Evan Sommers

I am a historian of early modern philosophy and a philosopher of mind and cognitive science (including neuroscience). I am especially interested in the history of theories of visual perception and in the historical development of vision science (the branch of cognitive science/neuroscience that studies visual perception). 

I come to Davidson from Washington University in St. Louis where I was a postdoctoral researcher in the philosophy-neuroscience-psychology program. The historical figures I am most interested in include Ibn al-Haytham, George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, and Hermann von Helmholtz among others. In present-day cognitive science and neuroscience, I am especially interested in issues surrounding neural representation and computation. I am increasingly interested in how these issues play out in the arena of AI. 

I love to discuss any topic related to mind, or the sciences of mind, so please do not hesitate to say hello if these things are of interest to you (or if you want to talk about philosophy more generally).