What I do

I direct Carnegie Mellon University's Humanism Initiative. I'm also a Research Associate at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for the Philosophy of Science. Basically, I study ways to improve our understanding of what matters. Then I write books and magazine articles, and give talks about science and human values. Much of my research now is in three areas:

• cognitive immunology (the emerging science of how to reduce our susceptibility to bad ideas)
• the nature and function of reasoning (how reasoning works, and why it so often doesn't)
• mattering theory (what really matters, and why)