PhD candidate
I am a Ph.D. student in the Cognitive and Brain Sciences Department, specializing in the philosophy of cognitive neuroscience. My research examines the explanatory role of representation in mechanistic explanations and explores possible ways to address the challenge that arises from incorporating representation in mechanistic explanations. This challenge, known as the compatibility challenge, concerns the problem of appealing to entities that supervene on the external distal environment (i.e., representations) within a mechanism that is confined to the boundaries of a system (e.g., an organism). My research focuses on: (a) investigating the explanatory relevance of representation in mechanistic explanations; (b) analyzing existing theories of representation to identify gaps that need to be addressed in leading accounts to resolve the compatibility challenge; and (c) exploring empirical evidence for the necessity of computation in the emergence of representation.