In just the first few months of 2026, graduate students have presented at meetings of the American Philosophical Association, Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Florida Philosophical Association, and more.

Pictured is PhD candidate Panagiotis Saranteas at the AI2 Summit in Orlando, presenting a paper co-authored with Dr. Rodrigo Borges, entitled “Beyond Blind Trust: AI-sponsors and virtuous communities as safeguards for epistemic agency in the age of cognitive delegation.” As AI systems take on more cognitive tasks—from drafting emails to guiding medical decisions—what happens to our capacity for independent judgment? ‘Beyond Blind Trust’ critiques existing approaches to cognitive delegation and proposes two correctives: an “AI-Sponsor” role that safeguards individual epistemic agency, and a “Communities of Virtuous Delegators” role that distributes oversight responsibility at the social level. Saranteas and Dr. Borges integrate insights from epistemology, philosophy of mind, and AI ethics. The authors are currently preparing the paper for publication later this year.

Speaking of publications, let us congratulate PhD candidate Jack Madock for his recent publication in Synthese, “Study Beliefs”! In this paper, Madock argues that there is an underexplored modal condition on knowledge. That condition is that S knows p only if had S not believed p, then p would be false. Beliefs that satisfy this condition are “sturdy.” The idea for the paper came while Madock was a student in Dr. Bob Beddor’s epistemology seminar. Dr. Beddor then supervised the project over the course of a year, as Madock refined the idea and edited drafts in response to referee feedback.