Selected Papers
Academic Work
The Cardinality Gap: Phenomenal Consciousness and The Limits of Digital Computation *
* Master's Dissertation -- As the dissertation is still being evaluated (expected Nov. 2), I will provide only a summary.
My dissertation argues against the possibility of phenomenal consciousness being realized by digital computation. Digital computation cannot instantiate phenomenal consciousness because they operate in mathematically incommensurable domains. Computational systems are constitutively synchronic. Their states unfold as discrete, enumerable snapshots with clock-synchronized temporal gaps separating them. Phenomenal consciousness, however, depends on diachronic biological processes that operate over continuous temporal intervals, placing them beyond what countable structures can instantiate. This dissertation explores whether the fundamentally mathematical framework of digital computation is capable of capturing processes known to support phenomenal consciousness in brains, or whether these processes exceed it. This paper examines allostatic regulation and ephaptic coupling, arguing that they exhibit continuous reciprocal causation (CRC) through bidirectional loops across temporal intervals at multiple levels. These processes cannot be wholly present at any single instant because they belong to the continuum, not the countable. Reductionism fails because it collapses CRC into linear cause-and-effect, losing its causal reality entirely. While computation can approximate conscious processes, it is incapable of instantiating them. Thus, phenomenal consciousness is not multiply realizable in computational systems.
READ PAPER (PDF) -- Coming Soon
The Limitations of Cognitive Extension
This paper is a response to the Extended Mind hypothesis, offered by philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers in 1998. Here, I argue that while the extended mind hypothesis positions itself as a functionalist description of cognition, it relies on subjective and intentional factors (trust, endorsement, meaning) for cognitive extension. Because these factors are mental interpretations, they do not truly constitute the functional integration necessary for external cognition, thereby making external cognition too easy to achieve and undermining the EM hypothesis. Thus, while the EM account looks like a functionalist account of mind, it falls short of achieving its aim due to its dependence on agents’ interpretive relation toward objects rather than any objective functional role inherent to them.
Understanding Justification Through Bayesian Networks
This paper is a response to Edmund Gettier's challenge to the longstanding view within Epistemology that knowledge is secured when is is a justified, true belief (JTB). Gettier argued that there exist scenarios where a belief can be a JTB, but only luckily so, exposing a flaw in the definition, thereby undermining the entire JTB account of knowledge. I argue that Gettier cases only appear to be lucky JTBs because they rely on an oversimplified model of justification. When we analyze them using Bayesian Networks -- which will make the structure, context, and stakes involved in justification more explicit -- we will see that the beliefs in Gettier cases are not justified at all. Rather, they are cases of poorly considered justification rendering the conclusion underdetermined.
Autadic Power: The Internal Mechanism of Structural Compliance
This paper is a response to Miranda Fricker's account of testimonial epistemic injustice as being as the result of dyadic power structures that exist "purely structurally" -- with no culprit. These structures are comprised of complex social relations between agents who have greater social influence over other agents. The result is that those from disadvantaged social positions are unjustly controlled through methods such as withholding information, undermining epistemic agency, and exclusion from knowledge sharing, which “thwarts the objective interests” of the disadvantaged. I argue that structural power is not simply an agentless, emergent dynamic inherent to social systems but that structural power gains its force when passive, external structures are internalized by agents - transforming into psychological schemata that influence behavior through “autadic” power, which describes power turned inward on the agent herself.