Research
Me, fitting somewhat uncomfortably in armchairs.
Overview
Contemporary philosophers of mind often take either an introspectionist or empiricist approach. For introspectionists, the mind as it appears introspectively is the core phenomenon for philosophical theorizing, while empiricists endeavor to reduce mental categories to kinds identified by the cognitive sciences.
In my work, I start with the mental as it shows up in folk psychology, which is neither especially introspective, nor constrained to the kinds uncovered by the cognitive sciences. This approach was favored by P.F. Strawson, and other descriptive metaphysicians, but the project looks very different now, in light of the empirical work on social cognition over the last fifty years.
This approach has produced some surprising results. Among them, I argue that we perceive agency, but not mental states, that perception immediately justifies beliefs that outstrip how things are perceptually presented, and that the personal–subpersonal distinction is a psychological construction.
In the future, I plan to pursue accounts of more 'sophisticated' knowledge of the mental—introspection and empathy, apply my epistemology of perception to other topics, and develop my constructivist account of the personal, especially as it relates to the normative.
Publications
Towards Biologically Plausible Artificial Vision
(Commentary on Quilty-Dunn, Porot and Mandelbaum's 'The Best Game in Town: The Re-Emergence of the Language of Thought Hypothesis Across the Cognitive Sciences')
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Forthcoming)
Constructing Persons: On the Personal–Subpersonal Distinction
Philosophical Psychology (2022)
Mind and Language (2022)
Other Minds Are Neither Seen Nor Inferred
Synthese (2021)
Papers in Progress
[Title Witheld to Preserve Blind Review]
A paper about the epistemology of perception
[Title Witheld to Preserve Blind Review]
A paper about social epistemology
What Unifies Social Cognition?
A paper that considers what, if anything, unifies social cognition given recent arguments for pluralism
Presentations (Selected)
Animacy as Perceived Agency
Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, December 2020
Phenomenal Anti-Imperialism
APA Pacific Division, April 2023
Polarization is Epistemically Innocuous
APA Central Division, February 2022
Perceiving Agency
Society for Philosophy and Psychology, June 2021
Polarization is Epistemically Innocuous
Canadian Philosophical Association, June 2021
A Constructivist Account of the Personal–Subpersonal Distinction
APA Pacific Division, April 2021
Animacy as Perceived Agency
Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, December 2020
The Epistemology of Looks
APA Eastern Division, January 2020 (Handout)
Perceiving Animacy
The Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society & the Mind Association, July 2019
The Personal–Subpersonal Distinction and Social Cognition
Society for Philosophy and Psychology, July 2019
Ampliative Perceptual Judgments and Other Minds
Canadian Philosophical Association: Annual Congress, June 2019 (Handout)
Other Minds are Neither Seen Nor Inferred
APA Eastern Division, January 2019