Canada Research Chair, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Bertrand Russell Research Centre at McMaster University
I am a philosopher and historian of science with a special interest in psychology. A hallmark of my research has been the analysis of experiment and clinical observation, particularly in the work of William James. His pragmatism was anchored in his rich (and richly neglected) empirical psychology. I am also interested in early analytic figures like Bertrand Russell, whose later naturalism grew out of an engagement with James and other psychologists.
James was gifted at phenomenal description, but he also had a deep background in experimental physiology. My new monograph (Consciousness Is Motor) examines a theory of consciousness he devised to help make sense of a range of vivisection experiments of his day, including hotly debated work that seemed to establish a capacity for purposive behavior in, of all things, beheaded frogs. Based partly on such vivisection evidence, he argued that consciousness is a Darwinian adaptation for behavior regulation, and that it achieves this function by enabling the valuation of objects and of possible courses of action. He also appealed to pathology case studies (such as Landry's anaesthetic patients) to support an ideo-motor model of action initiation and motor control, an approach that has been revived in recent cognitive psychology. James's later, pragmatist account of intentionality--which construes what an idea is about in terms of the goal the idea affords a capacity to achieve--is a philosophical extension of his highly detailed, empirical work on action. Or so I argue.
My current book project concerns James and Russell, who had a complicated intellectual relationship. Philosophers remember Russell's longstanding rejection of pragmatism about truth. But in the decade following his most famous attack, Russell continued engaging James's other work in a myriad of ways, developing a distinctive form of naturalism partly in response. Russell's debts to James concerned issues in psychology, in the metaphysics of mind, and in social and political activism. The latter issue is important--Russell and James were both science-minded social reformers who shared commitments to pacifism and anti-nationalism. My book project brings this shared political background to bear on their more familiar disagreement over truth (the book project has its seeds in a 2020 public essay I published on Russell in Aeon). Relatedly, I am working on a project with Zoë Thomas to transcribe and analyze some works in feminist and internationalist political philosophy by Dora Russell.
I have also written about a range of other figures in the history of empirically-informed philosophy of mind, including Rene Descartes, George Berkeley, David Hume, C. S. Peirce, Ernst Mach, and W. V. Quine. More neglected figures in this vein about whom I’ve written include G. H. Lewes, Thomas Henry Huxley, T. H. Green, Kurd Laßwitz, Francis Galton, Eduard Pflüger, and Hermann von Helmholtz.
Another interest is in the digital humanities. I have established the Digital Philosophy Laboratory at McMaster. Our mission is to cultivate new methods for employing computational techniques like topic modeling and sentiment analysis in the study of philosophy, particularly in the history of philosophy. Our connection with the Russell Archives (housed at McMaster) puts us in a special position to apply these digital methods in the study of early analytic philosophy. Our new, AI-powered search tool is now online for private alpha testing. Check back here for its public, beta release in the winter of 2025.
I am currently a visiting scholar at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands. Recently, I completed a Fulbright year at the University of Sheffield (2016 - 2017), which is where my book on James's account of consciousness was born. In 2019, I came to McMaster from the Philosophy Department at Cal State Long Beach. In 2008-2009 I was a Mellon Fellow in Philosophy at Cornell, and before that I held a postdoc at the University of Toronto. My PhD comes from the Philosophy Department at Indiana University, Bloomington, where I worked with the philosopher of biology Elisabeth Lloyd. Her primary appointment is in Indiana's History and Philosophy of Science Department, from which I also have an MA.
James was gifted at phenomenal description, but he also had a deep background in experimental physiology. My new monograph (Consciousness Is Motor) examines a theory of consciousness he devised to help make sense of a range of vivisection experiments of his day, including hotly debated work that seemed to establish a capacity for purposive behavior in, of all things, beheaded frogs. Based partly on such vivisection evidence, he argued that consciousness is a Darwinian adaptation for behavior regulation, and that it achieves this function by enabling the valuation of objects and of possible courses of action. He also appealed to pathology case studies (such as Landry's anaesthetic patients) to support an ideo-motor model of action initiation and motor control, an approach that has been revived in recent cognitive psychology. James's later, pragmatist account of intentionality--which construes what an idea is about in terms of the goal the idea affords a capacity to achieve--is a philosophical extension of his highly detailed, empirical work on action. Or so I argue.
My current book project concerns James and Russell, who had a complicated intellectual relationship. Philosophers remember Russell's longstanding rejection of pragmatism about truth. But in the decade following his most famous attack, Russell continued engaging James's other work in a myriad of ways, developing a distinctive form of naturalism partly in response. Russell's debts to James concerned issues in psychology, in the metaphysics of mind, and in social and political activism. The latter issue is important--Russell and James were both science-minded social reformers who shared commitments to pacifism and anti-nationalism. My book project brings this shared political background to bear on their more familiar disagreement over truth (the book project has its seeds in a 2020 public essay I published on Russell in Aeon). Relatedly, I am working on a project with Zoë Thomas to transcribe and analyze some works in feminist and internationalist political philosophy by Dora Russell.
I have also written about a range of other figures in the history of empirically-informed philosophy of mind, including Rene Descartes, George Berkeley, David Hume, C. S. Peirce, Ernst Mach, and W. V. Quine. More neglected figures in this vein about whom I’ve written include G. H. Lewes, Thomas Henry Huxley, T. H. Green, Kurd Laßwitz, Francis Galton, Eduard Pflüger, and Hermann von Helmholtz.
Another interest is in the digital humanities. I have established the Digital Philosophy Laboratory at McMaster. Our mission is to cultivate new methods for employing computational techniques like topic modeling and sentiment analysis in the study of philosophy, particularly in the history of philosophy. Our connection with the Russell Archives (housed at McMaster) puts us in a special position to apply these digital methods in the study of early analytic philosophy. Our new, AI-powered search tool is now online for private alpha testing. Check back here for its public, beta release in the winter of 2025.
I am currently a visiting scholar at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands. Recently, I completed a Fulbright year at the University of Sheffield (2016 - 2017), which is where my book on James's account of consciousness was born. In 2019, I came to McMaster from the Philosophy Department at Cal State Long Beach. In 2008-2009 I was a Mellon Fellow in Philosophy at Cornell, and before that I held a postdoc at the University of Toronto. My PhD comes from the Philosophy Department at Indiana University, Bloomington, where I worked with the philosopher of biology Elisabeth Lloyd. Her primary appointment is in Indiana's History and Philosophy of Science Department, from which I also have an MA.
My CV (Oct 2024) is here.
Area of Research Specialization
Classic Pragmatism (esp James)
Philosophy and History of Science (esp Psychology)
Early Analytic Philosophy (esp Russell)
Other Areas of Teaching Competence
Philosophy of Mind / Philosophy of Cognitive Science (Consciousness, Action, Perception)
Philosophy and History of Biology
General Philosophy of Science
Early Modern Philosophy (esp Descartes, Berkeley, Hume)
Here is a complete set of teaching evaluations from a recent introduction to philosophy class I taught (Phil 100).
And here is a complete set of teaching evaluations from a recent graduate seminar in the history of analytic philosophy (Phil 681).
Area of Research Specialization
Classic Pragmatism (esp James)
Philosophy and History of Science (esp Psychology)
Early Analytic Philosophy (esp Russell)
Other Areas of Teaching Competence
Philosophy of Mind / Philosophy of Cognitive Science (Consciousness, Action, Perception)
Philosophy and History of Biology
General Philosophy of Science
Early Modern Philosophy (esp Descartes, Berkeley, Hume)
Here is a complete set of teaching evaluations from a recent introduction to philosophy class I taught (Phil 100).
And here is a complete set of teaching evaluations from a recent graduate seminar in the history of analytic philosophy (Phil 681).
The background picture is a diagram of one of G. H. Lewes's physiological frog experiments, from Problems of Life and Mind, Second Series: The Physical Basis of Mind (London: Trübner & Co., 1877) p. 178.
Click to set custom HTML