geoff pynn

Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Illinois University
g pynn @ niu . edu

Here are drafts of some of my papers. Comments and questions are welcome. Please don't cite anything here without my permission.

A Priori Anti-Skeptical Justification (pdf)
Many philosophers scoff at the idea that I have a priori justification to believe that I'm not a bodiless brain in a vat. Here I attempt to say why they shouldn't scoff.

The Bayesian Explanation of Transmission Failure (pdf)
Transmission failure occurs when a subject's e-based justification for believing p cannot provide her with justification to believe q, despite the fact that q is recognized to be one of p's entailments. According to the Bayesian explanation, transmission failure occurs because P(q|e) < P(q). I argue that the Bayesian explanation is extensionally inadequate: the condition it identifies is neither necessary nor sufficient for transmission failure.

Mooreanism, Transmission, and the Deeply Contingent A Priori (pdf)
If I have justification to believe the contingent truth that I'm not a bodiless brain in a vat, and I do not get this justification from experience, then I have some deeply contingent a priori justification. If Mooreanism is correct, then my justification to believe I'm not a bodiless brain in a vat does come from experience. I argue that any plausible account of the phenomenon of transmission failure will imply that Mooreanism cannot be correct, and thus that if I have justification to believe I'm not a brain in a vat, I have some deeply contingent a priori justification.

The Problem of False Denials: Invariantism and Error (pdf)
Moderate invariantists must explain why people can, with apparent propriety, falsely deny that subjects know things in contexts where they are taking skeptical hypotheses seriously. Moderate invariantists often try to solve this problem by appealing to pragmatics. I argue that the pragmatic approach is doomed; invariantists should instead recognize that speakers in hard contexts are wrong about what subjects know.

Skeptical Hypotheses, Sensitivity, and Assertion (pdf)
It can seem that you do not know that you are not a bodiless brain in a vat, or that your car has not just been stolen, or that you are not going to win the lottery. I sketch a new account of assertion and attempt to use it to explain why it might seem that we don't know these things, even though we do.