About Me

I’ve recently finished The Madness Pill: One Doctor’s Quest to Understand Schizophrenia, which will come out in 2026 with St. Martin’s Press. It’s a history of the scientists who searched for a “madness pill” in the 1950s and ‘60s, a drug that would make sane people mad, thereby illuminating the causes of schizophrenia in the brain—and the pioneering work of Solomon Snyder, who unlocked the answer with his discovery of the dopamine receptor, ultimately ushering in the birth of modern psychiatry. My most recent book, Madness: A Philosophical Exploration, was published with Oxford University Press in 2022.

My first book, The Biological Mind: A Philosophical Introduction, (Routledge, 2015), looks at traditional problems in the philosophy of mind through an evolutionary lens, such as altruism, nature and nurture, free will, mental representation, and mental illness. The second edition of The Biological Mind appeared in 2022, and includes new chapters on race and racial classification, sex and gender, and the elusive notion of human nature.

I have two books on the topic of biological functions. What Biological Functions are and Why They Matter (Cambridge University Press, 2019), presents and defends a new theory of functions. A Critical Overview of Biological Functions (Springer, 2016) is a companion volume that surveys the debate. Harriet Fagerberg and I are currently writing a book, Biological Functions, for the Cambridge Elements series which will focus on the role of functions in medicine and psychiatry.

I’ve also written on topics such as ageing, madness, genetics, mental representation, biological functions, mechanisms in science, and the concept of information in neuroscience.