Research

My research is concerned with the connections between agency, self-consciousness, and temporal and causal cognition. In my current project and the previous one I am exploring the general idea of a temporal perspective, and the ways in which temporal cognition is underpinned by temporally perspectival forms of experience.

I am also planning a further project about the intersection of causal and social cognition. The idea of the project is that the ordinary understanding of our own and others' actions involves a distinctive and irreducible form of causal understanding.

Papers

'Relief, Time-Bias, and the Metaphysics of Tense' (Synthese, 2022)
Published version here (open access).

'Are Events Things of the Past?' (Mind, 2021)
Published version here.
Draft version here.

'Transient Particulars' (Ergo, forthcoming)
Draft version here.

'Tensed Truth, Temporal Particularity and the Fixity of the Past (Synthese special issue, 'Temporal Reasoning and Tensed Truths, forthcoming)
Draft version here.

'Is There Such a Thing as Joint Attention to the Past?' (Topoi special issue, 'New Perspectives on Joint Attention', forthcoming)
Draft version here.

'Agent-Regret, Finitude, and the Irrevocability of the Past' (Topoi special issue, 'The Formation of a Moral Point of View: The legacy of Bernard Williams 20 years after his passing', forthcoming)
Draft version here.

Paper on joint reminiscing [title omitted] (under review)
Draft version here.

Paper on causation in folk psychology [Title omitted] (under review)
Draft version here.

'On the Very Idea of a Temporal Perspective'
In progress—email for draft

'A Minimalist Approach to Memory Causality'
In progress—email for draft

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Doctoral thesis

In my doctoral thesis, 'Events and the Agential Perspective', I sought to articulate a distinctive epistemic perspective that agents have on their past actions. This epistemic perspective is connected with a capacity to engage in the kind of singular causal explanation characteristic of autobiographical thought. I argued that these considerations provide support for the thesis that actions are particular events, and for a conception of time as a system of particulars, rather than one on which the tenses are primitive. Ultimately the view is intended to make intelligible the possibility of a temporal perspective from which the past is fixed and the future is open, but which also incorporates a systematic and objective understanding of time as a causal system in which the agent is enmeshed. The thesis engages with debates about the relation between perspective and objectivity, Newcomb's problem and the debate over causal vs. evidential decision theory, the ethics of agent-regret, the development of causal and temporal cognition, questions in the metaphysics of time about the reality of tense, as well as current debates in the philosophy of action over the nature of actions and events.

Upcoming Talks
‘Memory Causality and the Previous Awareness Condition’, Bochum-Grenoble Memory Colloquium, December 2023 (invited speaker)

‘Temporal Perspective in Perceptual and Agential Experience’, University of Geneva, February 2023 (invited speaker)

Past Talks

‘Is There Such a Thing as Joint Attention to the Past?’, workshop on memory and attention, Centre for Philosophy of Memory, Institut de Philosophie de Grenoble, 5–6 June 2023 (selected speaker)

‘Regret and the Retrospective Point of View’, Toronto Metropolitan University, March 2023 (invited speaker)

‘Is There Such a Thing as Joint Attention to the Past?, workshop on joint reminiscing at the University of Warwick, organised by Daniel Vanello, February 2023 (invited speaker).

‘On the Very Idea of a Temporal Perspective’, London Mind Group, February 2023 (invited speaker)

‘What We Do to Each Other: Folk Psychology, Interventionism, and Special Causal Concepts’
‘Alternative Approaches to Causation: Beyond Difference-making and Mechanism’, University of Kent, June 2021 (selected speaker, open call). https://www.shanyafeng.com/causation-conference-kent-2021.html

'Transient Particulars'
Mini-workshop at Warwick Mind and Action Research Centre with Christoph Hoerl, February 18, 2021 (co-organiser).

‘Agent-Regret, Dummet’s Dilemma, and the Fixity of the Past’
Presented at ‘Agency, Past and Future’ conference organised by Society for Philosophy of Time in Hamburg, July 2019.

‘Tense and the First Person: Between Appearance and Reality’
Presented at ‘About Time: The de nunc and the de se’, workshop at Leeds University, June 2019.

‘Is Ordinary Thinking about Time Inconsistent?’, presented at ‘Thinking in and about Time’, symposium organised by the Centre for Philosophy of Time at the University of Milan, April 2019.

‘When Does an Event Exist?’, presented at London-Berkeley Philosophy Graduate Conference, Berkeley, May 2017.

‘Do We Perceive Spatial Magnitudes?’, presented at London-Warwick Mind Forum, London, October 2014.

Other activities

‘Agency, Past, and Future’, conference held at University of Hamburg, July 2019. Co-organised with Drs. Magali Roques (Paris CNRS) and Florian Fischer (Siegen).
Funding awarded by Fritz-Thyssen Stiftung