Faculty
Department Chair: Sara Bernstein
Graduate Program Director: Janette Dinishak
Undergraduate Program Director: Jon Ellis
Placement Officer: Rachel Achs
Colloquium Coordinator: Carolina Flores
Personnel Director: Nico Orlandi
Climate Committee: Hande Tuna, Lauren Lyons
- Title
- Associate Professor
- Associate Director, Center for Public Philosophy
- Division Humanities Division
- Department
- Philosophy Department
- Affiliations Legal Studies, Stevenson College
- Phone 831-459-5045
- Office Location
- Cowell College Faculty Office Addition, 105A
- Cowell Faculty Annex Room 105
- Mail Stop Cowell Academic Services
- Faculty Areas of Expertise Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Autism
- Courses PHIL 11: Intro to Philosophy, PHIL 22: Intro to Ethical Theory, PHIL 80S: The Nature of Science, PHIL 124: Other Minds, PHIL 140: History of Ethics, PHIL 233: Aspect-Perception, PHIL 190: Philosophy and Psychiatry, PHIL 190: Wittgenstein, PHIL 203: Autism, PHIL 135: Philosophy of Psychology
Research Interests
Philosophy and history of psychology and psychiatry (especially autism), Wittgenstein, philosophy of mind, disability, neurodiversity, and ethical theory, Gestalt psychology
Biography, Education and Training
PhD, Philosophy, University of Toronto
BA, Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles
Selected Publications
2025. A Living Experiment in Concept Formation: Hacking on the Creation of a Language for Autistic Experience. The Monist. link
2024. Reflections on Genuine Empathy: A Reply to van Grunsven and Roeser's 'AAC Technology, Autism, and the Empathic Turn'. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. link
2024. Can autie-biographies influence non-autistic readers' views of autism and autistic people? Neurodiversity. link
2022. Köhler, Wittgenstein, and the Live Bonds of Dynamical Reality. Philosophia Scientiae. link
2022. Integrating Autistic Perspectives into Autism Science: a role for autistic autobiographies (with Nameera Akhtar). Autism. link
2022. Embracing the In-Betweenness of Aspect-Perception's Evaluative and Normative Dimensions. Nordic Wittgenstein Review. link
2022. On Developing an Ear (blog post; adapted for voice and read by Nameera Akhtar). oxford public philosophy. link
2022. Still infantilizing autism? An update and extension of Stevenson et al. (2011) (with Nameera Akhtar and Jennifer L. Frymiare). Autism in Adulthood. link
2021. Autistic autobiography and hermeneutical injustice. Metaphilosophy. link
2020. Experiencing social connection: a qualitative study of mothers of nonspeaking autistic children (with Vikram Jaswal, Christine Stephan, and Nameera Akhtar). PLOS One. link
2019. The value of giving autistic testimony a substantial role in the science of autism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. link
2019. Autism, Aspect-Perception, and Neurodiversity. Philosophical Psychology. link
2016. The Deficit View and Its Critics. Disability Studies Quarterly 36 (4). http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5236/4475
2016. On social feedback loops and cascading effects in autism: A commentary on Warlaumont et al. (2014). (with Nameera Akhtar, Vikram Jaswal, and Christine Stephan). Psychological Science 27 (11): 1528-1530. link
2016. Philosophy of Psychology. (with Nico Orlandi). In McIntyre, L. and Rosenberg, A. (Eds.). Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science. Routledge, pp. 408-420
2016. Empathy, Like-mindedness, and Autism. In Risjord, M. (Ed.). Normativity and Naturalism in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Routledge, pp. 113-134. link
2014. “Blind” to the Obvious: Wittgenstein and Köhler on the obvious and the hidden History of the Human Sciences 27 (4): 59-76. link
2013. Wittgenstein on the Place of the Concept ‘Noticing an Aspect’. In Philosophical Investigations 36(4): 320-339. doi for full text
2013. A critical examination of mindblindness as a metaphor for autism. In Child Development Perspectives 7(2): 110-114. (with Nameera Akhtar). doi for full text
Selected Performances
"Borders" (February 2020), part of Futurefarmers; Fog Inquiry, Wandering Seminar series hosted by UCSC's Institute of the Arts and Sciences link to logbook
