My research concerns the structure and intelligibility of reality. It develops through several connected questions:
Objectivity
What does it mean to understand something objectively when the subject matter is mathematical, conscious, practical, or normative rather than merely physical?
Unity and difference
How can mathematics, physical nature, mind, reason, value, and agency belong to one reality without being reduced to one another?
Knowledge and necessity
How do finite thinkers acquire knowledge of mathematical and modal truths, and what makes such knowledge answerable to its subject matter?
Mind and nature
How can conscious experience be part of the natural world while retaining its first-personal character?
Value and agency
How can reasons, normative truths, and genuine self-government be real in a world that is also physically ordered?
These questions can be investigated separately, but they are parts of a single philosophical inquiry: how does reality hang together?
Jack Eng | Philosophy 