I am an independent philosopher with a background in applied mathematics. My work is primarily in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action.
My research is organized around a broad question: what must reality be like for mathematics, physical nature, conscious experience, rational thought, value, and agency all to be real and intelligible?
Contemporary inquiry often advances by isolating one subject from another. Mathematics, physics, consciousness, knowledge, morality, and agency are usually studied through different methods and different forms of explanation. This division is often necessary. But it leaves a larger philosophical question unanswered: how do these dimensions of reality belong together?
The task, as I understand it, is to recover unity without sacrificing difference. A satisfactory view of reality should neither reduce consciousness, reason, value, and agency to physical description nor separate them from the natural world. It should explain how they can arise within one reality while preserving what is distinctive about each.
This project is influenced by Thomas Nagel’s attempt to widen our conception of reality so that the subjective, rational, and normative are not excluded by an overly narrow conception of objectivity. I pursue that larger concern through work on objectivity, domains of inquiry, mathematical and modal knowledge, consciousness, normativity, and free will.
The papers to be presented on this website develop different parts of this continuing project.
Jack Eng | Philosophy 