Research

I argue in favor of what I call the ‘Cooperative Warrant Thesis’ (CWT), according to which the determinants of testimonial contents in communication are given by the practical requirements of joint action. This thesis distances itself from conventionalist accounts, according to which testimony must be strictly bounded by conventions of speech. CWT proves explanatorily better than conventionalism on several accounts. It offers a principled and accurate criterion to distinguish between testimonial and non-testimonial communication. In being goal-sensitive, this criterion captures the effects of weak and strong cooperation has in determining the contents to which speakers testify (or fail to testify). And, finally, it yields a principled explanation of why our testimonial practices entail the normativity of epistemic commitment.

This paper explores how humans communicate more than they literally say, and the connection between this familiar point and discourse coherence. We begin by arguing that non-literal conversational moves like implicatures can make their content common ground, just as literal moves can. We argue that this is best understood as ‘practical coherence’. We propose that practical coherence involves explaining how a given speech act counts as progress towards the goals shared by the interlocutors in a given conversation. We then show that some information p can become common ground when assuming p is required for practical coherence. Throughout, we situate practical coherence within existing QUD-approaches, psychological approaches, and grammatical approaches. We aim for a high-level account by employing the Cognitive Models framework for practical reasoning developed by Harris and inspired by Gibbard.

There is an intuitive normative difference between declarative speech acts that commit the speaker to a content and speech acts that do not. I propose a novel account of this distinction in terms of the role cooperative reasoning has in communication. Focusing on cooperative action warrants a distinction between stated contents—contents required as the cooperative interpretations of an utterance—and insinuated contents—contents merely permitted as the cooperative interpretations of an utterance. In turn, the normative difference between statements and insinuations owes to the fact that stated contents inherit the cooperative commitments that enable them, while insinuated contents do not. Crucially, this view recommends rejecting literalism: the view that the distinction between committal and non-committal speech corresponds to the distinction between literal and non-literal speech. After presenting the distinction between statements and insinuations, I argue how this view captures and accommodates literalist intuitions and how it fares against literalist objections.

The fact that defective assertions are subject to criticism strongly suggests that assertions are subject to a norm adjudicating between proper improper assertions. Constitutivism about assertion is the view that there is a deep conceptual connection between this norm and the ontology of the speech act of assertion. This family of views has been mostly concerned with what I call the normative question of assertion: Should speakers, for instance, know what they assert, or should they have certainty or justified belief? Here I aim to sketch an answer to this question by way of another significantly less visited question: What kind of norm is the norm of assertion? Call it the metanormative question of assertion. I argue that the constitutive norm of assertion is not Searlean, social, or conventional. Rather, it is an instrumental norm, stemming from the instrumental normativity of cooperative action. This view neatly accommodates the non-constitutive role of other communal norms in the practice of assertion. Moreover, it provides a distinctive path to answer the normative question of assertion. I conclude by exploring how the connection between knowledge and (cooperative) action yields reasons to think knowledge is the norm of assertion.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) has been an influential thesis since the earliest stages of western philosophy. According to a simple version of the PSR, for every fact, there must be an explanation of that fact. In the present research, we investigate whether people presuppose a PSR-like principle in ordinary judgment. Across five studies (N = 1,121 in total, U.S., Prolific), we find that participants consistently make judgments that conform to the PSR. Such judgments predictably track the metaphysical aspects of explanation relevant to the PSR (Study 1) and diverge from related epistemic judgments about expected explanations (Study 2) and value judgments about desired or useful explanations (Study 3). Moreover, we find participants’ PSR-conforming judgments apply to a large set of facts that were sampled from random Wikipedia entries (Studies 4-5). In tandem with our experimental findings, we offer a rational analysis of the PSR-like presumption that renders precise when and why having such a presumption makes inquiry an enticing prospect. The present research suggest that certain metaphysical judgments play an important role in our explanatory activities, one that is distinct from the role of the epistemic and value judgments that have been the focus of much recent work in cognitive psychology and philosophy of science.

People routinely appeal to ‘beliefs’ in explaining behavior; psychologists do so as well (for instance, in explaining belief polarization and learning). Across three studies (N = 1,843, U.S-based adults), we challenge the assumption that ‘belief’ picks out a single construct in people’s theory of mind. Instead, laypeople attribute different kinds of beliefs depending on whether the beliefs play predominantly epistemic roles (such as truth-tracking) or non-epistemic roles (such as social signaling). We demonstrate that epistemic and non-epistemic beliefs are attributed under different circumstances (Study 1) and support different predictions about the believer’s values (Study 2) and behavior (Study 3). This differentiation emerges reliably across three distinct signatures of attributed belief, and even when the believed content and attributed level of certainty about that content are held constant across cases. Our findings call for a more fine-grained characterization of theory of mind and provide indirect support for the hypothesis that human cognition itself features multiple varieties of belief.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), according to which if x is a fact, x must have an explanation, has been a venerable idea in metaphysics since the presocratic era. Recent research indicates that there is a PSR correlate in ordinary thought. Children and adults judge that facts across a wide variety of domains must have an explanation, independently of whether that explanation can be attainable or whether it would be valuable to attain it. Here, we develop a chained paradigm of explanation-giving to explore whether PSR-conforming judgments—i.e., judgments concerning whether facts must have an explanation—extend to the realm of value. Do people judge, for instance, that value claims (e.g., “murder is wrong” or “snowcapped mountains are magnificent”) must have an explanation to the same degree as paradigmatically descriptive claims (e.g., “most parks have roads”)? Across four studies, we find that adults are indeed less willing to judge that moral and aesthetic claims must have an explanation, compared to plainly descriptive, prudential, and tautological claims. Moreover, we find that explanatory judgments about moral and aesthetic value diverge from explanatory judgments about affective responses concerning the same objects.

Children exhibit sophisticated explanatory judgments: they expect, value, and judge explanations of salient facts. Do children also believe that everything must have an explanation? If so, they would exhibit a metaphysical explanatory judgment conforming to what philosophers have called the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). In this study, 6-9-year-old children (N = 80, Mage = 7.92, SDage = 1.21) were shown statements across domains (Psychology, Biology, Nature, Physics, Religion, and Supernatural). For each statement, children were asked if they agree with a person who says there must be an explanation, even if we do not know it, or with a person who says there may not be an explanation. As a comparison, children were also asked about coincidences, which should not necessitate an explanation under the PSR. Results suggest that indeed children conform to the PSR: children of all ages believed that the statements must have an explanation. Notably, 7-9-year-olds thought coincidences do not have to have an explanation, while 6-year-olds did not differ between the statements and coincidences. This is the first step at uncovering a developmental change in our metaphysical explanatory judgments.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) has been an influential thesis since the earliest stages of western philosophy. According to a simple version of the PSR, for every fact, there must be an explanation of that fact. In the present research, we investigate whether people presuppose a PSR-like principle in judgment. Across four studies (N = 1,007 in total, U.S., Prolific), we find that participants consistently presuppose PSR in judgments about candidate explananda. Such judgments predictably track the metaphysical aspects relevant to the PSR (Study 1) and diverge from related epistemic judgments (Study 2) and value judgments (Study 3). Moreover, we find participants’ PSR-affirming judgments apply to a large set of facts that were sampled from random Wikipedia entries (Studies 4). These findings suggest that certain metaphysical judgments play an important role in our explanatory activities, one that is distinct from the role of the epistemic and value judgments that have been the focus of much recent work in cognitive psychology and philosophy of science.

Children exhibit sophisticated explanatory judgments: they expect, value, and judge explanations of salient facts. Do children also believe that everything must have an explanation? If so, they would exhibit a metaphysical explanatory judgment conforming to what philosophers have called the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). In this study, 6-9-year-old children (N = 80, Mage = 7.92, SDage = 1.21) were shown statements across domains (Psychology, Biology, Nature, Physics, Religion, and Supernatural) and asked if they agree that each statement must have an explanation. As a foil, children were also asked about coincidences, which, putatively, aren’t apt for explanation. Indeed, children conform to the PSR: children of all ages believed that the statements must have an explanation. Notably, 7-9-year-olds thought coincidences don’t have to have an explanation, while 6-year-olds didn’t differ between the statements and coincidences. This is the first step at uncovering a developmental change in our metaphysical explanatory judgments.

Theory of mind is often referred to as ‘belief-desire’ psychology, as these mental states (belief, desire) are accorded a central role. However, extant research has made it clear that defining the notion of belief or characterizing a consistent set of key characteristics is no trivial task. Across two studies (N=283, N=332), we explore the hypothesis that laypeople make more fine-grained distinctions among different kinds of belief. Specifically, we find evidence that beliefs with matching contents are judged differently depending on whether those beliefs are seen as playing predominantly epistemic roles (such as tracking evidence with the aim of forming accurate representations) versus non-epistemic roles (such as social signaling). Beliefs with epistemic aims, compared to those with non-epistemic aims, are more likely to be described with the term ‘thinks’ (vs. ‘believes’), and to be redescribed in probabilistic (vs. binary) terms. These findings call for a refinement of the concepts posited to underly theory of mind and offer indirect support for the idea that human psychology in fact features more than one kind of belief.

As legend has it, the Swiss folk hero William Tell was forced to shoot an apple off the top of his son Walter’s head with a crossbow to save both their lives. Walter trusted his father, so he confidently stood in front of a tree with the small target on his head. Being a great marksman, William made an excellent shot, hitting the small apple from a distance. And, crucially, Walter was right in trusting his father. He trusted well. In A Telic Theory of Trust, Adam Carter defends the view that William’s shot and Walter’s trust are the same kind of thing: Both are performances, aimed attempts. And, thus, as with any other performance, the standards by which we judge that William’s shot was a good shot are the same standards by which we judge that Walter’s trust was good trust. This is a provocative idea. For it runs against views that equate trust with states like belief, hope, or desire and thus equate the normativity of good trusting with that of good belief, good hoping, or good desiring. Carter aims to show how seeing trust as a performance dissolves many of the key problems these views face and yields a detailed framework that illuminates the intricacies and forms of trust…

Consider two premises. P1: Speakers commit to the cooperatively required contents of their words, given the joint goals that structure their conversation; P2: Power allows agents to impose joint goals to others. I aim to explore the conclusion: Power modulates the contents to which speakers commit.

Euphemistic speech represents an odd gap in the philosophy of language. We’re here to fix that. Spoiler: the euphemistic character of an expression does not lie in its content, the intentions of the speaker, nor the conventions of her community.