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Dustin Locke [17]Dustin Troy Locke [2]
  1. Against Minimalist Responses to Moral Debunking Arguments.Daniel Z. Korman & Dustin Locke - 2020 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 15:309-332.
    Moral debunking arguments are meant to show that, by realist lights, moral beliefs are not explained by moral facts, which in turn is meant to show that they lack some significant counterfactual connection to the moral facts (e.g., safety, sensitivity, reliability). The dominant, “minimalist” response to the arguments—sometimes defended under the heading of “third-factors” or “pre-established harmonies”—involves affirming that moral beliefs enjoy the relevant counterfactual connection while granting that these beliefs are not explained by the moral facts. We show that (...)
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  2. An Explanationist Account of Genealogical Defeat.Daniel Z. Korman & Dustin Locke - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (1):176-195.
    Sometimes, learning about the origins of a belief can make it irrational to continue to hold that belief—a phenomenon we call ‘genealogical defeat’. According to explanationist accounts, genealogical defeat occurs when one learns that there is no appropriate explanatory connection between one’s belief and the truth. Flatfooted versions of explanationism have been widely and rightly rejected on the grounds that they would disallow beliefs about the future and other inductively-formed beliefs. After motivating the need for some explanationist account, we raise (...)
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  3. On Debunking Color Realism.Daniel Z. Korman & Dustin Locke - 2023 - In Diego E. Machuca (ed.), Evolutionary Debunking Arguments: Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mathematics, Metaphysics, and Epistemology. New York: Routledge. pp. 257-277.
    You see a cherry and you experience it as red. A textbook explanation for why you have this sort of experience is going to cite such things as the cherry’s chemical surface properties and the distinctive mixture wavelengths of light it is disposed to reflect. What does not show up in this explanation is the redness of the cherry. Many allege that the availability of color-free explanations of color experience somehow calls into question our beliefs about the colors of objects (...)
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  4. Knowledge, Explanation, and Motivating Reasons.Dustin Locke - 2015 - American Philosophical Quarterly 52:215-232.
    According to a number of recent philosophers, knowledge has an intimate relationship with rationality. Some philosophers hold, in particular, that rational agents do things for good motivating reasons, and that p can be one’s motivating reason for -ing (acting/believing/fearing/etc.) only if one knows that p. This paper argues against this view and in favor of the view that p cannot be one’s motivating reason for -ing—in the relevant sense—unless there is an appropriate explanatory connection between the fact that p and (...)
     
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  5. Practical Certainty.Dustin Locke - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (1):72-95.
    When we engage in practical deliberation, we sometimes engage in careful probabilistic reasoning. At other times, we simply make flat out assumptions about how the world is or will be. A question thus arises: when, if ever, is it rationally permissible to engage in the latter, less sophisticated kind of practical deliberation? Recently, a number of authors have argued that the answer concerns whether one knows that p. Others have argued that the answer concerns whether one is justified in believing (...)
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  6. Quidditism without quiddities.Dustin Locke - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (3):345-363.
    Structuralism and quidditism are competing views of the metaphysics of property individuation: structuralists claim that properties are individuated by their nomological roles; quidditists claim that they are individuated by something else. This paper (1) refutes what many see as the best reason to accept structuralism over quidditism and (2) offers a methodological argument in favor of a quidditism. The standard charge against quidditism is that it commits us to something ontologically otiose: intrinsic aspects of properties, so-called ‘quiddities’. Here I grant (...)
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  7. The Decision-Theoretic Lockean Thesis.Dustin Troy Locke - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (1):28-54.
    Certain philosophers maintain that there is a ‘constitutive threshold for belief’: to believe that p just is to have a degree of confidence that p above a certain threshold. On the basis of this view, these philosophers defend what is known as ‘the Lockean Thesis ’, according to which it is rational to believe that p just in case it is rational to have a degree of confidence that p above the constitutive threshold for belief. While not directly speaking to (...)
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  8. Darwinian Normative Skepticism.Dustin Locke - 2014 - In Michael Bergmann & Patrick Kain (eds.), Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution. Oxford ; New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    Sharon Street (2006) has argued that, given certain plausible evolutionary considerations, normative realism leads to normative skepticism. Street calls this ‘the Darwinian dilemma’. This paper considers the two most popular responses to the Darwinian dilemma and argues that both are problematic. According to the naturalist response, the evolutionary account of our normative dispositions reveals that there was selection for normative dispositions that were reliable with respect to normative truth. According to the minimalist response, the evolutionary account reveals that there was (...)
     
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  9. A partial defense of Ramseyan humility.Dustin Locke - 2008 - In David Braddon-Mitchell & Robert Nola (eds.), Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism. Bradford.
    This chapter argues that we are irremediably ignorant about the identities of the fundamental properties that figure in the actual realization of the true final theory. Of the three published responses to Lewis’s work, each argues that even if Lewis’s metaphysical assumption, the thesis known as “quidditism,” is accepted, we need not accept his epistemic conclusion, the thesis of Humility. The aim of this chapter is to defend Lewis against these critics. Ann Whittle attempts to refute Humility by an appeal (...)
     
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  10. Modal Security and Evolutionary Debunking.Daniel Z. Korman & Dustin Locke - 2023 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 47:135-156.
    According to principles of modal security, evidence undermines a belief only when it calls into question certain purportedly important modal connections between one’s beliefs and the truth (e.g., safety or sensitivity). Justin Clarke-Doane and Dan Baras have advanced such principles with the aim of blocking evolutionary moral debunking arguments. We examine a variety of different principles of modal security, showing that some of these are too strong, failing to accommodate clear cases of undermining, while others are too weak, failing to (...)
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  11.  73
    Implicature and non-local pragmatic encroachment.Dustin Locke - 2017 - Synthese 194 (2).
    This paper offers a novel conversational implicature account of the pragmatic sensitivity of knowledge attributions. Developing an account I first suggested elsewhere and independently proposed by Lutz, this paper explores the idea that the relevant implicatures are generated by a constitutive relationship between believing a proposition and a disposition to treat that proposition as true in practical deliberation. I argue that while this view has a certain advantage over standard implicature accounts of pragmatic sensitivity, it comes with a significant concession (...)
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  12. Evolutionary Debunking and Moral Relativism.Daniel Z. Korman & Dustin Locke - 2019 - In Martin Kusch (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism. Routledge. pp. 190-199.
    Our aim here is to explore the prospects of a relativist response to moral debunking arguments. We begin by clarifying the relativist thesis under consideration, and we explain why relativists seem well-positioned to resist the arguments in a way that avoids the drawbacks of existing responses. We then show that appearances are deceiving. At bottom, the relativist response is no less question-begging than standard realist responses, and – when we turn our attention to the strongest formulation of the debunking argument (...)
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  13. The Epistemic Significance of Moral Disagreement.Dustin Locke - 2018 - In Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics. New York: Routledge. pp. 499-518.
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  14.  90
    Knowledge Norms and Assessing Them Well.Dustin Locke - 2014 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (1):80-89.
    Jonathan Ichikawa (2012) argues that the standard counterexamples to the knowledge norm of practical reasoning are no such thing. More precisely, he argues that those alleged counterexamples rest on claims about which actions are appropriate rather than on claims about which propositions can be appropriately treated as reasons for action. Since the knowledge norm of practical reasoning concerns the latter and not the former, Ichikawa contends that proponents of the alleged counterexamples must offer a theory that bridges the gap between (...)
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  15.  87
    The Levels System.Dustin Locke - 2023 - Teaching Philosophy 46 (1):1-39.
    This paper describes an application of mastery learning to the teaching of philosophical writing—an approach I call “the Levels System.” In this paper, I explain the Levels System, how I integrate it into my course, and the pedagogical research supporting the principles of mastery learning on which it is built. I also compare the Levels System to Maryellen Weimer’s “menu approach,” Linda Nilson’s “specifications grading,” and Fred Keller’s “personalized system of instruction.” I argue that the Levels System has many of (...)
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  16.  61
    Quidditism.Dustin Troy Locke - 2009 - Dissertation, University of Michigan
    In general, properties realize certain roles in the workings of nature. For example, mass makes objects resist acceleration. But what is the relationship between these roles and the properties that realize them? According to ‘quidditism’, the roles are contingently realized by the properties that in fact realize them. Opponents charge that quidditism implies the existence of epiphenomenal and unknowable “quiddities” or “inner natures”. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue in favor of quidditism and explore its epistemic and pragmatic (...)
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  17.  49
    Setiya, Kieran. Knowing Right from Wrong.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 184. $45.00.Dustin Locke - 2014 - Ethics 124 (3):649-656.
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    The Normative Significance of Cognitive Science Reconsidered.Dustin Locke - 2020 - Philosophical Quarterly 70 (280):502-523.
    Josh Greene famously argued that his cognitive-scientific results undermine deontological moral theorizing. Greene is wrong about this: at best, his research has revealed that at least some characteristically deontological moral judgments are sensitive to factors that we deem morally irrelevant. This alone is not enough to undermine those judgments. However, cognitive science could someday tell us more: it could tell us that in forming those judgments, we treat certain factors as reasons to believe as we do. If we independently deem (...)
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  19.  46
    Review: Kieran Setiya, Knowing Right from Wrong. [REVIEW]Dustin Locke - 2014 - Ethics 124 (3):649-656,.
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