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: On leave

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

"The Perils of Tweaking: When can macrodata be used to set parameters in a microfoundational simulation?" with Patrick Forber, forthcoming.

"Agent-Based Models and the Fallacies of Individualism," in Models, Simulations, and Representations, ed. by Paul Humphreys and Cyrille Imbert, Routledge, 2011.

"The Diviner and the Scientist: Revisiting the question of alternative standards of rationality," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78, No. 4 (2010), 1048-1086.

"History and the Critique of Social Concepts," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 40, No. 1 (2010), 3-29.

"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).

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