Welcome to my Web page.

I'm Todd Jones, chair of the Philosophy department at UNLV. My academic work centers evaluating various explanations of human behavior.  Which ones are good,   which ones are bad,   and why?     If a man has a fistfight with his neighbor,   can it ever make sense to explain this in terms of high level historical trends?   Or in terms of low level genetic proclivities?    Investigating these issues leads me to look at various sub-areas: 1) What are explanations?    Do good explanations have to mention causes?    Do high level explanations always reduce to lower level ones?  2)What are beliefs and desires?   Many explanations of behavior make reference to these,   so it's important to have a good understanding of what these are (or if there really are such things). I have degrees in Anthropology and Cognitive Science, as well as philosophy, and I look at work in all of these fields to help develop answers to these questions.