Philosopher of science researching causal reasoning in the sciences and engineering of safety in sociotechnical systems. Trying to understand how human purposes and activities shape causal knowledge
Adjunct Faculty, Merrimack College
PhD, Philosophy, University of Calgary
BA, Philosophy & Physics, Boston University
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Research
Technological disasters depend on many different causal factors. This includes proximate factors (technical failures, human errors) and systemic factors (culture, hierarchy, communication). My research analyzes and elaborates the reasoning of scientists and engineers who study disasters and the safety of sociotechnical systems. I develop new causal concepts and a pragmatic method of analysis to understand how causal factors differ in terms of their causal nature and their epistemic and practical usefulness. [Click to read more] [cv]
I rarely have a mustache. When I do, this is what it looks like. Dennis, MA
I was born and raised in a typical, medium-sized town in the suburbs of Massachusetts. After 18 years of faux angst and basement bands, I did what all brave New Englanders do to learn about the great wide world: I moved to Boston.
I went to Boston University with a modest goal. I would learn physics to uncover the deepest, most well-hidden truths about the nature of reality. But, I soon discovered that physics training promised disproportionately fewer metaphysical revelations to ever-trickier mathematical problem sets. So, my interests turned towards a different world of ideas.
Excited by the excellent philosophy professors at BU, I became consumed by the history of philosophy. Courses on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz exercised my desire for big theories about the world. Courses on Hume and Kant opened my eyes to vexing questions about knowledge itself and how it does and doesn’t work. And so, I now aspired to load my schedule with as many philosophy courses as it could hold.
During this exploration of several centuries of philosophy, my thoughts always drifted back to questions about science. I became increasingly curious about how scientific inquiry worked, what scientific knowledge really was, and in what sense it is “true.” Then, in a Wittgenstein course taught by Jaakko Hintikka, a seed of an idea was planted that would grow into my philosophical research. There, I began thinking about language, representation, and meaning as it arises from human uses and the activities needed to understand and live in a complex, rich world. I wanted to know how this sort of perspective could help me better understand scientific knowledge.
After a year of missing philosophy while doing difficult (and damp) labor in a small brewery, I formed a slapdash plan to fly to Calgary to study philosophy of language and philosophy of science. By chance, around the same time, Ken Waters was also forming a (much more thoughtful) plan of his own to move to Calgary and take a research chair at the University of Calgary. In my first course with him, I saw clearly where my philosophical interests had been growing and the questions I wanted to answer.
How does scientific investigation work? Not as we hope it might work if we were perfect Cartesian minds, but how it really works within the often messy social, technological, and historical contexts of humans doing science? — What role do human purposes and activities play in shaping scientific reasoning, investigations, and the knowledge that results? — How can philosophers and non-philosophers understand knowledge in a more pragmatic, pluralistic, and humanistic way?
These big questions shape my research of causal knowledge and motivated me to explore areas of science that are often unexplored by philosophers. In Spring, 2021, I defended my dissertation looking to understand causal knowledge about why technological disasters occur and how we can use that knowledge to prevent disasters and their horrific social costs. For now, I am happily teaching the history of philosophy at a College in a medium-sized town in the suburbs of Massachusetts.