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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
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Dissertation Title: 

Implementation and Interpretation:

A Unified Account of Physical Computation

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MA, Philosophy, UC DavisSpring 2019
Master's Thesis: Existential Introduction & Justification for Believing

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BA, CSUS, Spring 2016
Philosophy [Ethics, Politics, & Law]
Magna Cum Laude​
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Additional Degrees, Fall 2014:
AS,  Corrections
AA, Administration of Justice
Sacramento City College
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Areas of Specialization

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE:

COMPUTATION 

COGNITIVE SCIENCE

NEUROSCIENCE

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY

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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

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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

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Areas of Competency:

Philosophy of AI

Ethics

Epistemology

Trainings

CITI Program Course:

    Social & Behavioral Research

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Honors &
Awards

Nomination: 2022-2023 Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award

Nominated for Minds, Brains, & Computers, Spring 2022

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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

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Graduate Student Fellowship | 2020

UC Davis | $7,500

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Nammour Award | 2016

Awarded for the best essay on a philosophical topic during Spring semester | $100

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CSUS Perry Weddle Award | 2015

Awarded for the best essay on a philosophical topic during Fall semester | $100

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Publications

Publications & Book Chapters:

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Williams, D. (2022). Markov blankets: Realism and our ontological commitments. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, E217. doi:10.1017/S0140525X22000255

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forthcomingWilliams, 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).

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forthcoming |Williams, Danielle and Piccinini, Gualtiero 'Philosophy of Technology' in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Technology and the Humanities (Chapter 16).  

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(Titles omitted for blind review purposes)

  1. Topic: Physical Computation (complete, under review)

  2. Topic: The role of abstraction and Idealization in Cognitive Science  ( workshopping)

  3. Topic: Engineering, Neuroscience, and Philosophy (in progress, near completion)

  4. Topic: Minimal Computation (co-authored for a special issue)

  5. Topic: The Nature of Representations in Cognitive Neuroscience (in progress)

  6. Topic: Representation & computation (in progress)

  7. Topic: Modularity in Cognitive Neuroscience (in progress)

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IN PROGRESS
SERVICE
Peer Review 

Minds & Machines

Synthese

British Journal for Philosophy of Science

Philosophical Psychology

Mind & Language

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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

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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

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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

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Colloquium (by invitation), Implementation, Individuation, and Triviality in Computational Theories at the Chico State University Philosophy Colloquium Series | November 2022

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Panelist, Graduate Student Panel at the Cognitive Science Conference, University of California, Davis | 2023

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Commentator, "Why we cannot resolve the scientific realism debate" at the American Philosophical Association | 2023 Central Division Meeting 

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Commentator: " What Justifies the Model-to-Mechanism-Mapping Requirement?" at the American Philosophical Association | 2022 Central Division Meeting.

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Discussant: "Computation with Neural Manifolds"

Neural Mechanisms Online, a webinar series on the philosophy of neuroscience | January 2021.

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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

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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

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Poster Session: "The mechanistic account of computation and the implementation relation" at the American Philosophical Association | 2022 Central Division Meeting.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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UC Davis Philosophy Department Social Media and Website Coordinator, 2018-2021

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Philosotea Coordinator, a weekly informal departmental social gathering where members of the department can socialize, drink some coffee, and eat some cheese, Fall 2018

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