Blaauw, Martijn

Research profile

I am the coordinator of 3TU. Centre for Ethics and Technology since February 1st 2011 as well as a Research Fellow based at the same Centre.

My PhD is from the VU University Amsterdam (2004, cum laude). In my dissertation I developed a contrastivist solution to the problem of radical scepticism.

I have held positions at the University of Aarhus (Denmark), the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), and the VU University Amsterdam (the Netherlands). At the last institution, I held a prestigious VENI-scholarship (2007-2010) for Innovative Research for a project on ‘Epistemic Pluralism’.

My research is mainly focussed on issues in epistemology, with special interest for social epistemology (testimony, group knowledge), context-relative accounts of the concept of ‘knowledge’ (such as contextualism, contrastivism, and subject sensitive invariantism), and assertion.
Currently, I am working on the notion ‘privacy’, trying to contribute to the privacy debate from an epistemological point of view.

I have published widely in epistemology, and am currently working on a book-length manuscript, tentatively entitled ‘Knowledge in Contrast’ in which I defend that ‘to know’ is a contrastive concept.

Later this year, my edited book ‘Contrastivism in Philosophy’ will appear with Routledge Publishers. This book will feature contributions from Adam Morton, Jonathan Schaffer, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Julia Driver, Christopher Hitchcock, Branden Fitelson, and myself.

I have published papers in such journals as Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, The Philosophical Quarterly, Ratio, Philosophical Issues, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Suppl. Vol), Social Epistemology, Metaphilosophy, and Religious Studies.

My personal webpage can be found at: