Gabriel Siegel

Starting Fall 2025, I will be an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa.

I received my PhD in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. I received my MA in Philosophy from Tufts University.

I work in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and philosophy of science. My research aims to better understand perceptual consciousness and explanatory practices in psychology and neuroscience. 

With respect to perceptual consciousness, I am especially interested in vestibular perception (which contributes to our sense of balance). My research demonstrates that attention to vestibular perception broadens our understanding of what we perceive in the world, it illuminates how self-consciousness surfaces in the context of perceiving our own bodies, and it reveals how understanding perceptual experience can contribute to medical diagnosis. In the general philosophy of science, my research investigates how scientists form explanations and make various phenomena in the world intelligible. 

Publications

(forthcoming) "Transfer of statistical regularity in visual search" (with Richard A. Abrams) Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

(2025) "Can Basic Perceptual Features Be Learned?" Synthese. [penultimate draft] 

(2024) "Scientific Understanding as Narrative Intelligibility" Philosophical Studies. [penultimate draft] 

(2024) "Phenomenological Laws and Mechanistic Explanations" (with Carl F. Craver) Philosophy of Science. [open access]

(2022) “Perceptual Modes of Presentation as Object Files” Erkenntnis. [penultimate draft]

Contact: gabriel.siegel@wustl.edu