Graduate Student, Philosophy
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Mandy Simons
Kevin Zollman |
About
I am a doctoral candidate in the philosophy department at Carnegie Mellon University. My dissertation explores the roles that COOPERATION and INTENTIONALITY play in gricean pragmatics, with a view to understanding just what sort of cooperation and intentionality are required in order to see the appropriate phenomena arise in a population of language users. To that end, I employ (evolutionary) game theoretic tools in an attempt to model changes in language use over time. My hope is that my work will contribute to both the study of pragmatics, and game theory.
In 2006 I completed an MA at the University of Western Ontario, which provided me with a good grounding in the history of (analytic) philosophy. En route to my PhD I also completed an MS degree at Carnegie Mellon University, which gave me a solid technical grounding. My MS thesis focuses on developing a formal characterization of a two stage decision rule. A version of that thesis was published in the Journal of Philosophical Logic.
On the teaching front, besides the obvious courses that are tied to my research interests (Philosophy of Language, Game Theory, Epistemology), I can teach courses in Logic and in Philosophy of Religion. In addition, I have developed and taught a course entitled "The Nature of Mathematical Reasoning", which explores what formal reasoning is all about.
Contact Information
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