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My research project principally involves epistemic action under conditions of great uncertainty. This project begins with my dissertation in which I present a new formulation of the epistemic regress problem and use it to argue that we are always under conditions of metaepistemic uncertainty. I further argue that Pyrrhonian skepticism can help us deflate these problems by allowing us to find epochê at the order of the metaepistemic, freeing ourselves to engage in first order philosophical projects without the need for more fundamental epistemic grounding. This line of thinking naturally leads to discussions about epistemic responsibility. If we are permitted to proceed without metaepistemic grounding under conditions of great uncertainty, what norms might we still appeal to for directing epistemic action?
I am currently working on three projects that explore this question through different lenses. First, I argue that part of epistemic responsibility involves duties that we have to others qua epistemic agent. Generally speaking, the thought is that in conditions of great uncertainty, it is epistemically viscous to further pollute the epistemic landscape – not just because it is bad for the epistemic polluter, but because it violates a duty we have to other epistemic agents. This follows a line of tradition from WK Clifford who argues that bad epistemic behavior is bad in part because of the negative epistemic effects it has on others. Second, I am also working on issues pertaining to (collaborative) complex problem solving, since one way of attempting to make epistemic progress despite conditions of great uncertainty is to distribute the epistemic task across some network. In the literature on complex problem solving, epistemic landscapes can differ in their ruggedness – which is to say that some epistemic landscapes afford easier paths to finding the optimal solution while others are much more inhospitable, full of many peaks and valleys. I am working to model how epistemic agents and their epistemic landscapes form dynamic systems – thus rejecting the presumption that epistemic landscapes, with their peaks and valleys, impinge on epistemic agents without, themselves, being altered by them. This work connects back to my project on social epistemic responsibility since it reveals that our epistemic activities can alter the possibility space for relevantly connected epistemic agents in our networks. Finally, I also work on issues pertaining to epistemic injustice. Specifically, I argue that epistemic injustice is a tool to rationalize the mechanisms of broader oppressive systems. That is to say, epistemic injustice creates conditions under which broader social injustice is strengthened and maintained, which in turn promotes further epistemic injustice (now rationalized though an oppressive logic). This work demonstrates that purely epistemic interventions on epistemic injustice are incapable of resolving epistemic injustice because it is a natural result of underlying social injustice. From this it follows that some of our epistemic duties to one another might involve broader liberatory moral duties. |
EDUCATION
EXPERTISE/SKILLS
Philosophy.
SQL, R, Tableau, Sheets/Excel, Python |