I am a philosopher and clinical bioethicist whose research examines consciousness, agency, and autonomy through an empirically informed understanding of the mind.
My research is organized around the idea that understanding how we ought to treat persons requires understanding the cognitive capacities through which people perceive the world, form commitments, deliberate, and govern their behavior. I draw on work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience to address questions at the intersection of philosophy of mind and ethics.
One strand of my research concerns consciousness and perception. I defend a reductive representationalist account of p…
I am a philosopher and clinical bioethicist whose research examines consciousness, agency, and autonomy through an empirically informed understanding of the mind.
My research is organized around the idea that understanding how we ought to treat persons requires understanding the cognitive capacities through which people perceive the world, form commitments, deliberate, and govern their behavior. I draw on work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience to address questions at the intersection of philosophy of mind and ethics.
One strand of my research concerns consciousness and perception. I defend a reductive representationalist account of perceptual experience and investigate the relationship between phenomenal consciousness, perceptual representation, attention, and cognitive access.
A second strand concerns agency, motivation, and autonomy. My current work examines how empirical research on motivation and self-control should inform philosophical accounts of autonomy and their application to medical decision-making. In particular, I am interested in how we should distinguish changes in a person's values from difficulties acting on values and commitments they continue to endorse.
These projects are united by a broader question: What does a psychologically realistic understanding of human cognition tell us about what it means to govern ourselves and to respect the agency of others?
