Faculty

Brian Epstein

Assistant Professor
Metaphysics, Philosophy of Social Science, Philosophy of Language

Contact Info:
Department of Philosophy
Miner Hall, Room 114B
Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155
617-627-4701

Email Prof. Epstein

Office Hours:
Weds., 4:15-5:30pm, Thurs, 4:00-5:00pm, or by appt.

Biography

Brian Epstein received his PhD in philosophy from Stanford University, his master's in philosophy from Oxford University, and graduated summa cum laude with an AB in philosophy from Princeton University. His research interests include philosophy of social science, metaphysics, and philosophy of language, focusing in particular on issues in the theory of reference and the ontology of social kinds. He also has interests in conceptual schemes, the philosophy of music, and the philosophy of economics. Between degree programs, he worked at a number of technology startups and consulting firms. His interests outside of philosophy include music and sound production, hiking, and photographing ducks. His personal webpage is: http://epstein.org/brian

Education

Ph.D., Stanford University
M.S., Oxford University
AB, Princeton University

Publications

"History and the Critique of Social Concepts," forthcoming, Philosophy of the Social Sciences

"Ontological Individualism Reconsidered," Synthese 166, No. 1 (2009), 187-213.

"Grounds, Convention, and the Metaphysics of Linguistic Tokens," Croatian Journal of Philosophy 9 No. 25 (2009), forthcoming.

"The Realpolitik of Reference," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (2008), 1-20.

"When Local Models Fail," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 38 (2008), 3-24.

"The Internal and the External in Linguistic Explanation," Croatian Journal of Philosophy 8 No. 22 (2008), pp. 77-111.

Review of Language: A Biological Model by Ruth Millikan, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (April 2006).