In-Progress

“Dilating and Contracting non-Arbitrarily”

I argue that if precise credences represent an agent's disposition to guess, then certain imprecise states represent an agent's disposition to suspend judgment when confronted with questions. Agents in a state of suspended judgment are modeled as abstaining from making guesses. I show that it is always irrational for agents to shift arbitrarily between precise and imprecise credences, where an arbitrary shift is one that is not evidence-responsive. I then argue that it is rational for non-ideal agents to shift between precise and imprecise credences without receiving new evidence so long as the shift results from reconceptualizing our existing evidence.

“Guessing on Principal”

I show that agents make more true guesses in expectation if they are more confident in proposition P than Q whenever the chance of P is greater than the chance of Q. The result suggests that if the chance of P is greater than the chance of Q, we ought to be more confident in P. I then use a representation theorem to argue that rational agents ought to be representable as having a credence function that matches the chance function precisely. But the argument faces a circularity concern. By looking at how many true guesses are made in expectation, I presuppose that agents already care about certain chance estimates. I argue that the circularity is not confined to the guessing approach, and that it is less vicious than a similar circularity admitted by epistemic utility theory.

“Fundamental Laws and the Methodology of Science” co-authored work with Travis McKenna

We show that the term 'fundamental law' is not used coextensively in metaphysics and science. The mismatch is significant, because the fundamental laws of nature are often regarded as those that tell us about the fundamental nature of reality. We appeal to examples from Newtonian mechanics, continuum mechanics, and electrodynamics to show that the use of 'fundamental law' in science is gerrymandered and fails to pick out laws that are suitable for telling us about fundamental reality. 

“Wavefunction Realism and Fundamentality” co-authored work with Nina Emery

 Our paper challenges the common assumption that if the quantum wavefunction is best represented as a field, then it must be a fundamental field in a high-dimensional configuration space. We introduce an alternative view, wavefunction non-fundamentalism, that says the quantum wavefunction represents a non-fundamental field in the high-dimensional configuration space. We argue that whether it's best to think of the wavefunction field as fundamental or non-fundamental will turn on nuanced questions about the nature of grounding, the importance of separability and locality, and the role of explanation in metaphysics and physics.