INÊS HIPÓLITO Post-doctoral researcher/Lecturer Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Berlin School of Mind and Brain & Department of Philosophy Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin Contact: ines.hipolito@hu-berlin.de & Affiliate of the Theoretical Neurobiology Group Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging University College London United Kingdom |
I work on the intersection between ontological commitments of cognition and computational cognitive neuroscience. More precisely, I use logical analysis to question the standard computationalist account of cognition, specifically the realist assumption that cognition is informationally based.
In my PhD thesis "Cognition as Interaction: Making Room for A-Theoretical Cognition", I rejected the picture that the brain or the mind necessarily employs or represents the tools we use to scientifically investigate them. My research motivates seriously exploring interactionist ways of understanding cognition that reject cognition as essentially an ability or capacity for theorising or inferring. I investigate to what extent cognition can be understood in terms of unfolding interactions that adjust and adapt without assuming that those adjustments and adaptations necessarily involve or reduce to - always and everywhere - theorising, thinking, or modelling the world. I develop a conceptual model to answer fundamental questions of cognition that require minimal assumptions and are consistent with evidence from Dynamical Systems Theory and 4E Cognition framework. I aim to elucidate how we understand cognition in everyday life in a way that is consistent with using the technical apparatus of dynamical systems theory to investigate it without our falling foul of philosophical pictures entailing cognition as necessarily representing or the nervous system informationally based.. If you are interested in this topic and would like to discuss or collaborate, drop me an email! |