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The 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
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Questions in ActionJournal of Philosophy 119 (3): 113-143. 2022.Choices confront us with questions. How we act depends on our answers to those questions. So the way our beliefs guide our choices is not just a function of their informational content, but also depends systematically on the questions those beliefs address. This paper gives a precise account of the interplay between choices, questions and beliefs, and harnesses this account to obtain a principled approach to the problem of deduction. The result is a novel theory of belief-guided action that expl…Read more
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Rational PolarizationPhilosophical Review 132 (3): 355-458. 2023.Predictable polarization is everywhere: we can often predict how people’s opinions, including our own, will shift over time. Extant theories either neglect the fact that we can predict our own polarization, or explain it through irrational mechanisms. They needn’t. Empirical studies suggest that polarization is predictable when evidence is ambiguous, that is, when the rational response is not obvious. I show how Bayesians should model such ambiguity and then prove that—assuming rational updates …Read more
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Probabilistic KnowledgeOxford University Press. 2018.Traditional philosophical discussions of knowledge have focused on the epistemic status of full beliefs. In this book, Moss argues that in addition to full beliefs, credences can constitute knowledge. For instance, your .4 credence that it is raining outside can constitute knowledge, in just the same way that your full beliefs can. In addition, you can know that it might be raining, and that if it is raining then it is probably cloudy, where this knowledge is not knowledge of propositions, but o…Read more
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Knowledge by constraintPhilosophical Perspectives 35 (1): 1-28. 2021.
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Knowledge in the face of conspiracy conditionalsLinguistics and Philosophy 44 (3): 737-771. 2020.
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Evidence: A Guide for the UncertainPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3): 586-632. 2019.Assume that it is your evidence that determines what opinions you should have. I argue that since you should take peer disagreement seriously, evidence must have two features. (1) It must sometimes warrant being modest: uncertain what your evidence warrants, and (thus) uncertain whether you’re rational. (2) But it must always warrant being guided: disposed to treat your evidence as a guide. Surprisingly, it is very difficult to vindicate both (1) and (2). But diagnosing why this is so leads to a…Read more
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The Case for ComparabilityNoûs 57 (2): 414-453. 2023.We argue that all comparative expressions in natural language obey a principle that we call Comparability: if x and y are at least as F as themselves, then either x is at least as F as y or y is at least as F as x. This principle has been widely rejected among philosophers, especially by ethicists, and its falsity has been claimed to have important normative implications. We argue that Comparability is needed to explain the goodness of several patterns of inference that seem manifestly valid, th…Read more
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The Ignorance Norm and Paradoxical AssertionsPhilosophical Topics 49 (2): 321-332. 2022.Can agents rationally inquire into things that they know? On my view, the answer is yes. Call this view the Compatibility Thesis. One challenge to this thesis is to explain why assertions like “I know that p, but I’m wondering whether p” sound odd, if not Moore-Paradoxical. In response to this challenge, I argue that we can reject one or both premises that give rise to it. First, we can deny that inquiry requires interrogative attitudes. Second, we can deny the ignorance norm, on which agents ar…Read more
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Thinking and being surePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (3): 634-654. 2022.How is what we believe related to how we act? That depends on what we mean by ‘believe’. On the one hand, there is what we're sure of: what our names are, where we were born, whether we are sitting in front of a screen. Surety, in this sense, is not uncommon — it does not imply Cartesian absolute certainty, from which no possible course of experience could dislodge us. But there are many things that we think that we are not sure of. For example, you might think that it will rain sometime this mo…Read more
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Thinking, Guessing, and BelievingPhilosophers' Imprint 22 (1): 1-34. 2022.This paper defends the view, put roughly, that to think that p is to guess that p is the answer to the question at hand, and that to think that p rationally is for one’s guess to that question to be in a certain sense non-arbitrary. Some theses that will be argued for along the way include: that thinking is question-sensitive and, correspondingly, that ‘thinks’ is context-sensitive; that it can be rational to think that p while having arbitrarily low credence that p; that, nonetheless, rational …Read more
Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Formal Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Decision Theory |