Ori Beck
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Pittsburgh, Ph.D. 2015)
Epistemology, Philosophy of Perception (including Philosophy of Cognitive Science), Philosophy of Mind
I specialize in philosophy of perception (including philosophy of cognitive science), philosophy of mind, and epistemology. My research focuses on understanding what the nature of our perceptions and epistemic capacities has to be, if they are to account for the kind of empirical knowledge we can attain and for the ways in which we can attain it. I think the way forward requires both a naive realist and a virtue-epistemological philosophical outlook, which I have been trying to develop in ways that connect with the concerns of contemporary cognitive science. My approach is multi-disciplinary, and touches on empirical results regarding hallucinations, sensory phenomenology, unconscious perception and the basic laws of psychophysics.
Before I took up my Lectureship (Tenure Track) at Ben-Gurion University's Philosophy Department in 2020, I spent a year here as a Kreitman Post-doctoral Fellow. Before that I served as a Junior Research Fellow at Christ's College, Cambridge. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2015.
In 2021 I won a 4-year ISF grant to develop a framework for naive reaslist epistemology. In 2023 I joined Eva Schmidt and Assaf Weksler n winning a 3-year jont DFG grant to explore psychophysical and epistemological chalklanges to naive realism.