Peter J Mandik

Professor (Full), Department of Philosophy, William Paterson University; Ph.D. (2000), Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis.

Professional Interests

My research concerns points of intersection between philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences, especially neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. I am primarily interested in naturalistic accounts of consciousness and intentionality. My main lines of research to date have focused largely on three areas: (1) neurophilosophical explanations of phenomenal consciousness, (2) artificial-life experiments on the evolutionary emergence of representational content, and (3) the role of action-oriented representations as the basis for enactive cognition and perception. My most recent directions for exploration are: type-Q materialist (Quinean) explanations of consciousness, especially conscious color vision; alternate architectures for posthuman minds (alternate minds in a hypothetical post-singularity era); and analytic philosophy of mind approaches to meditation. 

Other Interests

Visual art, especially painting, comic illustration, and graphic design

French