Dissertation
Most of us are aware of believing things we know we should not – often, we cannot help it. My dissertation comprises three papers exploring this phenomenon. In “Revealed Irrationality,” I defend the possibility of believing, of one of one’s beliefs, that it is irrational. “Doxastic Voluntarism: Some Recent Defenses” examines some recent defenses of the claim that we have voluntary control over what we believe and finds them wanting. But there is a propositional attitude we have control over – what I call acceptance – and in “Acceptance” I argue that we need this attitude to explain otherwise puzzling behavior.
Other Projects
Nick Smith and I are collaborating on a series of papers on coherentism, human rationality, and animal knowledge. These papers will further develop themes from our book Knowledge (Polity Press, forthcoming spring 2012).
Nathan Ballantyne and I published a paper assessing Sosa’s recent treatment of dreaming skepticism in his A Virtue Epistemology. We have another small paper on skepticism in the hopper and are planning a paper on acceptance, Peter Van Inwagen, and disagreement.
I’ve thought about the basing relation quite a bit over the past few years and am developing a series of papers on the topic, one of which is forthcoming in Synthese.