Robert Weston Siscoe | Bowling Green State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Robert Weston Siscoe
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Forthcoming)
Do factive mental states come in degrees? If so, what is their underlying structure, and what is ... more Do factive mental states come in degrees? If so, what is their underlying structure, and what is their theoretical significance? Many have observed that ‘knows that’ is not a gradable verb and have taken this to be strong evidence that propositional knowledge does not come in degrees. This paper demonstrates that the adjective ‘aware that’ passes all the standard tests of gradability, and thus strongly motivates the idea that it refers to a factive mental state that comes in degrees. We will explore a range of structural questions that have been overlooked in regard to our awareness of facts, showing that the degreed structure of awareness has significant implications for our understanding of knowledge.
Philosophical Studies, 2024
How are justified belief and rational belief related? Some philosophers think that justified beli... more How are justified belief and rational belief related? Some philosophers think that justified belief and rational belief come to the same thing. Others take it that justification is a matter of how well a particular belief is supported by the evidence, while rational belief is a matter of how well a belief coheres with a person's other beliefs. In this paper, I defend the view that justification is a dimension of rationality, a view that can make sense of both of these conflicting accounts. When it modifies belief, 'rational' is a multidimensional adjective, as there are multiple dimensions along which a belief can be rational. I will argue that one of these dimensions is justification, an account that can not only explain why philosophers give diverging theories of the relationship between justified belief and rational belief, but can also reveal why rational belief and justified belief are closely related despite being distinct.
Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, 2023
Political polarization is on the rise, undermining the shared space of public reason necessary fo... more Political polarization is on the rise, undermining the shared space of public reason necessary for a thriving democracy and making voters more willing than ever to dismiss the perspectives of their political opponents. This destructive tendency is especially problematic when it comes to issues of race and gender, as informed views on these topics necessarily require engaging with those whose experiences may differ from our own. In order to help our students combat further polarization, we created a course on "The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender" that incorporated intergroup dialogues - small, diverse, semester-long discussion groups-that focused on building the civic virtues of toleration, egalitarianism, and solidarity. In this article, we describe our approach, including the evidence that intergroup dialogue can act as a catalyst for democratic dialogue. We hope that the practice of intergroup dialogue can help other instructors cultivate the civic virtues in their philosophy classrooms as well.
The Philosophy Teaching Library, 2024
René Descartes was a French mathematician and philosopher and is considered the father of modern ... more René Descartes was a French mathematician and philosopher and is considered the father of modern philosophy. Coinciding with a period of scientific exploration and discovery in Europe, modern philosophy emphasized the use of reason over a dependence on traditional ways of thinking about the world. Embodying this spirit, Descartes split with many of the medieval and scholastic philosophers that came before him and attempted to build a philosophical system from scratch. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes begins this project by considering how much we can know about the world around us. In this piece, we will critically examine Descartes’ arguments that reality is not what it appears to be. Descartes makes the case that we can't rule out that our life is all a dream or that we might all be radically deceived. Is there any way that we can rule these things out?
Philosophical Studies, 2024
Given the significant exculpatory power that ignorance has when it comes to moral, legal, and epi... more Given the significant exculpatory power that ignorance has when it comes to moral, legal, and epistemic transgressions, it is important to have an accurate understanding of the concept of ignorance. According to the Standard View of factual ignorance, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not know that p, while on the New View, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not truly believe that p. On their own though, neither of these accounts explains how ignorance can often be a degreed notion-how we can sometimes be slightly ignorant, quite ignorant, or completely ignorant that p. In this paper, I will argue that there is a route for advocates of the Standard View and the New View to accommodate the gradability of ignorance. On the view I defend, 'ignorant' picks out everyone that is ignorant to some degree, making it possible that ignorance can be both degreed and characterized as a lack of knowledge or true belief. Even though we can be ignorant to a greater or lesser extent, the only way to avoid being ignorant that p is to know or truly believe.
Nous, 2024
Knowledge implies the presence of a positive relation between a person and a fact. Factual ignora... more Knowledge implies the presence of a positive relation between a person and a fact. Factual ignorance, on the other hand, implies the absence of some positive relation between a person and a fact. The two most influential views of ignorance hold that what is lacking in cases of factual ignorance is knowledge or true belief, but these accounts fail to explain a number of basic facts about ignorance. In their place, we propose a novel and systematic defense of the view that factual ignorance is the absence of awareness, an account that both comes apart from the dominant views and overcomes their deficiencies. Given the important role that ignorance plays in moral and legal theory and our understanding of various epistemic injustices, a precise and theoretically unproblematic account of the nature of ignorance is important not only for normative epistemology, but also for law, ethics, and applied epistemology.
Philosophy Compass, 2023
Many political philosophers have held that democracy has epistemic benefits. Most commonly, this ... more Many political philosophers have held that democracy has epistemic benefits. Most commonly, this case is made by arguing that democracies are better able to track the truth than other political arrangements. Truth, however, is not the only epistemic good that is politically valuable. A number of other epistemic goods - goods including evidence, intellectual virtue, epistemic justice, and empathetic understanding - can also have political value, and in ways that go beyond the value of truth. In this paper, I will survey those who have argued that democracy can be valuable because of these other epistemic benefits, considering (1) the ways in which these epistemic goods can be of political value and (2) the challenges that democracies face in producing them.
Philosophy Compass, 2023
In order to serve their citizens well, democracies must secure a number of epistemic goods. Take ... more In order to serve their citizens well, democracies must secure a number of epistemic goods. Take the truth, for example. If a democratic government wants to help its impoverished citizens improve their financial position, then elected officials will need to know what policies truly help those living in poverty. Because truth has such an important role in political decision-making, many defenders of democracy have highlighted the ways in which democratic procedures can lead to the truth. But there are also a number of other epistemic goods-goods like evidence, intellectual virtue, epistemic justice, and empathetic understanding-that democracies can benefit from producing as well. In this teaching and learning guide, I chart a course through the literature that considers the importance of truth, along with these other political goods, for the healthy functioning of democracies.
AAPT Studies in Pedagogy, 2023
Inspired by the practice of dialogue in ancient philosophical schools, the Philosophy as a Way of... more Inspired by the practice of dialogue in ancient philosophical schools, the Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL) Project at the University of Notre Dame has sought to put dialogue back at the center of philosophical pedagogy. Impromptu philosophical dialogue, however, can be challenging for students who are new to philosophy. Anticipating this challenge, the Project has created a series of manuals to help instructors conduct dialogue groups with novice philosophy students. Using these guidelines, we incorporated PWOL-style dialogue groups into our Spring 2021 course "The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender" with the hope that, through having conversations about these challenging topics, our students would both be able to practice having philosophical dialogues as well as form their views on race and gender in light of contributions from their diverse peers. This article examines several strategies for how instructors can seek to incorporate similar dialogues into their own introductory classrooms.
Erkenntnis, 2024
Modal metaphysics consumed much of the philosophical discussion at the turn of the century, yield... more Modal metaphysics consumed much of the philosophical discussion at the turn of the century, yielding a number of epistemological insights. Modal analyses were applied within epistemology, yielding sensitivity and safety theories of knowledge as well as counterfactual accounts of the basing relation. The contemporary conversation has now turned to a new metaphysical notion – grounding – opening the way to a fresh wave of insights by bringing grounding into epistemology. In this paper, I attempt one such application, making sense of the epistemic regress problem in terms of grounding. I argue that the relation that generates the epistemic regress is a grounding relation, showing that grounding can make sense of proposals by epistemic foundationalists and charting the course for similar applications to epistemic coherentism and epistemic infinitism. If it is right that grounding is involved in the epistemic regress, this points the way forward both for epistemologists and metaphysician...
Public Reason (Forthcoming)
If political decision-making aims at getting a particular result, like identifying just laws or p... more If political decision-making aims at getting a particular result, like identifying just laws or policies that truly promote the common good, then political institutions can also be evaluated in terms of how often they achieve these results. Epistemic defenses of democracy argue that democracies have the upper hand when it comes to truth, identifying the laws and policies that are truly just or conducive to the common good. A number of epistemic democrats claim that democracies have this beneficial connection to truth because of the type of deliberative environment created by democratic political institutions. Democratic political cultures make it easier to exchange and give reasons, ultimately improving the justification that citizens have for their political beliefs. With this improved justification comes a better chance at truth, or so the story goes. In this paper, I show that attempts to forge a connection between justification and truth in epistemology have encountered numerous difficulties, making the case that this causes trouble for deliberative epistemic defenses of democracy as well. If there is no well-defined connection between truth and justification, then increasing the justification that citizens have for their beliefs may not also increase the likelihood that those beliefs are true, revealing a serious flaw in charting a connection between political justification and political truth.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2023
Against the maximizing conception of practical rationality, Michael Slote has argued that rationa... more Against the maximizing conception of practical rationality, Michael Slote has argued that rationality does not always require choosing what is most rational. Instead, it can sometimes be rational to do something that is less than fully rational. In this paper, I will argue that maximizers have a ready response to Slote's position. Roy Sorensen has argued that 'rational' is an absolute term, suggesting that it is not possible to be rational without being completely rational. Sorensen's view is confirmed by the fact that, by the lights of contemporary linguistics, 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective. Because 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective, being rational requires being at the top of the scale of rationality, making anyone who is not fully rational positively irrational. Contra Slote, the only way to be rational enough is to be maximally rational.
Acta Analytica, 2023
In his recent book, Knowing and Checking, Guido Melchior argues that, when we attempt to check wh... more In his recent book, Knowing and Checking, Guido Melchior argues that, when we attempt to check whether p, we tend to think that we do not know p. Melchior then uses this assumption to explain a number of puzzles about knowledge. One outstanding question for Melchior's account, however, is why this tendency exists. After all, Melchior himself argues that checking is not necessary for knowing, so why would we think that we fail to know that p when we are in the midst of checking that p? I will explore one such suggestion for why this occurs, arguing that the connection between checking and inquiry can shed light on the impact that checking has on knowing.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2022
Starting with the slogan that understanding is a 'knowledge of causes,' Stephen Grimm and John Gr... more Starting with the slogan that understanding is a 'knowledge of causes,' Stephen Grimm and John Greco have argued that understanding comes from a knowledge of dependence relations. Grounding is the trendiest dependence relation on the market, and if Grimm and Greco are correct, then instances of grounding should also give rise to understanding. In this paper, I will show that this prediction is correct-grounding does indeed generate understanding in just the way that Grimm and Greco anticipate. However, grounding examples of understanding also show that Grimm and Greco are not telling the full story when it comes to understanding. Understanding can only be generated by a particular subset of dependence relations-those dependence relations that are also explanatory. Grimm and Greco should thus appeal to a privileged class of dependence relations, relations like grounding that can give rise to explanation as well.
Teaching Philosophy, 2022
It is no secret that we, as a society, struggle to have productive conversations about race and g... more It is no secret that we, as a society, struggle to have productive conversations about race and gender. Discussions about these issues are beset with obstacles, from the inherent power dynamics between conversation partners to the fear that participants feel about saying something harmful. One practice that can help address these difficulties is intergroup dialogue-sustained, small group discussions with participants from a variety of social identities. In this paper, we detail how we incorporated intergroup dialogue into a 120 student "Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender" course, providing a blueprint for anyone who wants to help their students develop the ability to take part in fruitful conversations surrounding these challenging topics. We provide strategies for how to design intergroup dialogues to avoid many of the common pitfalls of such conversations, strategies that ultimately helped our students become more likely to initiate and participate in worthwhile discussions on race and gender. We expect our experiences to be especially helpful for instructors of large courses, where making time for small group dialogue is quite challenging, but many of the practices we used can also be adapted for smaller scale courses as well.
1,000 Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology, 2022
Suppose that a majority of jurors decide that a defendant is guilty (or not), and we want to know... more Suppose that a majority of jurors decide that a defendant is guilty (or not), and we want to know the likelihood that they reached the correct verdict. The French philosopher Marquis de Condorcet showed that we can get a mathematically precise answer, a result known as the "Condorcet Jury Theorem." Philosophers have used this theorem to argue that the majoritarian voting found in democracy can help us choose the best policies and political leaders.
Philosophical Studies, 2022
A number of authors have defended permissivism by appealing to rational supererogation, the thoug... more A number of authors have defended permissivism by appealing to rational supererogation, the thought that some doxastic states might be rationally permissible even though there are other, more rational beliefs available. If this is correct, then there are situations that allow for multiple rational doxastic responses, even if some of those responses are rationally suboptimal. In this paper, I will argue that this is the wrong approach to defending permissivism-there are no doxastic states that are rationally supererogatory. By the lights of contemporary linguistics, 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective, and as such, can only be applied to things that satisfy the top of the scale of rationality. For this reason, it is not possible to believe what is rational while also failing to believe what is rationally optimal.
Journal of Modern Philosophy, 2022
Philosophical orthodoxy holds that Thomas Reid is an externalist concerning epistemic justificati... more Philosophical orthodoxy holds that Thomas Reid is an externalist concerning epistemic justification, characterizing Reid as holding the key to an externalist response to internalism. These externalist accounts of Reid, however, have neglected his work on prejudice, a heretofore unexamined aspect of his epistemology. Reid's work on prejudice reveals that he is far from an externalist. Despite the views Reid may have inspired, he exemplifies internalism in opting for an accessibility account of justification. For Reid, there are two normative statuses that a belief might satisfy, being blameless and having a just ground. Through reflection, a rational agent is capable of satisfying both of these statuses, making Reid an accessibility internalist about epistemic justification.
Synthese, 2022
Traditional epistemologists assumed that the most important doxastic norms were rational requirem... more Traditional epistemologists assumed that the most important doxastic norms were rational requirements on belief. This orthodoxy has recently been challenged by the work of revolutionary epistemologists on the rational requirements on credences. Revolutionary epistemology takes it that such contemporary work is important precisely because traditional epistemologists are mistaken—credal norms are more fundamental than, and determinative of, belief norms. To make sense of their innovative project, many revolutionary epistemologists have also adopted another commitment, that norms on credences are governed by a fundamental accuracy norm. Unfortunately for the revolutionary epistemologist, it has been difficult to define a measure of accuracy while maintaining that credal norms are more basic than belief norms. In this paper, I criticize one such proposal for measuring accuracy, that the accuracy of our credences should be assessed in terms of what we know, arguing that this picture ultimately cannot vindicate the revolutionary approach.
Philosophical Studies, 2022
Formal epistemologists often claim that our credences should be representable by a probability fu... more Formal epistemologists often claim that our credences should be representable by a probability function. Complete probabilistic coherence, however, is only possible for ideal agents, raising the question of how this requirement relates to our everyday judgments concerning rationality. One possible answer is that being rational is a contextual matter, that the standards for rationality change along with the situation. Just like who counts as tall changes depending on whether we are considering toddlers or basketball players, perhaps what counts as rational shifts according to whether we are considering ideal agents or creatures more like ourselves. Even though a number of formal epistemologists have endorsed this type of solution, I will argue that there is no way to spell out this contextual account that can make sense of our everyday judgments about rationality. Those who defend probabilistic coherence requirements will need an alternative account of the relationship between real and ideal rationality.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Forthcoming)
Do factive mental states come in degrees? If so, what is their underlying structure, and what is ... more Do factive mental states come in degrees? If so, what is their underlying structure, and what is their theoretical significance? Many have observed that ‘knows that’ is not a gradable verb and have taken this to be strong evidence that propositional knowledge does not come in degrees. This paper demonstrates that the adjective ‘aware that’ passes all the standard tests of gradability, and thus strongly motivates the idea that it refers to a factive mental state that comes in degrees. We will explore a range of structural questions that have been overlooked in regard to our awareness of facts, showing that the degreed structure of awareness has significant implications for our understanding of knowledge.
Philosophical Studies, 2024
How are justified belief and rational belief related? Some philosophers think that justified beli... more How are justified belief and rational belief related? Some philosophers think that justified belief and rational belief come to the same thing. Others take it that justification is a matter of how well a particular belief is supported by the evidence, while rational belief is a matter of how well a belief coheres with a person's other beliefs. In this paper, I defend the view that justification is a dimension of rationality, a view that can make sense of both of these conflicting accounts. When it modifies belief, 'rational' is a multidimensional adjective, as there are multiple dimensions along which a belief can be rational. I will argue that one of these dimensions is justification, an account that can not only explain why philosophers give diverging theories of the relationship between justified belief and rational belief, but can also reveal why rational belief and justified belief are closely related despite being distinct.
Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, 2023
Political polarization is on the rise, undermining the shared space of public reason necessary fo... more Political polarization is on the rise, undermining the shared space of public reason necessary for a thriving democracy and making voters more willing than ever to dismiss the perspectives of their political opponents. This destructive tendency is especially problematic when it comes to issues of race and gender, as informed views on these topics necessarily require engaging with those whose experiences may differ from our own. In order to help our students combat further polarization, we created a course on "The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender" that incorporated intergroup dialogues - small, diverse, semester-long discussion groups-that focused on building the civic virtues of toleration, egalitarianism, and solidarity. In this article, we describe our approach, including the evidence that intergroup dialogue can act as a catalyst for democratic dialogue. We hope that the practice of intergroup dialogue can help other instructors cultivate the civic virtues in their philosophy classrooms as well.
The Philosophy Teaching Library, 2024
René Descartes was a French mathematician and philosopher and is considered the father of modern ... more René Descartes was a French mathematician and philosopher and is considered the father of modern philosophy. Coinciding with a period of scientific exploration and discovery in Europe, modern philosophy emphasized the use of reason over a dependence on traditional ways of thinking about the world. Embodying this spirit, Descartes split with many of the medieval and scholastic philosophers that came before him and attempted to build a philosophical system from scratch. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes begins this project by considering how much we can know about the world around us. In this piece, we will critically examine Descartes’ arguments that reality is not what it appears to be. Descartes makes the case that we can't rule out that our life is all a dream or that we might all be radically deceived. Is there any way that we can rule these things out?
Philosophical Studies, 2024
Given the significant exculpatory power that ignorance has when it comes to moral, legal, and epi... more Given the significant exculpatory power that ignorance has when it comes to moral, legal, and epistemic transgressions, it is important to have an accurate understanding of the concept of ignorance. According to the Standard View of factual ignorance, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not know that p, while on the New View, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not truly believe that p. On their own though, neither of these accounts explains how ignorance can often be a degreed notion-how we can sometimes be slightly ignorant, quite ignorant, or completely ignorant that p. In this paper, I will argue that there is a route for advocates of the Standard View and the New View to accommodate the gradability of ignorance. On the view I defend, 'ignorant' picks out everyone that is ignorant to some degree, making it possible that ignorance can be both degreed and characterized as a lack of knowledge or true belief. Even though we can be ignorant to a greater or lesser extent, the only way to avoid being ignorant that p is to know or truly believe.
Nous, 2024
Knowledge implies the presence of a positive relation between a person and a fact. Factual ignora... more Knowledge implies the presence of a positive relation between a person and a fact. Factual ignorance, on the other hand, implies the absence of some positive relation between a person and a fact. The two most influential views of ignorance hold that what is lacking in cases of factual ignorance is knowledge or true belief, but these accounts fail to explain a number of basic facts about ignorance. In their place, we propose a novel and systematic defense of the view that factual ignorance is the absence of awareness, an account that both comes apart from the dominant views and overcomes their deficiencies. Given the important role that ignorance plays in moral and legal theory and our understanding of various epistemic injustices, a precise and theoretically unproblematic account of the nature of ignorance is important not only for normative epistemology, but also for law, ethics, and applied epistemology.
Philosophy Compass, 2023
Many political philosophers have held that democracy has epistemic benefits. Most commonly, this ... more Many political philosophers have held that democracy has epistemic benefits. Most commonly, this case is made by arguing that democracies are better able to track the truth than other political arrangements. Truth, however, is not the only epistemic good that is politically valuable. A number of other epistemic goods - goods including evidence, intellectual virtue, epistemic justice, and empathetic understanding - can also have political value, and in ways that go beyond the value of truth. In this paper, I will survey those who have argued that democracy can be valuable because of these other epistemic benefits, considering (1) the ways in which these epistemic goods can be of political value and (2) the challenges that democracies face in producing them.
Philosophy Compass, 2023
In order to serve their citizens well, democracies must secure a number of epistemic goods. Take ... more In order to serve their citizens well, democracies must secure a number of epistemic goods. Take the truth, for example. If a democratic government wants to help its impoverished citizens improve their financial position, then elected officials will need to know what policies truly help those living in poverty. Because truth has such an important role in political decision-making, many defenders of democracy have highlighted the ways in which democratic procedures can lead to the truth. But there are also a number of other epistemic goods-goods like evidence, intellectual virtue, epistemic justice, and empathetic understanding-that democracies can benefit from producing as well. In this teaching and learning guide, I chart a course through the literature that considers the importance of truth, along with these other political goods, for the healthy functioning of democracies.
AAPT Studies in Pedagogy, 2023
Inspired by the practice of dialogue in ancient philosophical schools, the Philosophy as a Way of... more Inspired by the practice of dialogue in ancient philosophical schools, the Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL) Project at the University of Notre Dame has sought to put dialogue back at the center of philosophical pedagogy. Impromptu philosophical dialogue, however, can be challenging for students who are new to philosophy. Anticipating this challenge, the Project has created a series of manuals to help instructors conduct dialogue groups with novice philosophy students. Using these guidelines, we incorporated PWOL-style dialogue groups into our Spring 2021 course "The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender" with the hope that, through having conversations about these challenging topics, our students would both be able to practice having philosophical dialogues as well as form their views on race and gender in light of contributions from their diverse peers. This article examines several strategies for how instructors can seek to incorporate similar dialogues into their own introductory classrooms.
Erkenntnis, 2024
Modal metaphysics consumed much of the philosophical discussion at the turn of the century, yield... more Modal metaphysics consumed much of the philosophical discussion at the turn of the century, yielding a number of epistemological insights. Modal analyses were applied within epistemology, yielding sensitivity and safety theories of knowledge as well as counterfactual accounts of the basing relation. The contemporary conversation has now turned to a new metaphysical notion – grounding – opening the way to a fresh wave of insights by bringing grounding into epistemology. In this paper, I attempt one such application, making sense of the epistemic regress problem in terms of grounding. I argue that the relation that generates the epistemic regress is a grounding relation, showing that grounding can make sense of proposals by epistemic foundationalists and charting the course for similar applications to epistemic coherentism and epistemic infinitism. If it is right that grounding is involved in the epistemic regress, this points the way forward both for epistemologists and metaphysician...
Public Reason (Forthcoming)
If political decision-making aims at getting a particular result, like identifying just laws or p... more If political decision-making aims at getting a particular result, like identifying just laws or policies that truly promote the common good, then political institutions can also be evaluated in terms of how often they achieve these results. Epistemic defenses of democracy argue that democracies have the upper hand when it comes to truth, identifying the laws and policies that are truly just or conducive to the common good. A number of epistemic democrats claim that democracies have this beneficial connection to truth because of the type of deliberative environment created by democratic political institutions. Democratic political cultures make it easier to exchange and give reasons, ultimately improving the justification that citizens have for their political beliefs. With this improved justification comes a better chance at truth, or so the story goes. In this paper, I show that attempts to forge a connection between justification and truth in epistemology have encountered numerous difficulties, making the case that this causes trouble for deliberative epistemic defenses of democracy as well. If there is no well-defined connection between truth and justification, then increasing the justification that citizens have for their beliefs may not also increase the likelihood that those beliefs are true, revealing a serious flaw in charting a connection between political justification and political truth.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2023
Against the maximizing conception of practical rationality, Michael Slote has argued that rationa... more Against the maximizing conception of practical rationality, Michael Slote has argued that rationality does not always require choosing what is most rational. Instead, it can sometimes be rational to do something that is less than fully rational. In this paper, I will argue that maximizers have a ready response to Slote's position. Roy Sorensen has argued that 'rational' is an absolute term, suggesting that it is not possible to be rational without being completely rational. Sorensen's view is confirmed by the fact that, by the lights of contemporary linguistics, 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective. Because 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective, being rational requires being at the top of the scale of rationality, making anyone who is not fully rational positively irrational. Contra Slote, the only way to be rational enough is to be maximally rational.
Acta Analytica, 2023
In his recent book, Knowing and Checking, Guido Melchior argues that, when we attempt to check wh... more In his recent book, Knowing and Checking, Guido Melchior argues that, when we attempt to check whether p, we tend to think that we do not know p. Melchior then uses this assumption to explain a number of puzzles about knowledge. One outstanding question for Melchior's account, however, is why this tendency exists. After all, Melchior himself argues that checking is not necessary for knowing, so why would we think that we fail to know that p when we are in the midst of checking that p? I will explore one such suggestion for why this occurs, arguing that the connection between checking and inquiry can shed light on the impact that checking has on knowing.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2022
Starting with the slogan that understanding is a 'knowledge of causes,' Stephen Grimm and John Gr... more Starting with the slogan that understanding is a 'knowledge of causes,' Stephen Grimm and John Greco have argued that understanding comes from a knowledge of dependence relations. Grounding is the trendiest dependence relation on the market, and if Grimm and Greco are correct, then instances of grounding should also give rise to understanding. In this paper, I will show that this prediction is correct-grounding does indeed generate understanding in just the way that Grimm and Greco anticipate. However, grounding examples of understanding also show that Grimm and Greco are not telling the full story when it comes to understanding. Understanding can only be generated by a particular subset of dependence relations-those dependence relations that are also explanatory. Grimm and Greco should thus appeal to a privileged class of dependence relations, relations like grounding that can give rise to explanation as well.
Teaching Philosophy, 2022
It is no secret that we, as a society, struggle to have productive conversations about race and g... more It is no secret that we, as a society, struggle to have productive conversations about race and gender. Discussions about these issues are beset with obstacles, from the inherent power dynamics between conversation partners to the fear that participants feel about saying something harmful. One practice that can help address these difficulties is intergroup dialogue-sustained, small group discussions with participants from a variety of social identities. In this paper, we detail how we incorporated intergroup dialogue into a 120 student "Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender" course, providing a blueprint for anyone who wants to help their students develop the ability to take part in fruitful conversations surrounding these challenging topics. We provide strategies for how to design intergroup dialogues to avoid many of the common pitfalls of such conversations, strategies that ultimately helped our students become more likely to initiate and participate in worthwhile discussions on race and gender. We expect our experiences to be especially helpful for instructors of large courses, where making time for small group dialogue is quite challenging, but many of the practices we used can also be adapted for smaller scale courses as well.
1,000 Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology, 2022
Suppose that a majority of jurors decide that a defendant is guilty (or not), and we want to know... more Suppose that a majority of jurors decide that a defendant is guilty (or not), and we want to know the likelihood that they reached the correct verdict. The French philosopher Marquis de Condorcet showed that we can get a mathematically precise answer, a result known as the "Condorcet Jury Theorem." Philosophers have used this theorem to argue that the majoritarian voting found in democracy can help us choose the best policies and political leaders.
Philosophical Studies, 2022
A number of authors have defended permissivism by appealing to rational supererogation, the thoug... more A number of authors have defended permissivism by appealing to rational supererogation, the thought that some doxastic states might be rationally permissible even though there are other, more rational beliefs available. If this is correct, then there are situations that allow for multiple rational doxastic responses, even if some of those responses are rationally suboptimal. In this paper, I will argue that this is the wrong approach to defending permissivism-there are no doxastic states that are rationally supererogatory. By the lights of contemporary linguistics, 'rational' is an absolute gradable adjective, and as such, can only be applied to things that satisfy the top of the scale of rationality. For this reason, it is not possible to believe what is rational while also failing to believe what is rationally optimal.
Journal of Modern Philosophy, 2022
Philosophical orthodoxy holds that Thomas Reid is an externalist concerning epistemic justificati... more Philosophical orthodoxy holds that Thomas Reid is an externalist concerning epistemic justification, characterizing Reid as holding the key to an externalist response to internalism. These externalist accounts of Reid, however, have neglected his work on prejudice, a heretofore unexamined aspect of his epistemology. Reid's work on prejudice reveals that he is far from an externalist. Despite the views Reid may have inspired, he exemplifies internalism in opting for an accessibility account of justification. For Reid, there are two normative statuses that a belief might satisfy, being blameless and having a just ground. Through reflection, a rational agent is capable of satisfying both of these statuses, making Reid an accessibility internalist about epistemic justification.
Synthese, 2022
Traditional epistemologists assumed that the most important doxastic norms were rational requirem... more Traditional epistemologists assumed that the most important doxastic norms were rational requirements on belief. This orthodoxy has recently been challenged by the work of revolutionary epistemologists on the rational requirements on credences. Revolutionary epistemology takes it that such contemporary work is important precisely because traditional epistemologists are mistaken—credal norms are more fundamental than, and determinative of, belief norms. To make sense of their innovative project, many revolutionary epistemologists have also adopted another commitment, that norms on credences are governed by a fundamental accuracy norm. Unfortunately for the revolutionary epistemologist, it has been difficult to define a measure of accuracy while maintaining that credal norms are more basic than belief norms. In this paper, I criticize one such proposal for measuring accuracy, that the accuracy of our credences should be assessed in terms of what we know, arguing that this picture ultimately cannot vindicate the revolutionary approach.
Philosophical Studies, 2022
Formal epistemologists often claim that our credences should be representable by a probability fu... more Formal epistemologists often claim that our credences should be representable by a probability function. Complete probabilistic coherence, however, is only possible for ideal agents, raising the question of how this requirement relates to our everyday judgments concerning rationality. One possible answer is that being rational is a contextual matter, that the standards for rationality change along with the situation. Just like who counts as tall changes depending on whether we are considering toddlers or basketball players, perhaps what counts as rational shifts according to whether we are considering ideal agents or creatures more like ourselves. Even though a number of formal epistemologists have endorsed this type of solution, I will argue that there is no way to spell out this contextual account that can make sense of our everyday judgments about rationality. Those who defend probabilistic coherence requirements will need an alternative account of the relationship between real and ideal rationality.
The Prindle Post, 2023
The Supreme Court has maintained that race-neutral admissions policies are preferable to race-con... more The Supreme Court has maintained that race-neutral admissions policies are preferable to race-conscious approaches, while nevertheless continuing to allow for race-conscious practices. How do we make sense of this? In this article, I use the ideas of ideal and nonideal justice to understand how the Court might maintain that it is not always best to implement the ideal policy.
The Prindle Post
Political issues are often very complex, calling for competency in history, economics, sociology,... more Political issues are often very complex, calling for competency in history, economics, sociology, and political science, amongst other disciplines. Because we cannot be experts in all these fields, such complexities call for a large degree of intellectual humility, transforming the way that we approach and think about challenging political issues.
New Work in Philosophy, 2023
The Prindle Post, 2023
It is widely thought that moral education is not compatible with the mission of higher education.... more It is widely thought that moral education is not compatible with the mission of higher education. In this article, I point out that the issue is a bit more complicated. There are some virtues, like honesty, that play a key role in university life, making it possible that other moral virtues like justice and compassion might also be important for helping students succeed at their colleges and universities.
The Prindle Post, 2023
An important aspect of liberal democracies is their ability to accommodate reasonable pluralism. ... more An important aspect of liberal democracies is their ability to accommodate reasonable pluralism. Many take this to mean that democracies should be completely hands-off when it comes to the moral formation of its citizens. In this article, I use Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach to argue that there are certain virtues that are necessary for leading self-directed lives, giving even liberal democracies reason to encourage particular minimal virtues in their citizens.
The Prindle Post, 2023
Who is responsible for growing political polarization? To many, the answer is obvious: Irrational... more Who is responsible for growing political polarization? To many, the answer is obvious: Irrational voters are to blame. This irrationality results in motivated, in-group reasoning that only serves to further deepen the political divide. In this piece, I examine a perspective that holds that polarization results, not from irrationality, but from rational responses by voters to their limited epistemic resources.
Daily Nous, 2022
If you're reading this blog, we don't need to tell you that there are a number of challenges to a... more If you're reading this blog, we don't need to tell you that there are a number of challenges to allowing undergraduates to have a class-wide, free-for-all conversation about the philosophy of race or the philosophy of gender. Nevertheless, ongoing dialogue is an important part of doing philosophy, making it a priority to teach students how to discuss even the most challenging of topics. In order to help students build the necessary skills to have constructive conversations about race and gender, we used an Innovation in Teaching Grant from the AAPT to create a course centered around weekly dialogue groups. In this post, we will describe the structure and format of our dialogue groups, explain how they were able to overcome some obvious challenges, and provide you with the resources to create dialogue groups in your classes.
Blog of the American Philosophical Association, 2021
One of the most difficult parts of college-level instruction is assessing the effectiveness of yo... more One of the most difficult parts of college-level instruction is assessing the effectiveness of your teaching. Many of the conventional methods for measuring student achievement are far from guaranteed indicators of course quality. Student course evaluations notoriously favor professors who water down course content, while rampant grade inflation makes the comparison of grades across courses and semesters completely unreliable in assessing instructional quality. Measuring the effectiveness of our courses is a priority for us at the Philosophy as a Way of Life Project. We want to know if our courses are helping students to live more philosophically, and how to introduce targeted interventions when we do not accomplish our course goals. In what follows, I will detail what our research has revealed about assessing the efficacy of college courses and how you can integrate these insights as you fashion your own classes for this coming semester.
Blog of the American Philosophical Association, 2021
The Florida State University Philosophy Club began in 2015 as the product of a few especially ded... more The Florida State University Philosophy Club began in 2015 as the product of a few especially dedicated students who wanted to create a closer community of budding philosophers on campus. Meetings are held once a week and scheduled to be an hour and a half in length, but discussions often run into the two-hour range. Each week, the discussion revolves around a pre-selected area in philosophy. In some cases, a series of discussions are held surrounding topics in a similar field, and on other occasions, polls are conducted to see what the members are interested in. Every semester also features numerous invited guests, including professors and graduate students from both within and outside the Florida State philosophy community. This past academic year included talks with PhD candidate Alex Schaefer on the responsibilities of the state, PhD candidate Caleb Dewey on moral objectivity, Professor Stephen Kearns on moral language, graduate student Kevin Hollahan on inductive risk in science, and Paul Rezkalla on evolutionary debunking arguments.
Philosophers' Cocoon, 2020
It is often difficult to tell when you're improving as an instructor. Good student evaluations ca... more It is often difficult to tell when you're improving as an instructor. Good student evaluations can be manufactured by watering down the course content, and grading can be inconsistent and inflated from semester to semester. These problems are exacerbated by the online environment-with less face-to-face contact with students, it is even more difficult to tell how student outcomes compare to past semesters. In this post, I will provide a step-by-step outline of our research-driven methodology for assessing the courses we have created at the Philosophy as a Way of Life Project, an approach which remains effective even when the majority of instruction happens in the digital classroom.
Blog of the American Philosophical Association, 2020
The current challenges to creating engaging philosophy courses are obvious. The majority of class... more The current challenges to creating engaging philosophy courses are obvious. The majority of classes remain fully or partially online, decreasing student motivation and preventing the valuable connections with their peers and professors that come from in-person instruction. Even though these circumstances are still fairly recent, these sorts of challenges to creating engaging online college courses are not. Not long ago, many prominent voices thought that physical college campuses would quickly become a thing of the past, replaced by massive open online courses that were more effective both pedagogically and financially. These predictions turned out to be premature, as some of these courses had completion rates as low as 5%, demonstrating the significant obstacles to creating an engaging virtual academic environment. As part of our ongoing series, in today’s post I will discuss how you can increase student engagement by creating courses that emphasize both human connection and immersive assignments regardless of whether they are taught online or in-person.
Philosophy, Ethics, Academia, 2020
In the not too distant past, many predicted that massive open online courses (MOOCs) would conque... more In the not too distant past, many predicted that massive open online courses (MOOCs) would conquer the educational landscape, offering learning opportunities that rivaled the college experience in quality while forgoing the expensive price tag. That of course never happened. Learning online without an engaged instructor created feelings of isolation, resulting in course completion rates as low as 5%. It was just like having an absentee instructor. Students who don’t receive timely instructor feedback report feeling frustrated, depressed, and less motivated. As it turns out, divorcing the educational project from an interactive educational community might not have been such a good idea after all. This, of course, is now everyone’s challenge. The majority of philosophy instructors are set to teach in online or hybrid formats for the foreseeable future, necessitating that they create the sense of community that the MOOCs failed to, lest their philosophy classes see drops across the board in student engagement, achievement, and retention. But where to start? How is it possible to create a course community when everyone will only be accessing the course remotely? In what follows, I will give some suggestions to help create an engaging online environment, emphasizing measures that can both increase instructor presence and boost peer-to-peer communication.
Daily Nous, 2020
Many universities responded to the onset of COVID-19 by offering pass/fail grading for the spring... more Many universities responded to the onset of COVID-19 by offering pass/fail grading for the spring semester, a move meant to lighten the burden on students negatively affected by the pandemic. The question remains, however, whether pass/fail grading will still be available this coming fall. Large numbers of students will contract the novel coronavirus, most likely far more than in the spring, and many more will have to care for ailing family members. If universities ceased to offer letter grades in the spring, then shouldn’t they also do so in the fall? In this post, I will make some suggestions for how you can assess your students during the pandemic whether or not your course is using letter grades, using strategies that both check for understanding and enhance student outcomes.
Blog of the American Philosophical Association, 2020
With this proliferation of ed-tech tools, there is a temptation for instructors to start planning... more With this proliferation of ed-tech tools, there is a temptation for instructors to start planning for their fall courses by deciding on which tool or platforms they’ll be using. This would be a mistake, as we can see -- on a massive scale -- by considering the case of the now-defunct Institute for Transformational Learning. The Institute poured millions of dollars into a hybrid bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences for UT Rio Grande Valley, a project that had a dedicated learning platform and app, only for the university to abandon it. The problem? The design team put tech before teaching. They did not work closely enough with the faculty, preferring instead to deliver a product with technological appeal but short on the functionality needed by individual professors. This kind of story is all too common, with tech companies offering broad services and platforms that are sometimes difficult to adapt to particular classroom needs. A one-size-fits-all approach fails when it comes to teaching just a classroom of students. Why think that there would be one tool that works for all online philosophy classrooms? Finding a flawless ed-tech tool is not the best way to start putting your course in an online format. Instead, decide what you want to prioritize this fall semester and then find the tools with the functionality necessary to make that vision a reality. Here are four strategies for getting the planning started.