A critique of capitalism, in order to count as such, must identify a problem that is not shared by all other feasible economic systems, for this would amount to little more than a complaint (or kvetch) about the human condition. The distinction between critique and kvetch raises the question of what constitutes a feasible alternative to capitalism. Although it sounds as though this is a pragmatic or technical question, I will argue that it is usually normative. With this clarification in place, I will consider whether Waheed Hussain’s concerns about capitalism amount to a critique or a kvetch.

In this précis of Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition (Oxford 2021), I highlight the book’s main lines of argument and provide an overview of each of the book’s three parts. I explain how: part I identifies the best kind of argument for radical skepticism and objects to one of the two main ways of responding to it; part II presents my version of the other main way of responding to that skeptical argument (a version that relies heavily on epistemic intuition); and part III defends epistemic intuition (and, thereby, my response to radical skepticism) from several important objections.

Hinge epistemology’s main claim to fame lies with its purported advantages in dealing with the problem of radical skepticism. In this paper, I argue that two of its most prominent formulations, due to Annalisa Coliva and Duncan Pritchard, are unsuccessful. To the extent that hinge epistemology represents one of the most relevant options available to internalists to avoid skeptical collapse, the results of this discussion contribute to cast a grim light on the chances of a successful defense of internalist epistemic justification more in general.

We offer a novel analysis of conspiracy theorizing, according to which conspiracy theory communities are engaged in collective projects of storytelling. Other recent accounts start by analyzing individual conspiracy theorists’ psychologies. We argue that a more explanatorily unifying account emerges when we start by analyzing conspiracy theorizing as a social practice. This helps us better account for conspiracy theorists’ psychological heterogeneity. Some individual theorists care about uncovering the truth, while others incorporate truth into their theorizing in subtler ways; viewed as a social phenomenon, though, the function of conspiracy theorizing is not to discover the truth, but to tell good stories.

The Practical Self offers a new and gripping account of the conditions on being self-conscious subjects. Gomes argues that self-conscious subjects are required to have faith in themselves as the agents of thinking, sustained and supported by worldly practices. I argue that that Gomes leaves open either theoretical or alternative practical grounds to justify being the agents of thinking and so does not motivate an appeal to faith as the mode of assent. And I ask whether we can make available an alternative account of the tight relation between communal practices and self-consciousness that preserves it, absent faith.

Although the harm-reduction approach to policy is most familiar from debates over public health and drug abuse, it provides a perfectly general framework for thinking about normative aspects of policy in non-ideal contexts. This paper seeks to apply a generalized harm reduction approach to the problem of attitudinal racism. Psychological research suggests that racism is unlikely to be completely eradicated, as a result of which a zero-tolerance approach risks becoming both counterproductive and overly punitive. Harm reduction recommends minimization of prevalence with respect to the primary phenomenon combined with attenuation of impact for the ineliminable portion.

In Transparency and Reflection, Matthew Boyle offers a Sartrean account of prereflective self-awareness to explain the essential link between self-consciousness and rationality, moving away from standard Kantian interpretations that he claims presuppose rather than explain this connection. I argue that Boyle’s account provides useful tools for re-interpreting Kant’s claim that the “I think” must accompany all representations as a form of nonpositional consciousness. I also aim to show that Boyle’s model risks fragmenting the unity of the subject across different representational domains, and that Kant’s account (construed as a kind of prereflective consciousness) has the resources to address this challenge.

Our politics are increasingly polarised. Polarisation takes many forms. One is increasing clustering, whereby people hold down-the-line liberal or conservative views on a wide range of orthogonal issues. Some philosophers think that such clustering is indicative of irrationality, and so finding yourself in one of several clusters gives you evidence that not all your political beliefs are true. I argue that the reverse is true, presenting a simple model of belief-formation in which finding yourself in one of several clusters of opinion on orthogonal issues should increase, rather than decrease, your confidence that all your beliefs are true.

The thought that intellectual arrogance consists in, roughly, overconfident resilience in one’s beliefs has been influential in philosophy and psychology. This thought is in the background of much of the philosophical literature on disagreement as well as some leading psychological scales of intellectual humility. It is not true, however. This paper highlights cases (of “stubborn fools” and the “arrogantly open-minded”) that cause trouble for equating intellectual arrogance with overconfident belief resilience. These cases are much better accommodated if we see intellectual arrogance as, instead, a form of vicious intellectual distraction by the ego.

I raise two concerns about Bergmann’s philosophical methodology: the first is a parity problem for his intuition-based “autodidactic” approach; the second is a tension between that approach and the commonsense tradition in which he situates it. I then use his approach to reflect on the limits of rational argument and set it alongside an alternative that likewise emphasizes the personal nature of philosophical inquiry while remaining more neutral about the rational standing of competing intuitions.

Standard conceptions of discrimination cannot account for all that is morally wrong about discrimination, as they cannot explain how individual acts of discrimination wrong not only their direct target but also all members of the targeted social group. In response to this lacuna, I develop a comprehensive account according to which discrimination consists of two interdependent wrongs: to discriminate against B, A must, first, treat B worse than C in a way that is grave enough to make this differential treatment morally wrong; and second, A must do so in a way that is disrespectful to B and to the social group B is perceived to belong to.

To what extent can intellectual humility be formalized? One natural idea links humility to open-mindedness, captured by a regularity principle: no coherent hypothesis should get probability zero. While debates over regularity often concern infinities, my objection is different. Regularity is feasible only for ideally rational, logically omniscient agents. Yet on a common view, humility involves appreciating our limitations—including our failure to be such agents. So whatever its merits for ideal cognition, regularity is a poor model for human humility. Indeed, taking it as such would itself be un-humble, by failing to appreciate our own epistemic limitations.

How should epistemologists respond to skepticism about knowledge of the external world? Michael Bergmann advocates noninferential antiskepticism. The thought is that, to reply to a skeptical argument, we should start with premises that do not require inference. I argue that Bergmann’s reasoning runs into the problem of easy knowledge and propose an alternative inferential antiskepticism. This view faces the problem of vicious circularity. I agree that, if we go down the inferential path, a certain type of circularity is unavoidable. I deny, however, that this type of circularity is vicious.

This article raises some questions about the intuitionist response to skepticism developed by Michael Bergmann in Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition, with a focus on Bergmann’s contention that epistemic intuitions serve as justifying evidence in support of anti-skepticism. It raises three main concerns: that an intuitionist conception of evidence is overly narrow, that it has undesirable implications for cases of disagreement, and that the evidential role that epistemic intuitions play in Bergmann’s version of anti-skepticism undercuts his claim that an intuitionist particularist response to skepticism is superior to disjunctivist responses.

This paper expresses extensive agreement with Michael Bergmann’s position in Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition, but (i) offers a simpler response to the skeptic, (ii) takes issue with Bergmann’s strong claim that an “evil demon” hypothesis is as good an explanation of our sensory experiences as is the natural realist explanation, and (iii) corrects a misunderstanding about explanationists’ canons of theory preference.