My past and emerging work falls into three areas: (1) the history of early modern philosophy, (2) contemporary epistemology, and (3) the philosophy of creativity.
Much of my research in the first two areas is focused on the phenomenon of clarity, or clear perception. This work proceeds along two parallel tracks.
(1) The first track is historical, as I expose and explicate the role that clarity plays for Descartes and other figures going back to the Stoics. This project culminates in a book, CLARITY FIRST: RE-ENVISIONING DESCARTES'S EPISTEMOLOGY (under contract with Oxford University Press). I argue that clarity is the central notion in Descartes’s epistemology and indeed in his philosophy as a whole. On my reading, every epistemic notion Descartes posits is either defined or explained in terms of clarity. Thus I attempt to systematically reinterpret his epistemology by unpacking his views on clarity: what clarity is, what clarity does, and how we make our ideas clear.
(2) The notion of "clear (and distinct) perception" has fallen out of favour in modern philosophy. But the second track of my clarity project, which I'm now beginning to develop, I argue that we need to bring clarity back. I think the right conception of clarity sheds light on a wide range of philosophical concerns, including cognitive phenomenology, perception and perceptual bias, reasons for belief (and reasons for doubt), introspection (and its limits), self-knowledge, intuition, inference, and even a certain kind of freedom, because, in short, clarity is liberating.
(3) In my third area of research, on creativity, I'm interested in questions like these: What is creativity? Can it be explained? Does being creative involve agency, or even freedom? I am co-editor of THE PHILOSOPHY OF CREATIVITY: NEW ESSAYS (Oxford University Press, 2014).
After completing my PhD at Yale, I was a Bersoff Fellow at New York University and then Assistant Professor at Barnard College of Columbia University.
I have since returned to my birth country of Canada where I teach at Queen's University.
