Dr. Sergiu Spatan

Personal information

I completed my PhD in philosophy at the University of Hamburg (with a dissertation on skepticism and certainty-based invariantism, defended in 2024). After my PhD studies, I was a postdoctoral researcher at TU Dresden, before moving to LMU Munich in September 2026. I come originally from Romania. My research lies at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of mind, and political philosophy. In particular, I focus on certainty and doubt as metacognitive attitudes, and on how individual epistemic dispositions shape collective outcomes such as polarization and democratic deliberation.

Research interests

• Epistemology
• Philosophy of mind
• Skepticism and doubt
• Metacognition
• Political epistemology

Current projects

Theoretical philosophy: What role do feelings of certainty, doubt, and confidence play in cognition? I investigate these doxastic epistemic feelings (DEFs) as metacognitive states that regulate inquiry and shape our sense of when we know. I investigate their nature, origins, and relation to belief and credence, as well as their role in phenomena such as motivated reasoning.
Practical philosophy: How can individual epistemic dispositions contribute to, or obstruct, collective epistemic outcomes? I investigate whether a form of metacognitive epistemic wisdom could help agents navigate this tension by regulating dispositions such as confidence, stubbornness, and open-mindedness in context-sensitive ways.

Selected publications

• Spatan, S. (2025). Doxastic Gradualism Without Credences. Inquiry. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2025.2545884
• Spatan, S., & Rich, P. (2025). The Role of Strong Ties in Holding (and Avoiding) Bad Beliefs. Topoi. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-025-10190-8
• Spatan, S. (2024). Some Worries About the Probability Account of the Feelings of (Un)Certainty. Erkenntnis. URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-024-00861-0
• Spatan, S., & Semenescu, A. (2024). Feeling of Certainty and the Shiftiness of Knowledge Utterances. Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 18(2), 66–85. URL: http://www.rifl.unical.it/index.php/rifl/article/view/873/836