I am currently developing research into well-being/happiness, with particular connections to our capacity to control our own minds.
Fear of Death and the Will to Live (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming)
The fear of death resists philosophical attempts at reconciliation. Building on theories of emotion, I argue that we can understand our fear as triggered by a de se mode of thinking about death which comes into conflict with our will to live. The discursive mode of philosophy may help us to avoid the de se mode of thinking about death, but it does not satisfactorily address the problem. I focus instead on the voluntary diminishment of one’s will to live. I argue that we can encourage a natural tendency for the will to live to decline as we approach death. I then consider two objections: Is not the will to live too fundamental for us to control? And even if we can control it, would not a declining will to live result in a general despair that it is better to resist? I argue that both of these objections can be overcome.
Imagination, Endogenous Attention, and Mental Agency (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2023)
This paper develops a mechanistic account of basic mental agency by identifying similarities between two of its major exemplars: endogenous attention and imagination. Five key similarities are identified: i) that both capacities are driven by currently prioritised goals that are either person-level or apt to become person-level. ii) that both deliver their outputs to the working memory iii) that both range across all and only conceptual contents; iv) that both proceed under the guidance of norms and/or habits; and v) that both directly activate rather than inhibit content. These five features are consolidated by proposing that basic mental agency is essentially the power to call conceptual content to mind and hold it within our working memories.
Popularisations:
Imagination is the Power of Voluntary Thought (Imagine magazine June 2022)
Distraction, flow and the creative mind (article for Institute of Art and Ideas, February 2023)
Reason to be cheerful (Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2021)
I begin this article with a critical review of the positive psychology technique of gratitude training, which I argue leaves one vulnerable to a Pollyannaish emotional bias. I then affirm a general conflict between happiness and emotional rationality. Plausible accounts of emotional rationality demand critical checking of positive emotions, where plausible accounts of happiness include exuberance, which counts against critical checking. However, in a shocking twist, I argue that given a 'Dionysian' preference for exuberance over emotional rationality, it can be rational to avoid checking. This is because critical monitoring itself either is, or involves, an emotional response. Thus it would be irrational for a Dionysian to worry about their emotional rationality; they literally have more rational emotions by not engaging in critical monitoring. I conclude that gratitude training, and related positive psychology techniques, can be rational, depending on your personality style.
Intrusive Uncertainty in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (with Keely Heaton) (Mind & Language, 2017)
Keeley Heaton and I refute the Dysfunctional Belief Model and the Inference-Based Approach to OCD (two of the most prominent existing models of the disorder). In their place we offer a model of OCD based on the persistent sense of doubt that is at the centre of OCD experience. We argue that OCD is characterised a hyperactive sub-personal signal of being in error, experienced by the individual as uncertainty about his or her intentional actions (including mental actions). This signalling interacts with the anxiety sensitivities of the individual to trigger conscious checking processes, including speculations about possible harms.