Brett Karlan
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Purdue University
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Welcome!
Welcome!
I am an assistant professor of philosophy at Purdue University.
I am a philosopher of cognitive science and epistemologist. I work on theories of rationality and agency, especially where those theories intersect with contemporary cognitive psychology and machine learning research. I am affiliated with Purdue's interdisciplinary Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center.
Prior to joining the faculty at Purdue, I held postdoctoral fellowships in the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford (where I was also a fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence) and in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. I completed my PhD at Princeton in 2020, where I was advised by Tom Kelly and Grace Helton.
My CV is here.
I spend most of my free time with my wife, Kelsey Wiggs Karlan (a rockstar ADHD researcher and clinical psychologist and, starting this fall, a fellow Purdue faculty member). We have, according to several objective measures, the cutest dog.
Philosophical work
Philosophical work
AI empiricism: the only game in town? In Rowbottom, Curtis-Trudel, & Barack (eds.). The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Science: Methodological and Epistemological Studies, forthcoming. [pdf]
Practical capacities, empathy, and human-centered artificial intelligence. In Perry & Cameron (eds.). Empathy and Artificial Intelligence: Challenges, Advances, and Ethical Considerations, forthcoming. [pdf]
No right to an explanation (with Henrik Kugelberg). Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2025. [pdf]
On non-ideal individual epistemology. International Journal of Philosophical Studies (special journal issue on Robin McKenna's Non-Ideal Epistemology), 2024. [pdf]
Authenticity in algorithm-aided decision-making. Synthese, 2024. [pdf]
Engineered wisdom for learning machines (with Colin Allen). Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 2024. [pdf]
Human achievement and artificial intelligence. Ethics and Information Technology, 2023. [pdf]
Quantum of wisdom (with Colin Allen). In Viggiano (ed.), Quantum Computing and AI: Social, Ethical, and Geo-Political Implications, 2022. [pdf]
The rational dynamics of implicit thought. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2022. [pdf]
Reasoning with heuristics. Ratio, 2021. [pdf]
Works in progress
Works in progress
A paper (with Evan Westra) on the productivity of folk psychology. [Under review]
A paper (with Colin Allen) on group expertise in human-machine sociotechnical systems. [Under review]
A paper (with Henrik Kugelberg) on inquiry and the role of machine learning in policy. [In preparation]
A paper (with Evan Westra) on AI alignment and social norms. [In preparation]
A paper (with Dan Burnston) on rationality in neuroscientific models. [In preparation]
Empirical work
Empirical work
Damage to the medial prefrontal cortex impairs music-evoked autobiographical memories (with Amy Belfi and Dan Tranel). Psychomusicology, 2018. [pdf]
Neural correlates of recognition and naming of musical instruments (with Amy Belfi, Joel Bruss, Taylor Abel, and Dan Tranel). Neuropsychology, 2016. [pdf]
Music evokes vivid autobiographical memories (with Amy Belfi and Dan Tranel). Memory, 2016. [pdf]
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