home > news from public affairs

News from Public Affairs

For Release:	IMMEDIATELY UPON RECEIPT
Contact:	TIM MASSIE (845) 575-3171 ANDREI BUCKAREFF (845) 575-3000, EXT. 2691

PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIUM TO LOOK AT "EVIDENCE AND DISAGREEMENTS"

POUGHKEEPSIE - The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies will conduct a philosophy colloquium featuring Dr. Richard Feldman from the University of Rochester on November 5 at 6:30 p.m. in the Henry Hudson Room in Fontaine Hall. Professor Feldman, one of the leading epistemologists in the nation, will speak on "Evidence and Disagreements."

Evidentialism is the thesis that a person is justified in believing a proposition if and only if the person's evidence on balance supports that proposition. Some philosophers have endorsed principles that seem to run contrary to evidentialism. Feldman argues that the puzzles about disagreement provide no reason to abandon evidentialism and that there are no true general principles about justified responses to disagreement other than the general evidentialist principle. He then argues that the puzzles about disagreement are primarily puzzles about the evidential impact of higher-order evidence evidence about the significance or existence of ordinary, first-order, evidence. He concludes by arguing that such higher-order evidence can often have a profound effect on the justification of first-order beliefs.

Feldman is professor of philosophy and dean of the college at the University of Rochester. He is co-author of "Evidentialism: Essays in Epistemology" (Oxford University Press, 2004), and he is author of "Epistemology" (Prentice-Hall, 2003) and "Reason and Argument" (Prentice-Hall, 1999). He is co-editor of "The Good, The Right, Life, and Death" (Ashgate, 2006) and "Disagreement" (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Feldman has authored articles on topics in epistemology and metaphysics in leading philosophy journals and contributed to numerous collections of essays. He also serves on the editorial board of several journals.

---

For further information, call the Marist College Office of Public Affairs at (845) 575-3174.