David Danks

Department Head & L.L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy and Psychology

Bio

 

Research

My research largely falls at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and machine learning, using ideas and frameworks from each to inform the others. My primary research in recent years has been in computational cognitive science: developing fully-specified computational models to describe, predict, and most importantly, explain human behavior (in causal cognition, concepts and categories, and most recently, linguistics). My other major research project, partly supported by an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, has focused on the human impacts when autonomy is introduced into a technological system. In particular, I have examined the relations of trust and identity as they are affected by technologies such as self-driving vehicles, autonomous weapons systems, and autonomous cyber-systems.

Publications

Please visit David's personal website for publication information and C.V.

Teaching

Undergraduate
80-150: Nature of Reason
80-257: Nietzsche
80-270: Philosophy of Mind
80-271: Philosophy & Psychology
80-316/616: Probability & Artificial Intelligence
80-323/623: Philosophy of Biology

Graduate
80-602: Proseminar/Philosophical Foundations seminar
80-514: Seminar on Philosophy of Science seminar (past seminars have included: Current Topics; Graphical Models in Cognitive Science; and Normativity in Cognitive Psychology)