(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.

(Open-access published version; Penultimate version)

Abstract: Identity-protective reasoning---motivated reasoning driven by defending a social identity---is often dismissed as a paradigm of epistemic vice and a key driver of democratic dysfunction. Against this view, I argue that identity-protective reasoning can play a positive epistemic role, both individually and collectively. Collectively, it facilitates an effective division of cognitive labor by enabling groups to test divergent beliefs, serving as an epistemic insurance policy against the possibility that the total evidence is misleading. Individually, it can correct for the distortions that arise from taking ideologically skewed evidence at face value. This is particularly significant for members of marginalized groups, who frequently encounter evidence that diminishes the value of their identities, beliefs, and practices, and in contexts where elite capture, not polarization, is the central threat to democracy.

(Penultimate version)

Reasoning that leads to delusions—especially in schizophrenia—appears beyond the bounds of sense, profoundly inaccessible. I argue against this view and propose an alternative characterization of delusion-supporting reasoning in terms of a distinctive maverick epistemic style, a distinctive implementation of reason rather than its absence, a style whose adoption is intelligible in light of experiences distinctive of schizophrenia.

(Penultimate version)

I review Mona Simion’s excellent book Resistance to Evidence, drawing connections with my own work on the nature of belief. A central focus is on comparing naturalistic vs. social accounts of epistemic normativity.

(Penultimate version)

Abstract: Identity labels are widely thought to undermine agency by essentializing groups, flattening individual distinctiveness, and enforcing discrimination. While we take these worries to be well-founded, we argue that they result from a particular practice, of using labels to rigidly label others. We identify an alternative practice, of playful self-labeling, and argue that it can function as a tool for combating oppression by expressing and enhancing individual and collective agency.

(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)

I offer a novel argument for a version of the view that belief is constitutively responsive to evidence, one that appeals to the notion of capacities. I do so by developing the Sellarsian idea that the concept of belief functions to mark the space of reasons in a non-intellectualist and naturalistic direction. The resulting view of belief does justice to the role of belief in social interactions, joint deliberation, and rational persuasion, while including evidence-resistant beliefs and animal beliefs as genuine beliefs, and has a range of further benefits for epistemology and philosophy of mind.

(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; Handout; Tongue-in-cheek summary for New Work in Philosophy Substack)

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.

(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; Portuguese translation!)

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 available upon request)

Online misinformation is often blamed for contemporary epistemic pathology by spreading misinformation, i.e., false or misleading evidence. I argue that the internet makes a different, underappreciated contribution to epistemic pathology: it reshapes users’ epistemic agency. Specifically, I argue that the algorithmic web (the social-media-centered internet that has become dominant since the early 2010s) inculcates and habituates agents to new, and often epistemically detrimental, epistemic styles. Our online lives change how we interact with evidence, not just what evidence we have. I discuss key design features of major online platforms that contribute to this, and sketch one concrete example of an epistemic style promoted by online engagement. Finally, I argue that this under-explored phenomenon is worrisome from both political and epistemic perspectives.

(Draft)

Abstract: Reasoning that supports delusions in schizophrenia appears to lie beyond the bounds of sense. I argue against this view by analyzing such reasoning as constituting a distinctive epistemic style, one that makes sense by the lights of underlying epistemic values.

(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.