Will Braynen

I am a Philosophy PhD student at the University of Arizona with a minor in Cognitive Science and previous background in Computer Science. Research-wise, I am currently interested in two things: (1) emergence and stability of cooperative or mutually advantageous behavior and (2) decision-making under risk and uncertainty. In particular, I am interested in the application of these two research areas to questions in political philosophy and philosophy of science. For example, how can the design of social and political institutions solve social dilemmas and when is coercion justified? Or, what principles of justice would we choose if we did not know how wealthy our parents will be and what native abilities we will be lucky to have? These intersect with questions in philosophy of science; for example, what probabilistic inferences should we draw from our experiences and was Popper right to be an inductive skeptic? (These questions are, of course, also relevant to epistemology and to statistical learning theory.) From time to time, I also worry about the robustness of computational models. Recently, as a way to intermittently procrastinate while studying for my comps, I have also taken a keen interest in urban planning/geography, especially the relationship between walkability, population density and urban spatial structure. And yes, there is a handful of things I find interesting outside of Geekville too.

wbraynen (at) gmail (dot) edu
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