Published Work
The Promising Puzzle
Forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint
Why Epistemic Partiality Is Overrated
2018 - in a special issue of Philosophical Topics (eds. Rima Basu and Mark Schroeder), co-authored with Nomy Arpaly
Review of Christensen and Lackey (eds.), The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays
2015 - Analysis, co-authored with Tomás Bogardus
Forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint
Why Epistemic Partiality Is Overrated
2018 - in a special issue of Philosophical Topics (eds. Rima Basu and Mark Schroeder), co-authored with Nomy Arpaly
Review of Christensen and Lackey (eds.), The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays
2015 - Analysis, co-authored with Tomás Bogardus
Papers In Progress
*Drafts 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.
Can Death Bad for One Who Dies and Goes to Heaven?
Appealing to Elizabeth Harman's idea of reasonable attachment to the actual, this paper develops a version of the deprivation of account of the badness of death that can make sense of badness of death for someone who dies and goes on to enjoy a happy afterlife.
An Evidentialist Take on "Rational" Prejudiced Beliefs
This paper argues that cases of beliefs that seem to be both prejudiced and properly based on relevant statistical evidence do not pressure evidentialists to give up their view of epistemic rationality.
A Defense of Silencing
Drawing on insights from the literature on moral encroachment, this paper defends the view that pornography illocutionarily disables women from the objection that it entails that sexual wrongdoers are less than fully morally blameworthy.
Good Friend: Bad Believer?
This paper advances a new account of the epistemic demands of friendship that focuses on attention rather than beliefs.
Can Death Bad for One Who Dies and Goes to Heaven?
Appealing to Elizabeth Harman's idea of reasonable attachment to the actual, this paper develops a version of the deprivation of account of the badness of death that can make sense of badness of death for someone who dies and goes on to enjoy a happy afterlife.
An Evidentialist Take on "Rational" Prejudiced Beliefs
This paper argues that cases of beliefs that seem to be both prejudiced and properly based on relevant statistical evidence do not pressure evidentialists to give up their view of epistemic rationality.
A Defense of Silencing
Drawing on insights from the literature on moral encroachment, this paper defends the view that pornography illocutionarily disables women from the objection that it entails that sexual wrongdoers are less than fully morally blameworthy.
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.
