I am a philosopher of mind with a special interest in cognitive neuroscience. I would like to develop a useful and precise framework for understanding the brain from an abstract perspective. Physics and economics provide helpful models of what I'm aiming for. When trying to understand a thermodynamic system, it's often better to abstract away from the activities of individual molecules, and instead focus on more global features, such as pressure and temperature. When trying to understand an economic system, it's often better to abstract away from the activities of individual consumers, and instead focus on more global features, such as inflation and gross domestic product. Likewise, when trying to understand brains, it's often useful to abstract away from activities of individual neurons, and instead focus on more global features, such as representation and inference. This is particularly true when trying to understand how our brains enable us to successfully interact with our environment. Unfortunatley, whereas we widely accepted definitions of representation and inference. Perhaps as a result, it is far less clear how to map these terms, because they often use them in loose and contradictory ways. The overall goal of this project is to develop a useful and precise framework for attributing representations and inferences to the brain, especially when they involve probabilities.
