Publications and areas of research

Articles and chapters

I do not have a separate page with my publications, although I periodically update my profile on PhilPapers, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate. Please check these links below:

Detailed areas of research

My research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of the philosophy of science, the philosophy of computation, the philosophy of natural sciences (physics, cognitive science, neuroscience), and applied ethics.

In the philosophy of science, I investigate how scientific unification relates to explanation and prediction in cases of theories and models. I evaluate computational tools’ actual and potential impact (machine learning, evolutionary computation, etc.) on scientific discovery, explanation, unification, and prediction. For example, one question is: how are laws of nature and invariants discovered and communicated in the computationally intensive scientific disciplines? I am interested in some metacognitive aspects of scientific practice (e.g., trust in science, acceptance and rejection of theories or models, artificial and natural learning, trust in computational results, etc.) and how scientific communities accept or reject computational results and methods. More recently, a new topic I have investigated is the intricate relationship between scientific progress, technological advancements, and the aims of science. I also work on scientific creativity when Artificial Intelligence is used in science, not as a mere tool but as an emerging epistemic agent.

In the philosophy of physics, I have investigated theoretical virtues such as unification, clarity, and simplicity in space-time models of unified field theories (Kaluza-Klein models) and quantum gravity (mostly string theory, especially in the context of dualities). I entertain an interest in quantum computing related to quantum indeterminacy. In the philosophy of physics, I have published on spacetime theories and string theory, especially on philosophical issues with string dualities. I am interested in how different string models relate to the standard particle physics and cosmology models. I discussed in a recent project the importance of the coupling constant for the unificatory power of string theory.

In applied ethics, I explore conceptually the relatively new area of ‘computational ethics’ (aka ‘machine ethics’) and models of moral cognition (natural and artificial) and moral agency (based on machine learning). I am interested in the relationship between the intricacies of applying AI to science and the domain of moral decisions. The idea of artificial moral learning immediately related to machine ethics is an area in which I develop an argument based on a Pareto tradeoff.

In the philosophy of computation, I work on different projects in the ethics and the epistemology of computer simulations in science and applied ethics, emphasizing moral agency in machine ethics. Recent interests in the philosophy of computation include trust, Big Data, numerical simulations, and machine learning. In general philosophy of science, my work follows the approach to unification I developed in my PhD thesis: I relate unification to explanation and scientific realism (I developed a counterargument to an anti-realist position based on unification). I have an interest in the epistemology and metaphysics of models (especially in model-as-maps accounts and forecast models), in perspectival realism, laws of nature (mainly in the better best system and Mill-Ramsey-Lewis approaches), and in modal aspects of science.