Research Program

Theory of Mind & Mindreading

A central thread of my research concerns how minds represent other minds. I work on the attribution of knowledge, belief, and desire across species, including the logical problem of mindreading, the question of whether non-human animals genuinely attribute mental states, and factive accounts of knowledge attribution in monkeys and great apes.

My MA thesis developed a "multiple soft-indicators" model designed to dissolve the logical problem, and my recent work with Evan Westra examines the role of metarepresentation in desire-attribution. This research also bears on the status of folk psychology itself: I argue that evidence from animal and infant mindreading poses serious empirical challenges for fictionalist and interpretivist accounts of the mental.

Comparative & Developmental Cognition

I combine philosophical analysis with empirical research on animal minds. As a visiting scholar in Christopher Krupenye's Social and Cognitive Origins Group at Johns Hopkins, I helped launch a canine cognition lab and design theory-of-mind experiments with dogs, including published work on whether dogs rationally infer the causes of failed actions.

I am interested in what comparative and developmental evidence, from monkeys and great apes to dogs and human infants, can tell us about the structure and origins of social cognition.

Norm Psychology

I study the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of social norms: what it takes for a creature to genuinely possess and be governed by norms, and how norms are acquired, maintained, and enforced, including in childhood. A recurring question is whether non-human animals, and primates in particular, count as normative creatures, and what the right evidence for normativity would be.

Bounded Rationality

I work on norms of rationality for real, cognitively finite agents, and on what a non-ideal epistemology should look like. This research is Kantian in spirit, extending Kantian ideas about autonomy and the proper use of reason into the philosophy of inquiry, with attention to how bounded agents ought to manage attention, rely on heuristics, and decide when to stop inquiring.

Kant on Moral Psychology & Education

My historical work focuses on Kant's moral psychology and philosophy of education, especially his account of how human beings develop from infancy into autonomous moral agents. I read these texts in dialogue with contemporary developmental and moral psychology, asking how Kant's framework can be squared with our best empirical understanding of moral development.

Funded Projects