Jason Zesheng Chen

My name is Zesheng Chen; my friends and family call me Jason. I am a PhD candidate at the Deparment of Logic and Philosophy of Science, UC Irvine. My advisor is Toby Meadows.

As a philosopher, I study how mathematicians go about their business, especially how they take something to be evidence, motivation, or justification for something else, and what that something else is. As a logician, I focus on the relationship between computation, complexity, and exorbitantly large infinities: if an object can be easily computed/defined, must it behave nicely?

I also specialize in the history of set theory, especially descriptive set theory from its emergence to the present. Curiously, this line of research has made me somewhat competent in the history of mathematics, logic, and computer science in the Soviet Union.

Born and raised in Shenzhen, China, I went to University of Southern California as an undergrad, where I studied linguistics, philosophy, and Middle Eastern languages. I also do a bit of expository writing for the general public. Below you can find some of my social media.