CHRISTOPHER CHERNIAK
Committee on Philosophy and the Sciences
Department of Philosophy
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
cherniak[at]umd[dot]edu
301 405-5704
Cherniak's research falls in theory of knowledge and in neuroanatomy. The underlying linkage between the two areas concerns models of the agent: Some of the work focusses on more realistic, bounded-resource theories of rationality; from this epistemology stems a research program focussed on optimal-wiring models of brain structure.
Spring 2007
Fall 2006
Spring 2006
PHIL 280 PHILOSOPHY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE: Mind from Computation?
Selected Publications
Philosophy, etc.
"Minimal Rationality,"
Mind, 90 (1981) 161-183. (
www.jstor.org )
"Feasible Inferences,"
Philosophy of Science, 48 (1981) 248-268. (
www.jstor.org )
"Rationality and the Structure
of Human Memory," Synthese, 57 (1983) 163-186.
"The Riddle of the Universe
and Its Solution" (philosophical fiction), in The Mind's I, D. Hofstadter
& D. Dennett, eds. (Basic Books, 1981); reprinted (in German) in Ist Gott
Ein Taoist, S. Lem, ed. (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988).
"Computational Complexity
and the Universal Acceptance of Logic," Journal of Philosophy, 81 (1984)
739-758; reprinted in Naturalizing Epistemology, H. Kornblith, ed. (Bradford/MIT,
1994). (
www.jstor.org )
"Limits for Knowledge,"
Philosophical Studies, 49 (1986) 1-18.
"The Wager" (philosophical fiction), AI Magazine, 7 (1986) 120-124 ( PDF ).
"Huysmans' Tortoise" (philosophical fiction) (1987, 2000) ( PDF ).
Minimal Rationality (Bradford
Books / M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA: 1986). Paperback, 1990; 2nd printing, 1992;
forthcoming in Japanese, 2006.
"Rationality," invited
article in A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, S. Guttenplan, ed. (Blackwell,
1994).
"Rational Beliefs,"
invited article in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, E. Craig, ed. (Routledge,
1998).
"Racionalidade," invited
article in Enciclopedia de Termos Logico-Filosoficos, J. Branquinho and P. Murcho,
eds. (Biblioteca Nacional, 1999).
"Rational Agency," invited article in MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, R. Wilson and F. Keil, eds. (MIT Press, 1999).
"Philosophy and Computational
Neuroanatomy," invited, Philosophical Studies, 73 (1994) 89-107. ( PDF
)
"Innateness and Brain-Wiring Optimization: Non-Genomic Nativism," in A. Zilhao, ed., Evolution, Rationality and Cognition (Routledge, 2005) 103-112.( PDF )
"Neural Circuitry Optimization," invited article in J. Kaas, ed., Evolution of Nervous Systems (Academic Press, 2006) 269-272, vol 1, History of Ideas, Basic Concepts and Developmental Mechanisms.
"Minimal Rationality and Optimal Brain Wiring," International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Beijing, Aug. 2007).
Neuroscience, etc.
"Prototypicality and Deductive
Reasoning," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23 (1984) 625-642.
"Undebuggability and Cognitive
Science," Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 31
(1988) 402-412. ( PDF )
"The Bounded Brain: Toward
Quantitative Neuroanatomy," Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2 (1990)
58-68. ( PDF )
"Local Optimization of
Neuron Arbors," UMIACS Tech Report 90-90 (July 1990); Biological Cybernetics,
66 (1992) 503-510. ( PDF
)
"Component Placement Optimization
in the Brain," UMIACS Tech Report 91-98 (June 1991); Journal of Neuroscience,
14 (1994) 2418-2427. ( PDF )
"Network Optimization in
the Brain: From C. elegans to Cerebral Cortex" [I: 9/1991] NIMH Grant Application,
UMIACS Tech Report CS-TR-4524. ( www.cs.umd.edu/Library/TRs/ )
"Neural Component Placement,"
invited, Trends in Neurosciences, 18 (1995) 522-527. ( PDF
)
"Large-Scale Optimization
of Neuron Arbors," with Mark Changizi and Du Won Kang, University of Maryland
Institute for Advanced Computer Studies Tech Report 96-78 (November 1996); Physical
Review E, 59 (1999) 6001-6009. ( www.aps.org
)
"Modeling the Large-Scale
Geometry of Human Coronary Arteries," with M. Changizi, Can. J. Physiol.
Pharmacol., 78 (2000) 603-611.
"Network Optimization in
the Brain: Cerebral Cortex Layout" [II: 2/2000] NIMH Grant Application,
UMIACS Tech Report CS-TR-4525. ( www.cs.umd.edu/Library/TRs/ )
"Optimal-Wiring Models
of Neuroanatomy," with Z. Mokhtarzada and U. Nodelman, in G. Ascoli, ed.,
Computational Neuroanatomy: Principles and Methods (Humana, 2002). ( PDF
)
"Global Optimization of Cerebral Cortex Layout," with
Z. Mokhtarzada,
R. Rodriguez-Esteban, and B. Changizi, (2003). University of Maryland
Institute for Advanced Computer Studies UMIACS-TR-2003-102. ( www.cs.umd.edu/Library/TRs/CS-TR-4534/CS-TR-4534.pdf
)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101 (2004) 1081-1086. ( www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0305212101v1
)
( Extended Version:
glue.umd.edu/~cherniak/globopt.htm )
( Supplementary Website: glue.umd.edu/~cherniak/SuppData/ )
Other
MindSet CogSci Courseware [ PCOMP, THERMO, and MSHRDLU ]
Indoor Micro-Booomerangs ( HTML )