CRUZ DAVIS
Much of my research focuses on issues at the intersection of naturalist philosophy of science and analytic epistemology and metaphysics. Guiding much of my research is an interest in our own epistemic status as finite limited reasoners and the idea that this can result in big epistemic payoffs with respect to realism about science, understanding our epistemic access to the deep features of reality, and, significantly, how we should engage in philosophy generally. This played out in my dissertation in a number of ways. Specifically, investigating these interests led me to a picture of how the epistemology of science and methodology of metaphysics should be done that is deeply externalist and realist in nature. We access the world through inferential methods which are essentially biased. The only way to make sense of how such methods could work is if the world “rose to the occasion” and appropriately matched our biases to make knowledge of it possible in the first place. In my dissertation, several lessons were drawn out from this and used to develop a naturalist program for doing metaphysics. My current research explores the ways in which the project developed in my dissertation extends to other issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science.
On an archeological dig with Sadie-Bug.