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My research has focuses on three areas: belief control, rationality, and social epistemology.
My current focus is a monograph on the origin of the notion of epistemic rationality and progress in theorizing about it. I argue that epistemic rationality is an innovation of the 17th century meant to provide a standard of adjudication for religious and moral judgments as well as capture the methodology of the new experimental natural philosophy--i.e., incipient modern science. The book is entitled, The Invention of Rationality.
Regarding belief control, I've published a number of articles on the views of historical authors on doxastic voluntarism: including Descartes, Locke, Mary Astell, Thomas Reid, Robert Holcot, Aquinas, and Augustine. I've published the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on doxastic voluntarism with Liz Jackson. I've also developed a number of empirical studies concerning the possibility of voluntary belief with Liz Jackson, forthcoming as "Doxastic Freedom: An Empirical Defense." These are a response to the so-called psychological argument against doxastic voluntarism.
Book:
Locke's Twilight of Probability: An Epistemology of Rational Assent (Routledge, 2023)
(preview) (introduction)
"Boespflug’s study stands as a thought-provoking contribution to Locke scholarship. By zeroing in on the centrality of assent, the book invites a critical reconsideration of Locke’s philosophical intentions. Additionally, Boespflug smoothly bridges Locke’s views with present-day developments in philosophy. The book’s engagement with contemporary debates is particularly praiseworthy: it skillfully avoids the pitfalls of anachronism while bringing Lockean ideas to bear upon current issues. If at times the arguments’ ambition invites further scrutiny – for example, regarding the claim that Locke’s [theory of rational probable assent] surpasses his theory of knowledge in importance – it is precisely this boldness that makes the work so intellectually stimulating. For these reasons, Locke’s Twilight of Probability should be of great interest not only to scholars of early modern philosophy but also to historically attuned scholars engaged in contemporary discussions on the epistemology of belief and testimony."
(Left: Merton College Fellows' garden (Oxford))
Dissertation:
"Voluntary Belief and Its Consequences in Locke and Descartes"
This project argues for novel views concerning both Locke's and Descartes' conceptions of doxastic control. I argue against the prevailing literature that, for Descartes, every belief is choice. For Locke, I argue that we have essentially no direct control over our beliefs and are at the mercy of our evidence. I, additionally, argue that their conceptions of doxastic voluntarism have significant and interesting implications for their respective epistemologies.
Descartes appears to hold that everything we believe is the product of a voluntary choice. Scholars have been reluctant to take this particularly radical version of doxastic voluntarism as Descartes’ considered position. I argue that once Descartes’ compatibilist conception of free will as well as his position on the ‘freedom of indifference’ are taken into account, the primary motivations for the rejection of the aforementioned radical version of doxastic voluntarism lose their force. Consequently, we may take Descartes at his word when he maintains that everything we believe, we believe freely – even if we cannot believe anything we wish.
“Locke’s Critique of Moral Enthusiasm,” Studi Lockiani 5 (2024): 183-203.
Enthusiasm is a pejorative label John Locke applies to the Quaker practice of immediate divine inspiration. Locke holds that enthusiasts are guilty of an epistemic violation owing to their lack of grounds for regarding their inspirations as having come from God. Moral enthusiasm is a species of this purportedly irrational practice, pertaining to moral judgments formed on the basis of such inspirations. It is plausibly this species of enthusiasm that Locke viewed as most dangerous, and in pressing need of censure. I examine the practice in among its most conspicuous expressions – the founder of Quakerism, George Fox. I close by grappling with three difficulties with Locke’s critique of moral enthusiasm, as it applies to Quakerism: the corroborative miracles that Fox purportedly performed, the remarkable moral innovations enacted by the Quakers, and complications with Locke’s physiological criticism of altered states of mind.
John Locke has been widely understood to hold that belief is under one’s direct control. This doxastic voluntarism appears to be implicit in his
evidentialism, his doxastic moralism, and his postulation of an ability to suspend assent. I argue, first, that interpreting Locke as a doxastic
voluntarist is untenable—at odds with his conception of knowledge, probable assent, and religious belief. I also claim that interpreting Locke
as a voluntarist fails to cohere with his understanding of the intellect’s relation to the will. Although Passmore’s voluntarist interpretation does
not capture Locke’s conception of doxastic control, there is a narrow sense in which Locke allows room for direct control of belief.
“Why Reid was no Dogmatist,” Synthese 196 (2019): 4511-4525.
According to dogmatism, a perceptual experience with p as its content is always a (defeasible) source of justification for the belief that p. Thomas Reid has been an extant source of inspiration for this view. I argue, however, that, though there is a superficial consonance between Reid’s position and that of the dogmatists, their views are, more fundamentally, at variance with one another. While dogmatists take their position to express a necessary epistemic truth, discernible a priori, Reid holds that if something like dogmatism is true, it is a mere contingent truth, discernible a posteriori. Owing to Reid’s epistemological naturalism, it might have been false that a perceptual experience is, by itself, a source of justification. On account of regarding something like dogmatism as only contingently true, then, Reid accepts the demand for a meta-justification of a sort that dogmatists squarely reject, and purports to meet it. Given that dogmatism essentially involves the rejection of the demand to meet this kind of meta-justification, it would seem that Reid should not be construed as endorsing dogmatism at all. I close by briefly considering how Reid’s view fits amongst dogmatism’s competitors.
“Locke on Testimony,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (2019): 1135-1150.
There is good reason to regard John Locke’s treatment of testimony as perhaps the most important of the early modern period. It is sophisticated, well developed, pioneering, and seems to have given shape to the later debate that would occur between Hume and Reid. I attempt to do three things in this essay. First, I argue that Hume’s landmark treatment of testimony is an appropriation of that developed by Locke. Second, I suggest that understanding Locke’s view of testimony is of critical importance to Locke’s broader epistemology. Finally, I claim that Locke’s reflection on testimony is valuable in its own right in that it is not confined to isolating the conditions under which testimonial beliefs are warranted or justified. Locke’s interest is, rather, in a variety of doxastic states, or degrees of assent, that testimony may serve to ground.
“Locke’s Principle of Proportionality,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 101 (2019): 237-257.
Locke’s principle of proportionality – among his most important contributions to philosophy – states that we ought to apportion our assent to a given proposition in accord with the probability of that proposition on an adequate body of evidence. I argue that treatments of Locke’s principle fail to avoid interpreting it as a fundamentally doxastic prescription – a precept concerning how we ought to voluntarily control our assent. These interpretations are problematic on account of their implications concerning the degree of control that agents have over the doxastic process, and on account of how they cohere with numerous texts in the Essay. I suggest that the principle, instead, commends that we engage in certain activities, or practices, that tend to produce true beliefs.
The common sense that heavily informs the epistemology of Thomas Reid has been recently hailed as instructive with regard to some of the most fundamental issues in epistemology by a burgeoning segment of analytic epistemologists. These admirers of Reid may be called dogmatists. I highlight three ways in which Reid's approach has been a model to be imitated in the estimation of dogmatists. First, common sense propositions are taken to be the benchmarks of epistemology inasmuch as they constitute paradigm cases of knowledge. Second, dogmatists follow Reid in taking common sense propositions to provide boundaries for philosophical theorizing. Inasmuch as philosophical theorizing leads one to deny a common sense proposition, such theorizing is stepping outside of the bounds of what it can or should do. Third, dogmatists follow Reid in focusing heavily on the problem of skepticism and by responding to it by refusing to answer the demand for a meta-justification that the skeptic wants.
In the Middle Ages, the view that agents are able to exercise direct voluntary control over their beliefs—doxastic voluntarism—was pervasive. It was held by Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan, among many others. Herein, I show that the somewhat neglected Oxford Dominican, Robert Holcot (†1349), rejected doxastic voluntarism with a coherence and plausibility that reflects and anticipates much contemporary thought on the issue. I, further, suggest that Holcot’s rejection of the idea that agents can voluntarily control their beliefs is intimately connected to his, likewise, aberrant views regarding the nature of belief, evidence, and faith. Finally, I examine Holcot’s attempt to show how involuntarism and doxastic responsibility are compatible. The issue of faith figures prominently throughout, given that an act of faith was conceived to be a voluntary operation whereby one believes religious propositions, and a paradigm case of belief for which we are responsible.
Aquinas’s conception of faith has been taken to involve believing in a way that is expressly out of keeping with the evidence. Rather than being produced by evidence, the confidence involved in faith is a product of the will’s decision. This causes Aquinas’s conception of faith to look flagrantly irrational. Herein, I offer an interpretation of Aquinas’s position on faith that has not been previously proposed. I point out that Aquinas responds to the threat of faith’s irrationality by explicitly maintaining that one may reasonably believe by faith because of an instinct to believe. I go on to point out other instances in which instincts amount to legitimate epistemic grounds for Aquinas. Given that this dimension of Aquinas’s thought is not well developed, I close by introducing some extensions of it in the work of John Henry Newman as well as points of contrast.
To be an enthusiast, for Locke, is to believe oneself, on insufficient evidence, to be the recipient of immediate divine inspiration. We describe the theological context that led Locke to insert a chapter on this subject into the fourth edition of the Essay, and then examine why Locke held enthusiasm to be particularly objectionable. Far from being an obscure historical footnote, the chapter raises foundational questions for Locke’s epistemology. We look more closely than have previous treatments of this topic at the religious practices that Locke targets, and find them to be less obviously irrational than his criticisms suggest. Reflection on those criticisms allows us a clearer understanding of where Locke locates the ultimate grounds of rational belief.
“Is Augustinian Faith Rational?” Religious Studies 52 (2016): 63-79.
The Augustinian conception of faith – according to which faith and belief precede knowledge and understanding – appears to entail an epistemic violation. For Augustine, faith is exercised when a testimonial report that P is believed on the basis of that report. This reconfigures the factors involved in assessing whether what is believed on faith is believed rationally. The specific goal of this article is, however, to determine whether believing specifically Christian testimony – and, thus, faith – is rational. Jonathan Adler identifies six forms of background evidence that constitute epistemic reasons for believing testimony. At least five of them appear to be fulfilled for Augustine in the case of believing Christian testimony. Thus, Augustinian faith is supported by epistemic reasons, and should be considered rational.
Many hold that science and religion, in some sense, stand in conflict. The most plausible way of understanding the conflict is to view science and religion as endorsing incompatible epistemic standards. It is argued, however, that advocates of this epistemic conflict model are guilty of fallaciously moving the goalposts when it comes to comparing the epistemic standards of science and religion: the epistemic standards of scientific experts are compared to those of the religious laity. When this asymmetry is corrected, and the standards of the scientific laity are compared to those of the religious laity, empirical investigation suggests that the standards are remarkably similar in that the former exhibit a variety of characteristics of faith. The essay concludes by considering whether the conflict might be established by comparing the standards of scientific experts to religious experts.
Ethics’ reputation for wide-ranging, interminable disagreement, coupled with conciliationism regarding disagreement, has been leveraged as a basis for moral skepticism. The focus of this essay is on this challenge as it has been applied to philosophical ethics. I call the empirical conjecture underwriting the challenge into question – namely, that disagreement is widespread and roughly balanced within ethics – by describing the results of two studies involving over 400 moral philosophers. The studies reveal widespread agreement, and even consensus, on a range of purportedly contentious moral issues – capital punishment, abortion, eating meat, physician-assisted dying, euthanasia, and many others. The evidence the studies provide suggest that the extent of disagreement within ethics that the conciliationist challenge relies upon likely does not exist.
Autonomous AI agents are increasingly required to operate in contexts where human welfare is at stake, raising the imperative for them to act in ways that are morally optimal—or at least morally permissible. The value alignment research program seeks to create “beneficial AI” by aligning AI behavior with human values (Russell in Human compatible: artificial intelligence and the problem of control, Penguin, London, 2019). In this article, we propose a method for specifying permissible outcomes for AI agents that targets ideal values via moral expertise as embodied in the collective judgments of philosophical ethicists. We defend the notion that ethicists are moral experts against several objections found in the recent literature and argue that their aggregated judgments offer the epistemically best available proxy for moral truth. We recommend a systematic study of ethicists’ judgments—using tools from social psychology and social choice theory—to guide AI agents' behavior in morally complex situations.
“Doxastic Freedom: An Empirical Defense,” (with Elizabeth Jackson) Matters of Justification from Steup: New Arguments, New Angles. (eds. McCain, Satta, Stapleford) Routledge, forthcoming.
“Evidence and Things Unseen,” Studies in Religion (Special Issue on Neil Van Leeuwen’s Religion as Make-Believe), forthcoming.
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