Publications
(European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2022)
Abstract:
Arguments from divine hiddenness attempt to show that God, as understood by traditional theists, does not exist. Eleonore Stump has claimed that, contrary to a key premise in such arguments, it is possible for God to have a personal relationship with human beings who do not believe that he exists. In this paper I describe Stump’s defense of divine hiddenness, as well as her account of the human will. I show that her account of the knowledge of persons does not solve the problem of divine hiddenness. I also argue that Stump’s account of the will commits her to the claim that nonbelief in God entails resistance to God. I conclude with a few potential replies and my own responses to them.
Papers under Review
How to Collaborate Well
(revised and resubmitted)
Abstract:
How do we collaborate with others? Perhaps more importantly, how do we collaborate well with others? In this paper, I will attempt to answer this second question. The term ‘collaboration’ is used across a wide range of contexts to describe a variety of activities. Yet, we seem to point to particular cases of collaboration with ease. We can also easily distinguish paradigmatic cases of collaboration from cases which obviously fail to count as collaboration at all, and from cases which fail to count as ideal collaboration. In this paper, I look at cases of good collaboration, cases in which persons collaborate well with one another, to determine what is needed to collaborate well. In this paper, I first discuss two famous cases of ideal collaboration in detail, one in the sciences and the other in the arts. I then proceed to describe the similarities between these cases, such as the openness and respect between collaborators, the flexibility in the shared plans of the collaborators, and the thoughtful criticism and debate that occurs within good collaboration. These characteristics of the two cases help us understand why we take them to be cases of good collaboration. The conclusion of the paper is that collaborating well involves shared norms, a shared vision, and the open-mindedness and thoughtful disagreement that both come with mutual respect among participants.
The Sui Generis Nature of Inquiring with Others
(under review)
Abstract:
In this paper, I argue that a certain type of social-epistemic phenomenon is in need of its own analysis within social epistemology. Inquiring together, which involves multiple persons working together to answer some question or pursue some line of reasoning, is an epistemic activity whose social characteristics are important to its epistemic nature. I begin by describing collaborative inquiry by example, detailing its characteristic features in the process. I then provide an argument for the claim that inquiring with others requires new analysis. Given three main categories that pervade the literature, epistemic systems, information exchange and group epistemology, I argue that inquiring together is not an instance of any of these three types. I defend the main premise of that argument by way of two different hypothetical cases, explaining that collaborative inquiry can occur and succeed in its aims without taking place at the level of an epistemic system, without using information exchange, and without resulting in group knowledge. So, collaborative inquiry is sui generis, deserving analysis of its own.
(under review)
Abstract:
Since the inception of analytic social epistemology, some have attempted to characterize the precise nature of the field. In this paper, I discuss the foundational features of social epistemology, as described by other social epistemologists. I then detail Alvin Goldman’s taxonomy of social epistemology and defend my own version, arguing that each phenomenon described in the literature to date can be fitted into one of three categories. These categories of social-epistemic phenomena are epistemic systems, group epistemic states, and information exchange. I describe each of these categories in depth, in order to show precisely how various phenomena fit into such categories. Finally, I detail a few theories in social epistemology that extend beyond these three categories, showing a way for epistemologists to move beyond the tripartite taxonomy.