Danielle J. Williams, PhD | she/her
Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Computation, Mind + Technology
Washington University in St. Louis
curriculum vitae
Education
PhD, Philosophy, UC Davis, Spring 2023
Advisor: Zoe Drayson
Dissertation Committee:
Zoe Drayson, Rohan French, Elaine Landry, Hanti Lin, William Ramsey, and Corey J. Maley
​
Dissertation Title:
Implementation and Interpretation:
A Unified Account of Physical Computation
​
​
MA, Philosophy, UC Davis, Spring 2019
Master's Thesis: Existential Introduction & Justification for Believing
​
BA, CSUS, Spring 2016
Philosophy [Ethics, Politics, & Law]
Magna Cum Laude​
​
​
​
​
Additional Degrees, Fall 2014:
AS, Corrections
AA, Administration of Justice
Sacramento City College
​
​
Areas of Specialization
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE:
COMPUTATION
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
NEUROSCIENCE
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY
​
Languages (natural and non-natural)
ENGLISH
some SPANISH
HTML
CSS
Some JAVA
Appointments
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry
Washington University in St. Louis
Psychological & Brain Sciences & Philosophy
Mentor: Jeff Zacks | Dynamic Cognition Laboratory
​
​
Visiting Appointment:
School of Philosophy at The Australian National University
College of Arts & Social Sciences
Hosted by Colin Klein | Postponed due to postdoc assignment
Skills
ADOBE:
Illustrator
InDesign
Photoshop
MICROSOFT:
Full Office Suite
Website Design + code injection
AOS / AOC
Areas of Specialization:
Philosophy of Science:
Computation
Neuroscience
Cognitive Science
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Technology
​
Areas of Competency:
Philosophy of AI
Ethics
Epistemology
Trainings
CITI Program Course:
Social & Behavioral Research
​
Honors &
Awards
Nomination: 2022-2023 Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award
Nominated for Minds, Brains, & Computers, Spring 2022
​
NSF Travel Grant | 2022
Philosophy of Science Association Meeting: $432.87
John Templeton Foundation / Duke University Project Grant | 2022
Computation and Systematicity in Human Behavior: $17,720
Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy at Duke University (SSNAP)| 2022
Funded Fellow | Honorarium: $1,000
​
Graduate Student Fellowship | 2020
UC Davis | $7,500
​
Nammour Award | 2016
Awarded for the best essay on a philosophical topic during Spring semester | $100
​
CSUS Perry Weddle Award | 2015
Awarded for the best essay on a philosophical topic during Fall semester | $100
​
Publications
Publications & Book Chapters:
​
Williams, D. (2022). Markov blankets: Realism and our ontological commitments. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, E217. doi:10.1017/S0140525X22000255
​
forthcoming | Williams, Danielle J. and Drayson, Zoe ‘The nature of the predictive mind: Realism and instrumentalism in Bayesian cognitive science’, in Tony Cheng, Ryoji Sato, and Jakob Hohwy (eds.) Expected Experiences: The Predictive Mind in an Uncertain World. Routledge (Chapter 8).
​
forthcoming |Williams, Danielle and Piccinini, Gualtiero 'Philosophy of Technology' in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Technology and the Humanities (Chapter 16).
​
​
​
​
(Titles omitted for blind review purposes)
-
Topic: Physical Computation (complete, under review)
-
Topic: The role of abstraction and Idealization in Cognitive Science ( workshopping)
-
Topic: Engineering, Neuroscience, and Philosophy (in progress, near completion)
-
Topic: Minimal Computation (co-authored for a special issue)
-
Topic: The Nature of Representations in Cognitive Neuroscience (in progress)
-
Topic: Representation & computation (in progress)
-
Topic: Modularity in Cognitive Neuroscience (in progress)
​
IN PROGRESS
SERVICE
Peer Review
Minds & Machines
Synthese
British Journal for Philosophy of Science
Philosophical Psychology
Mind & Language
​
​
Program
Committee
7th International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC-7) | October 2023
Presentations
upcoming | Presentation, 'Marr's levels are not levels of abstraction' at Washington University in St. Louis, Philosophy Department Colloquium | November 2023
​
Invited Presentation
Conference topic: Foundations of Computation at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia | July 2023
(unable to attend due to postdoc relocation time frame)
Invited Presentation
Conference topic: the role of representation and computation in the study of language and mind at the Philosophy Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia | June 2023
(unable to attend due to postdoc relocation time frame)
Presentation, "Anti-anti individualism about computational implementation" at the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology | March 2023
​
Symposium Presentation, "Physical Signatures of Computation" at the Philosophy of Science Association Biennial Meeting | 2022.
Symposium participants: Gualtiero Piccinini, Neal Anderson, David Barack, Paula Quinon, J. Brendan Ritchie, Pawel Stacewicz, and Danielle J. Williams
​
Colloquium (by invitation), Implementation, Individuation, and Triviality in Computational Theories at the Chico State University Philosophy Colloquium Series | November 2022
​
Presentation, "What a theory of computation can't be if the brain is a computer" at Philosophy and Neuroscience at the Gulf, 5th Annual Meeting of the Deep South Philosophy and Neuroscience Workgroup | 2022
​
Presentation, "There cannot be a mechanism only theory of computation" at the 37th-Annual CHPS Conference, Philosophy of Cognitive Neuroscience: Content, Self, and Cognitive Ontology | 2022
​
Joint Presentation, "Marr, instrumentalism and Bayesian cognitive science" at the 96th Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association | July 2022 (with Zoe Drayson)
-Declined presentation due to inability to travel
​
Presentation, "There cannot be a mechanism only theory of computation" at the Rotman Graduate Student Conference, Rotman Institute of Philosophy | May 2022
Presentation: “Minds, Understanding, and Artificial Intelligence” presented at the UCD Undergraduate Philosophy Conference | Spring 2016
Presentation: “McCausal Impotence: How Your Chicken Sandwich Matters” presented at the CSUS Nammour Symposium | Spring 2016
Presentation: “Knowledge as Justified True Belief” at the Pacific University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference | Spring 2016
Presentation: “Gettier’s Problem: The Problem with the Gettier Problem” presented at CSUS Perry Weddle Colloquium | Fall 2016
Commentator
upcoming | Invited Discussant, Society for the Metaphysics of Science 'Is Computation Essentially Medium-Independent?', American Philosophical Association | 2024 Central Division Meeting
with Lawrence Shapiro (chair), Zoe Drayson (Speaker), & Corey Maley (Speaker)
Panelist, 'Generative AI Panel Discussion' at the AI Digital Health Summit, Washington University in St. Louis | 2023
​
Panelist, Graduate Student Panel at the Cognitive Science Conference, University of California, Davis | 2023
​
Commentator, "Why we cannot resolve the scientific realism debate" at the American Philosophical Association | 2023 Central Division Meeting
​
Commentator: " What Justifies the Model-to-Mechanism-Mapping Requirement?" at the American Philosophical Association | 2022 Central Division Meeting.
​
Discussant: "Computation with Neural Manifolds"
Neural Mechanisms Online, a webinar series on the philosophy of neuroscience | January 2021.
​
Commentator: "Opening up the Openness of Joint Attention"
American Philosophical Association | 2021 Eastern Division Meeting.
Commentator: “Morality Derived from Social Evolution” at the Pacific University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference | Spring 2016
Panelist: "Marriage in a Liberal Democracy: Continuing the Discussion," CSUS Philosophy Department | Spring 2016
​
Posters
Poster Session, "Implementation, individuation, and triviality in computational theories" at the The Society for Philosophy and Psychology (ESP/EPP) | July 2022
-Declined presentation due to inability to travel
​
Poster Session: "The mechanistic account of computation and the implementation relation" at the American Philosophical Association | 2022 Central Division Meeting.
​
​
Session Chair
Session Chair, "Unraveling Discovery Dynamics in Open Science Partnerships" at the 57th Cincinnati Philosophy Colloquium Series: Explanation and Complexity in Biology and Psychology | 2023
​
​
Book Symposium Chair, "Cognitive Ontology: Taxonomic Practices in the Mind-Brain Sciences" at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting | 2023
Book Symposium Chair, "The Nature of Physical Computation," by Oron Shagrir at the American Philosophical Association | Pacific Division Meeting, 2022
Symposium participants: Oron Shagrir, Rosa Cao, Frances Egan, Corey J. Maley, and Danielle J. Williams
​
Session Chair, "Epistemically Useful Physical Computation" American Philosophical Association, 2021 Pacific Division Meeting | April 2021
Affiliations
MENTaL Reading & Research Group (Mind, Epistemology, Neuroscience, Thought, and Language)
UCD, Founding member, Spring 2018 - 2023
​
American Philosophical Association: 2012 - Present
Departmental
Service
Coordinator, Berkeley-Stanford-Davis Philosophy Conference, an annual conference in collaboration with the graduate students in philosophy at UC Berkeley and Stanford, 2022
​
​
​
​
​
UC Davis Philosophy Department Social Media and Website Coordinator, 2018-2021
Philosotea Coordinator, a weekly informal departmental social gathering where members of the department can socialize, drink some coffee, and eat some cheese, Fall 2018