About
About me
I am currently a first year PhD student at Florida State University. Before coming to FSU, I completed Bachelor's and Master's degrees in philosophy at the University of Florida. I have lived in Florida essentially all my life.
One of my main areas of interest is in the philosophy of human evolution — an area that, in my estimation, remains underexplored due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic. Philosophy of biology, psychology/cognitive science, language, and more all come to bear. Specifically, the conceptual biological questions posed by human evolution span from questions about evolutionary inference in the fossil record, to the evolution of psychological traits, all the way to questions about the aptitude of natural selection for giving rise to language (and other alleged distinctively human traits). Some scattered philosophers have started to work on these issues in isolation. It is one of my goals to synthesize this research, expand on it, and put it into conversation with empirical and theoretical developments in biological anthropology.
I have independent interests in these areas as well, beyond the pure biology. In the philosophy of cognitive science I am interested in debates over the innateness of psychological traits, the prospects for faculty psychology, and the modularity (or lack thereof) of cognition. I am especially interested in pursuing these debates in light of the fact that empirical work seems to show we cannot trust introspection to delineate features of our minds in the way philosophers have traditionally thought (see Azzouni (2025) for details).
I also have a broad range of interests in the philosophy of language and, more recently, the philosophy of logic as well. My long time favorite topic is the rule-following (or 'Kripkenstein') paradox — still haven't figured that one out. I am also interested in direct reference, semantic externalism, use theories of meaning, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction. In terms of logic, I have recently taken an interest in defending a form of logical conventionalism, and thinking about what implication(s) — if any — conventionalism has for logical pluralism. Many of these issues I enjoy pursuing from a historical angle when reading early analytic philosophy.
I have also done research in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion as a graduate research assistant, including one co-authored publication on a topic intersecting philosophy of religion and modal metaphysics.
Final fun fact: I host a YouTube channel (cleverly named 'Micah Edvenson') where I interview professional philosophers about their work, as well as upload lecture materials and other things. Some guests include Jody Azzouni, Graham Oppy, Michael Huemer, and more!
When not doing philosophy I enjoy reading and writing horror stories, hiking, exploring new cities, playing basketball, and watching collegiate sports.