About Me
I'm a graduate student in the philosophy department at the University of Notre Dame. I received a B.A. in philosophy from UC Irvine in 2005.
My primary research interests lie in epistemology, particularly with questions about the nature of rationality, knowledge and evidence; this last topic is the primary concern of my dissertation, An Essay on Evidence.
Besides epistemology, I also have interests in philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, philosophy of religion, metaphysics and cognitive psychology.
Papers in progress
Drafts of the following papers are available on request. When papers are submitted for review, they will disappear from this list.
"Quarrels without End": In this paper, I explore how widespread and persistent disagreement among religions may exert skeptical pressure on religious commitments.
"On False Evidence": Several theories of evidence claim that all evidence, where evidence is conceived of in propositional terms, must be true. I give an argument for the opposite claim.
"Rochester Evidentialism": Rochester Evidentialism is the epistemology that has been articulated and defended ably by Earl Conee and Richard Feldman for the past twenty-five years. In this essay, I aim to expose some problems for Rochester Evidentialism.
"Propositionalism": Many theories of evidence conceive of evidence in propositional terms. I discuss some problems for such theories.
"How to Think About Evidence": Much theorizing about evidence occurs in the absence of a solid conception for how we ought to approach questions about the nature of evidence. In this paper, I lay out the beginnings of a framework for answering questions about evidence; the central component of this framework is the idea of the fundamental evidential role. I also explore the implications for thinking about evidence in the way proposed.
"Knowledge First and Divine Foreknowledge": In this paper I propose a new response to the argument that divine foreknowledge and creaturely free action are incompatible that turns on recent work done on the nature of knowledge.