I have published widely on various topics, but I also have three large scale research projects that I have worked on which build on each other. I outline them separately below, starting with those I have so far published the most on. You can find many of my published papers on facets of these projects under the "Publications" tab.
(I) Reduction, Emergence and the Structure of Nature
I completed a long-term project on reduction and emergence in nature with my book Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy (CUP, 2016) building on a long series of papers. The book reconnects with scientific debates over reduction and emergence suggesting these scientific discussions are closer to the deeper issues, and live positions, of our times than philosophical accounts.
In light of my continuing work on compositional explanations, and coalitions, in the sciences (see the next project), I recently revisited scientific debates over reduction and emergence adding a richer, positive story about these debates over the last 150 years. This is a shorter, and more accessible, treatment of many of my earlier arguments. See my Element, in the Metaphysics series, Reduction, Emergence and the Metaphysics in Science (CUP 2025).
(II) Understanding the Human Body: Coalitions of Models and Compositional Models/Explanations, Relations and Levels
Scientific debates over reduction and emergence are built around compositional models/explanations in the sciences, so I had to engage these scientific products. However, I eventually realized contemporary philosophy of science either denies there are compositional models/explanations (this was the stance of David Lewis) or claims that they are really causal (this was Wesley Salmon’s approach.) My initial work had been on understanding the realization of properties, and the part-whole relations between individuals, in the sciences. But it became clear to me that I needed to defend the very existence of the compositional models/explanations within science representing such relations. I therefore worked on compositional models/explanations within the sciences, focusing on physiology, cell biology and molecular biology. Given this work, I also became convinced, following insights of Sandra Mitchell on "integrative pluralism," that scientists offer “coalitions” of plural, but integrated, models, including compositional ones, to understand complex biological individuals like the human body and its parts. I have therefore also been exploring the What?, How? and Why? of such coalitions about the human body. I am presently (finally) finishing up a long book on our coalitions, and compositional models, entitled Understanding the Human Body, its Activities, Composition and Levels (Unpublished).
Metaphysicians, and analytic philosophers of mind, have also been recently increasingly interested in “vertical” relations between entities in various areas – though the philosophical consensus is that the sciences do not offer compositional models/explanations. Ken Aizawa and I therefore edited an anthology of papers seeking to draw into contact various philosophers writing, in a variety of traditions and areas of philosophy, on "vertical" relations. See Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground (2016, co-edited with Ken Aizawa, Palgrave MacMillan). The introduction, co-written with Ken, gives my earlier views on the relations of these philosophical areas and their frameworks. My Chapter in the volume gives my take on what the “engaged” project I am pursuing, which seeks to describe the compositional models in the sciences and their compositional relations, should (and should not) look like.
(III) The Neuroscience Revolution and Brainhood about Psychological Properties and What You Are
For over a decade, I have been exploring material for another long-term project focused on the foundations of neuroscience. This work was jump-started, during 2013-2014, when I was lucky to be a Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Advanced Study. At NDIAS, I worked on the core positions, and arguments, of my new project focused on the foundations of neuroscience and "what we are" as philosophers now put it. I have been teaching graduate classes on this material almost every year for the last decade and I have a number of well-developed, and interconnected, unpublished papers and positions. My little, published paper, “Brains, Neuroscience and Animalism” (Gillett 2014) in the posted papers, gives a flavor of the underlying positions. Once I complete my book Understanding the Human Body, then I intend to finally focus on this project applying the insights of my more general work on physiology, along with my unpublished material, to a defense of “Brainhood”: the views that brains have psychological properties and that you are in fact, however it might experientially appear, a brain.