research

I have three main areas of research: epistemology, moral psychology, and social philosophy. I'm especially interested in the overlaps between these areas. 

My dissertation sits at the intersection of epistemology and moral psychology. In particular, I argue for a novel approach to the epistemology of practical modality, according to which we learn the facts about what's practically possible and necessary through our emotions and by exercising our capacities for practical reason. You can learn, for instance, that a snake is dangerous by feeling fear of it; you can learn that particular counterfactuals (e.g. 'If I weren't reading this website right now, I'd be grading my students' papers') are true by reasoning practically about them, and you can learn what you're able to do by reasoning practically about different courses of action. 

Outside of my dissertation project, I'm interested in the intersection of ethics and epistemology, especially as it relates to gender. My paper 'Gender and first-person authority' is part of this research project.

I'm also interested in the metaphysics of dispositions, especially masked dispositions (roughly, dispositions that are left intact but are prevented from manifesting). I developed an account of masked dispositions (in 'On dispositional masks') that I think helps solve a number of problems that have been posed for dispositional analyses of important concepts. My paper 'Masks, finks, and gender' is one offshoot of this project.

You can click on the papers below for brief descriptions and links to pre-prints/published versions. Feel free to email me at mat298@cornell.edu for drafts of my works in progress.