•  1159
    Inference, Explanation, and Asymmetry
    Synthese (Suppl 4): 929-953. 2018.
    Explanation is asymmetric: if A explains B, then B does not explain A. Tradition- ally, the asymmetry of explanation was thought to favor causal accounts of explanation over their rivals, such as those that take explanations to be inferences. In this paper, we develop a new inferential approach to explanation that outperforms causal approaches in accounting for the asymmetry of explanation.
  •  893
    Counterfactuals and Explanatory Pluralism
    with Kareem Khalifa and Gabriel Doble
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (4): 1439-1460. 2018.
    Recent literature on non-causal explanation raises the question as to whether explanatory monism, the thesis that all explanations submit to the same analysis, is true. The leading monist proposal holds that all explanations support change-relating counterfactuals. We provide several objections to this monist position. 1Introduction2Change-Relating Monism's Three Problems3Dependency and Monism: Unhappy Together4Another Challenge: Counterfactual Incidentalism4.1High-grade necessity4.2Unity in div…Read more
  •  608
    Seeking confirmation: A puzzle for norms of inquiry
    Analysis 80 (4): 683-693. 2020.
    Like other epistemic activities, inquiry seems to be governed by norms. Some have argued that one such norm forbids us from believing the answer to a question and inquiring into it at the same time. But another, hither-to neglected norm seems to permit just this sort of cognitive arrangement when we seek to confirm what we currently believe. In this paper, I suggest that both norms are plausible and that the conflict between them constitutes a puzzle. Drawing on the felicity conditions of confir…Read more
  •  579
  •  493
    Perspectives, Questions, and Epistemic Value
    In Michela Massimi (ed.), Knowledge From a Human Point of View, Springer Verlag. pp. 87-106. 2019.
    Many epistemologists endorse true-belief monism, the thesis that only true beliefs are of fundamental epistemic value. However, this view faces formidable counterexamples. In response to these challenges, we alter the letter, but not the spirit, of true-belief monism. We dub the resulting view “inquisitive truth monism”, which holds that only true answers to relevant questions are of fundamental epistemic value. Which questions are relevant is a function of an inquirer’s perspective, which is ch…Read more
  •  479
    In recent years, the effort to formalize erotetic inferences (i.e., inferences to and from questions) has become a central concern for those working in erotetic logic. However, few have sought to formulate a proof theory for these inferences. To fill this lacuna, we construct a calculus for (classes of) sequents that are sound and complete for two species of erotetic inferences studied by Inferential Erotetic Logic (IEL): erotetic evocation and regular erotetic implication. While an attempt has …Read more
  •  465
    Inquiring Attitudes and Erotetic Logic: Norms of Restriction and Expansion
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1-23. forthcoming.
    A fascinating recent turn in epistemology focuses on inquiring attitudes like wondering and being curious. Many have argued that these attitudes are governed by norms similar to those that govern our doxastic attitudes. Yet, to date, this work has only considered norms that might *prohibit* having certain inquiring attitudes (``norms of restriction''), while ignoring those that might *require* having them (``norms of expansion''). We aim to address that omission by offering a framework that gen…Read more
  •  298
    This essay presents a fully inferentialist-expressivist account of scientific representation. In general, inferentialist approaches to scientific representation argue that the capacity of a model to represent a target system depends on inferences from models to target systems. Inferentialism is attractive because it makes the epistemic function of models central to their representational capacity. Prior inferentialist approaches to scientific representation, however, have depended on some repres…Read more
  •  228
    Queries and Assertions in Minimally Discursive Practices
    Questions, Discourse and Dialogue: 20 Years After Making It Explicit, Proceedings of Aisb50. 2014.
    Robert Brandom’s normative-pragmatic theory is intended to represent the minimal set of practical abilities whose exhibition qualifies creatures as speaking a language. His model of a minimally discursive practice (MDP) is one in which participants, devoid of logical vocabulary, are only capable of making assertions and drawing inferences. This paper argues that Brandom’s purely assertional practices are not MDPs and that speech acts of asking questions (queries) must be included in any practice…Read more
  •  200
    The recent eruption of scholarship surrounding the nature and tenability of foundationalism in the work of Edmund Husserl offers the impetus and opportunity to (re)examine Theodor Adorno’s Metacritique of Epistemology. In that text, Adorno attempts an immanent critique of phenomenology designed to expose the antinomies that vitiate not only Husserl’s philosophy but any foundationalist epistemology. A detailed analysis of Adorno’s arguments and Husserl’s texts reveals that while Adorno successful…Read more
  •  122
    A Logic for Best Explanations
    Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics 29 (2): 184-231. 2019.
    Efforts to formalize qualitative accounts of inference to the best explanation (IBE) confront two obstacles: the imprecise nature of such accounts and the unusual logical properties that explanations exhibit, such as contradiction-intolerance and irreflexivity. This paper aims to surmount these challenges by utilising a new, more precise theory that treats explanations as expressions that codify defeasible inferences. To formalise this account, we provide a sequent calculus in which IBE serves a…Read more
  •  116
    A Defeasible Calculus for Zetetic Agents
    Logic and Logical Philosophy 30 (1): 3-37. 2021.
    The study of defeasible reasoning unites epistemologists with those working in AI, in part, because both are interested in epistemic rationality. While it is traditionally thought to govern the formation and (with)holding of beliefs, epistemic rationality may also apply to the interrogative attitudes associated with our core epistemic practice of inquiry, such as wondering, investigating, and curiosity. Since generally intelligent systems should be capable of rational inquiry, AI researchers hav…Read more
  •  92
    Many epistemologists take Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) to be “fundamental.” For instance, Lycan (1988, 128) writes that “all justified reasoning is fundamentally explanatory reasoning.” Conee and Feldman (2008, 97) concur: “fundamental epistemic principles are principles of best explanation.” Call them fundamentalists. They assert that nothing deeper could justify IBE, as is typically assumed of rules of deductive inference, such as modus ponens. However, logicians account for modus p…Read more
  •  84
    Inferentialist-Expressivism for Explanatory Vocabulary
    In Ondřej Beran, Vojtěch Kolman & Ladislav Koreň (eds.), From rules to meanings. New essays on inferentialism, Routledge. 2018.
    In this essay, we extend earlier inferentialist-expressivist treatments of traditional logical, semantic, modal, and representational vocabulary (Brandom 1994, 2008, 2015; Peregrin 2014) to explanatory vocabulary. From this perspective, Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) appears to be an obvious starting point. In its simplest formulation, IBE has the form: A best explains why B, B; so A. It thereby captures one of the central inferential features of explanation. An inferentialist-expressiv…Read more
  •  83
    Explanatory Obligations
    Episteme 17 (3): 384-401. 2020.
    In this paper, we argue that a person is obligated to explain why p just in case she has a role-responsibility to answer the question “Why p?”. This entails that the normative force of explanatory obligations is fundamentally social. We contrast our view with other accounts of explanatory obligations or the so-called “need for explanation,” in which the aforementioned normative force is epistemic, determined by an inquirer's interests, or a combination thereof. We argue that our account outperfo…Read more
  •  52
    Robert Brandom's normative-pragmatic theory is intended to represent the minimal set of practical abilities whose exhibition qualifies creatures as speaking a language. His model of a minimally discursive practice (MDP) is one in which participants, devoid of logical vocabulary, are only capable of making assertions and drawing inferences. This dissertation argues that Brandom's purely assertional practices are not MDPs and that speech acts of asking questions (queries) must be included in any p…Read more
  •  29
    It’s commonly thought that, in conversation, speakers accept and reject propositions that have been asserted by others. Do speakers accept and reject questions as well? Intuitively, it seems that they do. But what does it mean to accept or reject a question? What is the relationship between these acts and those of asking and answering questions? Are there clear and distinct classes of reasons that speakers have for acceptance and rejection of questions? This chapter seeks to address these issues…Read more
  •  9
    A Cut-Free Sequent Calculus for Defeasible Erotetic Inferences
    Studia Logica 107 (6): 1279-1312. 2019.
    In recent years, the effort to formalize erotetic inferences—i.e., inferences to and from questions—has become a central concern for those working in erotetic logic. However, few have sought to formulate a proof theory for these inferences. To fill this lacuna, we construct a calculus for sequents that are sound and complete for two species of erotetic inferences studied by Inferential Erotetic Logic : erotetic evocation and erotetic implication. While an effort has been made to axiomatize the f…Read more