Graduate Student in Residence
Specialization:
Research Interests
- Philosophy of Language
- Logic
- Metaphysics
- Philosophy of Physics
Education:
SUNY Geneseo (B.A., Psychology)
Virginia Tech (M.A., Philosophy)
Bio:
Other interests:
- board games
- kayaking
- hiking
- sci-fi books, movies, and TV shows
Research:
There are a couple of projects I am working on that are at various stages.
- Identifying propositions with the set of possible worlds at which the proposition is true has the infamously implausible entailment that all necessary true sentences share the same meaning. Several different extensions to this theory have been suggested to avoid this problematic entailment. One of which says that propositions are identical to the set of possible and impossible worlds at which it is true. I am working on a paper that argues that this extension (often called "Impossible World Semantics") still implausibly entails that seemingly non-synonymous sentences express the same proposition. I have presented varying versions of this project at a few conferences and will be presenting my newest draft at the Eastern APA in January 2019.
- Many theories about material constitution have been proposed; I am currently working on comparing and contrasting some of these theories. At the moment though, I will withhold any substantive claims on the matter.
- Believing two contradictory things is often considered a sign of irrationality. I have been examining this idea in light of paraconsistent logics and dialetheism. Is dialetheism inherently an irrational thesis or does the evolution of paraconsistent logics allow for rationality to survive inconsistency?