Research

Google Scholar page HERE.

PhilPapers page HERE.

REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES

1. Kopec, Matthew. 2019. “Unifying Group Rationality.”Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6: 517-44.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: I show that a pluralistic, teleological account of epistemically rational belief can capture the normative insights of all the major accounts of group rationality in the social epistemology literature, yielding a fully unified account.
2. Kopec, Matthew. 2018. “A Pluralistic Account of Epistemic Rationality.” Synthese 195: 3571-96
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: I develop, motivate, and defend a pluralistic, goal-oriented account of epistemically rational belief.
3. Kopec, Matthew and Seumas Miller. 2018. “Shared Intention Is Not Joint Commitment.” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 13: 179-89.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: We use counterexamples to show that Margaret Gilbert's notion of joint commitment is neither necessary nor sufficient for shared intention.
4. Kopec, Matthew. 2017. “A New Group Dutch Book Argument” Ratio 30: 122-36.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: I repair an early attempt to extend the classic Dutch Book argument to social groups, and I discuss its normative implications/limitations.
5. Kopec, Matthew. 2017. “Game Theory and the Self-Fulfilling Climate Tragedy.” Environmental Values 26: 203-21.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: I argue that the widespread belief among academics and policy makers that our climate problem is a “Tragedy of the Commons” is creating a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, and I sketch some possible ways to dispel it.
6. Kopec, Matthew, and Michael G. Titelbaum. 2016. “The Uniqueness Thesis.” Philosophy Compass 11: 189-200.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: We survey the quickly growing literature on the Uniqueness Thesis, which holds, very roughly speaking, that there is only one rational response to any body of evidence.
7. Kopec, Matthew. 2015. “A Counterexample to the Uniqueness Thesis.” Philosophia 43: 403-9.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: I present a straightforward counterexample to the Uniqueness Thesis, one that uses self-fulfilling beliefs.
8. Kopec, Matthew. 2014. “Clines, Clusters, and Clades in the Race Debate.” Philosophy of Science 81: 1053-65.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: Contrary to the claims of some top race scholars, I argue that recent advances in population genetics should not shake our confidence in the biological illegitimacy of human racial classifications.
9. Kopec, Matthew. 2014. “A New Use of ‘Race’: The Evidence and Ethics of Forensic DNA Ancestry Profiling.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31: 237-53.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: I argue that since a new technology that can reliably infer the “race” of perpetrators from their DNA will likely meet our evidential standards, we have weighty reasons to use it, at least in circumstances that promise to be justice enhancing.
10. Kopec, Matthew. 2012. “We Ought to Agree: A Consequence of Repairing Goldman’s Group Scoring Rule.” Episteme 9: 101-14.
    • SHORT ABSTRACT: I show that after we modify Goldman’s formal rule for assessing the epistemic accuracy of a group to make it a “proper” scoring rule, it suggests groups ought to form a consensus.
11. Kopec, Matthew. 2011. “A More Fulfilling (and Frustrating) Take on Reflexive Predictions.” Philosophy of Science 78: 1249-59.
    • SHORT ABSTRACT: I show that self-fulfilling and self-frustrating predictions cause previously unnoticed problems for theory confirmation in the social sciences.

BOOK CHAPTERS

1. Titelbaum, Michael G., and Matthew Kopec. forthcoming. “When Rational Reasoners Reason Differently.” in Reasoning: Essays on Theoretical and Practical Thinking, M. Balcerak-Jackson & B. Balcerak-Jackson (eds.). Oxford University Press.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: We show that views according to which two rational inquirers can reason to divergent conclusions based on the very same evidence don't entail the kinds of counter-intuitive consequences objectors have raised against such views. (This is a condensed and revised version of our widely circulated but unpublished paper “Plausible Permissivism” linked below.)

REVIEWS & NOTES

1. Kopec, Matthew. 2017. “Reasons without Persons: Rationality, Identity, and Time, by Brian Hedden.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO TECHNICAL REPORTS

1. “An Interdisciplinary Approach to Living in a Risky World.” Recommendations from the 2016 Australian Academy of Sciences’ Theo Murphy Think Tank.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

1. Kopec, Matthew. In Preparation. Making Better Groups.
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: This book, which will be the culmination of my ARC DECRA project, will first develop and defend a normative framework for group judgement and decision making and then leverage empirical results from the social and behavioral sciences in order to devise a set of feasible strategies that a diverse range of groups can use to make better judgments and decisions.
2. Handfield, Toby, Ben Grodeck, Matthew Kopec & Justin Bruner. In Preparation. “Cooperating with Future Generations: An Experimental Investigation of Altruism in Identity-Affecting Decisions.” (Targeted to Nature: Climate Change)
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: In this collaborative project, conducted at the Monash Laboratory for Experimental Economics (MonLEE), we empirically test a number of hypotheses about what causes the decrease in pro-social behavior in identity-affecting choice problems we observed in prior empirical work (see "No Harm Done" below).
3. Kopec, Matthew & Justin Bruner. Under Review. “No Harm Done? An Experimental Approach to the Non-Identity Problem.” (Currently at Politics, Philosophy & Economics)
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: We test, and confirm, our hypothesis that individuals will exhibit less pro-social behavior when making identity-affecting choices (i.e. where a choice affects not only some other person's welfare, but also which person is affected) and then examine whether normative notions of harm play some role in the behavioral shift.
4. Kopec, Matthew. In Preparation. “What Cooperative Groups Ought to Do.” (Targeted to Mind)
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: I use of modified version of Harsányi's notion of sympathetic preferences to argue that small, cooperative groups containing individuals who know a great deal about each other can feasibly make interpersonal utility comparisons and, in turn, ought to act so as to maximize their collective utility.
5. Kopec, Matthew. in preparation. “A New Precautionary Principle for Manufactured Uncertainty.” (Targeted to Journal of Political Philosophy)
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: I argue that previous precautionary principles are poorly suited to helping policy makers faced with uncertainty that has been strategically manufactured by actors attempting to avoid regulation, and I present and defend a new pragmatic precautionary principle that is better suited for such cases.

OTHER UNPUBLISHED WORK

1. Titelbaum, Michael G., and Matthew Kopec. ms. “Plausible Permissivism.”
   • SHORT ABSTRACT: We show that epistemic permissivism (i.e., the denial of “The Uniqueness Thesis” ) lacks the implausible consequences commonly attributed to the view. (This is the original version of our paper "When Rational Reasoners Reason Differently" above.)

(If you don't have access to any of the articles linked above, please email me for a copy .)