I’m interested in how broadly normative considerations — views about what’s normal, good, or exemplary — can feed into our thinking about what minds are like, and how we should describe and inquire about them. Most of my work takes up with these issues in the context of foundational questions in philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychiatry, although this often leads me into the broader territories of applied ethics and epistemology.
I also maintain an active interest in historical treatments of the ethics and metaphysics of mind, and “the life of the mind” more generally. I’m particularly influenced by Kant, Nietzsche, Murdoch, and the tradition of Ordinary Language Philosophy (especially Wittgenstein, Ryle, and Strawson), and often draw upon these resources in my first-order work. I tend to be concerned with how these philosophers have thought about how to virtuously think, and so with their contributions to our broader understanding of the nature of rationality and inquiry.
Before coming to Yale, I received a B.A. in Philosophy from Barnard College, Columbia University, and an M.A. in Philosophy and Cognitive Science from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. When I’m not doing philosophy, I enjoy making sound art, writing literary non-fiction, and trying to improve my German and Yiddish.