Ph.D., Philosophy
Email: ben@benbayer.com.

Personal stuff

Job portfolio

Research

Teaching

Dissertation

The varieties of naturalized epistemology: criticisms and alternatives
(July 11, 2007) (DOC) (PDF)

Online papers

How to be an internalist without direct, simultaneous access to justifiers (Conference paper)
(February 15, 2010) (DOC) (PDF)
I argue that debates in the philosophy of perception between direct realists and representationalists should influence the debate in epistemology between internalist and externalist theories of justification. If the direct realists are correct, internalists are afforded more forms of access to the justifiers than externalists believe possible, but internalists can maintain their distinctive internalist identity while accepting this widened conception of access. To demonstrate this, I show how Alvin Goldman's critique of externalism fails to draw two important lessons from direct realism—one straightforward, the second analogical—for a theory of justification.

A Role for Abstractionism in a Direct-Realist Foundationalism (Forthcoming in Synthese )
(FINAL REVISIONS, November 23, 2009) (DOC) (PDF)
Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human psychology has no relevance to the goal of traditional epistemology, that of providing first-person guidance in determining the truth. Without slipping into naturalism, I apply insight about the psychology of human perception and concept-formation to a very traditional epistemological project: the foundationalist approach to the epistemic regress problem. I argue that direct realism about perception can help solve the regress problem and support a foundationalist account of justification, but only if it is supplemented by an abstractionist theory of concept-formation, the view that it is possible to abstract concepts directly from the empirically given. Critics of direct realist solutions like Laurence BonJour are correct that an account of direct perception by itself does not provide an adequate account of justification. However a direct realist account of perception can inform the needed theory of concept-formation, and leading critics of abstractionism like McDowell and Sellars, direct realists about perception themselves, fail to appreciate the ways in which their own views about perception help fill gaps in earlier accounts of abstractionism. Recognizing this undercuts both their objections to abstractionism and (therefore) their objections to foundationalism, as well.

How We Choose our Beliefs
by Gregory Salmieri (UNC/Chapel Hill)
and Benjamin Bayer (Colorado College)
(June 5, 2009) (DOC) (PDF)
Recent years have seen increasing attacks on the "deontological" conception (or as we call it, the "prescriptive conception") of epistemic justification, the view that epistemology guides us in forming beliefs responsibly. Critics challenge an important presupposition of the prescriptive conception, doxastic voluntarism, the view that we choose our beliefs. We assume that epistemic prescriptions are indispensable, and seek to answer objections to doxastic voluntarism, most prominently William Alston's. We contend that Alston falsely assumes that choice of belief requires the assent to a specific propositional content. We argue that beliefs can be chosen under descriptions which do not specify their propositional content, and that these descriptions—which concern the method of inquiry whereby a belief is to be formed—nonetheless specify the features of the belief that make it epistemically responsible to adopt. More generally, we urge that the identity of a belief is not exhausted by its content.

The Elusiveness of Doxastic Compatibilism
(June 4, 2009) (DOC) (PDF)
While moral theorists regularly appeal to compatibilist accounts of freedom in order to reconcile the concept of moral responsibility with the prospect of determinism, few epistemologists are as concerned to find a workable doxastic compatibilism to underwrite the concept of epistemic responsibility. I suggest that, at least for internalists about justification, epistemic responsibility is crucial and so some version of doxastic compatibilism is necessary for those who take the prospect of determinism seriously. In this paper, I survey Matthias Steup's recent attempt to formulate just such a version of doxastic compatibilism, modeled along the lines of traditional proposals for compatibilism about the freedom of action. I argue, however, that Steup's proposal does not work, mostly on his own terms. After attempting to refine his proposal to meet my counterexamples, I express a general skepticism about the workability of doxastic compatibilism, and offer a brief libertarian account of doxastic freedom that I believe should be taken seriously by those internalist epistemologists who take epistemic responsibility seriously.

Quine's Pragmatic Solution to Skeptical Doubts (formerly "Quine's Acquiescence in Skepticism"). (Forthcoming in The International Journal of Philosophical Studies )
(MAJOR REVISIONS, July 6, 2009) (DOC) (PDF)
I examine a series of criticisms that have been leveled against Quine's naturalized epistemology, regarding its response to the problem of skepticism. Barry Stroud and Michael Williams, assuming that Quine wishes to refute skepticism, argue that Quine not only fails to undertake this refutation, but is also committed to theses (such as the inscrutability of reference and the underdetermination of theory by evidence) which imply versions of skepticism of their own. In Quine's defense, Roger Gibson argues that Quine can succeed in showing skeptical doubts to be incoherent. But I contend that both parties of this dispute wrongly assume that Quine wishes to defeat the skeptic in a traditional way. Instead, Quine is happy to "acquiesce" in skepticism about a certain kind of justification. No logical justification of our scientific beliefs is possible on his view. But Quine thinks pragmatic justification is possible, and acknowledging that this is his view this leads to the resolution of a number of interpretive quandaries.

How Not to Refute Quine: Evaluating Kim's Alternatives to Naturalized Epistemology. (Southern Journal of Philosophy, December 2007)
(August 6, 2007) (DOC) (PDF)
This paper offers an interpretation of Quine's naturalized epistemology through the lens of Jaegwon Kim's influential critique of the same. Kim argues that Quine forces a false choice between traditional deductivist foundationalism and naturalized epistemology, and contends that there are viable alternative epistemological projects. However it is urged that Quine would reject these alternatives by reference to the same fundamental principles (underdetermination, indeterminacy of translation, extensionalism) that led him to reject traditional epistemology and propose naturalism as an alternative. Given this interpretation of Quine, it is essential that a successful critic of naturalism also critique Quine's aforementioned principles. The divide between naturalist and non-naturalist epistemology turns out to be defined by the divide between more fundamental naturalist and non-naturalist approaches to semantics.

From folk psychology to folk epistemology: the status of radical simulation
(June 6, 2007) (DOC) (PDF) In this paper I consider one of the leading philosophic-psychological theories of "folk psychology," the simulation theory of Robert Gordon. According to Gordon, we attribute mental states to others not by representing those states or by applying the generalizations of theory, but by imagining ourselves in the position of a target to be interpreted and exploiting our own decision-making skills to make assertions which we then attribute to others as 'beliefs'. I describe a leading objection to Gordon's theory—the problem of adjustment—and show how a charitably interpreted Gordon could answer this objection. I conclude, however, that the best case for Gordon's position still runs into a new problem concerning basic folk epistemological knowledge. Identifying this new alternative helps undermine the simplicity of a theory based on simulation-based explanation.

Metaethical Problems for Ethical Egoism Reconsidered
(MAJOR REVISIONS, July 6, 2009) (DOC) (PDF)
Until recently it has been conventional to assume that ethical egoism is "ethical" is name only and that no account that considers one's own interests as the standard of moral obligation could ever count as seriously "ethical." In recent years, however, philosophers have shown increasing appreciation for more sophisticated forms of egoism which attempt to define self-interest in enriched terms, terms which characterize self-interest as a form of human flourishing in both material and psychological dimensions. But philosophers are still skeptical that any conception of self-interest could underpin ethical theory. This paper considers recent arguments by Richard Joyce, who is willing to concede enriched conceptions of self-interest, but who claims that egoism cannot support intuitions about counterfactual conditionals, or paradigmatic traits and uses of moral norms. I argue that ethical egoism can satisfy each of Joyce's requirements for morality, provided that it is taken to involve the very notion of enriched self-interest that Joyce is elsewhere willing to consider. In showing that egoism can count as a moral theory, I show, in effect, that Joyce's arguments for error theory about morality are really arguments for error theory about agent-neutral, non-egoistic morality.