Epistemology

‘Having Reasons.’ Philosophical Studies 139(1): 57-71, April 2008. Nominated for inclusion in the 2008 Philosopher’s Annual.

This paper explores the relationship between objective and subjective reasons and argues that these are two cross-cutting normative relations, rather than one being a strict restriction on the other.

‘What Does it Take to ‘Have’ a Reason?’ In Reasons for Belief, edited by Andrew Reisner and Asbjørn Steglich-Peterson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, June 2011.

This paper contrasts different accounts of what epistemic or doxastic condition is required in order to have a subjective reason and argues for a permissive account.

‘The Importance of Being in a Position to Know.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100(2): 457-462, March 2020.

This paper is a contribution to a symposium on Errol Lord’s important book, The Importance of Being Rational.

‘Experientialism Unidealized.’ Philosophical Studies 180 (8): 2485-2489, August 2023.

This is a contribution to a symposium on Juan Comesana’s important book, Being Rational and Being Right.

‘Perceptual Reasons and Defeat.’ In Reasons, Justification, and Defeat, edited by Jessica Brown and Mona Simion, Oxford University Press, 269-284, June 2021.

In this paper I consider contrasting models of how basic perceptual reasons provide evidence for belief and how this evidence is defeated, and argue in favor of my preferred model, defended at greater length in chapter five of Reasons First.

‘Knowledge is Belief for Sufficient (Objective and Subjective) Reason.’  Oxford Studies in Epistemology, volume 5, 226-252, February 2015.

This paper develops and states a version of the kind of analysis of knowledge defended in Part 4 of Reasons First and defends it by comparison to how it answers the most important objections for which people set aside similar analyses of knowledge in the 1970’s

‘Is Knowledge Normative?’ Philosophical Issues 25: 379-395, October 2015.

This paper considers the question of whether knowledge is itself a normative property, or just a highly normatively relevant property, and argues for the former thesis.

‘In Defense of the Kantian Account of Knowledge: Reply to Whiting.’ Logos and Episteme 6(3): 371-382, October 2015.

This paper responds to an important objection to my treatment of knowledge from Daniel Whiting and gives the answer further developed in Reasons First.

‘Knowledge is Not the Most General Factive Stative Attitude.’ Unpublished paper.

In this short unpublished paper I argue against Williamson that knowledge is not the most general factive stative attitude by relying on the principles that knowledge entails belief and that knowledge entails rational belief

‘Believing Well.’ In Metaepistemology, edited by Conor McHugh, Jonathan Way, and Daniel Whiting, Oxford University Press, 196-212, March 2019.

This paper develops an early strand of the argument eventually developed in ‘The Fundamental Reason for Reasons Fundamentalism’ and in Part 4 of Reasons First.

‘Doxastic Wronging.’ With Rima Basu. In Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology, edited by Brian Kim and Matthew McGrath, Routledge, 181-205, November 2018.

We introduce and defend the idea that you can wrong someone by what you believe about them.

‘When Beliefs Wrong.’ Philosophical Topics 46(1): 115-127, June 2018.

I consider the question of which beliefs wrong, and argue that beliefs wrong only when they falsely represent an individual in a way that diminishes them.

‘Sins of Thought.’ Faith and Philosophy 37(3): 273-293, July 2020.

I introduce the idea that if there are doxastic wrongs, then if God exists, some false beliefs about Her could wrong Her. I use this thought to address Pascal’s Wager and the problem of evil.

‘Agnostic Wrongs and Pragmatic Disencroachment.’ Provisionally forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

In this paper I consider the idea that if beliefs can wrong, then the lack of belief can also wrong. I argue that arguments for parity in the evidence that supports each of these thesis are lacking, and that theoretical reasons strongly support drawing a iine between them. But I also consider the distinctive force of evidence that comes from victim testimonies, and offer a distinctive treatment of such cases that turns on the epitemology specifically of testimony.

‘The Basis of Asymmetry.’ Provisionally committed to Jonathan Ichikawa, ed., Positive Epistemology.

In this paper I explore how different accounts of the nature of binary belief lend themselves to different answers to whether we should expect asymmetry between the norms affirming belief and the norms discouraging it.