I am a UKRI Future Leaders Research Fellow and PI of the interdisciplinary project on rational agency called “Agency, Rationality and Epistemic Defeat: ARED”.
I have joined the University of Stirling in March 2017 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the project Knowledge beyond Natural Science. Before coming to Stirling, I held research positions at the University of Copenhagen and at the University of Aberdeen, and a teaching position at the University of Glasgow. I have conducted my doctoral studies at the former Northern Institute of Philosophy under the supervision of Professors Crispin Wright and Carrie Jenkins, and I was awarded a PhD by the University of Aberdeen in 2015. From February 2024, I run the Empirical Epistemology Network in collaboration with Kirsten Blakey, Jack Lyons and Peter Graham.
My research concerns primarily how agents go about, and ought to go about, forming, revising and managing their beliefs. I am concerned especially in how the study of epistemic defeaters (roughly, counterevidence) may contribute to our understanding of the nature of rational agency.
In the project Agency, Rationality, and Epistemic Defeat (ARED), I take an interdisciplinary perspective and investigate whether non-human animals and human infants form and revise beliefs rationally in a way similar to adult humans. To find out more about ARED, please visit: https://ared.stir.ac.uk/
While my background is that of an armchair analytic philosopher, I have become very much interested in fruitful collaborations between philosophy and empirical research. With Kirsten Blakey, Jack Lyons and Peter Graham, I have set up the empirical epistemology network: https://empiricalepistemology.stir.ac.uk/
Agency, Rationality and Epistemic Defeat (ARED) - Phase II
PI: Dr Giacomo Melis
Funded by: Medical Research Council
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Agency, Rationality, and Epistemic Defeat
PI: Dr Giacomo Melis
Funded by: Medical Research Council
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Article
Blakey KH, Rafetseder E, Melis G, Veit A, Amelung K, Freudensprung F, Kovacs K & Virányi Z (2025) Non-verbal rationality? 2-year-old children, dogs and pigs show unselective responses to unreliability, but to different degrees. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.70020
Article
Epistemic Rationality Begins Unreflectively
Melis G & Blakey K (2025) Epistemic Rationality Begins Unreflectively. Erkenntnis. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-025-00977-x
Article
Are humans the only rational animals?
Melis G & Monsó S (2023) Are humans the only rational animals?. Philosophical Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqad090
Book Chapter
Williamsonian Skepcticism About The A Priori
Melis G & Wright C (2023) Williamsonian Skepcticism About The A Priori. In: Dodd D & Zardini E (eds.) Beyond Sense? New Essays on the Significance, Grounds, and Extent of the A Priori. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press.
Article
Normative Defeaters and the Alleged Impossibility of Mere Animal Knowledge for Reflective Subjects
Melis G (2023) Normative Defeaters and the Alleged Impossibility of Mere Animal Knowledge for Reflective Subjects. Philosophia. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00658-5
Article
How Many Normative Notions of Rationality? A Critical Study of Wedgwood’s The Value of Rationality
Melis G (2020) How Many Normative Notions of Rationality? A Critical Study of Wedgwood’s The Value of Rationality. Analysis, 80 (1), p. 174–185. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anz088
Article
The Intertwinement of Propositional and Doxastic Justification
Melis G (2018) The Intertwinement of Propositional and Doxastic Justification. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 96 (2), pp. 367-379. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2017.1342097
Book Review
A Naturalistic Epistemology: Selected Papers, by Hilary Kornblith
Melis G (2016) A Naturalistic Epistemology: Selected Papers, by Hilary Kornblith. Review of: A Naturalistic Epistemology: Selected Papers By Hilary Kornblith, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 222 pp. ISBN 9780198712459. Analysis, 76 (3), pp. 397-399.
Article
Undermining Defeat and Propositional Justification
Melis G (2016) Undermining Defeat and Propositional Justification. Argumenta, 1 (2), pp. 271-280. https://www.argumenta.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/18.-Argumenta-12-Giacomo-Melis-Undermining-Defeat-and-Propositional-Justification.pdf
Article
Understanding Undermining Defeat
Melis G (2014) Understanding Undermining Defeat. Philosophical Studies, 170 (3), pp. 433-442. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0238-z