Wayne D. Riggs

My main area of research is epistemology, though I have dabbled in philosophy of science, philosophy of emotions, and value theory as well. I was Department Chair of the OU Philosophy Department from 2012 to 2022, which took time away from my reseach. Now that I am free, I am interested in pursuing issues in social epistemology.

Some of my recent previous work has been on theories of epistemic luck and the role of luck in the theory of knowledge, e.g.:

• “What Are the ‘Chances’ of Being Justified?” The Monist 81 (3), 1998, 452-472
• “Why Epistemologists Are So Down on Their Luck,” Synthese 158 (3), November 2007, 329-344
• “Two Problems of Easy Credit,” Synthese 169, 2009
• “Luck, Knowledge, and “Mere” Co-incidence,” Metaphilosophy 45, October 2014, 627-639
• “The Lack of Control Account of Luck,” Ian Church & Robert Hartman, ed., Routledge Handbook on The Philosophy and Psychology of Luck, Routledge, 2019

I have also done some work in virtue epistemology, especially focusing on the epistemic virtue of open-mindedness, e.g.:

• “Understanding Virtue and the Virtue of Understanding,” in Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, Michael DePaul & Linda Zagzebski, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
• “Open-Mindedness,” Metaphilosophy 41, January 2010; reprinted in Virtue and Vice: Moral and Epistemic, Heather Battaly, ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
• “Open-mindedness, Insight, and Understanding,” in Jason Baehr, ed., Intellectual Virtues in Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology, Routledge, 2016
• “Open-Mindedness,” Heather Battaly, ed., Routledge Handbook on Virtue Epistemology, Routledge, 2018
• Open-Mindedness, ed. by Wayne Riggs, forthcoming, Oxford University Press