Many have taken Williamson’s Anti-Luminosity argument to show that no non-trivial condition is luminous. I focus on one specific mental state (or mental condition): belief. I argue that a specific notion of belief escapes the argument; for all I can tell, this notion of belief is luminous.

My argument rests on the identification of an implicit assumption in Williamson’s argument: his assumed knowledge of mind. He assumes that mental conditions are felt (like temperature or pain), more broadly detected. That mental conditions come in degrees also meshes well with this assumption about our knowledge of mind.

However, there is a notion of belief that is not known in this way–it is not detected. This notion of belief also does not come in degrees. Insofar as the implicit assumption does not apply to such mental conditions, they evade the conclusion of Williamson’s argument.

I have a project on Moore’s Paradox and on Akrasia. Let me briefly sketch them:

(1) Almost all scholars working on Moore's Paradox take it to show us something important about belief (or even assertion), such as that belief aims at truth. But this is a mistaken diagnosis of the problem, because the irrationality here patterns with states like being in pain but believing one is not or intending to do something, but believing one does not intend, which are all just as irrational. The key to seeing these as part of the same pattern is to identify a special kind of conscious awareness of our minds that is knowledge-providing in a distinctive first personal (de se) way, bridging levels of the mind (for example, from feeling pain, to knowing that one is in pain). I show that when we carefully formulate the conditions on this form of consciousness and distinguish them from temptingly close, but distinct, conditions (such as luminosity), we can identify the irrationality of all of the above cases as the holding of implicit logically contradictory beliefs.

(2) A practically akratic subject acts contrary to what she believes she ought to do, and an epistemically akratic subject believes contrary to what she believes she ought to believe. Akrasia is revealing, but neither specifically about beliefs nor actions, but about reason-sensitive attitudes in general, a class of attitudes that also includes for instance motivated desires. These are attitudes on which we can reflect in a special way, and for which we can – based on such a reflection – conclude that they are rationally based. By discussing akrasia on this level, and by formulating conditions of reflection precisely, I argue that the irrationality of akratic states reduces to logically irrational beliefs. When akrasia is rational, it is rational because at least one of the conditions of reflection is violated.

I have my own take on Kripke’s infamous “The Question of Logic” (2024).

I argue that Kripke is a traditionalist: logic is thought-dependent. This means that it is in some sense internal to thought and to formulate the logical laws is to recognize what holds of thought. As I see it, Kant is the original traditionalist, Frege inherited core traditionalist commitments and Wittgenstein radicalized them. I am working on a presentation of traditionalism; one day, I hope to defend it.

Can a set of unalterable attitudes be incoherent? For example, if I cannot but believe that it is snowing outside, no matter what I perceive, can this belief stand in coherence relations? More generally, which classes of attitudes can be structurally (ir)rational? Together with Jason Kay, I argue that only reason-sensitive attitudes can be structurally (ir)rational.

What does it take to be a user of “I”? Together with Madeleine Levac, I argue that first-personal thought and speech reflect a unique kind of experience and self-conceptualization. Our account is the product of critical engagement with G.E.M. Anscombe’s “The First Person.” Our paper is built around a contrast with two kinds of characters. To begin with we have the “A-users,” who feature in Anscombe’s own discussion. There is pressure from another direction, however, that she does not take account of: the solipsistic consciousness. We argue that our actual use of “I” overcomes both the A-users and the solipsist’s distinctive shortfalls. With this idea in hand, we develop an account of I-sentences according to which these are expressives in predicative form; of the unique and puzzling features associated with I-thoughts (e.g., immunity to error through misidentification); and of the relationship between embodiment and the first person. 

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus provides an account of what it is to affirm something, for example to affirm that the desk in front of me is made from birch wood. He calls this “thinking” or “logical picturing”. This latter expression makes perspicuous that Wittgenstein thinks of any affirmation, any thought, as governed by logic. I tackle a central exegetical question, namely whether the sentences of logic themselves may be affirmed, whether they are true, and if so how. I thereby provide a novel account of logical truth in the Tractatus, which is intimately connected to Wittgenstein’s conception of the thinking subject and his first-personal account of the mind. My account thereby situates the Tractatus as instructive for contemporary questions and problems, especially on the nature of rationality and  logic.