I work in epistemology. To me, epistemology is the study of the method of philosophical and scientific inquiries. Due to this rather broad conception of epistemology, I have wide research interests, raning from processes of hypothesizing and theorizing to the working of the brain and sensory organs. Currently, I have five active research projects:

1. In collaboration with my advisor Jonathan Livengood, I'm working on a paper on the frog's preying behavior:

-Frogs rely on the bug detector to prey. The bug detector is a modular, neurally hardwired visual system that gets activated whenever there is a small, dark moving object in a frog's visual field. We're interested in the content of the perceptual representation produced by this system and its implications for epistemology. We aim to provide a control theoretic framework for reasons/evidence-responsiveness and in turn knowledge. Hopefully, this framework can shed light on the epistemology of both frogs and humans.

2. I'm working on a paper regarding the role of thought experimentation in inquiry:

-Thought experimentation is a crucial step in inquiry, both scientific and philosophical. However, it occurs to me that most people are confused about the role of thought experimentation in inquiry. Conventionally, it has been argued that thought experimentation is similar to empirical experimentation; its function is to corroborate our theories' predictions. I propose to reverse this picture and argue that thought experiments occur at the beginning of an inquiry, whose function is to pump hypotheses rather than corroborate theories.

3. I'm working on a paper regarding the role of intuition in inquiry:

-I propose a new model of intuition: Intuition is part of the abductive inference. It occurs at the beginning of an inquiry after some observations have been made, and its function is to guide the inquirer in determining which, among multiple candidate hypotheses, should be further explored. This model stands in contrast to the traditional picture of intuition, according to which intuition functions as an evidence source, occurring at the end of an inquiry and (dis)confirming well-established theories. I argue that my model of intuition is explanatorily superior to the conventional picture of intuition.

4. I'm working on a paper regarding the function of the human conceptual apparatus:

-Conceptual engineering is an emerging methodology in philosophy, proposing that many concepts are defective because they malfunction, and philosophers should engage in the business of evaluating and fixing our conceptual repertoire. I argue in this paper that conceptual engineers are not advised to fix defective concepts just on the grounds of malfunctioning. By analogy to the working of the human visual system, I argue that concepts function most effectively exactly in virtue of being defective.

5. I'm working on a paper regarding the potential normative dimension in the scientific method:

-It has been a consensus among philosophers of science (and also many scientists) that scientific inquiries are descriptive, concerning how the world is rather than how it should be. I find this consensus implausible. In this paper, I propose and argue that there is an inherent and ineliminable normative dimension in the scientific method. This dimension is idealization. Via idealization, researchers deliberately misrepresent facts and intentionally include errors in their models. In doing so, they are abstracting away from how the world actually works and concern themselves with how the world should work.

For future research, I hope to work on the nature of knowledge, providing an operationalist model of knowledge that can be put into experiments, both humans and non-human animals.