Research Articles:
I’m an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.
I received my Ph.D. from NYU in 2009.
My email address is my first and last names, separated by a period, followed by “@gmail.com” (or, if you are my student, please use “@utexas.edu” instead).
My name is Turkish. I grew up half there, half in the US. Most people, when speaking English, pronounce my first name using the two English words “sin” and “on”: “sin-on”. The last name sounds like “dor-uh-mudge-uh”.
Sinan Dogramaci
Recent Courses:
Grad Seminars:
Bayesian Epistemology
(w Miriam Schoenfield)
(syllabus)
Meta-Ethics to Meta-Epistemology
(w Miriam Schoenfield)
(syllabus)
Topics in Epistemology: Testimony, Memory, and Self-Knowledge
(syllabus)
Pro-Sem: 20th Century Analytic Philosophy
(w Adam Pautz)
(syllabus)
Problems of Intentionality
(w Ray Buchanan)
(syllabus)
Meta-Epistemology
(syllabus)
Undergrad courses:
Logic (1st course in logic)
(syllabus)
Metalogic (2nd course in logic)
(syllabus)
Scientific Method (Confirmation Theory)
(syllabus)
Introduction to Philosophy
(syllabus)
Theory of Knowledge
(syllabus)
Knowledge & Reality
(syllabus)
Philosophy of Mind
A main interest of mine is the practical function of epistemic evaluations.
In my paper “Reverse Engineering Epistemic Evaluations”, I raised a puzzle about what function our use of the word ‘rational’ could serve. How does our use of ‘rational’ help us pursue true beliefs if ‘rational’ doesn’t mean ‘reliable’? Why do we use ‘[ir]rational’ to criticize some reliable people (Norman the unwitting clairvoyant) and praise some unreliable people (the brain in a vat)? To solve the puzzle, I introduced a view that I call epistemic communism: we use epistemic evaluations to promote coordination among our basic belief-forming rules, and the function of this is to make the acquisition of true beliefs by testimony safe and efficient. Coordinated believers don’t need to waste resources vetting each other for reliability.
I developed this view further in my paper “Communist Conventions for Deductive Reasoning”. In that paper and the others listed below, I explore the implications of epistemic communism and of other more general views of the functional role of epistemic evaluations. I believe this function-oriented approach has fruitful applications to many apparently intractable issues in epistemology. These issues include the explanation of what makes deductive reasoning rational, problems of memory and forgotten evidence, the uniqueness/permissivism debate, and skepticism.
Reverse Engineering Epistemic Evaluations
(co-winner of the biennial Rutgers Young Epistemologist Prize, 2011;
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 84:3, (2012), 513-530)
Communist Conventions for Deductive Reasoning
(Nous, 49:4, (2015), 776-799)
Forget and Forgive: A Practical Approach to Forgotten Evidence
(Ergo, 2:26, (2015), 645-677)
Why Is a Valid Inference a Good Inference?
(Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 94:1, (2017), 61-96)
An Argument for Uniqueness about Evidential Support
(co-authored with Sophie Horowitz, Philosophical Issues, 26, (2016), 130-147)
The Ordinary Language Argument Against Skepticism — Pragmatized
(Philosophical Studies, 176:4, (2019), 879-896)
What Is the Function of Reasoning? On Mercier & Sperber’s Argumentative and Justificatory Theories
(Episteme, forthcoming, special issue ed. David Henderson)
__________
I also write plenty of papers that don’t pursue the function-oriented, practical approach. Each paper begins with an abstract.
Rational Credence Through Reasoning
(Philosophers’ Imprint, 18:11, (2018) 1-25)
Solving the Problem of Logical Omniscience
(Philosophical Issues, 28:1, (2018), 107-128)
The above two papers are both on the problem of logical omniscience for probabilism. The first develops a positive view a greater length. The second focuses on criticizing existing approaches, including the view that logical omniscience is a reasonable requirement on “ideal rationality”.
Explaining Our Moral Reliability
(Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 98:S1, (2017) 71-86)
Reasoning without Blinders: A Reply to Valaris
(Mind, 125:499, (2016), 889-893)
(Episteme, 13:3, (2016), 269-287)
Why Can’t Armchair Philosophers Naturalize the Mind?
(for a forthcoming volume on the A Priori, eds. Dylan Dodd and Elia Zardini)
A Problem for Rationalist Responses to Skepticism
(Philosophical Studies, 168:2, (2014), 355-369)
(Philosophical Studies, 165:2, (2013), 371-399)
(The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language, eds. Delia Graff Fara and Gillian Russell, (2012)) Abstract: this is an opinionated introduction to the current debate about apriority. I focus on critically examining meaning-based explanations of how we acquire apriori justification.
(Nous, 44:3, (2010), 403-432)
Review of The A Priori in Philosophy, eds. Albert Casullo and Josh Thurow, for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
