-
150Attitudes as PositionsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.In these comments on David Hunter's insightful new book On Believing, I consider Hunter's account of believing that p as being in a position to act in light of the fact (or apparent fact) that p. After investigating how this kind of view is supposed to work, I raise a challenge for it: the account is unlikely to generalize to other attitudes like hoping and fearing that p. I then argue that this really is an objection to the account of believing, since all the attitudes have so many fundamental …Read more
-
261Attitudes, Conditional and GeneralLinguistics and Philosophy. forthcoming.I consider difficult data involving the interaction of attitudes and conditionals, specifically non-doxastic attitude expressions like 'regret'. I first show that felicitous attitude conditionals in "ignorance contexts", where the relevant person doesn't know the antecedent is true, give rise to a number of difficult problems given widely held assumptions in semantics. I then argue that, even so, we should expect these conditionals to be true and reasonable to utter in ignorance contexts, given …Read more
-
272Changes in attitudePhilosophical Perspectives 35 (1): 151-169. 2021.I formulate and tentatively defend the view that we cannot be rationally required to have one type of doxastic attitude (e.g., beliefs, credences, imprecise credences, etc.) because we have another type; in other words, we can only be required to have, say, given credences because we have some other credences already. I explore an argument that appeals to the idea that there is no good reasoning from one type to the other type. I consider some important possible responses, and conclude by sketch…Read more
-
396Wondering on and with PurposeOxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 2 58-84. 2022.I make a proposal about what wondering is and how it differs from other mental phenomena like curiosity. I argue that, though it's tempting to analyze wondering as a desire to know the answer to the question one wonders about, that would be wrong, since wondering is an activity rather than a state, i.e., something we do. I also argue that wondering about a question needn't even essentially involve a desire to know the answer to that question, even as a necessary part of what rationalizes the won…Read more
-
42Attitudes Beyond Belief: A Theory of Rational Non-Doxastic Attitude Formation and EvaluationDissertation, University of Michigan. 2018.I present and explore a normative theory of non-doxastic attitudes like desire, hatred, and admiration. The viewpoint is general and abstract: independent of any particular flavor or source of normativity, I explore general features any acceptable way of forming these attitudes would have, especially in contrast to doxastic attitudes like belief. The first three chapters present a relatively unified picture of non-doxastic attitude formation, grounded in types of non-doxastic attitudes we can ha…Read more
-
791Reasoning beyond belief acquisitionNoûs 56 (2): 416-442. 2021.I argue that we can reason not only to new beliefs but to basically any change in attitude we can think of, including the abandonment of belief (contra John Broome), the acquisition of non-belief attitudes like relief and admiration, and the elimination of the same. To argue for this position, which I call generalism, I defend a sufficient condition on reasoning, roughly that we can reason to any change in attitude that is expressed by the conclusion of an argument we can be convinced by. I then…Read more
-
846The Attitudes We Can HavePhilosophical Review 129 (4): 591-642. 2020.I investigate when we can (rationally) have attitudes, and when we cannot. I argue that a comprehensive theory must explain three phenomena. First, being related by descriptions or names to a proposition one has strong reason to believe is true does not guarantee that one can rationally believe that proposition. Second, such descriptions, etc. do enable individuals to rationally have various non-doxastic attitudes, such as hope and admiration. And third, even for non-doxastic attitudes like that…Read more
-
345A Rightness-Based Theory of Communicative ProprietyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1): 121-135. 2019.ABSTRACTWe express and communicate many attitudes beyond belief, such as amusement, joy, admiration, hatred, and desire. I consider whether there are any general norms that would cover all of these cases. The most obvious generalisation of the most popular norms for assertion, fittingness-based theories, fail in part because it is sometimes an intrinsic good to have certain kinds of mental states. I develop an alternative, rightness-based, approach, according to which it is appropriate to commun…Read more
-
284Policy ExternalismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (2): 261-285. 2017.I develop and argue for a kind of externalism about certain kinds of non-doxastic attitudes that I call policy externalism. Policy externalism about a given type of attitude is the view that all the reasonable policies for having attitudes of that type will not involve the agent's beliefs that some relevant conditions obtain. My defense primarily involves attitudes like hatred, regret, and admiration, and has two parts: a direct deductive argument and an indirect linguistic argument, an inferenc…Read more
-
768When propriety is improperPhilosophical Studies 176 (2): 367-386. 2019.We argue that philosophers ought to distinguish epistemic decision theory and epistemology, in just the way ordinary decision theory is distinguished from ethics. Once one does this, the internalist arguments that motivate much of epistemic decision theory make sense, given specific interpretations of the formalism. Making this distinction also causes trouble for the principle called Propriety, which says, roughly, that the only acceptable epistemic utility functions make probabilistically coher…Read more
Austin, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |