Epistemology

Starting in 2010, I began to turn my attention toward issues in epistemology, the study of knowledge and rational belief. This work was funded by an NEH fellowship in 2014-15 and has culminated in my book Reasons First, now forthcoming from OUP.

The main theme in this work has concerned continuities between ethics and epistemology, and ways in which each field has been distorted by failures to appreciate those continuities. I have also developed a framework for thinking about how we can wrong one another not merely by what we do, but also by what we believe about one another – a phenomenon that I believe is real and important but invisible both to most moral philosophers and to most epistemologists.

The main three topics pursued in Reasons First are the epistemology of basic perceptual beliefs, where I defend a simple and elegant but novel account, the question of what role evidence plays in justifying beliefs, where I defend the view that there are properly epistemic reasons against belief that are not evidence, and the analysis of knowledge, where I have argued at length that knowledge and the condition that contemporary moral philosophers call ‘moral worth’ are closely parallel and require similar accounts.

 Epistemology and Reasons

‘Having Reasons.’  Philosophical Studies 139(1): 57-71, April 2008.

‘What Does it Take to ‘Have’ a Reason?’  In Reasons for Belief, edited by Andrew Reisner and Asbjørn Steglich-Peterson.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, June 2011.

‘What Makes Reasons Sufficient?’  American Philosophical Quarterly 52(2): 159-170, April 2015.

‘Perceptual Reasons and Defeat’  Provisionally forthcoming in a volume on defeat in epistemology.  Posted September 2017.

Epistemology - Knowledge

‘Knowledge is Belief for Sufficient (Objective and Subjective) Reason.’  Oxford Studies in Epistemology, volume 5, 226-252, February 2015.

‘Is Knowledge Normative?’  Forthcoming in Philosophical Issues.

‘In Defense of the Kantian Account of Knowledge: Reply to Whiting.’  Forthcoming in Logos and Episteme.

'Knowledge is Not the Most General Factive Stative Attitude.'  Unpublished manuscript.

'Knowledge is Believing Well.'  Forthcoming in volume on epistemic normativity.  Posted September 2017.

Pragmatic Encroachment

‘Stakes, Withholding, and Pragmatic Encroachment on Knowledge.’  Philosophical Studies 160(2): 265-285.  August 2012.

‘Belief, Credence, and Pragmatic Encroachment.’  With Jake Ross.  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88(2): 259-288, March 2014.

‘Rational Stability Under Pragmatic Encroachment.’  Forthcoming in Episteme.  Posted September 2017.

‘The Epistemic Consequences of Forced Choice.’  Short response piece.  Posted September 2014.

Moral Epistemology

‘How Does the Good Appear to Us?’  Social Theory and Practice, 34(1): 119-130, January 2008. 

‘Desiring Under the Proper Guise.’  With Michael Milona.  Provisionally forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics.  Posted September 2017.