The International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s executive board has selected Associate Professor Corey Maley, for the 2023 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy, which specifically recognizes scholars at an early stage of their academic career whose research is likely to reshape debates at the nexus of Computing and Philosophy.
Corey is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University. He is interested in understanding what, precisely, computation is. To that end, he is currently working on a theory of computation that is broad enough to incorporate distinct types of computation as species (i.e., both digital and analog) in both artifacts and natural systems (i.e., engineered systems and neural systems). At the same time, this theory needs to be narrow enough to avoid making everything computational, or making computation a mere matter of perspective. Finally, this theory should make clear what the various types of computation have in common such that they are all of the same genera, yet distinct enough to count as separate species of that genera. Much of this project has been informed by Corey’s research into analog computation, which is not (as is commonly thought) essentially about continuity. Revealing the differences between analog and digital computation, as well as their similarities, has illuminated what aspects of computation are specific only to digital computation, and not necessary features of computation in general.
Before Purdue, Corey was a faculty member at the University of Kansas. As an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska, he received a B.S. in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Psychology, and a B.A. in Philosophy. After spending a couple of years in a cognitive neuroscience lab at Washington University in St. Louis, he went to graduate school at Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. through the Logic and Philosophy of Science track in the Department of Philosophy.
Dr. Maley will present the Simon Award Keynote Address at IACAP 2024 conference in Eugene, Oregon, 8-10 July 2024.
Please join us at IACAP 2024 to congratulate Dr. Corey Maley on this well-deserved award.