RIMELL, Nicholas

Brief Biography

Before joining CUHK’s Department of Philosophy at the beginning of 2022, I was a lecturer at Jilin University, in Changchun, China (2018 – 2021). I received a BA in philosophy and English literature from Duke University in 2006, an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2008, and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 2018 (dissertation supervisor: Trenton Merricks).

My research involves metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and ethics. I’m especially interested in where these areas of inquiry come together.  For instance, in the recent past, I’ve explored the nature of mental representation and its connection to first-personal knowledge, to the nature of proper reasoning, and to a variety of ontological issues. As part of this project, I published a book, through Palgrave MacMillan, called “Representational Content and the Objects of Thought”.  I have also explored the question of whether (and, if so, how) certain issues in ethics depend on issues in metaphysics and in the philosophy of mind.

These days, I am turning my attention to a couple related issues involving personal identity:

• I am pursuing a project on the relationship between the question “What are we?” and the question “In virtue of what do we persist?”; and
• I am pursuing a project on the relationship among the metaphysics of personal identity, the nature of the persistence of objects in general, and the nature of time.