Research
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Causation: My primary interest is the study of axioms (in particular, the Causal Markov Condition) that make causal inference from statistics possible. My goal is to promote a deeper understanding of the axioms and the entire causal inference process--an understanding that will, I hope, inform practice.
Induction: I am interested in inductive inference. My interest is both historical and philosophical, spanning from Aristotelian epagoge to the formation of scientific theories to machine learning algorithms.
Arisotelian Science and Logic: Today's philosophy of science has much to glean from Aristotle's phusike episteme. In addition, a content-specific understanding of Aristotle's logic is relevant to science. His syllogistic formalizes the logical relations between propositions on the basis of term relations.
Historical/Philosophical Accounts of the Development of Scientific Theory: I am interested in the problems and puzzles that drive scientific research. I am skeptical of philosophical accounts and historical methods that are centered around "climactic theories". I believe that if a philosopher or historian views everything as leading up to such a climactic theory, his work will not result in an accurate picture of events and participants that are not intentionally directed toward such a goal. I am particularly interested in John Dalton's development of the chemical atomic theory as a case study.