I am currently engaged full-time in the last phase of a PhD in cognitive science incorporating aspects of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. My doctoral research includes studies in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, linguistics, psycho-linguistics, origins of language, and artificial intelligence. My thesis project is primarily concerned with the nature of concepts, concept acquisition versus concept learning, and our intuitions about the correct application of concepts and the linguistic items used to express them. A major part of the project entails a study of theories of meaning and mental content and includes theories of the normativity of linguistic meaning and intentional content. Following the work of Clarke (2010), I argue that one or more of the dual process theories (advanced by Carruthers, Samuels, and others) can be useful in examining the nature of concepts and concept acquisition/learning – dual-process theories may help to differentiate between lexical and non-lexical concepts given that System 1 is associated with language and System 2 is independent of language. The thesis includes a model for a dual-process theory of mind which combines the Connectionist and Classical cognitive architectures, and builds on this model to present an internalist theory of meaning.
I have lectured in the philosophy of artificial intelligence, and guest-lectured in evolutionary psychology and in art, philosophy, and neuroscience.
I have a Masters degree in philosophy, a graduate certificate in computer science, and have completed all coursed in computer science at the Masters level. I have two Bachelor degrees: one in mathematics and one in philosophy.
Publications
1. “Is Man a Rational Animal?”, Ithaque, No. 7, Automne 2010
2. “Society and the Scientific Paradigm”, The International Journal of Science in Society, Volume 2,
Issue 1, pp.193-200.