Tadeg Quillien

Chancellor's Fellow

Research summary

I am interested in the role of causality in human cognition, as it applies to topics such as explanation, responsibility judgments, and concepts. I use concepts and ideas from computational cognitive science and philosophy to address these issues. I am also interested in meta-theoretical questions, such as the role of evolutionary biology and rational analysis in psychology.

Current research interests

In our everyday life, we make intuitive judgments about the causes of events. These judgments appear simple and effortless, but under the surface they turn out the be very sophisticated. For example, we intuitively feel that some events are 'more of a cause' of an outcome than others. Or we might say that an event 'allows' rather than 'causes' an outcome, revealing important qualitative distinctions in our representations of causation. An important part of my current research is to give formal accounts of these intuitive judgments, using for example tools from the causal modeling literature. This research program also extends beyond judgments of causation per se. For example, I have been developing formal accounts of what we mean when we say that someone acts intentionally, or when we offer guesses in answer to a question.

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