research

I'm writing a dissertation about the epistemology of practical modality under the joint supervision of Shaun Nichols and Carlotta Pavese. How do we know which things in our environments can harm or benefit us? How do I know what I would have done yesterday if I hadn't had to run errands? I argue that two cognitive faculties that have been overlooked so far in the epistemology of modality play crucial roles in how we learn about these facts: our capacities for practical reason and our emotions.

Outside of my dissertation project, I'm interested in the intersection of ethics and epistemology. I'm currently working on a few papers at this intersection: one about gender and epistemic norms, one about epistemic injustice, and one about gaslighting. My paper 'Gender and first-person authority' is part of this research project.

During my MA at Georgia State, I worked primarily on 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; I'm still working on several others.

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.