CV: | download .pdf

Lecturer in Philosophy, Churchill & Trinity Colleges
Newton Trust Lecturer, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge
Fellow of Churchill College

  
Citizenship
 Canadian  
AOS
 Metaphysics, Epistemology and the Philosophy of Mind  
AOC
 Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Science  

Academic Employment

2009-14: Newton Trust Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Cambridge
(responsibilities include undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and examining, member of Faculty Board and Degree Committee, member of caucus for philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and epistemology)

2008-13: Lecturer in Philosophy and Director of Studies, Churchill College
(responsibilities include undergraduate teaching and admissions)

Fall 2010: Early Career Fellow, Cambridge’s Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities
(a one-term fellowship, with remission of teaching, awarded to pursue a project titled “What is Cognitive Progress?”)

2007-08: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto

2006-2007: Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario		  
Education

Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Brown University

Dissertation: The World in Mind
Committee: Jaegwon Kim (chair), Ernest Sosa, Christopher Hill
defended: August 2008   conferred: May 2009

Abstract: Belief has a many/one, or part/whole, structure that is poorly understood. It is expressed largely as metaphor: Beliefs are said to be bound together, or to form a web, or to fit together to form a total view, or to construct, form, or build up a picture of the world. My dissertation focuses on clarifying this conception of belief and on understanding in what sense, if any, a subject's beliefs are both many and one. I develop and refine the problematic, examine several possible accounts of the unity of belief, and explore an original theory that takes unity to consist in a subject's taking there to be non-identities between the states of affairs her beliefs represent.

Visiting Student, University of Toronto Department of Philosophy, 2005-2006 academic year

BA (Honours), First Class degree. Queen’s University Canada, 1998

  
Publications

The Cogito and the Metaphysics of Mind
Philosophical Studies, 130:2 August 2006, pp. 247-271

One Race, Many Roads: Human and Cultural Rights
in Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Theoretical Foundations of Human Rights, held at Mofid University, Qom, Iran, 2003

  
Works in Progress

Papers

The Ontology of Experience
This paper offers a new argument for representationalism about consciousness.

Belief and Entertainment
This paper argues against the widely accepted view that it is possible to believe a proposition only if one can entertain the proposition.

Believing Conjunctions
This paper argues that there is a tension between the standard view that B(p & q) ≠ (Bp & Bq) and the uncontroversial claim that a conjunctive fact is no addition to being.

The World in Mind
This paper argues that there is a quantitative dimension to knowledge that is poorly understood (what is it to know more rather than less), and explores two ways we might try to understand this metric.

Monographs

What is Cognitive Progress?
This is the working title of a monograph projected as a short book of around 150 pages. It is an extended version of “The Measure of Knowledge”. It deepens and expands the central arguments, which concern issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics, and connects those to themes in epistemology concerning the goal of inquiry and the value of knowledge.

The World in Mind
This is a book version of my dissertation, and examines how we might make sense of the idea that a person’s beliefs at least sometimes compose an overall representation of an object or domain.

  

Talks and Conferences

 

The Measure of Knowledge
- Tenth Annual Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, August 2009
   Commentators: Don Fallis, Joshue Orozco
- Serious Metaphysics Group, Cambridge University, November 2008
- Young Philosophers Lecture Series and Podcast, August 2008, hosted by the State University
  of New York at Fredonia
- Trent University, March 2008
- The Value of Knowledge Conference, Amsterdam, August 2007

Weights and Measures
- Qualia: Thinking the Senses, University of Durham, March 2008

The World in Mind
- University of Warwick, March 2007
- Lancaster University, March 2007

Experience in Time
- University of Manitoba, January 2007
- Queen's University at Kingston, October 2006
- Centre for Metaphysics and Mind, Leeds University, May 2006
- Arché Research Centre, University of St. Andrews, April 2006

Two Ways to Beg the Question
- University of Toronto Political Theory Workshop, May 2005

Ignorance and Inquiry
- University of Toronto Graduate Student Conference, May 2004
- NYU-Columbia Graduate Student Conference, March 2004
- Contemporary Theories of Knowledge Conference, Amsterdam, Feb. 2004

Another Kind of Skepticism
- Skepticism in Contemporary Epistemology Conference University of Sherbrooke, Oct. 2003

Why Brain Scientists Should Give Philosophers Research Money
- Brain Sciences Program, Brown University, Oct. 2003

One Race, Many Roads: The Metaphysics of Human Rights
- Theoretical Foundations of Human Rights, Qom, Iran, May 2003

Securing Democracy
- Global Freedoms Conference, Boston College, March 2003

Electing to Vote
- Princeton-Rutgers Graduate Student Conference, April 2001

  
Comments

Commenter for Cambridge Philosophy Faculty Colloquium, Nov. 2009. Presenter: Arif Ahmed on Wittgenstein, Triangulation, and the Private Language Argument.

Commenter for the APA Colloquium “Monism and Intrinsicality”
APA Central, April 2007. Speaker Kelly Trogdon.

Commenter for the APA Symposium “Emergence: A Response to Kim”
APA Pacific, March 2006. Speaker Brannon McDaniel.		  
Teaching

At the University of Cambridge

Undergraduate Lectures:
Part 1A: Theories of Mind; Free Will
Part 1B: Theories of Justification: Internalism & Externalism; Mental Properties
Part 2: Self-Knowledge; Skepticism

Undergraduate Supervisions/Tutorials: Philosophy of Mind; Epistemology; Metaphysics; Philosophy of Science; Philosophical Logic; Philosophy of Language; History of Modern Philosophy; Aesthetics

Undergraduate Dissertations Supervised: Moorean responses to skepticism; the ontology of music; the causal closure principle; the unity of consciousness; Davidson and mental partitioning; the explanatory gap; emotional responses to fiction; rule-following; Wittgenstein on religious belief; fMRI and the mind/body problem (for the department of History and Philosophy of Science)

Graduate Supervisions/Tutorials: MA paper on personal identity

Undergraduate Examining: Main Examiner and Assessor for several papers.

Graduate Examining: “Is Intentionality the Mark of the Mental” (MPhil)

In Previous Academic Posts

University of Toronto: Theories of Mind; Seminar in Epistemology (goal of inquiry); Philosophy of Science; Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy; Introduction to Ancient Philosophy; Metaphysics (as visiting PhD candidate in fall 2005)

Trent University: Logical Atomism and Ontological Reduction (seminar); Philosophy of Art; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Religion

Brown University: Mind and Matter (philosophy of mind); Critical Reasoning; The Meaning of Life (summer program, 3x)

As a Teaching Assistant (during postgraduate study):

Contemporary Moral Issues; 19th Century Philosophy; Themes from Existentialism; Modern Science and Human Values; Early Modern Philosophy; Existentialism; Contemporary Moral Issues; Introduction to Philosophy

Other Relevant Teaching

Brown University, Spring 2005: Lectured regularly on philosophical issues in physics in a physics course taught by Nobel Laureate Leon Cooper

Senior Writing Coach: Brown University Writing Center
Writing Fellow, 2001–2004

  
Other Research Activities

Member of the Mind Network, a UK network for philosophy of mind and cognitive science
Philosophy of Mind Reading Group, Cambridge University
Faculty M & E papers-in-progress group, University of Toronto, 2007-2008
Ontario Roundtable in the Philosophy of Language, 2006-2008
PMS WIPS: Philosophy of Mind (and/or) Science Works In Progress Sessions
Researcher, chapter on content determination, for Barbara von Eckardt’s Controversies and Critiques in the Philosophy of Cognitive Science (under review)
Mental Causation workshop, University of Saarland, August 2001
Mind and Action III, Lisbon, June 2001

  
Professional Service

External Course Reviewer, University of Oxford Continuing Education (philosophy of mind)
Referee for Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Synthese, Canadian Philosophical Association
Session Chair on Intrinsic Properties, APA Central 2008
Organizing Committee, 2006 Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy Conference, Trent University
Editorial Assistant, 2002 Noûs and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Coordinator, 2002 Brown Graduate Philosophy Conference

  
Faculty and College Service

Faculty of Philosophy, Cambridge: Member of Faculty Board, Degree Committee, and Caucus for Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics and Epistemology.
Churchill College: Member of College Council, Undergraduate Tutor, SCR Committee
University of Toronto: Faculty Advisor to the Undergraduate Philosophy Club; Faculty mentor for group organizing (first, and now annual) undergraduate philosophy conference