In progress (happy to share)
Paper on peer disagreement & the normativity of assertion (under review)
Disagreement is common. What happens when epistemic peers disagree over some issue p, where A believes p but B believes not-p? Conciliationism says that both A and B should suspend judgment after learning of their disagreement. But suppose A is the first to assert on the matter. B is then the first to learn of their disagreement. Does B have warrant to assert not-p in response? Answering this question leads to a surprising conclusion: the epistemic norm of assertion is incompatible with conciliationism.
Paper on disagreement, testimony, and assertion (under review)
There are two questions at the core of the epistemology of disagreement. The first concerns whether learning of peer disagreement provides one with a higher-order defeater. The second concerns when it is reasonable to believe that someone is an epistemic peer. This paper focuses on the second question while assuming that conciliationism — that is, an affirmative answer to the first question — is true. In doing so, I argue if you are a conciliationist, then you should be an anti-reductionist about testimony-based justification and a proponent of the thesis that assertion is governed by a robustly epistemic norm. In big picture terms, this paper hopes to show how various core issues in social epistemology, such as peer disagreement, testimony-based justification, and the norm of assertion, are more intimately connected than has previously been recognized.
Paper on the norm of assertion, functionalist norms, & practical stakes (under review)
Many think that classical invariantism (CI) is the default view of the semantics of ‘know’, and many think that knowledge is the norm of assertion (KNA). The shiftiness dilemma challenges the claim that CI and KNA are compatible. What, then, is required to defeat the shiftiness dilemma? Perhaps, what is needed are independent grounds in support of CI/KNA compatibility. Mona Simion (2021), for example, appeals to a functionalist framework of normativity in an attempt to deliver this result. In this paper, I raise some concerns for Simion’s proposal but then offer a revised proposal instead. In sum, I argue that the revised functionalist proposal enjoys more prior plausibility and does a better job grounding CI/KNA compatibility.
Paper on peer disagreement & hinge epistemology (under review)
We disagree about a lot of things. Sometimes, we disagree with people who (we should think) are as intelligent and as well-informed as we are. Epistemologists say that in such cases, we disagree with an epistemic peer. How should we respond when we learn that we disagree with an epistemic peer? Conciliationism is the view which says that you are rationally required to reduce confidence in your initial belief. In this paper, I do two things. First, I raise a problem for conciliationism. Second, I provide a solution. The problem is that the view appears to lead to widespread skepticism. The solution involves an appeal to an epistemological approach inspired by Wittgenstein’s posthumously published On Certainty. If the appeal is sound, the problem of widespread skepticism is not really a problem, after all.
“Accepting Defeat”
There are two questions at the core of the epistemology of disagreement: Does evidence of peer disagreement defeat? When is it reasonable to believe that someone is an epistemic peer? If one responds to the first affirmatively, then one is a conciliationist, but what sort of conciliationist depends on how one responds to the second. In this paper, I argue for two claims: Conciliationism is in conflict with the claim that the norm of assertion is governed by a robustly epistemic norm (ENA), but the most plausible version of conciliationism assumes that ENA is true. The result is a self-defeat problem that is conceptual in nature: it is not only novel to the peer disagreement literature, but it poses a stronger challenge to conciliationism than the more familiar, epistemic self-defeat problem.
“Systematic Disagreement & the Norm of Assertion”
Sometimes, we disagree over things like how much we owe at the end of a meal. Sometimes, we disagree over things like philosophy, politics, or religion. The first is a mundane disagreement. The second are systematic. Some think that the nature of systematic peer disagreement requires us to revise our conception of the normativity of assertion. For example, Sanford Goldberg (2015) argues that systematic disagreement shows that the content of the norm of assertion is context-sensitive. Will Fleisher (2021), on the other hand, argues that it shows that there are different types of assertion associated with different types of norms. In this paper, I argue against ENA revisionism and suggest that the traditional account fares better at explaining the evidence.