•  44
    Misinformation and Epistemic Harm
    Social Philosophy Today 39 89-100. 2023.
    Standard accounts of misinformation require that it is either false or misleading, in the sense that it leads people to false beliefs. But many examples of misinformation involve true information that leads people to true beliefs. So, I propose a new theory of misinformation: misinformation is information that is epistemically harmful in the sense that it is disposed to reduce the overall quality of a subject’s epistemic position. This includes not only causing the subject to form a false belief…Read more
  •  14
    Epistemic Modality
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.
    Epistemic Modality Epistemic modality is the kind of necessity and possibility that is determined by epistemic constraints. A modal claim is a claim about how things could be or must be given some constraints, such as the rules of logic, moral obligations, or the laws of nature. A modal … Continue reading Epistemic Modality →
  •  22
    Epistemic Modality
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.
    Epistemic Modality Epistemic modality is the kind of necessity and possibility that is determined by epistemic constraints. A modal claim is a claim about how things could be or must be given some constraints, such as the rules of logic, moral obligations, or the laws of nature. A modal … Continue reading Epistemic Modality →
  •  25
    A Counterfactual Theory of Epistemic Possibility
    Res Philosophica 97 (4): 525-544. 2020.
    Standard theories of epistemic possibility analyze this relation in terms of knowledge, entailment, or probability. These theories are mistaken. Here, I present counterexamples to the standard theories and defend a new theory: that a proposition is epistemically possible on a body of evidence just in case that evidence supports that if the proposition were true, then the evidence might exist. In addition to avoiding the problems of the standard views, this new theory captures good reasoning abou…Read more
  •  67
    The Power to Do the Impossible
    Topoi 36 (4): 623-630. 2017.
    Several recent arguments purport to show that omnipotence is incompatible with the possession of various necessary properties. These arguments appeal to one of two plausible but false principles about the nature of power: that if it is metaphysically impossible for a being to actualize a state of affairs, then that being does not have the power to actualize that state of affairs, or that if it is impossible given some contingent facts about the world that a being actualize a state of affairs, th…Read more
  •  306
    Overdetermination And The Exclusion Problem
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (2): 251-262. 2011.
    The exclusion problem is held to show that mental and physical events are identical by claiming that the denial of this identity is incompatible with the causal completeness of physics and the occurrence of mental causation. The problem relies for its motivation on the claim that overdetermination of physical effects by mental and physical causes is objectionable for a variety of reasons. In this paper, I consider four different definitions of? overdetermination? and argue that, on each, overdet…Read more
  •  233
    Possible disagreements and defeat
    Philosophical Studies 155 (3): 371-381. 2011.
    Conciliatory views about disagreement with one’s epistemic peers lead to a somewhat troubling skeptical conclusion: that often, when we know others disagree, we ought to be (perhaps much) less sure of our beliefs than we typically are. One might attempt to extend this skeptical conclusion by arguing that disagreement with merely possible epistemic agents should be epistemically significant to the same degree as disagreement with actual agents, and that, since for any belief we have, it is possib…Read more
  •  1110
    How Skeptical is the Equal Weight View?
    In Diego Machuca (ed.), Disagreement and Skepticism, Routledge. pp. 131-149. 2013.
    Much of the literature on the epistemology of disagreement focuses on the rational responses to disagreement, and to disagreement with an epistemic peer in particular. The Equal Weight View claims that in cases of peer disagreement each dissenting peer opinion is to be given equal weight and, in a case of two opposing equally-weighted opinions, each party should adopt the attitude which ‘splits the difference’. The Equal Weight View has been taken by both its critics and its proponents to have …Read more