About Me

I am a philosopher at the University of Florida, where I have taught since 1997. You can find my most recent curriculum vitae here. And if you care to know my considered positions on several philosophical issues, you can see my responses to the PhilPapers opinion survey.

While I am not a native Floridian, my family moved to Florida when I was relatively young, so Florida feels like home. I did my BA at New College of Florida and my PhD at Rutgers University, and I was glad to be able to come back here for the long term. Florida may have quite the reputation for being an odd state, but perhaps that is only appropriate for a philosopher — to live in an odd state.

Areas of Research

Metaphysics, philosophy of mind, physicalism, consciousness, a priori knowledge

For more, see the page on Research and/or my profile page on PhilPeople, which includes links to various publications.

Areas of Teaching Interest

Metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of rmind, philosophy of religion, history of analytic philosophy, meta-ethics

I take teaching very seriously and think of it as the primary way in which my career enables me to do good in the world—by helping students gain key skills in careful, clear thinking about slippery issues. Thinking about philosophical questions requires exercising those skills, but those skills transfer to a wide array of other areas as well. That they really do transfer in this way is confirmed by the data on how well philosophy majors do by various measures, including standardized test scores and salaries; for some of that data, see “What’s the Use of Philosophy?“.

Undergraduate courses I teach regularly include Metaphysics, Theory of Knowledge, Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy of Mind. By way of graduate courses, I have taught Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, Epistemology, Proseminar, and various research seminars, often on topics related to philosophy of mind or the thesis of physicalism. For information on my current or upcoming courses, see the Current Teaching page.

Advising

I am currently the department’s Graduate Coordinator. This means that graduate students in philosophy should seek me out as their first contact for help with choosing classes, making progress through the degree program, and so on.