John Morrison

Affiliation

I am a professor of philosophy at Barnard College, Columbia University. I am an affiliate of Barnard's Neuroscience and Behavior Department, Columbia's Mind Brain Behavior Institute, and Columbia's Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. I am also a mentor in Columbia's Neurobiology and Behavior Graduate Program. My research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and Data Sciences Institute. I am an editor of the Journal of Philosophy. I led the effort to create the cognitive science program at Barnard and Columbia, and served as Barnard's founding director.

Teaching

Research

My research is primarily in the philosophy of mind (esp. cognitive neuroscience) and the history of modern philosophy (esp. the seventeenth century).

I am currently working on two projects. The first is an attempt to understand the brain from an abstract perspective. Physics and economics provide helpful models of what I'm aiming for. When trying to understand a thermodynamic system, it’s often better to abstract away from the activities of individual molecules, and instead focus on more global features, such as pressure and temperature. When trying to understand an economic system, it’s often better to abstract away from the activities of individual consumers, and instead focus on more global features, such as inflation and gross domestic product. Likewise, when trying to understand brains, it’s often useful to abstract away from activities of individual neurons, and instead focus on more global features, such as representation and algorithm. This is particularly true when trying to understand how our brains enable us to successfully interact with our environment. Unfortunately, whereas we have precise and uniform definitions of pressure, temperature, inflation, and gross domestic product, there are no widely accepted definitions of representation and algorithm in terms of neural activity. The overall goal of this project is to develop a useful and precise framework for attributing representations and algorithms to the brain.

This project builds on past research on conscious perception. In one line of research, I argued that our conscious perceptions involve probabilities. I called this view Perceptual Confidence. I have expanded my focus to include unconscious neural representations and the algorithms that rely on them. In another line of research, I argued that our conscious perceptions of color properties, such as redness, depend on our representations of the differences and similarities between objects, thereby reversing the traditional order of explanation. I called this view Perceptual Structuralism. I am now expanding my focus to include unconscious neural representations of other properties, such as orientation.

The second project is about the foundations of Spinoza's metaphysics. It's an attempt to unravel his claims about minds, bodies, God, and their essences. In past research, I argued for new interpretations of Spinoza's basic notions, namely causation, conception, and inherence. I also argued that Spinoza would reject the Indiscernibility of Identicals in response to a puzzle of identity over time, and that this is the key to understanding his view of the mind's relation to the body. I am now trying to understand his view of essences.

Philosophy of Cognitive Neuroscience

"Algorithms for Neural Networks," (email for draft)

"Representations for Neural Networks," (in progress)

"Representation in the Hippocampus,"
with Abhishek Shah (in progress)

"Using Transfer Learning to Define a Neural System's Algorithm,"
with Niko Kriegeskorte and Benjamin Peters (in progress)

"Source Invariance and Probabilistic Transfer:
A Testable Theory of Probabilistic Neural Representations,"
with Sam Lippl, Raphael Gerraty, and Niko Kriegeskorte, preprint

"Flavors of Abstraction: Comparing Methods for Identifying Algorithms in Neural Networks," with Amir Zur, Atticus Geiger, Benjamin Peters (in progress)

Probabilities and Perception

"Perceptual Confidence,"
Analytic Philosophy (2016), final
*Winner of the 2015 Sanders Prize in Philosophy of Mind

"Perceptual Confidence and Categorization,"
Analytic Philosophy (2017), final

"Third-Personal Evidence for Perceptual Confidence,"
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2024), final

Perceptual Structuralism

"Colour in a Physical World,"
Mind (2012), final, appendix

"Anti-Atomism about Color Representation,"
Noûs (2015), final

"Triangulating How Things Look,"
Mind & Language (2015), final

"Perceptual Variation and Structuralism,"
Noûs (2020), final

"Perceptual Variation and Relativism,"
Epistemology After Sextus Empiricus (2020), Vogt & Vlastis (eds.), final, appendix

"Perceptual Variation and Ignorance,"
Synthese (2021), final

Early Modern Metaphysics

"Conception and Causation in Spinoza's Metaphysics,"
Philosophers' Imprint (2013), final

"Restricting Spinoza's Causal Axiom,"
Philosophical Quarterly (2015), final

"Truth in the Emendation,"
The Young Spinoza, Melamed (ed.) (2015), final

"Two puzzles about Thought and Identity in Spinoza,"
Cambridge Critical Guide to Spinoza's Ethics, Melamed (ed.) (2017), final

"Spinoza on Numerical Identity and Time,"
Blackwell Companion to Spinoza, Melamed (ed.) (2021), final

"Descartes on Numerical Identity and Time,"
The Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2022), penultimate, final

"Spinoza on Mind, Body, and Numerical Identity,"
Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind (2022), final

"Three Medieval Aristotelians on Numerical Identity and Time,"
Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy (2022), final

Reviews

Review of Valtteri Viljanen's Spinoza's Geometry of Power
British Journal for the History of Philosophy (2013), final

Review of De Rosa's Descartes and the Puzzle of Sensory Representation (with Elliot Paul), Mind (2014), final

Contact

Barnard Faculty Profile

Columbia Faculty Profile

CV

October 2024

Postdocs

Nedah Nemati (2023-)

Raphael Gerraty (2019-2021)

PhD Students

Lisa Clark (advisor)

Andrew Richmond (advisor, PhD 2022)

Natalie Hannan (committee, PhD 2021)

Simon Brown (committee, PhD 2020)

Jorge Morales (advisor, PhD 2018)

Jeremy Wolos (advisor, PhD 2016)