About Me

I am an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Colby College and affiliated faculty at the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence. My research explores how we understand and model cognitive capacities, and how we understand and interact with artificial intelligence. One strand of my work focuses on internal representations that structure the behavior of biological and artificial systems. Another focuses on how embodiment and expressive movement shape cognition. I have a special interest in studying the mind in dance, and have developed a novel approach to the computational analysis of human movement. I regularly collaborate across disciplines, contributing philosophical perspectives to projects working to simulate neural systems and apply new machine learning methods. At Colby, I teach courses in philosophy of mind, AI, cognitive science, and dance. Before joining the Colby faculty, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship in computational neuroscience at UPenn, where I also received my PhD in Philosophy, and I hold a JD from Yale Law School.

Research



Selected Publications

Rethinking Artificial General Intelligence: Beyond Anthropomorphism (Invited chapter for Introducing Philosophy of Mind, Today, Routledge),
-- 2025 (forthcoming)

Understanding Complexity Through Affordances (with Sonia Roberts),
-- 2025 (under review at Minds and Machines)

Computational kinematics of dance: distinguishing Hip Hop genres (with Tony Liu, Jordan Matelsky, Felipe Parodi, Brett Mensh, John Krakauer and Konrad Kording),
-- 2024 Frontiers in Human Robotics and AI

Commentary on Favela and Machery, "Investigating the concept of representation in neural and psychological sciences
-- 2023 The Brains Blog

Three Aspects of Representation in Neuroscience (with Ben Lansdell and Konrad Kording),
-- 2022 Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Creativity in AI Dance Art
-- 2022 International Conference on Computational Creativity

Natural information, factivity and nomicity
-- 2021 Biology and Philosophy

Referee Report of (hypothetical) Philosophy-101 Textbook, by Professor Unspecified
-- 2021 Teaching Philosophy
   Spanish Translation by Fredy H.P. Galindo
   -- 2023 Cuestiones Filosophia

Teaching

I strive to empower my students to let their curiosity and passion drive their education. My courses challenge students to consider a topic from multiple disciplinary and cultural perspectives, and I incorporate hands-on interaction with emerging technologies, helping to build broadly applicable skills and knowledge.

Courses Taught

AI and Human Values
Central Philosophical Issues: Mind, Body and Machine
Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Philosophy of Dance
Philosophy of Emotion
Philosophy of Visual Perception
Ethics

Dance

Dance is a major part of my life and identity. My primary background is in hip-hop choreography, popping, and house, and I like to explore many movement styles.

A Dance Work by Me



CV

You can view and download my full CV here.

For inquiries about consulting, see this page.



About Now

Entering year 3 at Colby! Fall colors and fresh student energy to ease the goodbye to the summer sun

Awaiting responses on several fronts: a paper about comparative complexity of agents (biological and artificial) is revised and resubmitted to Minds & Machines, "Six Forms of Dance Cognition" is under review at Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, a chapter for Routledge about "Rethinking AGI" is on the way, and fingers remain crossed for an NSF proposal on simulating the whole nervous system of C. elegans

The motion lab is coming together -- successfully set up a 3D pose pipeline in the performing arts center and now fine-tuning for accuracy while plotting out the first study. Speaking of motion capture, check out this new SciTube animation about our computational kinematics paper!

This Fall I'm teaching another iteration of "Mind Body & Machine" -- functionalism and embodiment and AI, oh my -- and a new course called "Bodies and Power" thinking about how institutions and norms treat different bodies.