Academic research

Fields of interest:

Causation (causal explanation, levels of causation in the sciences) 

Reductionism, antireductionsm, emergentism (the exclusion argument and its problems, the causal autonomy of the special sciences)

Philosophy of Mind and Biology (reduction and explanation in the life sciences, mechanisms and mechanistic explanations)

On the one hand my research focuses on causation, causal explanation, on the other hand on reduction and reductive explanation.  More recently I stared a project on reductive accounts of teleology.

With respect to teleology and teleological intuitions I am much less skeptical as most contemporary philosophers. I started a research project as a fellow of the teloi.org project in 2021 that aims to justify a wide range of teleological intuitions countering the trend that aims to purge teleology from metaphysics. In doing so I rely on the so-called organisational view of teleology that gained traction in the last decade in the philosophy of biology. 

I have an interest in causal skepticism, the view according to which causal talk is illusory, there is no such thing as causation in the world. At least this is what our best scientific knowledge tells us. In fundamental physics processes have no direction, they are time-symmetrical. In a physical system there is no such thing as a cause of an event but there are many determiners of the event. In a physical system you cannot find the objects and properties assumed by causal talk. So, my basic question is, if physics describes things better, how can a notion like causation emerge as something nearly indispensable and useful in everyday life and in most sciences?

I have a serious interest in difference-making theories especially counterfactual theories of causation. I have done some work on contrastive theories of causation and on arguments for the causal autonomy of the special sciences based on counterfactual theories of causation. I am especially interested in proportionality-based arguments for higher-level causal autonomy. I developed arguments both against Menzies' version that relies solely on the notion of proportionate causation and against Yablo's classic account that relies on the determinable-determinate interpretation of realization.  My present stance is that higher-level causal autonomy is a dubious standpoint, but I am all for explanatory autonomy.