My current research is focused around two interrelated
themes.
First there is the work most directly associated with the
Marsden research grant, which is looking at the evidence
for human cognitive evolution. This research presumes that
there will be either archaeological or paleontological
by-products of behaviours, and that such behaviours are
themselves evidence of certain cognitive skills.
This research draws on my background in the philosophy of
archaeology, the philosophy of biology and the philosophy
of mind. My current research work is particularly focussed
on the use of extended mind/embodied cognition/evolutionary
niche construction models of minds and the ways they use,
interact with, and are partly constituted by technology and
the external environment. My work investigates matching
these post-cartesian models of cognition to archaeological
data associated with human evolution.
Clearly, the inference from observed trace, to behaviour,
to the cognitive skill of an extinct hominin species, is a
complex inferential chain, and the second strand of my
research looks at how well, and how reliably, the
historical sciences can secure these long chains of
inference.
This research includes not only the evolution of cognition,
it includes biology, archaeology, and that philosophically
neglected science; Geology.
I am a member of the Tempo and Mode virtual research group,
which covers my Philosophy of Biology interests.
I am also an associate member of the Centre for
Archaeological Research, which is based in Canberra at the
Australian National University.
I am also actively involved in various informal research
group/reading groups at Victoria University of Wellington
focussed on the philosophy of biology and the links between
culture and cognition.
I also have lurking interests in engineering and its status
as a science.