Genealogical debunking arguments try to undermine our justification for holding certain kinds of beliefs-- ex. moral beliefs, mathematical beliefs, religious beliefs, or perceptual beliefs about ordinary material objects-- by drawing our attention to their causal-historical origins. Not all genealogies have such "defeating" potential. So when, and in virtue of what, does awareness of a belief's genealogy give one a defeater for that belief? I am developing a novel answer to that question, according to which defeater-generating genealogies are those that do not include the relevant belief's would-be truthmakers.
Here are a few of my published and in-progress papers on this topic:
"Genealogical Defeat and Ontological Sparsity" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2023) argues that a recent explanationist account of genealogical defeat due to Korman and Locke cannot accommodate reasonable belief in a sparse ontology of worldly facts or states of affairs, and then develops an alternative account capable of meeting this challenge.
“Debunking Arguments and Metaphysical Laws" (Philosophical Studies, 2020), argues that believers in composite material objects can protect their object beliefs from debunking by using their beliefs about the general identity, nature, and grounds composite material objects as defeater-deflectors.
"Reductionist Replies to Debunking Arguments" (under review) argues that what I call "reductionist" replies to debunking arguments can succeed only if our beliefs about what's identical with what are epistemically independent of our beliefs about what there is. I use the moral naturalist's reply to evolutionary debunking arguments in metaethics as a case study.
A paper developing a truthmaker account of genealogical defeat (in progress)
A paper defending a debunking argument against the belief in LLM consciousness (in progress)
A paper distinguishing between two different kinds of defeater-deflectors (in progress)
Brute Facts
Many philosophers think that, other things being equal, it's better to explain a given fact than it is to take that fact as "brute" or inexplicable. My research in metaphysical grounding and fundamentality challenges that anti-bruteness principle. In my published work, I have argued that brute facts are both inevitable and ubiquitous. My in-progress work defends the more modest principle that, other things being equal, it's better to explain facts that "demand" or "call out for" explanation than it is to leave such facts without an explanation.
"Grounding and the Myth of Ontological Innocence" (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2021) argues that grounded entities not ontologically innocent relative to-- i.e. are not "nothing over and above", "an ontological free lunch" with respect to, etc.-- their full grounds.
"Against Purity"(Ergo, 2023) argues that, contra the so-called "purity" principle, there can be brute or metaphysically inexplicable facts about grounded or derivative entities like candy, tables, cities, and social structures. My argument against the purity of fundamental facts also gives us a powerful new reason to deny that every "grounding fact"-- or fact about what grounds what-- has a ground.
In "Calling for Metaphysical Explanation" (in progress), I defend a reductive account of what it is for a fact to "call out for", "require", or otherwise "demand" metaphysical explanation in more basic terms. I then put my answer to work by showing that it can shed much-needed light on some otherwise elusive topics in metaphysics including the scope of the PSR, the nature of ontological emergence, the notion of metaphysical arbitrariness, and the question of why some stopping-points for metaphysical explanation are better than others.
A paper arguing that not all phenomena demand metaphysical explanation.
A paper on explanatory demandingness and the grounding problem for coincident material objects.