I’m a philosopher teaching at Northeastern University, Providence College, and Merrimack College. I teach courses on the ethics and epistemology of technology, the history of philosophy, and biomedical ethics. I strive to lead student down that old Socratic path towards falling in love with inquiry, and to undertake that Emersonian imperative of remaking philosophical truths anew for their own lives and time.

In my dissertation research, I developed a pragmatist philosophy of the causal reasoning behind making sociotechnical systems safer. My article in Philosophy of Science about the Bhopal gas tragedy is the molten core of this work [open access]. My presentations at the PSA explained other layers, such as how speed of change and social hierarchy figure into why technologies cause harm [PSA2022 pre-print].

Since then, my research has broadened. Now, I’m working to understand John Stuart Mill’s empiricist epistemology in Logic and Examination, how these texts relate to his social epistemology in On Liberty, and how Mill’s thought may have influenced William James and C.S. Peirce.

I am also working to understand how technology shapes our reasoning and ethical sensibility. Here, I take inspiration from studying the curious writings of early tech critics, such as Lewis Mumford, Neil Postman, Ivan Illich, and Joseph Weizenbaum. Behind this research is a Millian aspiration to know how technology might liberate thought and character, rather than constrain and homogenize.

I grew up in Milford, Massachusetts. I now live in Providence, Rhode Island. Other than philosophy, I love to cook, take photographs, and fret about American politics. Recently, I have begun my ultimate philosophical project with my most important philosophical companion: raising my son, Orson, with my wife Mariesa.