Pablo Zendejas Medina

Hi there! I recently completed a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Starting in September 2022, I will be a Bersoff Faculty Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. My research is mostly in epistemology and decision theory, but really I'm interested in anything to do with reasons and rationality.

In my dissertation, I develop an account of rational reasoning that is sensitive to certain cognitive limitations, like our inability to reason with all of our beliefs at once, and our inability to always recognize the logical relationships between our beliefs.

I also work on the justification of Bayesian updating, the value of learning, and the role of decision theory in ethics.

You can contact me at zendejas.pablo [at] gmail.com.


Publications

Just As Planned: Bayesianism, Externalism, and Plan Coherence [abstract] [draft]. Forthcoming. Philosopher's Imprint.

Two of the most influential arguments for Bayesian updating (“Conditionalization”) --- Hilary Greaves' and David Wallace's Accuracy Argument and David Lewis' Diachronic Dutch Book Argument --- seem to impose a strong and surprising limitation on rational uncertainty: that one can never be rationally uncertain of what one's evidence is. Many philosophers (“externalists”) reject that claim, and now seem to face a difficult choice: either to endorse the arguments and give up Externalism, or to reject the arguments and lose some of the best justifications of Conditionalization. The author argues that the key to resolving this conflict lies in recognizing that both arguments are plan-based, in that they argue for Conditionalization by first arguing that one should plan to conditionalize. With this in view, it is argued that the conflict with Externalism only arises if one misconceives the requirement to carry out a plan made at an earlier time. They should therefore not persuade us to reject Externalism. Furthermore, rethinking the nature of this requirement allows us to give two new arguments for Conditionalization that don't rule out rational uncertainty about one's evidence and that can thus serve as common ground in the debate between externalists and their opponents.

Papers

(email for drafts - any comments would be greatly appreciated!)

A paper on rational inference for agents who do not reason with all of their attitudes

A paper on dogmatism and the rationality of gathering evidence

A paper on the relationship between consequentialism and deontology


Courses



As Main Instructor at New York University

As Teaching Assistant at the University of Pittsburgh