• The Epistemology of Desire and the Problem of Nihilism
    Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Most people have wondered whether anything really matters, some have temporarily thought that nothing really matters, and some philosophers have defended the view that nothing really matters. However, if someone thinks that nothing matters--if they are a "nihilist about value"--then it seems that it is irrational for them to care about anything. It seems that nihilism about value mandates total indifference. This is the "problem of nihilism" Allan Hazlett addresses in The Epistemology of Desire …Read more
  •  16
    Authenticity as transparency
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    What do we ordinarily mean when we describe people as authentic or inauthentic? We describe friends, enemies, acquaintances, and colleagues as authentic and inauthentic, as well as politicians, celebrities, and other public figures. What are we saying about someone, when we say that they are authentic or inauthentic? I argue that authenticity is transparency: that you are authentic to the extent that you are transparent and inauthentic to the extent that you are opaque. I contrast my account wit…Read more
  •  1254
    Most people not only think that it is possible for reasonable people to disagree, but that it is possible for people to recognize that they are parties to a reasonable disagreement. The aim of this paper is to explain how such mutually recognized reasonable disagreements are possible. I appeal to an which implies a form of relativism about reasonable belief, based on the idea that whether a belief is reasonable for a person can depend on the fact that she has inherited a particular worldview fro…Read more
  • Moorean pragmatics, social comparisons, and common knowledge
    In Peter Graham & Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (eds.), Epistemic Entitlement, Oxford University Press. 2020.
  • The Revival of Virtue Ethics
    with Anne Baril
    In Iain Thomson & Kelly Becker (eds.), Cambridge History of Philosophy 1946-2010, Cambridge. pp. 223-236. 2019.
    In the second half of the twentieth century, an influential strain of ethical thinking conceptualized itself as a revival of an ancient ethical tradition, as against modern moral philosophy, and in particular as a recovery of two central ethical concepts: virtue and eudaimonia. This revival paved the way for virtue ethics to be regarded as one of the “big three” approaches in ethics, alongside deontological and consequentialist approaches. Early developments of virtue ethics were eudaimonist, ha…Read more
  •  12
    The Aim of Suspension
    Res Philosophica 99 (4): 467-474. 2022.
  •  17
    The value of common knowledge
    Synthese 200 (1): 1-18. 2022.
    I articulate the question of the value of common knowledge, or the question of why common knowledge is preferred to mere widespread knowledge. I argue that common knowledge often enjoys instrumental value lacked by widespread knowledge, and present a case that suggests that common knowledge sometimes enjoys non-instrumental value lacked by widespread knowledge. But I articulate some doubts about whether we should draw that conclusion from the case.
  •  62
    Critical Injustice
    American Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2): 129-144. 2020.
    In this paper I examine unjust deficits of criticism, or what I call cases of “critical injustice.” In paradigm cases of testimonial injustice, prejudice leads one person to give insufficient credibility to another. In paradigm cases critical injustice, prejudice leads one person to offer insufficient criticism of another. Here I articulate the concept of critical injustice and give an explanation of why it is a species of injustice. I also describe a non-prejudicial species of critical inju…Read more
  •  218
    Intellectual Pride
    In Joseph Adam Carter & Emma C. Gordon (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Pride, Rowman & Littlefield. 2017.
    Intellectual pride is pride about intellectual matters – for example, knowledge about what you know, about your intellectual virtues, or about your intellectual achievements. It is the opposite of intellectual humility (e.g. knowledge about what you don’t know, about your intellectual vices, or about your intellectual failures). In this paper I will advocate for intellectual pride by explaining its importance in the contexts of education (where a lack of pride threatens to undermine motivation…Read more
  •  240
    In this chapter I sympathetically consider the idea that skepticism is an epistemic virtue. I argue that this depends on whether skepticism is admirable, and articulate three defenses of skepticism as admirable: a Pyrrhonian defense (on which skepticism leads to tranquility), a Cartesian defense (on which skepticism is prophylactic against error), and a liberal defense (on which skepticism counteracts dogmatism and closed-mindedness). I give the liberal defense the most attention: I distinguis…Read more
  •  610
    False Intellectual Humility
    In Mark Alfano, Michael Patrick Lynch & Alessandra Tanesini (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Humility, Routledge. 2021.
    This chapter explores a species of false modesty, false intellectual humility, which is defined as affected or pretended intellectual humility concealing intellectual arrogance. False intellectual humility is situated in a virtue epistemological framework, where it is contrasted with intellectual humility, understood as excellence in self-attribution of intellectual weakness. False intellectual humility characteristically takes the form of insincere expressions of ignorance or uncertainty – as…Read more
  •  217
    Here is a familiar liberal argument: just as it can be beneficial to establish a marketplace, in which producers of goods freely compete for the custom of consumers, it can be beneficial to establish a “marketplace of ideas,” in which defenders of ideas freely compete for the acceptance of those ideas by others. This paper is about the preconditions for the proper functioning of liberal marketplaces, and of marketplaces of ideas in particular. I will argue that, just as the proper functioning …Read more
  •  316
    Understanding and Testimony
    In Jennifer Lackey & Aidan McGlynn (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Social Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2024.
    Can understanding be transmitted by testimony, in the same sense that propositional knowledge can be transmitted by testimony? Some contemporary philosophers – call them testimonial understanding pessimists – say No, and others – call them testimonial understanding optimists – say Yes. In this chapter I will articulate testimonial understanding pessimism (§1) and consider some arguments for it (§2).
  •  221
    Populism, Expertise, and Intellectual Autonomy
    In M. Berhow, G. Petersen & G. Tsakiridis (eds.), Engaging Populism: Democracy and the Intellectual Virtues, Palgrave. forthcoming.
    Populism, as I shall understand the term here, is a style of political rhetoric that posits a Manichean conflict between the people and corrupt elites. In the present decade, populism has played a particularly salient role in the politics of the United States and Europe. Moreover, populism is commonly associated with a kind of skepticism about expertise, on which the opinions of non- experts are to be preferred to any expert consensus. In light of all this, populist expertise skepticism appears …Read more
  •  122
    Desire and Goodness
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (1): 160-180. 2021.
    Hume argued that passions, unlike judgments of the understanding, cannot be reasonable or unreasonable. Crucial for his argument was the premise that passions cannot be correct or incorrect. As he put it: “[a] passion is an original existence … and contains not any representative quality” and “passions are not susceptible of any … agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact … being original facts and realities, compleat in themselv…Read more
  •  55
    What Should Humeans Say about Rationality?
    Analysis 81 (1): 144-156. 2021.
  •  1385
    The problem of multi-peer disagreement concerns the reasonable response to a situation in which you believe P1 … Pn and disagree with a group of ‘epistemic peers’ of yours, who believe ∼P1 … ∼Pn, respectively. However, the problem of multi-peer disagreement is a variant on the preface paradox; because of this the problem poses no challenge to the so-called ‘steadfast view’ in the epistemology of disagreement, on which it is sometimes reasonable to believe P in the face of peer disagreement about…Read more
  •  1535
    Truthfulness without Truth
    Journal of Philosophical Research 45 115-131. 2002.
    It is natural to think that the badness of false belief explains the badness of lying. In this paper, I argue against this: I argue that the badness of false belief does not explain the badness of lying and that, given a popular account of the badness of lying, the badness of false belief is orthogonal to the badness of lying.
  •  57
    Desire That Amounts to Knowledge
    Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1): 56-73. 2021.
    I argue that desire sometimes amounts to knowledge, in the same sense that belief sometimes amounts to knowledge. The argument rests on two assumptions: that goodness is the correctness condition for desire and that knowledge is apt mental representation. Desire that amounts to knowledge—or ‘conative knowledge’—is illustrated by cases in which someone knows the goodness of something despite not believing that it is good.
  •  387
    Testimony, Understanding, and Art Criticism
    In Christy Mag Uidhir (ed.), Philosophy and Art: New Essays at the Intersection, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    I present a puzzle – the “puzzle of aesthetic testimony” – along with a solution to it that appeals to the impossibility of testimonial understanding. I'll criticize this solution by defending the possibility of testimonial understanding, including testimonial aesthetic understanding.
  •  28
    Intellectual Loyalty
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (2-3): 326-350. 2016.
  •  139
    The guise of the good and the problem of partiality
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (6): 851-872. 2019.
    According to the guise of the good thesis, we desire things under the ‘guise of the good.’ Here I sympathetically articulate a generic formulation of the guise of the good thesis, and addre...
  •  3339
    Non‐Moral Evil
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 36 (1): 18-34. 2012.
    There is, I shall assume, such a thing as moral evil (more on which below). My question is whether is also such a thing as non-moral evil, and in particular whether there are such things as aesthetic evil and epistemic evil. More exactly, my question is whether there is such a thing as moral evil but not such a thing as non-moral evil, in some sense that reveals something special about the moral, as opposed to such would-be non-moral domains as the aesthetic and the epistemic. The philosophical …Read more
  •  162
    Grice's razor
    Metaphilosophy 38 (5): 669-690. 2007.
    Grice’s Razor is a principle of parsimony which states a preference for linguistic explanations in terms of conversational implicature, to explanations in terms of semantic context-dependence. Here I propose a Gricean theory of knowledge attributions, and contend on the basis of Grice’s Razor that it is superior to contextualism about ‘knows’.
  •  76
    A Critical Introduction to Skepticism
    Bloomsbury Academic. 2014.
    Skepticism remains a central and defining issue in epistemology, and in the wider tradition of Western philosophy. To better understand the contemporary position of this important philosophical subject, Allan Hazlett introduces a range of topics, including: • Ancient skepticism • skeptical arguments in the work of Hume and Descartes • Cartesian skepticism in contemporary epistemology • anti-skeptical strategies, including Mooreanism, nonclosure, and contextualism • additional varieties of skepti…Read more