Accepting applications from PhD students.
Email: K.L.Sylvan@soton.ac.uk
I am currently working on the structure of knowledge, the epistemology of learning, the metaphysics of neurodiversity, and a book-length defense of a Kantian approach to theoretical rationality and normativity.
Dr Kurt Sylvan is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Southampton.
I joined the department in January 2014, initially as a post-doctoral lecturer in the Normativity: Epistemic and Practical project, but becoming permanent in 2015.
I finished my PhD at Rutgers in 2014. Ernest Sosa was my advisor and Ruth Chang, Jonathan Dancy, Alvin Goldman, and Susanna Schellenberg were on my committee. My PhD thesis sought to explain why we should care about being epistemically rational. My explanation rested on the thought that epistemic rationality constitutes respect for truth.
My longest-standing research interests are in epistemology. I also have research interests in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, philosophy of practical reason, and the history of epistemology. I've taught classes in many other areas, including ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, history of philosophy, and metaphysics.
A significant portion of my research is concerned with epistemic normativity and epistemic value. Two recent papers develop key ideas from my dissertation: (1) paper published in Philosophical Review developing the first explicit and systematic non-consequentialist account of theoretical normativity (Epistemic Kantianism) and (2) a paper in Philosophical Studies applying similar ideas to practical reason. I'm finishing a book developing these ideas in a more Kantian way, entitled Respect for the Truth: A Kantian Account of Theoretical Normativity.
My work in epistemology in the narrow sense (i.e., the theory of epistemic states, processes, activities, and episodes) is mostly separate from all this normativity business. For I think epistemology in the narrow sense is a branch of the philosophy of mind, and not really part of the philosophy of normativity. I defended this view in a 2018 paper. Some other topics I've worked on under the non-normative heading recently are ways of knowing, perceptual knowledge, inferential knowledge, and learning (in progress).
My work on suspension of judgment, the basing relation, internalism, and the metaphysics and epistemology of neurodiversity contributes things to both normative and non-normative epistemology.