Research

Expertise is philosophically interesting for many reasons: as an analogue for virtue development, as a selective pressure for the evolution of the human mind, and for some epistemologists a distinctive type of knowledge. But expertise is not one thing. Which domains of expertise should philosophers focus on for case studies?

* Gaining expertise in three dimensions (under review): Applied psychologists have accumulated rich data on how expertise is acquired in music, sports, medicine, and beyond, which can help us sort the different kinds of expertise by how they are acquired. I distinguish between three dimensions of excellence—virtuosity, versatility, and vigor—based on how the excellence is acquired. My account expands the prominent deliberate-practice theory of expertise acquisition and subsumes it as a special case.

* Permanent scaffolding of social expertise (with Anya Plutynski; Acta Biotheoretica, 2026): Of the three dimensions, versatility, or improvisational expertise, matters most for philosophical purposes, yet it remains the most elusive. In this paper, we study two of the best-studied social, improvisational domains, jazz improvisation and scientific research, and argue that social structure functions in these domains in contrast to our ordinary conception of social scaffolding as a temporary structure: the scaffolds that bring a learner to maturity remain needed to sustain and develop the expertise. Read the paper.

* Who bears the skill? (in progress): One question that interests both software engineers and philosophers of technology is how machine expertise should be classified, and how it contrasts with distinctively human expertise. One obstacle to studying this question rigorously is that it is unclear what bears the skill: in agentic AI use, a skilled performance is produced by a model, a harness, accumulated memory, and a person together. I propose desiderata for the individuality of a skill bearer, which point to the person extended by AI infrastructure, rather than the model, as the suitable unit of analysis.

Can natural sciences and social sciences share the same method? Philosophers of biology are interested in understanding whether and how evolutionary models can be applied to account for the culture of human foragers, including their hunting and crafting expertise. There are three stances. Radical supporters of biologizing culture, such as evolutionary psychologists, explain culture by biological traits such as intelligence. Moderate supporters, such as cultural evolutionists, argue that culture forms its autonomous lineages, but still insist on using evolutionary models to account for cultural change. Many philosophers of biology criticize the radical approach but welcome the moderate approach. By criticizing the moderate approach, I side with most practicing social scientists in denying the prospect of biologizing culture.

* Which cultural complexity needs cumulative explanation? (Biology & Philosophy, 2026): Before asking whether evolutionary models can explain culture, we need to know what they are meant to explain. Cultural evolutionists reserve their models for “complex” skills that no one could invent alone, but it is unclear what makes a skill “complex.” I argue that the relevant complexity lies in a skill’s development, which identifies the intended explanatory targets of cultural evolutionary models as expertise. Read the paper.

* Nominal inheritance relation in evolution by natural selection (draft): It is commonly believed that evolution by natural selection requires inheritance relations among individuals, exemplified by a typical family tree. What counts as an inheritance relation remains unclear. I argue against a reproduction-based conception of the inheritance relation, and instead argue for a more nominal conception of inheritance relation that subsumes reproductive relations as a special case. I distinguish the issue of identifying lineages for selection from another issue that is often conflated with it—the identification of the units that constitute memory of evolution.

* The misuse of cultural evolutionary models (draft): I argue that cultural evolutionary models are unsuitable for explaining change in hunting and crafting expertise. As improvisational expertise, the learning of hunting and crafting depends on multiple social sources, thus precluding clear inheritance relations even under the nomical conception. This paper finalizes my case against the biologizing of social sciences.

Biologically and archeologically informed philosophers of mind believe expertise is a key part in explaining the origin of the human mind. Complex hunting and crafting skills create selection pressures for better mental capacities to socialize, to imitate, and to conform to social norms.

* Can we test if culture evolves faster than biology? (under review): Cultural evolutionists say social learning is more advantageous because it speeds up skill evolution in comparison to biological evolution in a fast-changing environment. I argue that this claim of relative speed advantage of cultural evolution is untestable because it relies on claims regarding imaginary populations that biologically inherited complex skills. This untestability indicates a new shortcoming of the adaptationist strategy of looking for “fit” in accounting for human psychological capacities.

* Skill and the origin of normative psychology (draft): Some believe that normative cognition functions to motivate the improvement of crafting expertise. However, excellence in crafting is improvisational rather than virtuosic. I argue that during the development of improvisational expertise, norms operate as scaffolds or Wittgensteinian ladders, structures that enable learners to construct the basic form of skilled behaviour, but which can be discarded for more flexible cognitive control once expertise is achieved.

* Two planned papers: Expertise acquisition requires not only capacities for social learning and norms, but also the capacities to read others’ mind and to use words. I will investigate the origin of these capacities from the perspective of expertise acquisition. This strand of research will help construct a better story on the origin of our mind and help provide practical heuristics for developing epistemic and moral skills.