I am a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. Before coming to St Andrews, I was an Isaac Newton Trust Academic Career Development Fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow and Director of Studies at Magdalene College, Cambridge. 

 

My main research interests are in the philosophy and metaphysics of mind, philosophy of science, and the philosophy of psychiatry. The overarching goal of my current research is to understand and defend the explanatory significance of a category of conscious mental phenomena called ''global states of consciousness'' - which includes states like dreaming, wakefulness and psychedelic states - for ongoing research in clinical psychiatry. As part of this, I am developing a novel testable model of depression, according to which Major Depressive Disorder involves a change to a subject's global state of consciousness, akin to a dream or psychedelic state. I am also interested in what we can learn about the mind and mental faculties via an understanding of these as natural kinds, and how such a 'natural kind approach' to the mind relates to the philosophical project(s) explored and articulated in the works of Nagel, Sellars, Putnam, McDowell, and Kant.

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Please feel free to get in touch: cmkw1@st-andrews.ac.uk. 

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