Research

My research is split between three main projects. The first of these proposes an evolutionary account of human moral psychology and the psychology of free will. This project forms the foundation of my dissertation research. The second is a history of science project elucidating Charles Darwin's argumentative strategy in his most famous work, Origin of Species. The third is an ongoing project that assesses the possibility of naturalistic normativity. Summaries of these three projects are provided below. Paper drafts are available upon request.

Choicy Agents in a Mechanistic 

In this project, I argue that human possess two representational cognitive systems whose mutual incompatibility leads to some of the most intractable and long-standing philosophical issues pertaining to free will and moral responsibility. One system, which I refer to as "Agential Representation," is what we use for reasoning about the behaviors of entities that strike us as choicy agents (such as a classmate, or my dog, etc.). The other system, which I call "Mechanistic Representation," is what we use for reasoning about the behaviors of entities that strike us as causally-closed inanimate objects (shoes, meteorites, cutlery, etc.). Drawing on empirical results from developmental psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and experimental philosophy, I describe these representational systems and characterize the nature of their incompatibility. In short, my claim is that structural constraints on human thought prevent us from simultaneously representing an entity (such as a classmate, or my dog, etc.) as being both a bona fide agent, with choices and control over their possible actions, and at the same time as a mechanistic system, whose behavior is fully determined by the complete set of causal interactions between in which it figures. This incompatibility between Agential Representation and Mechanistic Representation leads straightforwardly to incompatibilist intuitions: the belief that free will could not exist in a deterministic world.

To explain the odd, albeit clear connection between Agential Representation and moral cognition, which is not itself explained by the dual systems view described above, I advance the “entanglement hypothesis”: during hominin evolution, Agential Representation and moral cognition developed a co-adaptive relationship, creating entrenched representational systems that came to govern the species-typical pattern of moral responsibility judgments observed in modern humans. I defend this hypothesis on empirical grounds and subsequently draw out several conclusions concerning open puzzles in experimental philosophy and metaphilosophical questions about philosophical intuitions.

In sum, this project aims to explain how the conflict between our mechanistic mode and our agential mode of representing the world around us leads to the typical pattern of intuitions about free will and determinism we observe in humans. The entanglement hypothesis further offers an evolutionary explanation for why this tension between Agential Representation and Mechanistic Representation is relevant to moral cognition, and why we are so motivated to try and rectify the manifest incompatibility that exists between these representational systems.

Revising Our View of Darwin’s Analogical Argument

Charles Darwin argued that natural selection produces new species in a fashion analogous to how artificial selection produces new breeds. Much philosophical attention has been paid to the formal aspects of Darwin’s analogical argument from artificial selection to natural selection, but few authors have investigated how the specific contents of Darwin’s analogy yield support for his theory. This is particularly surprising since at first blush, Darwin's analogical argument appears to undermine the inference he aims to make with it: if artificial and natural selection are analogous processes as Darwin claims, then why do they produce such disanalogous effects? Darwin held that natural selection produces new species, but plain observation shows that artificial selection cannot achieve that same end. I propose a new analysis which understands that Darwin argued for three key conceptual revisions to the content of the ‘received view’ of artificial selection, and that only on Darwin’s resultant ‘revised view’ of artificial selection did his analogical argument support, rather than undermine, his theoretical explanation for the origin of species. These revisions are: 1) the sufficiency of mere differential reproduction for producing evolutionary change; 2) the limitless variation of organisms in nature; and 3) the age and stability of Earth’s geological history. I show why Darwin needed to establish these particular conceptual modifications in order for his analogical argument to generate theoretical support, and I further suggest that accounts focused on the formal aspects of Darwin’s analogical argument cannot capture the significance of Darwin’s conceptual revisions to the success of his analogical argument.

The Metaphilosophical Insufficiency of Discovering The Cognitive Origins of Our Philosophical Intuitions

Structural details of the human mind shape how we perceive and reason about the world around us. Consider perceptual illusions and cognitive traps—systematically misguided representations generated by recalcitrant features of human psychology. Recent evidence suggests many of our intuitive philosophical stances are also, in fact, generated by specifiable cognitive mechanisms to which we do not have introspective access. Can we naturalistically assess whether these intuitive philosophical beliefs are accurate representations of the world? Theorists generally think we can. I challenge this claim by arguing that the evaluation of different philosophical stances is not much helped by discovering the cognitive mechanisms that generate them. To even get a foot in the metaphilosophical door, so to speak, we require a suitably naturalistic general theory of representation. I argue that on the final analysis we are led to a kind of philosophical quietism: descriptive facts leave, e.g., moral antirealism no better off than they do moral realism. They instead show the task of choosing between them, for a good naturalist, to be a fool’s errand.