Publications [Preprints ARE AVAILABLE ON academia.edu]
- "Real Quantitativeness: What Formal Investigations Can(not) Show" (forthcoming) Book Review: J. E. Wolff (2020) The Metaphysics of Quantity. Metascience.
- "Stipulative Agency." (2021). Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility vol 7: 7-31.
- "An Imaginative Person's Guide to Objective Modality." (2021). In: Christopher Badura & Amy Kind (ed). Epistemic Uses of Imagination. Routledge: 44-62.
- "The Phenomenology and Metaphysics of the Open Future." (2021). Philosophical Studies. 178(12): 3895-3921
- "Being Pessimistic about the Objective Present." (2020) Synthese. 11311-11326.
- "Metaphysics of Quantity and the Limit of Phenomenal Concept." (2019) Inquiry 62(3): 247-266.
- "Is Imagination Too Liberal for Modal Epistemology?" (2018) Synthese 195(5): pp. 2155–2174.
WORK IN PROGRESS [dRAFTS ARE AVAILABLE oN REQUEST]
- A paper against against the existence of an agent's credence about their own current intentional actions
- A paper about the distinction between justification for acquiring a belief and justification for maintaining a belief about one's intentional actions
- A paper about the counter possible foundation of the definitions of our SI units and its implications for the problem of vagueness
- A paper challenging the popular approach to account for the first person knowledge of an agent by appealing to the fact that such knowledge is essential to well-functioning agency
Research summary
My primary research interest is the structure of agency. I approach this topic from multiple angles, which lead me to publish in several sub-fields in philosophy:
- The epistemology of action
- The metaphysics of time
- The metaphysics and epistemology of modality
EPISTEMOLOGY OF ACTION
I’m interested in the first-person knowledge associated with intentional actions. If a person performs an intentional action X, she knows that she is X-ing. I call this kind of first-person knowledge agential knowledge. In the paper “Stipulative Agency” (2021, Oxford Studies of Agency and Responsibility vol. 7), I develop a new theory of agential knowledge: the Stipulative Theory. One widely held starting point in theorizing about agential knowledge is that it’s non-observational. Although observations help us execute our intentional actions properly, agents don’t typically learn about what intentional actions they are performing via observations. We need an account of the non-observational character of our agential knowledge. The Stipulative Theory characterizes our agential knowledge as an instance of the Kripkean contingent a priori. A person who uses a stick to introduce the measurement unit “meter” knows a priori that the stick is a meter long by stipulation. I propose that we can think about agential knowledge in the same way. An agent’s knowledge that she’s intentionally X-ing is non-observational because it’s based on her implicit stipulation that her action counts as X-ing. I show that my account outperforms other major theories in a cost-benefit analysis. In “Dialectic Delicacies in Arguing for Agential Knowledge” (draft available), I examine a popular theory that says an agent has non-observational self-knowledge because self-knowledge is essential to practical rationality or the norm of a well-functioning agency. I point out that the word “because” is ambiguous. An argument for p can either be a proof of p or be an explanation of p. I go on to argue that the fact that self-knowledge is essential to practical rationality, even if true, can serve neither as a proof nor an explanation of the non-observational character of an agent’s knowledge about her intentional actions. MODALITY
Intentional actions typically involve making choices among possibilities. The metaphysics and epistemology of modality are, therefore, indispensable for properly understanding the nature of agency. I focus on two issues about modality: first, the role imagination plays in justifying modal beliefs; second, how modality and chance relate to one another. In “Is Imagination too Liberal for Modal Epistemology?” (2018, Synthese), I argue against modal skeptics who first distinguish two kinds of imagination – the ones with sensory imagery and the ones that are non-sensory – and who then argue that non-sensory imagination is too liberal to be evidence for modal beliefs. I concede that non-sensory imagination is liberal (i.e., there is little limit to what we can imagine). But the skeptics fail to show that non-sensory imagination is tooliberal so that it is not only fallible but unsuitable to serve as a source of modal justification. In “An Imaginative Person’s Guide to Objective Modality” (2021, The Epistemic Use of Imagination), I bring chance and modality together to explains the way epistemic defeaters work regarding our imagination-based modal justification. Although perceptual justification can be defeated by information about the causal origin of one’s perception, as long as I’m really imagining x, information about the causal origin of my imagination cannot undermine my justification for believing that x is possible. Why? Here’s my proposal. The fact that something is possible just is the fact that it has a non-zero chance. Let’s assume Lewis’s Principal Principle: our credence for p should track the objective chance of p. Let’s further assume that (due to Bayes’ Theorem) we shouldn’t think that there is evidence for p unless our credence for p is non-zero. Based on these assumptions, that there is evidence for the possibility of something deductively entails its possibility. So, if imagination is evidence for possibility, the justification it provides cannot be defeated by information about its causal origin. Such justification can be defeated only by information that indicates that, although we appear to have imagined so and so, such imagining didn’t really occur. I have started working on a new project that further explores the intricate relation between chance and modality, and this relation’s relevance to agency. According to libertarianism, free will requires a choice between metaphysical possibilities. The view faces the objection that it implausibly reduces free choices into chancy events which we have no control over. In this project, I combine an original argument against the existence of an agent's first-person credence about what she is doing intentionally ("Not Being Sure of Myself", draft available) and Jenann Ismael's deflationary account of objective chances to develop a version of libertarianism that says that the alternative paths in a free choice have no well-defined probabilities and hence not chancy in any meaningful way. |
METAPHYSICS OF TIME
Action and time are intimately connected phenomena. In “The Phenomenology and Metaphysics of the Open Future” (2021, Philosophical Studies), I bring the action theory literature and the metaphysics of time literature together. Intuitively, there is something we can do about the future but not the past. I demonstrate that, when our agency is properly understood, there is something we can do about the present just as there is something we can do about the future. A good metaphysics of time should allow the present to be open in the same way as the future is. This opens up an uncharted territory in the metaphysics of time. I argue that the major extant metaphysics of time have difficulty fully accommodating an open present. I develop a novel metaphysics that can do so. In “Ex Ante Justification of Agential Knowledge” (draft available), I bring Goldman’s distinction between ex anteand ex post justification to bear on our understanding of the rationality of our agential knowledge. Ex ante justification is the justification for acquiring a belief before one has the belief. Ex post justification is the justification for maintaining a belief one already has. Fully rational beliefs should be justified both ex ante and ex post. I argue that a popular approach to agential knowledge explain its justification by factors that don’t typically exist before we form the beliefs about our intentional actions. Hence, even if these theories adequately explain our agential knowledge’s ex post justification, they cannot account for its ex ante justification. I offer an original solution to this problem, with a price in one’s metaphysics of time. Finally, I have also published on philosophy of time that is independent of the issue of agency. In everyday life, we describe temporal reality in terms of the tenses: past, present, and future. In “Being Pessimistic about the Objective Present” (2020, Synthese), I argue that if we treat past, present, and future as objective features of reality, we will face a pessimistic induction which concludes that we don’t know that this moment is present. I demonstrate why this pessimistic induction about the tenses is immune to the typical responses to the pessimistic induction in the context of philosophy of science. SIDE PROJECT: Scientific Measurement
Besides agency, I also have a side interest in the nature of quantities (i.e., properties that come in degrees) and scientific measurement. In “Metaphysics of Quantity and the Limit of Phenomenal Concept” (2019, Inquiry), I explore the anti-physicalist implications of conceiving of consciousness as a quantity. In a new paper “Quantitative Vagueness” (draft available), I show that the current definitions of the measuring units for the base physical quantities (e.g., the standard second) rely heavily on counter-possible idealizations. Although appealing to counter-possible scenarios is useful for scientific explanation, counter-possible scenarios cannot establish references (or so I argue). We, therefore, have good reason to be non-cognitivists about physical measurements. This leads to an interesting upshot about the problem of vagueness |
Selected Conferences/Workshops
- "Not Being Sure of Myself" Pacific APA Symposium. 2022 [upcoming]
- "Not Being Sure of Myself" University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Philosophy Brown Bag Colloquium Talk 2021
- “Stipulative Agency” St. Louis Annual Conference on Reasons and Rationality 2020 (postponed to Aug 2021)
- "Dialectical Delicacies in Arguing for Agential Knowledge" Central APA Symposium. Online. 2021
- "Stipulative Agency" New Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility. Tulane University. 2019.
- "The Rational Beginning of Intentional Action" Eastern APA Symposium. NYC. 2019.
- "The Rational Beginning of Intentional Action" Virginia Philosophical Association Meeting. Arlington. 2018.
- "The Dilemma Defense and Remaining Agnostic in the Right Way." Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Agency Conference. Florida State University. 2017.
- Philosophy and Physical Computing Workshop. Virginia Tech. 2017.
- "The Magnitudes Beyond Our Mind." New Directions in the Study of the Mind Project. Cambridge University. 2016.