Alex Worsnip
Biographic Data
| ID | 1061064 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alex Worsnip |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alex |
| FAMILY NAME | Worsnip |
| SIGNATURE | WORSNIP A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3757-3756 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Authority or autonomy? Philosophical and psychological perspectives on deference to experts
Several decades of work in both philosophy and psychology acutely highlights our limitations as individual inquirers. One way to recognize these limitations is to defer to experts: roughly, to form one’s beliefs on the basis of expert testimony. Yet, as has become salient in the age of Brexit, Trumpist politics, and climate change denial, people are often mistrustful of experts, and unwilling to defer to them. It’s a trope of highbrow public disc…
Suspiciously Convenient Beliefs and the Pathologies of (Epistemological) Ideal Theory
Public life abounds with examples of people whose beliefs—especially political beliefs—seem suspiciously convenient: consider, for examples, the billionaire who believes that all taxation is unjust, or the Supreme Court Justice whose interpretations of what the law says reliably line up with her personal political convictions. After presenting what I take to be the best argument for the epistemological relevance of suspicious convenience, I diagn…
Compromising with the uncompromising
There are no potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article. All relevant data are included in the article
Making space for the normativity of coherence
This paper offers a new account of how structural rationality, or coherence, is normative. The central challenge to the normativity of coherence – which I term the problem of “making space” for the normativity of coherence – is this: if considerations of coherence matter normatively, it is not clear how we ought to take account of them in our deliberation. Coherence considerations don't seem to show up in reasoning about what to believe, intend, …
Which Reason? Which Rationality
The slogan that rationality is about responding to reasons has a turbulent history: once taken for granted; then widely rejected; now enjoying a resurgence. The slogan is made harder to assess by an ever-increasing plethora of distinctions pertaining to reasons and rationality. Here we are occupied with two such distinctions: that between subjective and objective reasons, and that between structural rationality (a.k.a. coherence) and substantive …
Can Pragmatists Be Moderate
In discussions of whether and how pragmatic considerations can make a difference to what one ought to believe, two sets of cases feature. The first set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic reasons for belief, is exemplified by cases of being financially bribed to believe (or withhold from believing) something. The second set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic encroachment on epistemic justification, is exemplified by cases where a…
Immorality and Irrationality
Does immorality necessarily involve irrationality? The question is often taken to be among the deepest in moral philosophy. But apparently deep questions sometimes admit of deflationary answers. In this case we can make way for a deflationary answer by appealing to dualism about rationality, according to which there are two fundamentally distinct notions of rationality: structural rationality and substantive rationality. I have defended dualism e…
Contrastive Reasons
Justin Snedegar's book Contrastive Reasons is a deft, lean, and elegant explication and defense of contrastivism about reasons (henceforth, just ‘contrastivism’). The idea behind contrastivism can be explained and motivated by thinking about simple cases like the following. I am trying to decide what to do tonight, and I have a splitting headache. Is the fact that I have a headache a reason for me to spend my evening reading? Well, that's tricky.…
Is There a Distinctively Political Normativity?
A slew of recent political theorists—many taking their cue from the political writings of Bernard Williams—have recently contended that political normativity is its own kind of normativity, distinct from moral normativity. In this article, we first attempt to clarify what this claim amounts to and then reconstruct and interrogate five major arguments for it. We contend that all these arguments are unconvincing and fail to establish a sense in whi…
Eliminating Prudential Reasons
This chapter argues, contrary to the consensus of most contemporary Western ethics, that there are no (distinctively, fundamentally) prudential reasons for action. That is to say: there is no class of reasons for action that is distinctively and fundamentally about the promotion of the agent’s own well-being. Considerations to do with the agent’s well-being can supply the agent with reasons only in virtue of her well-being mattering morally or in…
Ought’-contextualism beyond the parochial
Moral Reasons, Epistemic Reasons and Rationality
It is standard, both in the philosophical literature and in ordinary parlance, to assume that one can fall short of responding to all oneâ s moral reasons without being irrational. Yet when we turn to epistemic reasons, the situation could not be more different. Most epistemologists take it as axiomatic that for a belief to be rational is for it to be well-supported by epistemic reasons. We find ourselves with a striking asymmetry, then, between …
Narrow-scoping for wide-scopers
The Conflict of Evidence and Coherence
For many epistemologists, and for many philosophers more broadly, it is axiomatic that rationality requires you to take the doxastic attitudes that your evidence supports. Yet there is also another current in our talk about rationality. On this usage, rationality is a matter of the right kind of coherence between one's mental attitudes. Surprisingly little work in epistemology is explicitly devoted to answering the question of how these two curre…
The Conflict of Evidence and Coherence
For many epistemologists, and for many philosophers more broadly, it is axiomatic that rationality requires you to take the doxastic attitudes that your evidence supports. Yet there is also another current in our talk about rationality. On this usage, rationality is a matter of the right kind of coherence between one's mental attitudes. Surprisingly little work in epistemology is explicitly devoted to answering the question of how these two curre…
Can Pragmatists Be Moderate
In discussions of whether and how pragmatic considerations can make a difference to what one ought to believe, two sets of cases feature. The first set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic reasons for belief, is exemplified by cases of being financially bribed to believe (or withhold from believing) something. The second set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic encroachment on epistemic justification, is exemplified by cases where a…
Ought’-contextualism beyond the parochial
Eliminating Prudential Reasons
This chapter argues, contrary to the consensus of most contemporary Western ethics, that there are no (distinctively, fundamentally) prudential reasons for action. That is to say: there is no class of reasons for action that is distinctively and fundamentally about the promotion of the agent’s own well-being. Considerations to do with the agent’s well-being can supply the agent with reasons only in virtue of her well-being mattering morally or in…
Moral Reasons, Epistemic Reasons and Rationality
It is standard, both in the philosophical literature and in ordinary parlance, to assume that one can fall short of responding to all oneâ s moral reasons without being irrational. Yet when we turn to epistemic reasons, the situation could not be more different. Most epistemologists take it as axiomatic that for a belief to be rational is for it to be well-supported by epistemic reasons. We find ourselves with a striking asymmetry, then, between …
Contrastive Reasons
Justin Snedegar's book Contrastive Reasons is a deft, lean, and elegant explication and defense of contrastivism about reasons (henceforth, just ‘contrastivism’). The idea behind contrastivism can be explained and motivated by thinking about simple cases like the following. I am trying to decide what to do tonight, and I have a splitting headache. Is the fact that I have a headache a reason for me to spend my evening reading? Well, that's tricky.…
Narrow-scoping for wide-scopers
Narrow-scoping for wide-scopers
The Conflict of Evidence and Coherence
For many epistemologists, and for many philosophers more broadly, it is axiomatic that rationality requires you to take the doxastic attitudes that your evidence supports. Yet there is also another current in our talk about rationality. On this usage, rationality is a matter of the right kind of coherence between one's mental attitudes. Surprisingly little work in epistemology is explicitly devoted to answering the question of how these two curre…
Moral Reasons, Epistemic Reasons and Rationality
It is standard, both in the philosophical literature and in ordinary parlance, to assume that one can fall short of responding to all oneâ s moral reasons without being irrational. Yet when we turn to epistemic reasons, the situation could not be more different. Most epistemologists take it as axiomatic that for a belief to be rational is for it to be well-supported by epistemic reasons. We find ourselves with a striking asymmetry, then, between …
Is There a Distinctively Political Normativity?
A slew of recent political theorists—many taking their cue from the political writings of Bernard Williams—have recently contended that political normativity is its own kind of normativity, distinct from moral normativity. In this article, we first attempt to clarify what this claim amounts to and then reconstruct and interrogate five major arguments for it. We contend that all these arguments are unconvincing and fail to establish a sense in whi…
Eliminating Prudential Reasons
This chapter argues, contrary to the consensus of most contemporary Western ethics, that there are no (distinctively, fundamentally) prudential reasons for action. That is to say: there is no class of reasons for action that is distinctively and fundamentally about the promotion of the agent’s own well-being. Considerations to do with the agent’s well-being can supply the agent with reasons only in virtue of her well-being mattering morally or in…
Ought’-contextualism beyond the parochial
Immorality and Irrationality
Does immorality necessarily involve irrationality? The question is often taken to be among the deepest in moral philosophy. But apparently deep questions sometimes admit of deflationary answers. In this case we can make way for a deflationary answer by appealing to dualism about rationality, according to which there are two fundamentally distinct notions of rationality: structural rationality and substantive rationality. I have defended dualism e…
Contrastive Reasons
Justin Snedegar's book Contrastive Reasons is a deft, lean, and elegant explication and defense of contrastivism about reasons (henceforth, just ‘contrastivism’). The idea behind contrastivism can be explained and motivated by thinking about simple cases like the following. I am trying to decide what to do tonight, and I have a splitting headache. Is the fact that I have a headache a reason for me to spend my evening reading? Well, that's tricky.…
Can Pragmatists Be Moderate
In discussions of whether and how pragmatic considerations can make a difference to what one ought to believe, two sets of cases feature. The first set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic reasons for belief, is exemplified by cases of being financially bribed to believe (or withhold from believing) something. The second set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic encroachment on epistemic justification, is exemplified by cases where a…
Which Reason? Which Rationality
The slogan that rationality is about responding to reasons has a turbulent history: once taken for granted; then widely rejected; now enjoying a resurgence. The slogan is made harder to assess by an ever-increasing plethora of distinctions pertaining to reasons and rationality. Here we are occupied with two such distinctions: that between subjective and objective reasons, and that between structural rationality (a.k.a. coherence) and substantive …
Making space for the normativity of coherence
This paper offers a new account of how structural rationality, or coherence, is normative. The central challenge to the normativity of coherence – which I term the problem of “making space” for the normativity of coherence – is this: if considerations of coherence matter normatively, it is not clear how we ought to take account of them in our deliberation. Coherence considerations don't seem to show up in reasoning about what to believe, intend, …
Suspiciously Convenient Beliefs and the Pathologies of (Epistemological) Ideal Theory
Public life abounds with examples of people whose beliefs—especially political beliefs—seem suspiciously convenient: consider, for examples, the billionaire who believes that all taxation is unjust, or the Supreme Court Justice whose interpretations of what the law says reliably line up with her personal political convictions. After presenting what I take to be the best argument for the epistemological relevance of suspicious convenience, I diagn…
Compromising with the uncompromising
There are no potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article. All relevant data are included in the article
Authority or autonomy? Philosophical and psychological perspectives on deference to experts
Several decades of work in both philosophy and psychology acutely highlights our limitations as individual inquirers. One way to recognize these limitations is to defer to experts: roughly, to form one’s beliefs on the basis of expert testimony. Yet, as has become salient in the age of Brexit, Trumpist politics, and climate change denial, people are often mistrustful of experts, and unwilling to defer to them. It’s a trope of highbrow public disc…
Epistemology (13 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (8 works) · Free Will and Agency (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works)