This the most general question that my research concerns.

More particularly, I am interested in how two crucial parts of the mind work: memory and imagination. What processes and mechanisms are involved when we remember or imagine? To answer this, I'm trying to build a cognitive architecture of the mind. I take an interdisciplinary approach to these questions, meaning that I combine (at least) philosophy, psychology, computer science, and neuroscience to find an answer.

Jaume Plensa's scupture Wilsis in Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
My photo.

Publications

  • Aphantasia: In Search of a Theory (in progress).
  • Imagination as a Skill: A Bayesian Proposal (in review).
  • Direct Social Perception of Emotions in Close Relations (2017). Phenomenology and Mind, 12. Issue on New Trends in Philosophy.

Drafts available on request.
Some of my research is also published as accessible blog posts on the Junkyard of the Mind – I have one on aphantasia, and one on affective forecasting.

My current research focus

  • There is a condition called aphantasia – people with aphantasia can't sensorily imagine. My goal is to develop a cognitive architecture which can explain why this is the case.
  • It is well known that we generate the content of our imagination from what's stored in our memory. I'm developing a computational theory of how this content generation works.
Previously, I have worked on whether imagination is a skill and how it can be improved, affective forecasting, and the nature of episodic memory in animals.

Talks

Upcoming

A selection of past talks

  • Great Expectations: Imagining Future Moods and Emotions (European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Athens, 2019)
  • Improving Imagination (The Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society & the Mind Association, University of Oxford, 2018)
  • Knowledge Through Controlled Imagination (White Rose Philosophy Forum, University of York, 2018)
  • Memory as the Route to Imagination: A Simulationist Account of Affective Forecasting  (Cognition and Philosophy, University of Sheffield, 2017)