About: 

I'm a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Knowledge in Crisis project at the Department of Philosophy, Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. My work explores how our social nature shapes how we think and act. I focus on our capacity for culture: the ability to acquire and transmit knowledge, skills, and values through imitation, teaching, and tradition. I study how this distinctive capacity bears on our cognition, motivation, and social interaction. My broader research interests include epistemology, rationality, and Latin American philosophy.

Before joining CEU in Vienna, I earned my PhD in Philosophy from Princeton University.

Published Papers:

• Competent Rule-following. Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming. [link]

• No Guarantee: Coherence, Rationality, and Fragmentation. Thought. forthcoming. [link] [blog post for NWP Substack]

• Taught Rules: Instruction and the Evolution of Norms. Philosophical Studies. 2024. [link]

• Coherence as Joint Satisfiability (w/ Sam Fullhart). Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 2024. [link]

Dissertation:

In my dissertation, "The Rules We Live By: Essays on Social Norms," I solve various puzzles arising from the idea that social norms are rational equilibria, that is, rules such that following them is rational for each just in case they are followed by all. I argue that norm adherence is rational because norms are tied to cultural practices, i.e., socially learned ways of acting that mediate our access to social goods like reputation, esteem, and status. My advisor was Philip Pettit. [link]

 In Progress (email me for drafts):

• A paper on pointless social norms

• A paper on the function of blame

• A paper on knowledge-how (w/ Matt Dougherty)

• A paper on Simon Rodríguez's philosophy of education (w/ Sergio Gallegos Ordorica)