Published

"The Relevance of Self-Locating Beliefs" (Philosophical Review 117 (2008): 555–605.)

Formalizes and expands the traditional Bayesian framework for modeling agents' rational degrees of belief to apply to cases involving context-sensitive beliefs. Along the way, it offers a solution to the Sleeping Beauty Problem and defends that solution from alternate accounts.

"What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?" (Philosophy & Public Affairs 36 (2008): 289–322.)*

A response to G. A. Cohen's argument that a prevailing "ethos" of justice would prevent a Rawlsian just society from having any income inequalities.  I suggest that Cohen's argument fails because a Rawlsian ethos would involve correlates of both of Rawls' principles of justice.

Review of David Christensen's Putting Logic in its Place (Mind 117 (2008): 677–681.)

Unpublished

"Not Enough There There: Reasons, Evidence, and Language Invariance"

"Tell Me You Love Me: Reliabilism, Induction, and Being Told What You Want to Hear"

"Contractualism, Chances, and Aggregation"

I propose a new way for a Scanlonian contractualist to argue that, when faced with a situation in which a number of people are threatened with the same level of harm, you should save as many people as possible from that harm.  The argument draws on a principle Sophia Reibetanz has defended for managing cases involving the chance of harm.

"Unlearning What You Have Learned"

I apply my extended, formal Bayesian framework to cases in which agents forget or face the threat of forgetting.  Along the way I treat Frank Arntzenius' "Shangri La" problem, van Fraassen's Reflection Principle, and Adam Elga's "guru" principle.

"Feigning Indifference"

Here I propose a new argument for a principle of indifference among subjectively indistinguishable centered worlds.  I compare my proposal to Adam Elga's, defend it from objections by Brian Weatherson, then consider how it applies to Everettian interpretations of quantum mechanics.

"An Infinitesimal Addition to Certain Frustration"

A brief response to Alan Hájek's Cable Guy Paradox.

Dissertation

Quitting Certainties: A Doxastic Modeling Framework (my UC Berkeley PhD dissertation)

Presents a unified Bayesian framework that models changing rational degrees of belief in situations involving memory loss and context-sensitivity.

[Page last modified 11/08.]

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