Timothy Kearl and Christopher Willard-Kyle, both postdoctoral researchers at the Cogito: Epistemology Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, are the winners of the 2023 Young Epistemologist Prize.

Timothy Kearl, Christopher Willard-Kyle

The prize is awarded by the Rutgers Epistemology Conference.

Dr. Kearl and Dr. Willard-Kyle won the prize for their paper, “Epistemic Cans”, which they will deliver at the upcoming Rutgers Epistemology Conference and which is forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Here’s the abstract:

We argue that S is in a position to know that p iff S can know that p. Thus, what makes position-to-know-ascriptions true is just a special case of what makes ability-ascriptions true: compossibility. The novelty of our compossibility theory of epistemic modality lies in its subsuming epistemic modality under agentive modality, the modality characterizing what agents can do.

The Young Epistemologist Prize includes $1000 and the coverage of expenses associated with attending the Rutgers conference. To be eligible to compete for it, a person must have a Ph.D. obtained by the time of the submission of the paper but not earlier than six years prior to the date of the conference.

You can learn more about Dr. Kearl’s work here and about Dr. Willard-Kyle’s work here.

This is the third time the Young Epistemology Prize has been awarded to scholars at the Cogito: Epistemology Research Centre at the University of Glasgow.