- 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
- M.A. in Philosophy. 2000. UC San Diego.
- B.A. in Philosophy and Physics. 1996. Texas Christian University, graduated
with University Honors summa cum laude.
Academic employment
- Assistant professor in Philosophy, University at Albany, State University of New York. 2004-present.
- Visiting assistant professor in Philosophy, Bowdoin College. 2003-2004.
- Associate in Philosophy, UC San Diego. Fall 1999, Spring 2003;
Teaching assistant in Philosophy, UC San Diego. Seven terms between 1998 and 2003.
Webmaster, UC San Diego Philosophy Department. 1998-2000.
- Editorial assistant for the journal Philosophy of Science. 1998-1999.
Publications
Refereed journal articles
- `Reid's defense of common sense.' Forthcoming in Philosophers' Imprint.
- 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.
- `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.
Books
- co-edited with Jacob Busch. New Waves in Philosophy of Science. Palgrave MacMillan. Projected Spring 2009.
- forall x: an introduction to formal logic. 2005.
Textbook covering translation, semantics, and proofs in propositional and first-order logic. Released under a Creative Commons license. It has been downloaded over 10,000 times and used in courses at UAlbany, UC San Diego, the University of Lethbridge, the University of Manchester, and Bentley College.
link: http://www.fecundity.com/logic/
Reference works
- `Underdetermination of theories' in The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia. Sahotra Sarkar and Jessica Pfeifer, eds. Routledge. 2005.
- with Michael Kalichman, education resources for the Responsible Conduct of Research Education Consortium. September 2002. Reprinted in University of Arizona's Program in Research Integrity Education newsletter, beginning in issue 6(6): June 2006.
link: http://rcrec.org/r/
Presentations
- `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
Course webpages at http://www.fecundity.com/courses/
- Symbolic logic
- History of modern philosophy, Descartes to Kant
- Existentialism
- Pragmatism
- Epistemology
- Science and society
- Philosophy of science
- Causality and determinism, grad seminar
- Underdetermination of theory, grad seminar
Dissertation and thesis advisement
- Chair, Ph.D. committee for John Styles. In progress.
- Member, Ph.D. committee for Tom Fowler. In progress.
- Member, Ph.D. committee for Kimberley Van Orman. In progress.
- Examiner in History for Dan Spanjer. Spring 2007.
Academic service
- University at Albany Philosophy Department
Library and information committee ('04- , chair '05- )
Hiring committee ('05-'06, '06-'07)
Program review committee ('06-'07)
Colloquium committee ('05-'06)
Undergraduate studies committee ('04-'06, '07- ; chair '05-'06, '07- )
Graduate studies committee ('04-'05)
- Chair and co-organizer, first annual Graduate Mini-Conference, UC San Diego Philosophy (April 2003)
- MacHack papers committee (2001, 2002)
- I have refereed articles for The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Inquiry, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, and Synthese and a book for McGraw-Hill.
- Affiliations:
Member, American Philosophical Association; Member, Philosophy of Science Association; Member, The Reid Society; Member, The Peirce Society;
Senior Fellow, Alden March Bioethics Institute;
Member, Society for Exact Philosophy
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