(Penultimate version)

Abstract: Beliefs can be resistant to evidence. Nonetheless, the orthodox view in epistemology analyzes beliefs as evidence-responsive attitudes. I address this tension by deploying analytical tools on capacities and masking to show that the cognitive science of evidence-resistance supports rather than undermines the orthodox view. In doing so, I argue for the claim that belief requires the capacity for evidence-responsiveness. More precisely, if a subject believes that p, then they have the capacity to rationally respond to evidence bearing on p. Because capacities for evidence-responsiveness are fallible and may be masked, beliefs can be held in the face of counter-evidence. Indeed, I will argue that our best science of belief supports the claim that evidence-resistant beliefs result from masks on evidence-responsiveness capacities. This account of belief not only allows for resistance to evidence, but provides us with a framework for describing and explaining actual cases of evidence-resistance.

(Penultimate Version; Handout)

Abstract: We argue that there are epistemic, rather than merely practical or moral, norms on evidence-gathering. In doing so, we develop a test for determining whether a norm is epistemic by looking at our practices of accountability. With epistemic norms on evidence-gathering, we can defend epistemology against charges on which it looks myopic. And, with the test we develop, we can get clear on the connection between the zetetic and the epistemic.

(Draft)

Abstract: We consider cases where we treat others as “nothing more” than some social type (e.g. a woman or a Muslim). What cognitive states lead to this behavior? The standard view holds that essentialist beliefs---beliefs that attribute essences to social groups---lie behind this treatment. We argue against this view. Agents can center identities in more intuitive ways. In standard cases, agents do so by regulating their thinking using frames---e.g. slogans, memes, or images. Specifically, they use frames that focus attention on these social identities and associated stereotypes. Agents' thinking can be shaped by frames without their believing that these frames accurately describe reality. This view has important practical implications for what strategies we should employ to combat discriminatory, objectifying, and dehumanizing treatment of others.

(Penultimate version)

This chapter focuses on how delusions relate to evidence. I give some reasons to think that people typically have evidence for their delusions, and that the evidence they have against them is often overstated. I draw on this discussion to consider whether delusions are evidentially supported and epistemically rational. Finally, I discuss implications for the nature of delusion, responsibility, and treatment and suggest directions for future research. A central upshot is that what we should say about the epistemic standing of delusions depends substantively on our positions in epistemology, in particular, on the debate between internalists and externalists about evidence.

(Penultimate version)

Commentary on Pablo Hubacher Haerle’s paper “Is OCD Epistemically Irrational?”. I argue for expanding our assessment of rationality in OCD by considering a wider range of epistemic parameters and how they fit together.

(Penultimate version; 5-minute video)

Abstract: Epistemic agents can respond to the same evidence in different ways. I argue that, to explain this phenomenon, we need to appeal to epistemic styles: ways of interacting with evidence that express unified sets of epistemic values, preferences, goals, and interests. The paper introduces the notion of epistemic styles and develops a systematic account of their nature. The account has implications for normative epistemology, the scope of epistemic agency, and understanding disagreement and the value of cognitive diversity.

(Penultimate version; published version; short blog post)

Abstract: I argue that delusions are evidence-responsive in the sense that subjects have the capacity to rationally respond to counter-evidence on their delusions. The extreme evidence-resistance of delusions is a consequence of powerful masking factors on these capacities, such as strange perceptual experiences, motivational factors, and cognitive biases. This view makes room for holding both that belief is constitutively evidence-responsive and that delusions are beliefs, dissolving long-standing debates about delusions and the nature of belief. And it has important implications for the study and treatment of delusions.

(Draft; poster)

Abstract: Individual beliefs often push back against structural reform, leading such reform to fail. Troublingly, beliefs that play this role often resist the evidence, persisting in the face of structural change. This poses a problem for structuralism, which prescribes large-scale structural change without considering how to get individuals to abandon such resistant social beliefs. I argue that the structuralist has resources to address the problem of resistant social beliefs. Specifically, I argue that large-scale changes to the shape of social networks can lead to the abandonment of resistant social beliefs, addressing even forms of active psychological resistance to belief change such as identity-protective reasoning. This solution to the problem of resistant social beliefs has significant implications for the debate between structuralists and individualists. In particular, it shows that careful attention to human psychology and proposing structural interventions are compatible.

(Draft)

Abstract: Reasoning in schizophrenia appears to lie beyond the bounds of sense. For example, how are we to make sense of believing that one’s partner is unfaithful because the fifth-lamppost along on the left is unlit? By analyzing empirical results on biases in schizophrenia (with a focus on work by Todd Woodward and collaborators), I argue that reasoning in schizophrenia in fact overlaps with ordinary reasoning. Reasoning in schizophrenia is the result of setting epistemic parameters in familiar ways, indeed, in ways that we praise in other contexts. It has much in common with ways of reasoning promoted by the Enlightenment tradition. This way of reasoning can be rational in some contexts. Indeed, if their experiences were veridical, it would be rational to reason as patients with schizophrenia do. Schizophrenia emerges as primarily a disturbance of salience, with subjects doing the best they can to make sense of their unusual experiences.