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 and philosophy of language.

Before USC, I was at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. And before that I was at Reed.

Publication

(2021). Hedging and the ignorance norm on inquiry (with Peter van Elswyk). Synthese. [preprint]

Peter and I defend the ignorance norm: the norm that interrogative attitudes directed at a question are never compatible with knowledge of the question’s answer. We further argue that the 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 when a question is fit to be wondered about.

I investigate how practical interests regulate what questions are fit to be wondered about.

A paper on slurs and complicity.

Hearers can become complicit when they fail to speak up in response to their interlocutors' slur use. I investigate why that might be.

A paper on vague communication.

I discuss how hearers may change their credences in response to assertions of vague sentences.

Graduate Speculative Society

For the 2022-2023 academic year, I ran USC's Graduate Speculative Society: a venue where USC philosophy graduate students can practice giving talks to each other in a colloquium format.