I received my
PhD in 2001 from Duke University, where I wrote my
dissertation, Free Will and the Knowledge Condition. I was an assistant
professor at Florida State University from 2001-2005 and
program chair for the 2005 meeting of the Society for Philosophy and
Psychology (SPP). Since 2005, I have been a member of the Department of
Philosophy and the Brains & Behavior program at Georgia State University, back in my hometown of Atlanta, where I grew up, attended Emory University, and met my wife, Cheryl.
My research is
devoted to the study of human agency: what it is, how it is possible, and
how it accords with scientific accounts of human nature. My primary focus
right now is the free will debate. I have written papers with several
graduate students on ordinary people’s intuitions about free will and
moral responsibility, as well as the phenomenology of free will. In these
papers in the new field of “experimental philosophy,” we discuss empirical
studies we have carried out on ordinary people's intuitions and
experiences of free will, and we discuss the role such data should play in
the philosophical debates (see “Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and
Mechanism: Experiments on Folk Intuitions”, "Is Incompatibilism
Intuitive?" “Surveying Freedom”, “The Phenomenology of Free Will", and
“The Past and Future of Experimental Philosophy”).
Other
recent papers include "Close Calls and the Confident Agent," which
reflects on the significance of alternative possibilities for free will;
"The Psychology of Free Will," which discusses the relevance of
psychological research to the free will debate; and "Free Will and the
Threat of Social Psychology," which examines results from social
psychology experiments that potentially threaten free will. The last paper
represents one part of a book project in progress, Free Will and the Sciences of the
Mind. In it I first offer a naturalistic theory of free will focusing
on the importance of self-knowledge—especially our ability to know what we
really want and how to act on it. This account of free will, which
analyzes it as set of cognitive capacities possessed and exercised to
varying degrees, is amenable to scientific inquiry. In the book, I examine
various sciences of the mind (e.g., social psychology and cognitive
neuroscience, each of which presents interesting challenges to this theory
of free will but may also provide support for it (see also “Agency,
Authorship, and Illusion” and "When Consciousness Matters"). I also
correct some of the mistaken conceptions about how these sciences are
supposed to threaten free will.
I believe
the free will debate is less about the question of determinism than the
question of the mind-body relation. I am interested in how to understand
that relation, especially in the study of consciousness and introspection
(see my "Verbal Reports on the Contents of Consciousness: Reconsidering
Introspectionist Methodology" and "The Problem of Pain"). I am also
interested in the development of agency in children (e.g., theory of mind
research) and the evolution of agency in primates (e.g., inhibition,
theory of mind, reciprocity, and deception) (see "Is Human Intelligence an
Adaptation? Cautionary Observations from the Philosophy of Biology" and
"Darwin's
Continuum and the Building Blocks of Deception"). Finally, I examine the
intersection of the above questions with questions about moral
responsibility and the moral sentiments.
I enjoy
teaching very much and find that my research is motivated by my attempts
to make philosophical questions interesting and relevant to my students
(see “Polling as Pedagogy” and "Some Practical Suggestions for Teaching
Small Philosophy Classes"). Recent graduate seminars include "Ethics,
Agency & the Sciences of the Mind," "Philosophy of Mind: Consciousness
and Mental Causation" and "Issues in Free Will" and I have also taught a
course on "Teaching Philosophy" for graduate students. At the
undergraduate level, I have taught Philosophy of Mind, Introduction to
Philosophy, Ethical Issues and Life Choices, Free Will and the Sciences of
the Mind, and various Honors seminars. I won the 2003 Superior Honors
Teaching Award from the Florida State Honors program.
Outside of
philosophy and my family, some of my interests include playing soccer,
watching Duke basketball, politics, movies, my dog Maggie, and making up
songs on guitar for my sons, Lucas and Sam.