research

My dissertation is in philosophy of language, concerning indicative conditionals: certain sentences of the form, ‘If A, then B’. People use conditionals often in ordinary discourse, and we all seem to know what they mean. The ethicist reasons, ‘If euthanasia is wrong, then so is suicide’. The scientist predicts, ‘If I add the acid, then the protein will unfold’. However, giving an account of the meaning of conditionals, and understanding what makes true conditionals true, is more difficult than one might expect. I develop the argument in my dissertation in three stages: first, I argue that indicative conditionals have truth values; second, I present new arguments against the major accounts on offer; and, third, I present and defend a new account of indicative conditionals, which I call the Consequence Account.

While I remain interested in philosophy of language, in my future research I hope also to branch out to more projects in metaphysics and philosophy of religion. In metaphysics, I am most interested in recent discussions surrounding grounding, fundamentality, and dependence relations. My dissertation makes use of a relation of consequence, and I hope to further explore the metaphysics of this kind of relation and how it interacts with current literature on dependence relations in metaphysics. Additionally, I hope to pursue research in philosophy of religion surrounding divine hiddenness, which is an argument at the intersection of philosophy of religion and epistemology.