Primary Research
My primary research interest is in metaphysics and how different accounts of language are related to different metaphysical pictures. My dissertation offered an inferentialist account of the meaning of quantified and modal expressions. During the course of the dissertation, whose table of contents can be found below, I offer a novel account of ontological commitment, the meaning of modal expressions, and their relation to quantifiers. The dissertation concludes by applying the logic developed by the account of meaning to the issue of contingentism and necessitism.
After my dissertation I continue to think about contingentism and necessitim. In particular, I argue that the validity of the Barcan formulas is neither necessary nor sufficient to settle the dispute between the two. Instead the dispute depends on the validity of a particular structural rule of a language. In my future research I hope to apply the techniques I've developed for investigating necessitism and contingentism to issues in the philosophy of time. My conjecture is that several metaphysical disputes there can also be settled by an investigation into the structural rules of a language.
After my dissertation I continue to think about contingentism and necessitim. In particular, I argue that the validity of the Barcan formulas is neither necessary nor sufficient to settle the dispute between the two. Instead the dispute depends on the validity of a particular structural rule of a language. In my future research I hope to apply the techniques I've developed for investigating necessitism and contingentism to issues in the philosophy of time. My conjecture is that several metaphysical disputes there can also be settled by an investigation into the structural rules of a language.
| Dissertation Table of Contents |
Pubications
- What's in a Name: A Response to Ramsey, Thought, 6, 368-277, 2017.
- Atomic Ontology, Synthese, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1725-8, 2018.
- Sellars, Second-Order Logic, and Ontological Commitment, The History and Philosophy of Logic, 40 (1), 81-97, 2019.
- A Hypersequent Solution to the Inferentialist Problem of Modality, Erkenntnis, forthcoming.
Papers Under Submission
- Barcan Up the Wrong Tree - An argument that the validity of the Barcan Formulas is neither necessary nor sufficient to capture the dispute between necessitists and contingentists.
- Hypersequent System D - A study of a hypersequent system for the modal logic D.
- PHIL: A Logic for Contingentism - Offers a calculus that responds to problems for contingentism raised by Williamson and Prior.
Work in Progress
- Carnap's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus - A translation of The Tractatus into Carnap's Formal Mode of Speech.
- Neutral Free Logic: a Proof Theory - Offers a cut-admissible calculus for neutral free logic (joint work with Norbert Gratzl, Marcus Rossberg, and Dave Ripley).
- Promises and 'Ought Implies Can' - A consistent theory holding that both 'Promises entail Obligations' and 'Obligations entail Ability'.
- Metasequents - A system of logic capable of accounting for the admissible rules of the sequent calculus. The main result of my paper is that this system is cut-eliminable.
- Rational Rejectability Liar - This paper presents an objection to the dialetheist view recently expressed by Beall.
Other Research Interests
I am a founding member of two reading groups at the University of Connecticut:
and play an administrative role in each.
- The Wittgenstein Reading group
- The Medieval Reading group
and play an administrative role in each.
Curriculum Vitae
| Curriculum Vitae |
