Craig Agule Email
Office H&SS 8037
B.A. Economics, University of Virginia
J.D. University of Virginia
M.A. Philosophy University College London
My interests include political, moral, and legal philosophy as well as aesthetics.
Nicholas Bell
Office H&SS 7055
B.A. University of Wisconsin, Madison
Interests: epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of science, history of philosophy, philosophy of language.
Amy Berg Email
Office: H&SS 7039
B.A. Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College (2008)
I'm originally from Corvallis, OR and after a year working in the software industry in Madison, WI, it's a relief to be back to both philosophy and the West Coast. My interests include ethics, political philosophy, and the occasional foray into action theory.
Sindhuja Bhakthavatsalam Email
Office: H&SS 8089
M.Sc. Physics, Indian Institute of Technology
I got my undergraduate and masters degrees in physics from back home in India and came to UCSD in 2008. My areas of interest include Philosophy of Science and more broadly, Epistemology. Specifically, I work on scientific realism. Lately, there have been a number of interesting realist positions that attempt to mediate between the traditional positions of hard core objective realism and extreme skepticism towards scientific claims. Most such attempts don't seem entirely successful though, in that they inevitably seem to lead back to either of the traditional extreme positions. My project revolves around finding such a middle ground realist position that is viable. I'm looking at Ron Giere's perspectivism and Hasok Chang's plausibility/ intelligibility realism to name a few. I'm also interested in finding standards for evaluating scientific claims and scientific decision making in the face of epistemic uncertainty in the broader, social context. When I'm not doing Philosophy, I sing/ blog on South Indian classical music.
Matthew Braich Email
Office: H&SS 8088
B.A. Philosophy and English, Lewis and Clark College
M.A. Philosohy, U.C. Riverside
I am primarily interested in foundational issues in ethics. Some questions that have been bugging me recently include: What’s going on when we make moral judgments? What are reasons for action? What’s the relationship between reasons and moral obligations? I am also interested in epistemology and normativity, more broadly. What’s the relationship between theoretical and practical reasons? What do we mean when we say we should do or believe something? Where does the force of such judgments come from? When not thinking about philosophy, I’m probably somewhere getting disappointed by an Arizona sports team.
Amanda Brovold Email
Office: H&SS 7089
B.A. Philosophy and English, Florida International University
In addition to my B.A.s, I have a certificate in Linguistics from Florida International University in Miami. I also spent a number of years studying education and volunteering in public schools. Prior to coming to UCSD in fall of 2005 I worked as a waitress, used book dealer, tutor, and co-directed KAPOW summer camp. I am interested in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive science, and especially how insights from those areas can inform and improve our education theory and policy.
Nanhee Byrnes Email
Office: H&SS 8088
B.A. and M.A., Philosophy, Korea University
I am interested in political philosophy. Previously, I was a graduate student at the ABD stage at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, specializing in philosophy of science. Then, the foundations of statistics and Bayesian methodology obsessed me, and I am still interested in these areas. I also had an academic stint at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where I met my husband. Having been away from academia for a decade to raise my two children, I have come to appreciate the relevance that philosophy can have in our day-to-day lives. I hope to use this insight as guidance in my own philosophical research.
Dan Burnston Email
Office: H&SS 7039
B.A. Philosophy, Rutgers University (2007)
M.A. Philosophy (Neurophilosophy Track), Georgia State (2009)
Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy, UCSD (2012)
My work focuses on issues at the intersection of philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, specifically neuroscience, cognitive science, and biology. In my dissertation, I analyze the notion of ‘modular hierarchy’ in perceptual neuroscience. I attempt to characterize this nearly-ubiquitous framework, and to articulate its commitments, and I raise several criticisms of it based on current findings in systems neuroscience. I then address the upshot of these arguments for understanding perceptual architecture, including such notions as ‘information’ and ‘representation’. I also discuss how different analyses of complex systems, such as those stemming from graph-theoretic investigations into neural connectivity, interact with functional explanation, and explore the philosophical ramifications of these relationships. My main other interest is in scientific cognition—that is, how active research scientists internally and externally represent phenomena, construct mechanistic explanations, and communicate their theories. I am currently an investigator in the WORking Group on Diagrams in Science (WORGODS), whose goal is to understand how external visualizations shape the reasoning and explanatory practices of researchers in Chronobiology.
Eric Campbell Email
Office: H&SS 8056
B.A. Psychology and Life Sciences, UT Austin
I came to UCSD primarily to work on philosophy of mind from a neuroscientific perspective. However, my obsession with all things ethical got the better of me, and now I focus on moral psychology and meta-ethics, with a special focus on the relationships between practical reason, motivation, commitment and self-awareness. I’m very interested in how we can and should think about our values in the light of evolution and the continual advances in psychology and neuroscience. I have a strong and increasing interest in Nietzsche; like him, I take my core philosophical task to be the affirmation of life and the avoidance of practical nihilism. We both think that rejecting intrinsic value and other common trappings of moral discourse, as well as seeking to know ourselves better than we do, are a key part of that task. I'm also increasingly interested in applied ethics, especially bioethics and environmental ethics.
Damon Crockett Email
Office: H&SS 8089
B.A., Philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2007)
M.A., Philosophy, University of California at San Diego (2011)
My dissertation concerns the relation between perceptual content and phenomenology. When I'm not doing philosophy, I write music and worry (unphilosophically) about social standards for reasonable belief.
Cory Davia Email
Office H&SS 8088
B.A. Claremont McKenna
M.A. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
I work on metaethics, action theory, and normative ethics. I'm particularly interested in questions about how to explain the normativity of moral standards and how to understand the relationship between moral standards and other normative standards, like those of rationality. Current projects include papers on the normative powers theory of promising, the epistemic status of moral testimony, and the explanatory goals of constitutivism about action. I also like cooking, homebrewing, and trying to improve my billiards game.
John Dougherty Email
Office: H&SS 8085
B.A. The History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Medicine and Physics, University of Chicago (2010)
My main interests are, in order of increasing specificity, the philosophies of science, physics, quantum gravity, and the structure of spacetime therein. I am also interested in bits of computation, math, and logic. In my off time, I enjoy board games, 1920/30's weird fiction, and mathematical typesetting.
Matt Evpak Email
Office: H&SS 8085
B.A. Philosophy, California State University Sacramento
I received my B.A. in the spring of 2009 and came to UCSD in the fall of the same year. My interests are scattered among metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind.
Jeremy Gomer Email
Office: H&SS 7059
I'm interested in philosophical issues relating to human excellence. As such, I am interested in virtue theory generally, and more particularly, virtue epistemology and virtue ethics. I don't think that philosophy should be restricted to the ivory-tower. Rather, I think that philosophers should use their abilities to contribute something of lasting significance to the world. At the end of the day, not many will remember what we said or what we wrote, but they will remember how we treated them. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but doing philosophy should make us and those around us better human beings. At the very least, that is the goal that I aspire to.
Marta Halina Email
B.A. Philosophy, University of Minnesota Twin Cities (2006)
B.S. Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota Twin Cities (2006)
I study how biologists and psychologists produce scientific knowledge, focusing on the use of comparative investigative methodologies. In biology, I examine how researchers formulate mechanistic accounts of biological systems by investigating model organisms in tandem with target organisms. I am particularly interested in how this activity relates to the roles of homology and novelty in research, the use of organisms as physical models and tools, and the practices of abstraction and extrapolation. In psychology, I look at how experimental studies of human infants and great apes are used to develop models of nonverbal communication. My dissertation (co-chairs: William Bechtel and Nancy Cartwright) examines contemporary debates on human and ape pointing with the general aim of illuminating the relationship between models and evidence in comparative psychology. One of my specific goals is to understand—from the perspective of philosophy of science—the modeling role that folk psychology plays in pointing research. Currently, I am also engaged in several empirical studies on the gestural abilities of apes in association with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Evolutionary Roots of Human Social Interaction research group.
Tanya Hall Email
Office: H&SS 7055
B.A. Philosophy, St. Cloud State University (2007)
M.A. Philosophy, Virginia Tech (2010)
I'm primarily interested in philosophy of science, history of philosophy of science, and early modern (attempts to grapple with science). My non-philosophical interests include drinking lots of coffee, eating lots of cheese, petting kittens, playing outside, Scrabble, and becoming the kind of person who always remembers to send post cards.
Joyce Havstad Email
Office: H&SS 7055
B.A. Philosophy of Life Science, UC San Diego
M.A. Philosophy, San Diego State University
I specialize in the history and philosophy of biology, the philosophy of science, biomedical ethics, environmental ethics, feminism, and non-traditional aesthetics. I am currently working on my dissertation, a project in the history and philosophy of molecular biology.
Gil Hertshten Email
Office: H&SS 7055
B.A. Philosophy Political Science & Economics, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel (2008)
I came to UCSD in the fall of 2009 after spending most of my life in Israel where I received my B.A. from the Hebrew University. At the moment I am mainly interested in normative ethics and philosophy of economics and the relation between them (yes, I believe a relationship exists).
Nat Jacobs Email
Office: H&SS 7054
B.A. Philosophy, UC Berkeley
Since coming to UCSD in 2006, I'm focusing on philosophy of physics and time. I've recently been studying the demarcation of presentism from eternalism. I have interests in logic, philosophy of science, and ancient philosophy. I also have woefully undeveloped interests in causation and skepticism. I suffer from a formalization fetish, but I'm in therapy for that. I relax with Latin translation, puzzle-solving, and noise music.
Titus Jewell Email
Office: H&SS 8029
B.A. Philosophy, New College of Florida
M.A. Philosophy, Ohio University
My interests are in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and cognitive science. I am particularly interested in the question of what colors are and whether or not colors are real features of the external world. My own view is that colors are not real but that we can nonetheless use color experience to infer true information about the world. My favorite philosophers are Bertrand Russell and Paul Churchland.
Cole Macke Email
Office: H&SS 8085
B.A. Philosophy, B.S. Physics and Astronomy, University of Washington
I have really broad philosophical interests including philosophy of science and physics, history of philosophy, ethics, and most other areas as well. Hopefully I'll be able to refine that a little further in the near future. As for non-philosophical interests, I enjoy playing and watching sports (especially football and rugby), hiking, quoting The Simpsons, trying to make time for non-philosophy reading, and growing ridiculous facial hair (see left for evidence), among other things.
Noel Martin
Office H&SS 7054
B.A. Humboldt State University
M.A. Georgia State University
Interests: philosophy of mind, cognitive science, moral philosophy.
Casey McCoy Email
B.S. Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Physics, Oregon State University (2003)
M.A. Liberal Arts, St. John's College (2008)
My interests are primarily in the philosophy of physics, but I have written on topics in metaphysics, artificial intelligence, and on Nietzsche as well. Outside of school I enjoy various mountain sports, particularly alpine climbing and ski mountaineering.
Per Milam Email
Office: H&SS 7093
B.A. Philosophy, Pomona College
My current research focuses on free will and the reactive attitudes. My main philosophical interests are in philosophy of action (free will, moral responsibility, agency, etc), moral psychology, and applied ethics (especially global poverty and animal welfare). I am currently part of a interdisciplinary group of psychologists and philosophers at UCSD studying the nature and effects of forgiveness. I also try to make time to read fiction, watch good and bad movies, and run far.
Michael Mullins Email
Office: H&SS 7043
B.A. Biology & English, Reed College (2005)
The core of my philosophical interests is the intersection of ethics and metaphysics. On the normative side, I currently have significant interests in axiology (particularly regarding welfare), the relationship between reasons and motivation, and moral responsibility. On the metaphysical side, I am primarily interested in identity, action theory and causation. During my past travels I studied the life sciences in Portland, Oregon, worked for a science journal in Washington, D.C., and broadened my philosophical horizons in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Matthew Piper Email
Office H&SS 8037
B.A. Psychology, St. Louis University, St. Louis (1996)
M.A. Interdisciplinary Studies: Philosophy of Complexity, Sonoma State University (2008)
M.A. Philosophy, University of Missouri, St. Louis (2011)
Interests: "the mind-body problem; theories of consciousness; neural and cognitive sciences; normativity (ethical & aesthetic)."
Theron Pummer Email Web
Office: H&SS 7093
B.S., Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience, George Washington University (2006)
M.A., Philosophy, UCSD (2010)
Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy, UCSD (2010)
I am primarily interested in ethics, theoretical and applied. In my dissertation, I examine competing principles governing the distribution of benefits across individuals, and attempt to locate the least implausible principle in this area of ethics.
Nate Rockwood Email
Office: H&SS 8056
B.A. Film Studies, B.A. Philosophy, University of Utah
M.S. Philosophy, University of Utah
My primary interest is in Early Modern metaphysics and epistemology. I wrote my Master's thesis on Locke's theory of personal identity, for example. Other interests are in Ancient Greek (Plato and Aristotle) and philosophy of religion.
Tomoya Sato Email Web
Office: H&SS 8089
My main research interests are in philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of language. At the moment, I am thinking about the bounds of logic and related topics. I completed my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics, and I am currently working toward my Ph.D. of philosophy. Before attending UC San Diego, I studied at Tohoku University in Japan, and at SUNY Stony Brook in New York.
Daniel Schwartz Email
Office: H&SS 8073
B.A. Liberal Arts, St. John's College Annapolis
I am interested in early modern philosophy of science and in the history of philosophy more generally. Topics of special interest include: Baconian induction and its implementation in the scientific commuity, Whewell's revival of the Baconian project and his debate with Mill, Kant's philosophy of science, and Aristotle's philosophy of science. I am working on a dissertation on Bacon's theory of induction as it relates to the certainty of science.
Ben Sheredos Email
Office: H&SS 7039
B.A., Philosophy (Minor in Cognitive Science), Rutgers University (2006)
M.A., Philosophy (Neurophilosophy Program), Georgia State University (2009)
Ph.D. Candidate, UCSD (2013)
I'm interested in the nature of phenomenality and intentionality, which I'm stalking from three different perspectives. First, from a historical perspective, I'm interested in late 19th and early 20th century philosophical psychology, which often put intentionality and phenomenality in close relation. Second, from a philosophy of science perspective, I'm interested in what the mind must be like to make possible our explanations of natural phenomena, especially when this is mediated by conscious perception of concrete representational media (esp. diagrams in the life sciences). Third, from an empirically-informed perspective, I'm interested in the biology of cognition, and in how well we can account for the phenomena of human mindedness in naturalistic terms.
Adam Streed Email
Office: H&SS 7055
B.A. Philosophy and PNP, Washington University
Ph.D. Candidate, UCSD (2008). I am interested in philosophy of mind, logic, and ethics. Currently I am trying to integrate those interests in a dissertation on normativity in logic and reasoning.
Ryan Stringer Email Web
Office H&SS 8037
B.A. University of Kansas, Lawrence
M.A. Michigan State University, East Lansing
Generally speaking, my philosophical interests are in the areas of ethics, metaethics, moral psychology, the philosophy of action, the philosophy of religion, and metaphysics. In addition to my philosophical interests, I have non-philosophical interests in (1) petting, owning, and helping cats, (2) eating good food (especially Indian, Ethiopian, and Thai food), (3) trying to understand and write poetry, (4) listening to good music (e.g., the band Tool, which is, objectively speaking, the best band in the history of the universe), and (5) watching good TV shows (e.g., Dexter) and good movies (e.g., Fight Club).
Chris Suhler Email Web
Office: H&SS 8029
B.A. Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Arizona (2007)
Most of my philosophical interests fall within the scope of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Moral Psychology, and Philosophy of Psychology. My general philosophical approach can be (roughly) summarized as examining how findings and methods from the cognitive sciences (especially psychology and neuroscience) can inform problems traditionally considered the exclusive domain of philosophy. Although I'm interested in any philosophical topic that's amenable to this sort of approach, at present my focus is on morality, the implications of psychological findings for control and moral responsibility, and the dynamics of philosophical intuitions. I'm also interested in broader issues in cognitive science, including the role of emotions and automatic processes in cognition (especially social cognition), cognitive control, and brain-level perspectives on decision-making.
Danny Weltman Email Web
Office: H&SS 8073
B.A. Philosophy and Political Science, Washington University
I'm interested in social and political philosophy, particularly questions of borders, authority, and territory, and in ethics, particularly anti-realistic metaethics and in various applied ethics issues. Aside from philosophy, I enjoy cooking, watching movies, and animals, especially cats.
Jason Winning Email
Office: H&SS 8037
B.S. Computer Science (Minor in Philosophy), Northern Illinois University (2003)
M.A. Philosophy, Northern Illinois University (2011)
Before philosophy grad school I spent four years as a software developer creating medical record software in Madison, WI. My interests are mostly centered around philosophy of mind, and include questions that also fall under the headings of philosophy of science (especially of cognitive science and neuroscience, but of science in general as well), computation/information, metaphysics, and moral psychology. Aside from philosophy, I'm also big into audio production.
Andrew Wong Email
Office: H&SS 8073
A.B., Philosophy, Washington University in St. Louis (2009)
I am primarily interested in epistemological skepticism, the philosophy of mind and consciousness, and metaethics.
Peter Yong Email
Office: H&SS 7059
B.A. Philosophy, Biola University
M.A. Theology, Fuller Seminary; M.A. Philosophy, CSU Los Angeles
My interests are diffuse. I've been focusing on philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and German idealism. At Biola University I focused mainly on metaphysics and epistemology. I was also part of their great books program (the Torrey Honors Institute). At Fuller Seminary I worked primarily on postmodern religious epistemology, ethics, and theology and science. At CSU Los Angeles I wrote my thesis on phenomenal accounts of mental representation. Besides studying philosophy I like to listen to opera, look at art, go to the theater, read, and write. I am also absolutely enthralled by Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu.
