PRIMARY RESEARCH
My primary areas of research concern the connections between the phenomenal character and the representational contents of perceptual experience as well as the bearing of various empirical results on these issues. More specific projects focus on:
The grammar of consciousness: the claim that our experiences have an argument structure akin to the grammar of a language or the rules of composition for the representational elements in maps, models, and diagrams
Phenomenal schematics: the claim that the phenomenal structure of a perceptual experience constrains without fully determining the possible representational contents of that experience
Using the structure of phenomenal consciousness to partially understand what it might be like to have an experience that one has not had
The varieties of spatial representation within and across sensory modalities (including biological and prosthetic sense modalities)
The diversity in the character of different subjects' perceptual experiences, even between "neurotypical" subjects
The use of amodal completion and other perceptual completion phenomena in understanding historical claims about the role of imagination in perception
SECONDARY AREAS OF RESEARCH
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
the relevance of work on complexity and modeling in the philosophy of science for realism about the propositional attitudes
pluralism about the mechanisms of causal judgement
MORAL PSYCHOLOGY
criticizing the claim that disability is inherently bad
implicit biases in perception
MEDICAL ETHICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHIATRY
the role of implicit bias in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic pain and psychiatric illness
the bearing of delusions on our understanding of the systematicity and compositionality of thought
OTHER PROJECTS
the use of schematic generality in understanding our commitments to logical truths across possible expansions of our languages
the role of mental imagery in film