about me

I am a full Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Cognitive Science Program at Marist University in Poughkeepsie, New York. 

My research has most recently focused on the ontology of causal powers and the applications of the powers metaphysic for work on questions in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion. 

I am presently working on four projects: three in the philosophy of mind and a fourth in the philosophy of religion. In the philosophy of mind, I am presently working on (a) some projects addressing foundational metaphysical questions about the nature of agency and the nature of consciousness and (b) a project that explores the foundations of cognitive science by looking at skilled perception and the phenomenon of the skater's eye. 

In the metaphysics of agency, I am developing a radical revision of the standard story of agency that incorporates a powers-in-process model of causation for conceiving of agency (where agency is fundamentally a causal process involving the manifestation of an agent's capacity to guide a process towards an end). 

In the metaphysics of consciousness, I am working on a series of papers that involves developing a modest hylomorphic physicalist-panpsychist metaphysic of mind that builds upon an ontology of properties understood as powerful qualities. 

My project related to skilled perception is with Brian Glenney. This work involves making a case for a modest enactivist approach to visual perception that emphasizes embodied skill acquisition (where a skill is a capacity/power) in acquiring the ability to see affordances  (which are themselves understood as powers that potentiate certain actions) in the world in certain ways (in this case, the way a skaterboarder sees it). 

Finally, in the metaphysics of the divine, I am working on applying a powers ontology to developing a pantheistic metaphysic of the divine. 

My projects on the metaphysics of consciousness and the divine builds on work that was part of the Pantheism and Panentheism Project funded by the John Templeton Foundation (my co-investigator was Yujin Nagasawa of the University of Birmingham) and another Templeton-funded project on which I was  the co-investigator with Philip Goff on Panpsychism and Pan(en)theism: Philosophy of Mind Meets Philosophy of Religion.

I live in Ulster County in the Mid-Hudson Valley region of New York State with my spouse, son, and six cats. My parents are both from Latin America (Paraguay and Puerto Rico).  My formative years were spent in Alaska and California. When not doing philosophy, I enjoy brewing beer, hiking with my family, mountain biking, reading popular science and science fiction, gaming with my son, skateboarding, and snowboarding.