Research

Below you'll find my papers, drafts, and some ideas that are still churning. If any of them are of interest please don't hesitate to reach out! Feedback is very welcome.

My research explores the intersections of epistemology, philosophy of action, philosophy of science, and social philosophy. I also have deep-seated research and teaching interests in areas of political philosophy,  the philosophy of law, as well as tech and business ethics.

Across these disparate areas, what I am especially interested in are how the ties that bind us socially have ramifications for proceeding rationally in cooperative settings, especially those where discovering the truth or achieving agreement is our goal. Much of this work is developed in my dissertation, you can read more about it here.

My current research program explores the impact of cooperation on epistemic life. I am thinking a lot about how shared inquiry affects our ways of navigating a vast and uncertain epistemic landscape; the promise (and perils) of shared scientific inquiry with AI systems, and questions about the natures of evidence, doubt, and cooperation.

Published

• “Cooperation and Shared Inquiry" Australasian Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming):  Unpacks and defends a variant of central norm of inquiring-together owed to Harman (1986).  In so doing, a general account of shared inquiry is developed, one which sheds light on the complex and surprising relationship between human cooperation and epistemic rationality.

• “Expert Judgment: Overlooked Epistemic Reasons” w/ Dunja Šešelja & Will Fleisher. The Epistemology of Experts (eds.) Peter Brossel, Anna-Maria Astuna-Eder, and Thomas Grundmann (forthcoming): Argues that simple evidentialist models of expert judgment are inadequate. Expert judgment must be informed by higher-order evidence and inquisitive reasons to play its social and epistemic function.

• "Zetetic Rights and Wrong(ings)" Philosophical Quarterly (2025): Defends a class of “zetetic rights” rights distinctive to group inquirers. Zetetic rights protect important central interests of inquirers. Building on arguments by Fricker (2015), explores cases in which zetetic rights are violated: zetetic wronging. Zetetic wronging is distinctive, pervasive, and merits further attention. Publisher's Version.

• “Intentions and Inquiry”  Mind (2025): Defends an approach to understanding inquiry that draws on intentions to answer questions. Shows this approach can offer compelling grounding for controversial zetetic norms. Publisher's Version. NWIP Blog Post.

• “Scientific Disagreement, Fast Science, and Higher-Order Evidence” (w/ Dunja Šešelja). Philosophy of Science (2023).  Publisher's Version

Drafts Available/In Progress/Under Review

• *Title Redacted For Review*: Paper on AI science and scientific discovery.

• *Title Redacted For Review* : Paper on outstanding evidence.

• *Title Redacted For Review*:  Paper on inquiry together with AI.

• *Title Redacted For Review* : Paper on epistemic errors in shared inquiry.

• *Title Redacted For Review* : Paper on shared inquiry and evidence one should have had.

• *Title Redacted For Review*: Paper on the epistemic merits of scientific deliberation

• "Interpretability (Propositional and Mechanistic) Needs Ecologically Sensitive Behavioral Analysis" w/ Eamon Duede (draft available): Offers skepticism about recent strategies exploring whether LLMs realize folk-psychological mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions. Defends a different methodology to answering the central questions upon which these attributions turn: ecologically sensitive behavioral analysis.

• "Why Share Inquiry?" (draft available): Argues that shared inquiry functions as a universal socio-epistemic means. Compares its value to other forms of epsitemic interaction.

• "The Costs of Cooperation" (draft): Cooperation in the workplace is a good thing, right? Corporate America’s push for workplace cooperation is taken to yield important benefits. Insights from social philosophy and action theory, however, reveal the hidden costs of workplace cooperation, including alienation and breakdowns of shared reasoning.

• “Against Epistemic Nihilism” (draft available): Are norms of inquiry genuinely epistemic? Nihilists say no: there are no epistemic norms of inquiry, thus no need for revolution to the canons of epistemic normativity. However, discussion has concerned only norms for individual inquirers. When we turn to norms for group inquiry, we can see how nihilists are mistaken.

• "Neither Interpersonal nor Institutional, but Interpersonal: The Structure of Scientific Success" w/ Eamon Duede (in preparation). Defends an account of scientific success as owed to characteristic forms of interpersonal interaction between scientists. Shows that this explanation of scientific success avoids recent objections to "invisible hand accounts" as well as worries appealing to epistemic virtues of individual scientists.

• “Scaling Up Shared Inquiry” (in preparation): Develops and defends a reductive and parsimonious account of massive and diffuse shared inquiry, by appeal to the attitudes in agents’ heads.

• "The End of (Shared) Action" (in preparation): Explores the significance of the common failure of overlap in execution/success conditions for much action. Argues that this failure of overlap can often be productive in a surprising way.

• "Evidence: (What) Is It? What (Should) It Be?" (in preparation): Explores core functions evidence plays in various contexts and derives constraints for any compelling account.

• All Doubts Matter: (in preparation): Explores the idea that, given recent connections between epistemic anxiety and doubt, all doubts, not just reasonable ones, matter epistemically. 

Future Work

• “Reciprocal Reasoning,” defends a reciprocal aim for an important form of social reasoning, concerned with mutual improvement.

• “Shared Inquiry, Shared Democracy” shows that by turning to shared inquiry, epistemic arguments for deliberative democracy can meet recent challenges.

• “Epistemic Solidarity,” develops an account of epistemic solidarity, which concerns taking on board the modes of inquiry of one’s fellows.

• “Esoteric Epistemology and Epistemic Standards,” explores the social function of epistemic standards, and argues that a healthy epistemic community should,  surprisingly, tolerate and even cultivate non-compliance.

• In the longer term, I intend to develop a philosophical account of epistemic cooperation which is informed by models and empirical results from work in anthropology, communication studies, economics, evolutionary biology, and social psychology. I plan to use the account to illuminate the centrality of working together across important human institutions, beyond just inquiry: testimony, disagreement, scientific communication, as well as friendship and social planning, among others.