I am a Mellon Humanities Faculty Fellow in the Philosophy Department at University of California Irvine. I received my PhD in Philosophy at University of California Irvine in 2024. You can contact me at apederne@uci.edu.
I am mainly interested in Social and Applied Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind and Late Wittgenstein. Especially, I focus on the Epistemology of Distrust. Indeed, my main interest is to address the question: when is it rational to distrust? I believe this question to be crucial to understand current political, cultural and social tendencies such as scientific skepticism, the polarization of public opinion, mistrust in politics and media and the workings of social media influence. The interdisciplinary nature of distrust also allows for collaborations with other fields such as applied mathematics and social psychology. Indeed, I am NSF Fellow for the Project “Genericity, Stability, and Structural Interactions”, which investigate both from a psychological and philosophical perspective the generation of generics in kids and adults.
I am also interested is Ancient Greek Philosophy. Especially, I work on Plato’s theory of knowledge and techné, to delineate a theory of power within the philosopher dialogues. I am also exploring a wider range of ancient greek literature, taking into consideration the intersection of the dialogues with tragedies and epic literature.
Finally, I am also MAP International Representative for my Department chapter; MAP aims to address structural injustices in academic philosophy and to remove barriers that impede participation in academic philosophy for members of marginalized groups.
Find me on PhilPeople or ResearchGate.
