Paul Faulkner
BA Cambridge, MA KCL, PhD UCL
Biography
I have been a member of the Department since September 2001; after a two-year lectureship at University College London, where I took my doctorate.
Research Interests
The focus of my research is the epistemology of testimony. The ambition is to produce a theory of testimony that recognises and accounts for the ways in which testimony is a unique source of knowledge and justification. In doing so I am interested in questions such as the following. Are others´ utterances good grounds for belief merely because they can constitute good evidence? What is the psychologically correct description of how we respond to testimony? Are the reactive attitudes we demonstrate in communication epistemologically important? In what ways does believing what someone says introduce problems of trust? Is there anything wrong with lying? Do knowledge and belief differ in the way they get transmitted across persons? How does believing what a speaker says relate an audience to that speaker and to a wider community of knowledge? In what ways, do we need to invoke communities in order to explain the ways in which knowledge is social? Recently, my interest has focused on trust.
Selected Publications
- Knowledge on Trust, (OUP, 2011)
- "Precis" and "Replies", Symposium on Knowledge on Trust, Abstracta, 2012, SI(6).
- "Norms of Trust", Millar & Pritchard eds. Social Epistemology (OUP, 2010)
- "A Genealogy of Trust", Episteme, 2007, 4(3).
- "On Telling and Trusting", Mind, 2007, 116(464).
- "What is Wrong With Lying?", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2007, 75(3).
- "On the Rationality of Our Response to Testimony", Synthese, 2002, 131(3).
- "The Social Character of Testimonial Knowledge", Journal of Philosophy, 2000, 97(11).
Contact
email : paul.faulkner@sheffield.ac.uk
Office Hours
Tuesday 10-12