Andrew Cullison

Joshua Knobe has run a series of experiments that suggest that our intuitions about whether or not an action was intentional may be influenced by whether or not the effects of the action were harmful/bad. Here’s a brief summary of one of those studies. In a case where an exec sought to max company profits [...]

Filed under: Uncategorized, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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I like to make note of real life Gettier cases. Yesterday I was in one.

Filed under: epistemology, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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Here’s an argument that the semantic content of some term is directly referential. It’s designed to mirror the regress argument for foundationalism in epistemology.

Filed under: Uncategorized, epistemology, philosophy, philosophy of language by Andrew Cullison
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I’m directing an independent study this summer on Experimental Philosophy. We’re starting with the new reader by Knobe and Nichols. I’ll probably be posting about some of it soon. So far we’re through the manifesto and the section on cross-cultural differences. We spent most of our time talking about “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions”

Filed under: philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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I’ve been on a David Lewis kick recently. Here’s more. David Lewis considers two different epistemic objections to Lewisian Modal Realism (hereafter LMR). The first argues that modal realism is incompatible with modal knowledge. The second is that modal realism is incompatible with knowledge about the external world. I want to talk about the second [...]

Filed under: epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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UPDATE: I think Mike Almeida is right. The response I lay out won’t work. Suppose you have the option of saving a drowning child. Further suppose that Lewisian Modal Realism is true. Here are your options. SAVE THE CHILD You save the child. However, consider what is true about the pluriverse if you save the [...]

Filed under: ethics, metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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I like evidentialism. (EJ) S is justified in believing P iff P is best supported by S’s total evidence. I also like phenomenal conservatism. (PC) If it seems to S that P and S has no defeaters for P, then S is justified believing P. I take it that seemings (absent defeaters) are a kind [...]

Filed under: epistemology, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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My first review for Philosopher’s Digest was posted today. Here’s the link. It’s on Jonathan Vogel’s paper “Epistemic Bootstrapping” in The Journal of Philosophy (September 2008)

Filed under: epistemology, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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There are a few things I don’t quite understand about the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). I think most of them boil down to my own confusion about when it’s true of a person that they intend to bring about some effect. In this post, I simply want to present a case. I’m not sure [...]

Filed under: ethics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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In On the Plurality of Worlds David Lewis resists an objection to his view by appealing to functionalism. The problem is roughly that for any number of worlds you suppose are in the pluriverse, you’ll be committed to the absurd thesis that there are more worlds than there really are. Here is the argument.

Filed under: metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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