About Me
I am currently a professor of philosophy at Stockholm University and a researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies. I am also a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, where I am active in the London AI and Humanity Project; an affiliated researcher at the Saul Kripke Center, at the City University of New York Graduate Center; and an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Cultural Evolution at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University.
I did my BA at York University (Toronto), and began working on an MA and PhD at the University of Toronto, with Ian Hacking. Three years in, I transferred to the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge, where I was supervised by Peter Lipton and Martin Kusch. I received my PhD from Cambridge in 2002, after which I held a postdoctoral fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 2005, I moved to my first permanent job at St Hilda's College, the University of Oxford, and in 2013, I moved to Sweden to take up a Pro Futura Scientia Fellowship from the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies, and a Professorship at Stockholm University. In 2024, I joined the Institute for Futures Studies, which is where I now spend most of my time.
I have a wide range of interests in philosophy, including the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, philosophy of language and logic, philosophy of artificial intelligence, epistemology, metaphysics, and meta-ethics. My first love in philosophy was feminist epistemology and philosophy of science, which I studied with the Lorraine Code at York University. Though most of my subsequent research has strayed from these topics, a commitment to feminism and social justice has influenced my approach to research, teaching, and service.
I did my BA at York University (Toronto), and began working on an MA and PhD at the University of Toronto, with Ian Hacking. Three years in, I transferred to the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge, where I was supervised by Peter Lipton and Martin Kusch. I received my PhD from Cambridge in 2002, after which I held a postdoctoral fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 2005, I moved to my first permanent job at St Hilda's College, the University of Oxford, and in 2013, I moved to Sweden to take up a Pro Futura Scientia Fellowship from the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies, and a Professorship at Stockholm University. In 2024, I joined the Institute for Futures Studies, which is where I now spend most of my time.
I have a wide range of interests in philosophy, including the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, philosophy of language and logic, philosophy of artificial intelligence, epistemology, metaphysics, and meta-ethics. My first love in philosophy was feminist epistemology and philosophy of science, which I studied with the Lorraine Code at York University. Though most of my subsequent research has strayed from these topics, a commitment to feminism and social justice has influenced my approach to research, teaching, and service.
Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
One of my main research interests these days lies in the philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. It seems to me that many of the questions I have been working on in the philosophy of mind, language, and cognitive science, have acquired a new significance, in light of recent advances in AI. I have been working closely with the London AI and Humanity Project, as well as the AI and Humanity Lab at Hong Kong University on projects that are not only inter-disciplinary, but engage with members of industry and the wider public. A particularly exciting project is the public-facing Philosophical Glossary of AI, for which I am both an associate editor, and author of a number of entries. I also have several more academic works in progress on understanding and reference in Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT), and the emergence of artificial general intelligence.
Philosophy of Mind, Language, and Logic
In both my doctoral dissertation and my first book, Oughts and Thoughts, I discussed Kripke's (1982) argument for meaning skepticism in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. A central focus of my discussion is Kripke's suggestion that meaning and content are normative, which appears to play a decisive role in Kripke's argument. I argued that Kripke's skeptical conclusion goes through only on the assumption that meaning is robustly prescriptive, in the sense that it has objective normative authority that holds independently of any agent's subjective mental states. And I argued that meaning and content are not robustly prescriptive, thereby establishing the negative claim that the skeptical conclusion could be blocked.
In 2010, while I was at Oxford, David Chalmers came to give the John Locke Lectures, and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to meet him frequently to talk philosophy. These discussions had a lasting influence on my work, since it was in light of them that I came to realize that the best solution to the puzzle Kripke found in Wittgenstein might well a form of Naturalistic Dualism applied to intentionality, along the lines of the view Chalmers defends in relation to consciousness. A few years later, I began work on a monograph (which is finally nearing completion) entitled Aboutness First: A Defence of the Fundamentality of Intentionality, in which I argue that semantic facts are neither fully grounded in nor supervenient on the physical, but are sui generis and connected to the physical by way of contingent psycho-physical laws.
In 2010, while I was at Oxford, David Chalmers came to give the John Locke Lectures, and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to meet him frequently to talk philosophy. These discussions had a lasting influence on my work, since it was in light of them that I came to realize that the best solution to the puzzle Kripke found in Wittgenstein might well a form of Naturalistic Dualism applied to intentionality, along the lines of the view Chalmers defends in relation to consciousness. A few years later, I began work on a monograph (which is finally nearing completion) entitled Aboutness First: A Defence of the Fundamentality of Intentionality, in which I argue that semantic facts are neither fully grounded in nor supervenient on the physical, but are sui generis and connected to the physical by way of contingent psycho-physical laws.
I had another bout of good fortune in 2019, when I was due to attend a conference in Milan on Rules, Norms, and Reasons: Kripkenstein's Paradox, and no more than a month before the conference, the organizers announced that Romina Birman and Saul Kripke would be joining us. I could hardly believe my luck! Through the pandemic years that followed, I attended Kripke's seminars on zoom at the CUNY Graduate Center, and when the restrictions were lifted, had the great privilege to get to know Kripke, and spend time visiting the Saul Kripke Center. (Here I am at one of the seminars, with Hannah Ginsborg, John P. Burgess, Saul Kripke and Romina Birman. Thanks to the Saul Kripke Center for the photo).
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One can hardly work on rule-following in mind and language without thinking about rules and normativity in logic and reasoning. I have written a number of papers on these topics, including one in which I develop an objection to logical conventionalism based on Kripke's so-called 'adoption problem,' and another in which Corine Besson and I consider whether deductive reasoning consists in rule-following. (Surprise! It doesn't!)
Epistemic Norms and Normativity
Another strand of research that developed out of my doctoral studies concerned epistemic normativity. Much of my early work on this topic concerned the question whether belief is constituted or governed by a norm of truth. During the global turmoil of the past few years, I became interested in epistemology as it relates to social issues, such as polarization in political and factual belief, as well as 'post-truth' culture and epistemic relativism. I have a number of works in progress on these themes.
Meta-Ethics
Much of my work in the philosophy of language, mind, and logic is closely connected to meta-ethics, particularly concerning the nature of normativity and its place in the natural world. In Moral Supervenience, I argue that moral properties and facts do not strongly supervene on the natural properties and facts. I am also currently working on several papers that explore subjective and objective normativity, and how the moral and the intentional are entangled.