Yasha Sapir
Email: jsapir [at] usc [dot] edu
I'm a third year philosophy graduate student at the University of Southern California. My main research interests are in epistemology, philosophy of language, and ethics.
Before USC, I was at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. And before that I was at Reed.
I come from a family of Russian mathematicians. You can learn more about my mom here, my dad here, and my older sister here.
Publication
(2021). Hedging and the ignorance norm on inquiry (with Peter van Elswyk). Synthese. [preprint]
Peter and I defend the ignorance norm.
The ignorance norm: Interrogative attitudes directed at a question are never compatible with knowledge of the question’s answer.
We further argue that the norm is exhaustive.
The ignorance norm is exhaustive: All epistemic positions weaker than knowledge directed at the answer to a question are compatible with having an interrogative attitude towards that question.
We provide two arguments for thinking as much.
First, we construct an argument based on considerations about the role of hedging in inquiry.
Second, we construct an argument that's conditional on considerations related to the aim of inquiry as a goal-directed activity.
Works in Progress
A paper on slurs and complicity.
In which I discuss the connection between slur-use and complicity.
A paper on complicity.
In which I defend a causal conception of what it takes to be complicit.
A paper on vague communication.
In which I discuss how hearers may change their credences in response to assertions of vague sentences.
A paper on what you learn from inexact faculties of perception.
In which I discuss what you learn when you look at stuff.
A paper on when a question is fit to be wondered about.
In which I investigate how practical interests regulate what questions are fit to be wondered about.