Kelley Annesley is a fifth-year graduate student at the University of Rochester, interested especially in epistemology and feminist takes on biomedical ethics. As a Rochesterian, she frequently defends both Evidentialism and the benefits of living in a place that requires one to occasionally shovel twelve plus inches of snow.
What are you working on right now?
My dissertation, where I argue that we should think that there is at least one epistemic duty: the epistemic duty to gather relevant, easily accessible evidence. On my view, when agents fail to fulfill that duty, they are epistemically irresponsible. But, I argue that this irresponsibility doesn’t directly affect their epistemic justification, so it’s possible that one could be quite epistemically irresponsible with regard to some proposition, and lack much of the relevant, easily accessible evidence, but still have a justified doxastic attitude about that proposition. One kind of case that I think motivates this view is certain kinds of conspiracy theorists. It seems to me that at least some conspiracy theorists are internally well-justified; for example, I take it that Flat Earthers can be justified in believing the Earth is flat if their evidence on balance supports that proposition. But, it seems that they are (often, but maybe not always) massively epistemically irresponsible in virtue of their failure to gather the relevant and quite easily accessible evidence that would ruin their justification for Flat Earth propositions. If one has a different kind of view, where epistemic irresponsibility and/or faulty evidence gathering itself ruins justification, the agents in this kind of case will be ruled unjustified, no matter how well their doxastic attitude fits the evidence they have at a time. This might seem like the right result to some, but I take it that it’s important to acknowledge what is going epistemically well in this kind of situation — the fit between the evidence and the doxastic attitude — along with what is not going well — the failure of a duty to gather relevant, easily accessible evidence.
What excites you about philosophy?
I have always loved reading, writing, and problem solving. One reason I find philosophy exciting is that it affords me the opportunity to spend most of my time doing all three of those things. I also love that philosophy is so difficult that we have to do it together; feeling stuck on a puzzle or issue is of course always frustrating, but I enjoy the moments when you’re suddenly able to understand things differently by thinking collaboratively.
What are you most proud of in your professional life?
So far, I am most proud of the impact I have been able to have on some of my students as a writing instructor and a TA at the University of Rochester. I benefited greatly from my relationships with many generous and thoughtful instructors and professors during my undergraduate education, and I am very pleased to be able to start paying back that debt of gratitude by being a positive resource for undergraduate students.
Name a trait, skill or characteristic that you have that others may not know about.
I spent most of my life pre-graduate school thinking I would be a performer, and so studied extensively as an actor and a singer, including during my undergraduate education at Muhlenberg College, where I double majored in Philosophy and Theater. (I tried dance several times, but that never worked out very well for me. The worst grade I got in college was in Intermediate Ballet.)
If you could wake up tomorrow with a new talent, what would you most like it to be?
The ability to write without drinking an unhealthy amount of coffee. If that’s too unrealistic, I’d also accept a talent for playing piano.
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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.
Yes, coffee is the drug of choice for many thinker/writers, here too. So here’s a caffeine fueled philosophical question about caffeine…
I’ve often written about the drug DMT as it seems to have fascinating relevance to some of the largest questions. Whenever I bring up DMT close to everyone immediately dismisses the experiences as mere hallucinations, offering no real insight in to the nature of reality. And they might be right. I don’t claim to know.
But does that mean our caffeine fueled thoughts are also mere drug experiences? Does the consumption of any chemical make any resulting insights invalid?
Where do we draw the line between chemicals typically assumed to be an asset to insight, and those typically assumed to be just a chemical experience?