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130Against The Bifurcation Of VirtueNoûs 51 (2): 291-301. 2017.It has become customary in the virtue epistemological literature to distinguish between responsibilist and reliabilist virtue theories. More recently, certain problems affecting the former have prompted epistemologists to suggest that this distinction in virtue theory maps on to a distinction in virtue, specifically between character and faculty virtue. I argue that we lack good reason to bifurcate virtue in this manner, and that this moreover counts in favor of the virtue reliabilist.
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208Getting it rightPhilosophical Studies 166 (2): 329-347. 2013.Truth monism is the idea that only true beliefs are of fundamental epistemic value. The present paper considers three objections to truth monism, and argues that, while the truth monist has plausible responses to the first two objections, the third objection suggests that truth monism should be reformulated. On this reformulation, which we refer to as accuracy monism, the fundamental epistemic goal is accuracy, where accuracy is a matter of “getting it right.” The idea then developed is that acc…Read more
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35The Epistemic Benefits of Democracy: A Critical PerspectiveIn M. Fricker, N. J. L. L. Pedersen, D. Henderson & P. J. Graham (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, Routledge. 2019.
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1081Moderate Epistemic ExpressivismPhilosophical Studies 163 (2): 337-357. 2013.The present paper argues that there are at least two equally plausible yet mutually incompatible answers to the question of what is of non-instrumental epistemic value. The hypothesis invoked to explain how this can be so—moderate epistemic expressivism—holds that (a) claims about epistemic value express nothing but commitments to particular goals of inquiry, and (b) there are at least two viable conceptions of those goals. It is shown that such expressivism survives recent arguments against a m…Read more
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98The Epistemic Virtue of DeferenceIn Heather Battaly (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, Routledge. forthcoming.To the consequentialist, virtues are dispositions producing beneficial consequences. After outlining a consequentialist theory of epistemic virtue, I offer an account of an epistemic virtue of deference, manifested to the extent that we are disposed to defer to, and only to, people who speak the truth. I then look at what informed sources can do to instill such virtues of deference, in light of social-psychological evidence on compliance. It turns out that one way of doing so is through a comple…Read more
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53People Listen to People Who Listen: Instilling Virtues of DeferenceIn Christian Miller (ed.), The Character Project: New Perspectives in Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology, Oxford University Press. 2015.We often fail to defer to sources who know what they’re talking about. When doing so consistently, we fail to manifest a virtue of deference. This is because epistemic virtues are dispositions that promote epistemic goals, and knowledge is an epistemic goal. The present paper makes two points about how to instill this virtue. First, virtues of deference can be instilled by promoting compliance with requests on the part of good sources to be listened to, since listening is conducive to believing.…Read more
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17Censoring Online BullshitIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica. forthcoming.Online bullshit consists in online claims offered by speakers misrepresenting themselves as being concerned about the truth or falsity of what they’re saying. I’ll argue that if some practice is epistemically detrimental, we have pro tanto reason to censor it; a practice of OB is epistemically detrimental; and we thereby have pro tanto reason to censor such a practice. After having considered, and rejected, the three most promising arguments to the effect that is either false, or the reasons inv…Read more
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451In Defense of Veritistic Value MonismPacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (1): 19-40. 2013.Recently, veritistic value monism, i.e. the idea that true belief is unique in being of fundamental epistemic value, has come under attack by pluralist philosophers arguing that it cannot account fully for the domain of epistemic value. However, the relevant arguments fail to establish any such thing. For one thing, there is a presumption of monism due to considerations about axiological parsimony. While such a presumption would be defeated by evidence that the relevant kind of monism cannot acc…Read more
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504Why Deliberative Democracy is (Still) UntenablePublic Affairs Quarterly 26 (3): 199-220. 2012.A common objection to deliberative democracy is that available evidence on public ignorance makes it unlikely that social deliberation among the public is a process likely to yield accurate outputs. The present paper considers—and ultimately rejects—two responses to this objection. The first response is that the correct conclusion to draw from the evidence is simply that we must work harder to ensure that the deliberative process improves the deliberators’ epistemic situation. The main problem f…Read more
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78Epistemic Perfectionism and Liberal DemocracySocial Philosophy Today 29 49-58. 2013.Robert Talisse’s recent attempt to justify liberal democracy in epistemic terms is in many ways a breath of fresh air. However, in the present paper we argue that his defense faces two inter-related problems. The first problem pertains to his defense of liberalism, and owes to the fact that a commitment to the folk-epistemological norms in terms of which he makes his case does not commit one to partaking in liberal institutions. Consequently, our (alleged) commitment to the relevant epistemic no…Read more
Areas of Interest
Social Epistemology |
Value Theory |
Epistemic Normativity |
Epistemic Value |
Epistemic Virtues |
PhilPapers Editorships
Naturalized Epistemology |