Nicholas Silins                              

 

The Sage School of Philosophy                                                          Tel: 646.329.4017

Goldwin Smith Hall 218                                             Email: ns338@cornell.edu

Ithaca, NY, 14853-3201

 

 

Areas of Specialization

 

Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind

 

Areas of Competence

 

Metaphysics, Aesthetics, Descartes

 

Education

 

Oxford University, D.Phil in Philosophy, 2004

       Title: Reasons and Armchair Knowledge

       Supervisor: Timothy Williamson

Oxford University, B.Phil in Philosophy, 2001

       Thesis: Content and Self-Knowledge

       Supervisor: Timothy Williamson

                  

Princeton University, B.A. in Comparative Literature, magna cum laude, 1999

 

Employment

 

Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Consciousness, RSSS, Australian National University,

Jan-July 2007, Jan-July, 2008

Assistant Professor, Cornell University, 2006-present

Bersoff Fellow, New York University, 2004-2006

 

Publications

 

“Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic”, Oxford Studies in

Epistemology: volume 2 (2008)

“Transmission Failure Failure”, Philosophical Studies (2005), 126: 71-102

“Deception and Evidence”, Philosophical Perspectives (2005), 19: 375-404

 

Papers in Progress

 

“How to Explain Perceptual Defeasibility”

“Mental Causation and the Basing Relation”

“Immediate Justification and Mediated Content”

 

Presentations

 

“Mental Causation and the Basing Relation”

 

            ANU, May 2007

“How to Explain Perceptual Defeasibility”

 

            Consciousness and Thought, Dubrovnik, August 2008

            The Epistemology of Experience, ANU, May 2007

 

“Immediate Justification and Mediated Content”

 

            Mellon Epistemology Workshop, University of Rochester, September 2008

            Epistemology of Perception, St. Andrews, March 2008

            University of Toronto, March 2008

Consciousness at the Beach 2, ANU Kioloa Coastal Campus, February 2007

 

“Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic”

 

University of Geneva, June 2006 (in French)

UNC, April 2005

Columbia University, October 2004

“Comments on E.J. Coffman’s ‘Williamson’s Evidence’”

 

            Central APA, April 2006

 

Teaching

 

Proseminar (Fall 2008)

 

Philosophy of Perception (Fall 2007)

A graduate seminar on the metaphysics and epistemology of perception

 

Epistemology (Fall 2006)

An advanced undergraduate seminar on privileged access

 

Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (Fall 2006, Fall 2007, Fall 2008)

Topics in the Philosophy of Mind (Spring 2006)

A graduate seminar, co-taught with James Pryor, on mental content

 

Special Topics in Metaphysics and Epistemology (Fall 2005)

An advanced undergraduate seminar on color and color experience

Special Topics in Metaphysics and Epistemology (Spring 2005)

An advanced undergraduate seminar on personal identity and persistence over time

 

Epistemology (Fall 2004)

A graduate seminar surveying recent work on knowledge and skepticism

 

Service

 

Referee work for Philosophical Studies, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research, Dialectica, Mind, Philosophers’ Imprint, American

Philosophical Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and the Philosophical Review

Department Workshop, coordinator, Fall 2006, Spring 2007

Discussion Club, coordinator, Fall 2007

Junior Search Committee, member, Fall 2006

 

Current Research

 

My current research focuses on three interconnected questions about perceptual justification:

 

(1) When it looks to be the case that p, what justifies us in believing that p?

(2) When it looks to be the case that p, how are we justified in believing that p?

(3) How can we be justified in disbelieving skeptical hypotheses about our visual experiences?

 

In “Deception and Evidence”, I argue for an internalist answer to the first question. On this view, the visual experience which justifies me in holding a given belief is present both when the belief is true, and when the belief is false. My argument for the view appeals to considerations about how we should proportion our confidence to our evidence. In “Mental Causation and the Basing Relation”, I critically evaluate causal arguments for the same conclusion.

 

In “Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic” and “How to Explain Perceptual Defeasibility”, I defend an answer to the second question which is modest: in order to explain the capacity of our visual experiences to justify our beliefs, one need not invoke our having independent reason to disbelieve skeptical hypotheses about our experiences.

 

According to Moorean answers to the third question, when our visual experiences justify us in believing some ordinary proposition, and there is a skeptical hypothesis incompatible with the ordinary proposition, we can be justified in believing that the skeptical hypothesis is false by inferring its negation from the ordinary proposition. In “Transmission Failure Failure”, I respond on behalf of the Moorean to the standard objections to the view. In “Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic”, I argue for a non-Moorean answer to the third question. I also explain why, contrary to what philosophers in the debates have thought, a denial of the Moorean view fits comfortably with a modest view about how our experiences justify our beliefs.