The art is by Dr. Renée Bolinger. https://www.reneebolinger.com/portraits.html
I am a philosopher at the University of Iowa. I started in philosophy with Plato’s Republic on a junior-high road trip to Houston. I then took symbolic logic as a college freshman and fell in love with the subject. I committed shortly thereafter to the lifelong study of philosophy.
I specialize in metaphysics, history of analytic philosophy, and philosophy of logic and mathematics. My dissertation, The Search for Logical Forms: In Defense of Logical Atomism, sets up a logic-first, logic-last framework for philosophical research. This framework is inspired by logical atomism, whose paradigmatic form and practice is outlined in Russell’s 1918 lectures. The archetype for logical atomist philosophizing is Principia Mathematica, and, as a logical atomist myself, I philosophize with that example firmly in mind. A longer abstract is included in my CV.
I enjoy live-tweeting philosophy texts. I also love recording great philosophical works as public-domain audio books for LibriVox – I am up to 43 hours and counting.
Education
- PhD in Philosophy, University of Iowa, 2018
- The Search for Logical Forms: In Defense of Logical Atomism, Adviser: Gregory Landini
- M.S. in Mathematics, University of Iowa, 2018
- B.A. in Philosophy with honors, George Washington University, 2013
- B.Sc. in Mathematics, George Washington University, 2013
Areas of Specialization
- Metaphysics
- History of Analytic Philosophy
- Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics
Areas of Competence
- Ancient Philosophy (Greek—Jain)
- Ethics (Elementary Ethics—Ethics and Digital Technology)
- Formal Logic (Mathematical—Modal—Non-Classical)
- Informal Logic (Critical Thinking—Decision Theory)
- Philosophy of Computer Science (Computing: Its Nature and History—Issues in Computer Science)
Blog: A Logician & A Snake
This website also hosts my blog, A Logician & A Snake. Here I archive and share mostly thoughts on the history of analytic philosophy, logic and philosophy of logic, foundations and philosophy of math, and metaphysics and modal logic.
The blog name is an allusion to the story in Bereishis (a.k.a. Genesis 3). I am the logician. The snake stands in for philosophical temptations: temptations to dogmatic answers, to captivating ideas, and to the need for certainty. These are the sort of philosophical temptations discussed at length and in different ways by Russell and Wittgenstein. Professional philosophers like anyone else struggle with these philosophical temptations. I do some struggling in my blog. If you are there reading, then you are along for the ride.
