PhilPapers Profile
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Orcid ID: 0000-0001-8685-6800
Published Work (Philosophy):
- "The First City and First Soul of Plato's Republic", Rhizomata 9 (2021):50-83. One puzzling feature of Plato’s Republic is the role of the First City, the so-called ‘city of pigs’. Though Socrates praises the First City as a “true” and “healthy” city, Plato nevertheless abandons it for what will become Kallipolis, with no real explanation of its problems. Here I provide an explanation for what Plato would have found wrong with the First City. I first reject previous attempts to answer this question, arguing that they fail to give sufficient weight to Socrates’s description of the First City and its place in the Republic. I argue that the First City is a viable political arrangement, where one can live a deeply Socratic lifestyle. But the First City has a psychological corollary, that the soul is simple rather than tripartite. The Republic rejects the simple soul as an inaccurate model of moral psychology; Plato therefore has to reject the First City as well.
- "Was Pyrrho a Pyrrhonian?", Apeiron, 50 (2017): 335-365. Many recent commentators, most notably Richard Bett, have made Pyrrho out to be a metaphysical dogmatist who thinks the world is fundamentally indeterminate. Despite some criticisms of this view by Brennan and others, this metaphysical reading has continued to gain adherents. But there are serious textual and logical problems with these dogmatic interpretations. According to the evidence we have, a better view is that Pyrrho was an agnostic skeptic, i.e. one who refused to make assertions about the world outside of perceptual or intellectual appearances. But this does not mean that the traditional view of Pyrrho is correct either: the kind of skepticism Pyrrho endorsed is not Pyrrhonian, because it is grounded in the nature of our epistemic faculties rather than opposition between equally plausible theories, arguments, beliefs, or appearances. A secondary thesis of this paper is about methodology. Rather than focus on the most ambiguous and contentious passages in isolation, we should base our interpretation on the whole corpus, beginning with the easiest passages. Faulty interpretations of Pyrrho go wrong, I argue, partly by failing to follow this method.
- "Melody and Rhythm at Plato's Symposium 187d2", Classical Philology 110 (2015): 152-158. In Plato’s Symposium Eryximachus provides a metaphysical theory based on the attraction of basic elements which he applies to a variety of domains, including music. In the text of his speech there is a variation in the manuscripts at 187d2 between two readings, “μέλεσί τε καὶ μέτροις” and “μέλεσί τε καὶ ῥυθμοῖς”. Though the former is almost universally followed, I argue that the latter is the correct reading. The manuscript transmission does not support either option over the other, but Plato’s style and diction, and the logic of the passage both suggest that ῥυθμοῖς is the preferable reading.
- "The Underlying Argument of Aristotle's Metaphysics Z.3". Phronesis 59 (2014):321-342. This paper argues that Aristotle’s Metaphysics Z.3 deploys a reductio against the claim that ‘substances underlie by being the subjects of predication’, in order to demonstrate the need for a new explanation of how substances underlie. Z.13 and H.1 corroborate this reading: both allude to an argument originally contained in Z.3, but now lost from our text, that form, matter and compound ‘underlie’ in different ways. This helps explain some of Z’s peculiarities—and it avoids committing Aristotle to self-contradiction about whether matter is substance, a claim denied in the reductio but endorsed elsewhere.
Published Work (SoTL):
- "Online Discussion Boards that Students Don't Hate". AAPT Studies in Pedagogy 8 (2023). This short piece discusses a modular online discussion board system I use in my classes, which is effective at increasing consistent student engagement (with each other and with course material).
- "Conspiracy Theories: What They (Particularists) Don't Want You to Know". Southwest Philosophy Review 40 (2024): 57-68. Particularists about conspiracy theories hold that there is nothing epistemologically suspect about conspiracy theories as a category; rather, they should be treated on a case-by-case basis. This is because Particularists use a minimal definition of ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracy’, which countenances a much larger range of activities than what standardly fall under that label. This makes it difficult to argue against the Particularist position, because it insulates itself from counterexamples. I attempt to circumvent this obstacle by offering an internal critique of Particularism instead. Particularists appeal to a norm of inquiry that they say is violated by their Generalist opponents, who hold that conspiracy theories are prima facie irrational and not worthy of investigation. I argue that, by taking such a permissive conception of what counts as a conspiracy theory, Particularism itself undermines inquiry into CTs, and is therefore worse off than Generalism on this front.
- "Recalcitrant Beliefs and Pyrrhonian Skepticism" Southwest Philosophical Studies 45. Brian Ribeiro's exploration of epistemic akrasia is part of a broader investigation of the history of skepticism and the weakness of reason. He appeals to the phenomenon of what I call recalcitrant beliefs to show that epistemic akrasia is a real cognitive phenomenon, and draws on the three eponymous philosophers of his book Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers to bolster his case. Here I argue that Ribeiro's argument of epistemic akrasia via recalcitrant beliefs is incompatible with key tents of Pyrrhonian skepticism, namely epoche (suspension of judgement) via isostheneia (equal strength or equipollence) of opposing considerations.
- "Recalcitrant Beliefs and Epistemic Akrasia". Southwest Philosophy Review 39. In Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers, Brian Ribeiro makes a novel argument for the possibility of epistemic akrasia by appealing to its actuality. He points to his own experience in struggling to explicitly believe in external-world skepticism, despite giving his informed, good-faith consent to arguments entailing this view. I argue that the stubborn persistence of belief in the external world is an example of a recalcitrant belief, which are analogous to the more familiar phenomenon of recalcitrant emotion. Interesting and important as recalcitrant beliefs are, however, they are incompatible with epistemic akrasia; consequently, Ribeiro's argument for the latter does not succeed.
- "Sealioning: A Case Study in Epistemic Vice". Southwest Philosophy Review 38.1 (2022):123-134. With new technology and new ways of communicating come new ways of exercising epistemic agency in social contexts. In this paper I consider a novel phenomenon of the online world: sealioning. I first discuss background issues involving epistemic virtue and vice in general, and the specific intellectual virtue of inquisitiveness, the “question-asking virtue”.[1] I then provide a philosophical analysis of sealioning, arguing that it functions as the negative counterpart to inquisitiveness, a specific character trait that uses questions in epistemically vicious ways. This analysis demonstrates some important conclusions about how epistemic vices are more than mere deficiencies or incompetencies, but are instead psychologically rich character traits directed toward epistemically malicious ends.
- "Epistemic Goods". Southwest Philosophy Review 36.1 (2020): 187-198. Virtue epistemologists have gone into significant detail about the nature of epistemic virtue, and about the specific features of numerous individual virtues. Many virtue epistemologists adopt an explicitly neo-Aristotelian framework, drawing parallels between virtue epistemology and virtue ethics along a number of dimensions. Given the close parallels between these two approaches, there is a surprising lacuna on the epistemological side: virtue epistemologists have said little about the epistemic goods and their function in epistemic flourishing (analogous to how moral goods like intelligence, health, or money are necessary for moral virtue and hence moral flourishing). This paper aims to fill this gap. I argue that there are three categories of epistemic goods (metacognitive, cognitive, and evidential), analogous to Aristotle’s psychic goods, bodily goods, and external goods. These epistemic goods are important resources for the exercise of epistemic virtue, and they are also important constituents of epistemic flourishing.
- "Metacognition as an Epistemic Virtue". Southwest Philosophy Review 35.1 (2019): 117-129. Metacognition, or ‘thinking about thinking’ is an important concept in a number of fields outside philosophy, especially in education and child development. In this paper I argue that metacognition should be of interest to epistemologists as well, because it is an epistemic virtue. After surveying how metacognition is understood in a variety of disciplines, I show that metacognition can be fruitfully viewed as a character trait, rather than a mere skill or cognitive process. I then show that this character trait should count as an epistemic virtue: it has the same components, makes the same kind of contribution to excellent epistemic agency, and contributes to epistemic flourishing in a variety of contexts.
- "Secondary Happiness in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics." Newsletter for the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy 17 (2017): 20-29. The first lines of NE X.8 are often translated to say that the life of moral virtue is a second kind of happiness, or is happiness is a secondary way. I argue that, minimally this is a mistranslation: Aristotle says only that the moral life "is so secondarily", leaving the predicate unspecified. I argue further that the best way to interpret this line is to understand it as saying the moral life is secondarily human, not secondarily happy. This reading is more plausible than the secondary happiness reading on its own terms, and has the added benefit for inclusivist interpreters of the NE that these lines are consistent with the rest of X.7-8 in arguing that there is exactly one form of eudaimonia.
- "Practical Nous in Aristotle's Ethics". Newsletter for the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy 16 (2016):11-17. The undisputed books of the Nicomachean Ethics (NE I-IV, VIII-X) make nous a single part of the soul capable of both theoretical and practical reason; several key arguments in the NE rely on this unity of the rational part of the soul. The undisputed books of the Eudemian Ethics (EE I-III, VII-VIII) and the so-called "Common Books" (NE V-VII=EE IV-VI) both attribute theoretical and practical reason to distinct parts of the soul. This suggests that (i) the Common Books belong only with the EE, and (ii) the EE has a more sophisticated psychology than the NE.
- "Self-Love and Self-Sufficiency in the Aristotelian Ethics". Newsletter for the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy 14 (2014):33-43. The Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics both argue that the self-sufficient person will have friends. But they give different arguments for this conclusion: the NE grounds the value of friendship in the value of self-love, because the friend is 'another self'. This argument fails to secure its conclusion. The EE, by contrast, grounds the value of friendship in the value of shared activity, and this argument is more successful. The best way to make sense of this, I submit, is that the EE book on philia was written to avoid the shortcomings in the earlier NE treatment.
- "Self-Love in the Aristotelian Ethics". Newsletter for the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy 11 (2010):12-18. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle makes self-love the foundation of the friendship relation: in short, we love our self, and friends are other selves. But, I argue, the way we are related to ourselves on Aristotle's view means that self-love fails to meet the criteria for friendship Aristotle proposes, and hence self-love cannot play this foundational role. The treatment of friendship in the Eudemian Ethics is very simliar to the NE in many respects, but it secures its conclusions without appeal to self-love. This suggests both that the EE does a better job in discussing friendship, and that the EE book on philia was written to avoid the shortcomings in the earlier NE treatment.
- "Protagoras was Not a Relativist to Me". Newsletter for the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy 10 (2009):8-14. In the Theaetetus and elsewhere, Plato associates Protagoras with the view of epistemic relativism. But based on our evidence of the historical Protagoras, he could not have been a relativist. I argue that a close reading of the Theaetetus shows that Plato is careful not to attribute relativism to Protagoras directly. Hence we should conclude both that the historical Protagoras was not a relativist, and that Plato was well aware of this fact.
Current Projects [Vague and title-less to protect blind-review]:
- The undisputed books of the Nicomachean Ethics posits a three-part soul, where theoretical reason and practical reason are two aspects of the same psychic part. The Eudemian Ethics (and the Common Books) both posit a four-part soul, where theoretical reason and practical reason are faculties of different psychic parts. This suggests that (i) the Common Books belong to the EE but not to the NE, and (ii) according to the traditional criteria for tracking Aristotle's intellectual development, the EE was written later and is more sophisticated than the NE.
- In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that self-love is the paradigm form of friendship, and draws many important conclusions from this status, e.g. about the intrinsic value of friendship. In the Eudemian Ethics, self-love is seriously demoted, and the relevant conclusions are supported by other means. I want to make sense of this change in doctrine. The best explanation is that the NE came first, Aristotle realized it had problems, and so wrote the EE to fix them
- Based on the extant fragments and on his treatment in the Theaetetus and Protagoras, Protagoras wasn't an epistemological relativist, and Plato didn't want us to think he was.
Dissertation:
- My dissertation argued that the so-called ‘Common Books’ printed in both the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics (NE V-VII = EE IV-VI) are inconsistent with the NE on fundamental points of doctrine, and so should be regarded only as part of the EE; this has some interesting results for how we interpret the resulting seven-book NE. I begin by isolating the seven undisputed NE Books (I-IV, VIII-X), arguing that there is a consistent theory running throughout them, a rather strict version of intellectualism. On particular importance are the following claims: (i) divinity is a foundational concept for Aristotle’s understanding of eudaimonia, both in the formal properties eudaimonia has and in the specific conception of the best life he defends; (ii) the person or self is identified with nous, which Aristotle argues is the divine part of the soul; (iii) nous in the NE is a single part of the soul with both theoretical and practical powers. The Common Books, I argue, are inconsistent with these points: (i) Aristotle rejects thinking of humans in divine the way the NE requires; (ii) the self is never reduced to a single part of the soul, but rather the whole psychic composite; (iii) theoretical and practical reason are split between two parts. The Eudemian Ethics agrees with the Common Books against the NE on all three of these points. I then argue that the EE and Common Books refer to one another repeatedly, while there is not a single reference that compels us to take the Common Books and NE as a unit (there are only two possible exceptions, and both are better read in another way). This suggests that the Common Books do not belong in the NE. I conclude by rejecting the view that NE X.6-8 is the outlier causes the problems with the Common Books, and argue that the seven remaining NE books form a complete, coherent treatise without the Common Books or posited equivalents.
Classics MA thesis:
- Eryximachus' speech in Plato's Symposium is thoroughly Hippocratic in both style and substance. It also expresses a number of views which Plato endorses in his own work, especially the later dialogues like the Statesman, Timaeus, and Laws. This suggests that, contrary to the received view, Plato himself took the content of Eryximachus's speech very seriously.