Colloquium - Prof. Rosa Cao

Prof. Cao is a philosopher of neuroscience and cognitive science. She has written about how notions such as “representation,” “computation,” and “information” contribute to our understanding of the mind, brain, and cognition, and whether there is anything distinctively biological about how the mind works. Her current research focuses on the relationship between artificial and biological intelligence, especially in the context of agency and trying to articulate conditions and mechanisms for minimal agency (e.g. in simple organisms), comparing them to what might be engineered into artificial systems. 

Prof. Cao holds two PhDs. She received a PhD in systems neuroscience from MIT in 2011 and a PhD in Philosophy from NYU in 2018. Before joining Stanford University, she was a post-doctoral fellow with Daniel Dennett at the Tufts Center for Cognitive Studies, had an NSF fellowship with Sean Kelly at Harvard, and was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Indiana University.