I work mainly on philosophy of science, blending methods from philosophy and psychology to study scientific reasoning. Currently, I’m developing ways to apply methods and concepts from computational neuroscience to help understand the behavior of AI systems. I also have projects on cognitive neuroscience, philosophical methodology, and consciousness.
Papers
Drafts
These are papers/projects in early stages of development, but let me know if you're interested in seeing an early draft.
Representation in AI: a fresh start for philosophy?
Philosophers can help make progress in explainable AI (XAI) by clarifying the concepts we use to understand AI behavior, like representation, computation, and function. But current approaches mostly port over existing views of those concepts from philosophy of mind and language, along with the goals, methods, and assumptions we take for granted when we approach those concepts. I argue that the recent AI boom and the focus on XAI offer a rare opportunity for philosophers to revisit our basic commitments, and especially those goals, methods, and assumptions. To take advantage of that opportunity, I offer some alternative goals/methods/assumptions, and argue that these alternatives are more appropriate to the project of XIA.
Naturalism and Philosophy of Mind
Philosophers of mind tend to accept three claims. (1) Philosophy of mind should draw support and from cognitive science. (2) Philosophy of mind should deliver a metaphysics of mind: a definition of the mind, or an account of what it is to be minded. (3) The most promising approach in philosophy of mind are computational and representational. I argue that these claims are only consistent on a naïve view of cognitive science and the explanations it provides — specifically, an understanding of those explanations as metaphysically loaded. Starting from a more nuanced understanding of cognitive science, I bring out the inconsistency of the three claims and discuss how we can move forward by dropping one of them.
Computational, Representational, and Functional Explanation: A Case Study in the Antikythera Mechanism
The concepts of computation, representation, and function have central explanatory roles in many different sciences. Cognitive science, in particular, explains the brain as a sort of computer, whose parts have functions, with one of those functions being to represent environmental variables. But these forms of explanation, and especially their epistemic role and status, are not fully understood. In philosophy, this problem is often approached by either toy examples of computation, representation, and function (and the associated explanations), or by real case studies of these forms of scientific explanation. Toy examples can often be too simplistic to provide any understanding of the real scientific explanations at issue. And it can be hard to distil general lessons from real case studies, which are highly complex and tend to support multiple interpretations. A useful and fascinating middle-ground can be found in the Antikythera mechanism — an ancient Greek astronomical device that is explained in computational, representational, and functional terms, and for which the history and development of those explanations is well-known. I use the Antikythera mechanism to draw out the features of computational, representational, and functional explanation, and argue for a particular epistemic role and status for each form of explanation.
Mysterianism, or: the cosmic horror of the self
Mysterians argue that the nature of consciousness is fundamentally unknowable, and I argue that their sense of "unknowability" is precisely the same kind of unknowability that characterizes the objects of cosmic or Lovecraftian horror. I then use this comparison to raise some questions about the relationship between theories of consciousness and the aesthetics of consciousness, and bring out some other puzzles to do with the aesthetics of consciousness.
Gamification and Domain Transfer
I discuss the use of gamification in pedagogy, highlighting a lack of consensus on best practices and some difficulties we face trying to construct those best practices using empirical research. I then show that gamification is an example of domain transfer, and derive a tentative set of best practices based on a broader understanding of domain transfer in science, business, and other domains.
Papers
- How Computation Explains [Mind & Language] [Arxiv]
- Commentary: Investigating the concept of representation in the neural and psychological sciences [Frontiers in Psychology]
- What is a Theory of Neural Representation for? [Arxiv]
- What really lives in the swamp? Kinds and the illustration of scientific reasoning [Arxiv]
- Computational Externalism [Draft available on request]
- Experimental philosophy of science: beyond taxonomy [Draft available on request]
Drafts
These are papers/projects in early stages of development, but let me know if you're interested in seeing an early draft.
Representation in AI: a fresh start for philosophy?
Philosophers can help make progress in explainable AI (XAI) by clarifying the concepts we use to understand AI behavior, like representation, computation, and function. But current approaches mostly port over existing views of those concepts from philosophy of mind and language, along with the goals, methods, and assumptions we take for granted when we approach those concepts. I argue that the recent AI boom and the focus on XAI offer a rare opportunity for philosophers to revisit our basic commitments, and especially those goals, methods, and assumptions. To take advantage of that opportunity, I offer some alternative goals/methods/assumptions, and argue that these alternatives are more appropriate to the project of XIA.
Naturalism and Philosophy of Mind
Philosophers of mind tend to accept three claims. (1) Philosophy of mind should draw support and from cognitive science. (2) Philosophy of mind should deliver a metaphysics of mind: a definition of the mind, or an account of what it is to be minded. (3) The most promising approach in philosophy of mind are computational and representational. I argue that these claims are only consistent on a naïve view of cognitive science and the explanations it provides — specifically, an understanding of those explanations as metaphysically loaded. Starting from a more nuanced understanding of cognitive science, I bring out the inconsistency of the three claims and discuss how we can move forward by dropping one of them.
Computational, Representational, and Functional Explanation: A Case Study in the Antikythera Mechanism
The concepts of computation, representation, and function have central explanatory roles in many different sciences. Cognitive science, in particular, explains the brain as a sort of computer, whose parts have functions, with one of those functions being to represent environmental variables. But these forms of explanation, and especially their epistemic role and status, are not fully understood. In philosophy, this problem is often approached by either toy examples of computation, representation, and function (and the associated explanations), or by real case studies of these forms of scientific explanation. Toy examples can often be too simplistic to provide any understanding of the real scientific explanations at issue. And it can be hard to distil general lessons from real case studies, which are highly complex and tend to support multiple interpretations. A useful and fascinating middle-ground can be found in the Antikythera mechanism — an ancient Greek astronomical device that is explained in computational, representational, and functional terms, and for which the history and development of those explanations is well-known. I use the Antikythera mechanism to draw out the features of computational, representational, and functional explanation, and argue for a particular epistemic role and status for each form of explanation.
Mysterianism, or: the cosmic horror of the self
Mysterians argue that the nature of consciousness is fundamentally unknowable, and I argue that their sense of "unknowability" is precisely the same kind of unknowability that characterizes the objects of cosmic or Lovecraftian horror. I then use this comparison to raise some questions about the relationship between theories of consciousness and the aesthetics of consciousness, and bring out some other puzzles to do with the aesthetics of consciousness.
Gamification and Domain Transfer
I discuss the use of gamification in pedagogy, highlighting a lack of consensus on best practices and some difficulties we face trying to construct those best practices using empirical research. I then show that gamification is an example of domain transfer, and derive a tentative set of best practices based on a broader understanding of domain transfer in science, business, and other domains.