My primary research lies at the intersection of traditional and formal epistemology. Broadly speaking, I am interested in the relationship between traditional and formal epistemology: ways the two subdisciplines come apart, but also their overlap and common themes. Much of my research is focused on the relationship between each subdiscipline’s doxastic building blocks, belief and credence. Making progress on the relationship between belief and credence is one way to bring together the two branches of epistemology and see their relationship more clearly. Within this framework, I also explore questions about the nature of evidence, e.g. can evidence be permissive? Can evidence move around our credences without changing what we ought to believe? I have further interest in in the relationship between practical and epistemic rationality, e.g. what are the bounds of epistemic rationality? Can practical and/or moral stakes affect epistemic justification?
I apply this work in epistemology to philosophy of religion, specifically to the epistemic and practical rationality of faith and religious commitment. This includes questions about whether faith can be rational but nonetheless go beyond the evidence, and, in general, what might underlie the diachronic rationality of long-term commitments. Finally, I’m interested in Pascal’s Wager, and the implications it has for both decision theory and the practical rationality of theistic commitment.
Below are abstracts of my published articles with links to the full papers. If you don’t have access to the official version, all published papers are available for free download via the PhilPapers link.
Journal Articles
(7) A Defense of Intrapersonal Belief Permissivism. Forthcoming in Episteme.
Permissivism is the view that there are evidential situations that rationally permit more than one attitude toward a proposition. In this paper, I argue for Intrapersonal Belief Permissivism (IaBP): that there are evidential situations in which a single agent can rationally adopt more than one belief-attitude toward a proposition. I give two positive arguments for IaBP; the first involves epistemic supererogation and the second involves doubt. Then, I should how these arguments give intrapersonal permissivists a distinct response to the toggling objection. I conclude that IaBP is a view that philosophers should take seriously.
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(6) Belief, Credence, and Evidence. Forthcoming in Synthese.
I explore how rational belief and rational credence relate to evidence. I begin by looking at three cases where rational belief and credence seem to respond differently to evidence: cases of naked statistical evidence, lotteries, and hedged assertions. I consider an explanation for these cases, namely, that one ought not form beliefs on the basis of statistical evidence alone, and raise worries for this view. Then, I suggest another view that explains how belief and credence relate to evidence. My view focuses on the possibilities that the evidence makes salient. I argue that this makes better sense of the difference between rational credence and rational belief than other accounts.
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(5) Belief and Credence: Why the Attitude-Type Matters. (2019). Philosophical Studies. 176(9): 2477-2496.
In this paper, I argue that the relationship between belief and credence is a central question in epistemology. This is because the belief-credence relationship has significant implications for a number of current epistemological issues. I focus on five controversies: permissivism, disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, doxastic voluntarism, and the relationship between doxastic attitudes and prudential rationality. I argue that the implications of each debate depend on whether the relevant attitude is belief or credence. This means that (i) epistemologists should pay attention to whether they are framing questions in terms of belief or in terms of credence and (ii) the success or failure of a reductionist project in the belief-credence realm has significant implications for epistemology generally.
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(4) How Belief-Credence Dualism Explains Away Pragmatic Encroachment. (2019). The Philosophical Quarterly. 69(276): 511-533.
Belief-credence dualism is the view that we have both beliefs and credences and neither attitude is reducible to the other. Pragmatic encroachment is the view that stakes alone can affect the epistemic rationality of states like knowledge or justified belief. In this paper, I argue that dualism can offer a unique explanation of pragmatic encroachment cases. First, I explain pragmatic encroachment and the motivations for it. Then, I explain dualism and some of the basic philosophical and psychological motivations for it. Finally, I show how dualism can explain the intuitions that underlie pragmatic encroachment. My basic proposal is that in high stakes cases, it is not that one cannot rationally believe that p; instead, one ought to not rely on one’s belief that p. One should rather rely on one’s credence in p. I conclude that we need not commit ourselves to pragmatic encroachment in order to explain the intuitiveness of the cases that motivate it.
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(3) Belief, Credence, and Faith. (2019). Religious Studies. 55(2): 153-168.
In this article, I argue that faith’s going beyond the evidence need not compromise faith’s epistemic rationality. First, I explain how some of the recent literature on belief and credence points to a distinction between what I call B-evidence and C-evidence. Then, I apply this distinction to rational faith. I argue that if faith is more sensitive to B-evidence than to C-evidence, faith can go beyond the evidence and still be epistemically rational.
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- Winner of the Religious Studies Post Graduate Essay Prize.
- A short, popular-level summary of this paper was published on a blog called “The Open Table.”
(2) Salvaging Pascal’s Wager (with Andy Rogers). (2019). Philosophia Christi. 21(1): 59-84.
Many think that Pascal’s Wager is a hopeless failure. A primary reason for this is because a number of challenging objections have been raised to the wager, including the “many gods” objection, and the “mixed strategy” objection. We argue that both objections are formal, but not substantive, problems for the wager, and that they both fail for the same reason. We show how a version of Pascalian reasoning succeeds, and gives us a reason to pay special attention to the infinite consequences of our actions. We go on to respond to additional objections to the wager that apply to our formulation. We argue that many can actually be incorporated into the wagerer’s decision matrix, and thus do not provide reason to refrain from wagering altogether. While we do not claim to answer every possible objection to the wager, we conclude that many traditional objections are unsuccessful.
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(1) Wagering Against Divine Hiddenness. (2016). The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 8(4): 85-105.
J.L. Schellenberg argues that divine hiddenness provides an argument for the conclusion that God does not exist, for if God existed he would not allow non-resistant non-belief to occur, but non-resistant non-belief does occur, so God does not exist. In this paper, I argue that the stakes involved in theistic considerations put pressure on Schellenberg’s premise that non-resistant non-belief occurs. First, I specify conditions for someone’s being a resistant non-believer. Then, I argue that many people fulfil these conditions because, given some plausible assumptions, there is a very good pragmatic reason to be a theist rather than an atheist. I assume it is more likely that theists go to heaven than atheists, and I argue there is a non-zero probability that one can receive infinite utility and a method of comparing outcomes with infinite utilities in which the probability of each outcome affects the final expected values. Then, I show how this argument entails there is no good reason to think that there are very many non-resistant non-believers.
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- Link to my discussion of this paper on “The Ultimist” podcast.
Contributions to Edited Volumes
(6) Permissivism, Underdetermination, and Evidence (with Margaret Turnbull). Forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence (Clayton Littlejohn and Maria Lasonen-Aarnio eds.). New York: Routledge.
Permissivism is the thesis that, for some body of evidence and a proposition p, there is more than one rational doxastic attitude any agent with that evidence can take toward p. Proponents of uniqueness deny permissivism, maintaining that every body of evidence always determines a single rational doxastic attitude. In this paper, we explore the debate between permissivism and uniqueness about evidence, outlining some of the major arguments on each side. We then consider how permissivism can be understood as an underdetermination thesis, and show how this moves the debate forward in fruitful ways: in distinguishing between different types of permissivism, in dispelling classic objections to permissivism, and in shedding light on the relationship between permissivism and evidentialism.
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(5) Faith, Hope, and Justification. Forthcoming in Propositional and Doxastic Justification (Luis R.G. Oliveira and Paul Silva, eds.). Routledge Studies in Epistemology. New York: Routledge.
The distinction between propositional justification (PJ) and doxastic justification (DJ) is the distinction between having justification to have an attitude and having a justified attitude. The goal of this paper is to contrast the PJ/DJ distinction when applied to belief with the PJ/DJ distinction when applied to faith and hope. First, I introduce the attitudes of belief, faith, and hope, focusing on the fact that belief has no essential affective component, whereas faith and hope essentially involve the affective. Then, I discuss implications of this for the PJ/DJ distinction. One, in contrast to belief, when the PJ/DJ distinction is applied to faith and hope, questions about (i) the justification of desire and (ii) the appropriate basis for desire become central. Two, while a paradigm example of PJ but without DJ is a belief that is evidentially supported but based on wishful thinking, surprisingly, parallel cases of faith and hope may actually enjoy both PJ and DJ. I conclude by exploring what it might look like for faith and hope to have PJ without DJ.
(4) Epistemic Paternalism and Social-Epistemic Risk. Forthcoming in Essays in Epistemic Autonomy (Kirk Lougheed and Jonathan Matheson, eds.). Routledge Studies in Epistemology. New York: Routledge.
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Epistemic paternalism is the practice of interfering with someone’s inquiry, without their consent, for their own epistemic good. To date, most have painted epistemic paternalism in a favorable light—arguing that it is often justified (Goldman 1991, Pritchard 2013), or always justified in particular circumstances (Alstrom-Vij 2013, 2018). In this paper, I argue that, contra the afore mentioned authors, we should be cautious before engaging in epistemically paternalistic practices, for two reasons. First, I argue that the literature thus far has conceived of epistemic value too narrowly. Our conception of epistemic value should be broadened from merely true belief to include rational belief, knowledge, understanding, epistemic virtues, epistemic justice, and relations of trust. When we include these additional utilities in the calculation, it isn’t obvious that the epistemic utility gained by epistemic paternalism outweighs the losses. While epistemic paternalism may raise the probability that someone gains a true belief, it will often to a series of losses as well, including lack of epistemic virtues, a loss of understanding and epistemic autonomy, and a loss of trust relations. Second, I emphasize how epistemic paternalism is risky in an uncertain world. These epistemic risks are especially salient in a social context, when one is putting others, rather than oneself, at risk—without their consent. I argue that, because epistemic paternalism constitutes taking a unique risk on another’s behalf, in cases where the expected values are balanced or inscrutable, we should air on the side of caution and refrain from acting paternalistically. And due to (i) the difficulty of weighing epistemic values against each other and (ii) the fact that we often can’t tell in advance what the outcome of our epistemic practices will be, cases of justified epistemic paternalism will be quite rare. I close by suggesting ways to demarcate cases of justified epistemic paternalism from cases of unjustified epistemic paternalism.
(3) Faith and Reason. (2022). In the Handbook of Philosophy of Religion (Mark A. Lamport, ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
(2) Epistemic Paternalism, Epistemic Permissivism, and Standpoint Epistemology. (2021). Epistemic Paternalism Reconsidered: Conceptions, Justifications, and Implications (Amiel Bernal and Guy Axtell, eds.). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Epistemic paternalism is the practice of interfering with someone’s inquiry, without their consent, for their own epistemic good. In this chapter, I explore the relationship between epistemic paternalism and two other epistemological theses: epistemic permissivism and standpoint epistemology. I argue that examining this relationship is fruitful because it sheds light on a series of cases in which epistemic paternalism is unjustified and brings out notable similarities between epistemic permissivism and standpoint epistemology.
(1) The Nature and Rationality of Faith. (2020). The New Theists (Joshua Rasmussen and Kevin Vallier, eds.), pp. 77-92. New York: Routledge.
A popular objection to theistic commitment involves the idea that faith is irrational. Specifically, some seem to put forth something like the following argument: (P1) Everyone (or almost everyone) who has faith is epistemically irrational, (P2) All theistic believers have faith, thus (C) All (or most) theistic believers are epistemically irrational. In this chapter, I argue that this line of reasoning fails. I do so by considering a number of candidates for what faith might be. I argue that, for each candidate, either (P1) is false or (P2) is false. Then, I make two positive suggestions for how faith can be epistemically rational but nonetheless have a unique relationship to evidence: one, that Jamesian self-justifying attitudes describe a distinctive kind of faith in oneself and others, and two, that faith is not solely based on empirical evidence.
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- A short, popular-level summary of this paper was published on a blog called “The Open Table.”
Other Publications
Epistemology. (2021). In The T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Christian Theology (Paul Allen, ed.). New York: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge. This entry covers epistemology in two parts: one historical, one contemporary. The former provides a brief theological history of epistemology. The latter outlines three categories of contemporary epistemology: traditional epistemology, social epistemology, and formal epistemology, along with corresponding theological questions that arise in each.
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Review of Problems of Religious Luck: Assessing the Limits of Reasonable Religious Disagreement, by Guy Axtell. (2019). Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
A Defense of Belief-Credence Dualism. (2018). In The Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the Brazilian Society of Analytic Philosophy (João Luis Pereira Ourique, ed.), pp. 77-78. Pelotas, Brazil: Série Dissertatio de Filosofia.
I defend belief-credence dualism, the view that we have both beliefs and credences and both attitudes are equally fundamental. First, I explain belief, credence, and three views on their relationship. Then, I argue for dualism. I do so first by painting a picture of the mind on which belief and credence are two cognitive tools that we use for different purposes. Finally, I respond to two objections to dualism. I conclude that dualism is a promising view, and one that both epistemologists and philosophers of mind should take seriously.
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Dissertation
Belief and Credence: A Defense of Dualism. (2019). University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame, IN: ProQuest.
Belief is a familiar attitude: taking something to be the case or regarding it as true. But we are more confident in some of our beliefs than in others. For this reason, many epistemologists appeal to a second attitude, called credence, similar to a degree of confidence. This raises the question: how do belief and credence relate to each other? On a belief-first view, beliefs are more fundamental and credences are a species of beliefs, e.g. beliefs about probabilities. On a credence-first view, credences are more fundamental and beliefs are a species of credence, e.g. credence above some threshold. In this thesis, I develop and defend a third view that I call belief-credence dualism. On this view, belief and credence are independent, equally fundamental attitudes, and neither reduces to the other. I begin by motivating the project: why should we care about the relationship between belief and credence? I argue it has broad implications for many debates in epistemology and beyond. Then, I defend dualism, arguing that it can explain features of our mental lives that a credence-first view and a belief-first view cannot. I also argue that dualism has attractive, interesting implications when applied to the pragmatic encroachment debate. Finally, I explore implications of dualism, both for the nature of evidence and how faith might go beyond the evidence but nonetheless be epistemically rational. I conclude that the human mind is, in some ways, complex, but we should be happy with this conclusion also long as each mental state we posit has a clear role to play.
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Below are abstracts of some of my unpublished current projects. The titles of papers under review are redacted. If you’re interested, feel free to email me for a draft!
Under Review
A paper on the diachronic rationality of commitment
I examine three attitudes: belief, faith, and hope. I argue that all three attitudes can play the same role in rationalizing action. First, I explain two models of rational action – the decision-theory model and the belief-desire model. Both models entail there are two components of rational action: an epistemic component and an affective component. Then, using this framework, I show how belief, faith, and hope that p can all make it rational to accept, or act as if, p. I conclude by showing how my picture can explain how action-oriented commitments can be rational over time, both in the face of counterevidence and in the face of waning affections.
A paper on belief and credence (with Andrew Moon)
This paper explains and defends a belief-first view of the relationship between belief and credence. On this view, credences are a species of beliefs, and the degree of credence is determined by the content of what is believed. We begin by developing what we take to be the most plausible belief-first view. Then, we offer several arguments for this view. Finally, we show how it can resist a prominent objection in the literature that has been raised to belief-first views. We conclude that the belief-first view is more plausible than many have previously supposed.
Another paper on belief and credence
Much of the literature on the relationship between belief and credence has focused on the reduction question: that is, whether either belief or credence reduces to the other. This debate, while important, only scratches the surface of the belief-credence connection. Even on the anti-reductive dualist view, belief and credence could still be very tightly connected. Here, I explore questions about the belief-credence connection that go beyond reduction. This paper is dedicated to what I call the independence question: just how independent are belief and credence? I look at this question from two angles: a descriptive one (as a psychological matter, how much can belief and credence come apart?) and a normative one (for a rational agent, how closely connected are belief and credence?) Ultimately, I suggest that the two attitudes are more independent than one might think.
A paper on moral encroachment (with Jamie Fritz)
Radical moral encroachment is the view that belief itself is morally evaluable, and that some moral properties of belief itself make a difference to epistemic rationality. To date, almost all proponents of radical moral encroachment hold to an asymmetry thesis: the moral encroaches on rational belief, but not on rational credence. In this paper, we argue against the asymmetry thesis; we show that, insofar as one accepts radical moral encroachment on belief, one should likewise accept radical moral encroachment on credences. We outline and reject potential attempts to establish a basis for asymmetry between the attitude types. Then, we explore the merits and demerits of the two available responses to our symmetry claim: (i) embracing moral encroachment on credences and (ii) denying moral encroachment on belief.
Full Drafts Available
Belief, Credence, and Graspability: Why Credences Are Not Beliefs
A question of recent interest in epistemology and philosophy of mind is how belief and credence relate to each other. Easwaran (2013), Holton (2014), and Moon (2018), among others, argue for a belief-first viewof the relationship between belief and credence. On the belief-first view, what is it to have a credence just is to have a particular kind of belief, that is, a belief whose content involves probabilities or epistemic modals. Here, I argue against the belief-first view: specifically, I argue that it cannot account for agents who have credences in propositions they barely comprehend. I conclude that, however credences differ from beliefs, they do not differ in virtue of adding additional content to the believed proposition.
Epistemic Akrasia and Belief-Credence Dualism (with Peter Tan)
We argue that familiar cases of epistemic akrasia support belief-credence dualism. Belief-credence dualism the view that belief and credence are distinct, equally fundamental attitudes. Consider the case of an agent who both believes p and has a low credence in p. We argue that dualists, as opposed to belief-firsters (who say belief is more fundamental than credence) and credence-firsters (who say credence is more fundamental than belief) can best explain features of akratic cases, including the observation that akratic beliefs seem to be held despite possessing a defeater for those beliefs, and the observation that, in akratic cases, one can simultaneously believe and have low confidence in the very same proposition.
In Progress
Epistemic Permissivism and Pascal’s Wager
Epistemic permissivism is the thesis that, given a body of evidence and a proposition P, there is more than one rational doxastic attitude that one can take toward P. Pascal’s Wager is the idea that one ought to believe in God for practical reasons, because of what one can gain if theism is true and what one has to lose if theism is false. In this paper, I argue that if epistemic permissivism is true, then the defender of Pascal’s Wager has powerful responses to two objections. First, I argue that if permissivism is true, then permissivism is likely true about theistic belief. Then, I show how epistemic permissivism about theistic belief dispels two objections to Pascal’s Wager: the objection that wagering is impossible, and the objection that wagering is epistemically impermissible.
Permissivism, Encroachment, and Practical Reasons for Belief
Intrapersonal permissivism is the thesis that there are evidential situations in which a particular individual can adopt more than one belief-attitude toward a proposition, given her evidence. In this paper, I argue that if intrapersonal permissivism is true, it makes two controversial theses in epistemology—practical reasons for belief and pragmatic/moral encroachment—more palatable. If one finds herself in a permissive case, then it is both possible and epistemically rational to believe for a practical reason. Along similar lines, permissivism dispels common worries for pragmatic and moral encroachment. I conclude that proponents of practical reasons for belief and proponents of encroachment have strong reason to adopt an intra-personally permissive epistemology.
The Faith of the Wagerer
I argue that many who take Pascal’s wager (i.e. commit to God for primarily non-epistemic reasons) can be seen as having genuine faith, according to recent accounts of faith. While those who wager may not believe God exists, philosophers working on faith have recently argued that faith doesn’t require belief, but is consistent with a variety of other cognitive attitudes toward the proposition(s) of faith. Further, the primary thing that motivates those who take Pascal’s Wager is the goodness of the outcome on which they believe in God and God exists. Similarly, on recent accounts of faith, those with faith that p have a positive conative attitude toward p. Second, both the person of faith and the wagerer have some kind of positive cognitive attitude toward God’s existence, even if not belief. Finally, both the person of faith and the wagerer make a commitment to living a particular kind of life. Thus, in many cases, taking Pascal’s wager is a way of having faith. One reason this result is significant is because it provides an answer to the impossibility objection to Pascal’s Wager: namely, that wagering is impossible because e.g. one cannot force oneself to believe in God. If faith, rather than belief, is what God requires, then those who wager won’t have to force themselves to believe. I also argue that if one’s credences in theism are too low to have faith, the wagerer can still hope that God exists, which (as I’ve argued elsewhere) can also justify a commitment to God.
Interpersonal Faith and Self-Fulfilling Beliefs
I provide a model of how rational faith in oneself or in others goes beyond the evidence. I begin by focusing on cases of self-justifying beliefs: beliefs that, when adopted, create evidence for the proposition believed or raise its probability. I argue that intrapersonal and interpersonal faith function similarly: having faith in oneself or in others can make it more likely that the target proposition obtains. In these cases, faith “goes beyond the evidence” but also creates evidence for, and thus rationalizes, itself.