About Me

I am Zhexi Zhang (pronounced juh-shee juhng), a PhD candidate in Philosophy at University of California, Davis.

I primarily work in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, drawing on empirical work from psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics. I investigate the explanatory roles of mental representations, focusing on representational formats—how representational vehicles are structured to map onto content. My research bridges foundational debates in the philosophy of mind with contemporary cognitive science, offering new insights into perceptual and linguistic systems, as well as how core cognition relates to higher-level thought.

In my work-in-progress dissertation, I investigate different representational formats and compare the distinctive features of analogue representations and language-like representations. For example, I examine whether analogue representations, often regarded as nonlinguistic, have conceptual elements, have the syntactic structure, and participate in inferential transitions.

Alongside this work, I investigate ethical and conceptual issues in artificial intelligence.

I am also interested in moral psychology and experimental philosophy.