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Scientia, diachronic certainty, and virtue

Synthese 198 (10):9165-9192 (2020)

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  1. Color in a Material World: Margaret Cavendish against the Early Modern Mechanists.Colin Chamberlain - 2019 - Philosophical Review 128 (3):293-336.
    Consider the distinctive qualitative property grass visually appears to have when it visually appears to be green. This property is an example of what I call sensuous color. Whereas early modern mechanists typically argue that bodies are not sensuously colored, Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) disagrees. In cases of veridical perception, she holds that grass is green in precisely the way it visually appears to be. In defense of her realist approach to sensuous colors, Cavendish argues that (i) it is impossible to (...)
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  • Faculties, Knowledge, and Reasons for Doubt in the Cartesian Circle.Matthew Clark - 2019 - Mind 128 (511):647-672.
    This paper argues for a novel solution to the Cartesian Circle by emphasising the important epistemic role of the Second Meditation and Descartes’ faculty epistemology. I argue that, for Descartes: doubt requires a ‘good reason’ to doubt ; whether a reason qualifies as a ‘good reason’ depends on which faculty produces that reason ; and for distinct metaphysical perceptions from the faculty of the intellect, no other faculty can provide ‘good reasons’ to doubt. The upshot of §2 is that the (...)
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  • Descartes’s Anti-Transparency and the Need for Radical Doubt.Elliot Samuel Paul - 2018 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5 (41):1083-1129.
    Descartes is widely portrayed as the arch proponent of “the epistemological transparency of thought” (or simply, “Transparency”). The most promising version of this view—Transparency-through-Introspection—says that introspecting (i.e., inwardly attending to) a thought guarantees certain knowledge of that thought. But Descartes rejects this view and provides numerous counterexamples to it. I argue that, instead, Descartes’s theory of self-knowledge is just an application of his general theory of knowledge. According to his general theory, certain knowledge is acquired only through clear and distinct (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of Mental Files.Simon Prosser - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3):657-676.
    There is much to be said for a diachronic or interpersonal individuation of singular modes of presentation (MOPs) in terms of a criterion of epistemic transparency between thought tokens. This way of individuating MOPs has been discussed recently within the mental files framework, though the issues discussed here arise for all theories that individuate MOPs in terms of relations among tokens. All such theories face objections concerning apparent failures of the transitivity of the ‘same MOP’ relation. For mental files, these (...)
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  • Non-propositional Contents and How to Find Them.Alex Grzankowski - forthcoming - Journal of Consciousness Studies 25 (3-4):233-241.
    To understand what non-propositional content is and whether there are any such contents, we first need to know what propositional content is. That issue will be the focus of the first section of this essay. In the second section, with an understanding of propositional content in hand, we will consider representations that fail to have propositional content. In contrast to recent literature, it will be argued that metaphysical considerations concerning what's represented, rather than linguistic considerations, are a more promising way (...)
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  • Cartesian critters can't remember.Devin Sanchez Curry - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 69:72-85.
    Descartes held the following view of declarative memory: to remember is to reconstruct an idea that you intellectually recognize as a reconstruction. Descartes countenanced two overarching varieties of declarative memory. To have an intellectual memory is to intellectually reconstruct a universal idea that you recognize as a reconstruction, and to have a sensory memory is to neurophysiologically reconstruct a particular idea that you recognize as a reconstruction. Sensory remembering is thus a capacity of neither ghosts nor machines, but only of (...)
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  • Cartesian Imperativism.Joseph Gottlieb & Saja Parvizian - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (4):702-725.
    We propose a novel reading of Descartes' views on the nature of pain, thirst, and hunger: imperativism. According to imperativism, rather than (exclusively) having intentional contents individuated by a set of correctness conditions specifying the way the world is, pain thirst, and hunger have contents individuated by satisfaction conditions, which specify the way the world ought to be. Unlike representationalist treatments, the imperativist reading satisfies the unique health-preserving role Descartes sets out for pain, thirst, and hunger, without inflating his austere (...)
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  • Philosophy and Memory Traces: Descartes to Connectionism.John Sutton - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are 'stored' only superpositionally, and reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models, argues John Sutton, depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control (...)
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  • Generosity, the Cogito, and the Fourth Meditation.Saja Parvizian - 2016 - Res Philosophica 93 (1):219-243.
    The standard interpretation of Descartes's ethics maintains that virtue presupposes knowledge of metaphysics and the sciences. Lisa Shapiro, however, has argued that the meditator acquires the virtue of generosity in the Fourth Meditation, and that generosity contributes to her metaphysical achievements. Descartes's ethics and metaphsyics, then, must be intertwined. This view has been gaining traction in the recent literature. Omri Boehm, for example, has argued that generosity is foundational to the cogito. In this paper, I offer a close reading of (...)
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  • Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry.Bernard Williams - 1978 - Hassocks [Eng.]: Routledge.
    Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical motives for his (...)
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  • Reforming the Art of Living: Nature, Virtue, and Religion in Descartes's Epistemology.Rico Vitz - 2015 - Cham: Springer.
    Descartes’s concern with the proper method of belief formation is evident in the titles of his works—e.g., The Search after Truth, The Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and The Discourse on Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and seeking the truth in the sciences. It is most apparent, however, in his famous discussions, both in the Meditations and in the Principles, of one particularly noteworthy source of our doxastic errors—namely, the misuse of one’s will. What is not widely (...)
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  • Descartes. [REVIEW]Peter J. Markie - 1987 - Review of Metaphysics 41 (2):380-381.
    Cottingham aims to present Descartes' philosophy in a way that makes "the issues reasonably accessible to students who may be approaching the Cartesian system for the first time". He also aims to do "justice to the complexities of argument involved". There is a potential conflict here: making the issues accessible can lead one to oversimplify them; capturing the complexities of Descartes' thought can cause one to leave inexperienced readers behind. When the conflict arises, Cottingham routinely picks accessibility over philosophical complexity. (...)
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  • Cartesian Logic: An Essay on Descartes’s Conception of Inference.Stephen Gaukroger - 1989 - Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
    This book deals with a neglected episode in the history of logic and theories of cognition: the way in which conceptions of inference changed during the seventeenth century. The author focuses on the work of Descartes, contrasting his construal of inference as an instantaneous grasp in accord with the natural light of reason, with the Aristotelian view of inference as a discursive process. Gaukroger offers a new interpretation of Descartes`s contribution to the question, revealing it to be a significant advance (...)
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  • Science, Certainty, and Descartes.Gary Hatfield - 1988 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1988:249 - 262.
    During the 1630s Descartes recognized that he could not expect all legitimate claims in natural science to meet the standard of absolute certainty. The realization resulted from a change in his physics, which itself arose not through methodological reflections, but through developments in his substantive metaphysical doctrines. Descartes discovered the metaphysical foundations of his physics in 1629-30; as a consequence, the style of explanation employed in his physical writings changed. His early methodological conceptions, as preserved in the Rules and sketched (...)
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  • The Ontological Argument as an Exercise in Cartesian Therapy.Lawrence Nolan - 2005 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35 (4):521 - 562.
    I argue that Descartes intended the so-called ontological "argument" as a self-validating intuition, rather than as a formal proof. The textual evidence for this view is highly compelling, but the strongest support comes from understanding Descartes's diagnosis for why God's existence is not 'immediately' self-evident to everyone and the method of analysis that he develops for making it self-evident. The larger aim of the paper is to use the ontological argument as a case study of Descartes's nonformalist theory of deduction (...)
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  • Descartes's Reply to Gassendi: How We Can Know All of God, All at Once, but Still Have More to Learn about Him.Alice Sowaal - 2011 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (3):419 - 449.
    At the crux of Descartes's general metaphysics and epistemology are his accounts of substances, attributes and ideas of substances and attributes. In spite of the centrality of these theories, there is wide disagreement among scholars about how to interpret them. I approach these debates by focusing on Descartes's theory of the infinite substance ? God. I argue that God's attributes are neither individual, inseparable properties that inhere in God (contra Kenny, Wilson, Curley, Hoffman) nor deductions from God (contra Lennon), but (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Dustbin Theory of Mind: A Cartesian Legacy?Lawrence Nolan & John Whipple - 2006 - Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 3:33-55.
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  • Descartes's theory of judgment.Peter Markie - 1982 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 21 (S1):101-110.
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  • Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy.Anthony Kenny (ed.) - 1968 - South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press.
    Life and works -- Cartesian doubt -- Cogito ergo sum -- Sum res cogitans -- Ideas -- The idea of god -- The ontological argument -- Reason and intuition -- Matter and motion zoo -- Mind and body.
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  • (1 other version)Cartesian truth.Thomas C. Vinci - 1998 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This book argues that science and metaphysics are closely and inseparably interwoven in the work of Descartes, such that the metaphysics cannot be understood without the science and vice versa. In order to make his case, Thomas Vinci offers a careful philosophical reconstruction of central parts of Descartes' metaphysics and of his theory of perception, each considered in relation to Descartes' epistemology. Many authors of late have written on the relation between Descartes' metaphysics and his physics, especially insofar as the (...)
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  • Descartes, epistemic principles, epistemic circularity, and scientia.Keith DeRose - 1992 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3):220-238.
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  • Descartes' epistemology.Lex Newman - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    René Descartes (1596-1650) is widely regarded as the father of modern philosophy. His noteworthy contributions extend to mathematics and physics. This entry focuses on his philosophical contributions in the theory of knowledge. Specifically, the focus is on the epistemological project of Descartes' famous work, Meditations on First Philosophy.
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  • The cartesian fallacy fallacy.Samuel C. Rickless - 2005 - Noûs 39 (2):309-336.
    In this paper, I provide what I believe to be Descartes's own solution to the problem of the Cartesian Circle. As I argue, Descartes thinks he can have certain knowledge of the premises of the Third Meditation proof of God's existence and veracity (i.e., the 3M-Proof) without presupposing God's existence. The key, as Broughton (1984) once argued, is that the premises of the 3M-Proof are knowable by the natural light. The major objection to this "natural light" gambit is that Descartes (...)
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  • Circumventing cartesian circles.Lex Newman & Alan Nelson - 1999 - Noûs 33 (3):370-404.
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  • Cartesian memory.Richard Joyce - 1997 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 (3):375-393.
    Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
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  • Memory aids and the Cartesian circle.Matthew Homan - 2018 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (6):1064-1083.
    ABSTRACTIn answering the circularity charge, Descartes consistently distinguished between truths whose demonstrations we currently perceive clearly and distinctly and truths whose demonstrations we merely remember having perceived clearly and distinctly. Descartes uses C-truths to prove God’s existence, thus validating R-truths. While avoiding one form of circularity, this introduces another circle, for Descartes believes that God’s existence validates R-truths even when itself an R-truth. I consider Newman and Nelson’s grounds enhancement strategy according to which this problem is solved when God’s existence (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Descartes.J. COTTINGHAM - 1986 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 50 (4):712-713.
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  • Knowledge and Certainty.Norman Malcolm - 1965 - Philosophy 40 (152):169-171.
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  • (3 other versions)Descartes.John Cottingham - 1986 - Philosophical Quarterly 36 (145):560-564.
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  • Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes's Meditations.John Peter Carriero - 2008 - Princeton University Press.
    Between Two Worlds is an authoritative commentary on--and powerful reinterpretation of--the founding work of modern philosophy, Descartes's Meditations. Philosophers have tended to read Descartes's seminal work in an occasional way, examining its treatment of individual topics while ignoring other parts of the text. In contrast, John Carriero provides a sustained, systematic reading of the whole text, giving a detailed account of the positions against which Descartes was reacting, and revealing anew the unity, meaning, and originality of the Meditations. Carriero finds (...)
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  • Descartes: Belief, Scepticism and Virtue.Richard Davies - 1997 - New York: Routledge.
    Descartes is often regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, and is credited with placing at centre stage the question of what we know and how we know it. Descartes: Belief, Scepticism and Virtue seeks to reinsert his work and thought in its contemporary ethical and theological context. Richard Davies explores the much neglected notion of intellectual virtue as it applies to Descartes' inquiry as a whole. He examines the textual dynamics of Descartes' most famous writings in relation to background (...)
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  • The Cartesian Circle.Willis Doney - 1955 - Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1/4):324.
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  • Oeuvres de Descartes: mai 1647 - février 1650. Correspondance.René Descartes, Ch Adam & Paul Tannery - 1974 - J. Vrin.
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  • La pensée métaphysique de Descartes.Henri Gouhier - 1962 - Paris: J. Vrin.
    Ce livre n'est pas un expose de la metaphysique cartesienne, mais s'attache a la pensee qui l'anime et qui cherche en elle son expression. Ce mot expression introduit un premier postulat: une philosophie n'a de sens que par reference a une certaine vision du monde dont precisement elle veut etre l'expression. A l'origine il y a un esprit qui regarde l'univers, l'homme, Dieu et qui s'etonne de les voir comme on ne les a encore jamais vus: c'est cette vision neuve (...)
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  • The cartesian circle.Louis Loeb - 1992 - In John Cottingham (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Descartes. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 200--235.
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  • Descartes' 'provisional morality'.Joseph Cimakasky & Ronald Polansky - 2012 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3):353-372.
    Discourse on Method part 3 offers une morale par provision, usually translated as ‘a provisional moral code’. Occasionally it has been questioned that this code is temporary and restricted to those engaged in pure inquiry. We argue that Descartes intends the moral code to be his final ethical position universally applicable. Since the moral code is ‘derived from’ the rules of method, it should have their permanence, holding for the time pure inquiry commences and when it completes the sciences. Moreover, (...)
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  • .Samuel Rickless - unknown
    the Tracturus" (forthcoming), and H. O. Mounce, "Philosophy, Solipsism and Thought", The Philosophical Quarterly 47, 186, January 1997, pp. I — 18, esp. pp. 11 — 12. Here Wittgenstein's early and late philosophy have important points of convergence. In my view, however, arriving at the world in the Tractarian way by following out the implications of solipsism retains a danger of distorting our relation to the world, specifically our role as..
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  • Descartes, the cartesian circle, and epistemology without God.Michael Della Rocca - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1):1–33.
    This paper defends an interpretation of Descartes according to which he sees us as having normative (and not merely psychological) certainty of all clear and distinct ideas during the period in which they are apprehended clearly and distinctly. However, on this view, a retrospective doubt about clear and distinct ideas is possible. This interpretation allows Descartes to avoid the Cartesian Circle in an effective way and also shows that Descartes is surprisingly, in some respects, an epistemological externalist. The paper goes (...)
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  • (1 other version)Cartesian scientia and the human soul.Lilli Alanen - 2008 - Vivarium 46 (3):418-442.
    Descartes's conception of matter changed the account of physical nature in terms of extension and related quantitative terms. Plants and animals were turned into species of machines, whose natural functions can be explained mechanistically. This article reflects on the consequences of this transformation for the psychology of human soul. In so far the soul is rational it lacks extension, yet it is also united with the body and affected by it, and so it is able to act on extended matter. (...)
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  • (1 other version)Descartes. Belief, Scepticism and Virtue.Richard Davies - 2002 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (3):569-570.
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  • Descartes and Method: A Search for a Method in Meditations.Clarence A. Bonnen & Daniel E. Flage - 1999 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Clarence A. Bonnen.
    Rene Descartes credited his success in philosophy, mathematics, and physics to the discovery of a universal method of inquiry, but he provided no systematic description of his method. _Descartes and Method_ carefully examines Descartes' scattered remarks on his application and puts forward a systematic account of his method with particular attention to the role it plays in the _Meditations_. Daniel E. Flage and Clarence A. Bonnen boldly and convincingly argue against the orthodox conception that Descartes had no method. Through a (...)
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  • Memory: A Philosophical Study.Sven Bernecker - 2009 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Sven Bernecker presents an analysis of the concept of propositional (or factual) memory, and examines a number of metaphysical and epistemological issues crucial to the understanding of memory. -/- Bernecker argues that memory, unlike knowledge, implies neither belief nor justification. There are instances where memory, though hitting the mark of truth, succeeds in an epistemically defective way. This book shows that, contrary to received wisdom in epistemology, memory not only preserves epistemic features generated by other epistemic sources but also functions (...)
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  • Descartes's Meditations as Cognitive Exercises.Gary Hatfield - 1985 - Philosophy and Literature 9 (1):41-58.
    According to the reading offered here, Descartes' use of the meditative mode of writing was not a mere rhetorical device to win an audience accustomed to the spiritual retreat. His choice of the literary form of the spiritual exercise was consonant with, if not determined by, his theory of the mind and of the basis of human knowledge. Since Descartes' conception of knowledge implied the priority of the intellect over the senses, and indeed the priority of an intellect operating independently (...)
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  • (1 other version)Clearness and Distinctness in Descartes.Alan Gewirth - 1943 - Philosophy 18 (69):17 - 36.
    Descartes's general rule that “whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true” has traditionally been criticized on two closely related grounds. As Leibniz, for example, puts it, clearness and distinctness are of no value as criteria of truth unless we have criteria of clearness and distinctness; but Descartes gives none. And consequently, the standards of judgment which the rule in fact evokes are purely subjective and psychological. There must hence be set up analytic, logical “marks” by means of which it (...)
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  • From habits to traces. des Chene - unknown
    Experience makes its mark on us in many ways. It leaves traces; it instills habits. A trace, as I define it here, is a quality of the soul or mind which is distinguished by its content, its intentional object. Aristotelian species and Cartesian ideas are traces. A habit I take, following Suárez, to be a quality of the soul which assists in the acts of a power of the soul, enabling them to be performed more easily and promptly. I will (...)
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  • Descartes: an analytical and historical introduction.Georges Dicker - 1993 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    A solid grasp of the main themes and arguments of the seventeenth century philosopher Rene Descartes is an essential tool towards understanding modern thought, and a necessary entree to the work of the empiricists and Immanuel Kant, and to the study of contemporary epistemology and philosophy of mind. Clear and accessible, this book serves as an introduction to Descartes's ideas for undergraduates and as a sophisticated companion to his Meditations for more advanced readers. After a thorough discussion of the main (...)
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  • (1 other version)Descartes: Belief, Scepticism and Virtue.Richard Davies - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (211):287-290.
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  • A Problem About Continued Belief.John Perry - 1980 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 (4):317-332.
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  • Illusion of transparency.Laura Schroeter - 2007 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (4):597 – 618.
    It's generally agreed that, for a certain a class of cases, a rational subject cannot be wrong in treating two elements of thought as co-referential. Even anti-individualists like Tyler Burge agree that empirical error is impossible in such cases. I argue that this immunity to empirical error is illusory and sketch a new anti-individualist approach to concepts that doesn't require such immunity.
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  • Memory and the Cartesian circle.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1962 - Philosophical Review 71 (4):504-511.
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