Future Talks
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2026-08-24
Proper Functions as an Etiological Kind: Core and Modules
With Marc Artiga at the ECAP12 from 24 to 28 August 2026 in Madrid Proper functions are used to explain why some hearts malfunction, why some neural states misrepresent, and why certain psychological and physiological conditions are considered disorders. We treat the question “What is it for something to have a specific proper function?” as…
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2026-08-24
AI Frogs, Proper Functions, and Internal Representations
with James Turner12th European Congress of Analytic Philosophy, Madrid, 24–28 August 2026 Modern AI systems built on artificial neural networks (ANNs) display behaviours that, in animals, would typically be explained by appeal to internal representations. This has prompted debate over whether such systems could possess internal representation. We advance this discussion by applying a teleosemantic…
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2026-10-09
In Defense of Realism about Self–Illness Ambiguity
27th International Network of Philosophy and Psychiatry Conference, Nijmegen, 8–9 October 2026 Self-illness ambiguity (SIA) refers to the difficulty of distinguishing “who I am” from “what my disorder does,” as expressed in statements such as “It wasn’t me; it was the illness.” Early descriptions of this phenomenon in illness narratives (Karp 1994) and in psychiatric-philosophical…
Past Talks
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2026-07-02
The Dual Role of Proper Functions: In Defense of Pluralist Contextualism
Functions and Classification in Biomedicine, Rijeka, 2 July 2026
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2026-06-11
Four Questions about Dysfunctions in Medicine and Psychiatry
Functions and Dysfunctions in Medicine and Psychiatry, Universitat de València, 11–12 June 2026
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2026-05-29
In Defense of Realism about Self–Illness Ambiguity
2026 Annual Meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP), online Self-illness ambiguity (SIA) refers to the difficulty of distinguishing “who I am” from “what my disorder does,” as expressed in statements such as “It wasn’t me; it was the illness.” Early descriptions of this phenomenon in illness narratives (Karp 1994)…
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2026-05-26
Etiological Service Functions for Teleosemantics
Representation and Affect in Cognitive Science, Universitat de Barcelona Teleosemantic theories aim to naturalise representational status and content by grounding them in the proper functions of components of cognitive systems. Yet teleosemantics inherits a substantive open question: which notion of proper function can do this grounding work across biological and artificial cases, while accommodating malfunction,…
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2025-09-12
The Mind’s Blueprint – Mental Health, Design, and Rational Ability
GAP.12 Pathways to Truth in Düsseldorf
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2025-05-29
The Mind’s Blueprint – Mental Health, Rational Ability, and Design
26th INPP Conference in Leipzig
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2024-09-11
Mental Representation and Proper Function for Artificial Neural Networks
with James Turner Congress of the German Society for Philosophy, Münster
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2024-02-15
Revisiting dysfunction in disorders: Degrees, diversity, and distality
Templeton-Sowerby Joint Workshop: Function and Dysfunction in Medicine and Psychiatry, King’s College London
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2023-12-05
Mind and Function: On the Role of Selected Dispositions in the Philosophy of Mind and Psychiatry
1st Recife’s Virtual Conference on Philosophy of Mind, online
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2023-10-05
Biological Functions as Selected Dispositions
Millikanfest, University of Connecticut