About me
I am a Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, the Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, and a member of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (University of Pittsburgh-Carnegie Mellon University).
My research focuses on the philosophical issues raised by psychology and cognitive neuroscience with a special interest in concepts, moral psychology, the relevance of evolutionary biology for understanding cognition, modularity, the nature, origins, and ethical significance of prejudiced cognition, the foundation of statistics, and the methods of psychology and cognitive neuroscience. I am also involved in the development of experimental philosophy, having published several noted articles in this field.
I have published more than 150 articles and chapters on these topics in venues such as Analysis, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Cognition, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Nature Human Behavior, Mind & Language, Nous, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophy of Science, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, and Social Cognition. I am the author of Doing without Concepts (OUP, 2009) and Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds (OUP, 2017) as well as the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality (OUP, 2012), La Philosophie Expérimentale (Vuibert, 2012), Arguing about Human Nature (Routledge, 2013), and Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy (Routledge, 2014). My work has been cited more than 8,500 times according to Google Scholar. I have given more than 300 talks on my research throughout the world. I have been an associate editor of The European Journal for Philosophy of Science from 2009 to 2013 as well as the editor of the Naturalistic Philosophy section of Philosophy Compass since 2012.
I have been awarded the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award (junior category) by the University of Pittsburgh in 2011 and the Stanton Prize by the Society for Philosophy and Psychology in 2013; I was a Senior Fellow of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in 2013, the Clark Way Harrison Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis in 2015, and a Regular Visiting Distinguished Professorship at Eidyn (Edinburgh). I was the Scots Philosophical Association Centenary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh in 2017. I have been awarded a Humboldt Research Award at the Ruhr-University in Bochum, a Mercator fellowship, and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Tsinghua University in 2017. In 2018, I received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award by the University of Pittsburgh (senior category) in 2018. I also sit on the governing board of Philsci-Archive and on the Steering Committee of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Until recently, I also sat on on the governing board of the Philosophy of Science Association (2016-20) and on the Lectures, Publications, and Research Committee and the International Cooperation Committee of the American Philosophical Association. I am the co-PI of a Templeton funded project "The Geography of Philosophy: Universality and Diversity in Philosophical Concepts" (about $3.5M) and I will lead another two-year Templeton funded project in 2022 (Foreknowledge and Free Will in Christianity and Islam). My work has been chronicled in The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
My research focuses on the philosophical issues raised by psychology and cognitive neuroscience with a special interest in concepts, moral psychology, the relevance of evolutionary biology for understanding cognition, modularity, the nature, origins, and ethical significance of prejudiced cognition, the foundation of statistics, and the methods of psychology and cognitive neuroscience. I am also involved in the development of experimental philosophy, having published several noted articles in this field.
I have published more than 150 articles and chapters on these topics in venues such as Analysis, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Cognition, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Nature Human Behavior, Mind & Language, Nous, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophy of Science, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, and Social Cognition. I am the author of Doing without Concepts (OUP, 2009) and Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds (OUP, 2017) as well as the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality (OUP, 2012), La Philosophie Expérimentale (Vuibert, 2012), Arguing about Human Nature (Routledge, 2013), and Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy (Routledge, 2014). My work has been cited more than 8,500 times according to Google Scholar. I have given more than 300 talks on my research throughout the world. I have been an associate editor of The European Journal for Philosophy of Science from 2009 to 2013 as well as the editor of the Naturalistic Philosophy section of Philosophy Compass since 2012.
I have been awarded the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award (junior category) by the University of Pittsburgh in 2011 and the Stanton Prize by the Society for Philosophy and Psychology in 2013; I was a Senior Fellow of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in 2013, the Clark Way Harrison Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis in 2015, and a Regular Visiting Distinguished Professorship at Eidyn (Edinburgh). I was the Scots Philosophical Association Centenary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh in 2017. I have been awarded a Humboldt Research Award at the Ruhr-University in Bochum, a Mercator fellowship, and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Tsinghua University in 2017. In 2018, I received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award by the University of Pittsburgh (senior category) in 2018. I also sit on the governing board of Philsci-Archive and on the Steering Committee of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Until recently, I also sat on on the governing board of the Philosophy of Science Association (2016-20) and on the Lectures, Publications, and Research Committee and the International Cooperation Committee of the American Philosophical Association. I am the co-PI of a Templeton funded project "The Geography of Philosophy: Universality and Diversity in Philosophical Concepts" (about $3.5M) and I will lead another two-year Templeton funded project in 2022 (Foreknowledge and Free Will in Christianity and Islam). My work has been chronicled in The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education.