I write on issues in epistemology, social epistemology, ethics, metaethics, and religion. I have projects in the works related to post-truth explanations, conversion, radicalization and extremism, humility, and self and other licensing. I worry about overconfidence, divisions in belief, and people's resistance to changing their minds. I am especially interested in the ways people's self-conceptions interact with their belief and opinion management. I'm starting to think seriously about epistemic, ethical, and political issues related to climate change.
Publications The Fragile Epistemology of Fanaticism Higher-Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology (forthcoming) [Invited] Conversion, Causes, and Closed-Mindedness Journal of the American Philosophical Association (forthcoming) The Word of a Reluctant Convert Synthese (forthcoming) Second-Best Epistemology: Fallibility and Normativity Philosophical Studies (forthcoming) Evidence and Fallibility Episteme (forthcoming) Higher-Order Defeat is Object-Independent Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99(2) (2018): 248-269 Indoctrination Anxiety and the Etiology of Belief (with Robert Simpson) Synthese 193 (2016): 3079-3098 Probabilistic Promotion Revisited (with Jeff Behrends) Philosophical Studies 173(7) (2016): 1735-1754 Reason to Promotion Inferences (with Jeff Behrends) Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (2015) Finlay and Schroeder on Promoting a Desire (with Jeff Behrends) Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (2011)
Work in Progress I welcome feedback. Please email me for drafts or with comments. A paper on disagreement with converts. A paper on moral and epistemic self-licensing. A paper on the rationality of prejudice, extremism, and beliefs formed and sustained in echo chambers.
Ideas Being Baked Reasonable person standards in the law Information cascades, social media, and self-licensing More on the relation between testimony and conversion The relation between love, respect, and conversion The nature of religious, moral, and political "belief" and how this informs questions about conversion The idea (found in Ta-Nehisi Coates and Baldwin, among other places) that there is a moral imperative to see reality as it is Miscarriage and abortion Transformative experience and autonomy in medicine Transformative experience and epistemic injustice