Epistemic norms can and should matter significantly. The ones that philosophers focus on do not. This calls for radical reworking of our views on epistemology. In the book, I discuss a series of accounts of why epistemic norms could matter, and show that for each, the norms that do matter diverge significantly from what we take the norms to be. The epistemic norms that matter tell us to ignore evidence, be incoherent, form beliefs unreliably, and in fact believe things that are obviously false in a broad range of cases. If you are interested in philosophical methodology, in normativity in general, or in epistemology, this book has something for you (if I do say so myself).

In some of my other papers, I discuss issues that arise from the epistemic value (or lack thereof) of pointless or boring beliefs. This paper discusses a new set of challenges having to do with the epistemic importance of mundane beliefs - beliefs about where one's keys are, what the weather will be tomorrow, or which local cafe has the best coffee. Compare the relative importance of mundane beliefs and more profound ones, such as beliefs about the meaning of life. Accuracy in one's beliefs about the meaning of life is sometimes more important than any amount of accuracy about more mundane topics. But this is not always the case. This is reflected in a host of familiar judgments, including those about the value of our own work as academic philosophers. Our accounts of epistemic norms should accord with these sorts of judgments. This poses an important challenge for formal epistemology.

Most possible beliefs or credences are pointless: they have no, or at most infinitely little, value. I show that this must be so no matter what epistemic value is, and for every plausible account of total epistemic value. I argue that, in light of this, epistemic consequentialists may have to say that there are no epistemic requirements on pointless beliefs.

Accuracy-first epistemology cannot show that coherence is a general rational requirement. Accuracy-first epistemology starts from the plausible claim that accuracy is epistemically valuable, and tries to vindicate norms of rationality by showing how conformity with them is beneficial. Jennifer Carr has shown that this approach faces a problem parallel to the Repugnant Conclusion in population ethics. This paper argues that accuracy first epistemology must solve this problem if it is to actually vindicate norms of rationality, and the only solution is to say either that accurate credences in some propositions have no value or infinitesimal value. From this it follows that certain incoherent credal states are not dominated by any coherent credal states. Thus the standard argument in accuracy-first epistemology for probabilism fails. The paper considers alternative ways of vindicating probabilism by appeal to the value of accuracy, and argues that none give a universal vindication.

Sometimes a belief that p promotes having true beliefs, whether or not p is true. This gives reasons to believe that p; call these reasons to believe "truth promoting non-evidential reasons for belief." This paper argues that three common views in epistemology, taken together, entail that reasons of this sort can epistemically justify beliefs. These three claims are: epistemic oughts are normative, epistemic oughts have a source, and the source of epistemic oughts is an end that has true belief as a necessary component. These claims would be hard for many epistemologists to deny, but accepting them, and thus accepting that truth promoting non-evidential reasons can justify beliefs, has significant consequences for epistemology.

It would be nice to be able "consequentialize" deontological ethical theories - to give equivalent theories that explain norms in terms of value promotion. For one (although this isn't the only reason), doing so allows us to apply some formal tools (like decision theory) to ethics in useful ways. Ethical theories that deny "ought" implies "can," or allow moral dilemmas, are hard to consequentialize. I present a solution to this problem, and argue that it is better than alternative solutions no matter what our motivation is for wanting to consequentialize. To argue for this, I focus on issues that are too often overlooked in the literature on consequentialization: contrary to duty obligations, degrees of wrongness, and ideas from the philosophy of science about the value of inaccurate models.

Enormous harms, such as climate change, often occur as the result of large numbers of individuals acting separately. In collective action problems, individuals have so little chance of making a difference to these harms that changing their behavior has insignificant expected utility. Even so, it is intuitive that individuals in many collective action problems should not be parts of groups that cause these great harms. This paper gives an account of when we do and do not have obligations to change our behavior in collective action problems. It also addresses a question insufficiently explored in the literature on this topic: when obligations arising out of collective action problems conflict with other obligations, what should we do? The paper explains how to adjudicate conflicts involving two collective action problems and conflicts involving collective action problems and other sorts of obligations.

One of the most powerful arguments that ought implies can says that obligations must be able to guide action, which unfulfillable obligations cannot do. This paper discusses a range of ways in which unfulfillable obligations can guide action, and argues that denying the principle that ought implies can gives us a better account of how obligations guide action than affirming it. The paper then considers the worry that, if we deny that ought implies can, we get too many obligations and too much guidance; it shows that this is no more of a worry for theories that deny ought implies can than for theories which affirm it.

Robots should act in accordance with some version of consequentialism, even if consequentialism is false. However, this by itself does not make it permissible for robot designers to build consequentialist robots. We argue that certain kinds of uncertainty about the future do license robot designers to build robots that comply with false moral theories.

Many criminal lawyers should expect that, were they to not defend a certain client, someone no less capable would do so. It is morally wrong for such attorneys to defend defendants who should be punished. This is true no matter how strong the defendant's rights are and no matter how important the benefits of defending the defendant are, and does not rely on endorsing any particular theory of punishment. It is true because the fact that the attorney expects to be replaced by someone equally capable has an asymmetric effect on the reasons for and against defending. The reasons that justify defending become extremely attenuated by this expectation, no matter what they are, while the reasons against defending are much less affected, no matter what they are.

The use of intuitions by so-called armchair philosophers has been criticized on empirical grounds. However, debates between armchair philosophers and their empirical critics would benefit from great precision. This paper discusses a set of probability-based tools for determining what we can and cannot learn from intuitions in various conditions. These tools can tell us whether beliefs can be justified by armchair practices, and what empirical findings would have to show to undermine the use of intuitions in philosophy. Using these tools, the paper shows that armchair philosophy makes sense in a broad range of situations, and that it is quite plausible that we are in those situations at the moment.

There have been a number of calls for reform of traditional philosophical methods such as gathering intuitions from bizarre thought experiments and using them as evidence in deductive arguments. In this paper I argue that those who accept certain common meta-philosophical views have reasons to embrace some 'old fashioned' philosophical methods, such as the use of intuitions as data and the use of bizarre thought experiments; these reasons are especially strong for those that agree with these calls for reform.

Recently, a number of philosophers have turned to folk intuitions about mental states for data about whether or not humans have qualia or phenomenal consciousness. In this paper I argue that this is inappropriate. Folk judgments studied by these researchers are most likely generated by a certain cognitive system - System One - that will ignore qualia when making judgments, even if qualia exist. If experimental research has any hope of shedding light into the existence of qualia, it needs to be better founded in an understanding of how we make judgments.

I respond to Justin Sytsma, Edouard Machery, and Bryce Huebner's arguments against the view I put forth in "The Irrelevance of Folk Intuition..." I argue that judgments about mental states are likely to be insensitive to qualia (if they exist) because these judgments are either too easy or too hard.

I argue that there are legitimate concerns about the use of intuitions in philosophy, and that these concerns cannot be fully responded to using the traditional methods of philosophy; we need a psychologically-informed understanding of how intuitions are generated. I explore how such an understanding is likely to impact a range of philosophical projects, including conceptual analysis, the study of (non-conceptual) "things themselves," and experimental philosophy.

Core philosophical beliefs that are widely shared among philosophers, such as the belief that skepticism is false, are often held with extreme confidence. However, this confidence is not justified if these beliefs are based on what are traditionally seen as the sources of philosophical evidence, such as intuitions or observation (or reasoning on these bases). Charity requires that we should look for some other basis for these beliefs. I argue that these beliefs are based on our knowledge of what we find interesting. Further, I argue that this is a good basis for belief. Knowing what we find interesting allows us to tune our inquiry in ways we could not otherwise.

I present a novel approach to teaching students who are moral relativists. I argue that we should not try to convince students to abandon relativism. We can show moral relativists why they should care about studying ethics rigorously and engaging with the views of others, and an openness to relativism actually encourages better pedagogy.