Home Page of Susan Schneider

Department of Philosophy

University of PennsylvaniaPicture of Computational Brain

423 Logan Hall

249 S. 36th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304                                  

Email: sls@sas[dot]upenn.edu

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm also an affiliated faculty member in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN) and the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science (IRCS). My work is mainly in the philosophy of cognitive science (including philosophy of mind), metaphysics, philosophy of science, and neuroethics.  My current work mainly concerns three topics:

1. The language, or format, of thought.  (I'm currently reframing the language of thought or symbol processing program).

2. The scope and limits of computational theories of the mind.

3. The metaphysics of mind. (I'm currently reworking the metaphysical commitments of different positions on the mind-body problem).

Books

The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, (with Max Velmans), eds., Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, Dec. 2006.

Science Fiction and Philosophy, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, June 2009. (Review).

               Portuguese translation -- expected Nov. 2010.

               Arabic translation - expected in 2o11.

Click on the science fiction book cover for the table of contents at Amazon.

Click on the cover of the consciousness book to look inside this book at Amazon.com.

Book Cover

Pieces to Download

I. Computational Theories of Mind ("*" indicates LOT/CTM in particular):

The Central System as a Computational Engine (circulating draft - comments very welcome).*

“The Nature of Symbols in the Language of Thought”, Mind and Language, Winter, 2009.*

"LOT, CTM, and the Elephant in the Room," Synthese, Winter, 2009.*

“Fodor’s Challenge to the Classical Computational Theory of Mind" (Formerly called "Fodor's Version of the Frame Problem: a Solution),” (with Kirk Ludwig).  Mind and Language, 2008.*

“Yes, It Does: A Diatribe on Jerry Fodor’s The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way,"” Psyche, 2007.*

“Direct Reference, Psychological Explanation, and Frege Cases,” Mind and Language, Sept., 2005.* 

“Daniel Dennett’s Theory of Consciousness,” in my The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, 2007.

"Conceptual Atomism," Encyclopedia of Mind, Hal Pashler, Tim Crane, Fernanda Ferreira, Marcel Kinsborne (eds.), Sage Publications, forthcoming (1K only).*

“The Language of Thought," for the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology, John Symons and Paco Calvo, editors, 2009.*

“Transcending and Enhancing the Human Brain," in Science Fiction and Philosophy, Susan Schneider, editor. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, May, 2009.

II. Metaphysics (see also the above piece, which is on personal identity):

"Alien Individuals, Alien Universals, and Armstrong's Combinatorial Theory of Modality," The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Winter 2002. 

"What is the Significance of the Intuition that Laws Govern?" Australasian Journal of Philosophy, June, 2007.

“Events”, for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, pp. 1-25 (a survey of Davidson, Kim and Lewis on the nature of events; from my PhD exam).

III. Book Introductions:

"Consciousness Studies: an Introduction to the Issues," (with Max Velmans), in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness.

"Thought Experiments: Science Fiction as a Window into Philosophical Puzzles."  Introduction to Science Fiction and Philosophy, Susan Schneider, editor. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, May, 2009. 

IV. Brain Enhancement, Personal Identity, and Computational Theories of Mind:

“Transcending and Enhancing the Human Brain," in Science Fiction and Philosophy, Susan Schneider, editor. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, May, 2009. (Note to philosophers - this is written for a general audience).

"Future Minds: Cognitive Enhancement and the Nature of Persons," for the University of Pennsylvania Bioethics Reader, Art Caplan and Vardit Radvisky, eds., forthcoming in 2009, pp. 844-856. (This is an introductory piece on a progressive bioethics position called "transhumanism", that adopts a computational approach to the mind (see, e.g., Nick Bostrom's work). Transhumanism of currently of great interest to bioethicists and is gaining attention in philosophy of mind as well).

V. In progress:

"Property Dualism Requires Substance Dualism"; "Token Identity is no Physicalism Worth Having"; "Physics is not Physicalistic" (I am now reframing the metaphysical commitments of computationalism and property dualism).

Some Recent Invited Talks


Georgetown University-Nour Foundation Symposium (on philosophical issues in cognitive science), Spring, 2009.

University of South Carolina, Dept. Colloquium, Spring, 2009.

"Transcending and Enhancing the Human Brain”, Media Seminar organized by Penn, Office of Communications, New York, New York, Sept. 2008. (Other panelists: Martha Farah, Stephen Morse, Anjan Chatterjee, and Jeff Aguirre).  (Attendees included major networks and newspapers, e.g., PBS, The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal and US News and World Report. Event to be repeated in Spring, 2009).

"Dynamical Systems Theory and the Problem of Mental Causation", Workshop on Dynamical Systems Theory, Parmenides Foundation, Elba, Italy, Summer 2008.

"Neurophilosophy", Ludwig Maximillians University, Munich, Germany, Sept. 2007.

"The Computational Mind?" Parmenides Foundation, Munich, Germany, Sept. 2007.

Temple University, "The Language of Thought" (Feb., 2007).

"The Language of Thought", University of Maryland, Spring, 2007.

"Fodor's Version of the Frame Problem, a Solution" (with Kirk Ludwig), symposium paper, Eastern APA (Dec., 2005).

“On the Nature of Primitive Symbols in the Language of Thought”, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati (Oct., 2005).

"The Philosopher's Frame Problem", Android Science: a Cognitive Science Society Workshop, Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Stressa, Italy (July, 2005).

"Fodor vs. the Interactivist" (debate with Mark Bickhard) Interactivist Summer Institute, Clemson, Ohio (Sept., 2005).

“Yes, It Does: a Reaction to Jerry Fodor's Mind Doesn't Work that Way,” Lehigh University, Department of Philosophy, (April, 2005).

Background

I took my Ph.D. in philosophy in the fall of 2003 at Rutgers University and was an assistant professor at Moravian College from Fall, 2003 until Spring, 2006.  Before doing my Ph.D. I was a pre-doctoral fellow with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spending a year at the University of Rochester exploring philosophy and cognitive science. I am a native Californian, and my undergraduate degree is from U.C. Berkeley in economics. I spent my junior year of college at the Economics University, in Budapest, Hungary.  I have an eight year old daughter, Ally. 

Teaching

I'm on leave in the fall of 2009 and will only teach one class in the spring (a graduate seminar in mind).

My students should read the following pieces by Professor Jim Pryor:

"Guidelines to Writing a Philosophy Paper", "Guidelines on Reading Philosophy", and

"Philosophical Terms and Methods"

Courses

Introduction to Philosophy, Fall, 2007, Spring, 2009.

Problems in Philosophy of Cognitive Science (graduate), Spring, 2008. (Click here for course description).

Computation and Consciousness (Spring, 2008). (Click here for course description).

Epistemology (undergraduate), Spring 2007, Spring, 2009.

Philosophy of Mind,(grad./undergrad) Fall, 2008.

Metaphysics (graduate) , Spring 2007, Fall  2008 (grad./undergrad).

Philosophy and Science Fiction, (undergraduate), Fall, 2007.