•  92
    Accurate Updating for the Risk Sensitive
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (3): 751-776. 2020.
    Philosophers have recently attempted to justify particular belief revision procedures by arguing that they are the optimal means towards the epistemic end of accurate credences. These attempts, however, presuppose that means should be evaluated according to classical expected utility theory; and there is a long tradition maintaining that expected utility theory is too restrictive as a theory of means–end rationality, ruling out too many natural ways of taking risk into account. In this paper, we…Read more
  •  1104
    Epistemology Normalized
    Philosophical Review 132 (1): 89-145. 2023.
    We offer a general framework for theorizing about the structure of knowledge and belief in terms of the comparative normality of situations compatible with one’s evidence. The guiding idea is that, if a possibility is sufficiently less normal than one’s actual situation, then one can know that that possibility does not obtain. This explains how people can have inductive knowledge that goes beyond what is strictly entailed by their evidence. We motivate the framework by showing how it illuminates…Read more
  •  751
    Deference Done Better
    Philosophical Perspectives 35 (1): 99-150. 2021.
    There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring…Read more
  •  123
    Avoiding Risk and Avoiding Evidence
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (3): 495-515. 2020.
    It is natural to think that there is something epistemically objectionable about avoiding evidence, at least in ideal cases. We argue that this thought is inconsistent with a kind of risk-avoidance...
  •  68
    Probabilistic Knowledge, by Sarah Moss (review)
    Mind 129 (515): 999-1008. 2020.
    Probabilistic Knowledge, by MossSarah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 288.
  •  400
    Transparency and the KK Principle
    Noûs 52 (1): 3-23. 2018.
    An important question in epistemology is whether the KK principle is true, i.e., whether an agent who knows that p is also thereby in a position to know that she knows that p. We explain how a “transparency” account of self-knowledge, which maintains that we learn about our attitudes towards a proposition by reflecting not on ourselves but rather on that very proposition, supports an affirmative answer. In particular, we show that such an account allows us to reconcile a version of the KK princi…Read more
  •  263
    Don’t Look Now
    with Arif Ahmed
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (2): 327-350. 2019.
    Good’s theorem is the apparent platitude that it is always rational to ‘look before you leap’: to gather information before making a decision when doing so is free. We argue that Good’s theorem is not platitudinous and may be false. And we argue that the correct advice is rather to ‘make your act depend on the answer to a question’. Looking before you leap is rational when, but only when, it is a way to do this.
  •  157
    Elusive Externalism
    Mind 128 (510): 397-427. 2019.
    Epistemologists have recently noted a tension between (i) denying access internalism, and (ii) maintaining that rational agents cannot be epistemically akratic, believing claims akin to ‘p, but I shouldn’t believe p’. I bring out the tension, and develop a new way to resolve it. The basic strategy is to say that access internalism is false, but that counterexamples to it are ‘elusive’ in a way that prevents rational agents from suspecting that they themselves are counterexamples to the internali…Read more
  •  79
    Partiality and Retrospective Justification
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 45 (1): 8-26. 2017.
    Sometimes changes in an agent's partial values can cast a positive light on an earlier action, which was wrong when it was performed. Based on independent reflections about the role of partiality in determining when blame is appropriate, I argue that in such cases the agent shouldn't feel remorse about her action and that others can't legitimately blame her for it, even though that action was wrong. The action thus receives a certain kind of retrospective justification.
  •  262
    Taking a chance on KK
    Philosophical Studies 175 (1): 183-196. 2018.
    Dorr et al. present a case that poses a challenge for a number of plausible principles about knowledge and objective chance. Implicit in their discussion is an interesting new argument against KK, the principle that anyone who knows p is in a position to know that they know p. We bring out this argument, and investigate possible responses for defenders of KK, establishing new connections between KK and various knowledge-chance principles.
  •  137
    Lewis on iterated knowledge
    Philosophical Studies 173 (6): 1571-1590. 2016.
    The status of the knowledge iteration principles in the account provided by Lewis in “Elusive Knowledge” is disputed. By distinguishing carefully between what in the account describes the contribution of the attributor’s context and what describes the contribution of the subject’s situation, we can resolve this dispute in favour of Holliday’s claim that the iteration principles are rendered invalid. However, that is not the end of the story. For Lewis’s account still predicts that counterexample…Read more
  •  272
    The Externalist’s Guide to Fishing for Compliments
    Mind 127 (507): 691-728. 2018.
    Suppose you’d like to believe that p, whether or not it’s true. What can you do to help? A natural initial thought is that you could engage in Intentionally Biased Inquiry : you could look into whether p, but do so in a way that you expect to predominantly yield evidence in favour of p. This paper hopes to do two things. The first is to argue that this initial thought is mistaken: intentionally biased inquiry is impossible. The second is to show that reflections on intentionally biased inquiry s…Read more