Published Work
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
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
Dissertation Overview
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. After all, if rationality is worth pursuing, it must promote true beliefs, and discourage false ones. The rationality of a belief, then, is determined by alone by evidential and other truth-related considerations: it is rational to believe that p iff p is supported by the evidence. Call this view evidentialism about the rationality of beliefs.
Although once widely accepted, evidentialism has recently come under attack across a variety of fronts. In particular, various philosophers have advanced evidentialist-unfriendly accounts of friendship, promising, and prejudiced belief. Their rejections of evidentialism, although independent of one another, share a similar structure. First, they point out some important social, practical, or moral role of belief: beliefs enable us, for example, to be supportive friends, to make sincere promises, and to think without prejudice. Second, they argue that there are cases when beliefs that respect the evidence cannot fulfill this other role by virtue of respecting the evidence: sometimes it is bad (social, practically, morally) for a belief respect the evidence, and sometimes it is good (socially, practically, morally) for a belief to go beyond, or against, it. These philosophers agree with the evidentialist that, if rationality is worth pursuing, it must promote good beliefs, and discourage bad ones. But, they continue, there is a social or practical or moral dimension to the goodness of beliefs that is independent of their being truth-aimed. They conclude the rationality of belief is sensitive these other dimensions and so is not determined only by evidential and other truth-related considerations.
This dissertation is intended to defend evidentialism from these attacks. In each chapter, I develop an evidentialist-friendly account of friendship (chapter one), promising (chapter two), and prejudiced belief (chapters three). I argue that these evidentialist-friendly accounts can accommodate the various considerations that motivate their evidentialist-unfriendly counterparts while also avoiding the problems and surprising epistemological commitments that arise when rationality is peeled apart from truth. Taken together, these accounts contribute to a systematic defense of evidentialism. More importantly, they tell us something important about the nature of belief: the social, practical, and moral dimension of the goodness of beliefs is intimately connected with their being true.
Although once widely accepted, evidentialism has recently come under attack across a variety of fronts. In particular, various philosophers have advanced evidentialist-unfriendly accounts of friendship, promising, and prejudiced belief. Their rejections of evidentialism, although independent of one another, share a similar structure. First, they point out some important social, practical, or moral role of belief: beliefs enable us, for example, to be supportive friends, to make sincere promises, and to think without prejudice. Second, they argue that there are cases when beliefs that respect the evidence cannot fulfill this other role by virtue of respecting the evidence: sometimes it is bad (social, practically, morally) for a belief respect the evidence, and sometimes it is good (socially, practically, morally) for a belief to go beyond, or against, it. These philosophers agree with the evidentialist that, if rationality is worth pursuing, it must promote good beliefs, and discourage bad ones. But, they continue, there is a social or practical or moral dimension to the goodness of beliefs that is independent of their being truth-aimed. They conclude the rationality of belief is sensitive these other dimensions and so is not determined only by evidential and other truth-related considerations.
This dissertation is intended to defend evidentialism from these attacks. In each chapter, I develop an evidentialist-friendly account of friendship (chapter one), promising (chapter two), and prejudiced belief (chapters three). I argue that these evidentialist-friendly accounts can accommodate the various considerations that motivate their evidentialist-unfriendly counterparts while also avoiding the problems and surprising epistemological commitments that arise when rationality is peeled apart from truth. Taken together, these accounts contribute to a systematic defense of evidentialism. More importantly, they tell us something important about the nature of belief: the social, practical, and moral dimension of the goodness of beliefs is intimately connected with their being true.
