My main area of research is in epistemology. Within the area of epistemology I have two main projects. The first project focuses generally on the normative aspects of epistemology. I see epistemology as an essentially normative enterprise, and argue that the units of evaluation we should use are not beliefs, but rather the character traits of the agent. This results in a virtue approach to epistemology. This approach to epistemology can help us to solve problems that epistemology has faced and gives us a fresh perspective from which to look at old debates. My virtue approach to normative issues can also be extended to areas of applied ethics including environmental ethics and feminism.

My second project focuses on the ways that humans reason about probability and their own preferences, and the limits that we as humans might face in such reasoning. The goal here is to use artificial systems to model human rationality. However, cognitive science has discovered surprising results about our inability to reason in these areas, and we should include these limitations in our attempts to adequately model human rationality.

Recent and forthcoming publications:

“What Nozick Did for Decision Theory” (with David Schmidtz) Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume 27, Issue 1, August 2004, pp. 282-294.

“The Proper Structure of the Intellectual Virtues” Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 47, Issue 1, March 2009.

“Virtue Epistemology and Contextualism” Metaphilosophy Special Issue, Virtue and Vice: Moral and Intellectual, February 2010.