I am a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, with interests in philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of biology.

My research focuses on organism-environment interaction and coevolutionary dynamics. I am interested in how and why coupled systems, across various spatial and temporal scales, arise and persist.

On the cognitive science side, I draw on resources from the enactive approach to cognition in answering these questions, and in biology, I do the same from developmental systems theory and research in evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo).

In my dissertation, I offer a theoretical framework that aims to bridge the gap between these two fields in order to provide a shared space in which questions about organism-environment dynamics can be investigated.

Aside from these topics, I am interested in environmental philosophy, public engagement with science, philosophical questions about scientific practice, and early modern philosophy (especially theories of perception).

Recent Work

 

Upcoming conference: Doing Science in a Pluralistic Society (26-28 March, University of Dayton, OH, USA)

In this coauthored work, we offer a framework for assessing and constructing Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR) projects that builds on previous suggestions by investigating divergence in values and goals between researchers and participants.

 

Paper under review: Enactivism and Ecological Psychology

Enactivism and ecological psychology converge on the relevance of the environment in understanding perception and action. In this paper, my aim is to more closely specify the environment as an organism's cognitive domain, in turn strengthening a joint appeal to both enactivism and ecological psychology.

 

Upcoming conference: 8th Biennial Conference of the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (7-10 July, Michigan State University, MI, USA)

I suggest that the concept of reciprocal causation can have a valuable epistemological and methodological impact on both biology and cognitive science. At the heart of a key debate in each field is a defining claim regarding causal directionality, and drawing attention to the claims made by each side reveals similarities in underlying commitments that impact the conceptual architectures of both fields.

 

Paper in progress: conceptualizations of color in visual ecology

In this coauthored work, we propose a theoretical model for the evolution of color vision informed by contemporary visual ecology and the philosophical literature on color. We argue for a relationalist approach to color vision as coevolving with color signals.

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