Expertise

My current research covers a broad range of topics in epistemology, moral psychology, psychological explanation, and psychoanalysis.

In epistemology, I have been working on external world skepticism for many years.  I am currently developing this work into a book.  I also have an ongoing project on topics often broached in the self-knowledge literature (the first-person relation to one’s own attitudes, self-conscious belief, “transparency”, expression of mental states through self-attribution, etc.).  This latter work intersects productively with my interest in clinical psychoanalysis.

In moral psychology I have been working with Katy Abramson on various issues relating to love, self-love, reasons, and valuing.

These moral-psychological interests connect with a more general interest I have in interpersonal phenomena, including particularly desire in interpersonal contexts and the normative structure of interpersonal interaction.  In relation to psychoanalysis I have written on self-understanding in the clinical context, and I am currently working on the concept of psychic integration.

I have wide-ranging historical interests.  Much of my work in contemporary epistemology belongs to a tradition that includes G. E. Moore, Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin: my epistemological data largely arise from careful investigations of our actual epistemic practices, and my response to external world skepticism begins from a position within those practices, asking what reason we can give ourselves for changing our views in the ways the skeptic suggests we should.

Areas of Current Interest

  • Epistemology, Wittgenstein & Ordinary Language Philosophy, Philosophy of Action, Moral Psychology and related topics in the Philosophy of Mind, Psychoanalysis

My current research covers a broad range of topics in contemporary epistemology, including the nature of empirical justification, skepticism, testimony, epistemic reasons and epistemic normativity, and the relation between epistemological categories and our practices of assertion and justification. Much of my work in epistemology is continuous with issues in metaethics, moral psychology, philosophy of action, and discussions of the nature of commonsense psychological explanation. I have historical interests including Ancient Greek Philosophy, Kant, Wittgenstein, and the history of Analytic Philosophy.

I began my research career as an epistemologist focused on issues relating to empirical justification and our knowledge of the world. In this part of my work I have focused mainly on philosophical arguments for external world skepticism and their relation to our actual epistemic practices. Over time I became increasingly interested in self-knowledge, and this led to an interest in clinical psychoanalysis, which now has a central place in my research and teaching interests.

I am interested in the sort of naturalism that results from accepting the scientific orientation in philosophy that logical empiricists such was Carnap urged, but giving up the logical empiricist's analytic-synthetic distinction, following W. V. Quine and Hilary Putnam.

Communities
Philosophy
Degrees
PhD, Harvard University, Philosophy, 2000
BA, University of California, Berkeley, Philosophy, 1992
Keywords
history of philosophy epistemology