I’m interested in how individual minds are socially situated. We’re not free-floating solitary intellects. As thinking and acting subjects, we are deeply entangled with our social environment. Also, I’m interested in impurity. We’re not moral saints. We’re not perfect epistemic citizens. We often go wrong and fall short of success. What follows from this for how we ought to live and what we ought to know? What does this entail for how we think about the nature of the self? My PhD-thesis investigates such and related questions.
First, I argue that prominent accounts of self-knowledge don’t have the resources to explain both uncertainty about the mind and its resolution. I suggest that we can come to know our minds by interpreting ourselves using socially available frames. In the future, I want to apply this to the topic of masculinity and explore whether norms of masculinity make it harder for men to acquire self-knowledge (‘emotional illiteracy’).​​​
The second area of my thesis is in the epistemology of inquiry. I think insufficient attention has been paid to the fact that inquiries are intentional actions. From this fact, I argue, it follows that it is irrational to inquire when you don’t have reason to believe that you will be successful in your inquiry. If we ignore this norm, we are overthinking.
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One field where this norm comes to fruition is in the study of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Many people think that OCD is irrational, but it turns out to be quite hard to explain what makes it so. I propose that the irrationality of OCD, if there is any at all, is to be found in the inquiries caused by it.
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My research on OCD has been picked up by philosophers, psychiatrists and psychologists and I seek to further expand this interdisciplinary line of research. Generally, I care about an informed attitude towards the concept of rationality in psychopathology.
The amazing © Bill Waterson's Calvin on overthinking.
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I also have a growing interest in social and political philosophy. For instance, I also work on political disagreement. I am interested in how, given the presence of drastically different political standpoints, we can engage in respectful and empathetic disagreement with eachother.
Earlier on, I wanted to become an economist and did some quantitative research (here) on the impact of political protests and whether protective tariffs are really as bad as orthodox economic theory says.