Research Overview

My research focuses on epistemology, especially social and applied. Within social epistemology, I’m interested in how real agents should manage belief, trust, and uncertainty under non-ideal conditions. Much of my work centers on testimonial trust and epistemic dependence, asking what it means to be responsible in environments where information is opaque, ambiguous, contested, or morally and politically fraught. I draw on tools and concepts from a range of areas, including virtue theory, formal epistemology, and the philosophy of science. My ultimate aim is to produce action-guiding epistemology that helps us think more clearly in an increasingly complex and fractured world. In applied epistemology, I use this approach to think about issues related to prejudice, conspiracy theorizing, and polarization. Beyond these topics, I have interests in the epistemology of perception, the theory of evidence, the ethics of belief, and metaepistemology.

Publications

Papers in Progress

  • “Permissive Trust:” I argue that testimonial evidence often underdetermines the appropriate level of trust in speakers, making trust epistemically permissive and allowing pragmatic factors to legitimately influence trust decisions among rationally permissible options.

  • “The Tragedy of Trust:” I show how trust in others can create epistemic feedback loops as it unfolds and evolves through our prolonged trusting relationships. These feedback loops give rise to diachronic tragedies: situations in which a series of belief updates, each of which was rationally permissible, leads one away from the truth. This offers a new mechanism for polarization and persistent disagreement, which may arise from the nature and dynamics of trust itself instead of irrationality.

  • “From Rational Trust to Virtuous Trust:” The permissive and tragic nature of trust renders rational trust quite thin. On this basis, I argue that we need an account of virtuous trust, where virtuous trust may diverge from the requirements of synchronic rationality in order to secure better long-run epistemic performance.

  • “Rethinking Evidence Resistance:” The standard view of evidence resistance — roughly, failing to update one’s beliefs correctly in light of one’s evidence — assumes we can readily identify it when we see it and treats evidence resistance as straightforwardly irrational. I argue that this is too hasty: what appears to be evidence resistance can involve rationally permissible ways of navigating genuine uncertainty about what one’s evidence is and what it supports.

  • “Degrading the Epistemic Commons:” I argue that when we negligently form false or irrational beliefs by failing to make wise use of our epistemic resources, we degrade the quality of the epistemic resources available to others in our community, harming them by making it more difficult for them to reach the truth by employing those very resources. I then explore whether this underwrites moral obligations to form beliefs responsibly and steward our epistemic resources wisely.

Presentations

Upcoming

  • “Negligent Belief and the Degradation of the Epistemic Commons,” PPE Society Annual Meeting, November 2025.

  • “Rational Trust and Virtuous Trust,” Auburn University (invited), March 2026

Past

  • “Prejudiced Testimony and Dynamic Epistemic Vigilance,” Applied Epistemology Project Works in Progress Series, December 2024

  • “Right-Kind Reasons Constitutivism and Moderate Moral Encroachment,” 2024 Eastern APA

  • “Perceptual Experience Cannot Be Rational,” 2023 Central APA

  • “Moral Progress and Radical (Meta)epistemology,” Austin Graduate Ethics and Normativity Talks (AGENT) Conference, University of Texas - Austin, November 2022