I'm a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at University of Southern California, dissertating under the supervision of Mark Schroeder.

My dissertation explores the concepts of doxastic courage and cowardice – that is, how forming (or omitting to form) beliefs can be a kind of moral virtue or vice – and their relationship to doxastic anxiety and political conflict. It is a project in epistemology, social and political philosophy, virtue theory, and the ethics of belief. But whereas most recent work on the ethics of belief focuses on the wrongs of positive belief, my virtue-theoretic approach highlights how lack of belief can wrong. Contrary to many moral and political exhortations to practice epistemic humility, there is such a thing as being too open-minded. 

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Aside from my dissertation, I have projects in philosophy language, metaethics, and aesthetics. I am particularly interested in how social and evaluative language, especially figurative language works – semantically, pragmatically politically.  In this vein, I also work on the semantics of slurs and their relationship to other derogatory and nonderogatory evaluative expressions, as well as aesthetic terms.

jenniferfoster dot phil at gmail dot com