My current research focuses primarily on doubt. I’m interested in what kind of attitude doubt is: whether it reduces to some other doxastic state, like credence, or whether it is sui generis; and in doubt’s normative profile: what norms govern doubt, and in particular, whether doubt is normatively compatible with belief.
I also work on inquiry, and in particular on the attitudes that inquirers typically have during their inquiries, known as ‘questioning attitudes’ or ‘interrogative attitudes’ (e.g. curiosity, wonder). Again, I’m interested in what these attitudes are, and in the norms that govern them.
From September 2025, I will be taking up a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship for my project 'Dangerous Doubts: Defects of Doubting in Epistemology, Psychology and Politics'. Here's the blurb for that:
The orthodox view in Philosophy is that doubting is always epistemically permissible: permissible from the perspective of acquiring and maintaining knowledge. Recent societal developments have shown this picture to be dangerously naïve. We face a global information crisis that the United Nations has declared an existential threat to humanity. Misinformation and disinformation have engendered widespread doubts about vaccine safety, scientific expertise, and the legitimacy of democratic institutions amid a worldwide pandemic. In this project, I argue that such doubts are not only practically harmful, but epistemically flawed. I develop a novel theory of the normativity of doubt that explains the epistemic defect involved in these doubts, while illuminating the role doubt plays in guiding thought and action at the individual, group, and societal level. Norms governing doubt are understood in terms of doubt’s function within cognition, which I argue is to protect against epistemic risk: the risk of believing erroneously.
Publications
Articles
(2024), 'What is reasonable doubt?', with Mona Simion, Philosophical Studies.
(2024), 'Reverse-engineering risk', with Angela O'Sullivan, Erkenntnis.
(2022), ‘Epistemic anxiety and epistemic risk’, Synthese.
(2021), 'The epistemic significance of modal factors', Synthese.
Book chapters
(forthcoming), 'Doubting in philosophy', in S. Goldberg and M. Walker (eds), Philosophy with Attitude (Oxford University Press).
(2025) ‘Inquiry and Normative Defeat’ w/ Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion, in A. B. Creller and J. Matheson (eds.), Inquiry: philosophical perspectives (Routledge).
(2024), 'The charge of relativism: "Post-modernism" and post-truth', with Iain Campbell, in S. Truwant and T. J. Kattumana (eds.), The post-truth condition: philosophical reflections (Lexington Books).
Under review
A paper on whether there are multiple kinds of doubt
A paper on ignorance (with Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion)
A paper on questioning attitudes