I completed a BBA with a specialisation in economics at York University (2014) in Canada and Nanyang Technological University (on exchange) in Singapore. I worked briefly in foreign exchange before an interest in persistent moral disagreements brought me back to academia. I got an MA in philosophy at York University (2016) and a PhD in philosophy at the University of Arizona (2023) in the USA.
At first, I was interested in contributing to naturalistic accounts of normativity, which seek a basis for normativity in the physical world described by the sciences. However, I was soon disappointed that these approaches weren’t seriously engaged with scientific practice. Seeking to rectify this in my own work, I sought two doctoral minors in neuroscience and cognitive science. I was immediately impressed by the many deep roles that normative standards play in these fields, particularly in the form of tasks.
After this realisation, I changed my approach. I now seek to show that normative standards (especially tasks) are indispensable to neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning for a variety of reasons. Eventually, I hope to show that inference the best explanation supports a realist (and possibly even objectivist) attitude towards these norms. In other words, I hope to show that the world has rich normative structure that makes possible (and successful) various strategies in science.
Through this work, I hope to build a bridge from philosophy of science to metanormative theory.