SHARON BERRY

"...to locate in the blackness with a gasp
Terra the fair, an orbicle of jasp" - Pale Fire, V. Nabokov

I wrote my dissertation on ``the access problem'' (aka The Benacerraf Problem) at Harvard under Warren Goldfarb, Peter Koellner , Ned Hall, and Bernard Nickel and then spent a year as postdoc at the Australian National University under Dave Chalmers and Daniel Stoljar. I'm now a Polonsky Fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem and I'll be joining Oakland University in the fall.

I mostly work on the foundations of a priori knowledge, (meta)metaphysical issues concerning realism and knowledge by convention, and the philosophy of mathematics and logic -- with a special focus on epistemological issues, set theory, and connections to metaethics.

Many of my publications develop tools for a proposed solution to the Benacerraf Problem which embraces extreme truth value realism (e.g., definite facts about the Continuum Hypothesis and the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis), the literal existence of mathematical objects, and fairly traditional a priorist epistemology of mathematics. If successful, this project has powerful implications for other areas of philosophy, e.g., in defeating the companions in guilt argument.

Publications

Gunk Mountains: A Puzzle (penultimate draft), forthcoming in Analysis
(Probably) Not Companions in Guilt, forthcoming in Philosophical Studies
Modal Structuralism Simplified (penultimate draft), forthcoming in Canadian Journal of Philosophy
a review of Augustin Rayo's The Construction of Logical Space (Mind 2015)
Chalmers, Quantifier Variance and Mathematicians' Freedom (penultimate draft) Synthese Library Volume 373 Quantifiers, Quantifiers, Quantifiers 2015
Malament-Hogarth Machines and Tait's Axiomatic Conception of Mathematics (Erkenntnis 2013)
Default Reasonableness and the Mathoids (Synthese 2013)

Under Review

External World Skepticism, Confidence and Psychologism about the Problem of Priors
Physical Possibility and Determinate Number Theory , now also in slideshow form [Presented at the Mind/Aristotelian Society Joint Sessions 2018]
Coincidence Avoidance and Formulating the Access Problem
On Potentialist Set Theory and Justifying Replacement, joint work with mathematician Peter Gerdes
The Residual Access Problem (formerly: The Access Problem for Knowledge of Logical Possibility)

Book A Logical Foundation for Potentialist Set Theory

Work In Progress

Quantifier Variance, Grounding, and the Revenge of Quinean Indispensibility Worries? in slideshow form
What Modal Notion Should the Set Theoretic Potentialist Use?
Three Mathematical Indispensibility Arguments

Just for Fun

Plato and Brogaard on Romantic Love and Perceptual Experience
On Gratitude and Resentment Without an Object: Quasi-Reactive Attitudes for Atheists
Nabokov's Passionate Agnosticism in Bend Sinister

Teaching Tools and Logic Games

Here's a link to the logic website I co-wrote one summer for Harvard's intro logic class, and some educational games I've written.

Contact?

Say hello at seberry@invariant.org if you want to see draft papers or talk shop.

Paper Length Overview of Dissertation/Access Problem Stuff

Solving the Access Problem for Logical Possibility See CAFAP , CQVMF and MSS for details, the book for a sample `logic of logical possibility', and PNCG for metaethical applications.