My areas of specialization are philosophy of mind and epistemology; other interests include metaphysics and history of philosophy (particularly modern philosophy).

I am currently working on conceivability and possibility; it's a topic that's at the intersection of my two main areas of interest (mind and epistemology). This was the topic of my dissertation, "Imagination and Modal Epistemology," which I did at New York University.

Tradition has it that conceivability is the evidence for possibility that gets us to this modal knowledge. But what is conceivability? I think it's obvious that 'conceive' cannot mean think, understand, entertain, suppose, or find believable, because none of these are suited to serve as evidence for possibility. And if it is none of these, it is mysterious what conceivability is, and why it is evidence for possibility. I argue that sensory imagination is the most promising candidate for a source of modal evidence. A crucial part of this argument is devising an answer to this challenge by Paul Tidman:

How do you know you are having the right sort of image for making judgments concerning possibility? Is there any way of distinguishing mental images from which it is safe to infer possibility from those from which it is not? It is difficult to see how this might be done. (Tidman, P. [1994]. Conceivability as a test for possibility. American Philosophical Quarterly , 31[4], 299)

I see the project as consisting of several components:

• Theory of sensory imagination – The theory of sensory imagination I develop draws on recent work on the content of perceptual experience. As a methodological point, I think it's crucial that we not "rig" the theory of imagination to fit our views about possibility.

• Modal epistemology – The crux of the project is to explain why sensory imagination counts as evidence for possibility in such a way that I can offer a principled answer to Tidman's challenge. What I call assignments are the key: imaginings in the suspect category are those that rely exclusively on assignments; in slogan form, “assignments make imagining the impossible possible.” I argue that the view neatly handles some of the puzzle cases in the literature, such as a posteriori necessities and zombie cases prominent in the modal arguments for dualism.

• First-Person Perspective – Imagination comes in both a third-person ("from the outside") and a first-person ("from the inside") variety, and this difference is critical in some mind-body dualism thought experiments. I find first-person imagining extremely puzzling, and explore it in connection with perception and memory.

• Alternative Sources of Modal Evidence – Part of securing a prominent place for imagination in modal epistemology is showing that other putative sources cannot provide the same results.

University of Pennsylvania, Department of Computer Science

Advanced Seminar: Psychology and Computation (Phil 185L, with Masahiro Yamada)
Epistemology (Phil 81)

Knowledge, Mind and Existence (Phil 30, with Brian Keeley), Spring 2006
Objectivity: is the truth out there? (ID1)

Knowledge, Mind and Existence (Phil 30, with Brian Keeley), Spring 2006
Advanced Seminar: the Skeptical Challenge (Phil 185L, with Masahiro Yamada), Spring 2006

Philosophy of Mind (Phil 80), Fall 2005
Exploring the Mind and the Self (ID 1), Fall 2005

Advanced Seminar: Conceivability and Possibility (Phil 185L), Spring 2005
Problems of Philosophy (Phil 1), Spring 2005

Manifest Image vs. Scientific Image (ID 1), Fall 2004
Knowledge, Mind and Existence (Phil 30), Fall 2004

“Imagination and Possibility”

9th Southern California Philosophy Conference
“Imaginability as a Guide to Possibility”

Conference on Knowledge and Imagination
"Imagining, Inside and Out "