Eylem Özaltun
I am an assistant professor of Philosophy at Koç University. After recevieng my B.Sc, in Mathematics, I switched to Philosophy and completed my Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2013 at Harvard. My dissertation, “Knowledge in Action,” investigates the role of reason and self-knowledge in acting intentionally, and was written under the supervision of Sean Kelly, Richard Moran, and Matthew Boyle. In addition to my dissertation supervisors, Charles Parsons, Warren Goldfarb, and Douglas Lavin influenced my thinking a great deal during my graduate work. John McDowell and Charles Travis were key influencers outside of Harvard.
I work on philosophy of mind, with a focus on action because (as O'Schaughnessy puts it) the phenomenon of bodily action set in a public and physical environment is a particularly appropriate place to focus to study mind in this materialistic age. My earlier research was on the possibility of acting, by itself, to be a way of acquiring knowledge of the objective world - so I worked on the object of the agent's non-observational knowledge. My current research lies at the intersection of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, and investigates self-consciousness both in action and perception and the use of the first-person pronoun in expressing such consciousness. In this investigation I focus on Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein and Anscombe.
I am also working on a monograph, with the working title “Varieties of I think”, which is a critique of how we study self-consciousness in contemporary analytic philosophy under the influence of the Evans/Strawson approach: by studying the special way in which the subject knows about the object she is. At the core of the Evans/Strawson approach to self-consciousness is the thought that self-consciousness is a manner of thinking of an object which is the subject of this thinking. My aim in this project is to reject this widespread approach to self-consciousness. Instead I propose to study self-consciousness as the nature of a thinker who can make objective judgments in general, and hence to reflect on the possibility of objective judgment rather than self-knowledge in particular. I propose, in studying self- consciousness, that our theme is not the manner of thinking of an object which is the subject of that thought, not a form of reference among many. Rather it is the manner of thinking of objects in general, the very possibility of objective reference.
In addition to my theoretical work I am also interested in the empirical implications of my views on self-consciousness and the agent’s knowledge. I am exploring this interest in a joint project with Wayne Christensen titled “The Structure of Action Awareness” where we are providing a new model for action awareness which captures the way in which cognitive processes contribute to action production. We are working to show that the evidence from three different areas of empirical research on bodily action—namely, cognitive control, anatomy of motor control, and ontogeny of motor control—fits nicely with our model.
Address: Koç University,
Rumeli Feneri Yolu, Sariyer, Istanbul- TURKEY
I work on philosophy of mind, with a focus on action because (as O'Schaughnessy puts it) the phenomenon of bodily action set in a public and physical environment is a particularly appropriate place to focus to study mind in this materialistic age. My earlier research was on the possibility of acting, by itself, to be a way of acquiring knowledge of the objective world - so I worked on the object of the agent's non-observational knowledge. My current research lies at the intersection of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, and investigates self-consciousness both in action and perception and the use of the first-person pronoun in expressing such consciousness. In this investigation I focus on Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein and Anscombe.
I am also working on a monograph, with the working title “Varieties of I think”, which is a critique of how we study self-consciousness in contemporary analytic philosophy under the influence of the Evans/Strawson approach: by studying the special way in which the subject knows about the object she is. At the core of the Evans/Strawson approach to self-consciousness is the thought that self-consciousness is a manner of thinking of an object which is the subject of this thinking. My aim in this project is to reject this widespread approach to self-consciousness. Instead I propose to study self-consciousness as the nature of a thinker who can make objective judgments in general, and hence to reflect on the possibility of objective judgment rather than self-knowledge in particular. I propose, in studying self- consciousness, that our theme is not the manner of thinking of an object which is the subject of that thought, not a form of reference among many. Rather it is the manner of thinking of objects in general, the very possibility of objective reference.
In addition to my theoretical work I am also interested in the empirical implications of my views on self-consciousness and the agent’s knowledge. I am exploring this interest in a joint project with Wayne Christensen titled “The Structure of Action Awareness” where we are providing a new model for action awareness which captures the way in which cognitive processes contribute to action production. We are working to show that the evidence from three different areas of empirical research on bodily action—namely, cognitive control, anatomy of motor control, and ontogeny of motor control—fits nicely with our model.
Address: Koç University,
Rumeli Feneri Yolu, Sariyer, Istanbul- TURKEY
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