I am assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Central Florida. 

I am originally from Gisborne, New Zealand. I moved to Canada in 1995 to do a Ph. D. in philosophy at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, AB.  Before coming to the University of Central Florida in 2003, I taught at Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS, Canada.

I teach courses on Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Language.  I also teach Ethics in Science and Technology.

My research revolves around the thesis that human beings are fundamentally members of normative communities. The core of my research program is the thesis that all entities that are held to have meaning (including utterances, actions, images, texts, and neurological representations) are constituted as meaningful by virtue of the role they play in human normative practices; in particular, the practice of ascribing intentional states as reasons for actions. I focus on the implications of this thesis for our accounts of language and of cognition.