BA

As an undergraduate, I studied mostly with Catherine Cater at North Dakota State University. I did my senior thesis under her on Plato's views of same-sex relationships. Aside from Plato, I also read a lot of David Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Whenever I could, I explored ways of writing about philosophy through fiction.

MA

At Arizona State University, I narrowed in on philosophy of language after taking a seminar on J.L. Austin from Peter French. He became my adviser, and I wrote my MA thesis on speech act theory, drawing mostly on John Searle's work to engage with some more recent work on asserting and promising by Gary Watson. After my MA, I stayed at ASU for another year, shifting gears to focus on the intersection of philosophy of language and metaphysics. I worked mostly with Greg Fitch on the ontology of fictional characters and on the meaning of the word "exists". 

PhD

After transferring to the University of Minnesota, I continued research at the intersection of philosophy of language and metaphysics. I worked mostly with Peter Hanks on this, writing my dissertation on the meaning of the existential quantifier expressions 'there is' and 'there exists'. Along the way, I spent a lot of time studying logic, philosophy of logic, and philosophy of math with Bill Hanson, Roy Cook, Wayne Richter, and Geoffrey Hellman. I also did some pedagogy research as an RA on a project about the teaching of philosophical writing.

Dissertation Abstract

"Committing Ourselves to Nothing: An anti-orthodox view of existential quantifier expressions"
There is a significant difference between the words `is' and `exists' that has either been overlooked or under-appreciated by many philosophers. This difference comes in sentences that express existential quantification using `is', `exists', or their cognates, such as, “There are cookies in the jar," or, “There exists a strange species of fish that nobody has studied yet." Phrases such as `there are' and `there exists' are existential quantifier expressions, since they're used to express existential quantification. The orthodox view of these expressions is that they are, in the words of David K. Lewis, “entirely synonymous and interchangeable". This dissertation presents and argues for an anti-orthodox view of meaning of `there is' and `there exists'. The root of the difference in meaning between the two expressions is that `there is' turns out to be context-sensitive, on the model of demonstratives like `this' or `that', while `there exists' is invariant in its meaning. These views are motivated through the introduction of a notion called `ontological robustness', which helps us evaluate the level of ontological commitment in our assertions. The anti-orthodox view is defended over orthodoxy through holistic arguments that compare the virtues of each theory, including such metrics as how they fare in accounting for our stubborn desire to talk about and quantify over nonexistent objects.

Post-PhD

Since finishing graduate school, I've been engaged in several projects that are still ongoing. I'm continuing with my research on the meaning of existential quantifier expressions, expanding my research on pedagogy, and writing a textbook for introductory Logic.