Description

Jonathan Phillips is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science at Dartmouth College. His research falls in the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and linguistics, and fits most easily within the broader umbrella of cognitive science. Much of the work he has done relates in one way or another to the psychological representation of modality – the way our minds represent possibilities. He has also conducted research on theory of mind, causal reasoning, moral judgements, formal semantics, and happiness. He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology and Philosophy from Yale in 2015, and before joining the Cognitive Science Program at Dartmouth in 2019, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Harvard’s Moral Psychology Research Lab. He is currently the Principal Investigator for the PhilLab at Dartmouth College, which explores how people think about possibilities themselves, and how that influences the way they think more generally, from the language they use, to the causal and moral judgements they make. He was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science in 2021, among many other honors including the Stanton Award from the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and Fellowship at “Human Abilities,” the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Humboldt Universität.