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Belief’s minimal rationalityPhilosophical Studies 177 (11): 3263-3282. 2020.
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Standpoint Epistemology and Epistemic Peerhood: A Defense of Epistemic PrivilegeJournal of the American Philosophical Association 10 (3): 409-426. 2024.Standpoint epistemology is committed to the view that some epistemic advantage can be drawn from the position of powerlessness. Call this theepistemic privilege thesis. This thesis stands in need of explication and support. In providing that explication and support, I first distinguish between two readings of the thesis: the thesis that marginalized social locations confer some epistemic advantages (the epistemic advantage thesis) and the thesis that marginalized standpoints generate better, mor…Read more
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What is it like to be boring and myopic?In Josh Weisberg (ed.), Consciousness (Key Concepts in Philosophy), Polity. 2014.
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The Epistemic Role of Outlaw EmotionsErgo 8 (23). 2021.Outlaw emotions are emotions that stand in tension with one’s wider belief system, often allowing epistemic insight one may have otherwise lacked. Outlaw emotions are thought to play crucial epistemic roles under conditions of oppression. Although the crucial epistemic value of these emotions is widely acknowledged, specific accounts of their epistemic role(s) remain largely programmatic. There are two dominant accounts of the epistemic role of emotions: The Motivational View and the Justificato…Read more
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Anger and Oppression: A Tantric Buddhist PerspectiveIn Myisha Cherry & Owen Flanagan (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Anger, Rowman & Littlefield. 2017.
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Two Kinds of CuriosityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (3): 811-832. 2023.Leading philosophical models of curiosity represent it as a desiderative attitude whose content is a question, and which is satisfied by knowledge of the answer to that question. I argue that these models do not capture the distinctive character of a form of curiosity that I call 'erotic curiosity'. Erotic curiosity addresses itself not to a question but to an object whose significance for the inquirer is affective as well as epistemic. This form of curiosity is best understood by analogy to ero…Read more
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Theories as recipes: third-order virtue and vicePhilosophical Studies 177 (2): 391-411. 2020.A basic way of evaluating metaphysical theories is to ask whether they give satisfying answers to the questions they set out to resolve. I propose an account of “third-order” virtue that tells us what it takes for certain kinds of metaphysical theories to do so. We should think of these theories as recipes. I identify three good-making features of recipes and show that they translate to third-order theoretical virtues. I apply the view to two theories—mereological universalism and plenitudinous …Read more
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Beyond Binary: Genderqueer as Critical Gender Kind [Chinese]Philosophers' Imprint 20 (9): 1-23. 2020.Chinese translation courtesy of Zhuanxu Xu. We want to know what gender is. But metaphysical approaches to this question solely have focused on the binary gender kinds men and women. By overlooking those who identify outside of the binary–the group I call ‘genderqueer’–we are left without tools for understanding these new and quickly growing gender identifications. This metaphysical gap in turn creates a conceptual lacuna that contributes to systematic misunderstanding of genderqueer persons. I…Read more
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On Epistemic AppropriationEthics 128 (4): 702-727. 2018.In this article, I offer an account of an unjust epistemic practice―namely, epistemic appropriation―that harms marginalized knowers through the course of conceptual dissemination and intercommunal uptake. The harm of epistemic appropriation is twofold. First, while epistemic resources developed within the margins gain uptake with dominant audiences, those resources are overtly detached from the marginalized knowers responsible for their production. Second, epistemic resources developed within, b…Read more
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The Conversational SelfMind 131 (521): 193-230. 2022.This paper explores a distinctive form of social interaction—interpersonal inquiry—in which two or more people attempt to understand one another by engaging in conversation. Like many modes of inquiry into human beings, interpersonal inquiry partly shapes its own objects. How we conduct it thus affects who we become. I present an ethical ideal of conversation to which, I argue, at least some of our interpersonal inquiry ought to aspire. I then consider how this ideal might influence philosophica…Read more
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Temporal Ontology and the Metaphysics of PerspectivesErkenntnis 85 (2): 431-453. 2020.The question of what exists is often seen as one of the metaphysician’s primary concerns—an ontological stance is a central and basic component of a great many positions in metaphysics. Consider, in particular, the debate surrounding the metaphysics of time: the question of whether non-present entities exist is typically thought of as one of the fundamental issues at stake in the debate, with each position on the nature of time consisting in part of an answer to this question of ontology. My pur…Read more
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Doxastic compatibilism and the ethics of beliefPhilosophical Studies 114 (1-2): 47-79. 2003.
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Intersection Is Not Identity, or How to Distinguish Overlapping Systems of InjusticeIn Ruth Chang & Amia Srinivasan (eds.), Conversations in Philosophy, Law, and Politics, Oxford University Press. 2023.When one takes an intersectional perspective on patterns of oppression and domination, it becomes clear that familiar forms of systemic injustice, such as misogyny and anti-Black racism, are inseparable. Some feminist theorists conclude, from this, that the systems behind these injustices cannot be individuated—for example, that there isn’t patriarchy and white supremacy, but instead only white supremacist patriarchy. This chapter offers a different perspective. Philosophers have long observed t…Read more
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Metaphysics as Essentially Imaginative and Aiming at UnderstandingAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 60 (1): 83-97. 2023.
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Depression as a Disorder of ConsciousnessBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science. forthcoming.First-person reports of Major Depressive Disorder reveal that when an individual becomes depressed a profound change or ‘shift’ to one’s conscious experience occurs. The depressed person reports that something fundamental to their experience has been disturbed or shifted; a change associated with the common but elusive claim that when depressed one finds oneself in a ‘different world’ detached from reality and other people. Existing attempts to utilise these phenomenological observations in a ps…Read more
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The Epistemic and the ZeteticPhilosophical Review 129 (4): 501-536. 2020.Call the norms of inquiry zetetic norms. How are zetetic norms related to epistemic norms? At first glance, they seem quite closely connected. Aren't epistemic norms norms that bind inquirers qua inquirers? And isn't epistemology the place to look for a normative theory of inquiry? While much of this thought seems right, this paper argues that the relationship between the epistemic and the zetetic is not as harmonious as one might have thought and liked. In particular, this paper argues that som…Read more
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Which Mental States Are Rationally Evaluable, And Why?Philosophical Issues 25 (1): 41-63. 2015.What makes certain mental states subject to evaluation with respect to norms of rationality and justification, and others arational? In this paper, I develop and defend an account that explains why belief is governed by, and so appropriately subject to, evaluation with respect to norms of rationality and justification, one that does justice to the complexity of our evaluative practice in this domain. Then, I sketch out a way of extending the account to explain when and why other kinds of mental …Read more
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Communication before communicative intentionsNoûs 57 (1): 26-50. 2021.This paper explores the significance of intelligent social behavior among non-human animals for philosophical theories of communication. Using the alarm call system of vervet monkeys as a case study, I argue that interpersonal communication (or what I call “minded communication”) can and does take place in the absence of the production and recognition of communicative intentions. More generally, I argue that evolutionary theory provides good reasons for maintaining that minded communication is b…Read more
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Coordination, Triangulation, and Language UseInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (1): 80-112. 2016.In this paper, I explore two contrasting conceptions of the social character of language. The first takes language to be grounded in social convention. The second, famously developed by Donald Davidson, takes language to be grounded in a social relation called triangulation. I aim both to clarify and to evaluate these two conceptions of language. First, I propose that Davidson’s triangulation-based story can be understood as the result of relaxing core features of conventionalism pertaining to b…Read more
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Rationalizing flow: agency in skilled unreflective actionPhilosophical Studies 168 (2): 545-568. 2014.In recent work, Peter Railton, Julia Annas, and David Velleman aim to reconcile the phenomenon of “flow”—broadly understood as describing the “unreflective” aspect of skilled action—with one or another familiar conception of agency. While there are important differences between their arguments, Railton, Annas, and Velleman all make, or are committed to, at least one similar pivotal claim. Each argues, directly or indirectly, that agents who perform skilled unreflective actions can, in principle,…Read more
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Exploring by BelievingPhilosophical Review 130 (3): 339-383. 2021.Sometimes, we face choices between actions most likely to lead to valuable outcomes, and actions which put us in a better position to learn. These choices exemplify what is called the exploration/exploitation trade-off. In computer science and psychology, this trade-off has fruitfully been applied to modulating the way agents or systems make choices over time. This article extends the trade-off to belief. We can be torn between two ways of believing, one of which is expected to be more accurate …Read more
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The Perception/Cognition Divide: One More Time, with FeelingIn Limbeck-Lilienau Christoph & Stadler Friedrich (eds.), The Philosophy of Perception and Observation. Contributions of the 40th International Wittgenstein Symposium August 6-12, 2017 Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 149-170. 2017.Traditional accounts of the perception/cognition divide tend to draw it in terms of subpersonal psychological processes, processes into which the subject has no first-person insight. Whatever betides such accounts, there seems to also be some first-personally accessible difference between perception and thought. At least in normal circumstances, naïve subjects can typically tell apart their perceptual states from their cognitive or intellectual ones. What are such subjects picking up on when the…Read more
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Evidentialism and Moral EncroachmentIn McCain Kevin (ed.), Believing in Accordance with the Evidence: New Essays on Evidentialism, Springer Verlag. 2018.Moral encroachment holds that the epistemic justification of a belief can be affected by moral factors. If the belief might wrong a person or group more evidence is required to justify the belief. Moral encroachment thereby opposes evidentialism, and kindred views, which holds that epistemic justification is determined solely by factors pertaining to evidence and truth. In this essay I explain how beliefs such as ‘that woman is probably an administrative assistant’—based on the evidence that mos…Read more
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Epistemic ExploitationErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3 569-590. 2016.Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalized persons to educate them about the nature of their oppression. I argue that epistemic exploitation is marked by unrecognized, uncompensated, emotionally taxing, coerced epistemic labor. The coercive and exploitative aspects of the phenomenon are exemplified by the unpaid nature of the educational labor and its associated opportunity costs, the double bind that marginalized persons must navigate when faced with the demand to…Read more
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Escaping the Natural Attitude About GenderPhilosophical Studies 178 (3): 983-1003. 2020.Alex Byrne’s article, “Are Women Adult Human Females?”, asks a question that Byrne treats as nearly rhetorical. Byrne’s answer is, ‘clearly, yes’. Moreover, Byrne claims, 'woman' is a biological category that does not admit of any interpretation as (also) a social category. It is important to respond to Byrne’s argument, but mostly because it is paradigmatic of a wider phenomenon. The slogan “women are adult human females” is a political slogan championed by anti-trans activists, appearing on bi…Read more
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Conceptual centrality and implicit biasMind and Language 33 (1): 95-111. 2018.How are biases encoded in our representations of social categories? Philosophical and empirical discussions of implicit bias overwhelmingly focus on salient or statistical associations between target features and representations of social categories. These are the sorts of associations probed by the Implicit Association Test and various priming tasks. In this paper, we argue that these discussions systematically overlook an alternative way in which biases are encoded, that is, in the dependency …Read more
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Hard Feelings: The Moral Psychology of ContemptOup Usa. 2013.
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Visual Confidences and Direct Perceptual JustificationPhilosophical Topics 44 (2): 301-326. 2016.What kind of content must visual states have if they are to offer direct (noninferential) justification for our external world beliefs? How must they present that content if the degree of justification they provide is to reflect the nuance of our changing visual experiences? This paper offers an argument for the view that visual states comprise not only a content, but a confidence relation to that content. This confidence relation lets us explain how visual states can offer noninferential percep…Read more
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Review: Sosa on Scepticism (review)Philosophical Studies 143 (3). 2009.
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Against Adversarial DiscussionCollingwood and British Idealism Studies 22 (1): 87-112. 2016.Why did R.G. Collingwood come to reject the adversarial style of philosophical discussion so popular among his Oxford peers? The main aim of this paper is to explain that Collingwood came to reject his colleagues’ specific style of philosophical dialogue on methodological grounds, and to show how the argument against adversarial philosophical discussion is integrated with Collingwood’s overall criticism of realist philosophy. His argument exploits a connection between method and practice that sh…Read more
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