Review of Kim Sterelny's 'The Pleistocene Social Contract: Culture and Cooperation in Human Evolution' The Quarterly Review of Biology. 2022. Article link.  Long blog version here.     

 

Cultural Evolutionary Theory as a Selectionist Theory (Under review) 

My thesis is that cultural evolutionary theory is selectionist.  I provide a reinforcement based explanation of norm transmission, and I provide a selectionist interpretation of reinforcement.  I also show that the phenomenon in question (cultural norm transmission via reinforcement) is a cultural phenomenon.  The upshot is that we get a cultural evolutionary theory that is selectionist, at least with regard to norms.

 

The Cultural Evolution of Epistemology (in progress)

I argue that humans evolved the practice of being vigilant towards information as a way to ensure the reliability of information.  Moreover, I argue that this is a social practice that structures the environment.  I end with some philosophical reflections.  

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Expressive Instrumentalism (under review)

This paper defends the thesis that epistemic reasons depend on goals (instrumentalism) by appealing to expressivism (the view that normative claims express a norm). 

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Presentations

 

Popper's (cultural?) Evolutionary Epistemology (2022). Presented at the Bulgarian Society for Analytic Philosophy.

 

Cultural Evolution and Epistemology (2022). Presented at ASU Grad conference and at Utrecht University Graduate Conference.  

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Trust, Knowledge, and Epistemically Safe networks (2021). Presented at the HAPSAT conference.  Conference site. 

 

Expressivistic Instrumentalism, Presented at the 10th European Congress of Analytic Philosophy, 2020.  Click for Conference site.

 

Epistemology as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives. Presented at the Aristotelian Society Joint Session, 2020. Click for video. 

 

The Normativity of Logic (2019), invited presentation at Shanxi University, China.

                                    

How to Argue for Bayesianism. Presented at The Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy, Boston 2019. conference site.

 

Carnap and the philosophy of Religion (2017). Presented at The ASU graduate conference and The Evangelical Philosophical Society, Ontario California.