Research

Research Interests

My research focuses on questions in the metaphysics and philosophy of science. I'm especially interested in a view in the debate about the laws of nature, called "Humeanism about laws". Some questions I'm interested in are: To what extent are Humean accounts of laws flexible enough to accommodate the types of laws we see in scientific practice? Do anti-Humean accounts of laws give a satisfactory explanation of the robust regularity of the world? Do Humean and anti-Humean laws explain their instances?

Publications

• In Defense of Humean Non-Universal Laws (Synthese, 2024) [official version] [unofficial version]

Abstract: In this paper, I raise a novel objection to David Lewis’s Humean account of laws. The objection is that non-universal laws are metaphysically possible, but Lewis’s account cannot accommodate them. I then propose and defend an extension of Lewis’s view that gives us an account of Humean non-universal laws.

Under Review

• A paper about anti-Humean laws explaining regularity

In Progress

• A paper about the inference problem

• A paper about Humeanism and explanation by unification (with Minghui Yang)

• A paper about anti-Humean principles of plenitude