13 found
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  1. An Explanationist Defense of Proper Functionalism.Kenneth Boyce & Andrew Moon - 2023 - In Luis R. G. Oliveira (ed.), Externalism about Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    In this chapter, we defend an explanationist version of proper functionalism. After explaining proper functionalism’s initial appeal, we note two major objections to proper functionalism: creatures with no design plan who appear to have knowledge (Swampman) and creatures with malfunctions that increase reliability. We then note how proper functionalism needs to be clarified because there are cases of what we call warrant-compatible malfunction. We then formulate our own view: explanationist proper functionalism, which explains the warrant-compatible malfunction cases and helps to (...)
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  2. The Fine-Tuning Argument Against the Multiverse.Kenneth Boyce & Philip Swenson - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    It is commonly argued that the fact that our universe is fine-tuned for life favors both a design hypothesis as well as a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis. The claim that the fine-tuning of this universe supports a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis has been forcefully challenged however by Ian Hacking and Roger White. In this paper we take this challenge even further by arguing that if it succeeds, then not only does the fine-tuning of this universe fail to support a multiverse hypothesis, but (...)
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  3. (1 other version)Proper functionalism.Kenneth Boyce & Alvin Plantinga - 2012 - In Andrew Cullison (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Epistemology. New York: Continuum. pp. 124.
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  4. The Coincidentalist Reply to the No-Miracles Argument.Kenneth Boyce - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (5):929-946.
    Proponents of the no-miracles argument contend that scientific realism is “the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle.” Bas van Fraassen argued, however, that the success of our best theories can be explained in Darwinian terms—by the fact they are survivors of a winnowing process in which unsuccessful theories are rejected. Critics of this selectionist explanation complain that while it may account for the fact we have chosen successful theories, it does not explain why any particular (...)
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  5.  95
    Fine-Tuning Indexical Evidence.Kenneth Boyce - manuscript
    Abstract: Proponents of the this-universe objection to fine-tuning arguments for a multiverse claim that while the multiverse hypothesis raises the probability that some universe is fine-tuned for life, it fails to raise the probability that this one is. Because that is so, they further argue, those who take the fine-tuning of this universe as evidence for the multiverse hypothesis are guilty of a probabilistic fallacy. I argue that a proper evaluation of the this-universe objection requires the development of a general, (...)
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  6. Why inference to the best explanation doesn’t secure empirical grounds for mathematical platonism.Kenneth Boyce - 2018 - Synthese 198 (1):1-13.
    Proponents of the explanatory indispensability argument for mathematical platonism maintain that claims about mathematical entities play an essential explanatory role in some of our best scientific explanations. They infer that the existence of mathematical entities is supported by way of inference to the best explanation from empirical phenomena and therefore that there are the same sort of empirical grounds for believing in mathematical entities as there are for believing in concrete unobservables such as quarks. I object that this inference depends (...)
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  7. Mathematical surrealism as an alternative to easy-road fictionalism.Kenneth Boyce - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (10):2815-2835.
    Easy-road mathematical fictionalists grant for the sake of argument that quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable to some of our best scientific theories and explanations. Even so they maintain we can accept those theories and explanations, without believing their mathematical components, provided we believe the concrete world is intrinsically as it needs to be for those components to be true. Those I refer to as “mathematical surrealists” by contrast appeal to facts about the intrinsic character of the concrete world, not (...)
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  8. Multi‐Peer Disagreement and the Preface Paradox.Kenneth Boyce & Allan Hazlett - 2014 - Ratio 29 (1):29-41.
    The problem of multi-peer disagreement concerns the reasonable response to a situation in which you believe P1 … Pn and disagree with a group of ‘epistemic peers’ of yours, who believe ∼P1 … ∼Pn, respectively. However, the problem of multi-peer disagreement is a variant on the preface paradox; because of this the problem poses no challenge to the so-called ‘steadfast view’ in the epistemology of disagreement, on which it is sometimes reasonable to believe P in the face of peer disagreement (...)
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  9. Some Considerations Concerning CORNEA, Global Skepticism, and Trust.Kenneth Boyce - 2014 - In Trent Dougherty Justin McBrayer (ed.), Skeptical Theism: New Essays (Oxford University Press). pp. 103-114.
    Skeptical theists have been charged with being committed to global skepticism. I consider this objection as it applies to a common variety of skeptical theism based on an epistemological principle that Stephen Wykstra labeled “CORNEA.” I show how a recent reformulation of CORNEA (provided by Stephen Wykstra and Timothy Perrine) affords us with a formal apparatus that allows us to see just where this objection gets a grip on that view, as well as what is needed for an adequate response. (...)
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  10. Non-Moral Evil and the Free Will Defense.Kenneth Boyce - 2011 - Faith and Philosophy 28 (4):371-384.
    Paradigmatic examples of logical arguments from evil are attempts to establish that the following claims are inconsistent with one another: (1) God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good. (2) There is evil in the world. Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense resists such arguments by providing a positive case that (1) and (2) are consistent. A weakness in Plantinga’s free will defense, however, is that it does not show that theism is consistent with the proposition that there are non-moral evils in (...)
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  11. Existentialism entails anti-haecceitism.Kenneth Boyce - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (2):297-326.
    Existentialism concerning singular propositions is the thesis that singular propositions ontologically depend on the individuals they are directly about in such a way that necessarily, those propositions exist only if the individuals they are directly about exist. Haecceitism is the thesis that what non-qualitative facts there are fails to supervene on what purely qualitative facts there are. I argue that existentialism concerning singular propositions entails the denial of haecceitism and that this entailment has interesting implications for debates concerning the philosophy (...)
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  12. Mathematical application and the no confirmation thesis.Kenneth Boyce - 2020 - Analysis 80 (1):11-20.
    Some proponents of the indispensability argument for mathematical realism maintain that the empirical evidence that confirms our best scientific theories and explanations also confirms their pure mathematical components. I show that the falsity of this view follows from three highly plausible theses, two of which concern the nature of mathematical application and the other the nature of empirical confirmation. The first is that the background mathematical theories suitable for use in science are conservative in the sense outlined by Hartry Field. (...)
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  13. On the equivalence of Goodman’s and Hempel’s paradoxes.Kenneth Boyce - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 45:32-42.
    Historically, Nelson Goodman’s paradox involving the predicates ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ has been taken to furnish a serious blow to Carl Hempel’s theory of confirmation in particular and to purely formal theories of confirmation in general. In this paper, I argue that Goodman’s paradox is no more serious of a threat to Hempel’s theory of confirmation than is Hempel’s own paradox of the ravens. I proceed by developing a suggestion from R. D. Rosenkrantz into an argument for the conclusion that these (...)
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