Levi Spectre
PhD Candidate,
Theoretical Philosophy
Department
Office: +46 (0)8 6747981
Mobile: +46
(0)73 4039595
Mobile: +972
(0)52 8214100
Home: +972 (0)2
5333088
E-mail: levi.spectre@gmail.com
Current
Research
A study of the principle of
knowledge closure (that what one knows to follow from one's knowledge is itself
knowledge) as it relates to higher order knowledge, ignorance, justification,
evidence and rationality. These relations are explored using probabilistic
tools and are informed by principles and assumptions about rationality and
evidential relations. The thesis explored is that knowledge openness (the idea
that knowledge is not closed) can withstand the more
powerful arguments against it, and has some appealing aspects that have yet to
be fully appreciated in contemporary epistemology.
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Dissertation title: |
Knowledge Closure and Knowledge Openness |
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| The Principle of Epistemic Closure its Validity and Implications | ||
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Supervision: |
Professor Peter Pagin |
Stockholm University (main supervisor) |
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Professor Asa Wikforss | Stockholm University |
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Professor John Hawthorne | Oxford University |
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Publications
"Mr. Magoo's Mistake," with
Assaf Sharon, Philosophical Studies,
139:2 (2008), pp. 289-306. (Available via SpringerLink and pdf draft.)
"The Puzzle of Dogmatism
Repuzzled," with Assaf Sharon, Philosophical
Studies, forthcoming. Argues
that the standard solution to KripkeÕs dogmatism puzzle is flawed. The
prospects, it further argues, of solutions to the puzzle that do not restrict,
amend, or reject the validity of knowledge closure, are dire. (Available via SpringerLink
or pdf draft.)
"Sleeping Beauty Meets
Monday," with Karl Karlander, Synthese,
forthcoming. This is not yet just another solution to the Sleeping Beauty
problem. Okay, it is. However, it is different from the other solutions in being
the one we think is correct. The solution appeals to knowledge that is gained
on Monday through an ability to demonstratively refer to a waking day within
the Sleeping Beauty experiment, i.e. through the knowledge that this day is an
experiment waking day. We show how standard conditionalization on this
knowledge leads to a one third answer. (Available via SpringerLink or pdf draft)
Work
in Progress
Determinacy Starts at Home
Develops a straight (roughly) Davidsonian solution to Kripke's meaning sceptical challenge. The idea is roughly that the formulation of the sceptical challenge demands higher order determinacy that is guarantied for T-sentences that relate to present sentence usage. Kripke claims that if the comparable claim does not relate to past sentences, there is no knowing what one means at present. This claim is challenged leading to a strait solution. This is a development of work I did for a master's thesis at the Hebrew University.
Williamsonian Knowledge, Probability ves.
Chance:
Elaborates on Williamson's exchange with John Hawthorne Maria Lasonen-Aarnio.
Knowledge of the Improbable:
Develops the idea that one could come to give high rational credence to a proposition merely on the basis of its being highly improbable that it was invented by a witness.
A Bayesian response to Skepticism
Continues ideas from "Open Knowledge and Evidence" co-authored with Assaf Sharon. The idea here is that Bayesians can directly respond to underdetermination skepticism but not to closure skepticism. By adopting knowledge openness, a Bayesian can extend her account of the evidence for relation to knowledge.
Rationality and Knowledge
Continues ideas from "Open Knowledge and Evidence" co-authored with Assaf Sharon. This paper concerns a distinction between having justification for believing and having a justification in believing. The former type of justification stems from the type of rationality concerning one's beliefs reflecting one's evidential situation, the latter is a rationality stemming from a requirement for consistency. While knowledge concerns both, justification does not.
Compartmentalization and Knowledge
Compartmentalizaion - that our efforts to make our beliefs cohere should be local and not global - is viewed in light of a new problem for contextualist epistemology.
Open Knowledge and Evidence with Assaf Sharon
Teaching
Spring Semester 2009:
Problems, Debates and
Paradoxes in Contemporary Epistemology (for advanced undergraduate philosophy
students at Stockholm University and open to MA students, PhD students, and
faculty).
Course description: The course is designed to
acquaint students with contemporary debates, paradoxes and problems in
epistemology on an advanced level. The course will be quite unique in its
orientation and methodology. Rather than viewing the foremost concerns of
epistemology as deriving from epistemic "isms" such as coherentism
and foundationalism, externalism and internalism, relativism and dogmatism,
contextualism and invariantism, the focus of the course will be on the
principles governing knowledge, belief and justification. Epistemic principles,
rather than theories, will be shown to give rise to various problems and
paradoxes, such as the preface paradox, the lottery paradox, the surprise exam
paradox, the sleeping beauty problem/paradox, skepticism, the easy knowledge
problem, the ravens and grue paradoxes, and the peer disagreement problem. We
will seek a fresh understanding of these major concerns through an evaluation
of the principles that bring them about; principles that make apparent
connections between them; and alternatives, both common and novel, that might
resolve these issues.
Scientific Method and Research
Ethics
course for Humanities MA students at Stockholm University.
Fall Semester
2008:
Philosophy of Social Science course as part of an MA
program of Electronic Government at Orebro University. http://www.electronicgovernment.se/index.asp
Scientific Method and Research
Ethics
course for MA students for the faculty of humanities at Stockholm University. http://people.su.se/~snce/vetenskaplighet_eng/index.html
Past
Teaching
Tutorials at Hebrew University: Aristotle, Critical
Evaluation of Contemporary Philosophical Texts, New Philosophy (from Descartes
to Kant), Introduction to Moral and Political Thought.
Teaching high school students
graduating in philosophy at Harel High-School of Mevasert Zion in Israel: Metaphysics, Philosophy of
Religion, Ethics, Jewish Philosophy, Epistemology, and Introduction to
Philosophy.
Seminar Lectures
Mr Magoo's Mistake,
(Assaf Sharon co-author), Philosophy of Science Seminar, Stockholm University,
March 2006.
Evidence and the Openness
of Knowledge, Logic and
Language Seminar, Stockholm University, December 2007.
Sleeping Beauty Meets Monday, (Co-presented and authored
with Karl Karlander), Philosophy of Science Seminar, Stockholm University,
March 2008.
Actual World Skeptcism, (Co-presented
and authored with Karl Karlander), Philosophy of Science Seminar, Stockholm
University, October 2008.
Bayesian Knowledge and Open Knowledge, Logic and Language Seminar, Stockholm University, December 2008.
Conference Lectures
Relativism and Translation, Reflections on Davidson (international conference), Jerusalem and Ben Gurion University, February 2004.
Mr Magoo's Mistake, (Assaf Sharon co-author), Rutgers-Princeton Graduate Philosophy Conference, Rutgers University, March 2007.
Evidence and Knowledge Openness, (Assaf Sharon co-author), 8th Annual NYU/Columbia Graduate Student Philosophy Conference, Columbia University, March 2008.
Evidnece and the Openness of Knowledge, The 12th Conference of the New Israeli Philosophical Association, Open University, April 2009 (in Hebrew). (Online video recording)
Refereeing
Dialectica.
Theoria
Erkenntnis
General
Information
Levi Spectre, born December 31st1967, Ashkelon, Israel (a real philistine). Married to the lovely Dr. Galia Spectre; a Haematologist at Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem and Karolinska Institutet Stockholm centre of medical research. A proud father of Omri (12), Tamar (9), and Amitai (4). Former high school teacher, farmer, and grain harvesting company owner/manger.
Education
Philosophy Bachelor's degree:
2001 Hebrew University.
Philosophy Master's degree
(incomplete): 2002-2005 Hebrew University.
Philosophy Doctoral degree:
2006 Stockholm University (expected to defend the PhD Thesis in 2009).
Visiting
Scholar: 2008 Trinity Term - Oxford University (with Professor John Hawthorne).
Special thanks to my friend Mikael
Petterson for designing this page and for taking the picture.