William Braynen

I go by "Will" and am a Philosophy PhD student at the University of Arizona (which is in Tucson) 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 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, in the realm of political philosophy, when do social dilemmas arise and when is coercion justified? Or, how would we choose to organize social and political institutions if we did not know how wealthy our parents will be and what natural abilities we will be lucky to have? These intersect with questions in philosophy of science; for example, what statistical inferences should we draw from our experiences and was Popper right to be an inductive skeptic? From time to time, I also worry about the robustness of computational models. And yes, there are a handful of things I find interesting and like to do outside of geekville too ;)