Welcome to the Home Page of David Alexander

 

I am currently pursuing my PhD in philosophy at the University of Washington in Seattle. In another life, I was a student at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design where I studied drawing, painting and printmaking. I then completed a BA honors and an MA in philosophy at the University of Toronto.

 

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Research

           

My dissertation addresses the topic of epistemic circularity. A belief in the reliability of a source is formed in an epistemically circular manner if one uses the source in order to acquire that belief. For example: I promise that you can trust the information on this website. Got it? Good. In the dissertation I argue that one can acquire a justified belief even if one’s reasoning is epistemically circular. The members of my committee are: Laurence BonJour (Chair), Ann Baker, Arthur Fine and Bill Talbott.

Prior to settling on this topic, I pursued a different project: a defense of externalist theories of the nature of epistemic justification by appeal to an instrumental account of the value of said justification. While this project proved overly ambitious, I am still very interested in pursuing questions about the value of knowledge and justified belief.