Research

Current Project

My current project is a monograph titled The Physical Mind: Toward a Scientific Theory of Consciousness. This monograph blends together several of my published ideas and several of the article-lengthed works-in-progress listed below; I add new and key ideas tying everything together. The overarching aim of the monograph is to respond to the problem of consciousness from a physicalist viewpoint and to build from this the philosophical foundations for the science of consciousness. See "The Physical Mind" for more detail.

Publications

"On the grounding-reduction link" (2016). American Philosophical Quarterly, 53(4): 411-22.

"Four conceptions of the hard problem of consciousness" (2015). Journal of Consciousness Studies, 22(9-10): 129-44.

"On the supposed limits of physicalist theories of mind" (2011). Philosophical Studies, 155(2): 207-25.

Work in Full Draft or in Progress

"Are point particles possible?"

"What is the hard problem of consciousness?"

"Why the hard problem hardly matters"

"What Descartes didn't know: The new knowledge argument"

"Steering physicalism clear of grounding problems"

"A closer look at the body problem"

"Defining the physical: A physics-guided definition"

"Quantum space"

Talks

I have presented my work throughout the United States and in several other countries (Brazil, England, Finland, France, Spain and Switzerland).

Dissertation

Cutting the problem of consciousness down to size (2011). University of California, Davis.

Committee: Bernard Molyneux (advisor), Cody Gilmore, Michael Glanzberg, Joseph Levine (U Mass Amherst), Barbara Montero (CUNY Graduate Center)

Other

"The identity thesis and necessity" (2002). Honors Thesis, The Ohio State University.

Committee: Louise Antony (advisor), Joseph Levine, Diana Raffman