E.J. Coffman

See Also: Personal Website

My Ph.D. is from the University of Notre Dame and I joined the department in 2007

Research Interests

Various issues in contemporary epistemology, especially

• the nature of—and relations among—knowledge, the main kinds of epistemic justification, and evidence;
• questions about how the above epistemological concepts are related to assertion, practical reasoning, and epistemic possibility; and
• different “benign” and “malign” roles that luck can play in our attempts to gain and retain knowledge.

Various issues at the intersection of metaphysics, philosophy of action, and ethics, especially

• arguments bearing on the question whether freedom and moral responsibility are compatible with causal determinism;
• objections to the view that freedom and responsibility are compatible with indeterminism; and
• the viability of “reductive” accounts of human action—which say, roughly, that human action can be fully analyzed or accounted for in terms of certain relations obtaining among certain kinds of events.

Recent, representative articles

• “Warrant without Truth?”, Synthese (forthcoming)
  
  
• “The Fall of the Mind Argument and Some Lessons about Freedom” (with Donald Smith), in Action, Ethics and Responsibility, eds. Joseph Campbell, Michael O’Rourke, and David Shier (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming)
  
  
• “Thinking about Luck,” Synthese 158 (2007): 385-398
  
  
• “Alfred Mele’s Metaphysical Freedom?” (with Ted Warfield), Philosophical Explorations 10 (2007): 185-194
  
  
• “Three Arguments against Foundationalism: Arbitrariness, Epistemic Regress, and Existential Support” (with Daniel Howard-Snyder), Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (2006): 535-564
  
  
• “Defending Klein on Closure and Skepticism,” Synthese 151 (2006): 257-272
  
  
• “Deliberation and Metaphysical Freedom” (with Ted Warfield), Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXIX: Free Will and Moral Responsibility (2005): 25-44
  
  
• “On Making an Effort,” Philosophical Papers 33 (2004): 11-21

Recent, representative presentations

• "Reliability and Warranted Assertion"
  • Southwest Philosophical Society, November 2007
    
    
• “Assertion, Knowledge, and Justification”
  • Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 2007
    
    
• “Luck and Standard Libertarianism”
• Southwest Philosophical Society, November 2006
• Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 2007
  
  
• “Williamson’s Evidence”
• Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 2006
  
  
• “The Fall of the Mind Argument and Some Lessons about Freedom” (with Donald Smith)
• Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference (Topic: Action, Ethics, and Responsibility), April 2006
  
  
• “A Principled Argument for Agency Theory” (with Donald Smith)
• Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, March 2005
  
  
• “Warrant, Luck, and Truth”
• University of Rochester Graduate Conference in Epistemology, September 2004
• Central States Philosophical Association Meeting, October 2004
  
  
• "Defending Klein on Closure and Skepticism”
• Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 2004
  
  
• “Causal Responsibility and Two Kinds of Control”
• Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 2002

Teaching Interests

Epistemology (both general and “applied”—e.g., moral and religious epistemology), metaphysics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language.

Contact Information

E.J. Coffman
Assistant Professor
806 McClung Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996-0480

Phone: 865-974-3255
Fax: 865-974-3509

Email: ecoffma1@utk.edu