Research Publications
Welcome to our database of research publications
Virtue Epistemology for the Zetetic Turn
Carter, J. A. and Willard-Kyle, C. Forthcoming in Mind.
This article develops and argues for a virtue epistemology that includes performance-normative evaluations of interrogative attitudes (IAs) We argue that (1) IAs are competent when they manifest (rightly situated) dispositions to form IAs in sound questions reliably enough, and (2) IAs are apt when their being directed towards a sound question manifests the relevant competence.
Easy Practical Knowledge
Kearl, T. and Carter, J.A. Forthcoming in Journal of Philosophy
This paper develops a novel account of practical knowledge by connecting the epistemologies of mental rehearsal and suppositional reasoning. We argue that practical knowledge—the knowledge agents have of what they're doing as they act intentionally—is "easy" in the technical sense that manifesting one's skills provides a priori propositional justification for beliefs about one's actions. The account explains why practical knowledge typically accompanies intentional action while accommodating problematic cases involving epistemic defeat or unsafe beliefs, where agents act intentionally without knowledge. The view charts a middle path between strong Anscombian requirements and deflationary accounts that deny substantive epistemic conditions on intentional action.
Know-How in Motion (draft 25 Jan 2026)
J Adam Carter
We do all sorts of things. But how much of our behaviour manifests genuine know‑how? This practical scope question mirrors a familiar epistemological question—how much knowledge there is—and it invites a parallel kind of scepticism: perhaps far less of what we do really manifests know‑how than we ordinarily assume. A prominent constraint in the literature appears to deliver such a sceptical answer. According to the success‑only constraint (SOC), one manifests know‑how to only if one successfully s. This paper argues that SOC is false for non‑basic telic tasks—extended, multi‑step undertakings with a distinctive finish line. In such cases, know‑how can be on display in the agent’s intelligently controlled route toward the goal, even when the goal is never reached. I develop a trajectory‑based alternative: a Good Trajectories view, on which manifestation is tied not to completion but to the agent’s intentional control of a suitably substantial stretch of robustly progress‑making activity. The resulting picture preserves the thought that manifestations of know‑how must be non‑accidental and competence‑guided, while allowing interrupted, abandoned, and deliberately “thrown” performances to manifest know‑how in the relevant sense. It also supports a less sceptical—and, I argue, more accurate—answer to the scope question: our behaviour manifests significantly more know‑how than SOC would allow; when we act (indeed whether we succeed or fail) the manifestation of know-how is normal.
Teleological Momentum and Non-Basic Actions (draft Feb 2026)
J Adam Carter
Abstract: When an agent is performing a non-basic action (e.g., walking to the summit, writing a novel, baking a cake) what determines at any given time whether they are still performing that action as it unfolds? The puzzle of the imperfective aspect reveals that intention and physical movement are insufficient: two agents can share both the intention to 𝜙 and the same initial behavior, yet, only one is in the process of 𝜙-ing. I develop a novel account on which an agent is performing a non-basic action A if and only if they possess sufficient teleological momentum toward A. Teleological momentum is, like physical momentum, a composite vector quantity comprising three elements: intentional mass, practical velocity, and guidance alignment. The TM framework explains the differential truth-conditions of progressive action ascriptions while avoiding what are shown to be pitfalls of purely modal, dispositional, intentionalist, and causalist accounts. It also has wider implications for how responsibility, akrasia, and collective action should be understood in cases of temporally extended agency, by clarifying how a non-basic action can persist over time through partial progress and counterfactual vulnerability in virtue of sufficient teleological momentum toward its end.