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Christopher Austin
, Faculty of Faculty of Arts
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Research Summary
My philosophical interests are centred around issues at the intersection of modal metaphysics and the philosophy of science - especially theories of causation, the viability of the project of… read more
Christopher was born in Indiana, a mid-Western state in the United States of America, and has lived in England for the last 3 years. His undergraduate studies were done at Indiana University, Bloomington under the supervision of Professor Timothy O'Connor, where he graduated with college honours with a thesis on contemporary theories of individual essentialism. Christopher completed his graduate, Masters-level studies in the 2-year BPhil program at the University of Oxford, UK under the supervision of Joseph Melia with a thesis on the defense of realism about dispositional properties.
Christopher's doctoral studies at the University of Nottingham are fully funded by the 'Vice Chancellor's International Research Excellence Scholarship', a non-departmental specific scholarship awarded by the University of Nottingham to international (non-EU) students. For more information on this scholarship, please click here.
Current Research
My philosophical interests are centred around issues at the intersection of modal metaphysics and the philosophy of science - especially theories of causation, the viability of the project of ontological reductionism, the ground of de re modality, and perhaps most of all, the nature and explanatory utility of dispositional properties.
My dissertation is a defense of neo-Aristotelian biological natural kind essentialism utilizing contemporary research in developmental genetics and an explanatory framework based on recent theories of dispositions and their sui generis method of causation.
Supervised by: Stephen Mumford & Penelope Mackie