Department of Philosophy

Philosophy > People

 Berislav Marusic

Area of Specialization: Theory of Knowledge.

Areas of Competence: Philosophy of Mind and Language, Philosophy of Perception, Existentialism.

Berislav Marušić received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007, and his A.B. from Harvard University in 2001.

Beri has two philosophical projects. His recent work is concerned with epistemic agency and the ethics of belief. He argues that because we think of ourselves as free, we may, and indeed should, sometimes believe something even if we realize that it goes against the evidence. For example, if you genuinely decide to quit smoking, you should believe that you won’t smoke again, even if you know that the statistical evidence indicates that you will. Or, if you promise to be with your spouse all the days of your life, you should believe that you will, despite your knowledge of the divorce statistics. If you didn’t believe this, you would ultimately undermine your capacity to make decisions or promises in these matters.

The second project, based on his dissertation, is to argue that a moderate form of skepticism is defensible and that accepting the skeptical conclusion can eliminate dogmatic elements from our commitments without undermining our ordinary and scientific judgments. A part of the argument is presented in the forthcoming paper, “Skepticism Between Excessiveness and Idleness.”

Publications:

“Skepticism Between Excessiveness and Idleness.”
European Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming 2009.

The online version is already available at:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121501672/PDFSTART

Recently Taught Courses:

• Introduction to Philosophy
• Mind, Meaning, and Language
• Existentialism
• Theory of Knowledge
• Topics in Epistemology and Metaphysics