I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia's Corcoran Department of Philosophy , where I work in the philosophy of cognitive science. In 2024, I will be pursing an NEH fellowship titled, “The Spontaneity Deficit: Good Minds in the Age of Distraction.”
Much of my work develops a nascent field of study: the philosophy of mind-wandering. Mind-wandering occupies up to half of our waking thoughts and has emerged as a leading topic in cognitive science. Yet this flurry of progress was not tethered to philosophical foundations. My work fills that gap, providing theoretical, empirical, and normative foundations for the study of mind-wandering, attention, and distraction.
I therefore propose a new theory of mind-wandering as unguided attention . I then examine more general philosophical topics – including mental action, attention, and introspection – through the lens of mind-wandering.