Jonathan Egeland

Universitetet i Agder | UIA

Can heritability estimates provide causal information? This paper argues for an affirmative answer: since a non-nil heritability estimate satisfies certain characteristic properties of causation (i.e., association, manipulability, and counterfactual dependence), it increases the probability that the relation between genotypic variance and phenotypi...

Why are there so many controversies in evolutionary psychology? Using a couple of concepts from philosophy of science, this paper argues that evolutionary psychology has not reached the stage of mature, normal science, since it does not currently have a unifying research program that guides individual scientists working in the discipline. The argum...

With metaphysical philosophy gaining prominence in the af- termath of the Quine-Carnap debate, not only has it become assumed that the Quinean critique leaves ontological pluralism behind as an untenable approach, but also that the same is true of deationism more generally. Building on Quine's criticisms against the analytic-synthetic distinction a...

Theories of different and independent types of intelligence constitute a Lakatosian research program, as they all claim that human intelligence has a multidimensional structure, consisting of independent cognitive abilities, and that human intelligence is not characterized by any general ability that is of greater practical importance, or that has...

This paper discusses the co-occurrence model and its associated research program, and it argues that the model provides the best supported theory of secular changes in cognitive ability. The co-occurrence model offers a better solution to Cattell's paradox (relative to the alternatives in the literature), and it is able to accommodate Flynn's four...

There is an ever-growing literature on what exactly the condition or criterion is that enables some (but not all) debunking arguments to undermine our beliefs. In this paper, I develop a novel schema for debunking argumentation, arguing that debunking arguments generally have a simple and valid form, but that whether or not they are sound depends o...

In this article, I argue that access internalism should replace preservationism, which has been called "a received view" in the epistemology of memory, as the standard position about memorial justification. My strategy for doing so is two-pronged. First, I argue that the considerations which motivate preservationism also support access internalism....

Considerations of scientific evidence are often thought to provide externalism with the dialectical upper hand in the internalism-externalism debate. How so? A couple of reasons are forthcoming in the literature. (1) Williamson (2000) argues that the E = K thesis (in contrast to internalism) provides the best explanation for the fact that scientist...

According to accessibilism, there is an accessibility condition on justification. More specifically, accessibilism claims that facts about justification are a priori accessible, where a priori is used in the traditional sense that a condition is a priori just in case it doesn't depend on any of the sense modalities. The most prominent argument for...

Doctoral dissertation

Facts about justification are not brute facts. They are epistemic facts that depend upon more fundamental non-epistemic facts. Internalists about justification often argue for mentalism, which claims that facts about justification supervene upon one’s non-factive mental states, using Lehrer and Cohen’s (Synthese 55(2):191–207, 1983) New Evil Demon...

A standard view in the epistemology of imagination is that imaginings can either provide justification for modal beliefs about what is possible (and perhaps counterfactual condi-tionals too), or no justification at all. However, in a couple of recent articles, Kind (2016; Forthcoming) argues that imaginings can justify empirical belief about what t...

According to epistemic internalists, facts about justification supervene upon one's internal reasons for believing certain propositions. Epistemic externalists, on the other hand, deny this. More specifically, externalists think that the supervenience base of justification isn't exhausted by one's internal reasons for believing certain propositions...