Degrees

Ph.D, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; M.A., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; B.A., Lawrence University

Short Bio

Dr. Bayer received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His dissertation critiqued the recent movement in epistemology, inspired largely by Quine, which seeks to answer philosophical questions about human knowledge using the methods of the natural sciences. Bayer argues that while special sciences have important resources for dispelling myths about human cognition that usually lend fuel to skepticism, epistemology and philosophy more generally retain a distinctive subject matter and methodology.  

More recently, Bayer has worked on articulating a positive alternative to naturalism in epistemology that seeks to avoid some of the pitfalls of traditional a priori epistemology. In an article forthcoming in Synthese, he argues that an appreciation of the psychology of human perception and concept-formation can help support a case for foundationalism in epistemology, the view that our knowledge is justified ultimately by the evidence of the senses. Bayer's work now focuses on drawing out the implications of this position for other central topics in normative epistemology. To this end, he is working on papers addressing questions about whether the facts that justify our beliefs are ones to which we have cognitive access (internalism vs. externalism), whether our beliefs are under our conscious control such that epistemology can offer guidance in their formation (doxastic voluntarism vs. involuntarism), and whether our reliance on the testimony of other people is at odds with firsthand responsibility for the evaluation of our beliefs (testimonial reductionism vs. anti-reductionism). Drafts of these and other papers are available at Bayer's web site.    

In addition to his work on central questions in epistemology, Bayer has done work in the philosophy of action, the philosophy of psychology, metaethics, and has published two interpretative essays on Quine (in The Southern Journal of Philosophy and The International Journal of Philosophical Studies). He is currently working on an introductory textbook on practical logic, a draft of which is also available online.

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