Faculty
David Christensen
My research interests are mainly in Epistemology and Philosophy of
Science. Some of the questions I have written on are: What
determines whether a given bit of evidence supports or refutes a given
theory? What logical principles apply to rational beliefs (either
degrees of belief either all-or-nothing beliefs)? How should one's
beliefs be affected by one's knowing that other people--equally
informed, rational and intelligent people--believe differently?
I'm currently working on questions about how our theory of ideal
rationality should accommodate rational self-doubt, and, in general,
what constraints rationality puts on the way one regards one’s
own beliefs.
I teach introductory Logic, which studies the basic principles
of deductive reasoning. At the intermediate level, I teach Philosophy
of
Science, in which we examine questions such as the following: Is
scientific
reasoning justified? What is the difference between correct and
incorrect
scientific reasoning? What is it to give a scientific explanation of
something? Does science give a true picture of the invisible parts of
the world, or
is it rather merely a tool for making useful predictions about the
parts
of the world we can observe directly?
At the advanced level, I have recently been teaching a course
on the
Self,
concentrating on questions of personal identity. I've also
taught
courses
in Metaphysics, studying topics such as necessary truth and
possibility,
the relation between mind and body, the question of free will, and the
question
of whether there are moral facts. Earlier courses I taught were on
Philosophy
of Language, and on the philosophy of W.V.O. Quine.
Publications:
Book:
Putting
Logic in its Place: Formal Constraints on Rational Belief,
Oxford
University Press (2004). (OUP
information)
Articles:
(pdf files represent last prepublication version I
have)
- "Epistemic Self-Respect" (revised version to come out in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society). (pdf)
- "Does
Murphy's Law Apply in Epistemology? Self-Doubt and Rational Ideals, " Oxford Studies in Epistemology 2 (forthcoming). (pdf)
- "Epistemology of Disagreement: the Good News," Philosophical Review 116
(2007): 187 - 217. (pdf)
- “ Three Questions about
Leplin’s Reliabilism,” Philosophical Studies 134 (2007): 43 - 50.
(pdf)
- "Preference-Based Arguments for Probabilism," Philosophy
of
Science
68 (2001): 356 - 76. (JSTOR)
(pdf)
- "Diachronic Coherence vs. Epistemic Impartiality," Philosophical
Review 109 (2000): 349 - 71. (JSTOR)
(pdf)
- "Measuring Confirmation," Journal of Philosophy
96 (1999):
437
- 61. (JSTOR)
(pdf)
- "What is Relative Confirmation?" Noûs
31 (1997):
370
- 84. (JSTOR)
(pdf)
- (with Hilary Kornblith) "Testimony, Memory, and the Limits
of the A
Priori," Philosophical Studies 86
(1997): 1 - 20. (DOI)
(pdf)
- "Dutch Books Depragmatized: Epistemic Consistency for
Partial
Believers," Journal of Philosophy 93 (1996): 450
- 79. (JSTOR)
(pdf)
- Critical Study of Robert Nozick's The Nature of
Rationality, Noûs 29 (1995):
259 - 74. (JSTOR)
- "Conservatism in Epistemology," Noûs
28 (1994):
69
- 89. (JSTOR)
- "Switched-Words Skepticism: a Case Study in Semantical
Anti-
Skeptical
Argument," Philosophical Studies 71 (1993): 33 -
58. (DOI)
- "Skeptical Problems, Semantical Solutions," Philosophy
and
Phenomenological
Research 53 (1993): 301 - 21. (JSTOR)
- "Confirmational Holism and Bayesian Epistemology," Philosophy
of Science 59 (1992): 540 - 57. (JSTOR)
- "Causal Powers and Conceptual Connections," Analysis
52
(1992): 163 - 68.
- "Clever Bookies and Coherent Beliefs," Philosophical
Review
100 (1991): 229 - 47. (JSTOR)
- "The Irrelevance of Bootstrapping," Philosophy
of Science
57 (1990): 644 - 62. (JSTOR)
- "Glymour on Evidential Relevance," Philosophy of
Science
50 (1983): 471 - 81. (JSTOR)
E-mail address:
Dchriste[at-sign]uvm.edu
Last modified May 17 2007 03:55 PM
