Bob Beddor is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore. He works on issues at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaethics.
What are you working on right now?
I have a few projects that I’m working on. One of these explores the role of certainty in epistemology. Contemporary epistemologists pay a lot of attention to knowledge and justified belief, but tend to give certainty short shrift. I think this is a mistake; many of the jobs philosophers enlist knowledge or justified belief to perform are better played by certainty. In particular, I think that by analyzing evidence, evidential probability, and epistemic modals (e.g., “might”, “must”) in terms of certainty rather than knowledge we can account for a range of data that are unexplained by rival accounts.
Another strand of my research focuses on the nature of “subjective discourse” such as taste predicates and (on some metaethical views) moral discourse. Subjective language displays some puzzling features. On the one hand, it resembles ordinary, descriptive language in many respects. On the other hand, it’s tempting to think that subjective discourse does not aim to represent the world in the same way that descriptive discourse does. I’m interested developing an analysis of subjective language that makes sense of both of these features. Since I think expressivism offers a particularly promising approach to these issues, I’ve been looking at some under-explored challenges to expressivism. I’ve also been investigating the relation between expressivism and relativism, and the extent to which challenges facing the former also arise for the latter.
What is your favorite thing that you’ve written?
Not sure that I have a favorite, but I rather like my recent paper, “Subjective Disagreement.” It raises some problems for standard explanations of disagreements involving subjective discourse, and proposes a new approach that – hopefully! – resolves some of these puzzles.
I’m also rather fond of this rhyming proof of the completeness of propositional logic that I wrote for Thony Gillies’ logic final back in grad school.
What topic do you think is under explored in philosophy?
In epistemology a lot has been written on the conditions under which beliefs are rational or irrational. But there are loads of rationally evaluable attitudes that are belief-like in certain respects and desire-like in others – for example, intention, fear, hope, regret. This raises some fascinating questions: What are the conditions under which these attitudes count as rational or irrational? And what does this tell us about functional roles of these states? While some important work has already been done on this topic (particularly in the case of intention), I think there’s a lot more to explore. I also think this is a topic that is likely to have implications for debates in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metaethics.
What is your favorite film of all time? (Or top 3). Why? To whom would you recommend them?
Top 3: National Treasure, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, and The Wicker Man (2006 remake). Would recommend to anyone who appreciates the magic and mania of a finely crafted Nicolas Cage performance.
What’s your favorite quote?
“This paper reinvents the sleigh, which is like reinventing the wheel, except less useful.”
Where is your favorite place you have ever traveled and why?
One great thing about living in Singapore is that I get to travel to all sorts of places that I probably would never have visited had I stayed in North America. One of my favorite recent trips was trekking in the Himalayas in Nepal. I’ve also found Indonesia endlessly fascinating. Seeing the Komodo dragons in the wild was particularly memorable.
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Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
