University of Toronto, St. George Campus
Graduate Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2015
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America
  •  789
    Perhaps the central question in action theory is this: what ingredient of bodily action is missing in mere behaviour? But what is an analogous question for mental action? I ask the following: what ingredient of active, goal-directed, thought is missing in mind-wandering? I answer that guidance is the missing ingredient that separates mind-wandering and directed thinking. I define mind-wandering as unguided attention. Roughly speaking, attention is guided when you would feel pulled back, were you…Read more
  •  747
    Mental control and attributions of blame for negligent wrongdoing
    with Samuel Murray, Kristina Krasich, Thomas Nadelhoffer, and Felipe De Brigard
    Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. forthcoming.
    Judgments of blame for others are typically sensitive to what an agent knows and desires. However, when people act negligently, they do not know what they are doing and do not desire the outcomes of their negligence. How, then, do people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing? We propose that people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing based on perceived mental control, or the degree to which an agent guides their thoughts and attention over time. To acquire information about others’ menta…Read more
  •  741
    Mind-Wandering: A Philosophical Guide
    with Aaron Glasser
    Philosophical Compass. forthcoming.
    Philosophers have long been fascinated by the stream of consciousness––thoughts, images, and bits of inner speech that dance across the inner stage. Yet for centuries, such “mind-wandering” was deemed private and thus resistant to empirical investigation. Recent developments in psychology and neuroscience have reinvigorated scientific interest in the stream of thought, leading some researchers to dub this “the era of the wandering mind”. Despite this flurry of progress, scientists have stressed …Read more
  •  685
    The Neuroscience of Spontaneous Thought: An Evolving, Interdisciplinary Field
    with Andrews-Hanna Jessica, Fox Kieran, Spreng Nathan R., and Christoff Kalina
    In Fox Kieran & Christoff Kieran (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought and Creativity, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    An often-overlooked characteristic of the human mind is its propensity to wander.  Despite growing interest in the science of mind-wandering, most studies operationalize mind-wandering by its task-unrelated contents.  But these contents may be orthogonal to the processes that determine how thoughts unfold over time, remaining stable or wandering from one topic to another. In this chapter, we emphasize the importance of incorporating such processes into current definitions of mind-wandering, and …Read more
  •  658
    The Philosophy of Mind Wandering
    In Fox Kieran & Christoff Kalina (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought and Creativity, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Our paper serves as an introduction to a budding field: the philosophy of mind-wandering. We begin with a philosophical critique of the standard psychological definitions of mind-wandering as task-unrelated or stimulus-independent. Although these definitions have helped bring mind-wandering research onto centre stage in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, they have substantial limitations that researchers must overcome to move forward. Specifically, the standard definitions do not account for…Read more
  •  409
    This report highlights and explores five questions that arose from the workshop on mind and attention in Indian philosophy at Harvard University, September 21st to 22nd, 2013: 1. How does the understanding of attention in Indian philosophy bear on contemporary western debates? 2. How can we train our attention, and what are the benefits of doing so? 3. Can meditation give us moral knowledge? 4. What can Indian philosophy tell us about how we perceive the world? 5. Are there cross-cultural philos…Read more
  •  400
    The scientific study of passive thinking: Methods of mind wandering research
    with Samuel Murray and Kristina Krasich
    In Felipe De Brigard & Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (eds.), Neuroscience and Philosophy, Mit Press. pp. 389-426. 2022.
    The science of mind wandering has rapidly expanded over the past 20 years. During this boom, mind wandering researchers have relied on self-report methods, where participants rate whether their minds were wandering. This is not an historical quirk. Rather, we argue that self-report is indispensable for researchers who study passive phenomena like mind wandering. We consider purportedly “objective” methods that measure mind wandering with eye tracking and machine learning. These measures are vali…Read more
  •  302
    The Catch-22 of Forgetfulness: Responsibility for Mental Mistakes
    with Samuel Murray, Aaron Glasser, and Kristina Krasich
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Attribution theorists assume that character information informs judgments of blame. But there is disagreement over why. One camp holds that character information is a fundamental determinant of blame. Another camp holds that character information merely provides evidence about the mental states and processes that determine responsibility. We argue for a two-channel view, where character simultaneously has fundamental and evidential effects on blame. In two large factorial studies (n = 495), part…Read more
  •  206
    Although mind-wandering occupies up to half of our waking thoughts, it is seldom discussed in philosophy. My paper brings these neglected thoughts into focus. I propose that mind-wandering is unguided attention. Guidance in my sense concerns how attention is monitored and regulated as it unfolds over time. Roughly speaking, someone’s attention is guided if she would feel pulled back, were she distracted from her current focus. Because our wandering thoughts drift unchecked from topic to topic, t…Read more
  •  141
    Blame for Hum(e)an beings: The role of character information in judgments of blame
    with Samuel Murray, Kevin O'Neill, Jordan Bridges, and Justin Sytsma
    Social Psychological and Personality Science. forthcoming.
    How does character information inform judgments of blame? Some argue that character information is indirectly relevant to blame because it enriches judgments about the mental states of a wrongdoer. Others argue that character information is directly relevant to blame, even when character traits are causally irrelevant to the wrongdoing. We propose an empirical synthesis of these views: a Two Channel Model of blame. The model predicts that character information directly affects blame when this in…Read more
  •  138
    Aha! Trick Questions, Independence, and the Epistemology of Disagreement
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 1 (3): 185-194. 2012.
    We present a family of counter-examples to David Christensen's Independence Criterion, which is central to the epistemology of disagreement. Roughly, independence requires that, when you assess whether to revise your credence in P upon discovering that someone disagrees with you, you shouldn't rely on the reasoning that lead you to your initial credence in P. To do so would beg the question against your interlocutor. Our counter-examples involve questions where, in the course of your reasoning, …Read more
  •  104
    Mind-wandering as spontaneous thought: a dynamic framework
    with Christoff Kalina, Fox Kieran, Spreng Nathan, and Andrews-Hanna Jessica
    Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17. 2016.
    Most research on mind-wandering has characterized it as a mental state with contents that are task unrelated or stimulus independent. However, the dynamics of mind-wandering—how mental states change over time—have remained largely neglected. Here, we introduce a dynamic framework for understanding mind-wandering and its relationship to the recruitment of large-scale brain networks. We propose that mind-wandering is best understood as a member of a family of spontaneous-thought phenomena that als…Read more
  •  79
    Perhaps the central question in action theory is this: what ingredient of bodily action is missing in mere behavior? But what is an analogous question for mental action? I ask this: what ingredient of active, goal-directed thought is missing in mind-wandering? My answer: attentional guidance. Attention is guided when you would feel pulled back from distractions. In contrast, mind-wandering drifts between topics unchecked. My unique starting point motivates new accounts of four central topics abo…Read more
  •  74
    Can we be responsible for our attention? Can attention be epistemically good or bad? Siegel tackles these under‐explored questions in “Selection Effects”, a pathbreaking chapter of The Rationality of Perception. In this chapter, Siegel develops one of the first philosophical accounts of attention norms. Her account is inferential: patterns of attention are often controlled by inferences and therefore subject to rational epistemic norms that govern any other form of inference. Although Siegel’s a…Read more
  •  59
    Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have reached the consensus that one can use two different kinds of regulation to achieve self-control. Synchronic regulation uses willpower to resist current temptation. Diachronic regulation implements a plan to avoid future temptation. Yet this consensus may rest on contaminated intuitions. Specifically, agents typically use willpower (synchronic regulation) to achieve their plans to avoid temptation (diachronic regulation). So even if cases of diach…Read more
  •  55
    Mind‐wandering: A philosophical guide
    with Aaron Glasser
    Philosophy Compass 15 (1). 2020.
    Philosophers have long been fascinated by the stream of consciousness – thoughts, images, and bits of inner speech that dance across the inner stage. Yet for centuries, such ‘mind‐wandering' was deemed private and thus resistant to empirical investigation. Recent developments in psychology and neuroscience have reinvigorated scientific interest in the stream of thought. Despite this flurry of progress, scientists have stressed that mind‐wandering research requires firmer philosophical foundation…Read more
  •  36
    Is an off-task mind a freely-moving mind? Examining the relationship between different dimensions of thought
    with Caitlin Mills, Quentin Raffaelli, Dylan Stan, and Kalina Christoff
    Consciousness and Cognition 58 20-33. 2018.
  •  32
    What Does “Mind‐Wandering” Mean to the Folk? An Empirical Investigation
    with Aaron Glasser, Alison Gopnik, Verity Pinter, and Chandra Sripada
    Cognitive Science 44 (10). 2020.
    Although mind‐wandering research is rapidly progressing, stark disagreements are emerging about what the term “mind‐wandering” means. Four prominent views define mind‐wandering as (a) task‐unrelated thought, (b) stimulus‐independent thought, (c) unintentional thought, or (d) dynamically unguided thought. Although theorists claim to capture the ordinary understanding of mind‐wandering, no systematic studies have assessed these claims. Two large factorial studies present participants (N = 545) wit…Read more
  •  29
    What Flips Attention?
    with Anne M. Cleary and Caitlin Mills
    Cognitive Science 47 (4). 2023.
    A central feature of our waking mental experience is that our attention naturally toggles back and forth between “external” and “internal” stimuli. In the midst of an externally demanding task, attention can involuntarily shift internally with no clear reason how or why thoughts momentarily shifted inward. In the case of external attention, we are typically exploring and encoding aspects of our external world, whereas internal attention often involves searching for and retrieving potentially rel…Read more