Hello, I’m Aliyar 👋

What does a mind minimally need to represent?

Much of what a mind must represent cannot be specified propositionally, at least not yet. A child tracks what someone is in a position to know, or is trying to do, before she can attribute a belief or a desire. Norms get enforced before they can be stated. An inquirer represents the unknown she is searching for well enough to steer the search, without knowing what she will find. Fear is directed at objects long before any determinate danger has been articulated. My research asks what format such states have, and what evidence justifies attributing one rather than a richer or leaner alternative. I bring philosophical analysis, formal modeling, and empirical evidence together to build mechanistic theories with discriminating predictions. The primary strand, growing out of my dissertation on mindreading and emotion attribution, asks how lean, action-guiding systems explain infant mindreading, deception, helping, pointing, and protest without full belief representation. A second strand carries the same question into inquiry and curiosity, assertion and epistemic commitment, object-directed attitudes, and minimal self-relation.