Helena Xinyi Fang
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PLA handout here.
about.
I am a third-year PhD student in Philosophy at MIT, advised by Kevin Dorst.
I an currently a visiting student at USC in Fall 2026, sponsored by Dmitri Gallow.
I work on epistemology, philosophy of language, decision theory, and their intersection.
Before MIT, I studied philosophy and mathematics at Tufts. Before that I was born and raised in Beijing, China.
You may reach me at hfang811 [at] mit.edu.
publication.
Guessing and its Limits. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2026.
I present a puzzle for a "question-sensitive" theory of belief/guessing in multi-question scenarios. The problem generalizes to formally parallel theories of attitudes and modals.
work in progress.
work in progress.
[a paper on normality]
[a paper on knowledge and certainty reports]
[a paper on externalist Bayesianism]
recent presentations.
Knowing for Certain
Philosophy of Language Association Conference, UCLA, September 2026
What is Evidence, and What Do We Want it to Be? (multiple titles)
Beyond Basic Bayesianism, University of Helsinki, May 2026
Orange Beach Epistemology Workshop (invited), Alabama, May 2026
Northeastern Epistemology Workshop (invited), Northeastern University, April 2026
misc.
I'm a huge fan of the MIT-style-non-pre-read reading groups. Here are some handouts I've made for reading group presentations.
Holguín 2021, "Indicative Conditionals without Iterative Epistemology"
Good 1967, "On the Principle of Total Evidence" and Salow 2024, "The Value of Evidence"
Meehan and Zhang 2025, "Bayes is Back"
Jerzak 2019, "Two Ways to Want?"
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