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I mainly work in epistemology and the philosophy of language.
My central research project has to do with a special kind of defeating evidence: evidence that your belief (or other attitude) is empty. According to such evidence, your belief (or other attitude) lacks a propositional (truth-apt) content. I call such evidence truth-aptness defeat. For example: suppose you are (say) 95% confident that the Mona Lisa sublime, but then you receive evidence that the notion of "the sublime" is utter nonsense. That evidence indicates that your 95% degree of confidence fails to have any propositional content at all.
Upon receiving this evidence, how should you adjust your confidence that the Mona Lisa is sublime? In my dissertation, I argue that you should not lower your confidence, even though the truth-aptness defeat makes that degree of confidence less likely to have a true content. (Spoiler: it also makes your degree of confidence that the Mona Lisa is not sublime less likely to have a true content—but if you reduce both of those degrees of confidence, they'll no longer sum to 100%! Moreover, lowering confidence misses the point: if your state of confidence is empty, lowering it won't solve that problem.) Instead, I argue, there must be a second dimension along which we can adjust our attitudes, and along which we should adjust them upon receiving truth-aptness defeat. I call this dimension how firmly an attitude is held. Holding an attitude less firmly weakens the behavioral dispositions typically associated with it. Each of our attitudes (desire, fear, etc.) can be held more or less firmly; hence, my dissertation reveals an entirely new dimension of the mind.
I have several papers in progress which explore the theoretical significance of truth-aptness defeat (see below). Next, I plan to develop a decision theory which is sensitive to truth-aptness defeat, as well as to argue that truth-aptness can rationally require agents to be fragmented: to have multiple, internally coherent doxastic perspectives, rather than a single, unified one.
In addition to my work on truth-aptness defeat, I have further papers in progress in epistemology, metaethics, and the philosophy of language (see below).
PUBLICATIONS
Interrogating the Linguistic Argument for KK
The Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming)
The KK thesis says that if S knows that p, then S knows that S knows that p. A common argument for KK is that it can explain why certain assertions are infelicitous. I undermine that argument: only the less plausible version of KK ("Strong KK") can explain the data, and in any case, a "believe that you know" norm on assertion can explain the data without appealing to (any version of) KK.
PAPERS IN PROGRESS (drafts available)
[1] In Truth-Aptness Defeat and Credence, I argue that upon receiving a truth-aptness defeater against p, you should not lower your credence in p—even though you may end up with a high credence in p, and a low credence that that credence has a true content. The reason is simple: if your credence is empty, a lower credence would be no better than a higher one.
[2] In Truth-Aptness Defeat and Firmness of Hold, I explore how a rational agent should respond to truth-aptness defeat. I argue that some response is necessary, but that none of the usual responses will do. (For example: even if, contrary to [1], truth-aptness defeat does require reducing credence, that that can’t be all it requires.) This makes for a real puzzle. I resolve it by introducing a new dimension along which we can adjust our attitudes, which I call how firmly they are held. Reducing how firmly you hold an attitude is the right way to respond to truth-aptness defeat. Doing so weakens the dispositions typically associated with it.
[3] In A New Case for Epistemic Permissivism, I argue that in certain cases, for some proposition p, agents will be epistemically permitted either to believe p, or to suspend judgment on p.
[4] According to perspectivism, whether I’m morally obligated to φ only depends on facts that are within my epistemic grasp. In Hyperintensional Obligations and Perspectival Satisfaction, I argue that perspectivism has two counterintuitive commitments. First, that moral obligations are hyperintensional: just like beliefs, they’re (partly) individuated by modes of presentation. This clashes with commonsensical views about obligations, like the view that obligations are simply relations between agents (like Smith) and acts (like administering a drug). Second, that whether an agent satisfies her obligation to φ depends not on whether she’s actually φ’d, but on whether it’s true according to her perspective that she’s φ’d. This is even worse: it means that you (i) may have an obligation to φ, (ii) may φ, but (iii) not satisfy your obligation—not even in a way that lacks moral worth. The upshot? Perspectivism may be far less plausible than is commonly supposed.
[5] There is disagreement about which norms govern assertion. Beneath that disagreement, though, are two widely held assumptions: (i) that a candidate norm can explain why an assertion is infelicitous merely by counting it as improper, and (ii) that we should settle this disagreement by looking at how explanatorily powerful different candidate norms are. In The Epistemic Significance of Infelicity, I challenge both of those assumptions. First, I point out that often, candidate norms will count felicitous assertions as improper, too; thus, impropriety alone cannot explain infelicity. Second, I argue that infelicitous assertions can provide (what I call) phenomenal support for candidate norms of assertion: witnessing an infelicitous assertion can justify believing that a certain norm governs assertion just like a visual experience can justify believing (say) that Steve is standing. Hence, we should settle this disagreement not just by seeing how well different candidate norms can explain certain data, but by looking at the degree of phenomenal support each receives.
this page last updated 8/10/26
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