Philosophy
Research Postgraduate students
Thomas Brouwer
PhD student
Current research
I am interested in the metaphysical import of theoretical ideology: the sorts of conclusions that we are, or are not, allowed to draw about the nature of reality from the fact that certain terms crop up in our best theories. In particular, my research concerns the status of our logical vocabulary. We cannot, it seems, do without logical terms in our theorising: does that mean that these terms get at some feature of reality? Do they carve, in Plato's phrase, at some joints? In my thesis, I defend the view that our use of logical vocabulary does not bring with it any distinctively metaphysical commitments.
Research interests
Metaphysics, in particular metametaphysics; philosophy of logic; metasemantics; history of philosophy.
Supervisors
Dr Robert Williams, Dr Jason Turner, Professor Robin Le Poidevin