Embodied epistemology & contemplative phenomenology.
My philosophical work asks how gut feelings function as knowledge: what they represent, how the body changes their epistemic status, when they warrant trust, and what it takes to read them well. My contemplative science work examines the nature of bodily phenomenology in Jewish contemplative practice and in advanced Buddhist contemplative practice. In particular, my work on Jewish meditation proposes that practicing in relationship to the divine alters the epistemic orientation of contemplative practice in ways that models built on non-theistic traditions cannot fully capture.
Gut feelings & embodied knowing
My dissertation explores intuitions that have a distinctively embodied mode of presentation, without which they would not be recognized as intuitions. I argue that intuitions in the bodily mode—or what I call gut feelings—have valenced evaluative content yet feature an epistemic signature that distinguishes them from emotion while making them easily mistaken for anxiety. Because gut feelings present in the bodily mode, they invite inquiry into what parts of our affective, relational, and life history might underlie intuition. My argument proposes an enactive approach to using and justifying gut feelings by coming into relationship with one's embodied epistemology: the experiences, habits, dispositions, and histories that are likely to have shaped one's intuitions within a particular domain. I also discuss problems of justification for intuition and suggest that domains of degree opacity or transparency determine whether we ought to take an internalist approach to justification or a pragmatic externalist approach. I gesture toward the ways in which a relationship with gut feelings is a moral, experimental, and creative route to greater self-knowledge.
Bodily awareness in advanced meditation & Jewish contemplative practice
As a Postdoctoral Affiliate with the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts General Hospital [link], I study bodily awareness in advanced meditation as well as Jewish contemplative practice. Current work proposes a model for bodily awareness across advanced meditation states, as well as a paper examining devekut—cleaving to the divine—as an irreducibly relational and collective practice that may distinguish it from other advanced meditation practices like jhāna.
Papers and Publications
- Gut Feelings and Embodied Epistemology PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley
- Bodily Awareness in Advanced Meditation: A Three-Level Model of Interoceptive, Schematic, and Pacificatory Changes PsyArXiv — with Terje Sparby, Matthew D. Sacchet
Essays & Public Writing