talks
June 13–14 2024, Inquiry and its Norms III, UNED Madrid.
On questions and pseudo-questions.
May 02–03 2024, Rationality and Cognition, Ruhr University Bochum.
Inquiry forbidden.
I will defend two basic instrumental norms of inquiry, understood as something that we do. The two norms are grounded on the fact that certain states of affairs deprive the activity of inquiry of instrumental value. That happens when the inquirer already knows the answer to their question, for example, or when it is impossible for them to know the answer to their question. Objections to the target norms will then be addressed and responded to. I will also show how the norm against inquiry into questions with unknowable answers entails further instrumental norms of inquiry, such as the norm against inquiry into questions with false presuppositions and the norm against inquiry into questions whose answers are neither true nor false. The paper contributes an important fraction of a complete system of instrumental norms of inquiry.
February 08, 2024, Philosophy Visiting Speaker Seminar, University of Stirling.
Fixing an attitude in the face of indeterminacy.
The paper inquires into how we should react to different types of indeterminacy—involving future contingents, empty terms, or vagueness. It first clarifies the problem by exploring different flavors of ‘should’ and specifying the nature of the sought-after reactions, which are alternative doxastic stances that one might have with respect to a question. It is argued that no doxastic stance is even possible in the face of one kind of indeterminacy, that one should reject the question in the face of another kind of indeterminacy, and that one should be in a state of doubt in the face of yet a third kind of indeterminacy.
January 19, 2024, Cologne-Frankfurt Epistemology Meeting, University of Cologne.
Gappy Evidence Vs. Evidence of Gaps.
Gappy evidence is evidence that leaves some questions unsettled. Evidence of gaps is evidence that some propositions are neither true nor false. Some similarities aside, these two traits of a total body of evidence have important differences. In particular, evidence that is gappy regarding whether p and evidence for the claim that p is neither true nor false vindicate different doxastic stances regarding whether p. Reflection on that difference reveals that the traditional taxonomy of (categorical) doxastic attitudes is incomplete.
November 28–29, 2023, Goethe Epistemology Meeting, University of Frankfurt.
Inquiry Forbidden.
November 02–03, 2023, Veritas Philosophy Workshop, Yonsei University.
Three Types of Indeterminacy and their Epistemology.
In this paper, I seek to establish the relationship between epistemic indeterminacy, understood as a situation where one's knowledge or evidence is not enough to decide what the answer to a given question is, and two other types of indeterminacy—namely, linguistic and semantic indeterminacy. Linguistic indeterminacy takes place when a sentence is neither true nor false. Semantic indeterminacy takes place when a proposition is neither true nor false. I argue that the attitudes that are rational for a subject to adopt in the face of each of these types of indeterminacy can differ radically.
October 13, 2023, Lisbon Wittgenstein Group Seminar, NOVA University of Lisboa.
Pseudo-questions and the norms of inquiry.
Intuitively, an inquirer should avoid inquiring into pseudo-questions. It turns out to be difficult to make a more precise sense of that norm, however. This is largely due to the fact that, assuming that pseudo-questions are not questions at all, it is not even possible for an inquirer to inquire into pseudo-questions. In this paper, I will (a) discuss alternative criteria for distinguishing questions from pseudo-questions, and (b) flesh out more precise formulations of the target norm that stem from those alternative criteria. I will then show that the systematization of the norms of inquiry in general is contingent on the adequacy of our choices regarding (a) and (b).
July 31-August 4, 2023, Summer School in Philosophy with Ram Neta, University of Cologne.
On the import of epistemic akrasia to the distinction between structural and substantial rationality.
April 12, 2023, X Social Epistemology Conference, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.
The effects of natural language communication on our epistemic states.
February 03–04, 2023, Meeting of the Florida Philosophical Association, New College of Florida.
A puzzle about the rationality of higher-order beliefs.
October 19–22, 2022, Doxastic Attitudes and their Reasons, University of Cologne.
A puzzle about presupposition.
July 8–9, 2022, First Workshop on Suspension, University of Konstanz.
The third stance and the proper means to express it.
June 24, 2022, CLIP Seminar, University of Cologne.
Questions, pseudo-questions and the semantics of interrogatives.
June 7–8, 2022, Hinge Epistemology Conference, NOVA University of Lisbon.
Evidential support under hinges.
May 22–24, 2022, St. Louis Annual Conference on Reasons and Rationality, St. Louis.
Good reasons to be coherent.
April 29–30, 2022, Central States Philosophical Association, University of Nebraska.
Rules for the direction of the inquiring mind.
February 21, 2022, The Inquiry Network Group
A rule for the direction of the inquiring mind.
October 25 (seminar of DFG group on suspension) and December 10 (Leuven CLPS seminar), 2021
Reasoning under suspense.
August 2–5, 2021, 12 Principia International Symposium.
Coherence and knowability.
July 22–23, 2021, First Rhine-Ruhr Epistemology Meeting, University of Cologne.
Akrasia and the contents of higher-order beliefs.
April 10, 2021 APA Pacific Division, Portland.
Suspending is not believing (Colloquium: Epistemology).
April 6, 2021 APA Pacific Division, Portland.
Paradoxes of Knowability (Group session of the Southern California Epistemology Network).
March 4, 2021, Epistemology Seminar at the University of Florida (organized by Rodrigo Borges).
Suspending is not believing.
22.08.2019, Knowledge of Knowledge, University of Regensburg.
As I think about knowledge, it starts to disappear (handout available here).
17.07.2019, I Symposium on Logic and Analytic Philosophy & VIII Social Epistemology Conference, Federal University of Maranhão.
Models in formal epistemology.
24.06.2019, Logic Rulez!?, University of Vienna.
How does logic constrain rational suspended judgment? (handout available here).
19.06.2019, Formal Epistemology Workshop 2019, University of Turin.
Rational requirements of agnosticism (poster presentation).
29.11.2018, III International Colloquium on Analytic Epistemology, UFSM Santa Maria.
Reasoning with suspended judgment (handout available here).
19.11.2018, Workshop with Johan van Benthem, RWTH Aachen University.
Knowability through deductive reasoning and Dynamic Epistemic Logic (handout available here).
27.08.2018, Philosophy Colloquium, University of Miami.
When reasoners suspend judgment.
11.06.2018, Workshop with Paul Boghossian on conscious and unconscious inferences, University of Antwerp.
From the taking condition to the psychology of reasoning.
15.05.2018, Perception, Mental Imagery and Inference, Ruhr-University Bochum.
Mental models, imagery and symbolic processing.
04.05.2018, Understanding Understanding, University of Tübingen.
Understanding the logical constants.
21.11.2017, I International Workshop GP-CRI—Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (Santa Maria, Brazil).
Evidence and a priori knowability.
23-24.10.2017, I Workshop on Philosophy and Probability, PUCRS (Porto Alegre, Brazil).
Suspended judgment, credence and bridge-principles.
21-26.08.2017, ECAP 9 – European Society for Analytic Philosophy, LMU Munich.
Analyticity, suppositional reasoning and the a priori.
31.07.2017, Summer School on Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students, MCMP.
Knowledge of validity.
14-16.06.2017, The Normativity of Logic, University of Bergen.
Ways in which logic was supposed to be special, but ain't.
18-19.05.2017, Reasoning Club 2017, Center for Logic, Language and Cognition, Torino.
Knowledge grounded on pure reasoning.
04-06.04.2017, UConn Logic Group/MCMP Workshop in Storrs, University of Connecticut.
The Epistemology of Logic and Logical Pluralism.
15.12.2016, The Third Lisbon Conference on Philosophy of Science, Universidade de Lisboa.
The epistemology of logic and logical pluralism.
19.11.2016, Workshop: The Relevance of Logic to Human Reasoning, Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy.
When reasoners go offline. This workshop was organized by me and my colleague Andreas Kapsner.
10.09.2016, Colloquium Logicum 2016, Universität Hamburg.
A framework for testing the relevance of logic to reasoning.
29.08.2016, Logic, Meaning and Language, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Reliable reasoning in natural language.
08.04.2016, Roots of Deduction Workshop, University of Groningen.
Warranted Logical Beliefs.
24.07.2015, Buenos Aires Logic Group WIP Seminar, University of Buenos Aires.
A logic of offline rationality.