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My main research area is philosophy of biology. However, I have done and still interested in doing research in philosophy of science and in philosophy of psychology.
Philosophy of Biology: Recently, there has been considerable amount of interest in the question of whether biology has laws. Some argue that there are none or only one (notably, Smart, Beatty, Rosenberg). Two of my recent papers address these issues. My paper "Biology and A Priori Laws" argue that biology has laws, albeit they are a priori. The main point of the paper is that the requirement that laws be empirical is idle in connection with how laws operate in science. My other paper "There may be strict empirical laws in biology, after all" argue that there is no good theoretical argument for the claim that biology cannot have strict laws. Furhtermore, there are good empirical reasons to think that biology may have strict empirical laws after all. Working on these problems made me realize that these issues are central to very important philosophical problems such as unity of science, scientific methodology, scientific explanation, testing and prediction to the extend that issues about laws involve issues about the differences and similarities between special sciences and physics. My interests in philosophy of biology are not limited to biological laws. I am also interested in the adaptionism debate, human nature from evolutionary point of view, evolutionary ethics and related issues like altruism and the unit of selection problem.
My interests in philosophy of science concern mainly the epistemological issues. One issue that I am interested in is the evalutation of scientific hypotheses and theories. I am especially interested in the role of observation in testing hypotheses and theories. My on going research tries to figure out the implications of theory-laden observations for likelihood and Bayesian approaches to hypothesis testing. The other issues I am interested in are as follows: what sort of things can be taken as indicators of truth? To what extend predictive accuracy relate to truth? What is the role of simplicity in evaluating theories? As a result of my research in philosophy of biology, I have also become interested in natural laws, conditionals and the questions concerning the structure of scientific theories.
Philosophy of Psychology: My paper "Special Sciences and Ceteris Paribus Laws" involves the question of whether psychology has laws and this topic is related to reductionism. So I am interested in both of these topics. On the otherhand, I am also interested in evolutionary psychology because of my interest in human nature from evolutionary perspective.