I mostly work on epistemology and philosophy of mind. Currently, I am pursuing several principal research projects. See also my CV.
The ethics and epistemology of concept acquisition
Concepts are often argued to be epistemically and morally innocent. They may be more or less useful, but as such they just represent, the question of whether they correspond to anything real is wholly different. Granting that nothing inherent to concepts is relevant for their epistemic status, they nevertheless seem to be better or worse in a way. I plan to explain this intuition by investigating when and whether the acquisition of particular concepts is epistemically and morally good.
The ethics and epistemology of using LLMs
LLMs are a transformative and often surprising technology. The problems they raise are manifold: I currently am investigating how we as human users relate to LLMs both morally and epistemologically. At the same time I am investigating what kinds of epistemic and moral competences LLMs might possess, taking a functionalist perspective.
Publications
My book
(2023) Trust Responsibly: Non-evidential Virtue Epistemology. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org10.4324/9781003374466 
I offer a virtue epistemological account of Wrightean epistemic entitlement. Showing how entitlement and other non-evidential accounts are threatened by a version of the problem of demarcation, I lay out how the fact that entitlement enables our having virtues avoids this problem of demarcation. The book is available in open access, thanks to the kind support of the Swiss National Science Foundation
Some papers
(2024) with Steffen Koch ‘Heavy Duty Conceptual Engineering’, Nous. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12538
(2024) ‘Cognitive Behavioural Virtue’, Review of Philosophy and Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-024-00761-w
(2024) ‘Baby Logic – a hinge epistemology’, Erkenntnis. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00858-9
(2023) ‘Engineering virtue: constructionist virtue ethics’, Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2023.2238293
(2021) ‘Dual processes, dual virtues’, Philosophical Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01761-7
Work in progress
- A paper on the different kinds of virtues that artificial intelligence can have (preprint at https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6d254)
- A co-written critical commentary on a book about non-ideal epistemology (commissioned for Analysis)
- A paper on a type of moral virtues inspired by virtue epistemology (in preparation)
- A paper on autobiographic memory and a special type of CBT (in preparation)
- A paper on how our innate cognitive resources produce the problem of free will (in preparation)
- A paper on the epistemic structure of extremist world views (in preparation)
Some Talks
9. 2023, “Engineering Virtue”, New Directions in Virtue and Vice Epistemology, University of Nottingham, UK (online).
9. 2022, “The mind-expanding powers of conceptual engineering”, Conceptual Engineering Seminar, University of Zürich, Switzerland (online). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RptQmwlVJOs
8. 2019, “Trust responsibly”, 2019 AHRC DTP Conference on “Trust and Truth”, University of Cambridge, UK.
7. 2019, “Is there a problem of demarcation for hinges?”, 2nd Hinge Epistemology Conference, Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, France.
11. 2018, “The certainties of delusion”, Belief, Imagination, and Delusion, University of Birmingham, UK.
10. 2017, “What deceiving oneself hinges on”, Self-Deception what it is and what it is worth, University of Basel, Switzerland.
6. 2016, “Luminosity in a Forced-March”, 6th Edinburgh Graduate Epistemology Conference (EGEC), University of Edinburgh, UK.
Organised events
September 2024 , I am co-organising two events:
A workshop on hinge epistemology at the University of Glasgow together with Andrew Sherrod and Martin Miragoli.
A conference on resilience against extremism at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam together with Rik Peels and Anna Haase.
Together with my doctoral supervisor Sven Bernecker and my marvellous colleague Lisa Benossi I also organised the conference Fürwahrhalten – Return of the Kantians at the University of Cologne in May 2019.
This also led to our editing a special issue on the topic at History of Philosophy and Logical analysis. Some of the articles have already come out, look for the name Kant in the titles.