In Relying on others [Goldberg, S. 2010a. Relying on others: An essay in epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press], I argued that, from the perspective of an interest in epistemic assessment, the testimonial belief-forming process should be regarded as interpersonally extended. At the same time, I explicitly rejected the extendedness model for beliefs formed through reliance on a mere mechanism, such as a clock. In this paper, I try to bolster my defense of this asymmetric treatment. I argue that a crucial (...) assumption lying behind the argument I used to establish interpersonal extendedness in testimony cases does not apply to beliefs formed through reliance on instruments. In this respect, at least, there appears to be something epistemically distinctive about relying on another epistemic agent. (shrink)

Kit Fine (2007) outlines an account of semantic coordination, an account motivated by the role of semantic coordination in cognition. Actually, Fine outlines two accounts of semantic coordination, one in terms of co-reference and another in terms of synonymy. I argue, first, that Fine's two accounts are not equivalent, with one being logically stronger than the other, but second and more importantly, that neither account is correct. I outline an alternative account of semantic coordination – the epistemic conception of semantic (...) coordination – that links semantic and epistemic aspects of cognition more directly. The most surprising result of my alternative account of semantic coordination is that semantic coordination is a relation that can hold between elements of thought and language of different semantic types. I close the paper by briefly outlining some applications of the idea that semantic coordination is a relation that can hold across semantic types. (shrink)

Les conditions de possession permettant l’individuation des concepts, bien que peu étudiées, constituent l’un des lieux fondamentaux de la polémique opposant les points de vue frégéen et anti-individualiste. Dans cet article, je décris une théorie compatibiliste de la valeur cognitive qui réunit des conditions de possession anti-individualistes et individualistes. Je soutiens que cette approche générale de la compatibilité des explications frégéenne et anti-individualiste de la possession de concepts suffit à mettre en doute l’idée voulant que la déférence et la transparence (...) sont des caractéristiques fondamentales de la valeur cognitive. (shrink)