curriculum vitae
EDUCATION
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PhD, University of California, Davis, Spring 2023
Philosophy
Dissertation Title: Implementation and Interpretation: A Unified Account of Physical Computation
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MA, University of California, Davis, Spring 2019
Philosophy
Master's Thesis: Existential Introduction & Justification for Believing
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BA, California State University, Sacramento, Spring 2016
Philosophy [Ethics, Politics, & Law] - Magna Cum Laude​
Senior Thesis: Organs for sale: Markets without limits
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APPOINTMENTS
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2023-2025: 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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2018-2023: Graduate Student Teaching Assistant
University of California, Davis
Philosophy & Cognitive Science
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HONORS & AWARDS
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School of Ideas in Neuroscience | 2024
Nencki Open Lab in Warsaw, Poland
Funded Visiting Lecturer on Metatheory in Neuroscience
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
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PUBLICATIONS
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Journal Articles:​
Williams, Danielle J. (forthcoming). Two senses of medium independence.
Mind & Language​
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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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Book Chapters:
Russin, J., McGrath, S., Williams, D., Elber-Dorozko, L. (forthcoming). 'From Frege to ChatGPT: Compositionality in Language, Cognition, and Deep Neural Networks' in Neuroscience & Philosophy, MIT Press
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Williams, Danielle J. and Piccinini, Gualtiero (2024) 'Philosophy of Technology' in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Technology and the Humanities.
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Williams, Danielle J. and Drayson, Zoe (2023). ‘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.
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Public Writing:
Williams, Danielle J. (2024). 'It takes two to make a thing go right'. The Brains Blog. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14986.68806​
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​Williams, Danielle J. (2024). 'We've been here before: AI promised human-like machines – in 1958' in The Conversation (also available in Popular Science)​
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Papers under review:
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1. A paper on realism (Under Review after R&R)
2. A paper on implementation and cognitive science (Under Review)
Papers in progress:
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1. Three questions about physical computation (revisions in progress)
2. A paper on computationalism (in progress)
3. A paper on abstraction in scientific modeling (in progress)
4. A paper on AI and Cognitive Science (In progress, Invited Book Chapter)
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SERVICE
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Founding and organizing member of the Society for Philosophy and Neuroscience (SPAN)
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Peer Review:
Minds & Machines
Synthese
British Journal for Philosophy of Science
Philosophical Psychology
Mind & Language
WIREs Cognitive Science
CUP Elements in Philosophy Series
Philosophical Quarterly
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Program Committee
7th International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing
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Conference Organizer
The Society for Philosophy and Neuroscience Conference | 2025
Location Announced Soon.
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Technology & Society: AI & Finance | 2024
Washington University in St. Louis
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Berkeley Stanford Davis Graduate Conference | 2022
University of California at Davis
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PRESENTATIONS
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Upcoming, Title: TBD
Author Meets Critic Session on Mazviita Chirimuuta's book "The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience" 116th Annual Meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology | April 2025
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Upcoming, "Burning the Bridge: Why a theory of implementation can't help computational neuroscience" Philosophy and Neuroscience at the Gulf, 7th Annual Meeting of the Deep South Philosophy and Neuroscience Workgroup | October 2024
Invited Lecture, "What do theories of physical computation have to do with neuroscience?" at the School of Ideas in Neuroscience, Nencki Open Lab, Poland | July 2024
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Invited Lecture, "Why do we think of the brain as a computer?" at the School of Ideas in Neuroscience Seminar | July 2024
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Presentation, "How to be a realist about computational neuroscience" at the annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SPP) | June 2024
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Invited Micro Talk, "We've Been Here Before." at the AI + Society Brunch | May 2024
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Invited Presentation, "New Language of Thought | Same Critique" at the Mini-Conference on Modal Logic and Connectionism" at the University of Houston | April 2024
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Invited Colloquium, "How to be a realist about computational neuroscience" at The Edinburgh University Cognitive Science Society Meeting | April 2024
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Presentation, 'Thinking about Levels' at the 115th Annual Meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology | March 2024
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Invited Colloquium, 'What philosophers can offer collaborative neural engineering' | California State University, Sacramento | March 2024
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Colloquium Talk, 'Marr's levels are not levels of abstraction' at Washington University in St. Louis, Philosophy Department Colloquium | November 2023
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 Talk, "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)
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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
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PANELS, COMMENTS, & DISCUSSIONS
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Discussant: "Predictive Processing’s Flirt with Transcendental Idealism"
Neural Mechanisms Online, a webinar series on the philosophy of neuroscience | 2024
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Commentator, 'Neural Network Modeling as Task Analysis, Not Mechanistic Explanation' at the 115th Annual Meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology | March 2024
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Invited Commentator, St. Louis area Philosophy of Science Association (SLaPSA) book symposium on The Physical Signatures of Computation: A Robust Mapping Account' by Neal Anderson and Gualtiero Piccinini | March 2024
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Invited Commentator, 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)
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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.
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POSTERS
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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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(INVITED) SESSION CHAIR
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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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AFFILIATIONS
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Reading Groups
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Philosophy, Computation, and Neuroscience Reading Group (PCN)
A reading group hosted by me and Carl Craver geared toward Grad Students on topics centering around the use of computational modeling and AI in neuroscience.
WashU, Scheduled for Fall 2024
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From Deep Learning to Rational Machines
A reading group on Cameron Buckner's book on machine learning
Online, Summer 2024
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Interdisciplinary Philosophy of Science Reading Group
Features members from philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and physics.
WashU, Fall 2023 - current
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MENTaL Reading & Research Group (Mind, Epistemology, Neuroscience, Thought, and Language)
UCD, Founding member, Spring 2018 - 2023
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Professional Organizations
Philosophy of Science Association: 2019 - Present
American Philosophical Association: 2012 - Present
Southern Society for Philosophy & Psychology: 2024 - Present
Society for Philosophy and Psychology: 2024 - Present
Areas of Specialization
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE:
COMPUTATION
THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES
NEUROSCIENCE
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Human Subjects Research Training
CITI Program Course:
Social & Behavioral Research
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