Brian's Research Page

I tend to pursue a number of distinct, but related, projects at the same time. All of these describe long-term projects and I tend to shift each on and off the front burner as I get more or less bored with it.

Making Sense of the Senses.

An extension of my dissertation work, in which I discussed the 20th century discovery of a novel animal sense--electroreception--in fish. But what exactly is a sense? And how does one "discover" a new one? What makes one sense different from others? My project is to defend an account of the senses derived from the biological science of neuroethology (within a larger pluralistic framework). What started as a quick paper in 2002 now looks like it may turn into a book.

• The original paper was "Making sense of the senses". The more recent papers that will likely turn into book chapters are "The Early History of the Quale and Its Relation to the Senses" & "The role of neurobiology in differentiating the senses".
• Soon, Fiona Macpherson will be publishing a nice collection of papers on the topic: The Senses: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press.

The Weird Epistemology of Conspiracy Theories

In a series of papers, I have explored the philosophical nature of conspiracy theories, ranging from the less to the more credible versions. One ought to consider conspiracies to cover up the fact that we didn't land a man on the moon, as well as Watergate. I argue that a "Humean analysis" of conspiracy theories--which attempts to treat them as Hume treated claims of historical miracles--fails to work; there are generally not a priori grounds for rejecting conspiracy theories (although, there may well be a posteriori reasons, especially as time passes). Recently, I have been attempt to relate the epistemology of conspiracy theories back to a religious context, namely arguments for agnosticism with respect to the existence of God.

• To date, I've written three papers on conspiracy theories: "Of conspiracy theories", "Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!" and "God as the ultimate conspiracy theory".
• I've even been interviewed about conspiracies on XM radio by Steve Karesh for “POTUS08”. Topic: “Conspiracy theories and U.S. presidential politics.” First broadcast: 11 Dec, 2007.
• A good start for exploring this topic, I suggest checking out this nice collection of papers: Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate, David Coady, ed., Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2006.

The Eyes Have it: The Neuroethology of Eye Gaze Information Processing and Other Minds.

This is the logical extension of my dissertation work, in which I argued that cognitive science should be structured more like computational neuroethology. What would such a beast look like? This project intends answer that question. The target phenomenon is the apparent capacity to infer information concerning the mental states of others using eye-gaze cues. In other words, how we use the eyes as the windows to the soul, as Da Vinci put it. To that end, I am looking at recent work in autism, primate comparative eye-gaze perception work, human neuroimaging of eye gaze detection, and philosophical work on theory of mind.

This project is funded by The James S. McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences. A detailed project description can be found on their site.

To get an idea of the project, take a look at the chapter I wrote for Colin Allen, Marc Bekoff & Gordon Burghardt's forthcoming MIT Press volume, The Cognitive Animal.

The Varieties of Functionalism: Psychological Explanation in a Neurobiological Era.

What is the current status of functionalist explanation in psychology given the recent explosion of neuroscientific research? In the 20th century, philosophy of psychology has witnessed an amazing line of philosophical development from the logical behaviorism of Ryle and Wittgenstein to mind-brain identity theory to contemporary functionalism in its many forms. Many competing varieties of functionalism have been developed as well as equally many lines of objections and problems for this approach. This line of development seemed finally to play out in the late 80s/early 90s. It is now time to take a step back and see where we have been and where we are likely to go.

There are two papers that most clearly falls into this project area:

1) "Shocking Lessons from Electric Fish"
2) "Fixing content and function in neurobiological systems".

Large, slow changes in electric organ discharge associated with social context in Eigenmannia

Eigenmannia virescens is a species of weakly electric fish. They produce constant electrical signals of very low voltage that play a role in perception and social communication. This year, I will be setting up a lab at Pitzer to continue my graduate project looking at how social context affects electric organ discharge frequency.

I am hoping to open a lab to do further work in this area. At the moment, my only publication is an abstract:
1) "Large, slow changes in electric organ discharge associated with social context in Eigenmannia"

Studies in Practical Epistemology.

If "practical ethics" is the application of ethical theory to everyday situations, then there ought to be "practical epistemology" that does the same thing for theory of knowledge. It would show us how to think about "weird things" such as miracles and conspiracy theories, as well as just everyday things, like what cues tell us that something is alive.

Two papers that exhibit this line of research are :
1) "Of Conspiracy Theories"
2) "Evaluating Artificial Life and Artificial Organisms"

Philosophical Issues in Artificial Life.

This research topic is pretty straightforward: Interesting philosophical problems raised by the relatively recent science of Artificial Life, which attempts to create life-like phenomena in artificial media, such as computers and robots.

There are three papers online from this line of work:
1) "Against the Global Replacement"
2) "Evaluating ALife & Artificial Organisms"
3) "Artificial Life for Philosophers"

Last Modified: 26 August, 2009.