•  869
    A Case for Epistemic Agency
    Logos and Episteme 6 (4): 449-474. 2015.
    This paper attempts to answer two questions: What is epistemic agency? And what are the motivations for having this concept? In response to the first question, it is argued that epistemic agency is the agency one has over one’s belief-forming practices, or doxastic dispositions, which can directly affect the way one forms a belief and indirectly affect the beliefs one forms. In response to the second question, it is suggested that the above conception of epistemic agency is either implicitly end…Read more
  •  502
    Epistemic Progress Despite Systematic Disagreement
    Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 56 (2). 2019.
    A number of philosophers argue that because of its history of systematic disagreement, philosophy has made little to no epistemic progress – especially in comparison to the hard sciences. One argument for this conclusion contends that the best explanation for systematic disagreement in philosophy is that at least some, potentially all, philosophers are unreliable. Since we do not know who is reliable, we have reason to conclude that we ourselves are probably unreliable. Evidence of one’s potenti…Read more
  •  46
    Getting off the Wheel
    Metaphilosophy 46 (4-5): 620-637. 2015.
    Roderick Chisholm argues that in giving an account of knowledge, we must either begin with an account of what knowledge is, and proceed on that basis to identify the particular things that we know, or else start with instances of knowledge, and proceed on that basis to formulate a definition of knowledge. Either approach begs the question against the other. This is the epistemic wheel. This article responds to Chisholm's challenge. It begins with cases of knowledge attribution and builds its acc…Read more
  •  31
    Public Opinion, Democratic Legitimacy, and Epistemic Compromise
    In Péter Hartl & Adam Tamas Tuboly (eds.), Science, Freedom, Democracy, Routledge. 2021.
    Using a recent example from US politics as representative of contemporary liberal democracies, this chapter highlights how public opinion is shaped through the exploitation of our epistemic interdependence and partisan bias. Climate change was an important issue leading into the 2010 US mid-term elections. Public opinion on climate change was subject to a number of willfully disseminated distorting influences, having a significant impact on the election’s outcome and subsequent political discour…Read more