Research

Consciousness & Attention

An intriguing hypothesis in the science of consciousness is that, in perceptual experience, we are conscious of more than we attend to. This is known as phenomenal overflow. My research approaches this hypothesis through the philosophical significance of distraction. Usually defined as attention off-task, distraction provides a novel source of potential dissociations between attention and consciousness: it allows us to examine what happens to consciousness when attention drifts and we zone out—for example, when one suddenly realizes that one’s mind has been wandering.

On this basis, I argue that there is an imaginative analogue of overflow: in some imaginative experiences, including mind-wandering without awareness, we are conscious of more than we attend to. I further argue that the richness of this elusive imagery is partly explained by its iconic format, and that this account may offer an alternative explanation of some cases of aphantasia.

Mental Representation & Cognitive Maps

The debate over the formats of mental representation has persisted for decades, centering on two primary types: discursive, or language-like, formats associated with higher cognition, and iconic, or picture-like, formats associated with sensory processes such as mental imagery. The language of thought hypothesis (LOT), according to which cognition operates mainly through discursive formats, has re-emerged in recent years because of the apparent involvement of language-like structures in basic processes such as visual perception—for example, object-files.

I argue that neuroscientific research on cognitive maps, particularly their implementation by hippocampal cells, reveals the flipside of this picture: many higher-order cognitive processes are themselves map-like. To support this claim, I focus on what is sometimes called navigation cognition: the use of map-like vehicles beyond the representation of physical space. In particular, I examine the role of hippocampal cognitive maps in concept learning and categorization.

Because these processes are central to higher-order cognition, the evidence supports a more ambitious hypothesis: the representational vehicles underlying many higher-order cognitive processes are at least partly map-like. I further argue that map-like formats can help bridge the divide between the iconic and the discursive by serving as an interface between them.

Natural Intelligence

The concepts of consciousness and mental representation have shaped many of the central debates in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Intelligence, despite its foundational role in the history of psychology, has received comparatively little philosophical attention in recent decades.

My current research asks what intelligence is and what it does: whether it is a natural kind or a normative standard for assessing behavior and the quality of information processing; whether consciousness enables intelligent behavior; and what kinds of cognitive structures support it. Are language-like formats and recursive structures especially important for intelligence, or can intelligence arise from statistical learning and pattern recognition alone?

My approach is to treat intelligence first as a natural phenomenon, prior to its artificial implementation: something found in human beings, nonhuman animals, and biological systems more broadly.

Epistemology & Spontaneous Cognition

Spontaneous mental episodes such as dreaming and mind-wandering are often treated by philosophers as forms of “junk consciousness”: experiences that serve no epistemic function. Research in cognitive neuroscience, however, suggests that they play a fundamental role in waking cognition. Spontaneous cortical activity is structured rather than random noise, and its organization reflects the statistical regularities of the environment. This suggests that the brain continuously samples from an internal model even in the absence of sensory input.

On this basis, I suggest that spontaneous thought processes—including dreaming, mind-wandering, and related phenomena—play a generative role in learning. They actively produce novel samples and hypotheses for predictive purposes, thereby expanding a cognitive system’s representational space in ways that stabilize learning and improve pattern recognition.

The Normativity of Attention

Much has been said about the conditions of satisfaction of propositional attitudes such as belief—for instance, their truth conditions. But what are the conditions of satisfaction of attention? Are these conditions even representational? One plausible answer is that attention is fitting if and only if it selects what merits consciousness—that is, what the subject ought to be conscious of. On this view, attention aims at value.

This account seems to capture the value-laden character of distraction, especially in the age of social media, when algorithms can make our patterns of attention maladaptive by filling our feeds with so-called “brain rot” and shitposting.

I argue, however, that there is a deeper problem. Digital platforms are not populated only by trivial or worthless content; they also provide access to an enormous amount of valuable material. Perhaps never in human history has so much worthwhile content been so readily available. If fitting attention simply consists in attending to what has value, then many of the attentional patterns involved in doomscrolling may count as fitting.

The central problem for aligning attention with value on digital platforms is therefore not scarcity, but plenitude. We need an alternative account of misattending—one that explains how attention can go wrong even when its objects are individually valuable.

The Vestibular Sense

Contemporary philosophy of perception concerns itself almost exclusively with vision. Even among philosophers of non-visual perception, however, one sense modality is often neglected: the vestibular system, which is responsible for our sense of balance and relative motion.

I think vestibular perception is philosophically interesting for reasons concerning both representation and consciousness. To begin with, vestibular representation appears to be essentially indexical. Given this indexical character, it also appears to support a distinctive form of self-knowledge akin to self-location. On this basis, I argue that the vestibular sense can ground perceptual self-location, offering an alternative to agentive theories.

On the consciousness side, many neuroscientists consider vestibular perception a silent sense: a sensory system that, under ordinary conditions—without unusual acceleration or movement—makes no difference to perceptual experience. Contrary to this view, I argue that vestibular perception has a distinctive phenomenal character, which I call phenomenal gravity, and that it makes a major contribution to our sense of reality, or reality monitoring.