Published Work
Not Excusing Rape: Silencing, Blame, and Rationality
Forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy
[pdf preprint] [published version]
Prejudiced Beliefs Based on the Evidence
Forthcoming - Synthese
[pdf preprint] [published version]
The Promising Puzzle
2021 - Philosophers' Imprint
[pdf preprint] [published version]
Death, Deprivation, and The Afterlife
2021 - Philosophia
[pdf preprint] [published version]
Why Epistemic Partiality Is Overrated
2018 - in a special issue of Philosophical Topics (eds. Rima Basu and Mark Schroeder), co-authored with Nomy Arpaly
[published version]
Review of Christensen and Lackey (eds.), The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays
2015 - Analysis, co-authored with Tomás Bogardus
[published version]
Forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy
[pdf preprint] [published version]
Prejudiced Beliefs Based on the Evidence
Forthcoming - Synthese
[pdf preprint] [published version]
The Promising Puzzle
2021 - Philosophers' Imprint
[pdf preprint] [published version]
Death, Deprivation, and The Afterlife
2021 - Philosophia
[pdf preprint] [published version]
Why Epistemic Partiality Is Overrated
2018 - in a special issue of Philosophical Topics (eds. Rima Basu and Mark Schroeder), co-authored with Nomy Arpaly
[published version]
Review of Christensen and Lackey (eds.), The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays
2015 - Analysis, co-authored with Tomás Bogardus
[published version]
Papers In Progress
*Drafts of these papers are available upon request.
Good Friend: Bad Believer?*
This paper advances a new account of the epistemic demands of friendship that focuses on attention rather than beliefs.
Epistemically Irresponsible Actions*
This paper develops an account of epistemically irresponsible actions.
Prejudiced Belief and the Moral Importance of Understanding*
This paper argues against moral encroachment by looking at cases in which beliefs that seem prejudiced in isolation are embedded in an understanding of morally relevant features of the believers' socio-epistemic landscape. It argues that moral encroachment is committed to unintuitive verdicts about these cases.
The Virtue of Social Consciousness
This paper develops an account of the moral-epistemic virtue of social consciousness, which refers roughly to the same thing as 'being woke.'
Views Beyond the Pale of Engagement
Views that are beyond the pale go engagement are morally (and perhaps also epistemically) bad to engage with. This paper explores the conditions that a view must meet to be beyond the pale of engagement, and how this varies by context.
The Moral Value of Epistemic Diversity
This paper looks at why it is morally good when people with conflicting views work and think together. It also explores the type of epistemic diversity that is morally valuable (political? moral? religious? the type of diversity that arises from differences in lived experiences?).
Good Friend: Bad Believer?*
This paper advances a new account of the epistemic demands of friendship that focuses on attention rather than beliefs.
Epistemically Irresponsible Actions*
This paper develops an account of epistemically irresponsible actions.
Prejudiced Belief and the Moral Importance of Understanding*
This paper argues against moral encroachment by looking at cases in which beliefs that seem prejudiced in isolation are embedded in an understanding of morally relevant features of the believers' socio-epistemic landscape. It argues that moral encroachment is committed to unintuitive verdicts about these cases.
The Virtue of Social Consciousness
This paper develops an account of the moral-epistemic virtue of social consciousness, which refers roughly to the same thing as 'being woke.'
Views Beyond the Pale of Engagement
Views that are beyond the pale go engagement are morally (and perhaps also epistemically) bad to engage with. This paper explores the conditions that a view must meet to be beyond the pale of engagement, and how this varies by context.
The Moral Value of Epistemic Diversity
This paper looks at why it is morally good when people with conflicting views work and think together. It also explores the type of epistemic diversity that is morally valuable (political? moral? religious? the type of diversity that arises from differences in lived experiences?).
Dissertation Overview
Dissertation Title: Evidence and the Rationality of Belief
Committee: David Christensen (chair), Nomy Arpaly, Joshua Schechter
Beliefs bear a special relation to truth – beliefs, in some sense, seem to aim at truth – and so it is natural to think that there is an important link between truth and the rationality of belief. If belief aims at truth, the thought goes, then rationality is a guide to it: the rationality of belief is determined by truth-related considerations alone. One view that captures this thought is evidentialism (evidentialism for short): it is rational for S to believe that p iff p is supported by S’s evidence.
Although once widely accepted, evidentialism has recently come under question along a variety of fronts. In particular, various philosophers have advanced accounts of friendship, promising, and prejudiced belief that challenge evidentialism. These challenges, although independent of one another, all rely on a common picture of the goodness of belief, which looks like this:
Beliefs have some important social, practical, or moral role. Beliefs enable us, for example, to be supportive friends, to make sincere promises, and to think without prejudice. But there are cases when beliefs that are supported by the evidence cannot fulfill this other role. Sometimes it is socially, practically, or morally good to not have a belief that’s supported by the evidence. So, there is an important social or practical or moral dimension to the goodness of belief that is independent of, and sometimes in conflict with, belief being truth- aimed.
Accepting this picture of the goodness of belief invites us to reject evidentialism. Everybody can agree that, if rationality is worth pursuing, it must promote good beliefs and discourage bad ones. But, if this picture is accurate, there are considerations in addition to truth-related ones that contribute to the goodness of beliefs. Rationality, we might conclude, is sensitive to these other dimensions of the goodness of belief: social, practical, and moral considerations get a say in what is rationality to believe.
The primary goal of this dissertation is to defend evidentialism. Towards this goal, I develop an evidentialist-friendly account of friendship (chapter one), promising (chapter two), and prejudiced belief (chapters three and four). Each account is based on the rejection of one of the claims that make up the picture of the goodness of belief that underlies the relevant challenges to evidentialism. In the case of friendship, I argue that belief does not have the social role that the picture says it has: that role belongs, instead, to attention. In the cases of promising and prejudice, belief does have the practical and moral roles the picture says it has but those roles are best fulfilled by beliefs supported by the evidence. Taken together, these accounts contribute to a systematic defense of evidentialism. Perhaps more significantly, they tell us something important about the goodness of belief: the social, practical, and moral dimension of the goodness of belief is intimately connected with belief being truth-aimed.
Committee: David Christensen (chair), Nomy Arpaly, Joshua Schechter
Beliefs bear a special relation to truth – beliefs, in some sense, seem to aim at truth – and so it is natural to think that there is an important link between truth and the rationality of belief. If belief aims at truth, the thought goes, then rationality is a guide to it: the rationality of belief is determined by truth-related considerations alone. One view that captures this thought is evidentialism (evidentialism for short): it is rational for S to believe that p iff p is supported by S’s evidence.
Although once widely accepted, evidentialism has recently come under question along a variety of fronts. In particular, various philosophers have advanced accounts of friendship, promising, and prejudiced belief that challenge evidentialism. These challenges, although independent of one another, all rely on a common picture of the goodness of belief, which looks like this:
Beliefs have some important social, practical, or moral role. Beliefs enable us, for example, to be supportive friends, to make sincere promises, and to think without prejudice. But there are cases when beliefs that are supported by the evidence cannot fulfill this other role. Sometimes it is socially, practically, or morally good to not have a belief that’s supported by the evidence. So, there is an important social or practical or moral dimension to the goodness of belief that is independent of, and sometimes in conflict with, belief being truth- aimed.
Accepting this picture of the goodness of belief invites us to reject evidentialism. Everybody can agree that, if rationality is worth pursuing, it must promote good beliefs and discourage bad ones. But, if this picture is accurate, there are considerations in addition to truth-related ones that contribute to the goodness of beliefs. Rationality, we might conclude, is sensitive to these other dimensions of the goodness of belief: social, practical, and moral considerations get a say in what is rationality to believe.
The primary goal of this dissertation is to defend evidentialism. Towards this goal, I develop an evidentialist-friendly account of friendship (chapter one), promising (chapter two), and prejudiced belief (chapters three and four). Each account is based on the rejection of one of the claims that make up the picture of the goodness of belief that underlies the relevant challenges to evidentialism. In the case of friendship, I argue that belief does not have the social role that the picture says it has: that role belongs, instead, to attention. In the cases of promising and prejudice, belief does have the practical and moral roles the picture says it has but those roles are best fulfilled by beliefs supported by the evidence. Taken together, these accounts contribute to a systematic defense of evidentialism. Perhaps more significantly, they tell us something important about the goodness of belief: the social, practical, and moral dimension of the goodness of belief is intimately connected with belief being truth-aimed.
