•  2220
    Uniqueness and Metaepistemology
    Journal of Philosophy 113 (8): 365-395. 2016.
    We defend Uniqueness, the claim that given a body of total evidence, there is a uniquely rational doxastic state that it is rational for one to be in. Epistemic rationality doesn't give you any leeway in forming your beliefs. To this end, we bring in two metaepistemological pictures about the roles played by rational evaluations. Rational evaluative terms serve to guide our practices of deference to the opinions of others, and also to help us formulate contingency plans about what to believe in …Read more
  •  1567
    Justifications and excuses in epistemology
    Noûs 55 (3): 517-537. 2019.
    While epistemologists have long debated what it takes for beliefs to be justified, they've devoted much less collective attention to the question of what it takes for beliefs to be excused, and how excuses differ from justifications. This stands in contrast to the state of affairs in legal scholarship, where the contrast between justifications and excuses is a standard topic in introductory criminal law textbooks. My goal in this paper is to extract some lessons from legal theory for epistemolog…Read more
  •  1440
    Verbal Debates in Epistemology
    American Philosophical Quarterly 52 (1): 41-55. 2015.
    The idea that certain philosophical debates are "merely verbal" has historically been raised as a challenge against (large parts of) metaphysics. In this paper, I explore an analogous challenge to large parts of epistemology, which is motivated by recent arguments in experimental philosophy. I argue that, while this challenge may have some limited success, it cannot serve as a wedge case for wide-ranging skepticism about the substantiveness of epistemological debates; most epistemological debate…Read more
  •  1031
    How I learned to stop worrying and love probability 1
    Philosophical Perspectives 29 (1): 179-201. 2015.
  •  780
    Cognitive Mobile Homes
    Mind 126 (501): 93-121. 2017.
    While recent discussions of contextualism have mostly focused on other issues, some influential early statements of the view emphasized the possibility of its providing an alternative to both coherentism and traditional versions of foundationalism. In this essay, I will pick up on this strand of contextualist thought, and argue that contextualist versions of foundationalism promise to solve some problems that their non-contextualist cousins cannot. In particular, I will argue that adopting conte…Read more
  •  629
    Is Epistemology Autonomous?
    In John McHugh, Jonathan Way & Daniel Whiting (eds.), Metaepistemology, Oxford University Press. 2019.
  •  531
    Could KK Be OK?
    Journal of Philosophy 111 (4): 169-197. 2014.
    In this paper I present a qualified defense of the KK principle. In section one I introduce two popular arguments against the KK principle, along with an example in which these arguments seem to prove too much. In section two I provide a simple formal model of knowledge in which KK holds, and which I argue provides an attractive analysis of the example from section one. I go on argue that when this model is combined with contextualism, we can retain our attractive analysis of the example, while …Read more
  •  523
    Fragmentation and Higher-Order Evidence
    In Mattias Skipper & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Higher-Order Evidence: New Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 84-104. 2019.
  •  512
    Safety, Explanation, Iteration
    Philosophical Issues 26 (1): 187-208. 2016.
    This paper argues for several related theses. First, the epistemological position that knowledge requires safe belief can be motivated by views in the philosophy of science, according to which good explanations show that their explananda are robust. This motivation goes via the idea—recently defended on both conceptual and empirical grounds—that knowledge attributions play a crucial role in explaining successful action. Second, motivating the safety requirement in this way creates a choice point…Read more
  •  466
    Sarah Moss: Probabilistic Knowledge (review)
    Journal of Philosophy 116 (4): 230-235. 2019.
  •  439
    A puzzle about epistemic akrasia
    Philosophical Studies 167 (2): 201-219. 2014.
    In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem to be p…Read more
  •  268
    Iteration and Fragmentation
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (1): 656-673. 2014.
  •  207
    The Impossibility of Skepticism
    Philosophical Review 121 (3): 317-358. 2012.
    Epistemologists and philosophers of mind both ask questions about belief. Epistemologists ask normative questions about belief—which beliefs ought we to have? Philosophers of mind ask metaphysical questions about belief—what are beliefs, and what does it take to have them? While these issues might seem independent of one another, there is potential for an interesting sort of conflict: the epistemologist might think we ought to have beliefs that, according to the philosopher of mind, it is imposs…Read more
  •  156
    Significance Testing in Theory and Practice
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (3): 607-637. 2011.
    Frequentism and Bayesianism represent very different approaches to hypothesis testing, and this presents a skeptical challenge for Bayesians. Given that most empirical research uses frequentist methods, why (if at all) should we rely on it? While it is well known that there are conditions under which Bayesian and frequentist methods agree, without some reason to think these conditions are typically met, the Bayesian hasn’t shown why we are usually safe in relying on results reported by significa…Read more
  •  149
    Epistemological Open Questions
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (3): 509-523. 2015.
    While there has been a great deal of recent interest in parallels between metaethics and metaepistemology, there has been little discussion of epistemological analogues of the open question argument. This is somewhat surprising—the general trend in recent work is in the direction of emphasizing the continuity between metaethics and metaepistemology, and to treat metanormative questions as arising in parallel in these two normative domains. And while the OQA has been subjected to a wide variety o…Read more
  •  125
    The epistemology of ‘just is’-statements
    Philosophical Studies 172 (10): 2599-2607. 2015.
    Agustín Rayo’s The Construction of Logical Space offers an exciting and ambitious defense of a broadly Carnapian approach to metaphysics. This essay will focus on one of the main differences between Rayo’s and Carnap’s approaches. Carnap distinguished between analytic, a priori “meaning postulates”, and empirical claims, which were both synthetic and knowable only a posteriori. Like meaning postulates, they determine the boundaries of logical space. But Rayo is skeptical that the a priori/a post…Read more
  •  112
    Iteration Principles in Epistemology I: Arguments For
    Philosophy Compass 10 (11): 754-764. 2015.
    Epistemic iteration principles are principles according to which some or another epistemic operator automatically iterates---e.g., if it is known that P, then it is known that P, or there is evidence that P, then there is evidence that there is evidence that P. This article provides a survey of various arguments for and against epistemic iteration principles, with a focus on arguments relevant to a wide range of such principles
  •  90
    Iteration Principles in Epistemology II: Arguments Against
    Philosophy Compass 10 (11): 765-771. 2015.
    The prequel to this paper introduced the topic of iteration principles in epistemology and surveyed some arguments in support of them. In this sequel, I'll consider two influential families of objection to iteration principles. The first turns on the idea that they lead to some variety of skepticism, and the second turns on ‘margin for error’ considerations adduced by Timothy Williamson
  •  74
    4. Probability and Prodigality
    Oxford Studies in Epistemology 4 82. 2013.
    I present a straightforward objection to the view that what we know has epistemic probability 1: when combined with Bayesian decision theory, the view seems to entail implausible conclusions concerning rational choice. I consider and reject three responses. The first holds that the fault is with decision theory, rather than the view that knowledge has probability 1. The second two try to reconcile the claim that knowledge has probability 1 with decision theory by appealing to contextualism and s…Read more
  •  66
    Acting on Probabilistic Knowledge
    Res Philosophica 97 (1): 109-117. 2020.
  •  43
    Accessibilism without consciousness
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (3): 788-794. 2023.
  •  39
    Self supporting evidence
    Philosophical Studies 179 (8): 2665-2673. 2022.
    Jessica Brown argues against infallibilist views of knowledge as follows. (1) Infallibilism is committed to the sufficiency of knowledge for self-support: if one knows that p, then p is part of one's evidence for p. (2) This commitment is false: often one knows that p, but p isn't part of one's evidence for p. So (3) infallibilism about knowledge is false. I’ll respond by questioning the motivation for (2). Brown’s main line of argument in defense of (2) concerns the awkwardness of citing a prop…Read more
  •  34
    The case for the superiority of Conviction Narrative Theory (CNT) over probabilistic approaches rests on selective employment of a double standard. The authors judge probabilistic approaches inadequate for failing to apply to “grand-world” decision problems, while they praise CNT for its treatment of “small-world” decision problems. When both approaches are held to the same standard, the comparative question is murkier.
  •  28
    Iteration and Fragmentation
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (3): 656-673. 2015.