I work primarily in the philosophy of science, particularly in scientific explanations. I’m also interested in its application to evolutionary biology, social sciences, philosophy of language, and ethics.
In the philosophy of science, my work focuses on how explanations in different sciences (physical, biological, and social) work, especially how they fit into (and contribute to) our broader understanding of scientific explanations---e.g., causal and non-causal explanations, various causal structures, and distinct causal/explanatory concepts.
My work in the philosophy of language concerns speech acts and how different aspects of speech, such as intention, uptake, conventions, and norms, contribute to, and explain, the impact of speech, particularly regarding inequities in speech acts.
Additionally, I'm interested in the evolution of human moral cognition, specifically in the evolution of moral norm externalization.
I provide a philosophical analysis of three explanatory strategies used in various sciences that have not received much attention in the philosophical literature: conventions/norms in the social sciences (Chapter 1), the notion of path dependency across various (life and social) sciences (Chapter 2), and molecular structures in biology (Chapter 3). These three chapters, collectively, explore how different types of structures play a significant explanatory role in their respective fields.
Abstract: To provide an evolutionary explanation of the human tendency to externalize moral norms, Stanford (2018) suggests an adaptive advantage of externalization: it provides an efficient and effective mechanism to protect our prosocial motivations from exploitation. Many have criticized this view, arguing that externalization is unnecessary to achieve the suggested adaptive advantage, given supposedly more plausible alternatives. Stanford provides an empirical argument against these criticisms. I argue that Stanford’s reply to critics fails for reasons he has previously highlighted in his critiques of others, and that his original position contains resources for an effective response to these criticisms.
Abstract: Current speech act theories focus on how to determine the illocutionary force of an utterance—whether the illocutionary force is determined by the speaker’s intention or the hearer’s uptake. Such a focus assumes that there is a single illocutionary force. This is problematic since certain injustices associated with speech acts can occur solely due to either the speaker’s communicative intention or the hearer’s uptake of the speaker’s intention. If a theory takes the illocutionary force to be determined by the speaker’s intention, it cannot account for the injustice that is constituted by the hearer’s uptake; if the theory takes the illocutionary force to be determined by the hearer’s interpretation, it cannot account for the injustice that is constituted by the speaker’s intention. Therefore, I argue that the nature of the illocutionary force of an utterance is twofold, reflecting the fact that both the speaker’s intention and the hearer’s uptake play distinct and indispensable roles, especially regarding injustices associated with speech acts. Accordingly, I suggest an alternative way of looking at illocutionary acts that focuses on the forces that constitute an illocutionary act: normative illocutionary force and descriptive illocutionary force.