detailed look at individual bad feelings: anger, envy and jealousy, spite and Schadenfreude, and contempt. I show how all our negative emotions are valuable parts of our attachment to our lives. We don't have to battle negative emotions or "channel" them into something productive. Bad feelings aren't obstacles to a good life; they are part of what makes life meaningful. (shrink)

Shaming behavior on social media has been the cause of concern in recent public discourse. Supporters of online shaming argue that it is an important tool in helping to make social media and online communities safer and more welcoming to traditionally marginalized groups. Objections to shaming often sound like high-minded calls for civility, but I argue that shaming behavior poses serious risks. Here I identify moral and political risks of online shaming. In particular, shaming threatens to undermine our commitment to (...) the co-deliberative practices of morality. As a result, online shaming can undermine the very goals it is supposed to accomplish. (shrink)

This essay starts from a consideration of Deleuze's theory of time. It begins with the empty form of time. But the essay's aim is to understand Deleuze's reversal of Platonism in his 1968 Difference and Repetition. There is no question that the stakes of the reversal of Platonism are ontological. But I argue that what is really at stake is a movement of demoralisation. The essay proceeds in three steps. First, we determine what sufficient reason or grounding is, for Deleuze. (...) Sufficient reason is struck with an irreducible ambiguity. It is this ambiguity in sufficient reason that allows it to be taken advantage of, to be used by representation and good sense for a moral purpose. The second part of the essay will therefore concern ‘the moralisation of sufficient reason’. Its focus will be good sense. But then, third, we must understand Deleuze's ‘demoralisation of sufficient reason’, which necessarily passes through others. Like sufficient reason, others are ambiguous, at once lending themselves to what cancels differences, and opening the way towards difference and intensity. The third step focuses on what Deleuze calls ‘the ethics of intensive quantities’. In the Conclusion, I examine Deleuze's famous, almost cliché, definition of ethics as not being unworthy of the event and, through the empty form of time, I connect it to Kant's formalistic ethics. (shrink)

We draw from resource dependence and institutional theories to explore how board characteristics associated with directors’ capacities to provide resources and legitimacy (i.e., board size, the number of non-executive, interlocking, and female directors) along with regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive institutional conditions combine to shape firm environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Using a process of configurational theorizing with fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis and data from firms in 32 countries, we identify multiple equifinal configurations that are associated with high and (...) low ESG performance. We find that high and low ESG performance have different drivers due to complementarities among the presence and absence of board characteristics. Our results also show that the effectiveness (or not) of the bundles of boards’ characteristics for ESG performance varies across institutional contexts. By leveraging these findings to construct a typology of board archetypes that lead to high and low ESG performance, we offer novel theoretical and empirical insights to scholars as well as implications for practice. (shrink)

Shame is a Jekyll-and-Hyde emotion--it can be morally valuable, but it also has a dark side. Thomason presents a philosophically rigorous and nuanced account of shame that accommodates its harmful and helpful aspects. Thomason argues that despite its obvious drawbacks and moral ambiguity, shame's place in our lives is essential.

One of the more notorious passages in Kant occurs in the Doctrine of Right where he claims that ‘bloodguilt’ will cling to members of a dissolving society if they fail to execute the last murderer (MM, 6: 333). Although this is the most famous, bloodguilt appears in three other passages in Kant’s writings. These have received little attention in Kant scholarship. In this article, I examine these other passages and argue that bloodguilt functions as a symbol for the demandingness of (...) justice. I then offer a sympathetic interpretation of the passage from the Doctrine of Right. (shrink)

Workplaces have transformed over the past decades in response to global forces. This case study of a Mexican-owned multinational corporation compares employee perceptions of a new work culture required to confront these demands. Employees are expected to work long hours and to produce results, obtain the right skills and knowledge, and exhibit proactivity. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, this article theorizes what the expectations mean for women and men employees. The competitive culture reinforces inequality because expectations are grounded in the (...) gendered “ideal worker” narrative. However, tensions ensue for the company that is partly characterized by paternalism yet requires a competitive work culture. The study uncovers a hybrid organizational logic with gendered assumptions undergirding a hidden inequality as professional women navigate the emergence of the glass ceiling in the global south. (shrink)