Soren Schlassa

I'm a PhD candidate in the NYU Department of Philosophy and undergrad emeritus at Carleton College. I work on cognitive science, metasemantics, and metaphysics. My dissertation is on the question: how and why do intelligent systems like us carve the world up into objects? 

I'm interested in methodological questions in the cognitive sciences, like the nature of computation, representational format, and representation. I also want to know how biological minds structure their representations, and how to apply this to thinking about AI. And I want to know what the world is like in itself. 

Minds and Machines

As primary instructor, Summer '25

Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science

As primary instructor, Summer '22

Syllabus here.

Global Ethics

Instructor: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Spring '23

Philosophy of Language

Instructor: Matt Mandelkern, Fall '22

Philosophy of Mind

Instructor: Verónica Gómez Sánchez, Spring '22

Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science

Instructor: Michael Strevens, Fall '21

My philosophy-teaching philosophy: I really like teaching philosophy. My first goal is to get students thinking like philosophers. To me that means framing hypotheses, clarifying them, applying them to cases, revising them, and rooting out misunderstanding. I think studying philosophy is a particularly good way to practice these things. I put a lot of effort into making my classes welcoming and collaborative.

My committee is Michael Strevens, Ned Block, and Kit Fine.

Papers and projects in various stages of progress:

"How to See Things" (email for draft)

Defends an account of what it is to visually represent objects, drawing heavily on empirical work. 

Haiku abstract:

To see things as such

Is just to organize stuff

Which one sees, chunkwise

A paper on metametaphysics and vision (email for draft)

Argues that our object-seeing doesn't track real mereological facts.

A paper on physics and compositional structure, with Nicolas Loizeau

Develops a sense in which the dynamics of a physical theory privileges a particular way of structuring its states. 

"What Is Representational Format?"

Replies to Greenberg, Vernazzani and Coelho Mollo, and Lee et al on format. Lays out logical space and gives a theory that explains the connection between format and computation.

A paper on associative computation, with Ali Rezaei

Integrates associative networks into a representationalist framework. Argues that associations frequently have semantic content.