P.D.M.: CV

Area of specialization:: philosophy of science
Areas of competence:: history of modern philosophy, pragmatism, logic, epistemology, existentialism

Education

Ph.D. in Philosophy. 2003. University of California, San Diego.
Underdetermination and the Claims of Science
committee: Paul Churchland (chair), Donald Rutherford, Nancy Cartwright, Naomi Oreskes, Martin Sereno
M.A. in Philosophy. 2000. UC San Diego.
B.A. majoring in Philosophy and Physics, minoring in Russian and Mathematics. 1996. Texas Christian University, graduated with University Honors summa cum laude.

Academic employment

University at Albany, State University of New York: Assistant professor in Philosophy, 2004-present.
Bowdoin College: Visiting assistant professor in Philosophy, 2003-2004.
UC San Diego: Associate or teaching assistant in Philosophy for nine terms between 1998 and 2003. Philosophy Department webmaster, 1998-2000.
Editorial assistant for the journal Philosophy of Science. 1998-1999.

Publications

Books

with Jacob Busch, co-edited volume and co-authored introduction. New Waves in Philosophy of Science. Palgrave MacMillan. Manuscript delivered; publication projected 2009.
forall x: an introduction to formal logic. 2005. Textbook covering translation, semantics, and proofs in propositional and first-order logic. Released under an open license. http://www.fecundity.com/logic/
forall x has been downloaded over 50,000 times and has been used as a course text at institutions including the University at Albany, the University of California San Diego, Bentley College, Hunter College, the University of Lethbridge, and Imperial College London. Parts of forall x were incorporated into Proofs and Concepts: the fundamentals of abstract mathematics by Dave Witte Morris and Joy Morris.

Articles

`Philosophy of science in the 21st century.' In Russian. Forthcoming in the Moscow Istoriko-Philosophskii Almanach. v3.
with Greg Frost-Arnold. `The Identical Rivals Response to underdetermination.' Forthcoming in New Waves in Philosophy of Science.
`On trusting Wikipedia.' Episteme. 6(1): 74-90. February 2009.
`Demonstrative induction and the skeleton of inference.' International Studies in the Philosophy of Science. 22(3): 303-315. October 2008.
`Early response to false claims in Wikipedia.' First Monday. 13(9): September 2008.
`Mag Uidhir on performance.' British Journal of Aesthetics. 48(3): 338-345. July 2008.
`Reid's defense of common sense.' Philosophers' Imprint, 8(3): 1-14. May 2008.
with Lawrence Schell. `Is there an elephant in the room? Addressing rival approaches to the interpretation of growth perturbations and small size.' American Journal of Human Biology, 19(5): 606-614. September/October 2007.
`Distributed cognition and the task of science.' Social Studies of Science, 37(2): 297-310. April 2007.
`What's new about the New Induction?' Synthese, 148(2): 295-301. January 2006.
`Underdetermination of theories' in The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia. Sahotra Sarkar and Jessica Pfeifer, eds. Routledge. 2005.
`Background theories and total science.' Philosophy of Science, 72(5): 1064-1075. December 2005.
`Reckoning the shape of everything: Underdetermination and cosmotopology.' British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 56(3): 541-557. September 2005.
`Hormone research as an exemplar of underdetermination.' Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(3): 559-567. September 2005.
`Peirce: Underdetermination, agnosticism, and related mistakes.' Inquiry, 48(1): 26-37. February 2005.
with Craig Callender, `Realist ennui and the base rate fallacy.' Philosophy of Science, 71(3): 320-338. July 2004.
`The price of insisting that Quantum Mechanics is complete.' British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 55(2): 257-267. June 2004.
`Reid's dilemma and the uses of pragmatism.' Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 2(1): 69-72. March 2004.
`Underdetermination and the Problem of Identical Rivals.' Philosophy of Science, 70(5): 1256-1264. December 2003.
with Jonathan Cohen, `Williamson on knowledge and psychological explanation.' Philosophical Studies, 116(1): 37-52. October 2003.
`Success, truth, and the Galilean Strategy.' British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 54(3): 465-474. September 2003.
with Michael Kalichman, education resources for the Responsible Conduct of Research Education Consortium. September 2002. Reprinted in the University of Arizona's Program in Research Integrity Education PRIE Newsletter, beginning in issue 6(6): June 2006.

Presentations

`The Identical Rivals Response to underdetermination.' Invited presentation, Underdetermination in Science workshop, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh (March 2009).
`Philosophy of science in the 21st century.' Presented at a telematic symposium on developments in philosophy, held between UAlbany and Moscow State University (February 2009).
`Theory concept pluralism.' Presented to the University of Nevada Las Vegas philosophy department (February 2009).
`Philosophy and Wikipedia.' Presented to the UAlbany philosophy department (December 2008).
`What SPECIES can teach us about THEORY.' Presented to the Creighton Club New York State Philosophical Association and published in conference proceedings (November 2007).
`The skeleton of inference.' Invited talk to the Southern Methodist University philosophy department (March 2007).
`Epistemology and the Wikipedia.' Presented at the North American Computing and Philosophy Conference in Troy, New York (August 2006).
`Eliminating induction.' Presented at the Society for Exact Philosophy annual meeting in La Jolla, California (May 2006).
`Tom Reid meets Tom Bayes: skepticism, dogmatism and common sense.' Presented at Hume and His Critics, a conference on the Scottish Enlightenment at Baylor University (April 2005).
`Background theories and total science.' Presented at the Philosophy of Science Association biennial meeting in Austin, Texas (November 2004).
`The value of philosophy.' Presented at the Maine Philosophical Institute (May 2004).
`Science, underdetermination, and the structure of space.' Presented under various titles as a colloquium at UC San Diego (January 2003), as an invited talk to the Bowdoin College philosophy department (April 2003), and as an invited talk to the UAlbany philosophy department (January 2004).
`The promise and perils of science as distributed cognition.' Presented to the UC San Diego Experimental Philosophy Lab (January 2004).
`Williamson on knowledge and psychological explanation.' Presented at the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference (May 2003).
`Underdetermination and aspirations of certainty.' Presented to the UC San Diego History of Philosophy Roundtable (June 2002).
`Underdetermination and the Problem of Identical Rivals.' Presented at the Southern California Philosophy Conference at UC Irvine (October 2001) and at the Philosophy of Science Association biennial meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (November 2002).
`Reliability on the crowded net: Finding the truth in a web of deceit.' Presented at MacHack and published in conference proceedings (June 2001).
`Underdetermination and the inference against value freedom.' Presented at Value-Free Science: Ideal or Illusion?, a conference sponsored by the Ethics Center at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (February 2001).
`Reality, sex, and cyberspace: an exercise in philosophy of technology.' Presented at MacHack in Detroit, Michigan and published in conference proceedings (June 2000).
`The logic of normative structure.' Presented at Philosophy and the Social Sciences, a graduate student conference at the University of Texas, Austin (March 2000).

Teaching

In 2009, I was awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Symbolic logic
History of modern philosophy, Descartes to Kant
Existentialism
Metaphysics
Pragmatism
Theory of knowledge
Science and society
Philosophy of science
Causality and determinism, grad seminar
Underdetermination of theory, grad seminar

Webpages for each are at http://www.fecundity.com/courses/

Dissertation and thesis advisement

Member, Ph.D. committee for Tom Fowler. In progress.
Member, Ph.D. committee for Kevin Olbrys. In progress.
Member, Ph.D. committee for Kimberley Van Orman. In progress.
Member, Ph.D. committee for Juliette Stevens. Mental Causation: A Nonreductivist Perspective. Summer 2008.
Advisor, undergraduate honors thesis for Brett Bustamante. Applied Humor Theory. Spring 2008.
Chair, Ph.D. committee for John Styles. Empirically Grounded Metaphors in Science. Spring 2008.
Examiner in History for Dan Spanjer. Spring 2007.

Academic service

University at Albany Philosophy Department: Undergraduate studies committee (2004-06, 2007- ) Director of undergraduate studies (2005-06, 2007- ) Library and information committee (2004- ) Program review committee (2006-08) Hiring committee (2005-06, 2006-07) Colloquium committee (2005-06) Graduate studies committee (2004-05)
University at Albany Council on Research (2007-08) subcommittees: benevolent award, faculty research award, conflict of interest
Chair and co-organizer, first annual Graduate Mini-Conference, UC San Diego Philosophy (April 2003)
MacHack papers committee (2001, 2002)
Articles referee for journals including The American Journal of Bioethics, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Erkenntnis, Inquiry, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophy of Science, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, and Synthese.
Book referee for McGraw-Hill and Palgrave Macmillan.
Affiliations: Member, American Philosophical Association; Member, Philosophy of Science Association; Member, The Reid Society; Member, The Peirce Society; Member, Society for Exact Philosophy; Member, Creighton Club

Current as of May 17, 2009 . http://www.fecundity.com/job