•  2527
    Cornell Realism, Explanation, and Natural Properties
    European Journal of Philosophy 25 (2): 1021-1038. 2017.
    The claim that ordinary ethical discourse is typically true and that ethical facts are typically knowable seems in tension with the claim that ordinary ethical discourse is about features of reality friendly to a scientific worldview. Cornell Realism attempts to dispel this tension by claiming that ordinary ethical discourse is, in fact, discourse about the same kinds of things that scientific discourse is about: natural properties. We offer two novel arguments in reply. First, we identify a key…Read more
  •  2079
    Como Ser um Naturalista Filosófico Responsável?
    Revista Brasileira de Filosofia da Religião 4 (1): 9-25. 2017.
    Um alinhamento responsável à alguma versão do naturalismo filosófico requer a articulação explicita e cuidadosa de um argumento em sua defesa. Em quatro passos, o texto que segue abaixo expande e examina a validade de um argumento que é frequentemente rascunhado em favor do naturalismo. Como veremos, contudo, a versão do naturalismo que esse argumento nos permite é um pouco diferente dos naturalismos filosóficos mais populares.
  •  1887
    Clifford, William Kingdon
    In Stewart Goetz & Charles Taliaferro (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, Wiley-blackwell. 2021.
    W.K. Clifford’s famous 1876 essay The Ethics of Belief contains one of the most memorable lines in the history of philosophy: "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." The challenge to religious belief stemming from this moralized version of evidentialism is still widely discussed today.
  •  1693
    Sceptical Theism and the Paradox of Evil
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (2): 319-333. 2020.
    Given plausible assumptions about the nature of evidence and undercutting defeat, many believe that the force of the evidential problem of evil depends on sceptical theism’s being false: if evil is...
  •  1655
    Hermeneutic Injustices: Practical and Epistemic
    In Andreas Mauz & Christiane Tietz (eds.), Interpretation und Geltung, Brill. pp. 107-123. 2021.
    Hermeneutical injustices, according to Miranda Fricker, are injustices that occur “when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences” (Fricker 2007, 1). For Fricker, the relevant injustice in these cases is the very lack of knowledge and understanding experienced by the subject. In this way, hermeneutical injustices are instances of epistemic injustices, the kind of injustice that “wrongs someone in th…Read more
  •  1085
    Rossian totalism about intrinsic value
    Philosophical Studies 173 (8): 2069-2086. 2016.
    This paper defends a novel account of how to determine the intrinsic value of possible worlds. Section 1 argues that a highly intuitive and widely accepted account leads to undesirable consequences. Section 2 takes the first of two steps towards a novel account by clarifying and defending a view about value-contribution that is based on some of W. D. Ross’ claims about the value of pleasure. Section 3 takes the second step by clarifying and defending a view about value-suppression that is based …Read more
  •  1081
    Deontological evidentialism, wide-scope, and privileged values
    Philosophical Studies 174 (2): 485-506. 2017.
    Deontological evidentialism is the claim that we ought to form and maintain our beliefs in accordance with our evidence. In this paper, I criticize two arguments in its defense. I begin by discussing Berit Broogard’s use of the distinction between narrow-scope and wide-scope requirements against W.K. Clifford’s moral defense of. I then use this very distinction against a defense of inspired by Stephen Grimm’s more recent claims about the moral source of epistemic normativity. I use this distinct…Read more
  •  989
    Ampliative Transmission and Deontological Internalism
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (2): 174-185. 2018.
    Deontological internalism is the family of views where justification is a positive deontological appraisal of someone's epistemic agency: S is justified, that is, when S is blameless, praiseworthy, or responsible in believing that p. Brian Weatherson discusses very briefly how a plausible principle of ampliative transmission reveals a worry for versions of deontological internalism formulated in terms of epistemic blame. Weatherson denies, however, that similar principles reveal similar worries …Read more
  •  949
    Deontological evidentialism and ought implies can
    Philosophical Studies 175 (10): 2567-2582. 2018.
    Deontological evidentialism is the claim that S ought to form or maintain S’s beliefs in accordance with S’s evidence. A promising argument for this view turns on the premise that consideration c is a normative reason for S to form or maintain a belief that p only if c is evidence that p is true. In this paper, I discuss the surprising relation between a recently influential argument for this key premise and the principle that ought implies can. I argue that anyone who antecedently accepts or re…Read more
  •  800
    Non-Agential Permissibility In Epistemology
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (2): 389-394. 2015.
    Paul Silva has recently argued that doxastic justification does not have a basing requirement. An important part of his argument depends on the assumption that doxastic and moral permissibility have a parallel structure. I here reply to Silva's argument by challenging this assumption. I claim that moral permissibility is an agential notion, while doxastic permissibility is not. I then briefly explore the nature of these notions and briefly consider their implications for praise and blame.
  •  610
    Evading the Doxastic Puzzle by Deflating Epistemic Normativity
    In Kevin McCain & Scott Stapleford (eds.), Epistemic Duties: New Arguments, New Angles, Routledge. pp. 44-62. 2020.
    What I call the Doxastic Puzzle, is the impression that while each of these claims seems true, at least one of them must be false: (a) Claims of the form ‘S ought to have doxastic attitude D towards p at t’ are sometimes true at t, (b) If Φ-ing at t is not within S’s effective control at t, then it is false, at t, that ‘S ought to Φ at t’, (c) For all S, p, and t, having doxastic attitude D towards p at t is not within S’s effective control at t. All three natural replies to the puzzle have been…Read more
  •  604
    Vagueness and the Problem of Evil: a New Reply to van Inwagen
    Manuscrito: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 44 (4): 49-82. 2021.
    One of the few points of agreement between most theists and non-theists working on the problem of evil is that the existence of a perfect God is incompatible with the existence of pointless evil. In a series of influential papers, however, Peter van Inwagen has argued that careful attention to the reasoning behind this claim reveals fatal difficulties related to the Sorites Paradox. In this paper, I explain van Inwagen’s appeal to sorites reasoning, distinguish between two different arguments in…Read more
  •  556
    Quatro Desafios Céticos ao Saber
    In Antonio José Pêcego (ed.), Direito e Filosofia: Em Busca do Saber. pp. 147-176. 2020.
    O ceticismo é por vezes descartado como uma doutrina absurda e merecedora do seu lugar distante na antiguidade. Nada poderia ser menos correto. O ceticismo continua extremamente relevante para o pensamento filosófico e científico de hoje, servindo como um lembrete de que a sabedoria não é barata nem segura. Nesse texto, o meu objetivo principal é reproduzir o raciocínio das discussões clássicas sobre o ceticismo, mas de uma maneira coloquial e contemporânea. Após seguir as linhas de pensamento d…Read more
  •  552
    God and gratuitous evil: Between the rock and the hard place
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 94 (3): 317-345. 2023.
    To most of us – believers and non-believers alike – the possibility of a perfect God co-existing with the kinds of evil that we see calls out for explanation. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the belief that God must have justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see has been a perennial feature of theistic thought. Recently, however, a growing number of authors have argued that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with the existence of gratuitous evil. Given powerful, mill…Read more
  •  519
    Abstracting away from its various particular versions, contemporary externalism about knowledge can be broadly characterized as the rejection of two central ideas: that knowledge is incompatible with reflective awareness of the possibility of error, and that knowledge is necessarily tied to the resources that are available from within the first-person perspective. In this brief introduction, I outline five distinctly externalist accounts of knowledge, and two distinctly externalist methodologica…Read more
  •  472
    My starting point is what I call the Normative Authority Conception of justification, where S is justified in their belief that p at t (to some degree n) if and only if their believing that p at t is not ruled out by epistemic norms that have normative authority over S at t. With this in mind, this paper develops an account of doxastic justification by first developing an account of the normative authority of epistemic norms. Drawing from work in political philosophy, I argue that (a) the cognit…Read more
  •  449
    Aesthetic Higher-Order Evidence for Subjectivists
    British Journal of Aesthetics 63 (2): 235-249. 2023.
    Aesthetic subjectivism takes the truth of aesthetic judgments to be relative to the individual making that judgment. Despite widespread suspicion, however, this does not mean that one cannot be wrong about such judgments. Accordingly, this does not mean that one cannot gain higher-order evidence of error and fallibility that bears on the rationality of the aesthetic judgment in question. In this paper, we explain and explore these issues in some detail.
  •  394
    Skeptical Theism: A Panoramic Overview (Part I)
    Philosophy Compass 18 (10). 2023.
    Skeptical theism, broadly construed, is an attempt to leverage our limited cognitive powers, in some specified sense, against “evidential” and “explanatory” arguments from evil. Since there are different versions of these kinds of arguments, there are correspondingly different versions of skeptical theism. In this paper, I briefly explain three versions of these arguments from evil (two from William Rowe and one from Paul Draper) and the three versions of skeptical theism tailor-made to block th…Read more
  •  369
    Agency and Reasons in Epistemology
    Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst. 2016.
    Ever since John Locke, philosophers have discussed the possibility of a normative epistemology: are there epistemic obligations binding the cognitive economy of belief and disbelief? Locke's influential answer was evidentialist: we have an epistemic obligation to believe in accordance with our evidence. In this dissertation, I place the contemporary literature on agency and reasons at the service of some such normative epistemology. I discuss the semantics of obligations, the connection between …Read more
  •  331
    Skeptical Theism: A Panoramic Overview (Part II)
    Philosophy Compass 18 (10). 2023.
    Skeptical theism, broadly construed, is an attempt to leverage our limited cognitive powers, in some specified sense, against “evidential” and “explanatory” arguments from evil. Since there are different versions of these kinds of arguments, there are correspondingly different versions of skeptical theism. In this paper, I consider four challenges to three central versions of skeptical theism: (a) the problem of generalized skepticism, (b) the problem of moral skepticism, (c) the problem of unqu…Read more
  •  301
    Defending the Free Will Defense: A Reply to Sterba
    Religions 13 (11): 1126-1138. 2022.
    James Sterba has recently argued that the free will defense fails to explain the compossibility of a perfect God and the amount and degree of moral evil that we see. I think he is mistaken about this. I thus find myself in the awkward and unexpected position, as a non-theist myself, of defending the free will defense. In this paper, I will try to show that once we take care to focus on what the free will defense is trying to accomplish, and by what means it tries to do so, we will see that Sterb…Read more
  •  269
    This is not a guide for your writing process. You should write in whatever way expressing and making sense of your ideas feels most natural and most productive to you. This is a guide for organizing your ideas, after you have captured some of them in fits and starts of prose, into a particular kind of final product: the basic philosophy paper.
  •  41
    Externalism about Knowledge (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2023.
    Externalism About Knowledge presents new essays from leading epistemologists working in various branches of this tradition: process reliabilism, tracking views, safety views, virtue epistemology, proper functionalism, naturalized epistemology, and knowledge-first epistemology.
  •  31
    The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification has been of undisputed theoretical importance in a wide range of contemporary epistemological debates. Yet there are a host of intimately related issues that have rarely been discussed in connection with this distinction. For instance, the distinction not only applies to an individual’s beliefs, but also to group beliefs and to various other attitudes that both groups and individuals can take: credence, commitment, suspension, fait…Read more
  •  29
  •  16
    Lynne Baker was a trenchant critic of reductionist and physicalist conceptions of the universe, as well as the foremost defender of the constitution view of human persons. Baker was a staunch defender of a kind of practical realism, or what she sometimes called a metaphysics of everyday life. And it was this general “common sense” philosophical outlook that underwrote her non-reductionist, constitution view of reality. Whereas most of her contemporaries were given to metaphysical reductionism an…Read more
  • Introduction
    In Luis R. G. Oliveira & Kevin Corcoran (eds.), Common Sense Metaphysics: Essays in Honor of Lynne Rudder Baker, Routledge. 2020.
  • Kornblith and His Critics (edited book)
    Wiley-Blackwell. forthcoming.
    Hilary Kornblith is one of the world’s leading epistemologists, a champion of an innovative philosophical research program that is at once traditional and revisionary. In viewing the study of knowledge as inseparable from the empirical study of the mind, Kornblith aligns himself closely with the approach of the traditional empiricists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Yet in taking contemporary empirical work seriously, Kornblith has developed views and arguments that shift the epistemological foc…Read more