Info
I am a fellow with the Swiss National Science Foundation project, "Being without Foundations," based in Lucerne and Glasgow. I specialize in metaphysics, along with the history of philosophy (particularly early modern rationalism and Kant). From 2017-2019, I was a Banting Research Fellow at the University of Toronto, working on a project concerning principles of the individuation of objects. In 2017, I completed a PhD in Philosophy at the Humboldt University, Berlin. My dissertation, 'Ontological Nihilism and Existential Commitment,' developed and argued for a non-individual based metaphysics. In 2012, I completed a PhD dissertation in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University on the Theory of Intensive Magnitudes in Leibniz and Kant. You can find my cv here. For drafts of unpublished work, send me an e-mail.
Research
I am currently working on several projects concerning principles of individuation and the logic of identity:
- My Banting postdoctoral project, "The Principle of Individuation in Leibniz, Kant, and Contemporary Philosophy" investigates one of the most fundamental questions in metaphysics: in virtue of what is something an individual object? The project undertakes a close study of the principle of individuation in Leibniz's and Kant's work and seeks to extract lessons from their debate for contemporary metaphysical inquiry.
- Together with Beau Madison Mount , I am working on a project exploring metaphysical systems that deny Leibniz's Law.
- My dissertation, "Ontological Nihilism and Existential Commitment," undertakes a systematic investigation of ontological nihilism, the view that it is not the case that individuals are part of the basic fabric of the world. It develops a form of feature-placing metaphysics, provides an account of the language suitable for this metaphysics, and argues that this view is well-motivated. For more information, see my dissertation abstract.
- My paper, "A Language for Ontological Nihilism," recently appeared in Ergo. In it, I defend predicate-functorese nihilism against the charge that it inherits the commitments of the corresponding theory in standard predicate logic.
- I'm also interested in issues concerning the fineness of grain of reality. For a draft of some work-in-progress on this, see here.
- In addition, I have published a critical response, 'Versteckte Zahlen,' to Katharina Felka's Talking about Numbers: Easy Arguments for Mathematical Realism in the Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (2016) (German)
- Tobias Rosefeldt and I have published two articles on Markus Gabriel's 'new realism' as part of a series concerned with critical engagement with the work of contemporary philosophers in the Philosophisches Jahrbuch (2015 and 2016).
Teaching
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