Juan Comesaña

After receiving my PhD from Brown in 2003, I taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for six years. I joined the University of Arizona in the Fall of 2008. I work mainly in epistemology, but I am also interested in metaphysics and metaethics.

Papers

What Lottery Problem for Reliabilism?

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, v. 19, n.1 (2009), pp. 1-20.

I argue that reliabilism, properly understood, faces no special problems stemming from lotteries.

Evidentialist Reliabilism

Forthcoming in Noûs.

I argue for a theory that combines elements of reliabilism and evidentialism.

Is Evidence Knowledge?

With Holly Kantin

Forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

We argue that if evidence were knowledge, then there wouldn't be any Gettier cases, and justification would fail to be closed in egregious ways. But there are Gettier cases, and justification does not fail to be close in egregious ways. Therefore, evidence isn't knowledge.

Could There Be Exactly Two Things?

Synthese 162 (2008), pp. 31-35.

I say "Yes."

A Well-Founded Solution to the Generality Problem

Philosophical Studies 129 (2006), 27-47.

I argue for a solution to the generality problem that appeals to the basing relation, and show that everyone should accept this solution.

We Are (Almost) All Externalists Now

Philosophical Perspectives 19 (2005), 59-76.

I argue that anyone who accepts that support facts (linking evidence with propositions justified by such evidence) are not mental is an externalist.

Justified vs. Warranted Perceptual Belief: Resisting Disjunctivism

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXXI (2005), 367-383.

I argue that one reason for being a disjunctivist advanced by McDowell (having to do with the indefeasibility of perceptual knowledge) fails because it ignores the distinction between justification and warrant.

Unsafe Knowledge

Synthese 146 (2005), 393-402.

Many epistemologists think that if someone knows that p, then his belief that p is "safe." In this paper I argue that safety, as defined by Sosa, is not a necessary condition on knowledge--we can have unsafe knowledge.

The Diagonal and the Demon

Philosophical Studies 100 (2002), 249-266.

I present a solution to the "new evil demon" problem for reliabilism.