Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 110 (3): 959–982. 2025. (penultimate draft)
An athlete has faith in her unathletic partner to run a marathon, a teacher has faith in her currently poor-performing students to improve in the future, and your friend has faith in you to succeed in the difficult project that you have been pursuing, even, and especially, when your chance of failing is non-trivial. This paper develops and defends a relational view of interpersonal faith by considering four interesting phenomena: first, in virtue of placing faith in someone, we stand in solidarity with that person; second, interpersonal faith is called for during moments of difficulty, but it can seem inappropriate during moments of ease; third, one’s faith in others can feel unwelcomed, and can be rejected; and fourth, when interpersonal faith is frustrated, disappointment, rather than resentment, is warranted. I propose that when the faithor (e.g., your friend) places faith in the faithee (e.g., you) to φ, the faithor does something close to inviting the faithee to (re)commit to φ-ing. This invitation-like move, once properly taken up by the faithee, puts both sides of the faith in a new kind of normative relationship that is in the same broad family as a promissory relationship, albeit with a different normative profile.
(draft available upon request)
Suppose my friend is choosing between furthering her legal career in New York City and moving across the country to reunite with her partner in California. Or suppose my epistemologist friend is trying to figure out whether to be an epistemic internalist or externalist. In either case, I can think along with my friend as she works through her question, much like walking along with her while she leads the way. Just as my friend may be grateful to me for keeping her company by walking alongside her, so too can she be grateful to me for being her companion by thinking along with her; and just as she could reasonably complain if I secretly steer her walk to a better but different location, so too could she reasonably complain if I force answers and justifications on her, even if they are epistemic goods that promote her epistemic interests. It is, however, natural to assess a companion based on the quality of epistemic goods she offers and her willingness to offer them. What is the role of epistemic goods in epistemic companionship? I propose that we should see the epistemic goods offered by a companion as akin to gifts. The deference, the mutual recognition, and the connection to relationships involved in gift exchange, when extended to the exchange of epistemic goods, reveal that the key to epistemic companionship is not the intentional promotion of someone’s epistemic interests, but rather respect for a particular other’s authority in directing her own inquiry.
(draft available upon request)
Wondering has been understood as either a pro-attitude toward information that can be satisfied by the attainment of that information, or an insatiable information-gathering orientation toward a fascinating individual. I argue that interpersonal wondering is neither. I long for information about my friend when I wonder about her, but I wish to hear from her, and third-party testimony about her will not satisfy my longing. I propose that when a wonderer (me) wonders about a wonderee (my friend), the wonderer seeks the wonderee’s recognition and invites a range of responses from her, including telling and wondering back. The openness involved in interpersonal wondering is the openness to diverse ways of interpersonal relating. And such wondering is satisfiable, not by pieces of information, but by the presence of the wonderee and the relations established between her and the wonderer.