Brent G Kyle

Despite recent controversies surrounding the principle that knowledge entails truth (KT), this paper aims to prove that the principle is true.  It offers a proof of (KT) in the following sense.  It advances a deductively valid argument for (KT), whose premises are, by most lights, obviously true.  Moreover, each premise is buttressed by at least two supporting arguments.  And finally, all premises and supporting arguments can be rationally accepted by people who don’t already accept (KT).

I argue that the Standard View of ignorance is at odds with the claim that knowledge entails truth. In particular, if knowledge entails truth then we cannot explain away some apparent absurdities that arise from the Standard View of ignorance. I then discuss a modified version of the Standard View, which simply adds a truth requirement to the original Standard View. I show that the two main arguments for the original Standard View fail to support this modified view.

This paper proposes a new Separabilist account of thick concepts, called the Expansion View (or EV).  According to EV, thick concepts are expanded contents of thin terms.  An expanded content is, roughly, the semantic content of a predicate along with modifiers.  Although EV is a form of Separabilism, it is distinct from the only kind of Separabilism discussed in the literature, and it has many features that Inseparabilists want from an account of thick concepts.  EV can also give non-cognitivists a novel escape from the Anti-Disentangling Argument.  §I explains the approach of all previous Separabilists, and argues that there’s no reason for Separabilists to take this approach.  §II explains EV.  §III fends off objections.  And §IV explains how non-cognitivist proponents of EV can escape the Anti-Disentangling Argument.

Skeptical puzzles and arguments often employ knowledge-closure principles (e.g. If S knows that P, and knows that P entails Q, then S knows that Q). Epistemologists widely believe that an adequate reply to the skeptic should explain why her reasoning is appealing albeit misleading; but it's unclear what would explain the appeal of the skeptic's closure principle, if not for its truth. In this paper, I aim to challenge the widespread commitment to knowledge-closure. But I proceed by first examining a new puzzle about failing to know--what I call the New Ignorance Puzzle (sections I-III). This puzzle resembles to the Old Ignorance Puzzle (i.e. the closure-based skeptical puzzle), although it does not involve a closure principle. It instead centers on the standard view of ignorance, a highly intuitive principle stating that ignorance is merely a failure to know. In sections II and III, I argue that the best way to solve the New Ignorance Puzzle is to reject the standard view of ignorance and to explain away its appeal via conversational implicature. I then use this solution to the New Ignorance Puzzle as a way of explaining why knowledge-closure principles would seem true, and why abominable conjunctions would seem abominable, even if such principles were false (section IV). The upshot is a new way of explaining why the skeptic's reasoning is appealing albeit misleading.

Could a Nazi soldier or terrorist be courageous? The Courage Problem asks us to answer this sort of question, and then to explain why people are reluctant to give this answer. The present paper sheds new light on the Courage Problem by examining a controversy sparked by Bill Maher, who claimed that the 9/11 terrorists' acts were 'not cowardly.' It is shown that Maher's controversy is fundamentally related to the Courage Problem. Then, a unified solution to both problems is provided. This solution entails that gutsy people who lack good ends are not courageous.

The Gettier problem has stymied epistemologists. Whether or not this problem is resolvable, we still must face an important question: Why does the Gettier problem arise in the first place? So far, philosophers have seen it as either a problem peculiar to the concept of knowledge, or else an instance of a general problem about conceptual analysis. But I would like to steer a middle course. I argue that the Gettier problem arises because knowledge is a thick concept, and a Gettier-like problem is just what we should expect from attempts at analyzing a thick concept. Section 2 is devoted to establishing the controversial claim that knowledge is thick, and, in Sect. 3, I show that there is a general problem for analyzing thick concepts of which the Gettier problem is a special instance. I do not take a stand on whether the Gettier problem, or its general counterpart, is resolvable. My primary aim is to bring these problems into better focus.

Ethicists are typically willing to grant that thick terms (e.g. ‘courageous’, ‘kind’, ‘murder’, and ‘brutal’) are somehow associated with evaluations. But they tend to disagree about what exactly this relationship is. Does a thick term’s evaluation come by way of its semantic content? Or is the evaluation pragmatically associated with the thick term (e.g. via conversational implicature)? In this paper, I argue that thick terms are semantically associated with evaluations. In particular, I argue that many thick concepts (if not all) conceptually entail evaluative contents. The Semantic View has a number of outspoken critics, but I shall limit discussion to the most recent—Pekka Väyrynen—who believes that objectionable thick concepts present a problem for the Semantic View. After advancing my positive argument in favor of the Semantic View (section II), I argue that Väyrynen’s attack is unsuccessful (section III). One reason ethicists cite for not focusing on thick concepts is that such concepts are supposedly not semantically evaluative whereas traditional thin concepts (e.g. good and wrong) are. But if my view is correct, then this reason must be rejected.

John Schellenberg has advanced the hiddenness argument against God's existence, based on the idea that an all-loving God would seek personal relationships. This paper develops a reply to Schellenberg's argument by examining the notion of moral impurity, as understood by Paul the Apostle. Paul conceptualized moral impurity as a causal state that transfers from person to person, like a contagious disease. He also believed that moral impurity precludes divine-human relationship. The goal of this paper is to develop these ideas into a problem for one Schellenberg's key premises.

The doctrine of penal substitution claims that it was good (or required) for God to punish in response to human sin, and that Christ received this punishment in our stead.  I argue that this doctrine’s central factual claim—that Christ was punished by God—is mistaken.  In order to punish someone, one must at least believe the recipient is responsible for an offense.  But God surely did not believe the innocent Christ was responsible for an offense, let alone the offense of human sin.  So, the central factual claim is mistaken.  In the final section, I show that this critique of penal substitution does not apply to the closely-related Anselmian satisfaction theory.