Clayton Littlejohn

My current project is a monograph on knowledge-first epistemology. (Working title, 'On knowledge and what follows') Highlights include: a functional explanation as to why knowledge (and not truth) is the fundamental epistemic good, why knowledge is the norm of a belief, how we can capture internalist intuitions within an externalist framework, explaining why we should acknowledge the existence of externalist or objectivist norms, a unified theory of defeat, and a theory of rational belief that preserves important connections between belief and the attitudes it can help rationalise (e.g., emotions and reactive attitudes) while explaining important differences between lottery and preface cases, and two stories about how knowledge can matter to rational choice.

More generally, I'm working on issues in epistemology and ethical theory with particular interests in connections between the practical and theoretical (e.g., the Enkratic requirement, fixed-point theses, epistemic norms governing practical reasoning, the relationship between rational choice and belief, epistemic conditions on responsibility, the relationship between reasons and rationality, the objectivism-subjectivism-perspectivism debates, the connection between beliefs (full and partial) and emotions and reactive attitudes, the problems with the reasons-first movement, the tension between the idea that normative reasons guide and that they determine what we ought to do, normative uncertainty and mistake, higher-order evidence).