My main research interests are in epistemology, with a focus on epistemic normativity and value. I am especially interested in how our understanding of the value of truth (in what sense is truth valuable?) interacts with our conceptions of the norms we ought to follow when forming and revising our beliefs (what are the correct epistemic norms?). These are the main questions that drive my dissertation. Often, the two questions are treated separately, under the tacit assumption that how we answer one should have little bearing on how we answer the other. In my dissertation, I challenge this assumption. I investigate the interplay between conceptions of value in epistemology and the conceptions of norms that should govern our belief-formation and belief-revision processes, and show how adopting one significantly constrains the other. This, I argue, has important consequences for several live debates in epistemology.
Ultimately, I am to develop a comprehensive account of epistemic normativity that combines these two key elements: on the one hand, a plausible account of the value of truth and knowledge, one which accounts for the authority of epistemic norms; on the other hand, an adequate conception of epistemic norms which is shaped by, and compatible with, this account of the value of truth and knowledge.
Selected research projects in epistemology
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The true, the good and the justified: on the teleological conception of epistemic justification
Argues that teleological conceptions of epistemic justification can avoid the main objections directed at them, but only by denying that what they mean by epistemic value is “value” in any substantive sense of the term; it is a spandrel of trying to cash out justification in terms of truth-conduciveness.
Why you should be antisocial (about epistemic normativity)
Argues that epistemic normativity is not essentially social, against views that explain the prescriptions and reason-giving force of epistemic norms by appealing to the value truth has for communities or to the aims of groups.
Epistemic value and the value of truth
Argues in favor of substantivism, the view that epistemic value is not merely domain-relative value, against isolationism, which holds that it is.
Epistemic duties and the normative import of evidence
Argues that there are no positive epistemic duties to believe, against recent trends in epistemology. We either find ourselves having a doxastic attitude in reaction to some evidence—in which case it must fit the evidence—or we ought to consider a question, which is a matter of practical rationality, moral obligation, or an obligation we incur in virtue of our social role.
Selected research projects in aesthetics
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Artistic and aesthetic value
Argues that there is a distinctive form of value that attaches to works of art qua works of art—artistic value—that is distinct from, and not reducible to, aesthetic value. On my view, artistic value is, at its core, socially constructed, and arises from our practices of art criticism. In contrast, although aesthetic value is not independent of sociocultural influences, it is not the product of social practices.
Aesthetic obligations
Draws a topography of what aesthetic obligations could be and argues that there are no aesthetic obligations worthy of the name.
The nature of aesthetic value
Argues for a third way between experiential accounts and engagement accounts of aesthetic value, one that avoids the pitfalls of both.
Selected research projects in the philosophy of normativity
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Domain-relative value
Argues that committing to the view that value in a normative domain is merely domain-relative, and not substantive, has significant implications for what value-derivation relations are available when theorizing about that normative domain. This conclusion has had one defender in the literature, Sjölin Wirling (2022), who makes her case about the epistemic; I take a different approach from hers, and argue that at least a great number of potential insulated normative domains, if not all of them, must have a teleological structure: the way to avoid claiming that domain-relative value is substantive is to understand it as a goal, as a mere state of affairs to bring about if one were to adopt the standpoint of the domain; this automatically disqualifies any value-derivation relation other than the instrumental relation from being available within that insulated normative domain.
Félix-Antoine Gélineau 