About

I am an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the Norton College of Medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. At Upstate, I teach medical students and residents in the Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry. I am also a member of CP3: The Center for Philosophy, Psychology, and Psychiatry as well as the Hospital Ethics Consult Service.

My research sits at the intersection of philosophy of psychiatry, philosophy of science, cognitive science, and bioethics. I examine how psychiatric knowledge is constructed, how concepts of self and disorder function in psychiatric theory and clinical practice, and how emerging technologies—including artificial intelligence and psychedelics—reshape mental health care. 

My recent book Reclaiming the Self in Psychiatry: Centering Personal Narratives for a Humanist Science (Routledge, 2025) argues that contemporary psychiatry suffers from an under-theorized conception of the self. I develop the Multitudinous Self Model (MuSe), which integrates first-person testimony, cognitive science, and empirically informed philosophy to reconceptualize objectivity and expertise in psychiatry. MuSe positions patients not merely as subjects of study but as experience-based contributors to psychiatric knowledge and outlines a vision of scientific psychiatry grounded as much in philosophy and the humanities as in neuroscience.

I have co-edited three books: The Handbook of Psychotherapy Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2021), which examines pressing ethical challenges in contemporary psychotherapy; The Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophy of Psychiatry (2019, with Robyn Bluhm), an introductory textbook that situates philosophy of psychiatry within the broader landscape of philosophical inquiry; and Extraordinary Science and Psychiatry: Responses to the Crisis in Mental Health Research (MIT Press, 2017, with Jeffrey Poland), which uses a Kuhnian framework to analyze the structure and direction of psychiatric research.

I am an Area Editor for Ergo, and serve on the editorial boards of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Medicine, and Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology. I am on the Executive Committee of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and on the Philosophy of Science Association’s Nominating and 2026 program committees. I am also a member of the Independent Psychedelic Evidence Assessment Working Group. 

Prior to Upstate, I was an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Medical Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) where I served as the Director of the Medical Humanities Program. I received my PhD in 2010 at York University, Canada, and have held postdoctoral fellowships at Dalhousie University in Canada, and at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. A native of Denizli, Türkiye, I have been fortunate to build a life across the places my academic journey has taken me—from Istanbul to Canada, to the United States.