L. Paul Strait
strait [at] usc [dot] edu
Paul's interests include applied (informal) epistemology, the Austrian School of economics, the Frankfurt School (especially the work of Jürgen Habermas), human rights, and psychiatry. He is currently developing two theoretical ideas. The first is a formal pragmatic theory of human rights, an attempt to derive a theoretical grounding for human rights from the universal validity claims of communication (intelligibility, truth, sincerity, and normative rightness). The second is a theory of epistemic bubbles-- starting from the assumption that an asset price bubble is a particular case of a more general set of phenomena, this theory is an attempt to apply economic concepts (e.g., asset price bubbles, the efficient market hypothesis, modern portfolio theory, the money supply, etc.) to non-market contexts. He is working on a dissertation that applies his theory of epistemic bubbles to the institution of psychiatry. In addition to his research, Paul is an assistant coach of the Trojan Debate Society.