Research
My research comprises two intertwined strands: the nature of human perception and reasoning, and the epistemic roles of these mental processes. I am particularly interested in which parts of our minds are rationally evaluable, and which parts are merely arational whirrings and grindings. I argue that a surprisingly large variety of mental states are rationally evaluable—including perception, unconscious belief, intuition, and emotion—because they are all based on reasons. This basing on reasons is something the agent does, even though it is often unconscious and outside of her control. I also argue that psychology can help uncover when the basing relation is psychologically instantiated.
Publications
"Perceptual Learning and Reason-Responsiveness" (Noûs, 2023)
Abstract: Perceptual experiences are not immediately responsive to reasons. You see a stick submerged in a glass of water as bent no matter how much you know about light refraction. Due to this isolation from reasons, perception is traditionally considered outside the scope of epistemic evaluability as justified or unjustified. Is perception really as independent from reasons as visual illusions make it out to be? I argue no, drawing on psychological evidence from perceptual learning. The flexibility of perceptual learning is a way of responding to new epistemic reasons. The resulting perceptual experiences are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified.
"Epistemic and Aesthetic Conflict" (The British Journal of Aesthetics, forthcoming)
Abstract: Do epistemic and aesthetic norms ever conflict? While conflicts between epistemic, moral, and prudential rationality have been widely discussed, conflicts in the aesthetic domain are relatively unexplored. I argue that an experience of a work of art can be at once aesthetically upgraded but epistemically downgraded. I focus on an example in which a viewer’s expectations about Rothko’s vibrant color palette alter her experience of degraded Rothko paintings, creating an illusion that simulates their original condition. I argue that this cognitive influence at once epistemically downgrades and aesthetically upgrades her experience, creating a conflict between epistemic and aesthetic norms. The true and the beautiful can pull us in different directions, forcing us to choose between domains of rationality.
"Perceptual Learning" (Philosophy Compass, forthcoming)
Abstract: Perception provides us with access to the external world, but that access is shaped by our own experiential histories. Through perceptual learning, we can enhance our capacities for perceptual discrimination, categorization, and attention to salient properties. We can also encode harmful biases and stereotypes. This article reviews interdisciplinary research on perceptual learning, with an emphasis on the implications for our rational and normative theorizing. Perceptual learning raises the possibility that our inquiries into topics such as epistemic justification, aesthetic criticism, and moral knowledge should include not only an examination of cognition but also of perception.
"Crossmodal Basing" (Mind, 2022)
Abstract: What kinds of mental states can be based on epistemic reasons? The standard answer is only beliefs. I argue that perceptual states can also be based on reasons, as the result of crossmodal interactions. A perceptual state from one modality can serve as the basis for an experience in another modality. My argument identifies key markers of the basing relation and locates them in the crossmodal Marimba Illusion. I argue that a subject’s auditory experience of musical tone duration is based on her visual representation of the length of the musician’s gesture.
"The Epistemic Role of Core Cognition" (The Philosophical Review, 2020)
Abstract: According to a traditional picture, perception and belief have starkly different epistemic roles. Beliefs have epistemic statuses as justified or unjustified, depending on how they are formed and maintained. In contrast, perceptions are “unjustified justifiers.” Core cognition is a set of mental systems that stand at the border of perception and belief, and has been extensively studied in developmental psychology. Core cognition's borderline states do not fit neatly into the traditional epistemic picture. What is the epistemic role of these states? Focusing on the core object system, I argue that core object representations have epistemic statuses like beliefs do, despite their many prototypically perceptual features. The scope of mental states that are subject to epistemic evaluation is not restricted to beliefs.
Work in Progress
"Encapsulated Failures" (under review)
Abstract: This paper considers how cognitive architecture impacts and constrains the rational requirement to respond to reasons. Informational encapsulation and its close relative belief fragmentation can render an agent’s own reasons inaccessible to her, thus preventing her from responding to them. For example, someone experiencing imposter phenomenon might be well aware of their own accomplishments in certain contexts but unable to respond to those reasons when forming beliefs about their own self-worth. In such cases, are our beliefs irrational for failing to respond to our own reasons? Or are they excused on grounds of the reasons’ inaccessibility? I argue that in such cases, the rational status of the belief that fails to respond to reasons is modulated by the degree of encapsulation of the system that produces it. Yet because our cognitive systems are rarely perfectly encapsulated, our failures to respond to reasons are almost always irrational to some degree.
"Reasoning without Control" (in preparation)
Abstract: Must reasoning always be under the reasoner’s control? According to popular viewpoints in philosophy (e.g., Boghossian, 2014; McHugh 2017) and cognitive science (e.g., Kahneman, 2011), the answer is yes. This tight connection between reasoning and control is motivated by the idea that agents are responsible for their reasoning, and responsibility requires control. In this talk, I argue that contrary to these popular viewpoints, reasoning is often outside of our control. To make this argument, I present a series of examples, drawn from psychological experiments, that evince reasoning without control. I focus on three senses of control: voluntary control (Williams, 1970), managerial control (Hieronymi, 2006), and attitudinal control (McHugh, 2017). If this argument succeeds, then our responsibility for our reasoning cannot be explained by control. I suggest that instead of explaining our responsibility for our reasoning by control, we should explain it by the ways in which reasoning reflects our character.
"The Function of Perceptual Learning" (under review)
Abstract: Our perceptual systems are not stagnant but can learn from experience. Why is this so? That is, what is the function of perceptual learning? I consider two answers to this question: The Offloading View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to offload tasks from cognition onto perception, thereby freeing up cognitive resources (Connolly, 2019) and the Perceptual View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to improve the functioning of perception. I argue that the Perceptual View better explains data from infants and animals, and better accounts for learned tasks that only perception could perform.
The Epistemic Self (book in preparation)
Book description: Our first impressions often reflect aspects of our character, for better or worse. A radiologist detects cancer from a glance at a mammogram. A police officer sees a phone as a gun in the hand of a Black man and shoots. These impressions are well-documented by psychologists (e.g., Eberhardt et al. 2004, Brennan et al. 2018). They also comprise much of our everyday experience. My book, The Epistemic Self, argues that such first impressions are the result of unconscious reasoning, even though they seem to simply happen to us. To understand who we are as epistemic agents (i.e., agents who reason and possess knowledge), we must look beyond conscious deliberation to reasoning that occurs in unconscious belief, intuition, perception, emotion, and more.
"The Psychological Markers of the Basing Relation" (in preparation)
"The Epistemic Deep Self" (in preparation)
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