RESEARCH
RESEARCH
I have two main research lines: one on radicalization, the other on the structure of normativity.
I also have an interest in modern philosophy, especially Nietzsche.
This is my main current work in these areas:
Fanaticism, Conspiracy Theories, Disinformation
"Disinformation and Grievance Narratives"​​
"What Makes Studying Fanaticism Hard?"​
"Deepfakes, Inquiry, and Going Off the Rails"​
Under Review​​
Work-in-progress
Work-in-progress
Moral and Epistemic Conflict, Coherence
"Is Incoherence in the Epistemic Normative Domain Undesirable?"​
Work-in-progress
Nihilism, Ressentiment
"Nietzschean Nihilism in Context: The Puzzle with Christianity," The Journal of Nietzsche Studies.​
Forthcoming
RADICALIZATION
When we think of fanatics, conspiracy theorists, or those who fall prey to disinformation, we often assume they are acting against their rational inclinations: that they are biased, psychologically weak, or morally corrupt.
My research provides an alternative explanation: in many cases, these people attempt to act in accordance with what they take rationality to require – ideals such as coherence, unity, and order – but fail precisely because they pursue them with a rigidity that gives rise to the intolerance and violence that trouble us today.
This research line explores this connection between failures in how we pursue rationality and the emergence of social and political pathologies.
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​The unifying thread is an attempt to explain troubling sociopolitical phenomena as involving not a deficit of rationality but an excess: namely, pursuing to the limit a misguided conception of what coherence demands.
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I approach these questions through three ongoing projects.​
FANATICISM
I propose a novel account of fanaticism. I argue that fanatics assume that genuine commitment to an ideal requires a kind of structural purity: eliminating anything that conflicts with it, both within themselves – by suppressing beliefs, values, and emotions that challenge the ideal – and in relation to others – through intolerance and violence toward those who resist it. I defend this view in Chapter 1 of my dissertation.
A related paper, “What Makes Studying Fanaticism Hard?”, identifies five challenges that any view of fanaticism must meet; my account, I argue, meets these challenges where others fail.
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CONSPIRACY THEORIES
A second research project examines what is problematic about conspiracy theories in terms of a related pitfall. I argue that conspiracy theorizing is epistemically vicious when, in its attempt to reveal a hidden conspiracy, it forces a set of disparate facts into a single, coherent explanation, at the expense of dismissing any evidence that disrupts this coherence. In such cases, conspiracy theorizing amounts to a form of dogmatism. I defend this view in Chapter 2 of my dissertation.
DISINFORMATION
My work explores how the content shared by some actors can undermine our ability to acquire, transmit, and sustain knowledge and other epistemic goods.
In "Deepfakes, Inquiry, and Going Off the Rails,"​ I examine the epistemic harms that political deepfakes inflict. Scholars often worry that deepfakes will erode the public’s confidence in whether any video can be trusted. But, I argue, this misses an important phenomenon: many deepfakes shared by political figures are clearly false; they are parodies. If they are problematic, it is not because they are counterfeit, but because they trivialize morally outrageous scenarios and force them into public discourse. In doing so, they obstruct inquiry.
Another paper, "Disinformation and Grievance Narratives," argues that actors such as Russia often deceive not by sharing false or misleading content, but by promoting narratives that exploit aversive emotions in the target audience. These narratives offer a compelling interpretation that legitimizes the grievances of a community, fostering emotions such as resentment and indignation while identifying a hostile group to blame. This satisfies an epistemic gap in explaining the experience of the community, but it does so at the expense of foreclosing competing explanations, leaving people epistemically isolated. This paper draws from Chapter 3 of my dissertation.
ON COHERENCE AND MORAL AND EPISTEMIC CONFLICT
In Chapter 4 of my dissertation, I show that a stringent conception of coherence (one that underlies troubling sociopolitical phenomena such as fanaticism) is also prevalent in the literature on moral dilemmas. I argue that we should resist this conception and instead understand normativity as involving an ongoing tension between the demand for coherence and the demand for responsiveness to reasons.
“Is Incoherence in the Epistemic Normative Domain Undesirable?” extends this argument to epistemology. I argue that some epistemologists (such as Jane Friedman) often rely on a questionable assumption about the role of coherence in determining whether a given domain is genuinely normative. I argue that a stringent requirement of coherence gurantees a tidy and unified epistemic picture, but also imposes significant costs: it risks impoverishing our view of epistemic normativity. Rather than assuming that conflict between norms signals failure, we should ask what kind of coherence is worth having, and when the demand for it becomes counterproductive.​​​
NORMATIVITY
My work on fanaticism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories is underpinned by a profound interest in examining how we should understand our normative domains – moral, prudential, and epistemic – and how views that deny the possibility of genuine conflict within these domains can create problems both at the individual and the political level. This is the focus of my second research line.
NIETZSCHE
I draw on the history of philosophy, especially Nietzsche, to inform my work on radicalization and normativity and to deepen my understanding of these phenomena.
RESSENTIMENT
I am interested in Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment: an affective mechanism that leads people to misrepresent the world so that aversive emotions like resentment feels continuously warranted. This notion offers key insights into why some people become partisan and polarized, and it connects directly with my research on radicalization.
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NIHILISM
In “Nietzschean Nihilism in Context: The Puzzle of Christianity,” forthcoming in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, I argue that, for Nietzsche, adopting an ideal can protect people from falling into nihilism if that ideal fulfills a specific role: it must make their lives bearable, even if it remains problematic in other respects. Nietzsche believed that Christianity played this role at its inception, but has gradually lost its capacity to shield humanity from nihilism.