About
I’m a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at COGITO Epistemology Research Centre, University of Glasgow. Before joining COGITO, I did a PhD as a Fulbright scholar in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. Before that, I completed an MA in Philosophy at Univerdad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and before that I received a BA in Philosophy from the Universidad de Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia).
I work on epistemology and have side research interests in the intersection of epistemology and moral responsibility. In my current research, I develop different strategies to explain ignorance as inherently agential. My line is that analytic epistemology has failed to see the agential aspects of ignorance by focusing on accounting for it in terms of the absence of truth or knowledge. This insight comes from my PhD dissertation, where I argued that different forms of epistemic luck show that ignorance is neither lack of knowledge nor lack of true belief. My positive proposal is that ignorance is lack of epistemic access to the world given what one does as a knower.
Publications
- Lucky Ignorance, Modality and Lack of Knowledge.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 102 (3), 468-490. (2021). - Can Hinge Epistemology Close the Door on Epistemic Relativism?
Synthese, 199, 4645-4671. (2021). - Relativism and Circularity
Discusiones Filosóficas 21(36): 25–37. (2020).
In Progress (available upon request)
- Paper proposing a version of the modal account of luck that avoids problems that existing
modal views of luck face and come from Lackey’s Buried Treasure cases. - Paper on ignorance and the epistemic condition for moral responsibility, in which I argue
that the type of non-ignorance relevant for moral responsibility is neither factive
nor modally robust, so that type of ignorance is neither lack of knowledge nor of true belief. - Paper on the moral luck problem: I argue, from within modalism about luck, that in order to
solve the moral luck problem paradox we should accept the phenomenon of moral luck.
This, in turn, doesn’t make moral responsibility evaluations unfair or inappropriate. - Paper defending a new account of ignorance in epistemology: the Access View.
It defines ignorance as a way of forming (or failing to form) a belief that is suboptimal
given one’s exercise of epistemic agency. Unlike mainstream views of ignorance, the Access View
captures two important epistemological desiderata for a good account ignorance: it explains
the relation between ignorance as an epistemic trait of an agent and ignorance as a state
that takes a proposition as its object; and it explains the evaluative aspect of ignorance.
Selected presentations
Peer Reviewed
- “Ignorance, Access, and Epistemic Responsibility” (2022). 11th Vienna Forum
for Analytic Philosophy Graduate Conference. University of Vienna. - “The Modal Moral Luck Problem” (2022). Beyond Free Will. Vilnius University, Lithuania.
- “Ignorance, Access, and Epistemic Responsibility” (2022). Workshop for Young Researchers
of the Francophone Society for Analytic Philosophy. University of Geneva. - “Ignorance, Excuses, and Modality” (2021). APA Pacific Division Meeting.
- “Ignorance Isn’t Modal” (2021). APA Eastern Division Meeting.
- “Ignorance and Epistemic Luck. Or Why Ignorance is not Lack of Knowledge” (2020).
Workshop on Luck, Risk and Competence. Universidad de Sevilla, Spain.
Invited
- “Epistemología de Bisagra y (anti)relativismo” (2021). VII Seminario en Historia y
Filosofía de la Ciencia: Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia. - “Suerte Epistémica e injusticia epistémica” (2020) Desacuerdo e
Injusticia Epistémica. Universidad EAFIT, Medellin Colombia. - “Ignorance, Lack of Knowledge, and Excuses” (2020). A Socially Distant
Open Topic Conference. University of California, Irvine
Contact
Email: Oscar.PiedrahitaRivera@glasgow.ac.uk
Philosophy, School of Humanities
69 Oakfield Avenue
Room 313
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK G12 8QQ