I studied psychology at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I received my M.A. in psychology from the University of Iowa where I did research in cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience. At one point, I began being more interested in the philosophical and methodological issues that arise in psychological science, which led me to pursue a doctoral degree in science studies focusing on philosophy of science.
I got my Ph.D. from the Science and Technology Studies program at Virginia Tech where I wrote my dissertation under the supervision of Professor Deborah Mayo. My dissertation is entitled “Experimental Knowledge in Cognitive Neu…
I studied psychology at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I received my M.A. in psychology from the University of Iowa where I did research in cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience. At one point, I began being more interested in the philosophical and methodological issues that arise in psychological science, which led me to pursue a doctoral degree in science studies focusing on philosophy of science.
I got my Ph.D. from the Science and Technology Studies program at Virginia Tech where I wrote my dissertation under the supervision of Professor Deborah Mayo. My dissertation is entitled “Experimental Knowledge in Cognitive Neuroscience: Evidence, Errors, and Inference” and it focuses on the epistemology of functional neuroimaging. I addressed essential questions, such as 'what can we really learn from cognitive neuroscience?', and analyzed the logic, epistemology, and the statistics of functional neuroimaging experiments. A central aspect of this work was applying Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical philosophy of science to issues of evidence and inference that arise in this field with the aim of clarifying and hopefully helping resolve these issues. Specific themes included carrying out detailed historical and conceptual analyses of elements of neuroimaging; such as the physical and physiological bases of the workings of neuroimaging machines, statistical analysis techniques, and the inferential relationships between hypotheses about human cognition and neuroimaging data. This work begins to clarify what we can reliably learn from neuroimaging and how this knowledge can be used to produce novel and fruitful conceptualizations of cognition. These include new approaches to answering the question 'how is cognition realized by the central nervous system?' as well as exploring possibilities for novel cognitive architectures which can be tested in biologically realistic neural network simulations.
My research interests fall in the intersections of philosophy of science, philosophy of experiment, cognitive science, and neuroscience. My current work is centered around three trajectories: the further development and expansion of my work in the error-statistical epistemology of neuroimaging, novel conceptualizations of cognitive architectures, and philosophical and empirical studies of complex cognition.
