Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

CURRICULUM VITAE

Orlin K. Vakarelov

Department of Philosophy
Social ScienceBuilding, Room 213
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721, USA / Phone: +520-762-5692
Cell: +520-990-5428
Email:
Website:

Areas of Specialization:

Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Mind and AI, Mathematical Logic, Philosophy of Information

Areas of Competence:

Epistemology, Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Mathematics, Theory of Complex Systems

Education:

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

University of Arizona – Ph.D. Philosophy
Department of Philosophy &Cognitive Science Program
Dissertation: General Situated Cognition
Committee: Jenann Ismael (Director), John Pollock, Richard Healey, Shaughan Lavine, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini / May 2011
(expected)
Carnegie Mellon University – M.S. Logic and Computation
Department of Philosophy
Thesis: Accessible Domains from a Category Theoretic Perspective
Advisors: Wilfried Sieg, Steve Awodey / August 2003
University of Toronto
M.A. Philosophy
Hon. B.Sc. Mathematics and Philosophy, specialist
with Distinction, Member of Innis College / August 1999
May 1998

Publications:

  • “Pre-cognitive Semantic Information”, Knowledge,Technology and Policy, 2010, 23(2):193-226
  • “An objectivist argument for thirdism”, with the OSCAR seminar,Analysis 2008 68(2):149-155

Works in Preparation:

  • “The Cognitive Agent: Overcoming Informational Limits” (under review)
  • “The Information Medium” (under review)
  • “Information Networks: A Meta-architecture for Situated Cognition”
  • “The Historical Necessity of Life for Cognition”

Doctoral Dissertation Abstract:

The dissertation is based on four papers that together offer a theory of General Situated Cognition. The project has twooverarching goals: (1) to unify existing foundational approaches to cognition by investigating cognition within the framework of the philosophy of information; (2) to characterize the function of cognition and suggest a general (meta-)framework for cognitive architecture. Two of the papers, “Pre-cognitive Semantic Information” and “The Information Medium”, deal primarily with the concept of information. They offer a pragmatic and structural account of information, as well as a novel and more general theory of meaning appropriate for simple, non-linguistic organisms – the interface theory of meaning. The papers lay the theoretical and conceptual machinery needed for the other two papers, “The Cognitive Agent: Overcoming Informational Limitations” and “Information Networks: A Meta-architecture for Situated Cognition”, which investigate cognition as a general natural phenomenon. They specify the function of cognition as the mechanism in an organism that overcomes informational deficits. They also offer a broad architecture of cognitive systems based on networks of information media, which encompasses, and thus unifies existing approaches to cognition, such as the computational/symbolic approach, the connectionist approach, the dynamicist approach and the ecological embodied approach.

Research Positions:

  • RA OSCAR Project, University of Arizona, 2003-2004 – Primary source of support

Implementation of defeasible reasoning agent architecture

  • RA APROS Project, Carnegie Mellon University, 2001-2003 – Primary source of support, Full-time

Implementation of a natural deduction automated theorem prover

  • RA Center for Cognitive Robotics, University of Toronto, Summer 1999

Action semantics with the GOLOG programming language

Awards:

  • UA Excellence Graduate Fellowship in the Social Sciences–2010
  • Graduate and Professional Student Counsel Travel Grant
  • Innis College Book Award – 1995, 1996, 1997

ConferencePresentations:

  • Between Thermostats and Humans: Towards Pre-cognitive Information, Philosophy Department Colloquium; University of Arizona, Tucson AZ, December 2009
  • The Cognitive Agent: Overcoming informational limits

Metanexus 2009 Conference: Cosmos, Nature, Culture; Tempe AZ, July 2009

The paper appears in the Proceedings of the 2009 Metanexus conference, 2009,

Cognitio 2009 - Changing Minds: Cultures and Cognition in Evolution; UQAM Institute of Cognitive Science, Montreal, QB, Canada, June 2009

Arizona Conference Preparation Workshop; University of Arizona, May 2009

Cognitive Science Brown Bag; University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, January 2009

  • Informational Networks: A Meta-architecture for Situated Cognition

North American Conference on Computing and Philosophy; University of Indiana, IN, June 2009

Arizona Conference Preparation Workshop; University of Arizona, May 2009

  • The Historical Necessity of Life for Cognition, Southeastern Graduate Philosophy Conference; University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, April 2009
  • Order and Information: How cognition emerges in life and how it leaves life behind, Contemporary Philosophy Seminar; Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria, July 2008
  • General Situated Cognition

Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference; Tucson, AZ, April 2008 (Poster)

Contemporary Philosophy Seminar; Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria, June 2007

Arizona Student Workshop in Philosophy IV; University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, October 2005

  • Information from Dynamics, Arizona Student Workshop in Philosophy V; University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, October 2006
  • Information and Non-propositional Knowledge, Arizona Student Workshop in Philosophy III; University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, July 2004
  • Towards a Better Understanding of the Representational Role of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences, 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy; University of Maryland, MD, May 2004

Teaching Experience:

Instructor

U of Arizona:

TRAD 104: Mind, Matter and God (Summer 2006, Fall 2009)

TRAD 104: Science and Enquiry (Fall 2008)

PHIL 110: Logic and Critical Thinking (Fall 2005)

PHIL 305: Introduction to Philosophy of Science – Phil. of Biology (Summer 2005)

PHIL 305: Introduction to Philosophy of Science (Summer 2004)

CMU:

80-220: Philosophy of Science (Summer 2001)

Teaching Assistant

U of Arizona:

INDV 102: Personal Morality (Mark Timmons;Michael Gill)

TRAD 104: Justice and Virtue (Michael Gill; Thomas Christiano)

TRAD 104: Science and Enquiry (Shaughan Lavine)

INDV 101: Philosophical Perspectives on the Individual (Laurie Pall)

TRAD 104: Mind, Matter and God (ChrisMaloney)

PHIL 420: Philosophy of Science (Richard Healey)

PHIL 442: Knowledge and Cognition (Joseph Tolliver)

CMU:

80-310: Logic and Computation (Jeremy Avigad)

80-311: Computability and Incompleteness (Jeremy Avigad)

80-120: Reflections on Science (Kevin Kelly)

15-399: Constructive Logic (Steve Awodey – Computer Science)

21-300: Basic Logic (Peter Andrews – Mathematics)

21-484: Graph Theory (Noel Walkington – Mathematics)

Teaching Experience Cont.

U of Toronto:

PHL 345H: Intermediate Logic

PHL 351H: Philosophy of Language (Bill Seager)

Graduate courses taken: (* indicates course was audited)

Cognitive Science and Mind

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Minds, Machines & Knowledge (Seidenfeld, 00)

Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Pollock, 03)

Perceptual Experience (Chalmers, 04)*

Philosophy and AI (Pollock, 04)*

The Situated Self (Ismael, 05)

Metaphysics of Mind (Paul, 05)

Computational Intelligence (Barnard, Fong, Higgins Pollock, 05)

Readings in Cognitive Science (Ismael, 05)

Distributed Cognition (Mathiesen, 06)*

Masters Seminar in Cognitive Science (Piatelli-Palmerini, 07, 10)*

Advanced Topics in AI (Pollock, 06, 07, 08)

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Philosophy of Science

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Relativity Theory I (Dyer, 96)*

Relativity Theory II (Dyer, 97)

Readings in Semantic Approaches to Science (Brown, 98)

Philosophy of Science (Hacking, 98)

Emergence and Scientific Constructivism (Seager Gupta, 99)*

Philosophy of Biology (de Sousa & Thompson, 99)

Readings in the Formalism of Quantum Mechanics (Apostoli, 99)

Philosophy of Physics (Healey, 03)

Gauge Theories (Healey, 04)

Readings in Philosophy of Science (Healey, 06)

Seminar on Kuhn (Ismael, 07)*

Metaphysics and Science (Healey Ismael, 09)*

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Logic & Philosophy of Mathematics

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Barwise & Etchemendy: The Liar (Urquhart, 97)

Barwise & Moss: Vicious Circles (Urquhart, 98)*

Computational Complexity Theory (Urquhart and Cook, 98)

Gödel’s Works (Urquhart, 99)

Domain Theory (Dana Scott, 99)

Model Theory I (Grossberg, 00)

Model Theory II (Grossberg, 00)

Recursion Theory (Kelly, 00)

Category Theory (Awodey, 00)

Logical Semantics (Belnap, 00)

Categorical Logic (Awodey, 00)

Topos Theory (Awodey, 01)*

Probability and AI (Spirtes, 01)

Temporal Logics (Belnap Perloff, 01)*

Dedekind & Hilbert (Sieg, 01)*

Seminar in Phil of Mathematics (Menders, 02)*

Philosophy of Mathematics (Lavine, 04)

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Language

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Natural Kinds (Hacking, 98)*

Brandom’s Making it Explicit (Heath, 98)

Linguistic Theory (Simons, 99)

Epistemology (Lehrer, Spring 04)

Theory of Knowledge (Pollock, 04)

A Priori Naturalized Epistemology (Horgan, 05)*

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Other

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Early Analytic Philosophy (Tulley, 97)

Wittgenstein (Canfield, 98)

Russell (Tulley, 99)

Frege (Awodey, 99)

Pro-seminar in Philosophy (Reimer, 03)

The Purpose of Moral Theory (Schmidtz, 04)

Analytic Aesthetics (Lehrer, 04)

Seminar on Hume (Owen, 05)

Seminar on Plato (Kamtekar, 06)

1

Curriculum VitaeOrlin Vakarelov

Professional Service:

  • Referee for 2009 Cognitive Science Society annual meeting
  • Organizer for 2002 Pitt-CMU Graduate Student Conference
  • Commentator for the following conferences: The North American Conference on Computing and Philosophy, University of Indiana, 2009; Information Ethics Roundtable, University of Arizona 2009; Pacific Division APA 2008; Pitt-CMU Philosophy Graduate Student Conference, Pittsburgh, 2002

References:

Jenann Ismael
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Arizona
Center for Time, University of Sydney
Email: / Luciano Floridi
UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics, School of Humanities; and
Research Chair in Philosophy of Information, Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire
Fellow of St Cross College, and
Senior Member, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford
Email:
Richard Healey
Professor of Philosophy
University of Arizona
Email:
Shaughan Lavine
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Arizona
Email: / Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
Professor of Cognitive Science
University of Arizona
Email:
RachanaKamtekar (Teaching)
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Arizona
Email:

1