Who I am
I am currently a Teaching Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder, where I was previously a Lecturer from 2020-2022. Prior to that, I was a Postdoc in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland from 2017-2019 under the supervision of John Quiggin and L. A. Paul as part of their the ARC grant to investigate transformative experience and rational choice. I hold a PhD (Philosophy, 2017) from the University of California, Davis.
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I love talking philosophy, cats, mountains, and generally having a good time. To learn more about me as a person (cf. philosopher), go to Misc.
What I do
My research interests are broad. I spend a lot of time thinking about the mental processes associated with epistemic change. These include things like reasoning, considering and evaluating evidence, imagining, and the resulting updates made to doxastic attitudes. While my interests are in the normative constraints on these processes, I am committed to methodological naturalism and see descriptive questions about how (non-ideal) human agents engage in these processes as relevant to the normative questions. My work often involves the use of logico-mathematical tools, however, as a methodological pluralist I value the use of all available tools in inquiry. I am also a committed teacher interested in helping my students grow and appreciate the complexity of new ideas.
E-mail: shear.ted@tedshear.org | Phone: (781) 248-1828 | Office: Hellems 273, University of Colorado Boulder